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April 2025 Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Sauntering is hard work By Anatoly Liberman To saunter “to walk in a leisurely way, stroll” is a verb, famous for its etymological opacity. It is instructive and a bit frustrating to read the literature on this word, published between roughly 1874 and 1910, though a few amusing notes in my collection antedate the eighteen-seventies. Read More 50 years after the fall of Saigon [reading list] By OUP History On 30 April 1975, the Vietnam War came to a historic end with the fall of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, to North Vietnam forces, marking a significant turning point in world history. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press What to do with too many books? By Edwin L. Battistella A while ago, my wife and I had some work done on our house, which entailed packing up a half-dozen bookcases until the work was done. We took the opportunity to sift through our books and to decide what we no longer needed. Deciding what to keep and what to let go of was a delicate negotiation. But equally tricky was deciding what to do with books we no longer needed. Read More Cover image of "Measure Short of War: A Brief History of Great Power Subversion" by Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth Subversion: history’s greatest hits By Jill Kastner and William C. Wohlforth Subversion—domestic interference to undermine or manipulate a rival—is as old as statecraft itself. But most of what we know about the subject concerns the Cold War and focuses on big powers maliciously manipulating the domestic politics of small ones. To understand how subversion fits into the new epoch of great power rivalry, to know what’s […] Read More Cover image of "Discovering Organizations" by Robin Burrow Organizations are our greatest achievement By Robin Burrow There are many contenders for the award of humanity’s greatest achievement. Some say its writing. Others say its agriculture. Electricity, space travel, and human rights are also possibilities. I disagree with them all. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman The salt of the earth and salt in a saltcellar By Anatoly Liberman First of all, my thanks to those who commented on the previous posts. Don’t miss the note about the ancient Romans’ view of babies on the father’s knee and the suggestion that the idiom to pull one’s leg may be of nautical origin. Read More Cover image of "Crafting Feminism from Literary Modernism to the Multimedia Present" by Amy E. Elkins Crafting the queer citational turn By Amy E. Elkins It’s a crisp summer morning, and I’ve just made the half hour walk from Sommerville, Massachusetts, to Harvard University. The grounds are majestic, as you’d expect, but everything is fragmented by iron fence railings (gates all locked or staffed by security) and garish white tents that have been installed for graduation festivities. I show my ID and make my way into the Houghton Library reading room where I’ll continue my research on craftwork for a project on queer modernist materialities. As a fan of the show Dickinson, which aired on Apple TV+ for three seasons from 2019-2021, I’ve asked to see the scrapbook set designer Marina Parker made for the archive. I’m fascinated by contemporary adaptations of literary pasts, and Parker’s scrapbook suggests how craft itself might be fundamental to those queer reworkings. Read More Ten transformative Andraé Crouch tracks that shaped gospel music [playlist] By Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby At his passing in 2015, President Barack Obama celebrated Andraé Crouch as the “leading pioneer of contemporary gospel music.” The Guardian UK newspaper’s obituary called him the “foremost gospel singer of his generation.” Ten years after his death, Andraé Crouch’s songs are still found in more hymnals—Black and white—than any African American composer, save Thomas Dorsey (and Dorsey had a 30-year head start!). Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman On a limb By Anatoly Liberman One can teach an advanced course on etymology, while climbing up the leg, ant-wise. On foot we reach the territory of Indo-European, but it is not every day that an English word finds itself in such respectable company. Read More Book cover of "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968–1989" by Matt Myers What actually happened during the 1970s? By Matt Myers Working-class politics is back in vogue in the West, but for whom does it speak? An AfD candidate in Germany won over 14% of the vote after claiming the SPD was ‘no longer a workers’ party in the classic sense’ and that his organisation was ‘taking on this role’. The US Vice President, JD Vance, emphasises he is a ‘a working-class boy, born far from the halls of power’ and promises to reshore industrial jobs. Marine Le Pen claims to lead the ‘party of French workers’ and Fratelli d’Italia wins a majority of manual workers after asking if ‘the Left is now no longer in the factories and amongst the workers, where can you find it?’ (its answer: a Pride parade). Read More Logo for Oxford LawPro How to be a good lawyer in an AI world By Merel Alstein There is no shortage of opinions on generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) and its uses in the legal space. If you are a lawyer, it is probably dominating your office meetings and working dinner conversations. Many firms are taking a cautious approach but, with legal technology providers pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into developing ever faster, more accurate tools, it feels only a matter of time before the use of Gen AI is an integral part of most lawyers’ working days. Read More Cover of Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain" by Stefan Collini How did English literature become a university subject? By Stefan Collini Even if you didn’t ‘read English’ at university yourself, you almost certainly know plenty of people who did, and more or less everyone has had to study English literature at school at some point or other. As a subject, ‘English’ (an adjective masquerading as a noun) has been central to educational arrangements in Britain for well over a century, seeming for much of that time to occupy a privileged place in the wider culture as well. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A grim shadow of a broad grin By Anatoly Liberman While working on the post about mean and moan, I decided to write something about groan, but I did not realize how far this word would take me. Read More Cover of "Age and Ageing" journal, Online ISSN 1468-2834 Ultra-processed foods are making us old beyond our years By Barbara Rita Cardoso In recent years, ultra-processed food (UPFs) consumption has surged globally, raising concerns about its impact on health. Ultra-processed foods are industrial formulations typically containing ingredients not commonly used in home cooking, such as hydrogenated oils, high-fructose corn syrup, flavour enhancers, and emulsifiers. Read More Cover image of "Stomp Off, Let's Go" by Ricky Riccardi 12 key titles to read this Jazz Appreciation Month [reading list] By Jo Wojtkowski In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM), we celebrate the extraordinary history and heritage of jazz, exploring its music, culture, and people who made it thrive. We hope that this reading list of 12 stimulating and inspiring books—like the number of keys in an octave—will spark your interest and encourage your participation in this truly original American art form—to read books about it, to study the music, to play and perform, and ultimately to listen to all things jazz. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman From meaning to moaning By Anatoly Liberman Few people realize how troublesome the word mean is. We have mean as in meaning (“what do you mean?”); mean “ignoble, base” (as in such a mean fellow), and mean, as in the meantime and meanwhile. Read More
March 2025 Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Slow down your writing By Edwin L. Battistella Sentences that are clear in our heads may be less clear when they come out of our mouths. When we talk, we get feedback from our audience or conversational partners. We observe facial expressions and body language. People may ask for clarification when something is not clear or they may correct us when we misspeak. Understanding is never perfect, but it’s doable in many face-to-face instances. On the page or the screen, it’s a different story. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A dictionary dance around Hag By Anatoly Liberman As usual, I’ll begin with a comment on the letters I have received. I never wrote that too few queries about words of unknown origin were coming my way: I complained that a stream of letters addressed to Oxford Etymologist had in principle become a trickle. Read More Cover of "On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide" by Matthew Restall Ten ways to see the Elton story [playlist] By Matthew Restall Sir Elton John is a living superlative, unequaled in music history in terms of global sales, awards, and career longevity. Here are ten tracks to kick off each chapter of On Elton John; each song prompts a story about Elton, each one is a window that offers a particular way of seeing him and his career. Read More Towards dynamic accountability By Bob Tricker Accountability is a fundamental component of governance, whether the governed entity is a country, a company, or indeed any other corporate entity, including charities, cooperatives, the NHS, or universities. Read More Logo of Oxford Intersections Oxford Intersections: research from all angles [quiz] By Matthew Colley We’re excited to announce the launch of Oxford Intersections, a new interdisciplinary research tool from Oxford University Press. Containing original research from diverse disciplines, this tool provides a comprehensive approach to problem-solving, fostering innovation and collaboration. Read More A thinker and her thought By Friederike Moltmann Thinker statues form a fascinating, but little explored cultural theme. While we may be most familiar with Rodin’s thinker, thinker statues, both male and female, appear in many very diverse cultures. They include the pensive bodhisattvas of Korea and China, the pensive Christ statues of Eastern Europe, the thinker statues of Kazakhstan and Africa, as well as the female thinkers of the pre-Columbian Tumaco-La Tolita culture. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman The end of the witch hunt By Anatoly Liberman My sincere thanks to all those who commented on the recent posts. I have never heard about the rule about one day referring only to the future. Read More We the Men By Jill Elaine Hasday Amidst the flurry of headlines about the Trump administration’s first weeks in power, who will notice that the federal government’s largest agency no longer celebrates Black History Month or Women’s History Month? The Department of Defense’s January 31 guidance declaring “Identity Months Dead at DoD” may have been lost in the news cycle. Read More Cover of "Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism" by Randall Fuller At Elizabeth Peabody’s bookshop By Randall Fuller Most histories situate the birth of feminism in the United States at the Seneca Falls Convention, held on 19-20 July 1848, in upstate New York. Yet as I researched and wrote Bright Circle: Five Extraordinary Women in the Age of Transcendentalism, I came to believe the movement had its roots almost a decade earlier and in a most unlikely place: the Boston bookshop owned and operated by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Witches and witchcraft By Anatoly Liberman Right after the appearance of the post on hag (March 5, 2025), I received a letter with a question about the origin of the word witch. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman The hag’s revenge and vindication By Anatoly Liberman This is an essay on the word hag, but let me first thank those who have commented on the latest posts, corrected the mistakes, and made suggestions. Read More Cover of "Very Practical Ethics: Engaging Everyday Moral Questions" by David Benatar featuring text above and below three pictures of a red, yellow, and green apple Does it matter if what I do doesn’t make a difference? By David Benatar Moral vegetarians think that we should not eat meat because doing so wrongfully harms animals. One response is that, in any typical case, purchasing and eating meat will do no harm. The animal has already been killed, and markets are not so sensitive that an individual purchase or meat meal will lead to additional animals being killed. Read More Cover image of "Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human" by Bart J. Wilson Making economics more human By Bart Wilson As the “official doctrine of neoclassical economics, enshrined in all respectable textbooks,” the esteemed game theorist Ken Binmore says, revealed preference theory “succeeds in accommodating the infinite variety of the human race within a single theory simply by denying itself the luxury of speculating about what is going on inside someone’s head. Instead, it pays attention only to what people do.” Read More Cover for "The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy" by Andrew Janiak Five inspiring biographies for Women’s History Month [reading list] By Amy Guest In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the lives and legacies of inspiring women throughout history that played path-breaking roles in shaping philosophy and literature. This reading list features five books that amplify the achievements of these women who were either overshadowed by men, or subject to hierarchical thinking.
February 2025 Cover of "On Elizabeth Taylor: An Opinionated Guide" by Matthew Kennedy Elizabeth Taylor’s working women By Matthew Kennedy In the 1950s and 1960s, actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011) was one of the most famous women on earth, someone to put alongside Queen Elizabeth II and Jackie Kennedy. Her complex marital history, many health crises, and love affairs were the stuff of front page headlines. She was, by any standard, the personification of the larger-than-life celebrity movie star. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A wary approach to hemlock By Anatoly Liberman Today’s story is about a deadly plant or rather, about its moribund etymology. And yet, when you reach the end, the word’s origin may appear somewhat more transparent, even though the plant will remain as deadly as ever. Read More Cover image of "The Prosthetic Arts of Moby-Dick" by David Haven Blake Moby-Dick and the United States of Aggrievement By David Haven Blake Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged? Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Fashion lingo By Edwin L. Battistella As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways. Read More Cover of "Genetic Reconstruction of the Past: DNA Analysis in Forensics and Human Evolution" by Henry A. Erlich Searching DNA databases: cold hits and hot-button issues By Henry A. Erlich Many criminal investigations, including “cold cases,” do not have a suspect but do have DNA evidence. In these cases, a genetic profile can be obtained from the forensic specimens at the crime scene and electronically compared to profiles listed in criminal DNA databases. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Idiomatic pigs and hogs By Anatoly Liberman According to an aphorism by Maxim Gorky, he who was born to crawl won’t fly. This is probably true of most other creatures. For instance, English speakers have great doubts about the ability of pigs to fly. Read More Cover image of "Saving Europe: First World War Relief and American Identity" by Tammy M. Proctor The end of the “American Century”? By Tammy M. Proctor “We Americans are unhappy,” is the opening line in a famous 1941 Life magazine article, in which Henry Luce called for Americans to harness the nation’s ingenuity as a benevolent force in the world. Partly aimed at the nation’s 1930s isolationism, his earnest exhortation to be imaginative and bold also spoke to a moment when decisive action might well turn the tide of war in Europe. Read More Cover image of "Patriot Presidents" by William E. Leuchtenburg Half a century with OUP: remembering Bill Leuchtenburg (1922-2025) By Nancy Toff In 2003, historian William E. Leuchtenburg signed a contract with OUP for a trade book on the executive branch. It was to be 60 to 80,000 words, 200 printed pages, due September 2005. Because he had two other large book projects underway, Bill did not make that date. Read More Cover of The Art of the Bee by Robert Page Nature’s landscape artists By Robert Page Claude Monet once said, “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.” Perhaps he should have given bees equal credit for his occupation. Without them, the dialectical coevolutionary dance with flowers that has lasted 125 million years would not have produced the colorful landscapes he so cherished. For Darwin, it was an abominable mystery; for Monet, an endless inspiration. Read More Cover image of "A Man on Fire: The Worlds of Thomas Wentworth Higginson" by Douglas R. Egerton featuring a close up painted portrait of Higginson Thomas Wentworth Higginson and the freedom jubilee By Douglas R. Egerton “Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to the literature of America, and left an imprint upon history too deep to be obliterated.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson would have been pleased to have been referred to as “colonel.” He was proud of his military service and happily used the title for many decades after the end of the Civil War and up to his death in May 1911 at the age of eighty-seven. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Dwarf and its past By Anatoly Liberman First, my thanks to those who wrote kind words about my most recent essays. Especially welcome was the comment that sounded approximately so: “I understand almost nothing in his posts but always enjoy them.” It has always been my aim not only to provide my readers, listeners, and students with information but also to be a source of pure, unmitigated joy. Read More Cover image of "Frances Oldham Kelsey, The FDA and the Battle Against Thalidomide" by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh Frances Oldham Kelsey: fame, gender, and science By Cheryl Krasnick Warsh Frances Oldham Kelsey, pharmacologist, physician, and professor, found fame soon after she finally, well into her forties, landed a permanent position as medical reviewer for the Food and Drug Administration in 1961. One of the first files to cross her desk was for the sedative thalidomide (tradename Kevadon), which was very popular in Europe and other nations for treating morning sickness. Read More Cover image of "A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering" by David H. Foster Discussing your research findings By David H. Foster Most research articles in journals have a standard structure with sections entitled “Introduction,” “Methods,” “Results,” and “Discussion.” Each has a clear remit except for the Discussion, which, if you’re a less experienced writer, may seem a hopelessly vague description. The occasional alternative of “Conclusion” or “General Discussion” isn’t much better. Read More Cover of "Return of the Gods: Mythology in Romantic Philosophy and Literature" by Owen Ware We are mythmaking creatures By Owen Ware Many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from others, from nature. We feel fragmented. But where are we to find a cure to our fragmentation? And how can we satisfy our longing for wholeness? The German and British romantics had a surprising answer: through mythology. Read More Cover of "Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath" by Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown Fact and fiction behind American Primeval By Barbara Jones Brown A popular new Netflix series, American Primeval, is stirring up national interest in a long-forgotten but explosive episode in America’s past. Though the series is highly fictionalized, it is loosely based on events covered in my recent, nonfiction publication, Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath, co-written with Richard E. Turley Jr. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Slow and fast worms, herring, and their linguistic kin By Anatoly Liberman I received several questions in connection with my post for January 29, 2025, on the origin of the word eel and decided to answer them right away and in doing will revive the format of “gleanings.” Read More February 2025 Cover image of "Stomp Off, Let's Go" by Ricky Riccardi The meteoric rise of Louis Armstrong [playlist] By Ricky Riccardi In the five years between his first recording session as a sideman with King Oliver in April 1923 to his final date as a leader in Chicago in December 1928, Louis Armstrong changed the sound of American popular music, with both his trumpet and with his voice. He perfected the art of the improvised solo, expanded the range of the trumpet, popularized scat singing, rewrote the rules of pop singing, and perhaps most importantly, infused everything he did with the irresistible feeling of swing. Read More Square image reads "emerging & global health policy" with the Health Affairs Scholar logo in the bottom left corner The best of Health Affairs Scholar 2024 By Sarah Flaig As we welcome 2025, we reflect on the milestones and achievements that shaped Health Affairs Scholar in 2024. Among the highlights, we introduced our first Calls for Papers, focusing on the critical topics of: Global Aging, Intersections of Social Policies, and Health and Policy Options for the 340B Discount Program. Read More The unknown A Complete Unknown By David K. Dunaway Folk music is still and always with us. It is in the tap of the hammer to the music on the radio or, in older days, to the workers’ own singing. It is the rhythmic push of the cabinetmaker’s saw, the scan across the checkout station to the beat of songs inside the checker’s head. Read More Cover image of "We Tried to Yell Y'all" by Meredith D. Clark Voices of change for Black History Month [reading list] By Sarah Butcher In honor of Black History Month, we celebrate the powerful voices that have shaped history and continue to inspire change in America and around the world. This reading list features eight books that amplify the diverse experiences and contributions of Black individuals. Eight unique stories of resistance, perseverance, empowerment, and transformation that deserve their place in the American narrative. Read More
January 2025 Sign up for libraries updates from Oxford University Press. Librarian reflections: a retrospective on 2024 By Eleanor Thomas At OUP, we’re eager to foster discussion and reflection within the library community. So we took the opportunity to ask Eleanor Thomas, Acquisitions Coordinator for the University of Adelaide Library, to share her reflections on, and experiences, of the library sector over the past year, and her impressions of what the new year may bring. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Slippery as an eel, merry as a grig By Anatoly Liberman My post on Yule redux (January 22, 2025) engendered two responses. One, published as a comment, states that my essays give the correspondent a lot of joy, though he does not understand much of what I say. I never thought that my writings sound like some sort of glossolalia. Read More Meditations in purple By Philip Nel Children may have less height, vocabulary, and power than adults do. But children’s books are not a lesser art form. Consider Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. At first glance, the book looks self-explanatory. What more can be said about a boy, a crayon, and the moon? Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Some barely iconic, epic usages By Edwin L. Battistella As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways. Read More Cover of "The Wars of the Lord" by Matthew J. Tuininga The massacre at Fort Mystic and the Puritan “Wars of the Lord” By Matthew J. Tuininga The first light of dawn flickered through the trees as soldiers rushed to take position around the fort. Twenty soldiers from Massachusetts commanded by Captain John Underhill prepared to storm the south gate. Another sixty from Connecticut under Captain John Mason would move against the northeast gate. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Returning to Yule By Anatoly Liberman A reader, as I mentioned in one of the most recent posts, called my attention to the 1853 book The Two Babylons by the Reverend Alexander Hislop. The book, which has been reprinted many times since the middle of the nineteenth century and is still easily available, contains an original etymology of the word Yule (and this is why the comment was written) Read More Cover of "My Fellow Americans: Presidents and Their Inaugural Addresses," edited by Yuvraj Singh, with an introduction by Ted Widmer “My fellow Americans” [timeline] By Lynsay Williams Every four years, the incoming president of the United States delivers an inaugural address in a tradition that dates back to 1789, with the first inauguration of George Washington. The address reiterates to Americans—and peoples around the world—what the country has been and what it has the potential to become. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Year in, year out By Anatoly Liberman As promised last week, the topic of this post is the history of the word year. It is hard to tell what hampers etymological discovery more. Consider two situations. If a word is relatively late and has no cognates, language historians are usually lost. This is what happens in dealing with slang and rare (isolated) regional words. For example, someone must have coined dweeb and nerd. Read More Cover image of "The Politics of Unpaid Labour" by Valeria Pulignano and Markieta Domecka Beyond the paycheck By Valeria Pulignano In the age of gig economy, remote work, and juggling multiple jobs, unpaid labour is no longer confined only to the domestic sphere or volunteerism. It is now an insidious undercurrent in paid employment, eroding worker rights and deepening inequality. Read More Cover image of "Racialized Commodities" by Christopher Stedman Parmenter. Racialized Commodities By Christopher Parmenter In the mid-sixth century BCE, the Greek mystic Aristeas of Proconessus composed a hexameter poem recounting a journey deep into Eurasia. According to Herodotus, Aristeas set off from his island home in the Sea of Marmara to visit the “one-eyed Arimaspians, and beyond them the griffins which guard the gold, and beyond the griffins the Hyperboreans, whose land comes down to the sea.” Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman The year is new and young. Everything else is old By Anatoly Liberman It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us. Read More
December 2024 cover image of "Introduction to International and Global Politics" Theories of Global Politics meet International Relations theories By Georg Sørensen and Jørgen Møller The study of world politics developed via a series of famous encounters, sometimes called the ‘great debates’. The first major encounter, dating to the early twentieth-century, was between utopian liberalism and realism; the second between traditional approaches and behaviouralism; the third between neorealism/neoliberalism and neo-Marxism. Read More Cover image of "Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human." by Bart J. Wilson Meaningful economics By Bart Wilson Human beings mean. We just do. Human beings contemplate the importance or significance of everything, be it a person or a place, an action or a consequence, a possession or an idea, a relationship or our well-being, an experience or our connection to something greater than ourselves. Read More The concept of emotional disorder By Gloria Sibson Ayob In August 2024, a special report on ‘ecological medicine’ was published in Psychiatry Online. The authors of the report describe ecological medicine as “the structured and deliberate use of connectedness and interaction with plants, animals, and other species to generate a therapeutic effect for individuals.” Read More Migration, colonization, and the shifting narratives of ancient Andean origins By R. Alan Covey In the Quechua-speaking highlands where the Incas built their empire more than 500 years ago, farmers and herders used the concept of pacha—movement across space and time—to shape local identities. Read More Rethinking migrations in late prehistoric Eurasia By Manuel Ferna´ndez-Go¨tz, Courtney Nimura, Philipp Stockhammer, and Rachel Cartwright People move. Whether at an individual or group level, migrations have been a constant and fundamental component of the human journey from its very beginnings to the present. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Jolly Yule By Anatoly Liberman It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us. Read More Oxford University Press. Best Books of 2024 A look behind the curtain at the best books of 2024 By Sarah Butcher Every year, Oxford University Press’s trade program publishes 70-100 new books written for the general reader. The vast audience for these trade books comprises everyone from history buffs, popular science nerds, and philosophy enthusiasts pursuing intellectual interests, as well as parents and caregivers seeking crucial advice or support—all readers browsing the aisles of their local bookstore (or the Amazon new releases) for literature that deepens their insight into the world around them. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Does “the” get italics? By Edwin L. Battistella One of the idiosyncrasies of copy editing that befuddles me involves the word “the”. Should it be capitalized and italicized when one refers to newspaper titles in a piece of writing? The Chicago Manual of Style will tell you no. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Varia By Anatoly Liberman It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us. Read More Cover image of "The Possibility of Moral Community" by James Lenman Morality without metaphysics By James Lenman Let’s talk about morality. There is stuff we think is okay to do and there is stuff we think is not okay to do. Human relationships work (when they do work) when we are all more or less on the same page about what stuff is and is not okay to do; as we often are. We all agree, for example, that it is not okay to beat people to death because you do not like the way they dress. We expect others to obey such rules and our relationships with them are shaped by whether or not they do so. We hold each other responsible for what we do in ways that inform how we distribute, on the one hand, our love and esteem and, on the other, our condemnation and resentment. Read More Cover image by "Europe Against Revolution: Conservatism, Enlightenment, & the Making of the Past" by Matthijs Lok The idea of Europe By Matthijs Lok In the decades around 1800—when the European past was (as in the present) the topic of fierce discussion, contestation, and political (ab)use—ideas of Europe were dominated by the shocking events of the French Revolution and its violent aftermath in Europe and beyond. The European order as well as Europe’s place in the world, was destroyed, rebuilt, and redefined at this moment. Read More Book cover of "Sonic Overload" by Peter J. Schmelz Culture sounds the alarm: Tbilisi at the crossroads By Peter J. Schmelz and Nana Sharikadze This fall has been a season of momentous elections—and not just in the United States. Over the past several weeks, after two rounds of voting, Moldova voted to return to office its pro-EU President, Maia Sandu, as well as (despite noted Russian interference) narrowly approving a referendum in favor of Moldova joining the European Union. By contrast, in the Republic of Georgia, in a parliamentary election held on October 26 dogged with similar claims of internal and external vote-rigging, the ruling Georgian Dream party claimed a majority of the vote. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman The once unpronounceable word “bloody” By Anatoly Liberman It is almost certain that the main event in the reception in England of the formerly unpronounceable “low” word bloody (which first turned up in texts in 1540 and, consequently, existed in colloquial speech earlier) goes back to 1914, when Eliza Dolittle, the heroine of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion, uttered it from the stage. Nowadays, when in “public discourse,” the rich hoard of English adjectives has been reduced to the single F-word (at least so in the US), this purism of an age gone by cannot but amuse us. Read More Sign up for libraries updates from Oxford University Press. Join our mailing list. Ten classics for your winter reading list By Ruby Dunn and Keerti Wadhawan One of the good things about spending more time indoors during the winter months is having more opportunities to spend an evening with a compelling book. If you are stuck on what to read this winter, we have put together a collection of ten riveting page-turners! Read More
November 2024 Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Don’t be afraid to switch tenses By Edwin L. Battistella Reading a book on the 1992 chess match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, I came across this sentence: “Twenty years ago, to the very day, Fischer had swept to victory, to become crowed as the 11th World Champion, against the self-same Spassky, then the Soviet World Champion.” Read More Cover image of "The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History' J.C.D. Clark How to escape from a maze By J. C. D. Clark Assume you know nothing about the First World War, but had heard the name and wish to learn about it. Reasonably, you turn to the latest scholarship on the subject, only to find fundamental differences of view among professional historians. Read More Book cover of "Navigating Life with Restless Legs Syndrome" by Andrew R. Spector. The risks of dopamine agonists for the treatment of restless legs syndrome By Andrew R. Spector An extraordinary breakthrough of modern medicine occurred in 2005 when the FDA approved ropinirole for the treatment of restless legs syndrome (RLS). With the first drug ever approved for this misery-inducing condition, patients finally had a highly effective treatment with relatively few side effects. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A ride on an unbroken colt By Anatoly Liberman The blog Oxford Etymologist is resuming its activities. I expected multiple expressions of grief and anxiety at the announcement that I would be away from my desk for a week, but no one seems to have noticed. Anyway, I am back and ready to finish the series on the four cardinal points. Since it is in the west that the sun sets, I relegated this post to the end of my long story. Read More Cover image of "Occupational Medicine." We need to support our health and social care system By Jermaine M. Ravalier Far too often health and social care workers are blamed. The decision of the conservative government to prevent social care workers from bringing their families to this country from abroad, for example, suggests that the immigration which is needed to keep the care system afloat is a problem. Indeed, nearly one in five of the social care sector area international, and The King’s Fund suggest that without them the sector will struggle to function. As such governmental actions have inevitably had knock on effects on the availability of care provision in this country. We need a political system that supports and guides health and social care workers. Not one which demonises and detracts from them. Read More Cover image of "Civic Solitude: Why Democracy Needs Distance" by Robert B. Talisse What does democracy look like? By Robert B. Talisse “This is what democracy looks like!” is a popular rallying cry of engaged democratic citizens across the globe. It refers to outbreaks of mass political action, episodes where large numbers of citizens gather in a public space to communicate a shared political message. That we associate democracy with political demonstration is no surprise. After all, democracy is the rule of the people, and collective public action is a central way for citizens to make their voices heard. As it is often said, democracy happens “in the streets.” Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Westward Ho By Anatoly Liberman The blog Oxford Etymologist is resuming its activities. I expected multiple expressions of grief and anxiety at the announcement that I would be away from my desk for a week, but no one seems to have noticed. Anyway, I am back and ready to finish the series on the four cardinal points. Since it is in the west that the sun sets, I relegated this post to the end of my long story. Read More Cover image of "The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Guel Propaganda and How to Fight It" by Genevieve Guenther Understanding fossil-fuel propaganda: a Q&A with Genevieve Guenther By Genevieve Guenther and Sarah Butcher 2024’s UN climate summit in Azerbaijan is a key moment for world leaders to express their convictions and plans to address the escalating stakes of the climate crisis. This month we sat down with Genevieve Guenther—author of The Language of Climate Politics, and founder of End Climate Science to discuss the current state of climate activism and how propaganda from the fossil fuel industry has shaped the discourse. Read More “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow”: tragedy and the environmental crisis By Laurence Publicover Our environmental crisis is often described in tragic terms. Weather events shaped by global warming are deemed tragic for the communities affected. Declines in fish populations are attributed to the so-called tragedy of the commons. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, has spoken of a “tragedy of the horizon”: that the “catastrophic […] Read More The crisis in the palm of our hand: smartphones in contexts of conflict and care By Jethro Norman, Matthew Ford, and Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde The rapid global proliferation of smartphones and their associated information infrastructures has been a defining feature of the past decade’s global crises. Yet, while the digital is now a topic of keen interest for scholars working on virtually everything that constitutes the international, the smartphone as an object of study in and of itself has been largely elusive. Read More Book cover of "Britons And Their Battlefields" by Ian Atherton Remembering the fallen By Ian Atherton This year as usual, on either Remembrance Sunday or Armistice Day, many people in the UK will gather at a local war memorial to remember the country’s war dead, those of the two World Wars and other conflicts since 1945. Read More Cover of "Extreme Overvalued Beliefs" by Tahir Rahman and Jeffrey Abugel In the spirit of Oswald By Jeffrey Abugel It’s been more than 60 years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Those who remember where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day in 1963 are becoming smaller in number. Since that afternoon in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald has been viewed as a glory-seeking sociopath who, according to every official account, acted alone. No one offered him the adulation or hero worship he so desired. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman All the way back: “South” By Anatoly Liberman This essay owes its title to local patriotism. In Minnesota, which has recently become one of the centers of world politics and in which I happen to live and teach, when people move in the direction of the state’s northern border, they often describe their travel as “going up north.” I too am moving in that direction with my heavy burden of words of unknown origin Read More Book cover of "Literature Against Fundamentalism" by Tabish Khair Orality, the book, and the computer: What happens to ‘literature’? By Tabish Khair Coming into academia from the margins of Postcolonial Studies, when it was heroically striving to give an academic voice to indigenous cultures in the 1980-90s, I am aware that any celebration of the book is likely to be considered by some to be a subtle denigration of past traditions of oral composition and recording. What is worse, these days celebrating the book might also be resented by those who owe allegiance to futuristic forms of digital reading or what one can call visual orality—the use of mixed media, rooted in TV and film technologies, to tell stories and convey information. Read More Cover image of "Engaging Characters" by Murray Smith Is Boris Johnson like James Bond—or more like Homer Simpson? [long read] By Murray Smith The question may seem like an odd one, so let me approach it by sketching some context. 2024 has been a year of elections worldwide, with voters around the globe hitting the ballot boxes, from India (the most populous country in the world, with the largest electorate) to Venezuela to the UK. And needless to […] Read More Logo of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Winston Churchill’s 150th birthday [reading list] By OUP History Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire on 30th November 1874. His exploits as Prime Minister during the Second World War left an indelible mark on history. To celebrate 150 years since his birth, we have collated the latest research on Oxford Academic to read more about Churchill’s life. Whether you’re a history enthusiast […] Read More
October 2024 Up north By Anatoly Liberman This essay owes its title to local patriotism. In Minnesota, which has recently become one of the centers of world politics and in which I happen to live and teach, when people move in the direction of the state’s northern border, they often describe their travel as “going up north.” I too am moving in that direction with my heavy burden of words of unknown origin Read More Nicotine and Tobacco Research by OUP Second-hand smoke exposure—it’s time to move beyond the pregnant woman herself By Yael Bar-Zeev Second-hand smoke exposure causes approximately 1.2 million deaths globally each year. Exposure to second-hand smoke during pregnancy has negative health effects both for the mother and for her baby, including preterm delivery, low birth weight, and congenital malformations. Most of the exposure to smoking during pregnancy occurs at home, mainly from the pregnant woman’s partner and/or other household members who smoke. Read More Cover image of "Empire of the Black Sea" by Duane W. Roller Alexander the Great, the Pontic Kingdom, and the rise of Rome By Duane Roller When Alexander the Great died in the summer of 323 BC in Babylon, he left no plans for his succession. He had travelled with an extensive entourage from his home in Macedonia to India and back to Babylon; and brought the Persian empire to an end. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Self words By Edwin L. Battistella Reading a book on the 1992 chess match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer, I came across this sentence: “Twenty years ago, to the very day, Fischer had swept to victory, to become crowed as the 11th World Champion, against the self-same Spassky, then the Soviet World Champion.” Read More Cover image of "Phoenicians Among Others: Why Migrants Mattered in the Ancient Mediterranean" by Denise Demetriou Why Migrants Matter By Denise Demetriou “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating—they are eating the pets of the people that live here,” said Donald Trump during ABC’s presidential debate on September 10, 2024. His comments amplified false rumors spread by J.D. Vance, the vice-presidential nominee, who claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing and eating the pets of longtime residents. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Out for lunch By Anatoly Liberman My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020). Read More Oxford Scholarship Online: Commit to Open Community, commerce, and open access experimentation By John Louth and Marta Moldvai You may have wondered why so many publishers are announcing pilot projects on open access (OA) publishing. The theme of Open Access Week (October 21-27), Community over Commercialization, hints at the reason Read More Cover image of "Martin Van Buren: America's First Politician" by James M. Bradley The father of the party system By James M. Bradley Martin Van Buren became president on March 4, 1837, at a time of great optimism. After an acrimonious eight years in the White House, Andrew Jackson was leaving office on a high note. The economy was strong and vibrant. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Light from the East By Anatoly Liberman My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020). Read More Publishing 101 Logo A generational divide: differences in researcher attitudes to AI By Dr. Henry Shevlin and Dr. Samantha-Kaye Johnston We surveyed 2,300 researchers to understand their use of AI, as well as their attitudes and worries. A quarter (25%) of those in the early stages of their careers have reported having sceptical or challenging views of AI. Read More Oxford Research Encyclopedias Logo Global mobility, bordered realities, and ethnocultural contact zones By Franco Laguna Correa Over the course of the last few weeks, public opinion in the U.S. and the U.K. have ignited in relation to issues of gender, race, religion, and place of origin. However, a closer look at this recent turmoil suggests that there is a clear concern regarding global migrations, inter-genetic contact zones, and the presence of Muslim communities across Western nations. Read More Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Volume 532 First observational evidence of gamma-ray emission in a proto-planetary nebula By Dr. Martin Ortega The gamma emission we observe in the sky through our telescopes involves a wide variety of astrophysical objects. That is why the understanding of the physical processes involved in the production of such emission requires the detailed study of objects like pulsar-wind nebulae, supernova remnants, active galactic nuclei, massive young stellar objects, X-ray binaries, and classic- and symbiotic-novae. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Do you have lumps in your lunch? By Anatoly Liberman My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020). Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Clowns, laughter, and macaroni By Anatoly Liberman My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020). Read More The Wendigo and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood. Oxford World Classics. Five spooky story collections to keep you up this Halloween [reading list] By Catrin Lawrence We all know Poe (though Eurovision fans might ask “Who the hell is Edgar?”). We’ve all heard of M.R. James and his wide range of ghost stories (watched The Haunting of Bly Manor yet?). We all love Lovecraft (unless you’re squeamish about tentacles). Read More
September 2024 Oxford Classical Dictionary Logo An introduction to migration in the ancient world [interactive map] By OUP Classics and Archaeology Migration has played a vital role in shaping human history and continues to have profound effects on the world today. Historically, the movement of people across regions has facilitated the exchange of ideas, technologies, and cultures, leading to significant advancements and the enrichment of societies. Read More 3D cover image of "Blue Jerusalem" by Kit Kowol New Jerusalem to Blue Jerusalem: radical visions of Britain’s postwar future By Kit Kowol The untold story of how Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party envisioned Britain’s post-war future, as told through the iconography of William Blake’s poem, and Sir Herbert Parry hymn, and how both the Conservative Party and the Labor Party of 1945 were inspired to create radically different visions of Britain’s post-war future based on Blake’s message. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press The hidden language of crosswords By Edwin L. Battistella I got a book of New York Times crossword puzzles, edited by Will Shortz, as a gift. I had never been a crossword addict or even an aficionado, but a gift is meant to be enjoyed, so I began working through the puzzles in the evenings as I watched the news. Read More Cover image of “Never By Itself Alone: Queer Poetry, Queer Communities in Boston and the Bay Area, 1944-Present” by David Grundy A new queer world: how poetry remade gay life [long read] By David Grundy In San Francisco and Boston after the Second World War, gay and lesbian poets came together to build a new queer literature and a new queer world. They came together both as activists and as poets. When activism failed, or visibility was denied, poetry provided a through line with a deeper and longer sense of queer history, real or imagined, from Whitman to Wilde, Sappho to Gertrude Stein. Read More Cover of "Within you Without You: Listening to George Harrison" by Seth Rogovoy George Harrison: ten quintessential songs [playlist] By Seth Rogovoy This playlist with annotations that I have put together is not intended to be a “best-of” George Harrison (although all the songs here would easily be on such a playlist). Nor is it meant to be exclusive—one could easily devise a playlist with ten different “quintessential” George Harrison songs: one that would include “My Sweet Lord,” “It’s All Too Much,” “I Me Mine,” “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth),” “Blue Jay Way,” and, of course, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun.” Read More Cover image of "Patriot Presidents" by William E. Leuchtenburg The creation of the US presidency By William E. Leuchtenburg At no time in our history has there been so illustrious a gathering as the corps of delegates who came together in the State House (Independence Hall) on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia late in the spring of 1787 to frame a constitution for the United States of America. Yet, distinguished though they were, they had only the foggiest notion of how an executive branch should be constructed. Not one of them anticipated the institution of the presidency as it emerged at the end of the summer. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Bootless cats, curious idioms, and Kattegat By Anatoly Liberman Over the years, I have discussed the origin of quite a few animal names. Despite my inroads, most of them—from heifer to dog—remain problematic. Yet no word is more enigmatic than cat. Two names for cat dominate the world: either some variant of kat or miu ~ mau (Ancient Egyptian) ~ mao (Chinese). Read More Book cover titled “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Presidency” by Lindsay M. Chervinsky The precedents of the presidency By Lindsay M. Chervinsky The United States Constitution drafted in 1787 is one of the shortest written governing charters in the world. The majority of the 4,000 words are devoted to Congress, leaving a relatively scant description of the presidency in Article II. In many ways, the presidency we have today barely resembles the office outlined in the Constitution. Instead, the office was created and defined by the early office holders who viewed the Constitution as a good first step, but not the end game. Read More Prophetic libraries and books in ancient Israel By Nathan Mastnjak For most readers of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the question of the ancient material forms of the biblical books rarely comes up. When it does, readers tend to imagine the large scrolls made famous by the discoveries around the Dead Sea. Even the Dead Sea scrolls, however, are centuries newer than most of the Hebrew Bible, which may well have been written on different materials and in different formats. Read More Cover of “Northanger Abbey” by Jane Austen, Oxford World’s Classics edition, with an illustration of a castle and people. Before Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen and “Susan” By Thomas Keymer With hindsight, it’s hard to imagine a more spectacular publishing flub than the rejection of Pride and Prejudice in its first version (working title “First Impressions”) in 1797. Read More Cover image of "Family Mourning After War & Disaster in Twentieth-Century Britain" by Ann-Marie Foster Remembering Gresford By Ann-Marie Foster Today, 22 September, marks the 90th anniversary of the Gresford mining disaster. To this day, the bodies of 253 miners remain in the pit underground below Wrexham. In 1934, the industry was rocked by the inquest into the disaster where accusations of forged documents, preventable deaths, and inadequate safety protocols were highlighted, echoing contemporary inquiries into disasters, such as the damning inquest into Grenfell which was published earlier this month. Nowadays, the disaster is remembered as a poignant moment in Welsh history. Read More 3D Cover image of Dogwhistles and Figleaves Figleaves: 5 examples of concealed speech By Jennifer Mather Saul In art, a figleaf is used to barely cover something one isn’t supposed to show in public. I use the term ‘figleaf’ for utterances (and sometimes pictures, or other things) which barely cover for speech of a sort one isn’t supposed to openly engage in. When someone says “I’m not a racist but…” and then […] Read More The horseshoe theory in practice: How Russia and China became fascist states By Michael Kort Three-quarters of a century after the destruction of the fascist regimes that threatened to extinguish freedom during World War II, fascism is back and again a threat to the world’s democracies. The irony is that this new fascist threat comes from two powers whose histories as communist societies presumably distanced them as far as possible from fascism: Russia and China. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Not everything is hunky-dory, and why should it be? By Anatoly Liberman First of all, let me apologize for the egregious typo I made in the previous post in Ernest Weekley’s name. This is what comes of being too devoted to every line of Oscar Wilde and his comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. Read More Cover of Warsaw Tales. Stories selected and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Edited by Helen Constantine. Warsaw Tales: An interview with Olga Tokarczuk By Antonia Lloyd-Jones Ever since I first read “Che Guevara” in Olga Tokarczuk’s short story collection Playing Many Drums (2001), I have wanted to translate it. So, when I was asked to compile Warsaw Tales, it was one of the first stories to come to mind. Read More 3D Cover image of Dogwhistles and Figleaves Dogwhistles: 10 examples of disguised messages By Jennifer Mather Saul Dogwhistles are one of the most discussed methods for politicians to play on voters’ racial attitudes in a stealthy manner, although they come in handy for manipulation on other topics as well. The key to a dogwhistle is this hiding of what’s really going on. Broadly speaking, a dogwhistle is a bit of communication with an interpretation that seems perfectly innocent—but which also does something else. Read More 12» September 2024 Cover image of "Between Borders" by Tobias Brinkman The great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe By Tobias Brinkmann In 1899 a young Jewish woman published a harrowing account of her journey through Germany in 1894, based on Yiddish letters she had written during the journey. Maryashe (Mary) Antin’s travelogue “From Plotzk to Boston” stands out as one of the few detailed contemporary descriptions of a migrant journey from the Russian Empire to America. In the spring of 1894, when she was thirteen years old, Maryashe, together with her mother and sisters, left her hometown of Polotzk in northern Russia to join her father, who had moved to Boston in 1891. Read More Cover image of "Elections: A Very Short Introduction" by L. Sandy Maisel and Jennifer A. Yoder 7 books to understand the US election [reading list] By Calla Veazie As the US Election approaches, explore a few Very Short Introductions to help answer your questions. Get informed before the debates begin, with concise guides on a wide range of topics from American political parties to democracy. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Honoring Ernest Weekley By Anatoly Liberman This is the second and last post on Ernest Weekley, an excellent scholar and engaging writer. The “installment” a week ago dealt with the history of Standard English through the eyes of the inimitable Mrs. Gamp. Read More What can we expect to see in the 2024 Parliament? [long read] By Cristina Leston Bandeira, Alexandra Meakin, and Louise Thompson Labour’s landslide electoral win may not have been unexpected, but few expected to see quite so many historic firsts arise from it. For the first time in over fifty years, a governing party with a majority in the elected House has been replaced by another party with a majority. Read More A listener’s guide to James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” [playlist] By Tom Jenks Discover the musical veins of James Baldwin’s 1957 short story “Sonny’s Blues” as we mark the 100th anniversary of the writer and civil rights activist’s birth and hear from Tom Jenks as he reflects on some of these key musical works. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Ernest Weekley and standard English By Anatoly Liberman Many people who are interested in word origins know Ernest Weekley’s English etymological dictionary. I am sorry that we cannot post his photo: for some mysterious reason, all his portraits on the Internet are copyrighted. He wrote many excellent books on English words. Read More Cover of "The Power of Black Excellence" by Deondra Rose 20 HBCU graduates that have shaped America [slideshow] By Deondra Rose Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are dedicated to empowering students and alumni with the tools to drive significant civic and cultural change. Through their intentional focus on leadership, advocacy, and excellence, HBCU graduates have made remarkable strides in political, legal, cultural, and artistic fields. Read More Logo of Oxford Intersections How interdisciplinarity enhances our understanding of social media’s societal impact By Laeeq Khan Addressing today’s most pressing challenges requires a new approach to thinking. An interdisciplinary transformative approach can advance knowledge by exploiting and harmonizing the strengths of various disciplines within a unified framework. Read More «12
August 2024 Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A fabulous story, or spilling etymological beans By Anatoly Liberman An instructive essay on etymology need not always be devoted to a word going back to the hoariest antiquity. It can also deal with an “exotic” borrowing like coffee, for example. Read More Book cover of "A Danger Which We Do Not Know" by David Rondel Iris Murdoch on how to lose yourself in nature By David Rondel Anxiety is the most frequently diagnosed mental health problem in the world today. The handful of psychiatric treatments for anxiety that nowadays dominate the field are well known. But it’s worth remembering that philosophy also has a long and illustrious history as a form of anti-anxiety therapy. Read More Front cover of "Rethinking Unjust Enrichment" Rethinking unjust enrichment By Sagi Peari and Warren Swain Restitutionary claims are pertinent to our daily interactions and commercial dealings. These claims arise in many scenarios including: improperly collected taxes, mistaken payments, disputes between cohabitants, payments on another person’s debt, mistaken improvements on another person’s property, and provision of unrequested services. Read More Cover of "Faith: A very Short Introduction" by Roger Trigg Religious faith in contemporary society By Roger Trigg The idea that religious beliefs claim truth is an unpopular position in Western societies. Any religion can sometimes be out of step with whatever the current secular consensus about moral priorities is. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Some very unique redundancies By Edwin L. Battistella One of the quirkier features of the English syntax has to do with the simple word all. All is a quantity word, or quantifier in the terminology of grammarians and logicians. It indicates an entirety of something. Read More Cover of "Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague" by Mark A. Drumbl and Barbora Hola Informers: secrets, truths, and dignity By Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá Over 100,000 individuals acted as secret informers reporting to state security police in Czechoslovakia during the Communist years. The contents of all their reports were saved in extensive police files. Similar dynamics occurred throughout all of Eastern Europe. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Coffee all over the world By Anatoly Liberman An instructive essay on etymology need not always be devoted to a word going back to the hoariest antiquity. It can also deal with an “exotic” borrowing like coffee, for example. Read More Cover image of "Wicked Problems for Archaeologists" by John Schofield A duty of care? Archaeologists, wicked problems, and the future By John Schofield Archaeology needs to stay relevant. To do so, it will need to change, but that won’t be simple given how much needs to change, and how many of the things that need changing are systemic, firmly embedded both within disciplinary traditions and practice and within society. Read More Law Teacher of the Year logo Bringing decolonisation to law teaching: fulfilling the promise of legal pedagogy By Foluke Ifejola Adebisi I, like many others, came to the law school because I heard justice and freedom and peace in its name. For many, like me, the sojourn into the study of law is triggered by some event or situation. For me it was the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Read More Six books to understand international affairs [reading list] By Sarah Butcher The world we live in is complex and ever-changing. This year India, Iran, the UK, and the US, to name a few countries, are facing pivotal elections, and many diplomatic relationships—in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and beyond—are at a turning point. Check out these titles to better understand the state of geopolitics and the movement of power in the world. Read More Overconfidence about sentience is everywhere—and it’s dangerous By Jonathan Birch Years before I wrote about the edge of sentience, I remember looking at a crayfish in an aquarium and wondering: Does it feel like anything to be you? Do you have a subjective point of view on the world, as I do? Can you feel the joy of being alive? Can you suffer? Or are you more like a robot, a computer, a car, whirring with activity but with no feeling behind that activity? I am still not sure. None of us is in a position to be sure. There is no magic trick that will solve the problem of other minds. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman On querns and millstones By Anatoly Liberman Have you ever seen a quern? If you have not, Wikipedia has an informative page about this apparatus. Yet there is a hitch about the definition of quern. For instance, Wikipedia discusses various quern-stones, and indeed, pictures of all kinds of stones appear in the article. But stones don’t do anything without being set in motion. Read More Cover image of "Selfish Genes to Social Beings" by Jonathan Silvertown Cooperation and the history of life: is natural selection a team sport? By Jonathan Silvertown Cooperation is in our nature, for good and ill, but there is still a nagging doubt that something biological in us compels us to be selfish: our genes. This is the paradox: genes are inexorably driven by self-replication, and yet cooperation continually rears its head. Not only are humans fundamentally team players, but all of nature has been teaming up since the dawn of life four billion years ago. Read More Background Image of bookshelf with text reading Oxford Academic logo and text reading “Becoming a journal author” Effective ways to communicate research in a journal article By Megan Taphouse, Anne Foster, Eduardo Franco, Howard Browman, and Michael Schnoor In this blog post, editors of OUP journals delve into the vital aspect of clear communication in a journal article. Anne Foster (Editor of Diplomatic History), Eduardo Franco (Editor-in-Chief of JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer institute and JNCI Monographs), Howard Broman (Editor-in-Chief of ICES Journal of Marine Science), and Michael Schnoor (Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Leukocyte Biology) provide editorial recommendations on achieving clarity, avoiding common mistakes, and creating an effective structure Read More Latin American voices of international affairs By Ricardo Villanueva, Jessica De Alba-Ulloa, Pedro González Olvera, and María Elena Lorenzini In the field of International Relations (IR), voices from Latin America have long been underrepresented—overshadowed by dominant Western perspectives, particularly those from the United States and Britain. This blog post aims to spotlight some of the contributions of Latin American thinkers to IR, showcasing how these perspectives challenge established norms and offer unique insights into both regional and global dynamics. Read More Background Image of bookshelf with text reading Oxford Academic logo and text reading “Becoming a journal author” How to edit your writing: tips to perfect your journal article By Megan Taphouse and Rose Wolfe-Emery Editing plays a significant role in improving the quality of your journal article and builds the bridge between the first draft and a submission-ready manuscript. You might picture grammatical corrections when you think of editing, but this process also improves the clarity, coherence, and accuracy of your writing. Read More August 2024 Cover of "Journal of the American Academy of Religion" by OUP How race shapes American Christian solidarities in Palestine [long read] By Sara A. Williams and Roger Baumann Since the October 7 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel and Israel’s subsequent war on Gaza, race and religion have loomed large in debates over appropriate solidarities linking the United States with Israel and Palestine, with the breakdown and reorientation of durable Black-Jewish U.S. civil rights alliances, mounting pressure coming from African American Christian clergy for a ceasefire in Gaza, and even organized Black clergy denunciations of U.S. military aid for the State of Israel as enabling “mass genocide.” Read More Cover of The Prophetic Body: Embodiment and Mediation in Biblical Prophetic Literature by Anathea E. Portier-Young How the body reshapes our understanding of biblical prophecy By Anathea E. Portier-Young In common parlance, a “prophecy” is a special kind of utterance. Perhaps an oracle about the future, words of approval or condemnation, critique or consolation. Scholars often define prophecy as a kind of message, issued from a deity to their people and mediated through an individual called a prophet. Read More Cover image of "The Book of Job in Wonderland: Making (Non)Sense of Job's Mediators" by Ryan M. Armstrong Love your friend as yourself By Ryan M. Armstrong Perhaps the most popular command in the Bible is to “love your friend”—or “neighbor,” as it’s commonly translated— “as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Less popular today are the preceding verses, which command friends to rebuke each other if one has sinned. In ancient Judaism, a good rebuke was a mark of friendship, although it had to be done the right way. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Why are lips called lips? By Anatoly Liberman A reader asked me to explain how I choose words for my essays. It is a long story, but I will try to make it short. When more than thirty years ago I began working on a new etymological dictionary of English, I compiled a list of words about which dictionaries say “origin unknown” and came up with about a thousand items. My other list contains “words of uncertain origin.” Read More Book cover of This Volcanic Isle by Robert Muir-Wood Charles Darwin the geologist By Robert Muir-Wood Who was Charles Darwin the geologist? Was he a nephew, or maybe a cousin, of the illustrious naturalist, who first published the theory of evolution by natural selection? I know they had big families… But no, this is the one and the same. It is often forgotten that, early in his career, Charles Darwin was a ‘card-carrying’ geologist. Read More Logo of Oxford Intersections The real existential threat of AI By Philipp Hacker How does Artificial Intelligence (AI) affect climate change? This is one of the unprecedented questions AI raises for societies, challenging traditional perspectives of fairness, trust, safety, and environmental protection. Read More Cover of "Aquinas's Summa Theologiae and Eucharistic Sacrifice in the Early Modern Period" by Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. Scholastic textualities in early modernity By Reginald M. Lynch Approaching present-day Paris from the south, the ‘rue-Saint-Jacques’ passes through the Latin quarter near the Pantheon and the Sorbonne (Paris IV) on its way to the Petit Pont bridge that crosses to Île de la Cité near Notre Dame Cathedral. For many centuries, this was the avenue of approach to the city for travelers from all points south. Read More Seduction French-style—why read Colette? By Michèle Roberts If I met you at a party and we started chatting and telling each other about our favourite authors, and I mentioned Colette, you might look blank. Read More What’s the matter with moral fundamentalism? By Steven Fesmire Inspired by fellow philosopher Anthony Weston, I often ask my ethics students to create a diabolical toolkit of rules that would torpedo public dialogue. The idea here, I explain, is to spell out rules that would maximize the distance between “us” and “them,” ensuring that possibilities for cooperatively setting and achieving social goals—like peace, security, justice, public health, or sustainability—go forever unnoticed. For example, consider things like “prepare your comeback instead of listening” or “be angrier and talk louder than others.” Read More Racism, jazz, and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” By Tom Jenks Reading is good; rereading is better. I can’t say with certainty how many times—forty? fifty?—I’ve read James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” only that for more than thirty-five years I’ve been reading and teaching the story, each time with an undiminished sense of awe and appreciation for how Baldwin issues a prophetic warning about the outcome of racism while making deeply felt gestures of hope and reconciliation. Read More 8 must reads in sport history [reading list] By OUP History Human civilization has always celebrated movement. Whether as recreation in everyday life, or elite competition to honour the gods of Olympus, sport has been a cornerstone of human culture for both spectator and competitor since records began. From the cricket crease to the athletics track to the All England Lawn Tennis Club, discover the history of sport in 8 books and bibliographies from Oxford University Press. Read More «12
July 2024 Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Two nonidentical twins: rump and runt? By Anatoly Liberman Rump and runt are not twins, but they sound somewhat alike, and they may be “distantly related,” to use a phrase sometimes occurring in dictionaries, though this phrase is too vague to be useful. Rump surfaced in texts only in the fifteenth century, and but for the Rump Parliament (1648-1653), famous in British History, the word would probably have been relegated mainly to talks about animals and bird. Read More Cover of "A Mystery from the Mummy-Pits: The Amazing Journey of Ankh-Hap" by Frank L. Holt Diary of a dead man By Frank L. Holt This blog post introduces readers to the well-traveled remains of an Egyptian mummy now residing in Houston, Texas. If old Ankh-Hap still had his original hands and an endless supply of papyrus, he might have made entries like these in a diary of his afterlife. Read More Cover of “The Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, translated by Terence James Reed Goethe in shirt-sleeves By T.J. Reed Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is Germany’s greatest poet, then and now. At the age of thirty-seven he was on the way to being the centre of a national culture, and a European celebrity. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman A whale of a blog By Anatoly Liberman The title of this post embodies everything I despise about cheap journalism, but the temptation was too strong, because today’s topic is indeed the origin of the word whale. I was planning the story for quite some time, and then suddenly the media informed the world that a spade-toothed whale had been washed up on South Island beach (Australia). Read More Abominable mysteries By Robert Page One hundred twenty-five million years ago, the earth exploded with a kaleidoscope of color with the rapid evolution of flowering plants, the angiosperms. The explosion coincided with the rapid increase and diversification of bee species, the new artists of the landscapes. Read More Rediscovering Piano Time By Robyn Elton It’s an eventful time in the OUP Music office, as we’ve just sent to press the latest editions of the Piano Time method books by Pauline Hall. It’s always exciting to see the publication of a new title, but these books feel extra special. Read More Cover of "The EU Law Enforcement Directive (LED)" by Eleni Kosta and Franziska Boehm Data protection, the LED, and the evolving landscape of AI governance By Eleni Kosta and Franziska Boehm In May 2024, OUP attended the Computers, Privacy and Data Protection (CPDP) conference in Brussels where academics, practitioners, and policymakers from the fields of data protection and privacy, as well as politics and technology, gathered to discuss the latest in legal, regulatory, academic, and technological development in privacy and data protection. Read More Cover of Inquiry Under Bounds by David Thorstad Bounded rationality: Being rational while also being human By David Thorstad The middle of the twentieth century was an optimistic time in the study of human rationality. The newly rigorized science of economics proposed a unified decision-theoretic story of how humans ought to think and act and how humans actually think and act. For the first time, we had good scientific evidence that humans were by-and-large rational creatures. Read More Cover image of "Music in Medieval Rituals for the End of Life" by Elaine Stratton Hild A listener’s guide to Music in Medieval Rituals for the End of Life [playlist] By Elaine Stratton Hild The music has been hidden—unseen and unheard—for centuries. Listen to the playlist and hear a historic soundscape unfold—songs of compassion and hope, created to accompany the final breaths of life. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Words, emotions, and the story of great By Anatoly Liberman First of all, many thanks to our two readers who sent me letters on sw-words and the linguistic environment of the adjective tiny. Read More How to choose the right journal By Megan Taphouse and Laura Richards There are likely to be many suitable journals in your field, but targeting the right journal is an important decision, as where you choose to publish can influence the impact and visibility of your work. Read More Israel, Palestine, and reflections on the post-9/11 War on Terror By Richard English How can the United States best help Israel defend itself against terrorist atrocity? Obviously, sustaining the alliance and friendship with the United States is vital for Israel and its security. Equally clearly, the scale and nature of Israeli violence in Gaza since October 2023 has placed new and great strain on the US relationship. Read More Cover of "Human Flourishing in a Technological World: A Theological Perspective" Edited by Jens Zimmermann Artificial Intelligence? I think not! By Jens Zimmermann These days, the first thing people discuss when the question of technology comes up is AI. Equally predictable is that conversations about AI often focus on the “rise of the machines,” that is, on how computers might become sentient, or at least possess an intelligence that will outthink, outlearn, and thus ultimately outlast humanity. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press Can a word have an existential crisis? By Edwin L. Battistella A while back, a philosopher friend of mine was fretting about the adjective “existential.” She was irked by people using it to refer to situations which threaten the existence of something, as when someone refers to climate change as an “existential crisis,” or more commonly, as “an existential threat.” Read More Cover image of "Life in a new Language" Ethnographic data-sharing as community building By Ingrid Piller, Donna Butorac, Emily Farrell, Loy Lising, Shiva Motaghi-Tabari, and Vera Williams Tetteh The open science movement has fundamentally changed how we do and evaluate research. In theory, almost everyone agrees that open research is a good thing. In reality, most researchers struggle to put theory into practice. Read More “But you got to have friends…”: A Bette Midler playlist By Kevin Winkler Since Bette Midler first entered a recording studio, she’s tackled just about every genre of music. This tour through her recorded output reveals not just the familiar best-selling hits but five decades of deep cuts and delightful discoveries. Read More July 2024 Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman More English words for size: the size increases… By Anatoly Liberman First of all, many thanks to our two readers who sent me letters on sw-words and the linguistic environment of the adjective tiny. Read More AI attitudes and behaviour: researcher profiles [interactive] By Jessamine Hopkins, Tamsin Chamberlain, and Laura Richards While 76% of researchers say they have used some form of AI tool in their research, our survey uncovered unexpected generational differences and polarised opinions on the impact of AI. Read More What can seventeenth-century sources teach us about living with climate change? By Timothy Grieve-Carlson At the beginning of another summer that will likely prove to be the hottest in the planet’s recorded history, it is easy to feel like we are living through a moment without precedent in human history. But it’s a mistake to assume that our histories have nothing to teach us about living under climate change. Read More Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman Words related to size, part two: tiny By Anatoly Liberman Now that we know how untrivial the origin of small, little ~ leetle, and wee is (see the post for June 20, 2024), we are fully prepared to examine the puzzling history of tiny. Little pitchers have long ears, and inconspicuous words may have a nearly impenetrable etymology. It is hard to believe how much trouble the adjective tiny has given researchers. Read More
June 2024 Quiz: Pioneers from British history By Millie Henson We are celebrating the remarkable individuals who have shaped British history, from groundbreaking scientists to social reformers. Read More The medieval world [interactive map] By OUP History The study of the Middle Ages is expanding. With new locales and cross-cultural interconnections being explored, the study of the medieval world has never been more open. Set upon the backdrop of Martellus’ c.1490 world map, venture across the medieval world discovering Latvian Mead, trans-Mediterranean trade, and Ibn Battuta’s travels. Explore the Middle Ages like never before and sample medieval research from across our books, research encyclopedias, and open access journal articles. Read More Etymological small fry: some words for “size” By Anatoly Liberman Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137). Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press All about all By Edwin L. Battistella One of the quirkier features of the English syntax has to do with the simple word all. All is a quantity word, or quantifier in the terminology of grammarians and logicians. It indicates an entirety of something. Read More Speech, AI, and the future of neurology By Adolfo M. García Imagine what your life would be like if you did not know where you are or who you are with, and a young man told you, “We’re home and I’m your son.” Those who do not need to imagine are the 55 million people living with Alzheimer’s and the 10 million living with Parkinson’s, respectively, as they experience similar challenges every day. Read More Better together: coupling up to watch TV and talk synchronizes brain waves By Oxford Open Neuroscience Brain-imaging technique reveals chatting between TV episodes increases mind match up, even when the topic isn’t TV-related. Read More The enchanted renegades: female mediums’ subversive wisdom By Claudie Massicotte Amidst the tapestry of history, there exist threads often overlooked, woven by the hands of remarkable women who defied the constraints of their time. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, amidst the burgeoning intellectual and cultural movements of Europe, the fascinating phenomenon of female mediumship emerged as one such thread in the history of Western psychology. Read More More gleanings and a few English sw-words By Anatoly Liberman Before I come to the point, a short remark is due. Some of our readers may have noticed that two weeks ago, they did not receive Wednesday’s post. This happened because of a technical problem, but the post “Some Gleanings and the Shortest History of Bummers,” is available. Read More Distributed voice: disability and multimodal aesthetics By Michael Davidson Over the years since writing about tapevoice I have lost most of my hearing and rely on various interfaces—captions, American Sign Language, lip-reading, conversation slips, and body language—that distribute the voice through multiple modalities. What I call “distributed voice” refers to the multiple forms through which the voice is produced and reproduced. But the idea of a voice dissevered from its source in the body and distributed through other media touches on larger communicational ethics in an era of digital information, social media, “fake news,” and broadband connections. Read More Age and experience: Early Modern women’s perspectives By Julie Candler Hayes It’s newsworthy, apparently, when the cover of Vogue magazine features a woman over 70 years old. The New York Times recently devoted an article to the photograph of Miuccia Prada on the March 2024 cover, breathlessly noting that Prada was wearing little if any makeup, did not appear to be “posed,” and remarkably was not gazing at the camera, “looking elsewhere, thinking of something else.” Ordinarily, one would not think it surprising to see images of a powerful, wealthy, highly-educated—and attractive—woman in the public sphere. But her age Read More Summertime musicking By Lisa Huisman Koops Many families imagine summer as a time of endless fun and warmth. But summer is full of parenting challenges, including disrupted schedules and kids having more free time while parents have less. Such parenting challenges make this a great moment to consider how to weave music into activities and routines of family life to make things a little easier and a little more fun—an approach I call “parenting musically.” Read More Pudding all over the world By Anatoly Liberman Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137). Read More Greenhouse gases from an unseen world By David L. Kirchman The list of ways we humans produce greenhouse gases is long and varied, starting with the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas, which releases prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide. That most important greenhouse gas is also emitted by deforestation, the making of cement, the cultivation and harvesting of crops, and the raising of cattle, pigs, and chickens. Read More 75 years of unidentified flying objects [interactive] By Greg Eghigian In the summer of 1947, a private pilot flying over the state of Washington saw what he described as several pie-pan-shaped aircraft traveling in formation at remarkably high speed. Within days, journalists began referring to the objects as “flying saucers.” Read More A ridge too far: getting lost in the Italian Apennines By Nick Havely Most people these days speed across the Apennines between Florence and Bologna through road or rail tunnels without really noticing. But if, as I did, you travel more slowly along that ridge on foot, you’ll get some impression of how these modest peaks had once been seen as “the dreadfull … Appennines”. Read More Does Orwell still matter? By Peter Brian Barry Much of George Orwell’s work is historically grounded, yet his final novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, remains of great interest even as it nears seventy-five years in print. Is Orwell still relevant today? Popular answers appeal to Orwell’s supposed ability to anticipate the future, say, the increase of surveillance technology and prevalence of authoritarian regimes. I contend Orwell remains relevant for a different reason: better than most, he understood the need to critically engage with potential allies and how to do it. Read More June 2024 Behind the scenes: what it’s like to be a junior author for the OHCM By Dearbhla Kelly, Iain McGurgan, and Peter Hateley To mark the release of the much anticipated 11th edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (OHCM), Oxford University Press spoke with the three new authors of this edition: Peter Hateley, a GP based in New Zealand; Dearbhla Kelly, a Critical Care Medicine fellow in Oxford; and Iain McGurgan, a Neurology Resident in Switzerland. The author team shared their experiences of writing the world’s best-selling medical handbook. Read More How to turn your PhD thesis into a book By Sam Bailey As an OUP editor who has also completed a PhD, one of the most common questions I am asked is how to turn a thesis into a book. My only-slightly-flippant answer is don’t. Read More Some gleanings and the shortest history of bummers By Anatoly Liberman Every English dictionary with even minimal information on word origins, will tell us that lord and lady are so-called disguised compounds. Unlike skyline or doomsday (to give two random examples), lord and lady do not seem to consist of two parts. Yet a look at their oldest forms—namely, hlaf-weard and hlæf-dige—dispels all doubts about their original status (the hyphens above are given only for convenience). Read More Dictators: why heroes slide into villainy By Oxford Open Economics Many autocrats come to power with good intentions only to morph into monsters. A new model explains common drivers of this inexorable slide. Read More A listener’s guide to Sand Rush [playlist] By Elsa Devienne Writing Sand Rush forced me to watch some of the worst teen movies ever produced by Hollywood— I’m never getting that one hour of my life spent watching The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) back—but the music associated with California beaches is top notch. Almost all of the songs on the Sand Rush playlist are from a very short period in time, roughly between 1961 and 1965 (not withstanding some obvious throwback songs from the 80’s, 90’s, and beyond), when the Southern California beach culture was on display everywhere, from music album covers to movies and magazine advertisements. Read More Six books to read this Pride Month [reading list] By Lindsey Stangl As Pride Month blossoms with vibrant parades and heartfelt celebrations, it’s the perfect time to reflect and honor the rich tapestry of LGBTQ+ history and culture. Whether you’re looking to deepen your understanding, celebrate diverse identities, or simply enjoy compelling stories, our carefully curated reading list offers something for everyone. Read More Find your perfect summer read [quiz] By Calla Veazie As the warm breeze of summer can be felt, it’s the perfect time to dive into a captivating read that will transport you to another place. Read More
May 2024 From rags to riches, or the multifaceted progress of lady By Anatoly Liberman Every English dictionary with even minimal information on word origins, will tell us that lord and lady are so-called disguised compounds. Unlike skyline or doomsday (to give two random examples), lord and lady do not seem to consist of two parts. Yet a look at their oldest forms—namely, hlaf-weard and hlæf-dige—dispels all doubts about their original status (the hyphens above are given only for convenience). Read More Human vulnerability in the EU Artificial Intelligence Act By Gianclaudio Malgieri Vulnerability is an intrinsic characteristic of human beings. We depend on others (families, social structures, and the state) to enjoy our essential needs and to flourish as human beings. In specific contexts and relationships, this dependency exposes us to power imbalances and higher risks of harm. In other words, it increases our vulnerability. Read More Kids, race and dangerous jokes By Claire Horisk I wish that everything my children will hear about race at school will be salutary, but you and I know it won’t. Their peers will expose them to a panoply of false stereotypes and harmful ideas about race, and much of that misinformation will be shared in the guise of humor. Read More When health care professionals unintentionally do harm By Lauren Freeman and Heather Stewart The Hippocratic Oath, which is taken by physicians and implores them to ‘first, do no harm,’ is foundational in medicine (even if the nuances of the phrase are far more complex than meets the eye). Yet what happens when doctors bring about great harm to patients without even realizing it? In this article, we define microaggressions, illustrate how they can hinder the equitable delivery of healthcare, and discuss why the consequences of microaggressions are often anything but “micro”. Read More The year of singing politically: The 68th Eurovision Song Contest 2024 Malmö, Sweden By Philip V. Bohlman Breaking out of the chains had emerged as a central leitmotif and call for activism at the Eurovision Song Contest long before Swiss non-binary singer, Nemo, performed it as the winning song, “The Code,” at the Grand Finale on May 11 2024 in Malmö, Sweden. Read More Working together: William Walton and Oxford University Press By Simon Wright The British composer Sir William Walton (1902-1983), writer of operas, symphonies, concertos, and instrumental music, enjoyed an exclusive publishing relationship with Oxford University Press from the mid-1920s until his death. Read More Fink, a police informer By Anatoly Liberman Specialists and amateurs have long discussed fink, and the main purpose of today’s post is to tell those who are not versed in etymology what it takes to study the origin of an even recent piece of slang and come away almost empty-handed. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press The word on arithmetic By Edwin L. Battistella When we think of genre, it is often in the sense of literature or film. However, rhetoricians will tell us that genre is a concept that includes any sort of writing that has well-defined conventions, such as business memos, grant proposals, obituaries, syllabi, and much more. Read More Here’s Johnny––and Bette! By Kevin Winkler New York-based talk shows in the 1970s offered plentiful opportunities for quirky young talents like Bette Midler to sing a song or two and maybe kibitz with the host, regardless of whether they had a Broadway show or film or new record to promote. Midler had none of these when her manager Budd Friedman got her booked on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson not long after she began her legendary run at the Continental Baths. Read More Did the Santa Barbara oil spill save our beaches? On 28 January 1969, a blowout on a Union Oil platform six miles off the Santa Barbara coast released three million gallons of crude oil into the ocean. As the first environmental disaster captured in technicolor and publicized across national news media, the Santa Barbara oil spill played an important role in the emergence of the modern environmental movement. Read More Classical allusions in Owen and Rosenberg’s war poems By Lorna Hardwick, Stephen Harrison, and Elizabeth Vandiver Wilfred Owen is one of the most studied of the war poets, and his poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ is undoubtedly the best-known example of classical reception in First World War poetry. The poem ends with seven Latin words from Horace Odes 3.2: dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’. Owen bitterly denounces these words as ‘the old Lie’. Read More Are academic researchers embracing or resisting generative AI? And how should publishers respond? By David Clark Most people, but not all, would agree that the internet has benefitted research and researchers’ working lives. But can we be so sure about the role of new technologies, and, most immediately, generative AI? Read More The importance of sun safety: Sun Awareness Week 2024 By Laura Prescott and Shehnaz Ahmed Sun Awareness Week (6-12 May) kicks off the British Association of Dermatologists’ (BAD) summer-long campaign dedicated to raising awareness of non-melanoma skin cancer, a very common type of cancer. The week also aims to teach the public about the importance of good sun protection habits, including ways you can check for signs of skin cancer. Read More My word of the year: hostages By Anatoly Liberman I have never been able to guess the so-called word of the year, because the criteria are so vague: neither an especially frequent word nor an especially popular one, we are told, but the one that characterizes the past twelvemonth in a particularly striking way. To increase my puzzlement, every major dictionary has its own favorite, to be named and speedily forgotten. Read More Finding the classics in World War I poetry By Lorna Hardwick, Stephen Harrison, and Elizabeth Vandiver It is a paradox that interest in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome has increased at the same time that the extent of detailed knowledge about Greece, Rome, and the associated languages has declined. Read More Messy, messy masculinity: The politics of eccentric men in the early United States By Ben Bascom For every weirdo one finds while researching the past’s forgotten personalities, there are probably two or three more just a stone’s throw away whom time did not preserve. Ben Bascom (Feeling Singular: Queer Masculinities in the Early United States) assembles a collection of once neglected but now deeply curious stories that offer the underside to more popular narratives about the founding of the U.S and what it meant—and means—to be masculine. Read More May 2024 Cover of The Art of the Bee by Robert Page The art of the bee By Robert Page The impact of bees on our world is immeasurable. Bees are responsible for the evolution of the vast array of brightly colored flowers and for engineering the niches of multitudes of plants, animals, and microbes. They’ve painted our landscapes with flowers through their pollination activities and have evolved the most complex societies to aid their exploitation of the environment. Read More A chronology of the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China [timeline] By Dali L. Yang In Wuhan: How the COVID-19 Outbreak in China Spiraled Out of Control, Dali L. Yang scrutinizes China’s emergency response to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, delving into the government’s handling of epidemic information and the decisions that influenced the scale and scope of the outbreak. This timeline adapted from the book walks through the day by day chronology of the initial outbreak and explores how both the virus and information spread. Read More Mental disorder or something magical? By Naomi Fisher Each generation finds their own way of understanding mental distress. The ‘shell-shocked’ soldiers of World War I were understood at the time to be of weak character, although now we might diagnose them with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Read More Dab-dab and a learned idiom By Anatoly Liberman I receive questions about the origin of words and idioms with some regularity. If the subjects are trivial, I respond privately, but this week a correspondent asked me about the etymology of the verb loiter, and I thought it might be a good idea to devote some space to it and to its closest synonyms. Read More Has Christian philosophy been having it too easy? By J.L. Schellenberg Over the last 50 years, Christian philosophy has ballooned into by far the largest interest area in the philosophy of religion. The Society of Christian Philosophers boasts more than a thousand members in the United States, and similar groups are dotted around the world. Read More
April 2024 State supported Covid-19 nudges only really worked on the young By Oxford Open Economics A Swedish study reveals vaccination nudges barely influenced the older, more vulnerable people who needed them but younger people complied. Why? Read More Of politicians as newsreaders and other curiosities of our brave new digital world By Irini Katsirea Few will have been surprised by Ofcom’s recent verdict that GB News broke due impartiality rules by featuring politicians like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Esther McVey as news presenters. However, the regulator’s decision to handle GB News with kid gloves by putting it on notice whilst refraining from imposing statutory sanctions raised an eyebrow or two. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press In search of the MacGuffin By Edwin L. Battistella I considered opening this post in the style of Dashiell Hammett: Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. Read More Unlocking the Moon’s secrets: from Galileo to giant impact By James Lawrence Powell It is a curious fact that some of the most obvious questions about our planet have been the hardest for scientists to explain. Surely the most conspicuous mystery in paleontology was “what killed the dinosaurs.” Read More How to co-write a book 3,000 miles apart: In Dialogue with Dickens [long read] By Rosemarie Bodenheimer and Philip Davis RB lives outside Boston in the United States, PD across the Mersey from Liverpool, England. We have never met in person. We communicated across the distance between America and England via books, via Dickens, trying to use our different lives in the same common purpose: in dialogue with Dickens. Read More Unscheduled gleanings and a few idioms By Anatoly Liberman I receive questions about the origin of words and idioms with some regularity. If the subjects are trivial, I respond privately, but this week a correspondent asked me about the etymology of the verb loiter, and I thought it might be a good idea to devote some space to it and to its closest synonyms. Read More “Unparalleled research quality”: An interview with Tanya Laplante, Head of Product Platforms By Tanya Laplante As part of our Publishing 101 blog series, we are interviewing “hidden” figures at Oxford University Press: colleagues who our authors would not typically work with but who make a crucial contribution to the success of their books. Tanya explains how, as research behaviours have changed, we use digital platforms to ensure that our authors’ books reach readers worldwide. Read More Is it democratic to disqualify a popular candidate from the ballot? By Benjamin A. Schupmann That a popular candidate could be disqualified from running and removed from the ballot might, at first glance, seem at odds with the very idea of democracy. For that reason, despite his evident role in instigating an insurrection, many Republican senators demurred and chose not to impeach former President Donald J. Trump on 13 January 2021. Read More A Sand County Almanac at 75: the evolution of the land ethic By Buddy Huffaker and Leah Bieniak A lot changes in 75 years. In 1949, when Oxford University Press published Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac with “The Land Ethic” included, there were about 2.5 billion people alive on Earth. The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was just over 310 parts per million. The average global temperature was 0.6 degrees Celsius below the average for the twentieth century. Read More How do you solve a problem like gender inequality? By José E. Alvarez How do you solve a problem like gender inequality? For most women’s rights advocates, the answer is obvious: adopt a human rights framework. At the global level this means using the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). While CEDAW has been subject to many critiques there is a reason that CEDAW is specifically cited as a justification for progressive new laws around the world. Read More The US South: A deadly front during World War II By Charles C. Bolton The US Army recently gave a full military funeral to Albert King, a Black soldier killed by a white military police officer in 1941; Charles Bolton considers race in the American South during WWII. Read More The Alexander Mosaic: Greek history and Roman memories By Peter J. Holliday Perhaps the finest representation of battle to survive from antiquity, the Alexander Mosaic conveys all the confusion and violence of ancient warfare. It also exemplifies how elite patrons across diverse artistic cultures commission artworks that draw inspiration from and celebrate past and present events important to the community. Read More Walter W. Skeat and the Oxford English Dictionary By Anatoly Liberman For many years, I have been trying to talk an old friend of mine into writing a popular book on Skeat. A book about such a colorful individual, I kept repeating, would sell like hotcakes. But he never wrote it. Neither will I (much to my regret), but there is no reason why I should not devote another short essay to Skeat. In 2016, Oxford University Press published Peter Gilliver’s book The Making of the Oxford English Dictionary, a work of incredible erudition. Read More Forgotten books and postwar Jewish identity By Rachel Gordan In recent years, Americans have reckoned with a rise in antisemitism. Since the 2016 presidential election, antisemitism exploded online and entered the mainstream of American politics, with the 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue marking the deadliest attack on American Jews. Read More The rising power paradigm and India’s 2024 general elections By T.V. Paul India, the world’s largest democracy, is holding its national elections over a six-week period starting 19 April. The elections to the 543-member lower house of the parliament (Lok Sabha) with an electorate, numbering 968 million eligible voters, assumes critical importance as India is going through both internal and external changes that are heavily linked to its rising power aspirations and achievements. Read More How well do you know Shakespeare’s plays? [quiz] By Catrin Lawrence Brush up on your Shakespeare with our quiz! Read More Do American family names make sense? By Peter McClure Do names really mean anything, even when they seem to? Individuals in present day America called Smith, Jackson, Washington, or Redhead are not usually smiths, sons of Jack, residents in Washington, or red-haired. Read More From “frog” to “toad” By Anatoly Liberman I did not intend to write an essay about toad, because a detailed entry on this word can be found in An Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology (2008), but a letter came from our correspondent wondering whether the etymology of toad is comparable with that of frog (the subject of the previous two posts), and the most recent comment also deals with both creatures. Read More Understanding the EU’s Law Enforcement Directive By Eleni Kosta, Franziska Boehm, Diana Dimitrova, and Irene Kamara If you ask an average European if they may request Google or Facebook to delete their data, they are likely to refer to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They are also likely to turn to a Data Protection Authority (DPA) or even directly to the domestic courts for that matter. Read More Remembering John Hope Franklin, OAH’s first Black president By Rob Heinrich The 2024 OAH Conference on American History begins in New Orleans on 11 April, almost exactly fifteen years after the death of the organization’s first Black president, John Hope Franklin. Read More Society was to blame for the letters, not twisted psychologies By Emily Cockayne In complex ways, social inequalities create the conditions for people to feel that writing anonymously might be useful for them. On top of this, social crises create anxious contexts, when the receipt of a threatening, obscene, or libellous anonymous letter might seem especially hazardous. Read More Jonah and genre [long read] By Brent A. Strawn Reading a piece of writing—from instruction manual, to sports page, to Op-Ed piece—according to its genre is something we do so naturally that it seems odd to even talk about it. Indeed, the very phrase “reading according to genre” sounds odd itself, entirely too formal, perhaps suitable for some English or Comparative Literature class, but hardly something that normal people do when reading normal things on an everyday basis. Read More Philosophers don’t often write about the heart By Stephen Darwall The Heart and Its Attitudes illuminates interpersonal phenomena that are as local and commonplace as heartfelt connections and their rupture between friends and lovers, on the one hand, or as nationally or internationally significant as the emotional injuries of racial and gender oppression and war, on the other. It is a work of philosophy that aims for rigor and analytical depth, but one that is unusual in its relevance to so much of ordinary life. Read More some type of way book cover Pay attention to your children By Lisa Schelbe You’ve probably been ignoring your children. This isn’t simply you not paying attention to them because you’re distracted or need to do something. Read More An etymological plague of frogs By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I discussed a few suggestions about the origin of the English word frog. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes in the Greek name of this animal. My negligence is puzzling, because the play by Aristophanes lay open near my computer. Read More Is humanity a passing phase in evolution of intelligence and civilisation? By Alvis Brazma In light of the recent spectacular developments in artificial intelligence (AI), questions are now being asked about whether AI could present a danger to humanity. Can AI take over from us? Is humanity a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence and civilisation? Let’s look at these questions from the long-term evolutionary perspective. Read More The hidden toll of war By Barry S. Levy During war, the news media often focus on civilian injuries and deaths due to explosive weapons. But the indirect health impacts of war among civilians occur more frequently—often out of sight and out of mind. Read More
England and Egypt in the early middle ages: the papal connection BY BENJAMIN SAVILLMARCH 29TH 2024 When the Venerable Bede (d. 735) looked out from his Tyneside monastery across the North Sea, over the harbour at Jarrow Slake to which ships brought communications, wares, and human traffic from Europe and the Mediterranean—how then did he picture Rome and the papacy, the city and institution he thought so central to English and even world history? His grasp of its visual culture cannot have been great. We know that Bede never saw Rome (in fact, he never saw any city or town). Our usual reference points of its basilicas, shrines, walls and mosaics—indeed, its sheer urban and suburban mass—cannot have meant much to him. He surely saw books from Rome, and perhaps church vestments and other textiles, although how distinctively ‘Roman’ these looked we do not know. He made a great deal of the relics of Roman saints brought to his island. But the kinds of relics of which he spoke were hardly spectacular: tiny wrappings of cloth, filled with dust, tagged with plain, fingernail-sized labels—to the modern eye, they resemble more covert bundles of narcotics than tokens of God’s elect on earth. Rather, the main visual medium through which Bede and many others in the early Middle Ages must have experienced Rome was through the physical format itself of the papal decrees which his monastery and wider political community received. Throughout the first millennium, these papal letters were not routine bureaucratic documents, and they would have not gone unnoticed. They took the form of enormous, metres-long scrolls of Egyptian papyrus. So fragile is papyrus that no more than about two dozen of the original letters sent by early medieval popes survive anywhere in Europe (the others, in their thousands, have come down to us via later copies and citations). The few we retain, however, indicate that the visual message which opened up before the eyes of those who unrolled these documents firmly located Rome, the papacy, and the mainstream of the Christian world within a culture which was distinctively eastern Mediterranean. One such survival appears on the cover of my recent book, England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages. The artefact now sits in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, where it was sliced into eight fragments by an overzealous librarian in the nineteenth century. It records the intervention of Pope John VIII into the legal privileges of the monastery of Tournus (eastern France) in the year 876. Textually, it is fairly mundane. Yet the external features of this papal manuscript are extraordinary when compared to what else we know of other European medieval documents. Like other papal survivals, it is huge—an amazing 3.2 metres in length (and specimens of up to 7 metres survive elsewhere). Like other surviving scrolls, it is written in a strange, seemingly deliberately baffling Roman script. And the use of papyrus, not parchment, as a format is by itself astonishing: this was a medium definitively phased out of use across most of Europe in the seventh century. By the ninth century, stocks must have been very difficult to obtain. The Tournus letter’s most remarkable feature, however, is its grand opening statement. This is not in Latin at all, nor by a papal notary. Instead, the letter begins with a half-metre-wide proclamation in Arabic, and its scribe was presumably Egyptian. What this Arabic actually says is contested. The extant script is almost undecipherable; a traditional reading, that it refers to Sa’id ibn ’Abd al-Rahman, an early-to-mid-ninth-century finance director of Abbasid Egypt, may or may not be secure. In any case, its scribe probably added the text to the plain sheet of freshly manufactured papyrus in Egypt, the caliphal province which held a virtual monopoly on the papyrus industry. This was completely standard procedure, inherited from the Roman Empire. Such ‘protocols’ are found elsewhere on Byzantine and Arabic papyri. Essentially, they certified that rolls of new papyri, whose manufacture was state-supervised, had passed through the right authorities before distribution. A rough modern-day analogy might be the duty-stamps found on exported whiskey and cigarettes. From Egypt, some stocks must have made it to Rome. But that is where things get weird. One would, I think, expect the papal notaries who prepared this magnificent, highly formalised document for Tournus to have at least trimmed off this half-metre block of Arabic text inserted by the Abbasid functionaries. On the contrary, the Arabic is retained in full, and is by some distance the single largest graphic element on the letter, where it stands out as pivotal to its visual power. It was surely kept on purpose. If those handling the letter could not read giant sweeps of official, Arabic chancery script, then they must have still recognised its connotations. At the head of the document, it signalled the claims of Rome and the papacy (and with them, the letter’s recipients) to a privileged hyperconnectivity with a universal Christian culture that stretched far beyond the bounds of the Latin west, and even touched upon the aesthetics, technologies, and trade networks of Islamic civilisation. This Arabic contribution to the document was something to be prized, not neglected. There’s no reason to believe that this would have been the only instance where such an Arabic protocol became embedded into a papal letter or decree. Rates of survival are too poor for us to assert that this single case was exceptional. Nor does the fact that later copyists failed to note such features when transcribing the many papyri which we have lost mean anything: even modern editors of the Tournus document have not always bothered. Hence my—slightly provocative—choice of this letter for a French recipient for the cover of England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages. I think we should take very seriously the possibility that a great many of the lost original papal letters for early medieval England would have looked just like this: that the archives of Canterbury, York, Wearmouth-Jarrow and Glastonbury could well have counted documents emblazoned with the Arabic calligraphy of Umayyad and Abbasid officials as their most prized possessions—that is, as both sacred texts issued by the pope, and as key witnesses to their legal title. When the early medieval English imagined Rome and the papacy, then, they may have often done so through the prism of what remained, for many, their most immediate sensory experience of its distant allure. This was an experience which none of us would associate with Rome today. To experience the popes and their city from afar meant to gaze upon metres-long rolls of an unfamiliar, precious, Egyptian fabric, and to watch them being unfurled in a church, palace, or place of assembly, to reveal decrees penned in a strange southern Italian script, sometimes even an Arabic one that looked stranger still. Was this the Rome of Bede, Offa, Wulfstan, Æthelred? If we want to take a more radical approach to thinking about English religion and politics in the first millennium—one which expands our sense of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ worldview beyond the familiar Insular tropes and images and destabilises our weary modern assumptions about what its Christian identity involved—then this seems to me like a good place to start. Feature image: gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des Manuscrits. Latin 8840. Benjamin Savill is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin, Visiting Scholar at the German Historical Institute in Rome, and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. England and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages was published last year. His forthcoming publications include ‘Civic factions, denied conversions, and the first European narrative of Jewish infanticide’ (Historical Research 97, 2024); ‘The donations of Pope Constantine: imitation, forgery, and the death of papyrus, 709-1205’ (Anglo-Norman Studies 46, 2024); and ‘Sublime scarcity: papyrus, papal documents, and the experience of early medieval economies’ (co-authored with Caroline Goodson), which will pick up some of the threads touched upon here.
Thinking disobediently? BY LAWRENCE BUELLMARCH 28TH 2024 Aperson who “thinks disobediently” can be invigorating, maddening, or both. The life and writings of Henry David Thoreau have provoked just such mixed reactions over time, scorned by some; cherished by others. What seems bracingly invigorating can also seem an off-putting mannerism. That’s also a significant reason why Thoreau lingered in provincial obscurity during his life but rose to iconic status after death to become one of the few figures in American literary history besides Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway to achieve something like folk hero status—at least for many. Against-the-grain thinkers are often easier to take from a distance than upfront. Socrates, Nietzsche, and Gandhi are some others who come to mind. Thoreau’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that “first instinct upon hearing a proposition was to controvert it.” Emerson usually found this cantankerousness energizing, but he also wearied of it; and so, to a much greater extent, did more conventional-minded folk, especially if they’d never seen Thoreau’s sweeter and more vulnerable side, as Emerson had. His author-physician friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, who had little time for willful idiosyncrasy, dismissed Thoreau as an Emerson clone who “insisted in nibbling his asparagus at the wrong end.” In Thoreau’s writing as well, we often find him insisting on the importance of such gestures as rejecting the gift of a doormat for his Walden cabin because “it is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.” This dogged staunchness repelled even some who were closer to him, like one neighbor who quipped that she would no more think of taking Thoreau’s arm than the arm of an elm tree. Never mind that still others who knew him more intimately disagreed, especially among the younger generation of Concord like Louisa May Alcott and Emerson’s son, who remembered him as a kindly playfellow and guide. Standoffish resistance, with a satirical bite, was the face he tended to present to the adult world. This side of Thoreau, however, is also key to the special force and bite of his writing, which for many latter-day readers has made his writing seem more vibrant and provocative over time than Emerson’s more abstract prose. Judged by their writings alone, Thoreau emerges as the far more memorable flesh-and-blood figure, Emerson by contrast as a kind of recording consciousness. Even Thoreau’s cranky niggling can seem like lovable eccentricity. When I put the question, “Which of the two would you rather room with?” to students who’ve read them both extensively, their first impulse is to choose Thoreau, although, on second thought, they grant that Emerson would have been easier to get along with. Thoreau scholars also face a version of this problem. Many of us, myself included, were first drawn to Thoreau in years past by his ringing idealistic denunciations of the social and political status quo (“Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the only place for a just man is also a prison,” etc.) In addition to their sheer charismatic vehemence, such pronouncements may ignite a feeling of special kinship in those who also feel themselves on the margins of society, as aspiring academics often do. The autobiographical persona in Thoreau’s writing evokes the sense of being invited into a select circle of intimacy above or apart from the ordinary herd, such as what e. e. cummings conjures up in the preface to an edition of his collected poems: These poems “are written for you and for me and are not for mostpeople [sic].” Only later does one realize that Thoreau might have scorned most who write articles and books about him as obtuse pedants. But that awakening may also have the salutary effect of making a scrupulous Thoreauvian less addicted to his or her pet theories about who the real Thoreau was, and more wary of making “authoritative” claims about the essence of his personhood or writing. That said, the defining arenas of Thoreau’s disobedient thinking are unmistakable. Individual conscience is a higher authority than statute law or moral consensus. True wildness can be found at the edges of your hometown. Scientific investigation of natural phenomenon is formulaic without sensuous immersion in the field. Religious orthodoxies of one’s time or any time are tribalistic distortions of the animating energies whose epicenter lies, if anywhere, in untutored intuition or the natural world, not human institutions. What gives these and other Thoreauvian heterodoxies their special bite is not so much how he lived but how he wrote. Many have practiced a more rigorous voluntary simplicity than Thoreau did during his two-plus years at Walden, often for far longer stretches of time and in places far more wild. Many have suffered for conscience’s sake far longer and far more agonizingly than his one-night incarceration for tax refusal. But no such heroes of nonconformity managed to write the likes of Walden and “Civil Disobedience,” which since Thoreau’s death have become classics of world literature and have helped inspire many more thoroughgoing acts of conscientious withdrawal, political resistance, and environmental activism. In order to make sense of how these—and other—Thoreau works have had such impact, a good place to start is Thoreau’s talent for arresting assertions, often directed as much to himself as to others, that set you back, make you think, urge you on. Such as: “Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already”; “If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior”; “For the most part, we are not what we are, but in a false position”; or “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!” This, however, is only a starting point for a deeper understanding of the motions of this disobedient thinker’s mind. For that, there’s no substitute for a careful examination of the works themselves. That’s what I’ve striven to do in Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently. Feature image by Chris Liu-Beers via Unsplash. Lawrence Buell is Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature Emeritus at Harvard University. Considered one of the founders of the ecocriticism movement, he has written and lectured worldwide on Transcendentalism, American studies, and the environmental humanities. His most recent book Henry David Thoreau: Thinking Disobediently is available from Oxford University Press.
A jumping frog and other creatures of etymological interest BY ANATOLY LIBERMANMARCH 27TH 2024 Our readers probably expect this post to deal with Mark Twain’s first famous story. Alas, no. My frog tale is, though mildly entertaining, more somber and will certainly not be reprinted from coast to coast or propel me to fame. In the past, I have written several essays about animal names. One of them examined toad. Here too, the toad will make its appearance, but before it does so, we should keep in mind that animal names—be it horse or sparrow, shark or rabbit—are often among the most obscure words from an etymological point of view. Frog is no exception. Consider Greek batrakhos (origin unknown; borrowed from some other language?). Frogs are famous for their long hind legs and jumping. Consequently, we may expect them to be called jumpers. And this sometimes happens. For example, in Russian, lyagushka “frog” (stress on the second syllable) is derived from the word for “hip” (liazhka), obviously with reference to the creature’s ability to hop and leap. One does not have to be a historical linguist to recognize the connection. But strangely, this transparency is rare. To increase our confusion, we find that even across related languages, the word for the frog is sometimes applied to the toad. Numerous animal names go back to the sound those animals make. Supposedly, Latin rana “frog” is sound–imitative. I am not quite sure what frogs “say.” English speakers hear croak-croak. Does one also hear ran-ran from them? In Russian, frogs go kva-kva, and in German, kvak-kvak. People’s attempts to imitate animals sounds are often puzzling: compare oink-oink (English) and khriu–khriu (Russian). It almost appears that English and Russian pigs have inherited different languages. German pigs, with their grunz–grunz, should feel more comfortable in the east that in the English-speaking world. The internet informs us that frogs whistle, croak, “ribbit” (an American verb, seemingly coined for this purpose only), peak, cluck, bark, and grunt—quite a symphony (as regards grunt, compare grunz-grunz; German z has the value of ts). As we will soon see, the origin of English frog is “not yet settled” (quoted from my favorite English dictionary by Henry Cecil Wyld). What if frog is a sound-imitating word? Perhaps those who coined frog heard frog–frog, along with croak-croak, kva-kva, and ran-ran? Correct etymologies are usually simple, but it does not follow that every simple etymology is correct. The Old English for “frog” was frogga, a hypocoristic formation, similar to docga “dog” (dog is a word of “contested etymology”: see my posts on May 4, May 11, May 18, and June 8, 2016). In the adjective hypocoristic, cor– means “child” (from Greek kóros “child”). Both dog and frog may be ancient baby words. If you are a frog, don’t try to become an ox. Fables in Thyme for Little Folks by John Rae, Project Gutenberg, via Wikimedia Commons. CC1.0. The “adult” root of dog (if it existed) is unknown. Besides, dog is almost isolated in English, and to increase our bafflement, the Old English form of dog occurred most rarely in the recorded texts. Frog is less obscure than dog, because Old English words for “frog” did turn up in early medieval prose. They are forsc, frosc, and frox. Obviously, they are different forms of the same noun, whose pronunciation fluctuated. In Middle English, we find the variants frude (with u, a long vowel) and froude, borrowed from Scandinavian: the Old Norse (that is, Old Icelandic) for “frog” was froskr, frauki, and frauðr (ð = th in Modern English this), in addition to frauki. One can see that the name for “frog” had several variants not only in English. Some fluctuation was due to phonetic reasons. For instance, in forsc and frosc, the vowel and consonant played leapfrog (I am genuinely sorry for the pun, but the temptation was too strong). This game is called metathesis. When r is entailed, metathesis is especially common: compare English burn and German brennen. Both bird and horse once sounded as brid and hros. Frogs’ voices did not appeal to Ancient Greeks. Frogs of the Aristophanes Playbill by Trinity College Dramatic Society, via Wikimedia Commons. If frog was not a production of the nursery or sound imitation, what could its origin be? Naturally, etymologists searched for some similar word that might provide a clue to the animal name. One such word is froth. If the match is good, the reference must have been to the frog’s slimy skin. The noun froth probably existed in Old English, but only a related verb has been recorded. The noun we today know is a fourteenth-century borrowing from Old Norse. The connection froth ~ frog is not particularly appealing, and hardly anyone supports it today. Dutch vors, Old English frosk (see it above), and Old Icelandic frauki (assuming that they all go back to a so-called protoform) seem to have developed from some early root like frusk-, which corresponds to non-Germanic prusk-. It will be remembered that the non-Germanic (that is, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavic, and so forth) match for f is Germanic p: compare English father, and Latin pater (the words are certainly related). This regularity is part is part of what is known as the Germanic Consonant Shift, or Grimm’s Law. In prusk-, -sk might be a suffix, which leaves us with the root pru-. This root was found in the Russian verb pry-gat’ “to jump.” No correspondence could be better (frogs emerged as jumpers), but the entire procedure looks like an attempt to justify a forgone conclusion: since frogs are jumpers, let us try to find some word meaning “jump, spring, leap” and connect the two. Many good dictionaries accept the frog ~ prygat’ solution, but I share Elmar Seebold’s skepsis on this score (Seebold is the editor of the main etymological dictionary of German). We’ll leave our frog in midair until next week and remember that English has another name for this anurous amphibian, namely, pad or paddock (-ock is a suffix). Perhaps some light on the origin of frog will fall from the history of pad? Pad first meant “toad”; pad “a small cushion, etc.” corresponds to northern German pad “the sole of the foot.” To paddle is almost a synonym for toddle (of unknown origin!). After years of hesitation, etymologists seem to have reached a state of unenthusiastic agreement that despite all difficulties connected with the origin of path, the word reflects the tread of the walker going pad ~ pad ~ pad. All over the world, people and animals are said to go pad-pad, pat-pat, and top-top. Frogs jump, while toads move slowly, that is, go pad-pad. I believe that pad “toad” is onomatopoeic (sound-imitating), and so are, most probably, pad– in paddle and tod– in toddle. There is also English dialectal tod “fox.” Since among other things, tod means “a weight used for wool; a bushy mass,” couldn’t tod “fox” get its name from the animal’s bushy tail? Be that as it may, pad and tod have nothing to do with frog, and after this long digression, we are none the wiser. Some creatures are born tailless, others have wonderful tails, but all are perfect. Images: (1) Public domain via Pexels, (2) Internet Archive Book Images via Flickr, (3) Plains Spadefoot, Alberta by Andy Teucher via Flickr. CC2.0. (4) Creeping fox by Eric Kilby via Flickr. CC2.0. The main conclusion of this part of our investigation is that in dealing with the names of the frog and the toad, one should be on the lookout for expressive formations. Toads and frogs have occupied the attention of our ancestors much more than, in our opinion, they deserve. Anticipating the discussion next week, it should be mentioned that there also is northern German pogge “frog,” which, despite its similarity with pad, cannot be dismissed without further discussion (pogge resembles frog!), and we’ll soon see a promising way of dealing with this word. Wait for the continuation next week! Editor’s note: thanks to our commenters and our apologies for any typos and errors! Hopefully all should be fixed. Feature image by Biodiversity Heritage Library via Flickr (Public Domain).
Why decolonization and inclusion matter in linguistics BY ANNE H. CHARITY HUDLEY, CHRISTINE MALLINSON, AND MARY BUCHLOTZMARCH 27TH 2024 As sociolinguists, we have centered social justice in our research, teaching, and administrative work for many years. But as with many other academics, this issue took on renewed collective urgency for us in the context of the events of 2020, from toxic politics and policies at the federal level, to state-sanctioned anti-Black violence and the ensuing racial reckoning, to the Covid-19 pandemic and the many inequities it exposed and heightened. Troubled by the often-misinformed efforts to make institutional change that we saw around us, we wanted to take action that was both specific to our disciplinary context and wide-reaching in its effects. We started with an article in the flagship linguistics journal, Language, calling for the centering of racial justice within the discipline. That article was the lead piece in the journal’s Perspectives section and was accompanied by a range of responses from linguists worldwide, which we responded to in turn. We wrote with the hope that institutional change could start from the individual and (especially) collective actions of linguists. We were also motivated by the hope that the discipline our students will enter will be radically different from the one that we have spent our careers within. This hope fueled our work for the next several years, as we collaborated with linguists within and beyond linguistics departments and throughout the academy to create concrete, specific, and action-centered models for how to do the work necessary to transform the discipline. The results of this intensive collaborative process are two companion volumes, Decolonizing Linguistics and Inclusion in Linguistics, and their websites, which provide additional information and resources. Some linguists, particularly those for whom linguistics is structured and whom it best serves, may be asking themselves, “What’s so bad about linguistics in its current form?” Many linguists we interacted with as we embarked on this project were defensive, baffled, or even outright hostile. Fortunately, many others were curious and eager to learn how the discipline could do better and what they could do to help. Most importantly, the people for whom we do this work—those who have been made to feel unwelcome in linguistics and who have been shut out, pushed out, or relegated to the disciplinary margins, as well as those who have succeeded despite rather than because of linguistics-as-usual—understood and welcomed our project. Many of these current, former, and would-be linguists have been engaged in like-minded efforts of their own. Some critics see our work as “politicizing” linguistics. But these commenters miss the point that linguistics (and academia) has always been political. The discipline has its roots in empire and the colonizing practices of categorizing and classifying languages in order to control those who use them. As the discipline has taken shape over the centuries to the present day, linguistics has become a field limited by its own exclusionary practices and ideologies—a field that, in our view, is simply too small. In Decolonizing Linguistics and Inclusion in Linguistics, we envision and work to build a linguistics that is capacious and welcoming, particularly to those whose lived experiences give them fresh and much-needed insights into the kinds of questions linguistics should be asking, the kinds of methods it should be using, and the kinds of real-world impacts it should be making. Inclusion in linguistics Most linguists are familiar with the concept of inclusion through institutional discourse in academia and elsewhere, particularly the acronym DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) or its many variants. Too often, however, inclusion is used to mean recruiting members of formerly excluded groups into often hostile institutions, without making significant changes to the workings of the institutions themselves. True inclusion is not a matter of making space within existing institutions for new people to do the same old thing. Instead, true inclusion requires the transformation not only of who is in institutional spaces but what they do, how, and why. Transformation demands that we ask ourselves who is and isn’t present in linguistics, whether they have full and equitable access, and whether the community of linguists will value their full humanity, rather than treating them merely as sources of linguistic data or as token representatives and spokespersons for the groups to which they belong. Inclusion in Linguistics offers abundant examples of how linguists can and already are creating genuine inclusion within the discipline. The authors challenge limited notions of who gets to be included, calling attention to a wide range of groups who remain marginalized on the basis of race and ethnicity, gender identity, disability, geography, language, class and caste, and more. The authors issue a powerful call for a linguistics that does not simply make space for but purposefully centers those who have been excluded. We collectively urge linguists to think bigger, to abandon long-cherished ideological investments in what is and isn’t legitimate within linguistics, and to build a discipline that doesn’t hide in the ivory tower but engages with the world and makes it a better place. Decolonizing linguistics Compared to inclusion, decolonization may be a less familiar concept to many linguists. Some academics in the US may have first encountered the idea, along with related concepts like settler colonialism, through student activism on their campus in recent years and months. (In fact, the New York Times recently published an explainer on the term settler colonialism, assuming—no doubt correctly—that its predominantly white, liberal, and highly educated readership is not well versed in decolonial theory and activism.) We chose the title Decolonizing Linguistics to invoke the long and ongoing history of linguists’ global academic exploitation of Black and Indigenous people and the discipline-based extraction of their languages for professional and economic gain. Contributors identify some of the forms of colonialism that linguistics has taken and continues to take. We emphasize the importance of Black-centered and Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies in undoing colonizing structures. We also highlight community-driven collaborative projects that provide a comprehensive picture of the powerful social and scholarly impacts of an unsettled, decolonized linguistics. Both volumes offer specific roadmaps and pathways for how to advance social justice, through programs, partnerships, curricula, and other initiatives. Our work is a necessary first step toward institutional and disciplinary change: a linguistics built by, around, and for groups that have confronted colonization, oppression, and exclusion—that is, precisely the people whose languages so often fascinate linguists—is also a linguistics that prioritizes the new ideas and practices that these groups bring to the discipline and recognizes these new directions as precisely where linguistics needs to go. We do not consider Inclusion in Linguistics and Decolonizing Linguistics as definitive statements but rather as an invitation for others to join us in ongoing conversations. We invite linguistics scholars and students, educators and higher education leaders, around the world to engage with the ideas in both volumes with an eye toward what you can do in your own local context, what we have inevitably left out, and how you might build on, adapt, and push us forward to create the kind of inclusive, decolonized, and socially just linguistics that you would like to be part of. Featured image by Fons Heijnsbroek, abstract-art via Unsplash. Anne H. Charity Hudley is Associate Dean of Educational Affairs, Stanford Graduate School of Education, the Bonnie Katz Tenenbaum Professor of Education and Professor of African and African American Studies & Linguistics, by courtesy. She is also director of the Stanford Black Academic Development Lab. Christine Mallinson is the 2023-24 Lipitz Distinguished Professor of the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Professor in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Program, and Affiliate Professor in the Department of Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies, where she is also Director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship and Special Assistant for Research & Creative Achievement in the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Mary Bucholtz is Professor in Department of Linguistics and Director of the Center for California Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated with the Departments of Anthropology, Education, Feminist Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese as well as the Programs in Latin American and Iberian Studies and in Comparative Literature.
American Exchanges: Third Reich’s Elite Schools BY HELEN ROCHEMARCH 26TH 2024 In the summer of 1935, an exchange programme between leading American academies and German schools, set up by the International Schoolboy Fellowship (ISF), was hijacked by the Nazi government. The organization had been set up in 1927 by Walter Huston Lillard, the principal of Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts. Its aim was to foster better relations between all nations through the medium of schoolboy exchange. However, the authorities at the National Political Education Institutes (aka Napolas), the Third Reich’s most prominent elite schools, had other plans. Lillard and the ISF were informed on 12 February 1935 that they would be exchanging ten American boys for ten Napola pupils. However, the American organizers were wholly unaware that the German pupils and staff were charged with an explicitly propagandistic mission. Their aim: to counteract and neutralize the effect of anti-Nazi accounts in the American media; to form opinions, and influence future foreign views of the Third Reich. To ensure the effectiveness of this pro-Nazi propaganda campaign at the highest level, one of the first German boys to be selected for the program was Reinhard Pfundtner, the son of a high-ranking civil servant in the Third Reich’s Interior Ministry. In his role as ‘state secretary,’ Hans Pfundtner was one of the key architects of the Nuremberg Laws, which demoted Jews, Sinti, and Roma to a pariah status within Nazi Germany, and which were instrumental in the genesis of the Holocaust. He was also a member of the Olympic Committee, and was keen to use the exchange as an opportunity to persuade Lillard, Reinhard’s American headmaster, to lobby in favour of U.S. participation at the upcoming 1936 Winter Olympic Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Surviving letters between Pfundtner and Lillard, now preserved in the German Federal Archives in Berlin, show that the principal of Tabor Academy was completely taken in by the Pfundtners’ pretense of friendship. In one letter from 23 November 1935, Lillard even assured Pfundtner that his ‘excellent letter replying to…questions about the Olympic Games’ had been ‘quoted by several of our good newspapers, and was included in the Associated Press service throughout the country… Undoubtedly, this message of yours will be very helpful in submerging some of the false propaganda.’ Even after the ‘Night of Broken Glass’ pogrom in November 1938, known in Germany as Kristallnacht, Lillard was still urging the principals at the eighteen American preparatory schools involved with the Napola-ISF exchange to continue the programme into the 1939-40 academic year. In one of these letters, he asserted that ‘if we continue to bring the boys together, something constructive may be accomplished; whereas, if we abandon all efforts in the direction of Germany, we are closing the opportunity for the future leaders to be enlightened, and we are retreating back toward the condition of ill-will which prevailed after the World War.’ In general, then, the Napola exchanges seem to have achieved their goal, at least in the short term. After 1935, many leading academies took part in the programme each year, including Phillips Academy Andover and Phillips Academy Exeter, St Andrew’s Delaware, Choate, the Loomis School, and Lawrenceville. Between 1936 and 1938, each year fifteen American pupils lived as pupils of the Nazi elite schools for ten months, while two groups of fifteen Napola-pupils spent five months each at the American schools. The Napola-pupils were often able to convince their American hosts that events in Germany were not nearly as dire as press reports might lead them to believe—and were also given the opportunity to put their political point of view across. Reports in school newsletters suggest that the American pupils also enjoyed getting to know the ‘new Germany’ and could quite easily be swayed into displaying some sympathy for their hosts’ political perspective. One American pupil who attended the Napola in Plön claimed that the year he had spent there was the ‘greatest experience of his life.’ Another was even discovered practising the Hitler salute in front of his mirror. Meanwhile, many staff and pupils at the US academies kept in touch with their German partner schools even after the outbreak of war in 1939. Walden Pell, principal of St Andrew’s School, Delaware, continued to correspond with the parents of one of his German exchange pupils for decades, assisting them in their search for their missing son, sending them food parcels and care packages, and donating a large sum of money to enable a pilgrimage to his war grave in Italy once his final whereabouts were known. To a present-day reader, the attitudes towards Nazi Germany depicted here might seem highly naïve. At the time, however, many educated Americans shared similar sentiments—curious, trusting in German good faith, and willing to downplay or disregard prior reports of Nazi atrocities, at least until Nazi belligerence reached its fatal climax. Feature image by Australian National Library via Unsplash. Helen Roche is Assistant Professor in Modern European Cultural History at Durham University, having previously held research fellowships at Cambridge and UCL. She has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century German history, including the history of education, National Socialism, and classical reception studies.
Conversations with Dostoevsky BY GEORGE PATTISONMARCH 25TH 2024 The first time I visited St Petersburg, nearly thirty years ago, I stayed not far from the area in which Dostoevsky set the action of Crime and Punishment. The tenement blocks were, for the most part, those that Dostoevsky himself would have seen—indeed, one friend lived at Grazhdanskaya 19, a possible location for the coffin-like garret inhabited by Raskolnikov, the novel’s homicidal anti-hero. The area borders the Griboedov canal, along which Raskolnikov frequently walked and where the house in which he murdered the miserly old pawnbroker and her innocent sister is situated—I could even imagine that the dark figure emerging from the dingy entrance was the pawnbroker herself. Further away was the Haymarket, still crowded with gypsies, peddlers, beggars, and cheap food stalls, and—despite the old Church of the Assumption having been pulled down by the Soviet authorities to make way for a Metro station—still an atmosphere heavy with poverty and the crimes of poverty. During those long walks, it was easy to feel that ghosts of Dostoevsky’s city lingered on in the mostly unvisited and run-down streets of the late twentieth century. There wasn’t so much traffic back then, and in the late afternoon sun, with only the distant shouts of some unseen workmen breaking the silence, there was a sense of timelessness, as if this is what it had always been like. Sheer imagination, of course—and much more important is what Crime and Punishment and Dostoevsky’s other great novels (Notes from Underground, The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamazov, and more) can mean for us today. We live in a material and social world very different from that of Dostoevsky’s characters but, like them, we still have to struggle with the challenges of finding a place in a competitive society that is endlessly generating economic insecurity, social injustice, family breakdown, and the fragmentation of religion and other value systems—as well, of course, as the eternal questions as to who and how to love, and whether, in the end, there is a God who cares. The historical study of Dostoevsky addresses these questions by taking us back to Dostoevsky’s world—less to the canal-side streets and back-alleys of St Petersburg and more to the literary and intellectual culture of his time, placing him in the context of contemporary debates about literature, politics, faith, and, not least, the future of Russia itself. Historical scholarship goes a long way towards reconstructing Dostoevsky’s world and showing the detail of his involvement in contemporary issues of art and society and his approach to fundamental questions about the ultimate purpose of human life—and what a lot of detail there is! Even apart from the dramatic events of his mock execution, his imprisonment and exile in Siberia, his gambling addiction and often chaotic love life, Dostoevsky was extraordinarily active in the literary world of his time, editing a succession of journals that published both Russian and foreign literature, from Mrs Gaskell to Edgar Allan Poe (he admired both). He was interested in philosophy and at one point planned on translating Hegel, while Russian identity and the fate of Russia in the modern world elicited some of his most intemperate and controversial statements—and, of course, there was God! As Dostoevsky himself put it, the question of belief plunged him into a ‘crucible of doubt’ as he confronted the seemingly irresolvable clash between the Christian God of love and the reality of a world scarred by poverty, injustice, gratuitous cruelty, violence against women, child abuse, and much more—all addressed in his novels. Historical study is one way of exploring these questions, but Conversations with Dostoevsky attempts the opposite approach. Instead of going back to Dostoevsky’s world, the Conversations bring Dostoevsky into ours, specifically into a series of conversations with a mid-career academic going through a rather average mid-life crisis—‘average’, that is, until, while he is reading one of Dostoevsky’s short stories, the writer himself appears. Thus begins a series of conversations that cover many of the themes of Dostoevsky’s fiction and non-fiction, focussing especially on the ‘eternal questions’ of God and that mysterious creature we call the human being. History cannot be ignored, of course, and the Conversations are accompanied by a set of commentaries that explore the issues raised in a more conventional manner. Nevertheless, a fictionalizing approach can help to profile the existential questions at issue in his work and to help us reflect on how we, as readers, bring our own concerns and—inevitably—biases into what we read. In the century and a half since his death, Dostoevsky has been read in many ways—as a prophet of the Russian Revolution, as a spokesman for protest atheism, or as representative of Orthodoxy Christianity, and more. Today, his work is necessarily exposed to the critical rereading of the Russian literary and intellectual tradition provoked by the invasion of Ukraine that is taking place across Russian Studies. More than ever before, it is important to be conscious not just of what Dostoevsky wrote but of how we are reading him. Featured image credit: Portrait of Fedor Dostoyevsky by Vasily Perov. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. George Pattison was formerly a parish priest in the Church of England, Dean of Chapel (King's College, Cambridge, 1991-2001), Lector in Practical Theology (University of Aarhus, 2022-3), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (University of Oxford, 2004-2013), and 1640 Professor of Divinity (University of Glasgow, 2013-2019). He currently holds honorary positions at the Universities of Glasgow, St Andrews, and Copenhagen. He has published extensively in post-Kantian philosophy of religion, with particular reference to Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, existentialism, and Russian religious philosophy. He is the author of Conversations with Dostoevsky: On God, Russia, Literature, and Life.
Does doctrine have a future in Christianity? BY ALISTER MCGRATHMARCH 25TH 2024 Why did Christianity develop doctrines in the first four centuries of its existence? After all, no other religion or worldview of late classical antiquity felt the need to do this. A school of philosophy might focus on propagating the teachings of its founders, yet Christianity seemed more concerned with clarifying the identity of Jesus Christ, before affirming his moral and spiritual vision. And what about the contemporary significance of these doctrines? Since these emerged in the culture of late classical antiquity, can they be disregarded today? These questions have fascinated me since I began studying theology at Oxford in the 1970s. I was a late arrival in this field, having initially studied chemistry and earned my doctorate in Oxford’s Department of Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Sir George Radda. I could not help but wonder whether there might be some interesting parallels between the development of scientific theories on the one hand, and Christian doctrine on the other. Reflecting on these questions took me the best part of fifty years. In The Nature of Christian Doctrine, I present a constructive and innovative account of the origins, development, and enduring significance of Christian doctrine, explaining why it remains essential to the life of Christian communities. My original hunch that there might be some significant commonalities between the development of scientific theories and Christian doctrine is more plausible today than it was back in the 1970s. Since 2010, an increasing number of scholars of early Christian thought have explored the idea of early Christianity as a “theological laboratory,” which proposed and assessed various ways of conceptualizing its vision of reality. I suggest that doctrinal formulations are best seen as proposals submitted for testing across the Christian world, rather than as static accounts of orthodoxy. This approach aligns with the available evidence much better than Walter Bauer’s famous theory of suppressed early orthodoxies. I argue that we can use Thomas Kuhn’s concept of a “paradigm shift” as a lens for understanding early Christian doctrinal development. Existing modes of thinking are found to be inadequate in explaining a diverse array of observations, leading to a “tipping point” in which new frameworks of interpretation are needed. There is an interesting parallel here with Christ’s remark that old wineskins are incapable of containing new wine. Furthermore, early Christian writers, such as Athanasius of Alexandria, seem to have employed something very similar to the modern scientific notion of “inference to the best explanation” in developing their accounts of the identity and significance of Christ. While these may be the most original and interesting aspects of this volume, I also explore many other facets of Christian doctrines. I provide a robust critique of George Lindbeck’s still-influential Nature of Doctrine (1984), raising significant concerns about his crude reduction of doctrine to a single function. I point out that there are multiple functions of doctrine that we need to weave together into a cohesive whole, rather than limiting ourselves to a single preferred option. Drawing on the philosopher Mary Midgley’s concept of “mapping” as a means of coordinating the multiple aspects of complex phenomena, and Karl Popper’s “three worlds” theory, I explore how the theoretical, objective, and subjective aspects of doctrine can be seen as essential and interconnected. Christian doctrine both allows us to grasp the deep structures of reality, while at the same time creating a coordinating framework that ensures its various aspects are perceived as interconnected parts of a greater whole. Doctrine provides a framework that allows theological reality to be seen and experienced in a new manner. So what difference does doctrine make? Why not simply embrace Christianity’s moral and spiritual vision and consider its doctrinal aspects as optional? I explore this question by considering some important connections between Christian doctrine and the Platonic idea of theoria—a new way of perceiving reality that encourages participation rather than mere observation. Doctrines provide a framework that alters our perception and experience of reality, influencing how we feel about the world and ourselves. Although many older accounts of Christian doctrine treat it somewhat rationalistically, I emphasize its imaginative and affective dimensions. It is not simply something that we understand; it is something that gives us a new vision of reality. So does doctrine have a future? If the arguments presented in this book hold any merit, doctrine is crucial to the future of Christianity. It safeguards the core vision of reality that is essential for the proper functioning and future flourishing of Christian communities. It articulates the life-giving and life-changing realities that lie at the heart of the Christian community of faith. If Christianity has a future, then doctrine will be an important part of that future. In fact, I think the evidence allows me to go further: if Christianity has a future, it is because of doctrine. Featured image credit: First Council of Nicaea (Damaskinos). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Alister McGrath served as Professor of Historical Theology and subsequently as Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at Oxford University. He is the author of The Nature of Christian Doctrine: Its Origins, Development, and Function.
How well do you know your ancient Greek literature? [Quiz] BY MAHRUKH KHALIDMARCH 22ND 2024 From Homer to Euripides, ancient Greek literature has an abundance in poetry, prose and plays—but how well do you think you know these works? Test your knowledge with our short, fun quiz and don’t forget to let us know how you did! Feature image by Hert Niks via Unsplash. Mahrukh Khalid, Marketing Executive on the Global Library Marketing team, and Ruby Dunn, Marketing Assistant on the Global Library Marketing team.
The origins of the war in Ukraine [timeline] BY MICHAEL KIMMAGEMARCH 22ND 2024 The fall of the Soviet Union meant independence for Ukraine, and radically altered the shape and power structures of Eastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was the culmination of a number of growing fissures and collisions in the region—between Russia and Ukraine, but also between Europe and Russia, and Russia and the United States. Michael Kimmage, a historian and former diplomat who served on the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State where he handled the Russia/Ukraine portfolio, looks at the origins of this conflict dating back to 24 August 1991. Feature image by Max Kukurudziak via Unsplash. Michael Kimmage is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Non-resident Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2014 to 2016, he served on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State, where he handled the Ukraine/Russia portfolio. He is the author of The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling, Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism and The Abandonment of the West: The History of an Idea in American Foreign Policy. He writes regularly for Foreign Affairs, the New Republic, and other publications. His latest book, Collisions, was published by Oxford University Press March 2024.
Awkward? We’d better own it BY ALEXANDRA PLAKIASMARCH 21ST 2024 We live in a golden age of awkwardness. Or so we’re told, by everyone from The Washington Post to Modern Dog Magazine. But we always have. A 1929 Life Magazine contributor writes, “These are awkward times, and I sympathize with the teashop waitress who approached a customer from behind and said brightly, ‘Anything more sir, I mean madam; I beg your pardon sir.’” What’s new isn’t awkwardness itself, but our upbeat attitude towards it; headlines tell us that post-Covid, “We’re all socially awkward now,” and public health campaigns urge us to “embrace the awkward” and talk openly about issues like mental health. But while reducing the stigma around mental health, addiction, and other issues is a good thing, we should be wary of our tendency to embrace awkwardness—or at least, we should be aware of the way in which we selectively celebrate awkwardness, and who gets left out of the embrace. The idea that being socially awkward is a personality trait—and a sign of superior intelligence—has become a mainstay of writing about the (predominantly white and male) worlds of tech and finance. From Mark Zuckerberg to the recently disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried, the socially awkward genius is a familiar figure in the news these days. It’s found in fiction, too: Sherlock Holmes, even our beloved Mr Darcy. In these men, awkwardness is seen as not only excusable, but laudable—the true genius can’t be bothered with social niceties; he doesn’t notice such things. But this stereotype rests on a misconception about where awkwardness originates. In fact, people aren’t awkward—situations are. And one reason situations become awkward is because of individuals’ willingness to disregard others’ social cues, needs, and feelings. The myth of the awkward misfit is harmful when it’s used to license antisocial behavior, but it’s also used to exclude and stigmatize the neurodivergent, the disabled, and other marginalized groups. That’s not to discount the fact that some people have more difficulty than others at detecting social cues; these individuals may feel, and be perceived as, awkward. But when we label people “awkward,” we attribute the problem to them, rather than to our failure to make social expectations clear. Programs like Rochester Institute of Technology’s Career Ready Bootcamp train autistic students in the so-called “soft skills” needed to succeed in job interviews and the workplace—skills such as where to look while talking (between the eyes, as a substitute for eye contact) and how to interpret and respond to open-ended questions (like “tell me something about yourself”). But this shouldn’t be a one-way process: employers can make interviews more accommodating, too, by asking more specific questions, or de-emphasizing the roles of small talk and considerations of whether a candidate will be a good “fit” in hiring decisions. Indeed, the emphasis on awkwardness as a personality trait disproportionately burdens people who don’t conform, for various reasons, to our social norms regarding speech patterns, eye contact, or body type. It’s no coincidence that the “geniuses” I mentioned above are all relatively affluent, successful white men. When we see awkwardness as a property of individuals, our choice about whether or not to accept or even celebrate it intersects with other forms of bias and prejudice. Our cultural assumptions about awkwardness put women at a double disadvantage. Whether in the workplace or at home, women are disproportionately tasked with “emotion work” like facilitating social interactions, smoothing over social discomfort, and managing others’ feelings. When conversations get uncomfortable, it’s women’s work to repair them. On the other hand, we stigmatize conversations about salaries, periods, postpartum bodies, etc., and these conversations are bound to get uncomfortable. More problematically, we’re prone to see that awkwardness as caused by the person who brings them up, and not by the social norms or stigma around the issues themselves. Our fear of being perceived as awkward, or of being seen as “making things awkward,” can function as a form of silencing, suppressing conversations about important issues like salary gaps, menopause, and microaggressions. I’m not saying that the desire to embrace awkwardness, and to celebrate self-proclaimed awkward people, is a bad thing. Our fear of awkwardness and our desire to avoid awkward encounters is real, and we would be better off, in many cases, if we got more comfortable with discomfort. But all too often, we treat powerful people as if they’re immune from social expectations, tolerating or even celebrating their disregard for social norms as a sign of intelligence. As long as we embrace or celebrate awkwardness as an individual trait, we risk embracing a solution that reproduces existing social biases and inequality. The intersection of awkwardness, gender, and status empowers some to disregard social conventions, while using those same conventions to keep others quiet. What’s the alternative? First, we should be aware that awkwardness is a product of all of our discomfort with certain topics. It’s not something individuals cause or have. It’s the result of insufficient or inadequate social guidance for how to handle an issue. Second, where we do feel uncomfortable talking about issues, we should take that as an indication and an opportunity to improve our social infrastructure, clunky and odd as that process may seem. For example, many professors now ask students to share their pronouns on the first day of class. For some older faculty, this process may feel awkward. Over time, it becomes less so. And often, avoiding awkwardness comes at the expense of someone else’s discomfort: for example, the students who faced the choice between being the only ones to share pronouns or being consistently misgendered. The work of discussing menopause or menstruation should be shared by everyone—not left to women. New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ recent press conference discussing menopause and women’s orgasms may have made many viewers (myself included) cringe, but it’s a step in the right direction. Making topics like sex, health, disability, and neurodiversity less awkward to discuss will take work, and that work shouldn’t selectively burden members of marginalized groups. Finally, we should look for areas where our social cues may not be accessible to everyone, and make our expectations more explicit. And if, after all that, someone still seems to disregard others’ comfort and our social norms around workplace behavior? Maybe he’s not so awkward after all. Maybe he’s just a jerk. Feature image by Campaign Creators via Unsplash. Alexandra Plakias is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College. She grew up in New York City and received her PhD from the University of Michigan. She works on issues in moral psychology and social epistemology and has published on topics including disgust, self-confidence, moral disagreement, and the philosophy of food.
A Retrospective on “Origin Uncertain” BY ANATOLY LIBERMANMARCH 20TH 2024 In early March, the mail brought me the expected complimentary copies of my recent book Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology, published by Oxford University Press (2024). The book is based on my contributions to this blog, and some of our readers may perhaps be interested in hearing how the events developed. The blog started on March 1, 2006, eighteen years (almost to a day) before the publication of the book. At that time, OUP inaugurated a series of blogs, and the “Oxford Etymologist” column was one of them. Yet the story is much longer. My work on etymology began forty, rather than eighteen, years ago and grew out of the discovery that even the best dictionaries often say about the words they feature: “Origin unknown.” To be sure, the formula has several variants: “perhaps related to such and such a word” (often equally obscure), “of uncertain origin,” “origin disputable (contested),” and an array of adjectives like dubious and doubtful, but in principle, the result is always the same, that is, “unknown.” Exploring the unknown The first mysterious word I began to explore was heifer. Just why heifer piqued my curiosity is a special plot, not worthy of attention here. In any case, some time later, I wrote a paper about it, after which my work on other mysterious words never stopped. I am not a decorated veteran, but if I were asked about a medal I would like to receive as a sign of recognition, I would say: “Bronze, small format, with an image of a heifer rampant facing forward.” So much for my knightly aspirations. What words, one wonders, resist language historians’ attempts to discover their origin? Surprisingly, all kinds: adz(e) and awl, bad and bamboozle, curmudgeon and Cockney, dandruff and drudge, and so on to the end of the alphabet (yeoman and zoot suit). We know neither who coined them nor what inspired the mysterious wordsmiths “to call a spade a spade.” Some such words are old, even very old, while others surfaced in the late Middle Ages, and still others emerged in our recent memory. Slang tends to be especially impenetrable. When I was entrusted with this blog, I decided to avoid all trivial information and discuss only such words as belong to the group “origin unknown/uncertain.” Very early on, I devoted a short post to copacetic. Recently, longer essays on caucus and curfew have appeared. This does not mean that I got stuck in the letter C. The opposite is true. I have written more than 900 posts covering the entire alphabet. In some, I answered the readers’ questions and discussed their comments, but all in all, I think I have touched on the origin of at least 600 English words. When OUP suggested that I write a book based on the blog, it also specified its size. The volume, now on the market, contains 330 pages, index and all. I had to choose the most attractive words and ended up with about seventy of them. To those I added four idioms, one place name (the mysterious Rotten Row), and three biographical essays: on the great language historian and etymologist Walter W. Skeat, the author of the English Dialect Dictionary Joseph Wright, and the little-remembered William W. John Thoms, the man who, among many other things, coined the word folklore. How does one tackle “origin unknown?” Here I should say something about Thoms but will have to begin from afar. If dependable sources say “origin unknown,” what was there to write in the blog and in the book? Why bother? Ay, there’s the rub. “Unknown” does not mean “beyond redemption” or “undiscussed.” Usually the opposite is true: the attempts to solve the riddle have been numerous, but the solution evades the researcher. While fighting my real, non-heraldic rampant heifer, I realized that comprehensive bibliographies of English etymology do not exist. The same is true of Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Romance linguistics. Nor has an English etymological dictionary with even near-exhaustive references to the scholarly literature been written. Fortunately, I found a rather old paper on heifer which contained good footnotes. It became clear that if I wanted to continue work on etymology, I needed a bibliography worthy of its name. The formula “origin unknown” had to give way to a full-fledged discussion of the state of the art. ‘Book of Snobs VI – Page 26’ (1848), Oxford University, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. It took a host of volunteers and a few undergraduate assistants about twenty years to look through thousands of pages of popular periodicals like The British Apollo, The Gentleman’s Magazine, and The Nation in search of statements on word origins, while I screened the scholarly journals in about every European language for several centuries. The bibliography (a huge volume) was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2009. (I have taught at the University of Minnesota since 1975.) Countless invaluable letters to the editor appeared in the British weekly Notes and Queries, conceived and edited for many years by Thoms. Hundreds of them dealt with word origins. English linguistics owes a huge debt of gratitude to that periodical, which, incidentally, spawned a whole gallery of offspring, including American Notes and Queries. Hence Thoms’s fully justified appearance next to Skeat and Wright. All the words featured in my book are among the most problematic ones in English etymology. Here are some of them: awning (and tarpaulin), ajar, akimbo, bizarre, dildo, bicker, galoot, snob, dandy, henchman, bigot, haberdasher, shenanigans, Hoosier, and the much-vilified ain’t. For the fun of it, three relevant images have been selected to illustrate this post. In my work on the blog and the book, I depended on the comprehensive bibliography described above. Whether it was bizarre or Hoosier, I had at my disposal practically everything ever said about the history of those words in any source or language, and it was sometimes in the darkest nooks that I would run into a clever suggestion, overlooked by my predecessors. This is what happened in the essay on conundrum, to cite the most spectacular case. Samuel Johnson’s definition of a lexicographer as a harmless drudge has been quoted to death. Alas, it also holds for an etymologist. To reach the ever-hidden shining heights, a word-hunter should tread patiently through a quagmire and a desert. ‘Giuseppe Maria Mitelli – Standing Peasant with Arms Akimbo’ by Art Institute of Chicago, via Picryl. From blog to book Turning even seventy disparate essays into a cohesive unity turned out to be a difficult task. Sometimes I had to rewrite the post from scratch. In other cases, it was necessary to edit the text, remove repetitions, and add cross-references, because the chatty style of a standalone post and the flowing style of a book, however “popular,” are different matters. It is not always easy to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. As could be expected, in my travels through the vocabulary, I did not solve all or most of the problems that had baffled my predecessors for decades, if not for centuries. But in all cases, I tried to present a full picture, reject groundless hypotheses, and choose what seemed to me the most promising solution, while making the story accessible to “everyone.” In a few cases, I think I could even suggest a promising way out of the impasse. Yet in the text, few references to scholarly sources appear. Those who will choose to pick up where I have left off will open my bibliography, familiarize themselves with the history of the question, and decide whether they can do better. In some cases, they will probably reject my solutions, as I have rejected numerous hypotheses of my predecessors. This is perfectly fine. ‘The Haberdasher Dandy, Charles Williams, England’ by Art Institute of Chicago via Picryl. The readers of the book will of course notice how often I suggest an “expressive” (that is, sound–imitative or sound -symbolic) origin of the most intractable words. Language must have been expressive in the remotest past, and it still is, even though we have learned to pronounce and understand words like supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and psychoanalysis. To return to my main point. Few people realize who difficult it is to write a “popular” book, without watering down the relevant facts and arguments. The uninitiated reader should be able to open the book by chance, feel intrigued, drawn to the page, and go on reading. Origin Uncertain was conceived not as etymology for dummies but as a detective story, a thriller. Let me quote the last sentences of the introduction: “Studying word origins is like participating in an eternal carnival. Masks beckon to you, tease, give a kiss, or bamboozle by unrealistic promises. All is about snipp, snapp, snorrum, an incantation Hans Christian Andersen liked, or, to use Hemingway’s phrase, a moveable feast.” Feature Image: Book Labyrinth at the Last Bookstore, CC3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Who do you think you are? Genetics and identity BY KOSTAS KAMPOURAKISMARCH 20TH 2024 Ethnicity and ethnic identity have been recently brought to the fore in the Western world. One important reason is that immigration and globalization have resulted in a variety of clashes among different groups in very different contexts. However, there is another reason: DNA ancestry testing. Margo Georgiadis, president & chief executive officer of the major company in the field, Ancestry.com, has estimated that in early 2020, 30 million people had taken a DNA test, of which over 16 million was with her company. These companies tell you that by simply spitting into a tube or swabbing the inside of your cheek, you can find out a lot about your origins and your ancestors through DNA. Indeed, the way these tests are sometimes marketed may make people think that ethnicity is something “written” in their DNA. In many cases, people have to deal with surprising revelations that make them reconsider their ethnic identity, and in some cases reveal that the person whom they called father is their biological one. Identity matters a lot to people, because it affects both how we perceive ourselves and how we are perceived by others. There are two big issues with how people tend to think about ethnic identity. On the one hand, it is assumed that people of the same ethnicity are a lot more similar than they actually are. On the other hand, it is assumed that people of different ethnicities are much more different from one another than they actually are. Therefore, once considered as members of particular ethnic groups, each person is no longer considered as an individual, but as a representative of particular ethnic types. This has an important consequence: people are not considered on the basis of what they really are, but rather on the basis of what they are expected to be given the ethnic group to which they belong. And this is where false stereotypes can easily prevail. Here DNA ancestry companies enter the scene by arguing that their tests can indicate to which ethnic group one belongs. Thus, these tests privilege notions of ethnicity based on genetics, contributing to the myth of genetic ethnicities. Research in psychology has supported the conclusion that people believe that they have internal, immutable essences that influence who they are. This kind of thinking is called psychological essentialism; when genes, and DNA more general, are considered as being these internal and immutable essences, the view is described as genetic essentialism. This is an intuitive view that makes people find natural that they belong in one or another group, as well as that these groups are internally homogeneous and entirely discrete from one another. Therefore, if people intuitively tend to think of ethnic groups in genetic essentialist terms, it might seem natural to them that there exist discrete ethnic groups that are both genetically homogeneous and genetically distinct from one another. Ethnic groups are real, but are socially and culturally constructed. More often than not, these groups have not had continuity across time historically, linguistically, culturally, and of course biologically. However, people intuitively tend to essentialize these groups, and DNA often serves as the placeholders for this. Population genetics provides an objective means for distinguishing among human groups; however, even though there are many different ways to do this, people (and researchers themselves) often tend to privilege those groupings that align with previously perceived, extant categories, such as continental and racial groupings. People living in the same continent are indeed more likely to have recent common ancestors among themselves than with people living in other continents. But what really exists at the genetic level are gradients of genetic variation, not distinct groupings. Human genetic variation is continuous and the genetic differences among people are overall very minor. For this reason, ethnic groups, nations, or races are not biological entities. As a result, any ethnically, nationally, or racially distinctive genetic markers exist only in a probabilistic sense, and what ancestry tests provide are just probabilistic estimations of similarities between the test-takers and particular reference populations, consisting of people living today. But being related genetically to people living today somewhere does not necessarily mean that their ancestors came from that place. Furthermore, as more people take such tests, these reference groups change and as a result the ethnicity estimates for the same person can change across time. DNA provides partial information about our ancestors, which is the outcome of a process of interpretation. Therefore, DNA cannot reveal our true ethnic identity and the genetic ethnicities to which test-takers are assigned are imagined. However, this does not devalue these tests as their results can indeed provide some valuable insights and information to people who may not know much about their ancestors. Indeed, the tests are very good for finding close relatives, and this is perhaps why the industry should be rebranded to DNA family testing. Feature image by Shutter2U via iStock. Kostas Kampourakis is the author and editor of several books about evolution, genetics, philosophy, and history of science. He teaches biology and science education courses at the University of Geneva. Previously he served as an adjunct Instructor at the department of Mathematics and Science Education at Illinois Institute of Technology, and he taught biology and nature of science to secondary school and IB DP students at Geitonas School in Athens, Greece. He is the editor of the book series Understanding Life, published by Cambridge University Press and the author of Uncertainty: How It Makes Science Advance. In the past, he was the Editor-in-chief of the Springer journal Science & Education, the founding editor of the Springer book series Science: Philosophy, History and Education, and the founding co-editor of the Springer book series Contributions from Biology Education Research.
Music Publishing: Looking to the Future BY SIMON WRIGHTMARCH 19TH 2024 Music publishing is an exciting and fast-paced industry touching all our lives, whether as performers, composers, or music lovers listening in the car or in our favorite movies. Music publishers provide the conduit, the link, through which a composer’s or song-writer’s inspiration travels, allowing musicians and audiences to discover and explore different works. It’s a publisher’s job to disseminate as widely as possible the songs and the symphonies, the jingles and the jazz that we all so enjoy. Embracing the technology Publishing music has always been driven largely by both technological development and consumer behaviour, particularly in the multifarious ways through which music is delivered and consumed. Looking back, it is clear to me, for example, how publishers in the early twentieth century needed to respond (quickly!) to the mechanical reproduction of their music in then-new devices such as gramophones and pianolas. How were publishers and their composers to be paid for such use of their music? A new legal ‘right’ was the answer—the ‘mechanical reproduction right’—and from that rapidly followed infrastructures and processes to license and collect income from the soon-to-be ubiquitous availability and use of recorded and broadcast music. Oxford University Press, in the 1920s, was fast to embrace those new technologies commercially, issuing guides to ‘pianola repertoire’ and radio broadcasts, teaming with the BBC and Radio Times, and including gramophone records as components within some publications. Fast-forward to the twenty-first century, and we find ourselves still running that same race, keeping up with technological change and with the ever-hungry blanket consumption of music of all genres. There’s a near-constant need to find new solutions for delivering, monetizing, and protecting the music that we publish and into which so much inspiration, effort, and finance is invested. Image: public domain via Pexels. My role as Head of the Business Operations team at OUP entails understanding and embracing new technology and maximizing opportunities, whether through licensing, new partnerships, or perhaps reviewing our back catalogue for materials that we can refresh and supply in different ways and formats, always ensuring that we have the required legal rights: copyright drives our work, but equally important are our agreements with composers, authors, and partners. Publishing music is a collaborative business. Music today flourishes in a digital environment. Composers create their music ‘manuscripts’ as digital notation files and, from these, publishers work to produce printed scores, orchestral parts for hiring, and new files which can be distributed and sold (and even streamed) online. Sound recordings are now made, stored, delivered, and consumed in digital formats. The joys of ‘digital’ are many: its durability, flexibility, and accessibility are all key advantages for music publishers and for the communities which make music. A conventional printed choral music anthology, chunky and possibly heavy for singers to hold, provides comprehensive access to a wide range of content in a fixed and immutable form. But, because the ‘content’ used to create that anthology is digitally based, it is now possible to split this up and easily supply individual items from such anthologies, allowing choirs to choose repertoire from the larger collection, in formats suitable for those choirs’ (or even for the individual singers’) needs. We as publishers informally call this process ‘atomization’: breaking the bigger publication down into its smallest useful components. ‘Atomizing’ the collection To give an example, in 2023 OUP issued the collection The Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers (compiled and edited by Marques L. A. Garrett) as one of a select group of special publications marking OUP’s centenary as a music publisher. This celebratory collection is ground-breaking in its new and diverse content, and it also looks forward in opening accessibility to that content: a handsome printed anthology, yes, and many choirs continue to purchase it in that format—but of its thirty-five separate items, twenty-seven have also been made available separately to purchase as digital sheet music downloads. And of those twenty-seven, twelve are additionally available as printed sheet music ‘leaflets’. Much of the content is available, too, to browse and peruse free of charge on the Yumpu platform, making choice and selection a simple matter. In parallel, all of this is backed up by equally accessible sound recordings of twenty-five of the anthology’s titles, available (again ‘digitally’) as streams through Spotify—these tracks can be used for repertoire selection, for learning, or simply for pure enjoyment. The digital provenance of this anthology’s text and music notation files and of the audio recordings has clearly enabled the transformation of the Oxford Book of Choral Music by Black Composers from a traditional ‘single anthology’ concept into a flexible, convenient, accessible, and multi-component resource. Choirs are now even able to customize their own ‘collections’ from the bigger collection! As did our OUP predecessors with their pianolas and their gramophones, so today’s publishers embrace the new and the emerging technologies, working with platforms and partners, to ensure the widest possible availability of the music which we publish. In the digital environment that presence and access is now only ever a few seconds away—from anywhere in the world. Looking ahead OUP Music’s centenary allowed us to reflect on the profound changes that truly impacted on the shape and the content of our catalogue—not only technological, but social, political, and attitudinal change, wars and conflicts, and (most recently) the immediate and wide-ranging effects of the Covid-19 pandemic (music publishing was first bowed by this, but then rose splendidly to the challenge of delivering and supporting music in new and creative ways). But what of the future? The next one hundred years? All that is certain is that the ‘technology race’ will continue, as will societal and other developments, and that music publishers will have to (and surely will) keep up. Artificial Intelligence is merely the latest technology development, but it’s already challenging creator communities in terms of both content and its use, and the underlying copyright (as did those pianolas one hundred years ago, which essentially used ‘artificial intelligence’ to create live piano performances in real time, the same performances over and over again). The sophisticated digital supply routes with which we increasingly engage—and whatever may replace them in the future!—will mean that the old distinctions between ‘selling’ and ‘hiring’ and ‘licensing’ music will probably disappear or become blended. Solutions will be found and will be designed to continue delivering, in the best possible ways and to multitudes of users, the increasingly diverse and always exciting music created by our writers—across the globe, and possibly beyond. Feature image by Kelly Sikkema via Unsplash. Simon Wright is Head of Business Operations in the music department at Oxford University Press.
Alice Mustian’s scandalous backyard performance BY DAVID MCINNIS, MATTHEW STEGGLE, AND MISHA TERAMURAMARCH 19TH 2024 The year 1614 was an eventful one for the London theatre world. Shakespeare’s Globe playhouse, rebuilt after having burned to the ground during an ill-fated performance of Henry VIII, was reopening its doors. Playgoers across the city could see performances of Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi. However, ninety miles away from London, in Salisbury, another play was performed that year, which was quite different from all of those: it was written by a middle-class woman, and it was staged in a temporary theatre in her backyard. Like much of the evidence about early modern performances in England, the story of this backyard performance was hidden away in archives for centuries; however, a recently reexamined lawsuit reveals the sensational tale of adultery, slander, and revenge behind this remarkable event. On 4 September 1614, a Salisbury woman named Alice Mustian erected a stage in the backyard of her house on Catherine Street. Neighbours trickled in, paying a small admission fee (pins or pieces of ribbon) as they gathered in front of the make-shift stage constructed on top of tubs and barrels to watch a play that Mustian herself had written. The cast for the performance was a group of local children, including Alice’s ten-year-old son Phillip. The subject of the play, however, was hardly juvenile. Instead of a fictional tale, Mustian’s backyard play dramatized a very real piece of local gossip: that Mary Roberts, the wife of a joiner, had been caught having an adulterous affair with a baker named Robert Humphries. In some ways, Mustian’s astonishing decision to stage this salacious real-life story for her neighbours represented a kind of vigilante justice. When the townspeople of Salisbury had learned two years prior that Roberts was caught in a compromising situation with Humphries, some expected that the adulterous pair would be subjected to the traditional shaming ritual known as “carting,” in which the two would be paraded through the streets in a cart. This, however, never happened. Alice Mustian, thinking that their punishment was long overdue, took it upon herself to shame them both. In her backyard play, the troupe of local children, at Mustian’s direction, enacted the precise moment that Mary Robert’s husband, accompanied by a town constable, caught his wife with the undressed Robert Humphries, thereby exposing the affair. It wasn’t long before news of this backyard play reached the real Mary Roberts. Fiercely maintaining her innocence and furious that Mustian would try to shame her so flagrantly, Roberts immediately sued for defamation. While the story of Mustian’s scandalous backyard play is remarkable, it is in one respect highly representative of early modern drama: the play itself does not survive and we only know anything about it through secondhand accounts, namely, the witness statements prepared for the ensuing defamation trial. Indeed, the majority of plays written and performed in the time of Shakespeare were never published and, in most cases, no complete scripts survive today in any form. Instead, theatre historians know about these plays through a wide range of types of evidence, such as playgoers’ diaries and letters, financial accounts, professional records, and manuscript fragments. This evidence might include titles, descriptions of performances, translations or quotations, backstage playhouse documents, payments to playwrights, or expenses for costumes and properties. As editors of the Lost Plays Database, a collaborative digital resource for compiling historical evidence and scholarly insights, we are dedicated to discovering as much as we can about these lost works of drama by examining the original documentary evidence. The case of Alice Mustian proves to be a perfect example of just how much can be uncovered by locating and analyzing these primary archival sources directly. The six witness statements prepared for Mustian’s defamation trial are preserved in a single handwritten volume, a so-called “deposition book” prepared for ecclesiastical court cases, currently held at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre in Chippenham. The first scholar to discover these records was the historian Susan J. Wright, who mentioned them briefly in her doctoral dissertation about the social life of seventeenth-century Salisbury; a few years later, Martin Ingram cited the same case in the context of early modern English shaming rituals. While these brief early references were enough to alert later scholars to the name of Alice Mustian, no one had returned to the original legal sources of evidence to learn more about her. The amusing anecdote remained an anecdote and wasn’t investigated further. In recent decades, however, scholars have increasingly turned their attentions to the fascinating body of dramatic writing by early modern women, including such plays as Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (printed in 1613), or Mary Wroth’s Love’s Victory (c. 1617) and Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley’s The Concealed Fancies (c. 1645), both preserved in manuscript. In light of this scholarly work, a more complete story of Alice Mustian’s backyard play demanded to be told. Even though her play itself does not survive, the legal records that do provide clear evidence that a woman from a very different social world than Cary, Wroth, Cavendish, and Brackley could write a play—and indeed that, like the professional dramatists of the London stage, a woman could write a play for the express purpose of public performance. The story of Mustian’s backyard play, in other words, underscores Ramona Wray’s claim that “Early modern women’s drama was restricted neither by social status nor by site of activity” and that “the extraordinary richness of kinds of performance […] sensitise us to women who purposefully engaged in playing actions across of range of institutional and informal, licensed and unlicensed, settings.” For us, the case of Mustian reminds us that the evidence awaiting discovery in the archives might very well change our understanding not only about the kinds of plays that were written in early modern England but also of the kinds of voices who once wrote those plays and poems that may not have survived into the present. It exemplifies the kinds of stories that have yet to be discovered in the archives, stories that can profoundly change what we think we know about the drama of Shakespeare’s time. In the case of Alice Mustian, we find a powerful revision to our ideas about who could be a playwright. Feature image by Joanna Kosinska via Unsplash. David McInnis is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama at the University of Melbourne and the author of Shakespeare and Lost Plays (Cambridge UP, 2021) and Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England (Palgrave, 2013). Matthew Steggle is Professor of English at the University of Bristol, whose most recent books include Speed and Flight in Shakespeare (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) and Digital Humanities and the Lost Drama of Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2015). Misha Teramura is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Toronto, whose work has appeared in such journals as Shakespeare Quarterly, ELH, and Modern Philology, and who is currently editing Henry IV, Part 2 for the Arden Shakespeare, Fourth Series. Together, they edit the Lost Plays Database along with Roslyn L. Knutson (emerita) and have co-authored “Alice Mustian, Playwright,” published in The Review of English Studies.
Explore the history of Asia in ten stops [interactive map] BY OUP HISTORYMARCH 18TH 2024 Embark on a captivating journey through pieces of the rich tapestry of Asian history with this interactive map of reading suggestions. Within these ten works, readers will encounter a rigorous examination of the historical trajectories, socio-cultural dynamics, and geopolitical intricacies that have characterized much of Asia’s evolution across epochs. Engage with renowned scholars and historians as you navigate through these ten essential works, each offering unique insights into the vibrant and intricate mosaic of Asian history. Some stops on the map include access to chapters, free for a limited time, as well a select number of open access journal articles. Feature image: Pink and yellow umbrella on brown wooden table by Ice Tea. Public domain via Unsplash. This interactive map was created by the OUP History Team.
Beyond God and atheism BY PHILIP GOFFMARCH 15TH 2024 What are we doing here? What’s the point of existence? Traditionally, the West has been dominated by two very different answers to these big questions. On the one hand, there is belief in the traditional God of the Abrahamic faiths, a supreme being who created the universe for a good purpose. On the other hand, there is the meaningless, purposeless universe of secular atheism. However, I’ve come to think both views are inadequate, as both have things they can’t explain about reality. In my view, the evidence we currently have points to the universe having purpose but one that exists in the absence of the traditional God. The theistic worldview struggles to explain suffering, particularly in the natural world. Why would a loving, all-powerful God choose to create the North American long-tailed shrew that paralyses its prey and then slowly eats it alive over several days before it dies from its wounds? Theologians have tried to argue that there are certain good things that exist in our world that couldn’t exist in a world with less suffering, such as serious moral choices, or opportunities to show courage or compassion. But even if that’s right, it’s not clear that our creator has the right to kill and maim—by choosing to create hurricanes and disease, for example—in order, say, to provide the opportunity to show courage. A classic objection to crude forms of utilitarianism considers the possibility of a doctor who has the option of kidnapping and killing one healthy patient in order to save the lives of five other patients: giving the heart to one, the kidneys to another, and so on. Perhaps this doctor could increase the amount of well-being in the world through this action: saving five lives at the cost of one. Even so, many feel that the doctor doesn’t have the right to take the life of the healthy person, even for a good purpose. Likewise, I think it would be wrong for a cosmic creator to infringe on the right to life and security of so many by creating earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural disasters. Looking at the other side of the coin, the secular atheist belief in a meaningless, purposeless universe struggles to explain the fine-tuning of physics for life. This is the recent discovery that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall in a certain, very narrow range. If the strength of dark energy—the force that powers the expansion of the universe—had been a little bit stronger, no two particles would have ever met, meaning no stars, no planets, no structural complexity at all. If, on the other hand, it had been significantly weaker, it would not have counteracted gravity, and the universe would have collapsed back on itself a split second after the big bang. For life to be possible, the strength of dark energy had to be—like Goldilocks’ porridge—just right. For a long time, I thought the multiverse was the best explanation of the fine-tuning of physics for life. If enough people play the lottery, it becomes likely that someone’s going to get the right numbers to win. Likewise, if there are enough universes, with enough variety in the numbers in their ‘local physics,’ then statistically it becomes highly probable that one of them is going to fluke the right numbers for life to exist. However, I have been persuaded by philosophers of probability that the attempt to explain fine-tuning in terms of a multiverse violates a very important principle in probabilistic reasoning, known as the “Total Evidence Requirement.” This is the principle that you should always work with the most specific evidence you have. If the prosecution tells the jury that Jack always carries a knife around with him, when they know full well that he always carries a butter knife around with him, then they have misled to jury—not by lying, but by giving them less specific evidence than is available. The multiverse theorist violates this principle by working with the evidence that a universe is fine-tuned, rather than the more specific evidence we have available, namely that this universe is fine-tuned. According to the standard account of the multiverse, the numbers in our physics were determined by probabilistic processes very early in its existence. These probabilistic processes make it highly unlikely that any particular universe will be fine-tuned, even though if there are enough universes one of them will probably end up fine-tuned. However, we are obliged by the Total Evidence Requirement to work with the evidence that this universe in particular is fine-tuned, and the multiverse theory fails to explain this data. This is all a bit abstract, so let’s take a concrete example. Suppose you walk into a forest and happen upon a monkey typing in perfect English. This needs explaining. Maybe it’s a trained monkey. Maybe it’s a robot. Maybe you’re hallucinating. What would not explain the data is postulating millions of other monkeys on other planets elsewhere in the universe, who are mostly typing nonsense. Why not? Because, in line with the Requirement of Total Evidence, your evidence is not that some monkey is typing English but that this monkey is typing in English. In my view, we face a stark choice. Either it is an incredible fluke that these numbers in our physics are just right for life, or these numbers are as they are because they are the right numbers for life, in other words, that there is some kind of “cosmic purpose” or goal-directedness towards life at the fundamental level of reality. The former option is too improbable to take seriously. The only rational option remaining is to embrace cosmic purpose. Theism cannot explain suffering. Atheism cannot explain fine-tuning. Only cosmic purpose in the absence of God can accommodate both of these data-points. Philip Goff is Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. His research focuses on consciousness and the ultimate nature of reality. Goff is best known for defending panpsychism, the view that consciousness pervades the universe and is a fundamental feature of it. On that theme, Goff has published three books, Consciousness and Fundamental Reality, Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness, and a co-edited volume, Is Consciousness Everywhere? Essays on Panpsychism. Goff has published many academic articles, as well as writing extensively for newspapers and magazines, including Scientific American, The Guardian, Aeon, and the Times Literary Supplement.
Chewing the cud and ruminating on word origins BY ANATOLY LIBERMANMARCH 13TH 2024 The history of cud may be more exciting than it seems at first sight. Initially (long ago!), I was intrigued when I read the statement by Henry Cecil Wyld, an outstanding language historian, that the origin of cud is unknown. I will return to his statement at the end of the post. Wyld’s The Universal Dictionary of the English Language is the only general purpose twentieth-century dictionary whose editor, most probably, wrote all the etymologies himself. Last week, I suggested that in dealing with the origin of any word it may be useful to look at the word’s neighbors on the page. The neighborhood of cud inspires little hope. The witty Dr. Cuthbert Gordon (1730-1810) prepared a dyeing powder (cudbear) and named it after his name, Cuthbert. Cuthbert may (only may) also be the source of cuddy “donkey.” Finally, there is cudgel, going back to Old English, reminiscent of English dialectal nudgel, German Keule (the same meaning), German Kugel “bullet,” English bludgeon, and quite a few other words of nearly the same sound and meaning. Yet cudgel has been dismissed as being of unknown origin. To repeat, the neighborhood of cud holds out little promise to an etymologist. Yet we know that the earliest forms of cud were cwudu and cwidu, the latter being the oldest form. Secure cognates of cwidu ~ cwudu existed in Old High German (Modern German Kitt “cement” is its continuation) and Old Norse, though the Scandinavian noun had a different look (see below). Responsible sources tell us that Latin bitumen “bitumen” and Sanskrit játu “resin, gum” are related to cud. The Latin name of bitumen, as Roman speaker already knew, was borrowed from Celtic. The territory covered by our word is wide: Germanic, Celtic, and Sanskrit, that is, all the way from Norway to India. The ancient root must have begun with gw– or as special books write, gw-. This is bitumen: linguistically related to “cud” but not good to chew. Image by Feroze Omardeen, CC2.0 via Flickr. At one time, cud was believed to be related to the word chew. One can find a statement to this effect even in the reworkings of Webster’s dictionary in the nineteen-eighties, but neither the OED nor The Century Dictionary supported this etymology (the OED was especially reserved in discussing the origin of cud and mentioned only the indubitable cognates). Indeed, from the phonetic point of view, ceowan, the oldest recorded form of chew, and cwidu ~ cwudu, cannot be reduced to the same root. Therefore, the idea of their affinity has been given up, even though nothing can be more natural than a connection between a cud and chewing. It may be that both cwidu ~ cwudu and ceowan, the ancestors of cud and chew, were sound-symbolic or sound-imitative words and in some obscure way reflected the movement of the jaw or rather, rendered the impression produced by that movement, just as crunch, scrunch, and munch reflect the idea of chewing and squeezing. By the way, jaw is a word “of unknown origin,” whereas jowl goes back to ceafl, and its j is late and expressive. For a similar train of ideas, I may refer to two of my earlier posts. One dealt with cheek and jowl (August 31, 2022), the other with kitsch (April 7, 2010). Cheeks have something to do with chewing, while Kitsch, including its little-known English regional cognate keech (discussed in that post), is related to the name of a rake for removing mud. The result of chewing is some sort of pulp. Hence my idea that chew (from ceowan) and cud (from cwudu), with their initial k-w- ~ kw, were perhaps coined to imitate, however imperfectly, the process of chewing. That such words are, in principle, expressive follows from their history. Strange things happen to them all the time: in jowl, j was substituted for initial ch, and the Old Icelandic cognate of chew is tyggva. Did its t- replace k- under the influence of the word tönn “tooth”? After all, we chew with teeth. Incidentally, chew is related to choke! Chockfull is a rather obscure word from an etymological point of view, but its connection with cheek raises no doubts. Chewing gum does not yield the most endearing images. Image: public domain via Pexels. Verbs related to chew and German kauen (the same meaning) exist in several languages, and they also begin with a guttural consonant (g and its descendants). Similar associations arise when we look at words for mud (kitsch). Russian govno “feces” (stress on the second syllable), with exact cognates elsewhere in Slavic, also has initial g. While dealing with the origin of expressive words, one can rarely “prove” anything. But the processes of word formation have hardly changed since the earliest times. By lumping together chew, cud, govno, and kitsch, I deliberately forfeit the shelter of the wall, to paraphrase Plato’s image, that is, give up the safe algebra of comparative linguistics. Yet when that indispensable algebra keeps producing the answer “origin unknown,” as it always does in dealing with sound symbolism and sound imitation, one is probably justified in looking elsewhere. By way of curiosity, I may cite one more example. German has a very popular word for empty talk, namely, Quatsch. It surfaced in texts in the middle of the sixteenth century. Quatsch is almost a doublet of Kot “feces.” Kitsch has an English cognate or lookalike, namely, keech “fat of a slaughtered animal rolled into a lump,” referred to above. Kot is not unlike such forms as quat, quot, and so forth, recorded in medieval German texts. Is Quatsch one of them? And suchseems to have been the common opinion. (English cud and keech may or may not belong to this group.) But I was amazed to find in the latest edition of the main German etymological dictionary (written by Elmar Seebold, a seasoned Indo-European scholar) only one short line about Quatsch: “Sound-imitative, like Matsch [mush, slush], Klatsch [splash].” Seebold also wrote about cud (in the entry Kitt) that the image might be inspired by the sight of chewing resin but did not explain why he thought so. We have viewed a motley group: Old English cwidu ~ cwudu “cud,” Old English ceowan “chew,” English dialectal keech, English chew (from ceowan), German Quatsch, German Kot, and finally, German Kitsch, borrowed into English and many other languages. Is this group a family or a crowd of similarly attired vagabonds? I invoked a similar image in my previous post. There, I spoke about a bunch of rootless mushrooms on a stump and of children from an orphanage wearing the same uniform. Perhaps some members of today’s etymological ragtag and bobtail did have the same or closely related parents. Recalcitrant words are like little children. Image: public domain via Pexels. But to return to our main subject, namely, cwidu “cud.” What should we write about its etymology, apart from listing its old forms and cognates? Rather cautiously, I might risk saying that English cud has an expressive, perhaps sound-symbolic or sound-imitative, origin and is therefore aligned with (but not related to!) chew. Did Henry Cecil Wyld suspect a similar solution? It this why instead of giving a few bits of safe and trivial information, he wrote (quite unexpectedly): “Origin unknown?” We will never know. Words are like children. Quite often they behave according to expectation, so that the etymologist may abide by the rules. In other cases, they become uncontrollable. Then it becomes necessary to leave the shelter of the wall. Like Eeyore, I am just ruminating. Feature image by Clay Junell via Flickr. CC2.0.
Unheard voices: overcoming barriers in women’s music composition BY ANNE MARSDEN THOMASMARCH 11TH 2024 Until recently, women were regularly dismissed as unable to compose music. In 1894, the French physician Havelock Ellis said, ‘There is certainly no art in which they have shown themselves more helpless’. In 1891, the music critic Eduard Hanslick stated that women were less capable than men of mental achievements. In 1940, the psychologist Carl Seashore blamed the lack of music composed by women on women’s urge to be loved and admired, rather than to achieve. These men, and countless others like them, chose to ignore the many factors which inhibited women from composing, distributing, and hearing performances of their music. These factors included lack of education, the demands of marriage and children, societal pressures (Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in 1762 that ‘a woman outside of the home displays herself indecently’), limited opportunities for performance, difficulties in getting published, and limited archiving. Educating women to the same level as men was unusual until relatively recently. The few who were lucky enough to receive a full education included wealthy aristocrats from artistic families, like Duchess Maria Antonia Walpurgis Symphorosa (1724-80) and those who studied privately with ambitious parents, such as Clara Wieck Schumann (1819-96). By the late 19th century, women sought training and validation at institutions, but formal studies were complicated by various challenges: Ethel Smyth (1858-1944) and Betzy Holmberg (1860-1900) both left Leipzig Conservatoire early, finding its tuition unsatisfactory. At the Paris Conservatoire, Louise Farrenc (1804-75) found that composition classes were only for men. Oxford University blocked the Bachelor of Music degree earned by Elizabeth Stirling (1819-95) on learning she was female. Marriage further impacted women’s composing. Fortunately, the husbands of Amy Marcy Beach (1867-1944) and Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1665-1729) allowed them to continue composing, though they forbade them from performing. Maria Agata Szymanowska (1789-1831) divorced her husband after he objected to her career. Betzy Holmberg stopped composing after her marriage. Robert Schumann’s wife Clara (1819-96) continued composing until his death, but Robert believed his work took precedence over hers, saying that ‘Clara herself knows that her main occupation is as a mother’. Of course, Clara Schumann’s eight children, two miscarriages, her husband’s failing mental health and her career as a virtuoso pianist considerably inhibited her freedom to compose, but her famous statement: ‘a woman must not wish to compose—there never was one able to do it’ also points to another challenge which afflicted many (most?) women composers: the internalising of society’s doubts about their ability. Women favoured small-scale works for ‘feminine’ instruments: the violin, piano, and harp, so the scarcity of music by women for organ—long considered a ‘male’ instrument—is hardly surprising. Perhaps women yearned for more sonority, colour, and volume, as many of those small-scale pieces transcribe easily; in fact, some are more effective on the organ than on the instruments for which they were written. For example, Louise Farrenc’s ‘Fugue on Two Subjects’ greatly benefits from the organ’s sustaining power and the structural clarity that imaginative registration on two or three manuals brings. Clara Schumann’s Op. 16, No.3 states ‘for piano’, but only by playing the bass notes on the organ pedals can the player cope with the wide stretches and sustain the long pedal-points adequately. Those of us who care about making women’s voices heard must mourn the loss of so much music from the past; much was unpublished or discarded, and the authorship of published pieces was sometimes obscured by pseudonyms or gender-neutral names. Dozens of unpublished scores by Florence Price (1887-1953) were discovered by chance in 2009 in a dilapidated house. Augusta Holmés first published under a pseudonym; Betzy Holberg published her early works as the gender-neutral ‘B.Holmberg’, and ‘Clement de Bourges’ was only recently identified as Clementine de Bourges (c1530-61). Women composers today thankfully face far fewer challenges in being published and heard. Yet, as Sara Mohr-Pietsch claimed in a recent article for the Guardian newspaper, 40% of living composers are female, and yet only about 17% of names on music publishers’ lists are female. The balance is slowly shifting in many publishers’ catalogues, as evidenced by new works such as The Oxford Book of Organ Music by Women Composers. However, this situation will only improve if we celebrate women’s music in every way available to us: by publishing, playing, recording, and teaching their music, as well as highlighting both their historic and ongoing contribution to music history, and joining bodies which promote them, such as The Society of Women Organists. Feature image: Organ musical instrument by Eloy-CM. Getty Images via Canva. Anne Marsden Thomas is one of the most influential organ teachers of today, and has wide experience as a concert and church organist. She has written or edited over twenty books for organists. In 2015 she was awarded the MBE in the Queen's New Year Honours, and, in 2017, was the first woman to receive the Royal College of Organists highest decoration, the RCO Medal.
How well do you know fantasy literature? BY RUBY DUNNMARCH 10TH 2024 Do you know your orcs from your elves, and your witches from your warlocks? Are you a J. R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis aficionado? Have you read everything by Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Le Guin? Test your knowledge of the varied world of fantasy literature with this quick quiz! Feature image by Cederic Vanderberghe via Unsplash, public domain. Ruby Dunn is a Marketing Assistant in the Global Library team at Oxford University Press.
Homer’s Penelope and the myth of the ‘model military wife’ BY EMMA BRIDGESMARCH 8TH 2024 Ostensibly a tale of the adventures of a soldier, Homer’s ancient Greek epic Odyssey also has at its heart the remarkable story of Odysseus’ waiting wife Penelope, who is renowned for her patience and her fidelity. Left behind for 20 years while Odysseus spends ten years fighting in the Trojan War and then a further ten years on his meandering journey home to Ithaca, Penelope is faced with multiple challenges in her husband’s absence. Her story, although it comes from a millennia-old tale set in a mythical past, echoes some of the experiences undergone by military spouses in contemporary society. We can also find in Homer’s Penelope an ancient archetype for the idealised image of the ‘model military wife’ which still persists in the modern world. In her husband’s absence, the Odyssey’s Penelope is faced with a whole array of emotional and practical struggles, many of which modern-day military spouses might recognise. The poet describes how she has trouble sleeping, worries crowding her mind as she lies in bed at night (Odyssey 19.513-17), and frequently throughout the poem she is to be found weeping, overwhelmed by the grief and stress of her situation. This mythical waiting wife has no idea whether her husband is alive or dead—he is what we might describe today as ‘missing in action’—and if or when he might return home to her. Modern military spouses often talk about the dread of the ‘knock on the door’ bringing bad news while their partner is in a war zone: Penelope too is simultaneously desperate for news of Odysseus but living in constant fear of what that news might reveal. At the same time, she must deal with the day-to-day responsibilities of being home alone: parenting the child, Telemachus, who was a baby when Odysseus left for Troy, and managing the household alone. In this patriarchal ancient society, the absence of the male head of the royal household is felt especially strongly. Nonetheless, there are parallels here with contemporary situations; when a partner is away on active duty, their spouse must often take on domestic responsibilities which would ordinarily be shared. ‘Penelope and the Suitors’ (1912) by John William Waterhouse, via Wikimedia Commons. Penelope’s already difficult situation is exacerbated by the presence of 108 suitors, who are vying for her hand in marriage—a marriage which would also grant them Odysseus’ kingly power, his possessions, and his estate. It is her response to this situation which cemented her reputation for fidelity in the ancient world; that response also enables her to demonstrate her resourcefulness. In her hope that Odysseus will eventually return, and in order to buy time, Penelope deploys what in the ancient world is a typically feminine stratagem: she tells the suitors that she will choose which of them to marry once she has finished weaving a shroud for her father in law. What her suitors don’t know is that she is unpicking each day’s weaving in secret every night. The shroud trick not only keeps Penelope occupied during much of Odysseus’ absence, but it also represents a life which has been placed on hold while he is away. Both the notion of ‘keeping busy’ as a coping strategy and the feeling of being unable to move forward with their own lives—with career plans or education, for example—while awaiting the return of a serving partner are recurring elements of the first-hand accounts of modern-day waiting wives. Yet it is not merely some of the day-to-day elements of Penelope’s life that might feel familiar to contemporary military spouses. There is a broader sense in which this ‘myth’ of the model military wife is fundamental to upholding the patriarchal structures which still endure in some military institutions. In modern UK and US contexts, the armed forces still rely heavily on the support of the spouses of personnel. Those spouses are still overwhelmingly female, despite the fact that women and same-sex couples are now eligible for military service. The feminist political theorist Cynthia Enloe, in her 2000 book Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives, set out a lengthy list—which still holds up almost 25 years after first publication—of the ideal characteristics of today’s ‘model military wife.’ This is someone who, among other things, is unfailingly supportive and content for all aspects of her life to be subordinated to her husband’s military role, and who, like Penelope, is both faithful and resourceful in coping alone for long periods of time while her partner is away on deployment. Moreover, the model military wife is expected to do all of this without complaint. The focus of policy-makers, media reporting, and the military itself, still rests predominantly on combatants themselves. The voices of those whose lives are also profoundly affected by their partners’ career choice are often silenced. Similarly, in the Odyssey Penelope is given little room to share her experiences. Nowhere is this more apparent in the poem than when the couple are finally reunited. Here only four lines (Odyssey 23.302-5) are set aside to summarise Penelope’s story; by comparison, despite the fact that the majority of the poem’s 12,000 lines describe Odysseus’ exploits, 32 lines (Odyssey 23.310-41)—eight times as much space—are devoted to recalling his adventures. If at times the warrior’s wife takes up less space, both in Homer’s poetry and in the minds of the public today, that should merely make us more determined to give her more of our attention. Featured image: ‘Penelope and the Suitors’ (1912) by John William Waterhouse via Wikimedia Commons Dr. Emma Bridges is a Senior Lecturer and Staff Tutor in Classical Studies at The Open University, UK.
Smother,” “smooth,” and the Slavic name of sour cream, with an obscure idiom for dessert BY ANATOLY LIBERMANMARCH 6TH 2024 The word smother “dense or stifling smoke” (often with smoke!) has existed in English for about a thousand years. It first competed with smorther (the spelling of the Middle English form has been simplified here) and conveyed an even more murderous idea than today. At present, smother is all about suffocating rather than killing. Dictionaries know a good deal about the history of the verb but little about its origin. Some even call the origin unknown. It is instructive to have a quick look at the word’s neighbors on the page (this is in general a useful procedure: similar-sounding words may belong together even from a historical point of view) and find out how many of them are equally obscure. Here is a short list: smack “taste” (a Lithuanian lookalike exists, but who cares?); smack “to strike” (of imitative origin; are those really two different words? Isn’t taste something that “touches” or “strikes” our tongue?); smash (perhaps [!] related to smack); smatter, which we mainly remember from smattering and smatterings (most likely, sound-imitative); smear (many cognates, but they are hardly related to a similar Greek word); smell (isolated: no cognates); smelt ~ smolt (a fish name of unknown origin), and a few others. Even the origin of smith is obscure. In any case, something in the initial group sm– seems to suggest the idea of smacking, smashing, smelling, smoldering, and smothering. This is a promising first step, but as always in such cases, no one knows where to go from there. This fish is called smelt or smolt. Who could give it its name? NOAA Great Lakes Environment Research Laboratory‘s photostream. CC2.0 via Flickr. Some sources state that smother is obscurely related to smolder (smoulder). Few formulas in etymology are more frustrating than “obscurely related.” We are told that though a good deal of resemblance between the words cannot be denied, their kinship is hard to demonstrate. To add insult to injury, a respectable dictionary informs us that smolder is obscurely (!) related to Dutch smeulen (the same meaning). Indeed, in most cases, we easily find English, Dutch, and northern German lookalikes. I am sorry to conjure up the same images in one post after another, but I cannot think of better ones. We are dealing, I believe, with an analog of many mushrooms growing on a stump: they look similar but are rootless, so that the question of kinship is moot. My other ever-recurring image is of a group of children from an orphanage: almost the same age, the same uniform, but not brothers and sisters. We remember that smother appeared in English as smorther. It resembles smirk, and smirk, we are told, is a fully respectable verb, with a cognate in German, closely related to a Sanskrit word and more remotely to some verbs in Slavic, Greek, and Sanskrit. Perhaps etymology will become less obscure if it gets rid of such vague references to the kinship metaphor. About a hundred years ago, historical linguists reconstructed numerous ancient Indo-European roots. Actually, they only abstracted the common parts of many seemingly related words. Allegedly, once the root smei– existed, and today we can see it in smile and smirk. The root sme– (with a long vowel) has been recognized in smite, as opposed to smei– in smirk, but no consensus has been reached in the business of ascribing all those words to ancient roots. Curiously, smother lacks any ancient ancestor! It appears that if, in some mysterious sound-symbolic way, the initial group sm– suggested the opening and closing of the mouth in a variety of languages from Classical Greek to Old Norse, we end up with a bunch of obscurely related (!) words from smile to smother, and the idea of a primordial root loses its attraction, especially because a semantic bridge can be built between almost any two words and any two concepts. Smother also sounds like smooth. Let me repeat: we don’t know whether the words in this motley group referring to smashing, smacking, smelling, and the rest belong together. Even Old English smugan “to creep” may (or may not) belong here. I think it was William Craigie (a serious and dependable philologist) who suggested that English smooth is not clearly represented in any of the cognate languages. We find this statement in the 1912 fascicle of the OED. In 1966, The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology wrote the same: “…without certain cognates.” A good deal depends on what kind of cognates one is looking for. Students of Dutch and Frisian found numerous words with the root smeu-. In some way, smother may be related to them, but in the works I have read, the sound-symbolic or south-imitating factor underlying smooth and smother is not mentioned. We can now again look at the verb smite, whose original meaning is to “strike” (we are still “smitten with remorse”). The verb has been mentioned above in connection with the reconstructed root sme– and is discernible in German (now regional) Schmant “cream” and Russian smetana “sour cream” (stress on the second syllable), with cognates elsewhere in Slavic. It is also recognizable from the name of the Czech composer Smetana (stress on the first syllable). The root of all of them may be the same as the one we observe in smooth. I’ll refrain from discussing the technology of making (sour) cream. Idioms These are an ape and a dandy. The two are obscurely related. Free chimpanzee in forest and Mr. Lambkin dressing up in front of a mirror. Public domain via rawpixel. As in the previous two posts, I’ll finish this one with a glance at an obscure phrase. In Take My Word For It: A Dictionary of English Idioms, I devoted some space to the idiom to pay in monkey’s coin. I should have said more about it. In 1896, a correspondent to Notes and Queries wondered what the derivation and meaning of the proverbial saying is and whether to give one monkey’s allowance is its equivalent. I know nothing about monkey’s allowance, but the next letter referred to a long explanation of the main phrase in E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Brewer understood the idiom as meaning “to pay in goods, in personal work, in mumbling and grimace.” Merry Andrew in full glory. Bearded man with back to viewer in a jester’s cap. Minneapolis Institute of Art. Public domain via rawpixel. A correspondent to NQ, 8th Series, IX, 1896, p. 494, quoted in translation the account given in G-F. P. Saint Foix’s Historical Essays. According to that account, the story originated with Louis IX. We read: “Whoever fetches a monkey into the City for sale, shall pay four deniers, but if the monkey belongs to a Merry-Andrew [a professional clown] be exempted from paying the duty…, by causing his monkey to play and dance before the Collector.” King Saint Louis lived from 1226 to 1270. The Old French text is not quoted in the Essays, and I failed to find the original referred to in this ordinance. The tale may be true, though it has all the features of folk etymology. Monkey’s coin, naturally, suggests deceit. Is the French saying payer en monnaie de singe (singe “monkey”) so old? Such figurative expressions were not typical of the Middle Ages. In any case, the English idiom is certainly a translation from French. The same must be true of the Dutch version iemand met apenmunt betalen. As regards the reaction of native speakers, the Dutch phrase seems to be better known than its English equivalent. The OED does not feature it. I’ll be grateful for any information on the French original and its European kin. Wexford Friary Window Saint Louis IX King of France by Lucien-Léopold Lobin. CC3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Feature image by U.S. National Archives via Picryl (Public Domain).
Written in the stars: Prince Hal’s almanac BY MARISSA NICOSIAMARCH 4TH 2024 Prince Hal addresses Poins in the Boar’s Head Tavern in William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, exclaiming “Saturn and Venus this year in conjunction! What says th’almanac to that?” This is a rare instance of Shakespeare using the word “almanac,” although he does reference calendars and gesture to almanacs as potential props for determining the date, time, lunar cycle, and weather in other plays. In this scene, Prince Hal is not simply checking the date, he is tracking the position of the planets. In Renaissance (and twenty-first century) astrology, a conjunction between planets is a powerful sideral event. In our own moment of revived interest in astrology, Prince Hal’s almanac shows the longer history of using the stars to understand the present and imagine the time to come. Almanacs were widely used in Shakespeare’s England to consider astrological matters, recount past events, take note of the present position of heavenly bodies, and imagine future times, weather, and celestial movements. In addition to the essential monthly calendar that lists feast days and charts the movements of the stars, almanacs often include historical chronologies of biblical and national history, tide tables, latitude charts, lists of England’s kings since 1066, suggested timelines for planting and harvesting crops, distances between cities and ports, schedules of the university terms, medical and veterinary advice, and predictions concerning matters of weather, health, and politics. Almanac users would purchase a new copy each year for up-to-date calendars, predictions, and astronomical and astrological information. The day-to-day functions of marking time in an almanac are notably saturated with political meaning because they organize everyday time with respect to the nation’s past and present rulers. Prince Hal’s call for an almanac is simultaneously mundane—almanacs were common Renaissance books—and extraordinary in that calendars did not take this specific material form during the actual Prince’s lifetime. On the Renaissance stage, this multi-temporal almanac could have been the issue for the current year, i.e. 1599. The printed booklet would contain information about the Prince’s future, including the dates for the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V. The Prince’s future is, of course, always a part of the past to the audience in the playhouse, but it would have also been part of the past in the pages of a printed almanac prop. Prince Hal calls for an almanac to determine the present position of the stars, but he would hold in his hand a printed book that documents his future and, in turn, encapsulates the tensions of representing past futures of the monarchy on the stage. A perplexing scene is unfolding in the tavern when the Prince seeks out an almanac to metaphorically help him decipher it. Doll Tearsheet sits on Falstaff’s lap while Prince Hal and Poins spy on them and provide color commentary on this unlikely coupling. The Prince wants to know if the astrological symbols of elderly Saturn (Falstaff) and lovely, perpetually beautiful Venus (Doll) are forecast to be both visible in the heavens at the same time in an almanac because it might explain the amorous tableaux he sees before him. Today, astrology enthusiasts are more likely to turn to an app than an almanac to consult the position and influence the stars might have on their near or long-term future. Over the past decade, interest in astrology, and businesses providing astrological services, have both steadily grown. Traffic and profit peaked during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As Hilary George-Parkin puts it in a 2021 BBC article, “Perhaps it’s no wonder that so many people who weren’t interested in astrology before are turning to the stars for guidance. For much of the world, the past year has been one of few earthly comforts – hugs have been scarce, jobs have been lost and every day brings news of more human suffering.” Writing in The Washington Post in 2023, Sydney Page reminds us that “Research has shown that people are more likely to be drawn to divinatory practices in times of tumult and uncertainty.” Uncertain times encourage us to imagine possible futures, guided by the stars and other means. Shakespeare may also have been alluding to tumultuous times when he wrote Prince Hal’s jest: a notable conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1583 that was thought to have predicted the English victory at Tilbury in 1588. Margaret Aston argues that this historical conjunction underpins Shakespeare’s reference to almanac astrology because of how extensively the 1583 Saturn and Jupiter conjunction was discussed in print in Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles—an important source text for the play—as well as other contemporary sources. According to prophetic interpretations, this conjunction predicted an annus mirabilis that would arrive in five-years time, and English astrologers and intellectuals alike argued that the events of 1588 fulfilled that prophecy. Shakespeare, moreover, was writing his chronicle plays about England’s medieval past during the Elizabethan succession crisis, a long-term, slow-moving panic about the future of the English throne during the reign of a virgin queen who refused to marry or publicly name her heir. Staging futures past and realized, aided by almanacs and astrology or other modes of speculation, provided a model for thinking ahead along lines of succession, however unstable. National futures, not only prospects of love and affection, might be foreseen in the movement of the stars. Feature image: Prophetic almanac. 1832 edition. CC4.0, via Wellcome Collection gallery. Marissa Nicosia is an Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature at the Pennsylvania State University - Abington College where she teaches, researches, and writes about literature, temporality, food history, and material texts. She is co-editor of Renaissance Futures, a special volume of Explorations in Renaissance Culture (2019), and Making Milton: Print, Authorship, Afterlives (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Rhetorical “um” BY EDWIN L. BATTISTELLAMARCH 3RD 2024 “Uh” and “um” don’t get much respect. What even are they? Toastmasters International calls them “crutch words.” Speech teachers and verbal hygienists deride them as mere disfluencies to be stamped out. And while people can certainly overuse them, ”uh” and “um” fill the pause while speakers organize their thoughts, search their vocabularies for the right word, or compose a complex bit of phrasing. But there is a lot of linguistic research on the function of “uh” and “um,” some of which suggests that listeners pay extra attention to the language that follows a filled pause, understanding the pause to signal a word or phrase carefully chosen. If you are interested, the research on “uh” and “um” is presented in readable form in two excellent books: Michael Erard’s: Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean, published in 2007,and Valerie Fridland’s Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English, published in 2023. Reading Fridland’s book, I came across another use of um that I had not previously thought about: “Um” shows up in writing as a word meaning “wait a minute.” Fridland gives a couple of examples mined from Gunnel Tottie’s corpus study of journalistic “um”: “Obama is, Um, More Seasoned” and “Um, Senator…” What’s going on?” In the Washington Post headline “Obama is More, Um, Seasoned” the “um” serves as a set of scare quotes, suggesting that seasoned is not the only way to expressed the former President’s gray hair and implying that the writer intends a bit of genteel euphemism. And in the quote from economist Paul Krugman, “Um, senator,” is a way of disputing an immediately preceding quote from then-Senator Richard Shelby. The “um” says “wait a minute, here’s what really going on.” In these examples, “um” does not signal hesitation. Rather it is a rhetorical device to indicate a certain attitude toward one’s own words or someone else’s. Rhetorical “um” has been around for a while: looking back at New York Times headlines, I found examples from as early as 1957: “As to Christmas Presents They Want, Women Are Found, Um, Inconsistent.” Like Obama’s being “seasoned,” the “um” suggests euphemism. The same goes for the 1969 headline about the decline of a New Left magazine “The Ramparts Story: . . . Um, Very Interesting.” The “um” suggests that “very interesting” does not quite capture the full situation. And a 1999 Boston Globe story noting that actor Ben Affleck had fallen asleep while attending a performance of Shakespeare said, “The Oscar winning screenwriter and actor seemed to be, um—how can we put this delicately?—meditating during most of the first act.” Gunnel Tottie of the University of Zurich searched databases and found hundreds of examples of written “um” or “uh” in journalistic texts from 1990 to 2011. What’s more, there is a difference depending on whether “um” comes at the beginning of a sentence or later, before a particular word or phrase. At the beginning of a sentence “um” tends to challenge a preceding idea, while before a word it challenges that usage. Check out these examples, from Tottie’s article: And if you’re building a kit cabin … it’s tempting to believe it will be easy. Um … reality check time. (Outdoor Life 1994) … former boxing champ … Holyfield agreed to show his dancing, um, skills. (USA Today 2000) In the first, the “um” tells you that cabin-building is not so simple. In the second, it suggests that Holyfield is a bad dancer. The much-maligned “um” is not just a verbal stumble or filler. It’s also written word as well, with an evolving, complex usage. Featured image by Hümâ H. Yardim via Unsplash. Edwin L. Battistella taught linguistics and writing at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, where he served as a dean and as interim provost. His books include Bad Language: Are Some Words Better than Others?, Sorry About That: The Language of Public Apology, and Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump.
Policy meets politics on the frontiers of world urbanization BY TOM GOODFELLOWMARCH 1ST 2024 At a time when funding for urban infrastructure and the promotion of an overarching global goal—the hard-won SDG 11—have catapulted cities up the international policy agenda, it’s hard to believe that urban issues could ever have been considered marginal. In relation to much of Africa, however, until about 15 years ago urban development challenges were quite a fringe concern in both policy and academic research. Many governments on the continent—particularly in Eastern Africa, where a suite of countries were governed by regimes whose rebel origins lay deep in the rural peripheries—viewed city-dwellers either with indifference or active hostility. International donor agencies ploughed funds into rural development, and later into aspatial ‘social’ sectors such as education and health. Meanwhile, the renewed interest from China in Africa in the early 2000s was largely seen as being focused on natural resource extraction. This all changed from around 2010. The intense refocusing of international attention on African cities has sometimes been taken for granted as a natural consequence of the continent’s urbanisation, and of evolving international aid and investment priorities. Yet the focus on external and demographic drivers can obscure how this reorientation has been shaped in strikingly diverse ways by different political contexts. Against the background of this ‘urban turn’ in twenty-first century Africa, my book Politics and the Urban Frontier explores how domestic politics and power struggles harness the demographic force of urban growth, alongside diversifying flows of international finance, to produce very different kinds of cities. I explore this in a set of countries in East Africa (specifically, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda), which I argue is the global urban frontier: the region with the lowest proportion of people living in urban areas, but also on average the fastest rates of urbanisation. Globally-sanctioned ideals of urban progress have been central to urban development in this region, yet their fate in any given city is partly determined by how they become entangled with other political and economic agendas. What’s missing in ‘global’ urban policy debates? The kinds of blueprints that have often been promoted for cities in low-income countries (think of the vogue for ‘self-help’ housing schemes in the 1970s, the prescriptive urban ‘good governance’ reforms dominating the 1990s, or the supposed panacea of land titling since the early 2000s) are rooted in certain generic assumptions about how cities work. These policy approaches are steeped in ideas of private property, infrastructure planning, and capitalist social relations that are largely rooted in industrialised countries elsewhere. African cities are often seen by foreign donors and external investors as substandard versions of the urban norm: low-income, dysfunctional nearly-cities that can be ‘lifted’ with the application of enough funds and the right regulatory frameworks. Yet cities are not just bundles of land, regulations, and economic resources. They are also fundamentally political arrangements of people and things, and in much of the world in the twenty-first century they are shaped by three intersecting variables, about which conventional urban debates say little. Yet cities are not just bundles of land, regulations, and economic resources. They are also fundamentally political arrangements of people and things. First, cities are conditioned by shifting geopolitics, both in terms of regional dynamics of trade, movement, and diplomacy, and in terms of the diversifying forms of international finance on offer from donors and creditors. These financial flows, which wax and wane in response to geopolitical conditions, provide scope for bargaining and deal-making over big investments in and around capital cities, where national government priorities jostle with urban ones. Second, cities are increasingly subject to dynamics of resurgent authoritarianism—but the nature and impact of this varies by country, given different levels of prior democratic institutional development and very different distributions of power among urban social groups. These differences affect how easily a governing regime can crush urban social opposition and repress city-level institutions. Third, and related, cities are sites of intensifying quests for political legitimacy by governments seeking to build and hold urban power in the context of competing socioeconomic demands. In East Africa, postcolonial legitimacy to govern has often been sought among the rural majority. This is no longer adequate in the face of rapid urban growth. Urban legitimacy is now a central concern, even for authoritarian regimes—but precisely which urban groups matter most, and what needs to be done to court their support, will differ substantially by context. Cities, then, are geopolitical hubs in which leaders and governing coalitions draw international flows into localised bargaining processes, in pursuit of (often authoritarian) urban power and legitimacy—not just globalising sites of ‘travelling’ urban planning visions and ideals of entrepreneurialism. The latter aspects of cities—which are no doubt important—have received much greater attention than the former. Politics and the Urban Frontier is part of an attempted rebalancing. Urban analysis as political work Focusing on East Africa, the book develops a detailed analytical framework to explain differences in urban trajectories between three cities that face many similar socioeconomic and demographic pressures, and similar flows of ideas and finance. It aims to explain why we see a stark contrast between a sustained commitment to top-down master planning processes in Kigali, accompanied by drive towards high-end service sector-led development, in contrast with a long-term ‘anti-planning’ political culture in Kampala where major urban infrastructures are fragmented and targeted as sources of private gain. Meanwhile, Addis Ababa has seen huge investments in the kinds of large-scale mass transport and housing projects that never get off the ground in the other two cities (though these have taken on a life of their own, due to widespread use by social groups for which they were not initially designed). These differences between the cities are above all rooted in power relations, rather than economic might or depoliticised notions of ‘state capacity’. Why does all this matter? Aside from academic rebalancing, the book’s argument aims to enhance understanding about which kinds of urban investments will be taken seriously in a given context, and which may collide with political dynamics that mean they founder or twist into radically new directions during implementation. Having the analytical tools to better understand the political agendas and conflicts that underpin urban policy in a given context is essential if the international push towards more inclusive urban futures is to produce results in actual urban places. But attention to the politics of urban development is not just about tailoring urban interventions to political contexts to enhance implementation. It’s also about recognizing how such interventions can either bolster or reconfigure existing power relations, and therefore influence politics itself in a particular place—for better or worse. There is a lot at stake in Africa’s urban century. We have seen the forms of radical socio-economic polarisation, spatial segregation, and authoritarianism that are possible in cities across the world. Indeed, many African cities were created this way during colonialism, and have struggled to escape this shadow. As the continent becomes an increasingly urban, it is vitally important that investors, donors, analysts, and advisors, who often see themselves as providing technical assistance, realise they are doing fundamentally political work—and not always in the ways they intend. Featured image by Daggy J Ali via Unsplash (public domain). Tom Goodfellow is a Professor of Urban Studies and International Development at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on the comparative political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts arond infrastructure and housing, migration, and urban institutional change.
February 2024 African American religions and the voodoo label By Danielle N. Boaz In 1932, an African American man named Robert Harris killed his tenant on a makeshift altar in the back of his home in Detroit, Michigan. Harris, who was allegedly part of Detroit’s burgeoning Black Muslim community, described the murder as a human sacrifice to Allah. Harris was put on trial for murder; however, following some bizarre courtroom rants during which he referred to himself as a “king” and the murder as a “crucifixion,” Harris was declared insane and sent to an asylum. Read More The musician’s journey: preparing our students as entrepreneurs By Jill Timmons Today, our college and university music students are facing a rapidly changing global market place. There are new technologies, career options, virtual education, and so forth. As educators, we continue to focus on the highest standards of pedagogy. Nevertheless, we need to also expand our curricula to include the necessary preparatory training for skills that will transcend a dizzying rate of change. Read More Late winter etymology gleanings and a few little-known idioms By Anatoly Liberman Ms. Melissa Mizel found my post for July 29, 2009, on the ethnic slur Sheeny “Jew” and sent me her idea about the etymology of this ugly word. Read More Faith in God, themselves, and the people: Black religious activist-educators By Almeda M. Wright I started my first seminar on Radical Pedagogy, reflecting with students on a provocative blog entitled “10 Reasons Septima Clark was a Badass Teacher.” Beyond the shock value of using badass in a divinity school setting, the students were curious about why I started with this lesser known (if not completely unknown) figure from the 1950s Civil Rights era. Read More The first women’s shelter in Europe? Radegund’s Holy Cross By E.T. Dailey ‘With the passion of a focused mind, I considered how to advance other women so that—the Lord willing—my own desires might prove beneficial for others. […] I established a monastery for girls in the city of Poitiers. After its foundation, I endowed the monastery with however much wealth I had received from the generosity of the king.’ Read More Analysis of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Agenda By Benoît Pelopidas and Kjølv Egeland In a context of intensifying great power competition and deep divergences of view between nuclear and non-nuclear powers on the urgency of nuclear abolition, ‘nuclear risk reduction’ has gained renewed attention as a pragmatic framework for managing and reducing nuclear dangers. Read More Of language, brain health, and global inequities By Adolfo M. García One of the greatest public health challenges of our century lies in the growth of neurodegenerative disorders. Conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and frontotemporal dementia stand as major contributors to disability and mortality in affluent and under-resourced nations alike. Read More A four-forked etymology: curfew By Anatoly Liberman It appears that the etymology of curfew has been solved. In any case, all modern dictionaries say the same. The English word surfaced in texts in the early fourteenth century, but a signal to people to extinguish their fires is much older. Read More The need for expertise in quality improvement at every stage of a healthcare worker’s career By Peter Lachman The quality improvement in healthcare movement has been around for the past 25 years with variable degrees of success. Read More Cosmopolitan, cad, or closeted Catholic? By Dr. Johanna Luthman Having just arrived via ferry to the Dutch town of Sluis in mid-May 1611, William Cecil, Lord Roos (1591-1618), promptly exposed his “privy member” (penis) to what one assumes were rather surprised townsfolk. Read More Brighter than a trillion suns: an intense X-rated drama By Nicholas Mee You may be unaware of the celestial wonder known as OJ 287 but, as you will see, it is one of the most outlandish objects in the cosmos. Read More The third sister: beauty, and why the aesthetic matters By George Levine In the current critical/political atmosphere, the “aesthetic” has come to be regarded as the province of dandies and their descendants, not to do with the enormous difficulties of the here and now. Read More “Indian summer” and other curious idioms By Anatoly Liberman The Internet is full of information about the origin of the phrase Indian summer. Everything said there about this idiom, its use, the puzzling reference to Indian, as well as about a desired replacement of Indian by a word devoid of ethnic connotations and about the synonyms for the phrase in the languages of the world, is correct. Read More Aleph-AI: an organizing force or creative destruction in the artificial era? By Gissel Velarde The Aleph is a blazing space of about an inch diameter containing the cosmos, tells us Jorge Luis Borges in 1945, after being invited to see it in the basement of a house. The Aleph deeply disrupted him, revealing millions of delightful and awful scenes, simultaneously. Read More Intractable words By Anatoly Liberman In my correspondence with the journalist who was curious about the origin of caucus, I wrote that we might never discover where that word came from. Read More Cover of Love and the Working Class: The Inner Worlds of Nineteenth Century Americans by Karen Lystra Exploring different facets of love in eight history books [reading list] By OUP History As Valentine’s Day approaches, we’ve curated a special reading list that considers the complexities of love, society, and human interaction. These recent history titles promise to captivate heart and mind and offer a journey through time that goes beyond roses and chocolates. Read More February 2024 Françoise de Graffigny and Electronic Enlightenment By Olivia Russell ‘Ah mon Dieu, tu n’es plus ici. Voila les pleurs qui reccomensent.’ These melancholic words open the first of 173 newly digitalized letters from the ninth volume of Françoise de Graffigny’s complete correspondence. Read More Cover of The Review of English Studies Election plays and the culture of elections and electioneering in the days of Dunny-on-the-Wold By Kendra Packham England’s pre-Reform elections are memorably satirized in the historical sitcom, Blackadder the Third. Also glancing at late 1980s politics, the series begins with the rigged by-election for a fictional rotten borough—Dunny-on-the-Wold—taking centre stage. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press How synonymy rolls By Edwin L. Battistella If you look up the synonym of big, you are likely to find words like large, huge, immense, colossal, enormous, and ginormous, among others. Some of these will cause you to raise an eyebrow because they are bigger than big: something can be big, but not huge or enormous. Read More Scientific writing as a research skill By Stuart West and Lindsay Turnbull Scientific papers are often hard to read, even for specialists that work in the area. This matters because potential readers will often give up and do something else instead. And that means the paper will have less impact. Read More
The origin of the word caucus: conclusion By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I mentioned three etymologies of caucus: from caucus, Latin for “cup”; from an Algonquin phrase, and from calker’s or caulkers’. Read More Holes in the Tower of Babel By Brent A. Strawn The Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11:1–9) is among the most famous in the Bible. It might even be considered an iconic text—famous beyond its actual content; since the story was originally written it has come to mean much more than its actual words. Read More Less-than-universal basic income By Matt Zwolinski Ten years ago, almost no one in the United States had heard of Universal Basic Income (UBI). Today, chances are that the average college graduate has not only heard of the idea, but probably holds a very strong opinion about it. Read More Cello and the human voice: A natural pairing By Becky McGlade I’ve heard the phrase “It’s the instrument most like the human voice and that’s why it’s so expressive” countless times over the years. As a cellist myself I’m probably biased to some degree, but I truly believe that the cello has a unique voice which wonderfully synergises with the human voice. Read More Could lonely and isolated older adults be prescribed a cat by their doctor? By Sherry L Sanderson, Kerstin G Emerson, Donald W Scott, Maureen Vidrine, Diane L Hartzell, and Deborah A Keys Many older adults struggle with isolation and loneliness. Could cats be the solution? At the same time, many humane societies have more cats to rehome than they can manage. Could lonely older adults be the solution? Read More The intractable word caucus By Anatoly Liberman At the moment, the word caucus is in everybody’s mouth. This too shall pass, but for now, the same question is being asked again and again, namely: “What is the origin of the mysterious American coinage?” Read More A librarian’s reflections on 2023 By OUP Libraries and Anna França What did 2023 hold for academic libraries? What progress have we seen in the library sector? What challenges have academic libraries faced? Read More A Q & A on English and all its varieties [interactive map] By Danica Salazar and Rachel Havard World Englishes are localized or indigenized varieties of English spoken throughout the world by people of diverse cultural backgrounds in a wide range of sociolinguistic contexts. Read More Word Origins Etymologicon and other books on etymology By Anatoly Liberman In the previous post, I answered the first question from our correspondents (idioms with the names of body parts in them) and promised to answer the other one I had received during the break. The second question concerned the book titled The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections. Read More Living Black in Lakewood: rewriting the history and future of an iconic suburb [Long Read] By Becky M. Nicolaides In the annals of American suburban history, Lakewood stands as an icon of the postwar suburb, alongside Levittown, NY, and Park Forest, Ill. Noted not only for its rapid-fire construction—17,500 homes built from 1950-1953—it was also critiqued for its architectural monotony, alarming writers at the time who feared that uniform homes would spit out uniform people. That worry quickly faded when the demography of Lakewood began to change. Read More Cover of Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City by Dennis Romano Your 2024 travel guide [reading list] By Lindsey Stangl Now is the time for crafting your resolutions and setting the stage for a remarkable new year. Read More Which imaginary book should you read? By Ruby Dunn Take this quiz to find out which fictional book would be a perfect next read for you. Read More How can business leaders add value with intuition in the age of AI? [Long Read] By Eugene Sadler-Smith In a speech to the Economic Club of Washington in 2018, Jeff Bezos described how Amazon made sense of the challenge of if and how to design and implement a loyalty scheme for its customers. This was a highly consequential decision for the business; for some time, Amazon had been searching for an answer to the question: “what would loyalty program for Amazon look like?” A junior software engineer came up with the idea of fast, free shipping. But a big problem was that shipping is expensive. Also, customers like free shipping, so much so that the big eaters at Amazon’s “buffet” would take advantage by free shipping low-cost items which would not be good for Amazon’s bottom-line. When the Amazon finance team modelled the idea of fast, free shipping the results “didn’t look pretty.” In fact, they were nothing short of “horrifying.” Read More Back to work: body and etymology By Anatoly Liberman While the blog was dormant, two questions came my way, and I decided to answer them at once, rather than putting them on a back burner. Today, I’ll deal with the first question and leave the second for next week. Since the publication of my recent book Take My Word for It (it deals with […] Read More cover image a A bridge tio the sky by Glaire D. Anderson From Abbas Ibn Firnas to Assassin’s Creed: The legacy of Medieval intellectualism By Glaire D. Anderson The dream of flying has a long premodern history. Think of the myth of Daedalus, the ancient Greek inventor who designed wings for himself, and his ill-fated son Icarus. Or think of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous sketches and studies of birds and flying devices. Read More cover image of Durers Lost Masterpiece Albrecht Dürer and the commercialization of art By Ulinka Rublack Dürer´s “Praying Hands” are so iconic, but most people know little or nothing about the painting for which it partly served as a study. Looking at the story of that painting shows us a different Dürer from the arrogant, assured manipulator of new media he is often said to have been. It also opens a new window onto his time and the commercialisation of art Read More 12» Janus words By Edwin L. Battistella January gets its name from Janus, the Roman god of doors and gates, and (more metaphorically) the god of transitions and transformations. What better time to talk about so-called Janus words. Read More «12
December 2023 English spelling, rhyme, rime, and reason By Anatoly Liberman The story of rhyme has been told more than once, but though both The OED and The Century Dictionary offer a detailed account of how the word acquired its meaning and form, it may be instructive to follow the discussion that occupied the intellectuals about a hundred and fifty years ago and some time later. Read More Five ways the British magnetic enterprise changed the concept of global science By Edward J. Gillin The concept of global science was not new in the nineteenth century. Nor was that of government-sponsored science. But during the 1830s and 1840s, both of these concepts underwent a profound transformation: one that still has ramifications over today’s relationship between specialist knowledge and the modern nation state. Read More Book cover of how to do research 7 ways to deal with the rejection of your manuscript submission By Robert Stewart Publication in peer-reviewed journals is an integral part of academic life, but however successful you are in your research career, you’re likely to receive a lot more rejections than acceptances of your submitted manuscript. Here are 7 suggestions on how to cope, understand, and learn from manuscript rejection. Read More Going on an endless etymological spree By Anatoly Liberman Noah Webster (1758-1843) knew spree and included it in the first edition of his dictionary. He defined spree as “low frolic” and branded it as vulgar. Read More Genomic insights into the past and future of the black rhinoceros By Casey McGrath The iconic African black rhinoceros faces an uncertain future after intense poaching caused a 98% decline in wild populations from 1960 to 1995. The species’ survival within its fragmented natural habitat now relies on dedicated conservation efforts. A study published in Molecular Biology and Evolution reshapes our understanding of the evolutionary and natural history of the black rhinoceros, opening a window into the species’ genetic past while urging us to forge a path toward its conservation. Read More Title cover of "Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America" by Stephanie Stein Crease, published by Oxford University Press Chick Webb meets Chick Webb: Fact and fiction in James McBride’s new novel By Stephanie Stein Crease Chick Webb’s drumbeats resonate through much of James McBride’s fast-paced new novel “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.” McBride, one of America’s most beloved authors today, weaves Webb into this story early on. Read More Word Origins More gleanings: cob, shark, cowan, and the rest By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist shares his monthly gleanings on cob, shark, cowan, and more. Read More Title cover of "Glad We Met: The Art and Science of 1:1 Meetings" by Steven G. Rogelberg, published by Oxford University Press 10 things direct reports must do to get the most out of their 1:1 meetings By Steven G. Rogelberg 1:1s are crucial in promoting positive outcomes in the workplace. It is essential that direct reports have a strategic approach to these meetings to make sure they receive the help they need to grow in their career. Read More Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press “Happy Birthday” to the Linguistic Society of America By Edwin L. Battistella In January 2024, the Linguistic Society of America celebrates its 100th anniversary. And one thing you can be sure of is that “Happy Birthday” will be sung. Read More Remembering the legacy of Henry Kissinger [reading list] By Sarah Butcher As a key architect of US foreign policy during the Nixon and Ford administrations, Henry Kissinger left an indelible mark on international relations. Read More
November 2023 A spotlight on Native American language and religion [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Rachel Havard On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, the last for 2023, inspired by the themes in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon”, and in celebration of National Native American Heritage Month in the United States, we spotlight two aspects of Native American culture that transcend tribe and nation and have been the recent focus of OUP scholars: language and religious beliefs. Read More Falling dice and falling ministers: explaining an artwork in the Royal Collection By John Eglin John Eglin, author of “The Gambling Century” examines a portrait supposedly by William Hogarth to explore the history of gambling in Georgian England. Read More Title cover of "Understanding Human Time", edited by Kasia M. Jaszczolt, published by Oxford University Press Flow of time: reality or illusion? By Kasia M. Jaszczolt Real time of space-time is one of the dimensions on which we comprehend and describe reality. Time neither flows, nor flies, or drags on; it doesn’t run out and is not a commodity that can be wasted. Read More Title cover of Hitler's Personal Prisoner: The Life of Martin Niemöller by Benjamin Ziemann, published by Oxford University Press The man behind the legend: Martin Niemöller, Hitler’s Personal Prisoner By Benjamin Ziemann Martin Niemöller, Lutheran pastor in the Dahlem parish at the outskirts of Berlin, stood at the centre of the struggle over hegemony in the German Protestant Church during the Third Reich. Read More Title cover of "American Tyrannies in the Long Age of Napoleon" by Elizabeth Duquette, part of the Oxford Studies in American Literary History series published by Oxford University Press Napoleon’s cinematic empire: a fascination with film By Elizabeth Duquette Given his decided penchant for spectacle—he crowned himself emperor, after all—there is no reason to be surprised that Napoleon’s empire soon included the cinema, a medium his visual ubiquity made ripe for conquest. To prepare for our newest Napoleon, it is worth looking back on some of his prior celluloid incarnations, some great and others less so. Read More Word Origins Highfalutin, cowan, and all, all, all… Gleanings at last! By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist shares a new explanation for “highfalutin” from a reader of the blog, which, if accepted, “will be a small step forward in the study of word origins.” Read More Title cover of "The Use of Force against Individuals in War under International Law: A Social Ontological Approach" by Ka Lok Yip, published by Oxford University Press Catch-22: exploring the escape routes for Gazans By Ka Lok Yip Ka Lok Yip examines how the current situation in Gaza powerfully illustrates the danger of relying solely on international humanitarian law to address problems without transforming the underlying structural conditions through jus contra bellum and international human rights law. Read More Title cover of "Aesthetic Dimensions of Modern Philosophy" by Andrew Bowie, published by Oxford University Press The art of philosophy By Andrew Bowie The “philosophy of art” in Anglo-American analytical philosophy has had barely any influence on the main epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical concerns of that philosophy. Read More Five unexpected things about medical debt By Luke Messac 100 million Americans hold medical debt which causes people to forgo or be denied necessary medical care. Luke Messac, a historian and physician, looks at five unexpected things about medical debt. Read More Word Origins From broke to broker: following the tortuous path to truth By Anatoly Liberman “To me, the history of etymologists’ wanderings reads like a thriller: so many naive and clever suggestions, such a blend of ignorance and ingenuity!” The Oxford Etymologist traverses the history of “broke.” Read More "A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering" by David H. Foster, published by Oxford University Press The risks of boosterism in research writing By David H. Foster At first glance, the significance of a piece of research may not be obvious, either from a paper submitted to a journal or from a published article. Its novelty, importance, and future impact are often uncertain, needing time to become clear to the research community. Read More Seven predictions for the biggest management trends in the next few years By Sophie Shepherd What do you think will be the next big management trend? We asked Academy of Management Annual Meeting attendees for their predictions. Read More Title cover for "Empires of the Dead: Inca Mummies and the Peruvian Acestors of American Anthropology" by Christopher Heaney, published by Oxford University Press Why global museums amassed the ancestral dead, starting in Peru By Christopher Heaney It is a time of worldwide reckoning for museums that display or contain ancestral dead. But the specific story of the collection of Andean ancestors charts a different origin for this global process, and it asks us to think with more nuance regarding what to do with the museums it created. Read More Word Origins Clever Hans and beyond By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist details the origin and development of the adjective “clever”. Read More "The Void Inside: Bringing Purging Disorder to Light" by Pamela K. Keel, published by Oxford University Press How the US healthcare system is failing people with eating disorders [infographic] By Pamela K. Keel People with eating disorders often do not receive sufficient support within the United States healthcare system, which can have a devastating emotional and monetary impact on patients and their families. Read More Title cover for "The Hijacking of American Flight 119" by John Wigger, published by Oxford University Press D.B. Cooper, Martin McNally, and the Golden Age of Skyjacking By John Wigger In June 1972, Martin McNally pulled off one of the most daring airline hijackings in American history, parachuting from the aft stairs of a Boeing 727 with half a million dollars in cash. Read More November 2023 Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press More than emotion words By Edwin L. Battistella Interjections like oh or wow are sometimes described—too simply—as “emotion words.” They certainly can express a wide range of emotions, including delight (ah), discovery (aha), boredom (blah), disgust (blech), frustration (argh), derision of another (duh) or one’s self (Homer Simpson’s d’oh). They certainly can express a wide range of emotions, including delight (ah), discovery (aha), boredom (blah), disgust (blech), frustration (argh), derision of another (duh) or one’s self (Homer Simpson’s d’oh). Read More "Understanding Self-injury: A Person-centered Approach" by Stephen P. Lewis and Penelope A. Hasking, published by Oxford University Press Supporting a loved one who self-injures [infographic] By Stephen P. Lewis and Penelope A. Hasking The stigmatization of self-injury remains common. Such stigma makes it difficult for people to reach out about their experience, even when they may want support. Further, many people who do not have lived experience, but who are concerned about someone who does, want to offer support but are unsure about how to navigate this. The […] Read More "The First Episode of Psychosis: A guide for Young People and Their Families" by Beth Broussard MPH CHES and Michael T. Compton MD and MPH, published by Oxford University Press How to recognise and treat an episode of psychosis [infographic] By Beth Broussard and Michael T. Compton Psychosis is a rare experience and often misunderstood within society. Learn more about the symptoms, stages, and treatments for psychosis in the infographic. Read More Title cover for "English Begins at Jamestown: Narrating the History of a Language" by Tim William Machan, published by Oxford University Press How little we (can) know about the history of the English language By Tim Machan Historical linguist Tim Machan explores the history of the English language and what we (can) know about it, and how it has been recorded throughout history. Read More Title cover for "Feeling Unreal: Depersonalization and the Loss of the Self, second edition" by Daphne Simeon and Jeffrey Abugel, published by Oxford University Press Understanding Depersonalization and Derealization Disorder [infographic] By Daphne Simeon and Jeffrey Abugel Depersonalization is the third most common psychiatric symptom, yet clinicians and lay people still know little about its presentation and treatment. While it can indeed be a symptom accompanying other mental illnesses, it is also a full-blown disorder itself, recognized by every major diagnostic manual. Read More Breakthrough and disgrace: Knut Hamsun’s Hunger and Pan in retrospect By Terence Cave and Tore Rem The 2023 award of the Nobel Prize for literature to the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse brings Norwegian literature into focus for English-speaking readers and provides a fresh angle from which to view the writings of Knut Hamsun. Read More Word Origins A fool’s cap of etymologies, or the praise of folly By Anatoly Liberman It is amazing how many synonyms for “fool” exist! It is almost funny that fool, the main English word for “a stupid person,” is not native, says the Oxford Etymologist in this week’s exploration of the origins of fools. Read More
October 2023 The Oxford Comment podcast Infrastructure, public policy, and the Anthropocene [podcast] By Steven Filippi, Ed Aymer, and Meghan Schaffer On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we discuss the state of human infrastructure in the Anthropocene with a particular focus on how research can best be used to inform public policy. First, we welcomed Patrick Harris, co-editor-in-chief of the new transdisciplinary journal, Oxford Open Infrastructure and Health, to speak about the aims and […] Read More International Affairs journal published by Oxford University Press Where there’s a will, there’s a way? Germany and the EU leadership quest By Magnus G Schoeller and Olof Karlsson As the EU confronts multiple challenges, many question whether Germany has finally shed its reluctance to become a leading power in the region. In this blog post, Magnus G Schoeller and Olof Karlsson highlight the key obstacles standing in the way of Germany’s leadership aspirations, its policy implications, and how the country can overcome them. Read More Title cover for "The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker" by Maryemma Graham, published by Oxford University Press When fame is not enough: Margaret Walker and the twentieth-century South By Maryemma Graham Maryemma Graham on writing “The House Where My Soul Lives: The Life of Margaret Walker”, the complete, authorized biography of America’s first award-winning Black writer. Read More Word Origins Another hopelessly obscure word: brocard By Anatoly Liberman Some words are so rare that few people know and even fewer study them. Such is “brocard”, the “outcast” subject of today’s blog post from the Oxford Etymologist. Read More Oxford Bibliographies by Oxford University Press Are the Apostolic Fathers relevant to twenty-first century readers? By William Varner The value of the “Apostolic Fathers” is evident for a better understanding of the New Testament and the formative years of the “Jesus Movement” that came to be called Christianity. The Apostolic Fathers can help us measure our own understanding of that early phase of church history. Read More The Hsu-Tang Library On the launching of a new library of classical Chinese literature By Wiebke Denecke 250 years ago, Ji Yun compiled one of the world’s largest premodern encyclopedias for the Chinese court. This fall Oxford University Press launches the first endowed bilingual translation library of Classical Chinese Literature thanks to a generous gift by Ji Yun’s descendant, Agnes Hsin-mei Hsu-Tang and her husband Oscar Tang. Read More Science in the time of war: voices from Ukraine By Taras K. Oleksyk On 23 February 2022, I drove back to Michigan after giving a talk at the University of Kentucky on genome diversity in Ukraine. My niece Zlata Bilanin, a recent college graduate from Ukraine, was with me. She was calling her friends in Kyiv, worried. A single question was on everyone’s mind: will there be a […] Read More Title cover for "Ralph Vaughan Williams: Four Last Songs". Words by Ursula Vaughan Williams. Arranged for SATB choir and piano by Jonathan Wikeley. Published by Oxford University Press Vaughan Williams’ Four Last Songs: “letting go” of the music By Jonathan Wikeley Jonathan Wikeley explores Vaughan Williams’s “Four Last Songs”, looking at the textual meaning, the process of arranging for choir, and composer’s philosophy of “letting go” of the music. Read More Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press Supporting communities through society publishing By Charley James Lawrence In this blog post, we hear from OUP’s society publishing collaborators and the ways in which they support diverse communities, including through open access publishing. Read More Word Origins Believe it or not: one more book on language and language history By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist casts a glance at a book exploring the history of language and its development that is “definitely worth reading.” Read More Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press What does “community” mean to you? By Ashley Stanlake The theme of this year’s Open Access Week is “Community Over Commercialisation”. As part of this, we’re looking at different definitions of “community” used within academic research. Read More Title cover for "Writing Against Expulsion in the Post-War World: Making Space for the Human" by David Herd, published by Oxford University Press Human rights are not a “luxury belief”: why Suella Braverman’s rhetoric is dangerously misguided By David Herd David Herd explores the language of human rights and why Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s recent pronouncement of human rights as a “luxury belief” is a shocking step even by the standards of contemporary political rhetoric. Read More Title cover of "Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes" by Nicholas Mee, published by Oxford University Press Tuning in to the cosmic symphony: restarting LIGO By Nicholas Mee In 2015 history was made when LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) detected the first ever gravitational wave signal. This was an incredible technological achievement and the beginning of a completely new way of investigating the cosmos. The restart of LIGO and the global gravitational wave research network launches a new phase of deep space exploration. Read More Title cover of "Analysis" journal, published by Oxford University Press Should animals have the right to vote? By Ioan-Radu Motoarca Suppose it were suggested that animals’ interests would be even better protected if we recognized a right of political participation to animals. One way to do that would be to have human representatives cast votes on behalf of animals with respect to different legislative proposals. Read More Oxford Libraries Test your knowledge of Gothic literature! By Ruby Dunn Take this Gothic literature quiz to see how well you really know your castles, ghosts, and scary stories. Read More Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press Open access and the academic community: a librarian’s view By Henrik Schmidt We asked Henrik Schmidt, Licence Manager from the Research Collaboration Unit at the National Library of Sweden, for his views on open access and the transformation of the research environment. Read More Making sense of the Molly Maguires today By Kevin Kenny Twenty Irish mine workers were hanged in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania in the 1870s, convicted of a series of murders organized under the cover of a secret society called the Molly Maguires. Here Professor Kenny discusses 10 things that helped him answer the questions at the heart of his book, “Making Sense of the Molly Maguires.” Read More Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press Embracing a sustainable open access future: removing barriers to publishing By Nikul Patel In this blog post, we explore what OUP is doing to address the challenges to making open access publishing available to all and share information on the volume of articles we waive Article Processing Charges for each year. Read More Open Access Week 2023 at Oxford University Press Supporting researchers at every career stage By Sarah Trostle Discover how OUP supports researchers at every career stage—including Early Career Researchers—through our journals publishing. Read More Title cover of "Shakespeare without a Life" by Margreta de Grazia, published by Oxford University Press On Shakespeare’s “illiteracy” By Margreta de Grazia This year marks 400 years since the publication of Shakespeare’s First Folio, but why was he singled out for his lack of knowledge about classics, as well as his “illiteracy”? Read More Title cover of "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" by Liza Herzog, published by Oxford University Press Why does government policy ignore scientific evidence? Experts and the public must act together By Lisa Herzog Together, expert communities and the public need to manage the interfaces between the production of specialized knowledge and its use in wider political discourse. Read More The three empires of our digital world [infographic] By Anu Bradford Today, there are three dominant and competing models of digital regulation—the US, China, and the EU. Explore the nuances and implications of each model in the infographic. Read More Title cover of "Tracing Value Change in the International Legal Order: Perspectives from Legal and Political Science" co-edited and co-authored by Heike Krieger and Andrea Liese, published by Oxford University Press Much attacked, still standing: how the international legal order is attacked and defended By Heike Krieger and Andrea Liese The invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine on 24 January 2022 is certainly not the first, but one of the most blatant attacks on the international legal order and one of the order’s foundational values, namely peace. It has enlivened widespread debates about the end of the liberal world order and, closely related to this, a crisis of international law. But what does this crisis stand for? Read More Word Origins Some hopelessly obscure words: the case of cowan By Anatoly Liberman Some words don’t interest anyone. They languish in their obscurity, and even lexicographers miss or ignore them. Yet they too deserve to get their day in court. One such word is “cowan.” Read More Title cover of "Asian Classics on the Victorian Bookshelf: Flights of Translation" by Dr Alexander Bubb, published by Oxford University Press Found in translation: how the amateur translator brought Asian classics to a 19th century audience By Alexander Bubb Today, translation is a professionalized activity closely linked to the publishing industry. For most of the nineteenth century, however, this organized chain of production had yet to be established. Read More What we say when we say “just sayin’” By Edwin L. Battistella The distinction between nouns and adjectives seems like it should be straightforward, but it’s not. Grammar is not as simple as your grade-school teacher presented it. Read More
September 2023 Title cover of "Lifting the Chains: The Black Freedom Struggle since Reconstruction" by William H. Chafe, published by Oxford University Press Black resistance in America: a timeline By William H. Chafe From the end of the Civil War to today, Lifting the Chains is a history of the Black freedom struggle in America since the Civil War. Explore key moments in the timeline. Read More Word Origins On squashing and occasional squeezing By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores squash, squeeze, and the development of squ- words featuring the infamous s-mobile. Read More Title cover of "The Rise and Fall of Animal Experimentation" by Richard J. Miller, published by Oxford University Press Animal pharm is closing its doors By Richard J. Miller Until the middle of the twentieth century, human beings had no defense against deadly microbial diseases. Bubonic plague, cholera, tuberculosis, and syphilis; waves of infectious diseases regularly swept across the globe killing millions of people. But then, suddenly, everything changed. In 1935, the Bayer drug company in Germany was experimenting with the pharmaceutical properties of […] Read More Title cover of "Of Age: Boy Soldiers and Military Power in the Civil War Era" by Rebecca Jo Plant, published by Oxford University Press Minors in the military: parental rights and the Union war effort By Rebecca Jo Plant Throughout the entirety of the American Civil War, intense battles over youth enlistment played out in courts, Congress, the military, and individual households. Read More Title cover of "United Kingdoms: Multinational Union States in Europe and Beyond, 1800-1925" by Alvin Jackson, published by Oxford University Press United kingdoms and European Unions: using global history to better understand the UK By Alvin Jackson Was the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which was inaugurated in January 1801, unique? It has certainly been uniquely recognised as the “United Kingdom,” or (more simply) the “UK.” But how far does this recognition reflect the UK’s exceptional multinational structures? Read More Title cover for "Non-Ideal Epistemology" by Robin McKenna, published by Oxford University Press Virtues and vices in a non-ideal world By Robin McKenna Humans are prone to bias, irrationality, and various forms of prejudice. From an evolutionary perspective, this is no accident. Read More Word Origins In praise of sloth By Anatoly Liberman The hero of today’s blog post is the adjective “slow.” No words look less inspiring, but few are more opaque. Read More The Oxford Comment podcast Supporting the future of peer review [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Jenn Saboe Every year, Peer Review Week honors the contributions of scientists, academics, and researchers in all fields for the hours of work they put into peer reviewing manuscripts to ensure quality work is published. This year, the theme of Peer Review Week is “The Future of Peer Review.” Read More Title cover of "Company Politics: Commerce, Scandal, and French Visions of Indian Empire in the Revolutionary Era" by Elizabeth Cross, published by Oxford University Press A free market? The French East India Company and modern capitalism By Elizabeth Cross “Paris is the place to make money, & England is the country to enjoy it.” With what we think we know about capitalism in England and France circa 1790, it is hard to fathom how exactly, a banker in London could have come to this conclusion. Read More Open Access at Oxford University Press Advancing open access in the UK By Charley James Lawrence and Alexandra Marchbank Oxford University Press (OUP) and Jisc, the education and research not-for-profit, have held a successful and productive Read & Publish (R&P) agreement since 2021. This report showcases a selection of the achievements of UK researchers who have published their work OA in an OUP journal via our agreement with Jisc. Read More Title cover of "Oxford Clinical Guidelines: Newly Qualified Doctor" by David Fisher and Liora Wittner, published by Oxford University Press How to succeed as a newly qualified doctor By David Fisher and Liora Wittner There’s nothing like the reality of starting out as a newly qualified doctor; it is exciting, challenging and a relief after years of study to finally get on the wards. Read More Title cover of "The Swann Way" by Marcel Proust, Oxford World's Classics edition, published by Oxford University Press Translating Proust again By Brian Nelson “There is no ideal, ultimate translation of a given original. Classic texts in particular, from Homer onwards, are susceptible of multiple readings and retranslations over time.” Brian Nelson discusses translations of classic works and the difficulties with translating Proust in particular. Read More Word Origins Etymology as guesswork, being also a study in the history of the word guess By Anatoly Liberman A good deal of our scholarship is guesswork, and today’s story deals with the origin and history of the word “guess.” Read More Antonina: a sixth-century military wife By David Alan Parnell In our modern world, the spouses of major political figures may sometimes themselves spend quite a bit of time in the limelight, and be significant assets to the careers of their politician partners. In the sixth century, the wife of the most famous and successful Roman general of the day became nearly as powerful and famous as he was. Read More Title cover of "A Suspicious Science: The Use of Psychology" by Rami Gabriel, published by Oxford University Press Making psychology a reflexive human science By Rami Gabriel It’s up to cognitive psychology to figure out a way to explain how the mind works that takes into account its purpose and surroundings. The best approach would be to combine scientific and philosophical ideas, while also considering history and culture. Read More "International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability: In The Court’s Shadow" by Patryk I. Labuda, published by Oxford University Press The turn to domestic accountability in the shadow of international criminal tribunals By Patryk I. Labuda How did domestic accountability come to eclipse the dream of international criminal tribunals? And what effects does this shift from international to domestic trials have on the global fight against impunity? Read More September 2023 Title cover of "The Genius of their Age" by S. Frederick Starr, published by Oxford University Press Illuminations and enlightenment throughout the history of the Middle East [reading list] By Lindsey Stangl Explore the vast history of the Middle East in seven books and immerse yourself in the stories of the luminaries, leaders, moments, and the movements that shaped the intellectual and cultural landscape for the centuries that followed. Read More Title cover of "The United States of English: The American Language from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century" by Rosemarie Ostler, published by Oxford University Press American English dialects: always changing, yet here to stay By Rosemarie Ostler Are Americans in different parts of the country starting to talk more alike? It’s a reasonable question to ask. Americans have always been footloose, and now that working remotely is possible, they’re relocating to other regions more than ever. Read More Word Origins An etymological stinkpo(s)t By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist’s subject today is the origin of the verb “stink”. Read More Title cover for "Would you say that a(n actual) banana duct-taped to a wall may be protected by copyright? And would you consider a claim that the author of said duct-taped banana copied the work of another artist who had also duct-taped a (plastic) banana to a green cardboard an infringement of the copyright owned by said artist?" Building copyright: an absurdist work in progress By Eleanora Rosati Would you say that a(n actual) banana duct-taped to a wall may be protected by copyright? And would you consider a claim that the author of said duct-taped banana copied the work of another artist who had also duct-taped a (plastic) banana to a green cardboard an infringement of the copyright owned by said artist? Read More Title cover of "Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know®, Third Edition" by Robert Paarlberg, published by Oxford University Press Rising seas, eroding beaches, and fewer fish in Africa By Robert Paarlberg Robert Paarlberg describes the impact of human-induced climate change and local economic and political forces on fishing communities in Code d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria. Read More Is it a noun or an adjective? By Edwin L. Battistella The distinction between nouns and adjectives seems like it should be straightforward, but it’s not. Grammar is not as simple as your grade-school teacher presented it. Read More Title cover for "Camus's The Plague: Philosophical Perspectives" edited by Peg Brand Weiser, published by Oxford University Press Pandemic? What pandemic? By Peg Brand Weiser Three months after the official US government “end” of three years of monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic that took over 1.1 million American lives, we are back to “new normal.” Read More Oxford World's Classics Five children’s classics that stand the test of time [reading list] By Catrin Lawrence The books people remember most are often the ones from their childhoods, and it’s no surprise; many children’s books have survived decades of changing tastes and digital distractions, continuing to entertain generations of children and even adult readers. Read More
A listener’s guide to The Subversive Seventies [playlist] By Michael Hardt What songs would revolutionaries in the 1970s have listened to and identified with? Listen to the playlist and trace the political history behind seven iconic protest songs from the 1970s. Read More
Word Origins Language peeves and the word peeve By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist considers the etymology of the word “peeve.” Read More
The Oxford Comment podcast The revelation of the Book of Mormon at 200 [podcast] By Steven Filippi, Sarah Butcher, and Jack Dugan On today’s episode, we’re joined by two preeminent scholars on the history and theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to discuss with us the legacy of Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates as well as the state of academic scholarship surrounding The Book of Mormon. Read More
Title cover for "Bioethics: What Everyone Needs to Know®" published by Oxford University Press Alzheimer’s: do we focus too much on new treatments? By Paul T. Menzel Paul T. Menzel discusses the focus on new treatments for Alzheimer’s versus existing patient-led options. Read More
Title cover of "The British Army: A New Short History" by Ian F. W. Beckett, published by Oxford University Press The British Army: how is the Army meeting changing societal priorities? By Ian F. W. Beckett What is the nature of the British army’s exceptionalism in constitutional, political, social, cultural, and military terms? Read More
Title cover for "The Opening of the Protestant: Mind How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty" by Mark Valeri, published by Oxford University Press The contested nature of religious liberty in today’s America By Mark Valeri Several decisions recently made by the United States Supreme Court, along with an escalation in Christian Nationalist rhetoric among right-wing American politicians, have brought the issue of religious liberty to the surface in today’s media. Much of the commentary has focused on a paradox: the concept of religious liberty has increasingly been used to suppress […] Read More
Word Origins No release from an etymological entanglement By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics. Read More
Title cover of "International Law and Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons" by Grant Dawson, published by Oxford University Press Environmental remediation of sea-dumped chemical weapons: courageously fixing the mistakes of our past By Grant Dawson and Frans Nelissen For many generations to come, there is only one place where we can live, and that one place is the Earth. It is therefore imperative that we take care of our home, rather than treating the Earth as if it were given to us for our own selfish exploitation. Read More
Communicative luck reduction: machine-like or social (or both)? By Carlos Montemayor While we occasionally have the sense that we are rolling dice with words and hoping for good luck, meaning and communication would be impossible if we only and always succeed no better than luck would allow. Read More
Word Origins A few things at a glance By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics. Read More
Oxford Open Digital Health journal branding Putting positive planning into telemedicine projects By Oxford Open Digital Health Introducing the Telemedicine Program Design Canvas, a new implementation tool to help practitioners design and build better remote healthcare programmes. Read More
"The Function of Equity in International Law" by Catharine Titi, published by Oxford University Press International law in quest for justice By Catharine Titi One of the stated purposes of the United Nations, according to the UN Charter, is to settle international disputes or adjust situations that threaten international peace “in conformity with the principles of justice and international law.” In this blog post, Catharine Titi explores the relationship between equity, law, and justice and its importance to international dispute settlement. Read More
Photo of piglets suckling milk from sow as title cover of Animal Frontiers journal, published by Oxford University Press The rise of dairy consumption [infographic] By Sarah Reed Explore milk consumption by humans and lactase tolerance with a look at the domestication of milk producing mammals over the past 10,000 years and milk consumption across different cultures leading to some adults no longer having the ability to digest lactose. Read More
Title cover for "King David, Innocent Blood, and Bloodguilt" by David J. Shepherd published by Oxford University Press Is all fair in war? Innocent blood, armed conflict, and King David By David J. Shepherd It is widely agreed that even in war, innocent blood should not be shed. What has not been readily apparent until now is that in the Judeo-Christian tradition, the problem of innocent bloodshed in war was first detected and, indeed, dissected much earlier—in its most ancient text, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Read More
Word Origins Irregular gleanings and a last shot at Modern English usage By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics. Read More
In praise of phrases By Edwin L. Battistella Writers need to love words—the good, the bad, and the irregular. And they need to respect syntax, the patterns that give words their form. But when writers understand the power of phrases, their sentences shine. Read More
End birth alerts that separate at-risk Indigenous mothers from their children By Michael J. Sullivan “Born Innocent” uncovers the ongoing legacy of state-mandated family separation on Indigenous and other minority communities, with a particular focus on women and children. Read More
Word Origins An etymological cul-de-sac: the verbs “flaunt” and “flout” By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores the history and development of the verb “flaunt”, “to display ostentatiously,” Read More
The Buddha: A Storied Life, co-edited by Vanessa R Sasson and Kristin Scheible, published by Oxford University Press The Buddha’s never-ending story By Vanessa R. Sasson and Kristin Scheible, Vanessa R. Sasson and Kristin Scheible explain how the Buddha’s life story is not an individual narrative, but a cosmic one, brimming with previous and future buddhas. Read More
July 2023 Melville's Wisdom: Religion, Skepticism, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America by Damien B. Schlarb, published by Oxford University Press Melville’s wisdom: making the past speak to the present By Damien B. Schlarb Damien B. Schlarb discusses how “Melville’s wisdom,” the version of moral philosophy Herman Melville crafts in his fiction through his engagement with biblical wisdom literature, may help us confront our own moment of informational inundation and uncertainty. Read More
Word Origins Language history and we, part two (actually, a conclusion) By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist considers feminist perspectives of language development, split infinitives, and the pronoun “they” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.” Read More
The Oxford Comment podcast Revisiting toxic masculinity and #MeToo [podcast] By Steven Filippi, Rachel Havard, and Meghan Schaffer On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we explore two recognizable components in contemporary conversations on gender and gendered violence: that of “toxic masculinity” and of the #MeToo movement with scholars Robert Lawson and Iqra Shagufta Cheema. Read More
"Language and Mediated Masculinities: Cultures, Contexts, Constraints" by Robert Lawson, published by Oxford University Press Exploring language and masculinities in the media landscape By Robert Lawson Robert Lawson explores both toxic masculinity and positive masculinity in the media landscape, from Andrew Tate to the television show Brooklyn 99. Read More
Oxford University Press (OUP) logo How to write a journal article By Rose Wolfe-Emery A well-written and structured article will increase the likelihood of acceptance and of your article making an impact after publication. Read More
Word Origins Language history and we: the case of “like” By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist considers “like” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.” Read More
Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE) published by Oxford University Press Looking through the ice: cold-adapted vision in Antarctic icefish By Casey McGrath A recent study reveals the genetic mechanisms by which the visual systems of Antarctic icefishes have adapted to both the extreme cold and the unique lighting conditions under Antarctic sea ice. Read More
Fiddle Time Duets, edited by Kathy Blackwell and David Blackwell, published by Oxford University Press The joy of playing duets By Kathy Blackwell “There is an irresistible appeal to playing with another musician.” In this blog post, Kathy Blackwell discusses the history of duet playing in classical music, and the benefits it can have for musicians. Read More
Word Origins Etymology gleanings for June 2023 By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions about American English vowels, the word “night”, and “love” in English and Greek. Read More
Reputations at Stake by William Harvey, published by Oxford University Press Reputations at Stake: 10 cautionary recommendations for leaders By William Harvey There are multiple rewards and risks that stem from how we manage our reputation, from the macro level for countries and governments through to the meso level for organisations and to the micro level for leaders and managers. Read More
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, published by Oxford University Press Much ado about nothing? The US Supreme Court’s Warhol opinion By William Patry Is there any future guidance in the opinion about other fair use disputes from The Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith? Yes, not in the majority opinion, but rather in Justice Gorsuch’s concurring opinion for himself and Justice Jackson. Read More
Conquistadors and Aztecs: A History of the Fall of Tenochtitlan by Stefan Rinke, published by Oxford University Press The heavy burden of the past: the history of the conquest of México and the politics of today By Stefan Rinke The history of the conquest of Mexico by Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century remains a complex topic of discussion. Various interpretations have emerged throughout the years, each offering unique insights into this pivotal moment in Mexican history. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexico’s president, has taken up the issue and uses it to promote his populist policy. Read More
From Dr Google to ChatGPT: are the tides turning in how cancer patients access information? By Ashley Hopkins The discussions surrounding ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art natural language processing AI, are hard to miss. With its capabilities to draft articles, engage in written conversations, and provide complex coding solutions, ChatGPT holds great potential to revolutionize how people seek health information. In November 2022, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, first powered by GPT-3.5 architecture; it is now even […] Read More
Word Origins Dangerous neighbors: “sore” and “sorrow” By Anatoly Liberman Quite naturally, speakers connect words that sound alike. From a strictly scholarly point of view, “sore” and “sorrow” are unrelated, but for centuries, people thought differently, and folk etymology united the two long ago. Read More
Helping verbs are curious, AND fascinating By Edwin L. Battistella English has a big bagful of auxiliary verbs. You may know these as helping verbs as they help the main verb express its meaning. Read More
June 2023 “Lying” in computer-generated texts: hallucinations and omissions By Kees van Deemter and Ehud Reiter There is huge excitement about ChatGPT and other large generative language models that produce fluent and human-like texts in English and other human languages. But these models have one big drawback, which is that their texts can be factually incorrect (hallucination) and also leave out key information (omission). Read More
Word Origins Plain as day? By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist looks at the origin of the word “day” and its connections across the Indo-European language world. Read More
The Oxford Comment podcast The great gun conundrum [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer In this podcast episode, we discuss the history of the gun debate in the US with Robert J. Spitzer and how a reform of policing can deter gun violence with Philip J. Cook. Read More
"Bioethics: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Bonnie Steinbock and Paul T. Menzel, published by Oxford University Press Is a 15-week limit on abortion an acceptable compromise? By Bonnie Steinbock A recent opinion piece claims that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has resulted in “a partial healing of the nation’s civic culture.” Read More
"Language, Science, and Structure: A Journey into the Philosophy of Linguistics" by Ryan M. Nefdt, published by Oxford University Press Real patterns and the structure of language By Ryan M. Nefdt There’s been a lot of hype recently about the emergence of technologies like ChatGPT and the effects they will have on science and society. Linguists have been especially curious about what highly successful large language models (LLMs) mean for their business. Read More
Word Origins Confronting bud and buddy By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy” – the final part of the series. Read More
Rethinking the future of work: an interview with Phil McCash By Phil McCash One of the best ways organisations can enhance their employees’ careers is through access to career coaching. Career coaching can be accessed through external providers or delivered internally by suitably trained members of staff. Read More
"The Commercial Determinants of Health" Edited by Nason Maani, Mark Petticrew, and Sandro Galea, published by Oxford University Press Public health challenge: taking on the commercial determinants of health By Nick Freudenberg, Sharon Friel, and Mark Petticrew How can the public health community use the commercial determinants of health lens to better protect human and planetary health and reduce the stark health inequities that characterize the world today? We suggest four cross-cutting strategies. Read More
"Modern Irish and Scottish Literature: Connections, Contrasts, Celticisms" by Richard Alan Barlow, published by Oxford University Press “There is no writer can touch sir Walter Scott”: Joyce and the Wizard of the North By Richard Barlow There is a network of intertextual links between Walter Scott and James Joyce. Richard Barlow teases out some of the allusions and references to Scott and his work in Joyce’s texts, comparing the different visions of history offered by these two writers. Read More
Word Origins The company we keep, part two: bud(dy) By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist tackles the convoluted history of “bud” and “buddy”. Read More
"Recursion: A Computational Investigation into the Representation and Processing of Language" by David J. Lobina, published by Oxford University Press What can Large Language Models offer to linguists? By David J. Lobina, Does the recent, impressive performance of Large Language Models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, have any repercussions for the way in which linguists carry out their work? And what is a Language Model anyway? Read More
"The Bioethics of Space Exploration" by Konrad Szocik, published by Oxford University Press Elon Musk, Mars, and bioethics: is sending astronauts into space ethical? By Konrad Szocik A future human mission to Mars will be very dangerous, both as a result of factors already known but intensified, as well as new risk factors. It is worth raising the question of the ethicality of the decision to send humans into such a dangerous environment. Read More
"Teams That Work: The Seven Drivers of Team Effectiveness" by Scott Tannenbaum and Eduardo Salas, published by Oxford University Press Rethinking the future of work: an interview with Eduardo Salas and Scott Tannenbaum By Eduardo Salas and Scott Tannenbaum, In this interview, Eduardo Salas and Scott Tannenbaum share their thoughts on the future of work and how to build a successful team. Read More
Inside the shark nursery: the evolution of live birth in cartilaginous fish By Casey McGrath A new study reveals that egg yolk proteins may have been co-opted to provide maternal nutrition in live-bearing sharks and their relatives. Read More
Animal Frontiers published by Oxford University Press Societal roles for meat: what does science tell us? By Sarah Reed The blog post is based on an article published by Animal Frontiers which tackles meat consumption and whether it’s healthy or not, while also addressing societal and environmental elements as well. Explore these facets of the agriculture industry with an accompanying infographic. Read More
Finding purpose for the corporate office By Joe Ungemah When the pandemic occurred, a major shift to virtual work occurred out of necessity and those in corporate settings adapted magnificently to a new way of working. Where does this leave the corporate office and what are the long-term ramifications for hybrid and remote work? Read More
What’s coming down the pike? By Edwin L. Battistella During the news coverage of the COVID pandemic, I enjoyed seeing Dr Anthony Fauci on television and hearing his old-school Brooklyn accent. My favorite expression to listen for was his use of “down the pike” to mean “in the future.” Read More
The Age of Agility Building Learning Agile Leaders and Organizations by Veronica Schmidt Harvey and Kenneth P. De Meuse, published by Oxford University Press Rethinking the future of work: an interview with Veronica Schmidt Harvey and Kenneth P. De Meuse By Veronica Schmidt Harvey and Kenneth P. De Meuse Veronica Schmidt Harvey and Kenneth P. De Meuse, editors of The Age of Agility, offer valuable insight into the concept of “learning agility” and strategies that promote more effective leadership. They are both experts in the field of leadership practical experience developing healthy skills that help both individuals and organizations to thrive. Read More
Saving the Protestant Ethic: Creative Class Evangelicalism and the Crisis of Work by Andrew Lynn published by Oxford University Press From deadness to life: how today’s conservative Protestants recovered and adapted the Protestant ethic By Andrew Lynn Andrew Lynn explains how the Protestant faith and work movement is reformulating and creatively adapting earlier theological frameworks in order to make them fit with both contemporary work life and with contemporary ideals about work. Read More
The company we keep By Anatoly Liberman Observing how various words for “friend” originate and develop is a rather curious enterprise. Read More
The Oxford Comment podcast Privacy and the LGBT+ experience: the Victorian past and digital future [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer Scholars continue to explore the role of sexuality in private lives—from the retrospective discovery of transgendered people in historical archives to present questions of identity and representation in social media—with the understanding that those who identify as LGBTQ+ have always existed and have fought tirelessly to advance their rights. Read More
Good News for Common Goods: Multicultural Evangelicalism and Ethical Democracy in America by Wes Markofski, published by Oxford University Press Multicultural evangelicalism: what is it and why should anyone care? By Wes Markofski One of the many tragedies of the religious currents swirling around the capitol insurrection and the amplification of white Christian nationalist discourse in American politics and public life is the cementing of evangelicalism with whiteness and Trumpism in the minds of many Americans. Read More
Grove Music Online On specters and spectacle: tales of two Eurovisions, Liverpool-Ukraine 2023 By Philip V. Bohlman Phantoms from the past, ghosts of the present, specters of the future, all gathered on 13 May to haunt the Eurovision Song Contest, cohosted in 2023 by the United Kingdom in Liverpool and by Ukraine in the spectral spaces of a Europe divided by war, but singing in concert under the banner, “United by Music.” Read More
Forum for Modern Language Studies, published by Oxford University Press The asexual awakening: Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami By Tommasina Gabriele What is a woman? This is the central question that Kawakami’s novel, “Breasts and Eggs”, addresses from every angle. The main character, Natsuko, is preoccupied with her body and the gendered and sexed bodies of those around her. Read More
Word Origins More short words, or negation of the negation By Anatoly Liberman All over the Indo-European map, the main word of negation begins with “n”. What is in this sound that invites denial, refutation, or repulsion? Read More
A Long Reconstruction: Racial Caste and Reconciliation in the Methodist Episcopal Church by Paul William Harris, published by Oxford University Press Black Methodists, white church By Paul William Harris Paul William Harris explores how different the experience of Black Methodists was in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and what the trade-offs were in seeking the support of white allies. Read More
Oxford University Press (OUP) logo Advancing the open access movement in Japan By Miki Matoba Read and Publish agreements have become an important mechanism for providing institutions with a simple, flexible, and inclusive way of managing access to subscription and hybrid journals, whilst supporting their faculty to publish with open access licenses. These agreements play an increasingly important role in OUP’s program for advancing high-quality open access publications, and bring many benefits and opportunities for researchers. Read More
Useful Objects: Museums, Science, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century America by Reed Gochberg, published by Oxford University Press Bringing museum collections to life By Reed Gochberg The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has declared a focus for 2023 on sustainability, well-being, and community. Read More
Word Origins On cowards and custard from a strictly linguistic point of view By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist dives into the history and meaning of the word “coward” – and what does cowardice have to do with custard? Read More
The Oxford Handbook of Workplace Discrimination Rethinking the future of work: an interview with Adrienne J. Colella and Eden B. King By Adrienne J. Colella and Eden B. King An interview with organizational psychologists Adrienne J. Colella and Eden B. King, discussing trends in the workplace and how organizations can prepare/adapt to the future of work, enabling employees to flourish and do their best work. This particular interview covers workplace discrimination, employee wellbeing, flexible working and more. Read More
"Making Christianity Manly Again: Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church, and American Evangelicalism" by Jennifer McKinney, published by Oxford University Press American evangelism and complementarianism: authority and abuse By Jennifer McKinney Jennifer McKinney shows how the complementarianism in churches such as Mars Hill Church, Grace Community Church, and the Southern Baptist Convention leads to abuse. Read More
Socio-Economic Review published by Oxford University Press An inflation-proof methodology to measuring policy effects on poverty By Geranda Notten Europe’s soaring inflation and energy prices highlight the need to measure poverty and policy responses in non-monetary ways. Read More
Word Origins Etymology gleanings for April 2023 By Anatoly Liberman Always, let me thank our correspondents for consulting the blog, asking questions, and offering words of encouragement. Read More
Read twentieth-century literature from Oxford University Press with Oxford World's Classics (OWC) and Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) How well do you know your twentieth-century literature? [Quiz] By Megan Whitlock Try this short quiz to test your knowledge and learn more about famous twentieth-century texts! Read More
What does a technical writer do? By Edwin L. Battistella When people think about careers in writing, they may focus on writing novels or films, poetry or non-fiction. But for steady work, there is nothing like technical writing. Read More
A riddling tale By Anatoly Liberman The root of riddle “puzzle,” from rædels(e), is Old English rædan “to read.” Read More
"Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America" by Stephanie Stein Crease, published by Oxford University Press A listener’s guide to Rhythm Man [playlist] By Stephanie Stein Crease Explore the musical legacy of the Swing Era’s pioneering virtuoso drummer and bandleader, Chick Webb! Listen to the playlist and read about each track to trace Webb’s legacy on record and radio from 1926 to 1939. Read More
Rethinking the future of work: an interview with Joe Ungemah Dr Joe Ungemah, author of Punching the Clock, examines whether the future of work is compatible with maintaining the social fabric of the workplace and the psychological needs of workers. Read More
"In Search of Ancient Tsunamis: A Researcher's Travels, Tools, and Techniques" by James Goff, published by Oxford University Press Studying ancient tsunamis is all about glasses By James Goff If you go back a mere 40 years or so, not a long time really, then you pretty much arrive at the time when the modern study of ancient tsunamis began. Before then there had been some work, but it really kicked off with Brian Atwater and his work on the 1700 CE Cascadia earthquake […] Read More
Eight fun facts about Bibles at OUP Bibles have had a long history at our Press; in fact, Oxford’s Bible business made OUP a cornerstone of the British book trade, and, ultimately, the world’s largest university press. When you’ve been in the Bibles business for this long, you’re bound to have some interesting anecdotes. Read on for some fun facts in the history of Bibles at OUP. Read More
Word Origins Hooker, as promised By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores the etymological development and history of the word “hooker.” Read More
Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire by Erik Linstrum, published by Oxford University Press Open secrets? Where to look for the history of colonial violence By Erik Linstrum As decolonization gathered pace in the 1950s, Great Britain began to destroy evidence of violence that was rife through out the British Empire, yet evidence of violence can still be found in archives and through first hand accounts. Read More
Forum For Modern Language Studies “Think like a forest”: how forest literature can help us fight climate change By Robert Spencer The gargantuan task of the fight against climate change needs practical know-how and political militancy. It also requires a clear sense of its wider goals. Robert Spencer explores how “forest literature” can help us to formulate new ways of inhabiting the living world. Read More
Democracy Unmoored: Populism and the Corruption of Popular Sovereignty by Samuel Issacharoff, published by Oxford University Press Populism and the future of democracy By Samuel Issacharoff The democratic world is struggling to find political leadership. On the conservative side of the spectrum, the parties of the center-right have watched their constituencies fade and their political role be supplanted by a populist upsurge. On the left of the spectrum, the picture is no rosier. Read More
"The All-Consuming Nation: Chasing the American Dream Since World War II" by Mark H. Lytle, published by Oxford University Press COVID-19 and consumerism: what have we learnt? By Mark H. Lytle Writers often worry that someone will scoop them before they finish, or an unexpected event will undo years of research and writing. Two weeks after naturalist Rachel Carson published her first book, Under the Sea Wind, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Despite excellent reviews, the book sold fewer than a thousand copies. The COVID-19 pandemic became my […] Read More
Word Origins Prolegomena to the word hooker: the English verb filch By Anatoly Liberman Problems emerge the moment we begin to explore the history of filch, because two homonymous verbs exist: filch “to attack” and filch “to steal.” They are almost certainly unrelated. Read More
Electronic Enlightenment Beaumarchais and Electronic Enlightenment By Gregory Brown The addition to Electronic Enlightenment of nearly 500 letters from the Beaumarchais correspondence is a significant event in eighteenth-century studies. Read More
"Music for Prime Time: A History of American Television Themes and Scoring" by Jon Burlingame published by Oxford University Press Music for Prime Time: 15 of the greatest TV themes By Jon Burlingame Music composed for television had, until recently, never been taken seriously by scholars or critics. Catchy TV themes, often for popular weekly series, were fondly remembered but not considered much more culturally significant than commercial jingles. Read More
Publishing 101 What is subject marketing? An interview with Hana Purslow, philosophy marketing manager By Hana Purslow In this interview, our Marketing Manager for philosophy, Hana Purslow, outlines OUP’s approach to subject marketing. Read More
Word Origins A rake’s etymological progress to hell By Anatoly Liberman Three English words sound as rake: the garden instrument, the profligate, and a sailing term meaning “inclination from the perpendicular.” Though at first sight, they do not seem to be connected, I’ll try to show that their histories perhaps intertwine. Read More
"Memories of Socrates: Memorabilia and Apology" by Dr Carol Atack, published by Oxford University Press Xenophon’s kinder Socrates By Carol Atack The idea that Xenophon’s Socratic dialogues entirely lacked the philosophical bite or intellectual depth of Plato’s had become a commonplace in a philosophical discourse which prioritised abstract knowledge over broader ethics. Dr Carol Atack makes the case for Xenophon’s kinder Socrates. Read More
"The Problem of Immigration in a Slaveholding Republic" by Kevin Kenny, published by Oxford University Press 10 things to know about US immigration policy in the nineteenth century By Kevin Kenny Learn 10 things about US immigration policy in the nineteenth century that give context to some of the immigration concerns we face in the US today. Read More
Scratching all the way to hell (second series) By Anatoly Liberman At first sight, the origin of the verb “scratch” looks unproblematic… The Oxford Etymologist scratches beneath the surface of “scratch.” Read More
"Getting to Good Friday: Literature and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland" by Marilynn Richtarik, published by Oxford University Press Reading Between the Lines: Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes and the Peace Process in Northern Ireland By Marilynn Richtarik A novel about a female composer struggling with depression after the birth of her child does not, on the face of it, seem to have much to do with war or peace in Northern Ireland. But appearances can be deceiving. Read More
Animal Frontiers How sustainable is sustainability? By Sarah Reed In a recent Animal Frontiers article, we look at the larger picture of sustainability and the conversation that needs to happen when thinking about just one facet of an industry. Read More
Archaeology of Jesus' Nazareth by Ken Dark, published by Oxford University Press How long can the historical associations of places be remembered? By Ken Dark Can local memory of an association between a place and the people who lived there be preserved for more than three centuries? Ken Dark looks at this question in reference to the “House of Jesus”, and whether it is plausible that the historical associations of a place—even a place in Nazareth—can be remembered 200 years on, let alone three centuries. Read More
When meanings go akimbo By Edwin L. Battistella The realization started with the word akimbo. I had first learned it as meaning a stance with hands on the hips, and I associated the stance with the comic book image of Superman confronting evildoers. Body language experts sometimes call this a power pose, intended to project confidence or dominance. Read More
Grove Music Online Announcing the winner of the 2023 Grove Music Online spoof contest By Scott Gleason Happy April Fool’s Day! I’m pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest is “Back to Bolivia” by Steven Griffin. Read More
The Dominant, 1 April 1928 edition, OUP Music Nicholas Bugsworthy: an unknown Tudor composer? By Simon Wright Simon Wright digs into the curious history of an almost forgotten Tudor composer, Nicholas Bugsworthy. Thanks to an insert in OUP’s in-house magazine, ‘The Dominant’, published on 1 April 1928, Sir Richard Runciman Terry was able to bring the music of this prolific composer into the public domain. Simon Wright picks up where Terry left off, considering, amongst other things, the origins of a curious tune almost certainly shows the earliest version of musical patterns later to become threaded within Irving Berlin’s 1911 hit ragtime song “Everybody’s Doin’ It Now.” Read More
March 2023 Word Origins A guide to going to hell (first draft) and other matters By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist ruminates on the origins and meanings of idioms including “to go to hell in a handbasket.” Read More
Façade Entertainment Study Score “Through Gilded Trellises”: a reflection on one hundred years of Façade By Simon Wright The making of Façade “Poetry is more like a crystal globe, with Truth imprisoned in it, like a fly in amber. The poet is the magician who fashions the crystal globe. But the reader is the magician who can find in these scintillating flaws, or translucent depths, some new undiscovered land.” Osbert Sitwell, writing in 1921 […] Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Climate emergency: lessons from Classic Maya to contemporary China [podcast] By Scott M. Moore and Kenneth E. Seligson In episode 81 of The Oxford Comment, we discussed the environmental resilience of the Maya with scholar Kenneth E. Seligson and contemporary China and sustainability with scholar Scott M. Moore. Read More
"The World According to Proust" by Joshua Landy, published by Oxford University Press Why read Proust in 2023? By Joshua Landy The world is literally on fire; authoritarianism threatens multiple countries; racism and xenophobia are rampant; women’s and LGBTQ rights are under threat—why on earth would anyone spend time reading a 3,000-page novel by a man who’s been dead (exactly) a hundred years? Read More
Word of the Year 2022 - A Year in Words by Oxford Languages How to define 2022 in words? Our experts take a look… (part four) By Oxford Languages Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022. Read More
"Macbeth Before Shakespeare" by Benjamin Hudson, published by Oxford University Press Macbeth, King James, and biting the hand that feeds you? By Benjamin Hudson Possibly the most dangerous play William Shakespeare wrote was The Tragedie of Macbeth. The drama is packed with illegality: assassination of kings; prophecies about kings; supernatural women; and necromancy. To add to the danger, Shakespeare’s employer, King James, was a prickly patron of the performing arts and notorious for his sensitivity to slights, real and perceived. […] Read More
Word Origins Spring gleanings and a partial spring cleaning By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist replies to etymology questions from readers. Read More
Ware and Justice in the 21st Century by Luis Moreno Ocampo published by Oxford University Press Twenty years on: Luis Moreno Ocampo on the International Criminal Court By Luis Moreno Ocampo Luis Moreno Ocampo provides a unique perspective on the International Criminal Court and its interaction with the War on Terror. Read More
"Scars on the Land: An Environmental History of Slavery in the American South" by David Silkenat, published by Oxford University Press Scars on the Land: Slavery and the environment in the American South [extract] By David Silkenat Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice. David Silkenat’s Scars on the Land provides an environmental history of slavery in the American South from the colonial period to the Civil War. Read More
"Race, Politics, and Irish America: A Gothic History" by Mary M. Burke, published by Oxford University Press A Black Irish-American rejoinder to Gone With The Wind: Frank Yerby’s The Foxes of Harrow By Mary M. Burke “The Foxes of Harrow” (1946), a Southern historical romance by Black Irish-American author Frank Yerby (1916–1991), writes back to Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel, “Gone with the Wind” (1936). Although Yerby and Mitchell were both raised in Georgia during segregation by mothers of Irish descent, their socially assigned racial identities created divergent approaches to representing the pre- and post-Civil War South in their respective novels. Read More
"William Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction" by Stanley Wells, published by Oxford University Press Sir Stanley Wells and the First Folio By Martin Maw 2023 marks the 400th anniversary of the publication the First Folio of William Shakespeare’s plays, which has since acquired the status of a cultural touchstone. Read More
Five books to celebrate British Science Week 2023 By OUP Science To celebrate British Science Week, join in the conversation and keep abreast of the latest in science by delving into our reading list. It contains five of our latest books on plant forensics, the magic of mathematics, women in science, and more. Read More
Peace: A Very Short Introduction The hidden and fraught development of an International Peace Architecture By Oliver Richmond The historical evolution of peace has led to the development of a substantial International Peace Architecture (IPA). However, the IPA’s historical development has overall been very slow, hidden, and fraught. Read More
Word Origins Going out on an etymological limb By Anatoly Liberman Today’s post is about the murky origin of the word “limb”. Read More
"Women in the History of Linguistics" edited by Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Helena Sanson, published by Oxford University Press Women in the history of linguistics—from marginalization to recognition By Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Helena Sanson Women’s history month raises issues of erasure and marginalization, authority and power which, sadly, are still relevant for women today. Much can be learnt from the experience of women in the past. Read More
"On Marilyn Monroe: An Opinionated Guide" by Richard Barrios, published by Oxford University Press Marilyn Monroe goes to the Oscars By Richard Barrios Marilyn Monroe attended the Oscars only once in 1951, before the Academy Awards were even televised. Ana de Armas is nominated for playing Monroe in Blonde this year, but Marilyn’s work as an actress is rarely given the recognition it deserves. Read More
Semantic prosody By Edwin L. Battistella When linguists talk about prosody, the term usually refers to aspects of speech that go beyond individual vowels and consonants such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such suprasegmental features may reflect the tone or focus of a sentence. Read More
Word of the Year 2022: A Year in Words part three How to define 2022 in words? Our experts take a look… (part three) By Oxford Languages Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022. Read More
Word Origins Sib and peace By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist has examined the verbs “begin” and “start.” For consistency’s sake, it is now necessary to say something about the noun and the verb “end.” Read More
The Review of English Studies, published by Oxford University Press Finding Jane Austen in history By Kathryn Sutherland In the anniversary year marking 100 years since the publication of R. W. Chapman’s OUP edition of “The Novels of Jane Austen”, Kathryn Sutherland (Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts, OUP 2018) examines the call to reassess the contribution made to the edition by Chapman’s wife, Katharine Metcalfe. Read More
Women in sports: Althea Gibson, Billie Jean King, and their legacies [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Sarah Butcher Women’s history in sports has in fact been a long series of shocks that have reshaped the world of athletics as well as the possibilities that exist for women everywhere. In episode 80 of The Oxford Comment, we discussed tennis greats Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King and the legacies for women in sports with scholars Ashley Brown and Susan Ware. Read More
"The Musical Brain" published by Oxford University Press Five things musicians should know about the brain By Lois Svard Understanding brain basics can help us study and teach music with greater efficiency and confidence, thus giving us more freedom in performance to concentrate on communicating the emotional essence of the music. Read More
Word of the Year 2022: A Year in Words (part two) How to define 2022 in words? Our experts take a look… (part two) By Oxford Languages Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022. Read More
Word Origins A shaky beginning of the end and the state of the art By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist has examined the verbs “begin” and “start.” For consistency’s sake, it is now necessary to say something about the noun and the verb “end.” Read More
The Icy Planet: Saving Earth's Refrigerator by Colin Summerhayes, published by Oxford University Press Saving Earth’s Refrigerator: what does global warming mean for our planet’s future? By Colin Summerhayes Colin Summeryhayes explains how global warming is affecting the polar regions and what the loss of “Earth’s Refrigerator” means for our future. Read More
Genome Biology and Evolution, published by Oxford University Press The social code: deciphering the genetic basis of hymenopteran social behavior By Casey McGrath The authors of a recent study published in Genome Biology and Evolution set out to uncover early genetic changes in bees and wasps on the path to sociality. Read More
Word Origins A new beginning: the verb “start” By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores the origin of the verb “to start”. Read More
Sweet Fuel: A Political and Environmental History of Brazilian Ethanol by Jennifer Eaglin, published by Oxford University Press Explore environmental history in eight books [reading list] By OUP History Environmental history is one of the most innovative and important new approaches to history. Explore eight of our latest titles in environmental history. Read More
Afghan Crucible by Elisabeth Leake, published by Oxford University Press The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: the past’s resemblance to the present By Elisabeth Leake From the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Elisabeth Leake walks us through how the past resembles the present 40 years on. Read More
Scottish Poetry, 1730-18-30, edited by Daniel Cook - Oxford World's Classics, OUP After Burns: recovering Scottish poetry By Daniel Cook Scottish poetry produced in the long eighteenth century might strike you as at once familiar and unknown. Hundreds of poets, balladists, and songwriters born or raised in Scotland throughout the long eighteenth century need to find new readerships. Read More
Of Age by Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant, published by Oxford University Press New perspectives on the American Civil War [reading list] By Lindsey Stangl The Civil War is one of the seminal moments in US history. New research continues to illuminate how we understand both the events of the war and how its legacy continues to impact our modern world. Read More
Word of the Year 2022 How to define 2022 in words? Our experts take a look… (part one) By Oxford Languages Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022. Read More
Word Origins The murky beginning of the verb begin By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores the unfinished story of the word “begin”. Read More
Is Sheridan Le Fanu's "Uncle Silas" an Irish novel? Claire Connolly, editor of "Uncle Silas" (OUP, 2022) explores the question in this OUPblog post. Is Le Fanu’s Uncle Silas an Irish novel? By Claire Connolly When Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Uncle Silas” appeared in 1864, its author was best known as the proprietor of the Dublin University Magazine and a writer of Irish historical novels. Yet, as advised by his publisher, Le Fanu had produced a work of fiction situated not in the Irish past but the English present. Read More
Do nouns have tense? By Edwin L. Battistella English noun phrases have something called a “temporal interpretation.” That’s linguist-speak for how we understand their place in time relative to the tense of the verb. Read More
Spiritual Care: The Everyday Work of Chaplains by Wendy Cadge, published by Oxford University Press (OUP) The everyday work of chaplains: hidden around the edges By Wendy Cadge Chaplains tend to fly below the radar with little attention outside of emergency situations. Their work has long been an important part of the care religious leaders provide across the country. Read More
Etymology gleanings for two winter months (2022-2023) By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist responds to questions from readers on word borrowing across Hebrew, Greek, and Germanic, plus a few new etymology ideas. Read More
Grove Music Online Grove Music’s 2023 spoof article contest is now open! By Scott Gleason The Grove Music Online spoof article contest is now open for 2023! Read More
Mind the gap: the growth in economic inequality [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer Amid the current economic crises, how do we recover? How can we address such financial distress and inequity, and how might we go about enacting more permanent resolution? Listen to Christopher Howard and Tom Malleson on The Oxford Comment podcast. Read More
"Giving Now: Accelerating Human Rights for All" by Patricia Illingworth, published by Oxford University Press Charity and solidarity! What responsibilities do nonprofits have towards Ukraine? By Patricia Illingworth In a speech to the UN General Assembly in the fall of 2022, President Biden called on the UN to stand in solidarity with Ukraine. At least 1,000 companies have left Russia because of Putin’s brutal unprovoked war on Ukraine. Some companies left because of sanctions. Others left for moral reasons, often under pressure from investors, consumers, and out of […] Read More
Garner's Modern English Usage, fifth edition - published by Oxford University Press A Q&A with Bryan Garner, “the least stuffy grammarian around” By Sarah Butcher and Bryan A. Garner The fifth edition of Garner’s Modern English Usage has recently been published by OUP. I was happy to talk to Bryan Garner—who was declared a “genius” by the late David Foster Wallace—about what it means to write a usage dictionary. Read More
"Shakespeare's Blank Verse: An Alternative History" by Robert Stagg “A tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide”: Shakespeare under attack By Robert Stagg Around three years into his career as a dramatist, Shakespeare’s blank verse—his unrhymed iambic pentameter—came under attack. We might wonder whether the passage from “Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit” was right? Read More
Word Origins Gr-words as mushrooms By Anatoly Liberman Some words propagate like mushrooms: no roots but a sizable crowd of upstarts calling themselves relatives. Gr-words are the pet subject of all works on sound imitation and sound symbolism. Read More
"Ruth Page: The Woman in the Work" by Joellen A. Meglin, published by Oxford University Press America’s first feminist ballet: Ruth Page and American Pattern By Joellen A. Meglin As that rare creature—an American woman who, defining herself as a choreographer and ballet director, amassed a degree of power and prestige and exerted aesthetic prerogatives—Ruth Page’s life and work offer refreshing paradigms for the twenty-first century. Read More
James Purdy: Life of a Contrarian Writer by Michael Synder, published by Oxford University Press Life of a Contrarian Writer: James Purdy’s life-changing correspondences [excerpt] By Michael Synder The American author James Purdy has long been considered a “lost” figure in literary studies, but he has always enjoyed a certain cult following among artists and writers interested in the fringes of society. Michael Snyder details how Purdy began making the connections that would carry him through his career. Read More
The End of the Tether and Other Stories by Joseph Conrad. Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press What is “normal” anyway? How reading changes our thinking about mental health By Philip Davis Reading literature has us think differently, with a subtler emotional lexicon. Explore three case studies into reading for identity, expression, and mental health from the Centre for Research into Reading, Literature, and Society (CRILS). Read More
Word Origins Monosyllabic moping By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist the common but etymologically opaque verb “mope”, and other monosyllabic verbs. Read More
The Contagion Next Time by Sandro Galea OUP celebrates their BMA 2022 Award winners By Sandro Galea, Harold Thimbleby, and David Beaumont OUP celebrates their BMA 2022 Award winners: Sandra Galea, Harold Thimbleby, and David Beaumont. Read More
Animal Frontiers You are what you eat. Or is your immune system what you eat? [infographic] By Sarah Reed From a recent Animal Frontiers article, we look at the interactions between the immune system and metabolism and how what you eat changes your immune response. Read More
Oxford World's Classics Eight classic novels to inspire your New Year [reading list] By Ashendri Wickremasinghe Are you searching for inspiration to help further your goals this new year? Reading books offers an easy yet effective way to help navigate life, so who better to turn to than authors of some well-loved Oxford World’s Classics! Read More
Word Origins 2023 and adventures in the idiom wonderland By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist explores a selection of idioms, including the amazing story of the phrase “fox’s wedding.” Read More
Dancing on Bones History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea by Katie Stallard - best books of 2022 for your 2023 reading list Six books from 2022 to add to your 2023 reading list By Ashendri Wickremasinghe Here are six books from 2022 that reviewers and critics loved that you should add to your 2023 reading list. Read More
Are you setting goals for New Year 2023? Check out our quiz for book recommendations based on your resolutions for the new year! Which book matches your New Year’s resolution? [Quiz] By Lindsey Stangl Are you setting goals for 2023? Check out our quiz for book recommendations based on your resolutions for the new year! Read More
The Age of Interconnection by Jonathan Sperber Infectious disease in the twentieth century By Jonathan Sperber In the first half of the century, the three great killers among endemic diseases—smallpox, malaria, and tuberculosis—raging around the world (we think today of malaria as a tropical malady but in the 1920s there were outbreaks as far north as Siberia) were each responsible for more deaths than the 80 million who died in both world wars. Innovations stemming from the Second World War, an immense hothouse of technological progress, made it possible to contemplate combatting infectious disease on a global scale. Read More
Can you itch an itch? By Edwin L. Battistella Reading Dan Chaon’s novel Sleepwalk last summer, I noticed his use of the verb itch to mean scratch. Read More
December 2022 The Journal of Gerontology What do we know about the effect of gut microbiome in diet and exercise on brain health? By Noah Koblinsky, Krista Power, Laura Middleton, Guylaine Ferland, and Nicole Anderson The gastrointestinal tract is one of the most densely populated microbial habitats on earth, containing more cells than those that make up the human body and 150 times the number of genes than exist within the human genome. An unhealthy gut environment is characterized by a reduction in the diversity of bacteria, leading to gut barrier permeability and the release of endotoxins into the blood stream that negatively impacts the brain. Read More
Publishing 101 Social media at a glance: for academics By Cassie Ammerman There are dozens of social media platforms, each with a distinct personality and purpose, so it can be difficult to know which social media platforms are the most useful for academics to engage with. That’s why we’ve put together this how-to guide to help you decide which social media platforms are the best fit for […] Read More
International Human Rights The cost of crises on human rights By Stephen P Marks, Meghna Abraham, Martin Scheinin, and Lavanya Rajamani With crises such as climate change and pandemics permanently on our minds, it seems a pertinent time to reflect on how these challenges impact on human rights. Specifically, it is essential to think about whether the way we are governed through these challenging times impacts on human rights. Read More
Gender and Domestic Violence Domestic violence: deconstructing the “gender paradigm” By John Hamel and Brenda Russell Most people—and not just the average citizen but, sadly, most policy makers and other stakeholders—hold mistaken and distorted beliefs about intimate partner violence (IPV). This is what some call the “gender paradigm.” Read More
A Winter Breviary by Rebecca Gayle Howell and Reena Esmail A Winter Breviary: Q&A with poet Rebecca Gayle Howell By Rebecca Gayle Howell A Winter Breviary is a triptych of carols that tells the story of a person walking in the woods on solstice night. This pilgrim—she, he, they—searches for hope, the hope they cannot name, or hear or see. And still, they walk deeper and deeper into the dark. Read More
Word Origins Skin-deep: wrinkle, pimple, and mole By Anatoly Liberman The history of “dude” has been documented with amazing accuracy. Read More
Nine literary New Year’s resolutions Do you need some inspiration for your New Year’s resolutions? If you’re in a resolution rut and feeling some of that winter gloom, then you’re not alone. To help you on your way to an exciting start to 2017, we’ve enlisted the help of some of history’s greatest literary and philosophical figures–on their own resolutions, and inspiring thoughts for the New Year. Read More
China's Next Act: How Sustainability and Technology are Reshaping China's Rise and the World's Future by Scott M. Moore What’s next for China? Sustainability, technology, and the world’s future By Scott M. Moore We must re-envision our thinking about China’s rise and its role in the world in terms of two newer issue areas, sustainability and emerging technology. Read More
The Good It Promises, the Harm It Does: critical essays on Effective Altruism The predictably grievous harms of Effective Altruism By Alice Crary, Lori Gruen, and Carol J. Adams Over the past decade the philanthropic ideology of Effective Altruism has grown massively both in attracting funds and in influencing young people to try to make as much money as they can and give most of it away. But a series of catastrophic financial hustles in the world of cryptocurrency has brought EA heightened attention and started to expose its dangers. Read More
Broadway Bodies by Ryan Donovan Funny how it ain’t so funny: casting, Funny Girl, and Broadway’s body issues By Ryan Donovan Sometimes the meeting of an actor and a role produces a rare kind of alchemy that forever bonds the two… and sometimes the opposite happens. The former occurred when twenty-one-year-old Barbra Streisand was cast as famed comedienne Fanny Brice in the 1964 musical Funny Girl. Read More
Leonardo's Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts Leonardo and the Salvator Mundi: fame and infamy By Margaret Dalivalle When people ask me about the Salvator Mundi, just like Google, I can predict the questions they will “also ask.” Read More
Rome: Strategy of Empire The history of Ancient Rome: a timeline By James Lacey From Octavian’s victory at Actium to its traditional endpoint in the West, the Roman Empire lasted a solid 500 years—one-fifth of all recorded history. Embark on your own journey through the past with this informative timeline detailing major events within the Roman Empire. Read More
Word Origins Dude: a long history of a short word By Anatoly Liberman The history of “dude” has been documented with amazing accuracy. Read More
Moby Dick Oxford World's Classics Weird Moby-Dick By Hester Blum There are a lot of peculiar phrases in Moby-Dick. My new introduction to the second Oxford World’s Classics edition of Herman Melville’s novel highlights the startling weirdness of the book, both in its literary form and its language. Read More
Becoming Emeritus By Edwin L. Battistella When I received the letter granting me emeritus status, I naturally got curious about the etymology. Read More
Genome Biology and Evolution (GBE) Inside the genome of the world’s weirdest octopus By Casey McGrath The greater argonaut, Argonauta argo, has a reputation for being the world’s weirdest octopus and indeed may be one of the most unusual and mysterious creatures to roam the ocean. Read More
November 2022 Identifying future-proof science by Peter Vickers How to identify a scientific fact By Peter Vickers When do we have a scientific fact? Scientists, policymakers, and laypersons could all use an answer to this question. But despite its obvious importance, humanity lacks a good answer. Read More
Word Origins Say cheese, or l’esprit d’escalier neglected and forgotten By Anatoly Liberman As everybody knows, the phrase in the title, l’esprit d’escalier, refers to a good thought occurring too late. Read More
The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000-1500 Bringing the Church back in: European state-formation, AD 1000-1500 [long read] By Jørgen Møller European state-formation would have looked very different if rulers did not constantly have to negotiate with a strong clergy, independent townsmen, and the nobility over, inter alia, the wherewithal for warfare, succession and public peace. But the medieval Church shaped European societies in other ways than this. It was the one institution of late antiquity that survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, and it carried the torch of the Roman world after the Empire collapsed. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Looking into space: how astronomy and astrophysics are teaching us more than ever before [podcast] By Steven Filippi, Himalee Rupesinghe, and Tessa Mathieson On today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we’re looking at what these recent discoveries mean to our understanding of the universe. Why should we all know about distant galaxies? How will this learning impact us? And what role will artificial intelligence and machine-learning play in the wider astronomy field in the coming years… Read More
Excommunication in Thirteenth-Century England by Felicity Hill Excommunication in thirteenth-century England: a volatile tool By Felicity Hill Reactions to excommunication in thirteenth-century England varied considerably, but its consequences for society as well as individuals were significant. The fact that sentences needed to be publicised so that communities knew who to avoid made excommunication a valuable tool of mass communication. However, when the sanction was used unfairly or vengefully, this publicity shone a light on such abuses, with potentially damaging consequences for the church. Read More
Scientific Testimony Pursuing deliberative democracy through scientific testimony By Mikkel Gerken Science skepticism is a central threat to deliberative democracy. Generally speaking, scientific investigations based on collaboration between scientific experts are far more reliable than individual efforts when it comes to finding the truth about complex matters. So, since public deliberation is better off when it rests on science, deliberative democracy requires a reasonably high degree of public uptake of science communication. Read More
The Curse of the Somers Was it murder? Why a US Navy hanging resonates nearly 200 years later By James P. Delgado In 1842, The US brig Somers, commanded by Alexander Slidell Mackenzie was the site of what may have been the only planned mutiny in the US Navy’s history. The repercussions of the Somers Affair had long felt effects, and inspired Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. Read More
Word Origins Some premature gleanings By Anatoly Liberman I decided not to wait another week, let alone another four weeks, and discuss the notes and queries from my mail. As usual, I express my gratitude to those who have read the posts, added their observations, or corrected my mistakes. Read More
Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York by Daniel S. Levy Boss Tweed and the “Forty Thieves” of New York City By Daniel S. Levy Boss Tweedborn—William Magear Tweed—and the “Tweed Ring” comprised of 20 aldermen and 20 assistant alderman in Tamanay Hall dominated New York politics for profit in the second half of the 1800s. Read More
Leonardo's Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts Salvator Mundi: the journey of a false saviour By Robert B. Simon Discovering the provenance of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi formed a significant part of the book that I co-authored with Margaret Dalivalle and Martin Kemp. Determining which records and references pertained to the original and which to the many copies and derivations of the painting required the unraveling of dozens of documentary threads, intertwined and occasionally knotted, stretching across the centuries. Read More
The World According to Proust by Joshua Landy Big, wonderful, difficult questions (and answers) about life in Proust [interactive] By Joshua Landy For the 100th anniversary of Marcel Proust’s death, Joshua Landy explores the existential questions posed by “In Search of Lost Time” to show how Proust’s novel connects to our contemporary lives. Read More
Analysis The return of Humpty Dumpty: who is the ultimate arbiter of meaning? By Lucy McDonald In philosophy of language, as well as in many court opinions (e.g., Liversidge v. Anderson, 1942), Humpty Dumpty is held up as an example of how not to think about meaning. Contrary to his claim that the meaning of his words is determined solely by his intentions, there is broad agreement that what words mean is not solely up to us—we can change their meanings over time, but that requires a group effort, and something like consensus. Read More
Word Origins In the footsteps of our greatest favorite: vampire By Anatoly Liberman We love books and movies about vampires, don’t we? Everybody knows who Dracula was, and many people believe that we owe the entire myth to him. This, however, is not true. In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist deals with the history of the word “vampire.” Read More
The Oxford History of Life-Writing: Volume 7: Postwar to Contemporary, 1945-2020 What is “life-writing” and why does it matter? By Patrick Hayes Over the last few decades “life-writing” started to be used as an umbrella term for an increasingly eclectic range of literary forms and invested with a new level of cultural importance. Read More
East of the Wardrobe Everyday Narnia: the language of another world By Warwick Ball There is little doubt that “Narnia” has effectively entered the English language and that references to a “wardrobe” or “wardrobe door” have been given additional meanings by C. S. Lewis: any reference to it requires no explanation simply because everyone knows. Read More
Solo Time For Cello 2 From orchestra to cello solo: the gentle art of arranging music By David Blackwell Art has always been transformed from one form to another: books to films, plays to operas, even music to novels—Beethoven’s Eroica and Anthony Burgess’s Napoleon Symphony, for example. Within music, composers have been equally ready to adapt and modify. Read More
Oxford Open Infrastructure and Health A new OUP journal connecting health and infrastructure By Evelyne de Leeuw and Patrick Harris This week sees the launch of our new journal, Infrastructure and Health: Big Connections for Wellbeing, or OOIH for short. Humanity strives to and achieves progress through infrastructure. Infrastructure provides the hardware, tools, and services for a connected and functioning planet. Those connections are not just for humans but whole ecosystems. But the world faces challenges […] Read More
Word Origins Post-summer gleanings By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist answers readers’ questions on the origin of the word “race”, variants of “in one’s stockinged feet”, the folkloric creature Lady Hoonderlarly, and “bonfire.” Read More
Democracies in America: Keywords for the Nineteenth Century and Today Defining “democracy” By D. Berton Emerson and Gregory Laski One week before the 2022 US midterm elections, President Joseph Biden delivered a prime-time address at Union Station in Washington, DC. Biden suggested that something foundational, fundamental, was at stake. He reminded listeners of the definition of democracy. Read More
Analysis Delegitimising “reverse racism” By Jordan Scott “Affirmative action? That’s just reverse racism!” We’ve all heard claims like this; the term “reverse racism” used to attack some progressive project. If you’re anything like me, something about it strikes you as fundamentally misguided. Read More
Walking from Dandi: In Search of Vikas Gandhi weaves: lyrical beauty in Mahatma Gandhi’s writing By Harmony Siganporia Now I’ve read my Gandhi and while I’ve always found his writing incredibly coherent and often inspired, I haven’t necessarily thought of it as lyrical. I realise now that this is because I had not known where to look. Read More
The spell of spelling By Edwin L. Battistella English spelling can be endlessly frustrating. From its silent letters (could, stalk, salmon, February, and on and on) to its nonsensical rules (i before e except ….), to the pronunciation of ough (in cough, through, though, and thought). Read More
Advancing Your Research Career Five tips to improve your research culture By Magdalena Bak-Maier With principal investigators facing work, life, mental health and career challenges, time is often a limiting factor. But creating a healthy environment helps all achieve and feel well. A typical principal investigator (PI) must overcome many challenges and has a great deal to learn. The experience was accurately portrayed in a recent Twitter post with the caption […] Read More
The Rules of Rescue When can you refuse to rescue? By Theron Pummer At what point are you morally permitted to refuse to rescue distant strangers? How much must you give over the course of your life? Theron Pummer explores these extremely difficult questions. Read More
Leonardo's Salvator Mundi and the Collecting of Leonardo in the Stuart Courts Salvator Mundi: poor picture, poor Leonardo By Martin Kemp What does “SM” stand for in the context of Leonardo da Vinci? Our visual engagement with the painting has been skewed by fictionalised stories, lurid journalism, and attributional vitriol. For me, SM now stands for “Sensationalised Mess.” How the painting actually works as a devotional image, what it means, and how it embodies Leonardo’s science and art have become lost. Read More
SHAPE Interview with Dr Molly Morgan Jones, Director of Policy at the British Academy on SHAPE By Molly Morgan Jones At OUP, we are the largest university press publisher of SHAPE disciplines. Back in 2021, we joined the SHAPE initiative along with the British Academy, LSE, the Arts Council, and other key partners to show our support and advocacy for these vitally important areas of research and scholarship. Read More
Word Origins In one’s stockinged feet By Anatoly Liberman One does not need to be an etymologist to suggest that stocking consists of “stock-” and “-ing”. The trouble is that though “-ing” occurs in some nouns, it looks odd in stocking. Few English words have more seemingly incompatible senses than stock. Read More
Publishing 101 Is publishing sustainable? By Zoe Cokeliss Barsley The shift from print publishing toward digital publishing brings environmental benefits that will help to reduce publishing’s contribution to the climate and nature emergencies. Read More
Civil war and the end of the Roman Empire By Adrastos Omissi Adrastos Omissi argues that the collapse of the West Roman Empire in the fifth century AD was caused not, primarily, by invasions of external “barbarians” from Germanic Europe, but was rather a product of the endemic civil wars that sprang up in the Roman Empire from the third century AD onwards. Read More
Walking Among Pharoahs and Tutankhamun Exploring Ancient Egypt with Carter, Reisner, and Co. [interactive map] By Ashendri Wickremasinghe Travel back in time to Ancient Egypt and explore pyramids with hidden burial chambers, colossal royal statue, miniscule gold jewelry, and much more. Read More
Gobal Tantra Modern tantra and the global history of religion By Julian Strube For good reasons, tantra often stands at the center of debates about cultural appropriation and the commodification of religious practices. Through nineteenth-century orientalist studies and missionary polemics, it became associated with sexual licentiousness and abhorrent rituals before it was refashioned as a way to sexual liberation and individual freedom. Read More
The Virgin of the Seven Daggers and Other Stories by Vernon Lee Vernon Lee, history, and horror By Aaron Worth Some of the most acclaimed films to come out of the horror mini-boom of the past decade mix history and horror in disconcerting ways. Of course, these are not the first scary movies or stories do this. But when, and how, did horror first get historical? Read More
LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives LGBTQ+ Victorians in the archives By Simon Joyce The first challenge that confronts researching LGBTQ+ Victorians in the archives is the question: where to look? Simon Joyce explores how to access more accurate, reliable information about LGBTQ+ Victorians. Read More
Mussolini in Myth and Memory The March on Rome: commemoration or celebration? By Paul Corner Throughout Europe reaction to the March on Rome was, inevitably, mixed, with some appalled by the violence and the total disregard the fascists showed for parliamentary politics, while others—such as those among British conservative opinion—thought that the fascist government would bring much-needed “order” to what they condescendingly saw as typically Mediterranean chaos. Many right-wing European politicians looked on Mussolini and to his mode of achieving power with admiration. One man in particular was greatly impressed by the March on Rome and even hoped to emulate it. This was Adolf Hitler. Read More
Oxford Academic Transparency in open access at OUP By Rhodri Jackson As a not-for-profit university press which publishes over 75% of its journals on behalf of scholarly societies and other organisations, OUP is committed to a transparent approach to OA. The transition to OA can appear opaque, steeped in jargon and complexity, and we see a major part of our role in the move to OA as being as open and clear as possible. Read More
Word Origins Hue and cry, or the mystery of red gold By Anatoly Liberman I have always wanted to write about the enigmatic phrase “red gold.” Our characterization of color is a matter of culture, not physiology. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Egyptology at the turn of the century [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Sarah Butcher On November 1, 1922 Egyptologist Howard Carter and his team of excavators began digging in a previously undisturbed plot of land in the Valley of the Kings. For decades, archaeologists had searched for the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun with no success, and that November was to be Carter’s final attempt to locate the lost treasures. What Carter ultimately discovered—the iconic sarcophagus, the mummy that inspired whispers of a curse, and the thousands of precious artifacts—would shape Egyptian politics, the field of archaeology, and how museums honor the past for years to come. Read More
The London Restaurant, 1840-1914 COVID-19 and the London restaurant: a Victorian perspective By Brenda Assael The last two years have proved the restaurant business is nothing if not adaptable. In my residential London neighbourhood, a popular Indian restaurant quickly moved to take-away meals once the first wave of the pandemic hit, a pattern many other businesses followed in a fight for survival. Theirs is a small-scale, family operation; factors that […] Read More
Orwell & Empire The Mahatma and the Policeman: how did George Orwell view Gandhi? By Douglas Kerr George Orwell served for five years in the 1920s as an officer in the Imperial Police in Burma, at that time part of the British Raj. He was to write about the Empire as an unjustifiable despotism. Mahatma Gandhi did more than anyone else to bring about the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, the first step in the dismantling of the Empire. Orwell should have seen Gandhi as a comrade in arms, a fellow anti-imperialist, even a hero. Instead he speaks of Gandhi with suspicion, hostility, irritation, and ” sort of aesthetic distaste.” Why? Read More
How Romantics and Victorians Organized Information: Commonplace Books, Scrapbooks, and Albums The Butcher’s Books: how did Tennyson write In Memoriam? By Jillian M. Hess Where do we go to mourn the dead? A graveyard? A photograph album? A Facebook page? The very intangibility of death makes us yearn for a physical space to locate grief—a space we might return to. For many Victorians, mourning took place in notebooks. This was certainly the case for the future poet laureate, Alfred Tennyson. Read More
Oxford World's Classics How well do you know these spooky Oxford World’s Classics? By Ashendri Wickremasinghe To help put you in the apt mood for Halloween this year, we have created a quiz to test your knowledge on some of Oxford World’s Classics scariest tales. Are you up for the challenge? Read More
What Everyone Needs to Know: Sanctions Sanctions: who uses sanctions, why, and what impact do they have? By Bruce W. Jentleson Even before the extensive economic sanctions against Russia for its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it was hard to browse the news without seeing reports of yet another imposition of sanctions by one country or another. Read More
Planting Clues Environmental DNA: the future of forensic testing? By David J. Gibson Can plants solve crimes? It’s been known for a long time that botanical evidence has forensic value. Indeed, exciting recent advances allowing the detection and sequencing of minute amounts of DNA are providing new tools for conservation biologists and forensic scientists. Read More
The Fasces The radical reinterpretation of the fasces in Mussolini’s Italy By T. Corey Brennan In November 1914, when Benito Mussolini, then prominent as a revolutionary socialist, tried to mobilize popular opinion for Italy to intervene in World War I, he gave the name “Autonomous Fasci of Revolutionary Action” to his disparate supporters. The term “fascio” (plural “fasci”) was then common in Italy’s political lexicon, in its core meaning of “bundle”, to denote a loosely-organized group grounded in a common ideology. When Ralph Bunche met Princess Margaret By Kal Raustiala As the Under-Secretary General of the UN, Ralph Bunche was one of the leaders in the fight to end empire in the second half of the Twentieth Century, In 1965, he had the opportunity to speak to Princess Margaret about the role of the British Empire in the world. Read More
Word Origins Crabbed age and youth cannot live together, but crabs and scorpions can By Anatoly Liberman The origin of the word blatherskite ~ bletherskate “foolish talk; foolish talker” is supposedly secure. The Oxford Etymologist investigates… Read More
Oxford Academic A year in review: Open Access at OUP By Lucy Oates, Georgia Bailey, and Charley James Lawrance The open access landscape is fast evolving, and for good reason. Following the global outbreak of COVID-19 in which research and knowledge lay at the heart of hope, we have seen a renewed focus in the industry for open access publishing. In recognition of Open Access Week 2022, we reflect on the progress that has been made at OUP and the people who have been influential in driving it. Read More
Why We Hate: Understanding the Roots of Human Conflict Why we hate (and whether we can do something about it) By Michael Ruse Human nature is a paradox. On the one hand, thanks to our evolution in the five million years since we left the jungle, we are a highly social species. On the other hand, as the last centuries show only too well, we can be truly hateful towards our fellow human beings—on a group level, war, and on an individual level, prejudice. Read More
Cold War: A Very Short Introduction Nine new books to understand the Cold War [reading list] By OUP History This October marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense political and military standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. To mark the anniversary, we’re sharing some of our latest history titles on the Cold War for you to explore, share, and enjoy. We have also granted free access to selected chapters, for a limited time, for you to dip into. Read More
The Masnavi, Book Five Rumi’s subversive poetry and his sexually explicit stories By Jawid Mojaddedi Rumi, the thirteenth-century Muslim poet, has become a household name in the last few decades, even becoming the best-selling poet in North America thanks to translations of his work into English. Verses of his poetry are used to begin yoga sessions, religious ceremonies, and weddings, and are ubiquitous throughout social media, in addition to actual […] Read More
Oxford Music Ralph Vaughan Williams: preserving the publishing legacy By Simon Wright In the Vaughan Williams’s 150th anniversary year, his primary publisher Oxford University Press are donating around 60 items to the British Library, to be preserved and made available to musicians and researchers. These items include artefacts from all stages in the publishing process, from conductor’s marked scores, copyist’s copies and handwritten notes by the composer. In this blog, Simon Wright highlights some interesting features amongst the titles being donated. Read More
Word Origins Do you blather when you skate? By Anatoly Liberman The origin of the word blatherskite ~ bletherskate “foolish talk; foolish talker” is supposedly secure. The Oxford Etymologist investigates… Read More
Oxford Open Journals Towards climate justice: the role of cross-disciplinary Open Access research By Eelco J. Rohling, Peter D. Lund, Rachael J.M. Bashford-Rogers, Evelyne de Leeuw, Robert Vajtai, Sam Gilbert, and Patrick Harris To mitigate for the huge environmental and societal impacts we are facing across the world, scientists and scholars, policy makers, governments, and industry leaders need to connect and collaborate effectively. Open access publishing has a role to play in facilitating the discourse needed, by ensuring that the most up-to-date research is accessible, re-usable, and available to a wide audience quickly. Read More
State lotteries in modern America The intertwined history of state lotteries and convenience stores By Jonathan D. Cohen This past summer, millions of Americans were transfixed by the prospect of becoming billionaires. After weeks with no winner, the jackpot for the multi-state lottery game Mega Millions rose to $1.3 billion before being won by an as-yet-unnamed gambler who purchased the winning ticket at a Speedway gas station in Des Plaines, Illinois. Or, more specifically, at the convenience store portion of the gas station, where customers can purchase gas, food, drinks, cigarettes, and, of course, lottery tickets. Read More
Solo Time for Cello Eight composers whose music we should know By Kathy Blackwell From Teresa Carreno to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, this blog post features composers who experienced barriers to music education within their lifetimes, leading to their exclusion from the historical canon. Read More
Being a careful reader By Edwin L. Battistella When we are moving briskly though a supermarket, skimming ads, or focusing on a big purchase, it’s easy to be a less-than-careful reader. Read More
Public Policy and Aging Report: Aging in Asian American and Pacific Islander Communities Reframing an aging policy agenda for the AAPI community By Oliver J. Kim Over the past few years, we have had great discussions on societal inequalities in our nation’s infrastructure, and hopefully these in turn will result in policy changes. Aging, too, is having such a review as we think through how older people of color face disparities in key needs such as financial security, housing, and healthcare. Read More
Oxford Libraries Which library should you visit? [Quiz] By Megan Whitlock Are you a lover of libraries or just looking for somewhere new to explore? Get some inspiration for your next trip by taking this short quiz and finding out which library you should visit! Read More
Word Origins Noises off? A guarded tribute to onomatopoeia and sea-sickness By Anatoly Liberman While trying to solve etymological riddles, we often encounter references to sound-imitation where we do not expect them, but the core examples hold no surprise. It seems that nouns and verbs describing all kinds of noises should illustrate the role of onomatopoeia, and indeed, hum, ending in m, makes one think of quiet singing (crooning) and perhaps invites peace, while drum, with its dr-, probably evokes the idea of the noise associated with this instrument. Read More
900 Miles from Home Memorable years, formative years: why do boys stop singing in their teens? By Martin Ashley There are many adult men who sang as small boys but now either don’t sing at all or who have had long gaps in their lives with no singing. Professor Martin Ashley discusses how to support adolescent boys as their voices change. Read More
Philosophy for Public Health and Public Policy: an interview with James Wilson By James Wilson James Wilson, Professor of Philosophy at University College London, and co-director of the UCL Health Humanities Centre, talks to Peter Momtchiloff about philosophy’s role in addressing and supporting public health policy. Read More
Howard Carter and Tutankhamun: a different view By Peter Der Manuelian On 4 November 1922, Englishman Howard Carter acted on a “hunch” and discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, setting the world at large on fire, archaeologically speaking. “King Tut’s tomb” and the (much older) Pyramids of Giza;:have any other monuments come to symbolize ancient Egyptian civilization—and archaeology—better? Read More
Word Origins Three unwilling partners: “heath,” “heathen,” and “heather” By Anatoly Liberman Did heathens live in a heath, surrounded by heather? You will find thoughts on this burning question of our time at the end of today’s blog post. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Distrust in institutions: past, present, and future [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer In this episode of The Oxford Comment, we speak with Brian Levack, Robert Faris, and Tom Nichols on the past, present, and future of institutional distrust, with a particular focus on the contentious 2016 and 2020 US presidential elections. Read More
The language of labor By Edwin L. Battistella September means back to school for students, but for those of us in unions, it is also the celebration the American Labor Movement and a good opportunity for us to take a look at some of the language of the labor movement. Read More
Trusts and Equitable Obligations A life map of Equity and Trusts [interactive map] By Warren Barr and John Picton Through our lives, the law of Equity and Trusts is very often working in the background. If a parent wants to provide for their child, she will need to set up a trust. If we fall in love and move in with a partner, the law of Equity and Trusts might control who owns the family home. When we get older and start to plan for death, Equity and Trusts controls the ways in which we can provide for our loved ones. Read More
The Survival Nexis: Science, Technology, and World Affairs The Ukraine invasion: wrestling at the edge of the nuclear cliff By Charles Weiss The paradoxical combination of loud saber-rattling and cautious military strategy on both sides of the Ukraine war follows the new rules of conflict involving nuclear powers. Read More
Metafilm Music in Jean-Luc Godard's Cinema Jean-Luc Godard’s filmic legacy By Michael Baumgartner Jean-Luc Godard died at the age of 91 on 13 September 2022 at his home in Rolle at the Lake of Geneva in Switzerland. The uncompromising French-Swiss cineaste was arguably one of the most influential filmmakers of the last 60 years. With his innovative approach to cinema, he broke with tried-and-tested conventions and taught us […] Read More
The Short Story: A Very Short Introduction Can you match the famous opening line to the story? [Quiz] By Megan Whitlock Do you know your Austen from your Orwell? Consider yourself a literature whiz? Or do you just love a compelling story opening? Try out this quiz and see if you can match the famous opening line to the story and put your knowledge to the test. Read More
Networks of Modernity: Germany in the Age of the Telegraph, 1830-1880 10 German history titles to read this autumn [reading list] By OUP History Here are 10 books that we recommend if you want to learn something new about Germany’s past, but don’t know where to begin. Read More
Word Origins The word “condom” By Anatoly Liberman For a long time, the word “condom” was unprintable. Neither the original OED nor The Century Dictionary featured the word. Several venues for discovering the origin of “condom” have been tried. It surfaced in texts at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but we cannot be sure that the word was coined in England. Read More
What is transparent peer review? By Megan Taphouse and Francesca Cockshull Transparent peer review is a relative newcomer and not widely used at present, but it has grown in popularity and is becoming an increasingly popular choice. The question is—why? This blog post takes a closer look at the transparent peer review process, its rise in popularity, and the challenges journals, reviewers and editors face with this model. Read More
Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea Shipwreck tales: bounty from the archives By David Cressy News broke in 2022 that the royal frigate Gloucester that sank in 1682 had been located off the coast of Norfolk. The discovery excited marine archeologists and treasure hunters, and drew attention to the scandal of the warship’s loss. Read More
Horse power from the powerhouse of the cell [infographic] By Sarah Reed In a recent Animal Frontiers article, we review mitochondrial physiology and the relationship of mitochondrial phenotypes to performance in equine athletes, and take a look at their impact in horse competitions. Read More
Peasants Making History Alice le Fynch and new ways of seeing medieval society from below By Christopher Dyer Everyone in the village of Sedgeberrow must have known Alice le Fynch, a determined personality defending the interests of her family. Christopher Dyer discusses why Alice, and other medieval peasants like her, should not be underestimated. Read More
Performing Antiquity Why we all need more Lesbian Dance Theory By Samuel N. Dorf Last month a Member of Congress joined Fox News to claim President Joe Biden is “robbing hard working Americans to pay for Karen’s daughter’s degree in lesbian dance theory” in response to the announcement that the President was providing $20,000 in debt relief for Pell Grant recipients and $10,000 for many other borrowers. Read More
Word Origins On mattocks and maggots, their behavior and origin By Anatoly Liberman The mattock, a simple tool, has a name troublesome to etymologists even though it has been known since the Old English period. In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist explores a new hypothesis for the origins of “mattock”. Ralph Vaughan Williams and the art of the amateur By Eric Saylor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was one of the twentieth century’s great champions of and advocates for amateur music-making. Explore his views on the amateur vs professional relationship, and discover what he might have thought of America’s Got Talent, and other reality talent shows. Read More
The Very Short Introductions Podcast Four Very Short Introductions podcast episodes on the Classical world By The VSI Podcast Team Did “Ancient Greece” exist? Are all Epicureans decadent dandies? What do we really know about Alexander the Great? Explore the people, places, and philosophies of the Classical world through these four podcast episodes from the expert authors of our Very Short Introductions series. Read More
Word Origins Etymology gleanings for August 2022 By Anatoly Liberman The history of “cheek by jowl” and especially the pronunciation of “jowl” could serve as the foundation of a dramatic plot, says the Oxford Etymologist in this week’s blog post. Read More
Performing the Kinaidos Unmanly men and the flexible meaning of kinaidos in Classical antiquity By Tom Sapsford Tom Sapsford discusses the “kinaidos”: a type of person noted in ancient literature for his effeminacy and untoward sexual behaviour. Some scholars think he was perhaps an imaginary figure, but Sapsford looks into financial records, letters, and temples that complicate our understanding of this figure. Read More
BJS Four ways machine learning is set to revolutionize breast surgery By Viraj Shah and Karen Soh Machine learning has grown to become quite the buzzword in clinical research. Across recent years, we’ve seen an almost exponential increase in the number of successful machine learning trials conducted, with the technology now hailed as a torchbearer for healthcare’s artificial intelligence revolution. Read More
The Very Short Introductions Podcast Four Very Short Introductions podcast episodes to get you thinking By The VSI Podcast Team What does atheism mean to you? Is logic ancient history? How is Calvinism changing the world? Put your thinking cap on, earbuds in, and get listening to our curated collection of Very Short Introduction podcast episodes for thinkers. Read More
Blackfriars in Early Modern London East and west the preachers mouth: St. Anne Blackfriars in early modern London By Christopher Highley The experience of churchgoing at St Anne’s was undoubtedly shaped by the unconventional situation and layout of the place of worship, but in ways that are now hard to recover. Religious experience, like any other, is embodied experience that unfolds in particular spaces and physical conditions. St Anne’s parishioners may have considered the unorthodox nature of their worship space an unhappy accident of history, or they may just as readily have imbued it with special symbolic significance, making it an important focus of their collective identity. Read More
The Journal of Gerontology Formerly incarcerated women of color face worse health in later life By Kenzie Latham-Mintus, Monica Deck, and Elizabeth Nelson Incarceration takes a heavy toll on one’s mental and physical health. A growing share of older adults are now aging with incarceration histories and poor health. Read More
One True Logic Infinite potential: logic, philosophy, and the next tech revolution By Owen Griffiths and A. C. Paseau About a century ago, then, our world was transformed by a logical revolution, which may broadly be called philosophical. This transformation was the key to the technological advances of the past century. What about today’s logic? Could current advances in logic or its philosophy lead to the sort of computer-driven technological change we’ve seen in the past hundred years? Read More
Cheek by jowl By Anatoly Liberman The history of “cheek by jowl” and especially the pronunciation of “jowl” could serve as the foundation of a dramatic plot, says the Oxford Etymologist in this week’s blog post. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast The need for affordable and clean energy [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Stella Edison Check out Episode 75 of The Oxford Comment to hear from Martin J. Pasqualetti and Paul F, Meier on the need for affordable and clean energy, the history of energy in the US, and the dire implications of not changing our energy habits. Read More
Concepts of Elementary Particle Physics The CERN Large Hadron Collider is back By Michael E. Peskin The CERN Large Hadron Collider, the LHC, is the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. It smashes together protons with energies almost 7,000 times their intrinsic energy at rest to explore nature at distances as small as 1 part in 100,000 of the size of an atomic nucleus. These large energies and small distances hold clues to fundamental mysteries about the origin and nature of the elementary particles that make up matter. Read More
Humans, among other Classical Animals Disappearing animals, disappearing us: what can Classics teach us about the climate crisis? By Ashley Clements In enlightenment definitions, anthropological hierarchies, and early modern and modern capitalist exploitations of the natural world, European thought about the human remains indebted to Classical concepts. Read More
When Brains Meet Buildings: A Conversation Between Neuroscience and Architecture From navigation to architecture: how the brain interprets spaces and designs places By Michael A. Arbib How do our brains help us learn about the spatial relationships in our world and then use them to find our way from one place to another? And how might answering this question offer new insights into how architects design? Read More
The Private Life of William Shakespeare Monument: what did Shakespeare look like? By Lena Cowen Orlin In this OUPblog, Lena Cowen Orlin, author of the “detailed and dazzling” ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ presents a compelling case that Shakespeare designed his own funerary monument: a memorial less about death than about a life of accomplishment. Read More
Oxford Commentaries on the State Constitutions of the United States Policing direct democracy under US state constitutions: the Massachusetts example By Lawrence M. Friedman The United States Constitution does not contemplate the possibility of lawmaking via direct democracy. Almost every US state constitution, on the other hand, does. Read More
News from Moscow: Soviet Journalism and the Limits of Postwar Reform Has Russian journalism returned to Soviet era restrictions? By Simon Huxtable Simon Huxtable explores the history of Russian journalism in the Soviet Union and asks how, or whether, it compares to the situation of Russian journalists after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Read More
Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience Epiphanies: an interview with Sophie Grace Chappell By Sophie Grace Chappell Sophie Grace Chappell is Professor of Philosophy at the Open University, UK, and her new book “Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience” has just been published by OUP. In this interview, Sophie speaks with OUP Philosophy editor Peter Momtchiloff on exploring the concept and experience of epiphanies. Read More
International Affairs The nuclear egg: challenging the dominant narratives of the atomic age By Hebatalla Taha While researching early Egyptian perspectives on nuclear weapons, I repeatedly came across the symbol of the egg. The atomic bomb, and atomic technology more broadly, was frequently imagined and drawn as an egg in the period after August 1945 in Egyptian magazines and popular science journals. Read More
The Private Life of William Shakespeare Bequest: why did Shakespeare bequeath his wife a “second-best” bed? By Lena Cowen Orlin In this OUPblog, Lena Cowen Orlin, author of the “detailed and dazzling” ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ explores why Shakespeare left Anne Hathaway his “second-best” bed – and what this tells us about their relationship. Read More
The not-so-great caramel debate By Edwin L. Battistella I’m intrigued by the not-so-great debate over the pronunciation of caramel, which is instructive both socially and linguistically. Is the word pronounced with that second a, as caramel or without it, as carmel? Read More
The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care Becoming “properly empathic”: the importance of empathy in healthcare By Richard P. McQuellon There are three components to empathy and its expression: cognitive—the ability to grasp what the person thinks, to see things from their perspective; affective—the ability to discern another’s feelings; and importantly, the ability to act in such a way as to convey understanding to the other, sometimes referred to as compassionate empathy. Read More
Why Waterloo? How the Battle of Waterloo took its place in Britain’s national identity Why Waterloo? How the Battle of Waterloo took its place in Britain’s national identity By Luke Reynolds How does a country choose what to commemorate? What elevated the victory of 18 June 1815 over other great British victories in the previous quarter century of war? Read More
Selwyn's Law of Employment What does UK law say about strikes? By Astra Emir Every day there are reports of further strikes. Chaos on the railways, airlines, teachers, the NHS: the list goes on. Whilst strikes cause huge disruption for the public, they are also one of the few levers available to employees to bargain for their position. This blog post looks at what the main rights and requirements are, both for employers and employees, once a strike has been called. Read More
Word Origins The human aspect of etymology By Anatoly Liberman Why do so many words beginning with sn- evoke unpleasant associations? The Oxford Etymologist answers a reader’s question. Read More
Comparing Woolf’s Jacob’s Room and Beethoven’s Third By Urmila Seshagiri How does the formal originality of Jacob’s Room, its dark tenor, fit into the arc of Woolf’s career? I found unexpected and illuminating answers to this question in an all-Beethoven concert at Carnegie Hall. Read More
The Private Life of William Shakespeare Wedding: how did Shakespeare become a London playwright? By Lena Cowen Orlin In this OUPblog post, Lena Cowen Orlin, author of the “detailed and dazzling” ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ asks: just when was Shakespeare’s birthday? Read More
Word Origins The loudest short word in English: hurrah By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist discusses the origin of English’s loudest short word: hurrah! Read More
Oxford Academic Management in the twenty-first century [infographic] By Phoebe Murphy-Dunn What does a modern-day workplace look like? Explore our handy infographic, specially curated to reflect current discussions around workplaces and management techniques. Read More
Embattled America: The Rise of Anti-Politics and America's Obsession with Religion A democracy, if we can keep it By Jason C. Bivins At this fearful time in American democracy, the best way to starve anti-democratic forces of their energy is to change the subject away from conservative religion and demand investment in civic education, democratic localism, and human rights. Read More
Stars and Shadows: The Politics of Interracial Friendship from Jefferson to Obama The politics of interracial friendship By Saladin Ambar There have been instances of interracial friendship even in the worst of times. Explore some of these noteworthy friendships, which have served as windows into the state of race relations in the United States. Read More
Religion: was Shakespeare raised Catholic? By Lena Cowen Orlin In this OUPblog post, Lena Cowen Orlin, author of the “detailed and dazzling” ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ asks, was Shakespeare raised Catholic, and what role did his father, John, play. Read More
Perspectival Realism Public trust in model-based science: moving beyond the “view from nowhere” By Michela Massimi Never more than during the COVID-19 pandemic, the public has been reminded of the importance of science and the need to trust scientific advice and model-based public health policy. The delicate triangulation among scientific experts, policymakers, and the public, which is so central to fight misinformation and mistrust, has shone a light on a well-entrenched “view from nowhere” that science is often identified with. Why trust experts and their model-based policy anyway? Read More
Word Origins Returning to some of the shortest words in English By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist discusses the origin of English’s shortest words, including pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions. Read More
The Fall of Robespierre 24 hours in revolutionary Paris: 9 Thermidor [timeline] By Colin Jones The day of 9 Thermidor is universally acknowledged as a major turning-point in the history of the French Revolution. Discover the outline of the key events on 27 July that ultimately led to Robespierre’s death. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Equity in health care [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Christine Scalora There are many factors that affect our ability to be healthy, but we unfortunately do not all face the same barriers to accessing care. Such roadblocks can be related to cost, discrimination, location, sexual orientation, and gender identity, to name just a few. Read More
Virginia Woolf and Poetry Cut out characters and cracky plots: Jacob’s Room as Shakespeare play By Emily Kopley “Why, within the world of the novel, is Jacob unknowable? He is the hero of a Shakespeare play.” Emily Kopley uses Virginia Woolf’s letters with her brother to examine her first experimental novel, “Jacob’s Room”. Read More
The Private Life of William Shakespeare Birth: when was Shakespeare’s birthday? By Lena Cowen Orlin In this OUPblog post, Lena Cowen Orlin, author of the “detailed and dazzling” ‘The Private Life of William Shakespeare’ asks: just when was Shakespeare’s birthday? Read More
Mary Shelley: A Very Short Introducation How well do you know Mary Shelley? [Quiz] By Calla Veazie How well do you know Mary Shelley? Take this short quiz to find out and put your knowledge to the test. Read More
Word Origins Pulling the whole length of one’s leg By Anatoly Liberman Today, most English speakers will recognize the idiom: to pull one’s leg means “to deceive playfully, to tease.” Its origin has not been discovered. I usually stay away from guesswork, but in a blog, vague conjectures may not do anyone any harm. Read More
Oxford World's Classics A summer playlist inspired by Oxford World’s Classics By Ashendri Wickremasinghe To help curate your summer playlist and reading list, here are 10 songs and Oxford World’s Classics we recommend you add to your rotation: Read More
Oxford Open Immunology Were you prepared for this pandemic? By John Patcai Did you have a stock of fitted, unexpired N95 masks in your closet and a six-month supply of non-perishable foods in the pantry? Pretty much nobody was fully prepared, including me. Were you relying on the healthcare system to keep supplies on hand? Should we expect better preparedness from ourselves and our society? Read More
French History Democracy at work? France’s uncertain political future [long read] By Emile Chabal, Michael C. Behrent, and Marion Van Renterghem In the last of our essays, we discuss the unexpected outcome of the legislative elections and look back on the electoral cycle as a whole. What does French politics look like after a series of fractious campaigns? And do the results offer any hope for the future? Read More
International Affairs Global health diplomacy and North Korea in the COVID-19 era By Dong Jin Kim The COVID-19 pandemic set off an unprecedented scale of border closures, a rise in health nationalism, and inequitable global distribution of vaccines, which have all exacerbated the humanitarian situation in low-income countries. This has led to calls for greater cooperation to support vulnerable populations beyond sovereign borders. Read More
Word Origins Spelling Reform and after By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist discussed the English Spelling Reform movement. Read More
Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice - Abu Dhabi Police special edition Best practice: contributing to the global police community from the United Arab Emirates By Amanda Davies There is limited focus in scholarly and practitioner publications on policing in the Middle East and this is a problem in the global policing field because states like the United Arab Emirates are, by many measures, safe places. This asks the question: how are the police and law enforcement organisations achieving this enviable position? Read More
The Use of Force against Individuals in War under International Law Individualization of war or de-contextualization? A social critique By Ka Lok Yip A look at how examining the regulation of war through a social lens can provide important insights into the relationship between international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Read More
Pronouns and joint possession By Edwin L. Battistella I’ve been noticing compound possessives like Kace and I’s texts or at Paul and my home. Both examples struck me as a little odd. Read More
From Servant to Savant Classical music, privilege, and ghosts of the French Revolution By Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden The word privilege is a lightning rod in United States culture. For some, it indexes systemic inequities shaped by race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality, while for others, it represents a “woke” vocabulary used to enforce political correctness. Perhaps unsurprisingly, accusations of privilege have reached the classical music world. Read More
June 2022 Are all our fingers toes? By Anatoly Liberman The etymology of finger is debatable, and toe fares only a bit better. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Hong Kong 2022: one country, two systems? [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Patrick Horton-Wright The first of July 2022 marks the 25th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. It also marks the halfway point of a 50-year agreement between China and Hong Kong that established the “one country, two systems,” rule – a system designed to allow Hong Kong to “enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs” while still remaining a Special Administrative Region of China. Read More
The Old Hundredth Psalm Tune Recalling hymn tunes by Ralph Vaughan Williams By Robert Mann Hymn tunes of Ralph Vaughan Williams find consensus: undisputed quality. The foremost English composer of his generation is credited with composing, adapting, or arranging more than 80 tunes set to important hymns of our faith. Read More
The Politics of Succession The perennial problem of succession [long read] By Jørgen Møller These days it is perhaps difficult to put oneself emphatically into a world in which the dynastic realm appeared for most men as the only imaginable ‘political’ system”, writes Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities, his seminal book on the origins of modern nationalism. But this was the world a large majority of all Europeans lived in before the French Revolution and in many cases up until the First World War. Read More
Misfire: The Sarajevo Assassination and the Winding Road to World War I Almost “nothing”: why did the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand lead to war? By Paul Miller-Melamed Shot through the neck, choking on his own blood with his beloved wife dying beside him, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Habsburg Empire, managed a few words before losing consciousness: “It’s nothing,” he repeatedly said of his fatal wound. It was 28 June 1914, in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. Read More
Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged: Entitlement's Response to Social Progress Guns and the precarity of manhood By Kristin J. Anderson Manhood is precarious. Unlike womanhood, manhood is hard won and easily lost and therefore men go to great effort to perform it—for the most part for other boys and men—sometimes to their own and others’ detriment. Read More
International Affairs A caution in exploring non-Western International Relations By Tomohito Baji The past quarter of a century has seen a burgeoning scholarship on the disciplinary history of International Relations (IR). By re-examining and revealing how past intellectuals and experts wrote about “the international,” this revisionist work on IR history generates a critical gaze at the assumptions on which IR stands today. Read More
Word Origins Long-delayed gleanings By Anatoly Liberman No one doubts that “bachelor” came to Middle English at the end of the thirteenth century from Old French and meant “a young knight.” Most conjectures about the etymology of this mysterious word were offered long ago. Read More
Moby Dick Oxford World's Classics Moby-Dick is the answer. What is the question? By Hester Blum In December 2021, I was a contestant on the popular American quiz show Jeopardy! Every Jeopardy! game has a brief segment in which contestants share anecdotes about themselves, and I used my time to proselytize reading Moby-Dick. I talked about my work on the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of the novel, and emphasized that Melville’s novel is unexpectedly weird, moving, and hilarious despite its monumental reputation. Read More
Management of Healthcare Systems How can we build the resilience of our healthcare systems? By Sonu Goel and A. K. Aggarwal An effective and efficient health care system is a key to good health of citizens and plays a significant contribution to their country’s economy and overall development (WHO). Poor health systems hold back the progress on improving health in countries at all income levels, according to a joint report by the OECD, World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank. Read More
Conquering the Ocean Eight books to read to celebrate the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian’s Wall By OUP Classical Studies To commemorate the 1900th anniversary of Hadrian’s Wall, here’s a selection of titles exploring its history, ancient Rome’s influence on British identity, the new approaches being developed in Roman archaeology, and more. Read More
Bachelors and bachelorettes By Anatoly Liberman No one doubts that “bachelor” came to Middle English at the end of the thirteenth century from Old French and meant “a young knight.” Most conjectures about the etymology of this mysterious word were offered long ago. Read More
Happy Dreams of Liberty An enslaved Alabama family and the question of generational wealth in the US By R. Isabela Morales Wealthy Alabama cotton planter Samuel Townsend invited the attorney to his home in 1853, swearing him to secrecy. His elder brother Edmund had recently died, and the extensive litigation over Edmund’s estate had made it clear to Samuel that he needed an airtight will if he wanted to guarantee that his chosen heirs would inherit […] Read More
Public Policy & Aging Report Aduhelm and the politics of drug approval in the United States By Michael K. Gusmano During the past several decades, the US Congress has authorized billions of dollars for Alzheimer’s disease research, but this has not yet led to a major breakthrough in the treatment. It is therefore understandable why there was a great deal of excitement about a new drug being developed by Biogen for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, aducanumab (Aduhelm). Read More
Salvation on earth: “saviour” gods in Ancient Greece Salvation on earth: “saviour” gods in Ancient Greece By Theodora Suk Fong Jim What did it mean to be “saved” in antiquity? In a polytheistic system where multiple gods and goddesses reigned, which ones did the ancient Greeks turn to as their “saviour” and how could the gods be persuaded to “save”? Theodora Jim investigates how the Greeks imagine, solicit, and experience divine saving as they confronted the unknown and unknowable, and how their hopes of “salvation” differ from that in Christianity. Read More
Grove Music Eurovision 2022 in tempore belli: voices of the people, protest, and peace By Philip V. Bohlman Months before the Grand Finale of the Eurovision Song Contest on May 14, 2022 in Turin, Italy, Ukraine was able to claim both moral and musical victory with its entry, the Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania” (Stephanie). Together with the official videos of all other national entries, “Stefania” began circulating globally on multiple internet platforms in the early weeks of 2022, even as the threat of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine intensified and then reached the full force of invasion on 24 February. A “neat” etymology By Anatoly Liberman Where do you find the origin and, if necessary, the meaning of never say die, never mind, and other phrases of this type? Should you look them up under never, say, die, or mind? Will they be there? Read More
Off with their prefixes By Edwin L. Battistella I was teaching the history of the English Language and had just mentioned that, following the English Civil War, Charles I had been convicted of treason and beheaded. A question came from the back of the classroom: “Why do we say beheaded and decapitated, not the other way around?” Read More
The Changing Energy Mix The versatility of hydrogen: storable, portable, and renewable By Paul F. Meier Hydrogen is becoming a more versatile fuel, with the potential of storing and transporting renewable energy. This OUPblog post explores hydrogen’s use in electricity and heating and predicts greater demand for it in the future. Read More
“Never say die” and dictionaries for the living By Anatoly Liberman Where do you find the origin and, if necessary, the meaning of never say die, never mind, and other phrases of this type? Should you look them up under never, say, die, or mind? Will they be there? Read More
Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know Who is Putin fighting against? By Serhy Yekelchyk The Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted a curious disconnect between the supposed ideological objective of the war and the means used to achieve it. Read More
May 2022 The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Oxford World English Symposium 2022 recap [podcast] By Steven Filippi This past April, the Oxford English Dictionary hosted the World English Symposium, a two-day event featuring a series of parallel sessions and panels on topics relating not only to varieties of English, but language prejudice, colonialism, and context-based English language teaching, among others. Read More
When does a kid stop being a kid? By Edwin L. Battistella Last summer, my city’s community forum had a post that generated considerable discussion about the meaning of the word kid. Our governor had announced, via Twitter, that “All Oregon kids ages 1-18, regardless of immigration status, can get free summer meals” from the state’s Summer Food Service Program. Read More
Distrust of Institutions in Early Modern Britain and America Institutional distrust in Britain and America: a history By Brian P. Levack In the past few decades, trust and distrust have become frequent subjects of journalistic and academic discourse. Distrust of British and American public institutions has, in fact, a much longer and more complex history than most academics recognize. Read More
The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe The president and the Patriarch: the significance of religion in the Ukrainian crisis By Grace Davie Baffling though this seems to most Europeans, President Putin believes that by invading Ukraine he is defending Orthodox Christianity from the godless West. Read More
Oxford World's Classic 10 books to immerse yourself in the world of classical literature [reading list] By Lindsey Stangl Here are 10 books that we recommend you read if you’re looking to immerse yourself in the world of classical literature, but don’t know where to start: Read More
Bram Stoker's Dracula Five little-known facts about Dracula The 26th May 2022 marks the 125th anniversary of Dracula’s publication. Despite its reputation as one of the great Gothic novels, there are facts about Dracula that might surprise even the most hardcore fans. Read More
Selwyn's Law of Employment What does UK law say about sexual harassment in the workplace? By Astra Emir What does the law say about sexual harassment in the workplace? Barrister Astra Emir provides a guide to UK law on harassment for employers and employees. Read More
Idioms: a historian’s view By Anatoly Liberman Idioms are phrases and often pose questions not directly connected with linguistics. Linguists interested in the origin of idioms should be historians and archeologists. Read More
Every 90 Seconds by Anne P. DePrince The possibility of a world without intimate violence By Anne P. DePrince Today, stopping violence against women falls to few. The criminal legal system is charged with enforcing laws. A school delivers prevention programming to the children in attendance that day. A doctor privately addresses a survivor’s pain. Read More
French History The French presidential election: Macron’s strange victory [long read] By Emile Chabal, Michael C. Behrent, and Marion Van Renterghem After the Fall of France in 1940, historian Marc Bloch famously spoke of France’s “strange defeat” by Germany. Emmanuel Macron’s victory on April 24 might just as appropriately be called a “strange victory”. Read More
Unexpected Prosperity: How Spain Escaped the Middle Income Trap Beyond the Anna Karenina principle in economic development By Oscar Calvo-Gonzalez The opening sentence of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina–All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way–is popular among development practitioners, who often offer their own version as follows: All rich economies are alike; each poor economy is poor in its own way. This idea, which we can call the Anna Karenina principle of economic development, is meant as a recognition of the value of context and local knowledge. Read More
A long look at the origin of idioms By Anatoly Liberman Idioms are a thankful subject: one needs no etymological algebra or linguistic preparation for suggesting the origin of phrases. And yet it may be useful to explain how a professional goes about studying idioms. Read More
Oxford University Press logo A Florence Price mystery solved (part two) By Douglas W. Shadle To my knowledge, Price’s Boston address remained inconclusive until I visited Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Mullins Library this past January to find new leads for the Price biography I am co-authoring with Samantha Ege, the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, Oxford. The recovery of this information fills a void in a life story for which “the necessary evidence to write a detailed biography,” as preeminent Price scholar Rae Linda Brown once put it, “is surprisingly scant.” Read More
Epigeum logo Five ways to support international students studying in the UK By Polly Penter Going to university for the first time, or embarking on graduate study, is a significant transition for anyone. Doing it in an unfamiliar country, with no support network, unaccustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the daily life and daunted by an alien academic culture, can be overwhelming—and that’s before we even consider that students may be doing all this in a second language! Read More
A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering The curious popularity of “however” in research articles By David H. Foster There are many ways to signal a change of direction in a piece of text, but the most common is by inserting a “but.” Alternatives such as “although,” “though,” “however,” “yet,” and “nevertheless” generally run a poor second. In research articles, though, the prevalence of “however” increases—especially in some disciplines. Read More
The sour milk of etymology By Anatoly Liberman The time has come to write something about the etymology of the word milk. Don’t hold your breath: “origin unknown,” that is, no one can say why milk is called milk, but then no one can say why water is called water either. Read More
A Florence Price mystery solved (part one) By Douglas W. Shadle To my knowledge, Price’s Boston address remained inconclusive until I visited Special Collections at the University of Arkansas Mullins Library this past January to find new leads for the Price biography I am co-authoring with Samantha Ege, the Lord Crewe Junior Research Fellow in Music at Lincoln College, Oxford. The recovery of this information fills a void in a life story for which “the necessary evidence to write a detailed biography,” as preeminent Price scholar Rae Linda Brown once put it, “is surprisingly scant.” Read More
Before the UN Sustainable Development Goals Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is another tragic setback in our efforts at building a sustainable future By Martin Gutmann and Dan Gorman To say that wars cause disruption and hardship is stating the painfully obvious. Regardless of attempts—real or professed—at limiting civilian casualties, military conflict always unleashes suffering on the civilian population. History also shows us that the disruptive effect of war also runs deeper and far beyond the geographic limits of fighting with far-reaching consequences for sustainability. Read More
Oxford World's Classics A literary history of Modernism [timeline] By Ashendri Wickremasinghe In this timeline, we explore key figures and events that contributed to shaping modernism and celebrate 100 years since 1922: the pinnacle year of modernist publishing! Read More
The Changing Energy Mix Renewable solar energy: how does it work and can it meet demand? By Paul F. Meier While it is impractical to have solar panels dotting virtually every available surface of the earth, it does show the awesome potential of solar energy as a renewable energy to meet our needs for generations to come. Read More
The Journals of Gerontology: Series A We are what we breathe: environmental factors in biological ageing By Yanfei Guo and Fan Wu Volcanic eruptions, floods, and heatwaves have forced us to think seriously about whether the air we breathe will allow us to age healthily. To try to answer this question, we selected a unique sample of five middle-income countries on four continents and used NASA satellite remote sensing data to assess the associations between long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 and frailty in older populations. Read More
Social Workers' Desk Reference Social work in the anti-science era: how to build trust in science-based practice By Lisa Rapp-McCall Over the past five to seven years, there has been an increase in anti-science rhetoric and ideas which look to replace the reliance on science with misleading theories and discredit scientific experts. Unfortunately, non-scientific beliefs gained traction during the pandemic and show no signs of slowing. This post-truth and anti-science movement places the field of social work at an important crossroads. Read More
How avocados may boost dog health [infographic] By Madeline McCurry-Schmidt In a new Journal of Animal Science study, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report that dogs can benefit from fiber in their diet, which can help with weight loss and supports beneficial bacteria. Read More
On being lazy, loose, empty, and idle By Anatoly Liberman Some of the most common words appeared in English late. Yet their origin is obscure. Of course, while dealing with old words, we also encounter unexpected solutions. Read More
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast The role of DNA research in society [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Stella Edison For today’s episode of The Oxford Comment, we’re commemorating National DNA Day in the United States with Amber Hartman Scholz and Dee Denver. Read More
The Silken Thread Rough Walkers: the true story of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders By J. Ray Fisher and Robert N. Wiedenmann The recent controversy over a statue of Theodore Roosevelt reveals a larger story: one about the Rough Riders, the first United States Volunteer Cavalry. Although their victory at the Battle for the San Juan Heights is well-known, the Riders’ real enemy was not the Spanish they fought but the deadly yellow fever and malaria carried by mosquitoes. Read More
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management The problem with self-driving cars is not technology, the problem is people By D. Christopher Kayes The recent $2.5 billion fine against Boeing due to the 737 Max disaster exposes a problem associated with the introduction of new technology. This blog post highlights how the successful adoption of self-driving cars will depend on the drivers, not just on the technology. Read More
From the ridiculous to the sublime: from “monkey” to “elephant” By Anatoly Liberman Recently I have reread August Pott’s essay on the word “elephant” and decided to write something about this word. I have nothing original to say about it and depend on two works: an excellent book in Italian and a detailed essay in English. Not everybody may have read them; hence my inroad on this convoluted problem. Read More
Choreomania: Dance and Disorder Dance “crazes” and plagues: a precedented phenomenon By Kélina Gotman Lockdown raves, dodging people in the street, no more hugs, confinement within the home worthy of house arrest—and the language of self-isolation, shelter, safety… all the makings of a sci-fi horror film depicting the world at an end. Or a history book, which is what this pandemic has felt like to me at times, having spent well over a decade thinking about historical epidemiology, specifically in relation to ideas about dance. Read More
America's Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911 The Bible and American history By Mark Noll The recent American presidency illustrates why Scripture has been both a polarizing and a constructive force in the nation’s history. On 1 June 2020, Donald Trump made an overtly political point when he cleared peaceful demonstrators from Lafayette Square, who were protesting police violence against unarmed Black men, so that he could pose for a […] Read More
The Changing Energy Mix Electric vehicles: a shift in the resource landscape for the transportation market By Paul F. Meier At this time, the critical resource for the transportation industry is crude oil, the energy source needed to power vehicles. This could change, however, as some parts of the world move away from fossil fuel driven vehicles and towards battery electric vehicles. Read More
On buying and selling By Anatoly Liberman Strange as it may seem, the origin of the verb buy remains a matter of uninspiring debate, at least partly because we don’t know what this verb meant before it acquired the modern sense. Read More
Sportin' Life Three times systemic racism hindered Buck and Bubbles’s show business career By Brian Harker Since George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020, social justice activists have targeted systemic racism in housing, education, and law enforcement. Less attention has been paid to entertainment. As the recent controversy over racial bias in the Academy Awards suggests, however, this problem has always existed in show business. The career of legendary vaudeville team Buck and Bubbles shows how it worked. Read More
Etymology gleanings for March 2022 By Anatoly Liberman This week, the Oxford Etymologist answers readers questions in his latest etymology gleanings. Read More
French History What is the French presidential election about? [Long read] By Michael C. Behrent, Emile Chabal, and Marion Van Renterghem The upcoming French presidential election presents something of a paradox. On the one hand, the outcome seems a foregone conclusion with Macron on course for re-election. But while such an overwhelming electoral narrative could easily be interpreted as a mere continuation of the status quo, nothing could be further from the truth. Read More
Ecosystem-based fisheries management A more holistic approach to fisheries management: including all the players By Jason S. Link and Anthony R. Marshak EBFM is rapidly becoming the default approach in global fisheries management, with the clarity of its definition and approaches for its implementation sharpening each year in US and international jurisdictions. The challenge is to objectively and quantitatively ascertain progress towards EBFM, and ensure wide-ranging applicability of the findings. Read More
Grove Music Announcing the winner of the 2022 Grove Music Online spoof contest By Scott Gleason Happy April Fool’s Day! I’m pleased to announce that the winner of this year’s Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest is David Barber, for an entry on “L.O.L. Bach.” Read More
March 2022 Oxford African American Studies Center A life documented: Winkfield, an enslaved man in colonial Virginia By Terry L. Meyers The odds are long against learning much about any individual among the millions of people once enslaved in America. Terry L. Meyers charts the life of Winkfield, an enslaved worker at the College of William and Mary in the late 18th century.
The Silken Thread Scientific myopia: proof triumphs over conviction in the study of yellow fever By Robert N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher The Oxford Advanced American Dictionary lists one entry for myopia as “the inability to think about anything outside your own situation.” We likely are all guilty of myopic thinking to one degree or another. However, myopia in science is not so simple, nor so benign.
Osteological folklore: “bonfire” By Anatoly Liberman My today’s word is bonfire, which turned up in texts at the end of the fifteenth century. Seven years ago, I devoted a post to it but today I know more about this tricky compound and can write the story in a different way.
Oxford World's Classics Five classics to read if you enjoy shows like Bridgerton or Sanditon [reading list] By Ashendri Wickremasinghe “It is a truth universally acknowledged…” that there is no such thing as too many period dramas—at least, this remains true for those of us who are drawn to them, time and time again. Watching period dramas bring with them a sense of comfort as they transport the viewer to a world that is so […]
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Women’s economic empowerment, past and future [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Sarah Butcher In the western world, discussions about the gender pay gap have dominated discussions for the last few decades, but the issues around the economic status of women, and women’s roles in the workforce are far more nuanced, incorporating issues of race, class, consumerism, and ongoing shifts in the legal status of women in subtle and often invisible ways.
The Pursuit of Europe The Brexit referendum, five years on: can future generations “rebuild Europe”? By Anthony Pagden To paraphrase, Winston Churchill, Britain has always been “with Europe but not of it”. All it ever wanted was a share in a common market. Instead, it found itself caught up in the creation of new kind of political order. The consequence was Brexit. Now Britain is neither of nor with Europe.
Celebrating women in STEM Celebrating women in STEM [timeline] By Amelia Storck, Sarah Trostle, Emily Richardson, and Laura Godfrey Throughout the month of March, Oxford University Press will be celebrating women in STM (science, technology, and medicine) with the objective of highlighting the outstanding contributions that women have made to these fields. Historically many of the contributions made by women have gone unsung or undervalued, and these fields have been male-dominated and inaccessible for women to enter.
Conquering the Ocean Reconstructing Claudius’ arch in Rome By Richard Hingley A look at the process of reconstructing Claudius’ Arch in Rome and how it was informed by the latest research in archaeology and classical studies to provide a better understanding of the significance of the Roman Invasion of Britain.
The Diva's Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata Why “the all-male stage” wasn’t By Pamela Allen Brown Why is “the all-male stage” inadequate as shorthand for the early modern stage? For one thing, it enforces a gender binary that has little to do with the subjects, desires, audiences, and practices of the time. Gender was elusive, plural, and performative, especially on the stage, where attractive androgynous boys played women, or switched back and forth between genders. The importance of female spectators, artisans, and backers gives the lie to total exclusion, and so does mounting evidence that women played in many spheres adjacent to the professional stage.
Selwyn's Law of Employment A legal right to work from home? Here’s what the law says By Astra Emir With the lifting of the remaining coronavirus restrictions across the UK, there is now no requirement for those who can work from home to continue to do so. As we have seen, however, the past two years have shown many people that they can do their jobs just as well from home, and have a better work-life balance.
The Parrot in the Mirror Revenge of the hungry cockatoos? Spite and behavioural ecology By Antone Martinho-Truswell Outside of humans, very few other animals have been observed engaging in spiteful behaviour, and those that have are controversial. Some of the only animals that seem to share our capacity for spite are large, intelligent parrots like cockatoos. Their acts of spite, including against humans, point to a larger set of similarities they share with humans.
Viruses: The Invisible Enemy, second edition What are viruses for? By Dorothy H. Crawford What are viruses for? What use are they? These are questions that my frustrated grandson asked during the first lockdown in 2020, when he was deprived of friends, school and sports, all because of a virus.
Looking for Alicia: The Unfinished Life of an Argentinian Rebel Memory, truth, and justice as Argentina honours the victims of state terrorism By Marc Raboy 24 March is a public holiday in Argentina, officially designated as The Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice. The date commemorates the 1976 coup d’état that unleashed seven years of military dictatorship. The legacy of the coup continues to echo in Argentina, especially for the tens of thousands of families who lost loved ones during the military’s euphemistically-styled “national re-organization process.”
Souls searched for but not found (part two) By Anatoly Liberman This is the second and last part of the series on the origin of the word “soul.” The perennial interest in the etymology of this word should not surprise us. It is our inability to find a convincing solution that causes astonishment and disappointment.
Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok Digital dance cultures: from online obscurity to mainstream recognition By Trevor Boffone I didn’t enter the world of digital dance cultures as a scholar. When I was introduced to TikTok and Dubsmash in October 2018 by my high school students, I first engaged with the platforms as a dancer.
Zenobia: Shooting Star of Palmyra Zenobia: warrior queen or political tactician? By Nathanael Andrade Popular culture often romanticizes Zenobia of Palmyra as a warrior queen. But the ancient evidence doesn’t support that she fought in battles. Instead, we should remember Zenobia as a skilled political tactician. She became ruler without being dominated by the men of her court.
March 2022 Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York by Daniel S. Levy New York City: the grid By Daniel S. Levy There had been attempts to lay out streets in New York going back to its founding. It was a process that would go on for the next few centuries, and would only accelerate in the decades before and after the Great Fire of 1835.
The Silken Thread History repeats—yellow fever and COVID-19 By Robert N. Wiedenmann and J. Ray Fisher See if this sounds familiar: misinformation, disinformation, and incomplete information are applied to an epidemic, its causes, and treatments. I am not referring to COVID-19 but to 1878 and the yellow fever epidemic that decimated a wide swath of the southern reach of the Mississippi River.
Human-Centered AI by Ben Shneiderman Behind the cover: Human-Centered AI By Ben Shneiderman Human and robot handshakes, humanoid robots with electronic wiring, and human brains with chip circuitry dominate depictions of AI. I’ve long felt that these images were misleading, thereby slowing research on technologies that enhance and empower human performance. The challenge is to find other ways to present future technologies.
Soul searching, or the inscrutable word “soul” (part one) By Anatoly Liberman If we expect someone to save our souls, this person won’t be an etymologist, because no language historian knows the origin of the word soul, and without a convincing etymology, how can anyone save the intangible substance it denotes? Yet nothing prevents us from looking at the main attempts to decipher the mysterious word.
Corporate Governance in Contention Shared governance—not shareholder governance By Ciaran Driver The intellectual basis for shareholder control of firms is that what is good for shareholders is good for everyone. In turn that is rationalized by the claim that only shareholders bear risks that are not compensated by contracts.
Music Therapy Perspectives Managing the power of music to foster safety and avoid harm By Annie Heiderscheit and Kathleen M. Murphy Pulitzer Prize recipient and American playwright Lynn Nottage shared in a recent interview, “What music can do is get to the emotion with incredible economy and efficiency.” This capacity that music holds to reach in and connect to the wide range of emotions we experience as human beings can be a wonderful asset as it accesses those feelings we want to revisit and are ready to express. This becomes challenging and potentially harmful when it relates to unexpressed or unresolved emotions and experiences.
Dreams of Love: Playing the Romantic Pianist The Piano meets The Power of the Dog By Ivan Raykoff In Jane Campion’s 1993 film “The Piano”, and her new film, “The Power of the Dog”, the grand piano serves as more than the emblematic instrument of feminine domestic music-making and of European bourgeois culture transported to the hinterlands of the nation or empire; it also functions as a gender technology because it regulates the metaphorical sound-body of the woman who plays it.
OUP logo Five books to celebrate British Science Week By OUP Science To celebrate British Science Week, join in the conversation and keep abreast of the latest in science by delving into our reading list. It contains five of our latest books on evolutionary biology, the magic of mathematics, artificial intelligence, and more.
Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York by Daniel S. Levy New York City: the streams and waterways of Manhattan By Daniel S. Levy We think of New York as an island packed with buildings, a place of concrete sidewalks and tarmacked avenues, a city that as Frank Sinatra sang, “doesn’t sleep.” But Manhattan at the turn of the 19th century—in the years before its street grid was laid out and decades before the Great Fire of 1835 which would accelerate the city’s northward growth—was a very different sort of place. New York City back then was a sleepy town just on the island of Manhattan.
Religious terminology: further benefits of blessing and the devious ways of cursing By Anatoly Liberman In this week’s blog post, the Oxford Etymologist dives deeper into the competing origin theories for the verb “bless”—with “curse” as an added bonus.
Women Philosophers in the Long Nineteenth Century International Women’s Day: feminist philosophy with Clara Zetkin By Dalia Nassar and Kristin Gjesdal Clara Zetkin was instrumental in establishing International Women’s Day. It did not take long to catch on. The following year the International Women’s Day was marked by over a million people taking to the streets.
Magnificat by Tawnie Olson Tawnie Olson: re-imagining the Magnificat By Tawnie Olson Several years ago, a choir in which I sang premiered a piece by a successful male composer. The music and text combined to suggest a Blessed Virgin who was inoffensively meek, sweet, and… small. I was not the only singer who found this composer’s vision unsatisfying. After one rehearsal, a normally-reserved alto walked up to me and fumed, “Tawnie, you have to compose a feminist Magnificat!”
Collective Understanding, Radicalism, and Literary History, 1645-1742 Inky thumbprints: what common women can tell us about reading, relationships, and resisting anti-intellectualism By Melissa Mowry In communities and state legislatures across the United States, there is a concerted movement underway to limit the kinds of ideas to which students are exposed. Often hidden behind claims to parental rights, balanced treatment, and a desire to avoid division, these efforts target students’ ability to think freely, to ask probing questions, and to […]
When Money Talks: A History of Coins and Numismatics A silver thread through history [video] By Frank L. Holt With a history spanning back over 2,000 years, coins are much more than just money. They are also a means of storing and communicating information, resembling tiny discs of information technology that convey images and text across vast swatches of time and territory. Coins are the first world wide web linking us together. While they […]
Letting foregones be bygones By Edwin L. Battistella I was reading a column in a chess magazine when I came across the description of a game’s finish as a bygone conclusion. “That’s really weird,” I thought, “It should have said foregone conclusion.”
Dissenting Daughters: Reformed Women in the Dutch Republic, 1572-1725 Ten new books to read this Women’s History Month [reading list] By OUP History Since 1987, Women’s History Month has been observed in the US annually each March as an opportunity to highlight the contributions of women to events in history and contemporary society. This month, we’re sharing some of the latest history titles covering a range of eras and regions but all charting the lives of women and the impact they made, whether noticed at the time or from the shadows.
March 2022 Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York by Daniel S. Levy New York City: the life and times of the Bowery Theater By Daniel S. Levy In the mid 1820s, New York had three theaters:, the Park, the Chatham, and the Lafayette. Some citizens felt there should be more, and in October 1825, the New York Association started work on a new house. They chose a site between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street just south of Canal Street, and Mayor Philip Hone officiated at the laying of the cornerstone. “This spot which a few years since was surrounded by cultivated fields,” he told the gathered, “where the husbandman was employed in reaping the generous harvest, and cattle grazed for the use of the city, then afar off, has now become the centre of a compact population.”
Religious terminology continued: bless your heart, my dear! By Anatoly Liberman From God (or rather, god) to bless.
The Art of Conversation in Cancer Care Healing conversation in medical care By Richard P. McQuellon Every day thousands of people have conversations with healthcare providers (HCPs) about their medical condition. Such meetings can be profoundly comforting or extremely distressing to the patient and caregiver.
February 2022 (15))
How well do you know your library quotes? [Quiz] By Mahrukh Khalid Do you know what Neil Gaiman once said about librarians? Perhaps you share Sir Francis Bacon’s taste for books? Give our library quotations quiz a go and tell us how you score!
Why does justice for animals matter? By Jeff Sebo Recent health and environmental crises have taught us that our lives are increasingly connected. Many of us now appreciate pursuing health and climate justice requires pursuing social and economic justice too. And in the same kind of way, I believe, pursuing justice for humans requires pursuing justice for animals too.
Very Short Introductions The VSI podcast season three: ageing, Pakistan, slang, psychopathy, and more By The VSI podcast team Listen to season three of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York by Daniel S. Levy New York City: The Great Fire of 1835 By Daniel S. Levy In the 1830s, New York was a small city. While the island of Manhattan had a prosperous community at its southern end, its northern area contained farms, villages, streams, and woods. Then on the evening of 16 December 1835, a fire broke out near Wall Street.
If God is not good, what is the origin of “good”? By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist details the etymology of the adjective “good”. If it is not related to “god”, then what is its origin?
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast The color line: race and education in the United States [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Meghan Schaffer Black History Month celebrates the achievements of a globally marginalized community still fighting for equal representation and opportunity in all areas of life. This includes education. In 1954, the United States’ Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional for American public schools in ‘Brown v. Board of Education’. While this ruling has been celebrated as a pivotal victory for civil rights, it has not endured without challenge.
The Oxford Textbook on Criminology Breathing life into statistics: stories of racism within the criminal justice system By Tyler Hawtin, Clare Weaver, and Livy Watson Recent events have put the issue of racial inequality in the criminal justice system front and centre. The increased focus has shown that it is human stories that have the greatest impact. This blog post takes extracts from three conversations on of racism and justice.
Religious terminology: the etymology of “god” By Anatoly Liberman A few days ago, I received a letter from a well-educated reader, who asked me whether the English words “god” and “good” are related.
Grove Music Grove Music’s 2022 spoof article contest is now open! By Scott Gleason I am pleased to announce the semi-annual Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest is now open for 2022!
Totally Truffaut: 23 Films for Understanding the Man and the Filmmaker François Truffaut: why we crave great fiction By Anne Gillain François Truffaut is among the few French directors whose work can be labeled as “pure fiction.” He always professed that films should not become vehicles for social, political, religious, or philosophical messages.
Something Old, Something New Contemporary Entanglements of Religion and Secularity Chief Justice Roberts’ court questions the religious neutrality of secular schools By Wayne Glausser Having chosen “entanglement” as the best word to describe religious and secular cultures interacting, I noted with interest the oral arguments in Carson v. Makin, heard 8 December 2021.
The incomprehensible word “understand” By Anatoly Liberman “Understand” is a teaser: each of the two elements of this compound is clear, but why does it mean what it does?
Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality Which anti-vaxxers are irrational? By Alex Worsnip Consider two different characters: Alanna and Brent. Both refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine, but their motivations are different. Alanna believes that the vaccine is unsafe and ineffective. Brent simply doesn’t care much about protecting others, and so he can’t be bothered to get vaccinated. Are these characters irrational?
What are light verbs? By Edwin L. Battistella English verbs show tremendous variety. Some have a lot of semantic content and serve as the main predicate of a sentence—as transitive or intransitive or linking verbs.
Annotations to James Joyce's Ulysses “A man of genius makes no mistakes”: Joycean misapprehensions By Sam Slote Joyce invites misapprehension in many ways. He overtly signals the importance of error with Stephen’s famous line in ‘Scylla and Charybdis’: ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery’. This is a particularly shrewd move on Joyce’s part. Since a man of genius makes no mistakes, anything that seems like a mistake must actually be something ingenious that can only be discerned by a suitably astute reader. In effect, Joyce implies that there are no mistakes in this text, just artistic brilliance that may or may not be properly apprehended.
Monthly gleanings for January 2022 By Anatoly Liberman In this month’s round-up of questions from readers, the Oxford Etymologist tackles “see”, “echo”, “Baba Yaga”, “masher”, and more.
January 2022 (20))
Silver linings from the COVID-19 shutdowns at music schools By Amy Nathan “Our teachers and students and families are so excited to be back, to see everyone again,” said Brandon Tesh, director of the Third Street Music School in New York City. His school resumed in-person classes in September 2021 after 18 months of online instruction, caused by government-ordered school shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Selwyn's Law of Employment “No jab, no job”? Compulsory vaccination and the law By Astra Emir The issue of so-called “compulsory vaccination” is an emotive one for many, and now with the rise of action being taken against unvaccinated employees it has become an employment law issue too. This is having an impact in two main areas: in the field of statutory sick pay and also whether employees in health and social care must be vaccinated.
Internet Jurisdiction Having data privacy rights is of no use if you cannot claim them By Julia Hörnle The focus of legal discussions on data protection and privacy is normally placed on the extent of the rights conferred by the law on individuals. But as litigation lawyers are painfully aware, to have a claim valid in law is not the same as succeeding in court, as being “right” is expensive business and litigation financing is a key part of being successful. It is therefore about time that the UK government should consider enacting legislation to provide a clear and comprehensive framework for collective redress.
How Nations Remember: A Narrative Approach The road from Berlin in 1989 to America today By James V. Wertsch In November 1989, the world watched with disbelief as crowds tore down the Berlin Wall. In America, we assumed that we were witnessing the end of communism and speculated about the rise of democracy in Eastern Europe and maybe even in the Soviet Union. These ideas guided our thinking for the next several years, but […]
Seeing is believing (?) By Anatoly Liberman Today I’ll try to say something about the verb “see.” Once again, we’ll have to admit that the more basic a word is, the less we know about its remote history.
UK Politics by Andrew Blick Importance and uncertainty: referendums in the United Kingdom By Andrew Blick erendums—popular votes held on specific subjects—are an important part of United Kingdom (UK) politics. But they are also surrounded by doubts and disagreement.
The Drama of History by Kristin Gjesdal Staging philosophy: the relationship between philosophy and drama By Kristin Gjesdal Where does philosophy belong? In lecture halls, libraries, and campus offices? In town squares? In public life? One answer to this question, exceedingly popular from the Enlightenment onward, has been that philosophy belongs on stage—not in the sense that this is the only place we should find it, but that the relationship between philosophy and drama is particularly productive and promising.
First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Ideal Majority rule is not democracy By Paul Woodruff What is democracy? Pundits have been writing recently that democracy is majority rule, but that is wrong, dangerously wrong.
Colliding Worlds Do Look Up! Could a comet really kill us all? By Simone Marchi When it comes to catastrophic events for humans, a big nasty asteroid or comet colliding with Earth tops the chart, and several movies have exploited this scenario. The recent Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” did that again, but as a satire and a warning. It is widely considered an allegory for climate change, but let’s consider the astronomical scenario as presented. Is such a scenario scientifically sound?
Communication, Culture & Critique The challenges and opportunities of studying the digital cultures of South Asia By Sangeet Kumar, Kalyani Chadha, and Radhika Parameswaran Like all aspects of the cultural landscape in South Asia, the digital sphere is increasingly a site of fractious contestations where immense hope and optimism on social change and progress coexist alongside despair and anger around a host of social and political issues.
Hearsay? It depends on what you hear By Anatoly Liberman The etymology of the word “hear” is especially tough – but life would be a dull thing is everything was clear.
Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence The morality of espionage: do we have a moral duty to spy? Why spy? . . . For as long as rogues become leaders, we shall spy. For as long as there are bullies and liars and madmen in the world, we shall spy. For as long as nations compete, and politicians deceive, and tyrants launch conquests, and consumers need resources, and the homeless look for land, and the hungry for food, and the rich for excess, your chosen profession is perfectly secure, I can assure you. (John Le Carré, “The Secret Pilgrim”)
Forms of Astonishment: Greek Myths of Metamorphosis by Richard Buxton Charlie Chaplin and the art of metamorphosis By Richard Buxton Charlie Chaplin was certainly the greatest mime, probably the greatest actor, and arguably the greatest artist in any medium in the twentieth century. As self-transformations go, his personal rags-to riches story is hard to match. But the theme of metamorphosis also permeates his movies.
Oxford Bibliographies in Management Recognizing the “other” ways of employee creativity in the workplace By Feirong Yuan For many years, the common understanding of employee creativity involves individuals generating new products and services for their organizations. Yet employees can also demonstrate creativity in other ways.
After a sun eclipse: bedposts and curtains in sex life and warfare By Anatoly Liberman The phrase in a/the twinkling of a bedpost (with the archaic variant bedstaff) means the same as in a twinkling of an eye, that is, “very quickly,” because twinkle, when used metaphorically, refers to a rapid movement. Agreed: eyes and stars twinkle, but bedposts don’t, and here is the rub.
Screening the Police: Film and Law Enforcement in the United States by Noah Tsika Beyond “Copaganda”: Hollywood’s offscreen relationship with the police By Noah Tsika Do Hollywood’s portrayals of policing matter as much as the industry’s material entwinement with law enforcement—as much as the working relationships pursued beyond the screen? Instead of conceding that the consumers of popular media are eminently capable of thinking for themselves (and thus of resisting flattering depictions of power), more and more commentators are calling for the complete elimination of cop shows, cinematic police chases, and other, ostensibly entertaining images of law enforcement.
The tree of life and the table of the elements By Eric Scerri and David Reznick Darwin’s tree of life and Mendeleev’s periodic table of the elements share a number of interesting parallels, the most meaningful of which lie in the central role that each plays in its respective domain.
Getting English under control By Edwin L. Battistella Any large organization or bureaucracy is likely to have a style guide for its internal documents, publications, and web presence. Some organizations go a step further and develop what is known as a control language.
Trust and Distrust: Corruption in Office in Britain and its Empire, 1600-1850 Britain’s long struggle with corruption By Mark Knights Corruption has risen to the top of the British political agenda. Even if we agree with Boris Johnson that the UK is “not remotely a corrupt country”, then Britain certainly did struggle with corruption in the past. Indeed it has had a long history of corruption and anti-corruption. This has some lessons for today.
The scars of old stars By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Etymologist is out of hibernation and picks up where he left off in mid-December. It may be profitable to return to the origin of “star”, but from a somewhat broader perspective.
December 2021 (22))
The top 10 religion blog posts in 2021 By OUPblog team In 2021, our authors published new research, analysis, and insights into topics ranging from religious tolerance to taboo, atheist stereotypes to the appeal of religious politics, and much more. Read our top 10 blog posts of the year from the Press’ authors featured in our Religion Archive on the OUPblog: 1. Stereotypes of atheist scientists […]
OUPblog The top 10 politics blog posts of 2021 By OUPblog How can we help Afghan refugees? What are the challenges facing American democracy? Is Weimar Germany a warning from history? These are just a few of the questions our authors have tackled on the OUPblog this past year. Discover their takes on the big political issues of 2021 with our list of the top 10 politics blog posts of the year.
OUPblog The top 10 literature blog posts of 2021 By OUPblog team This year on the OUPblog, our authors have marked major anniversaries, championed activism, confronted antisemitism, shattered stereotypes, and sought to understand our post-pandemic world through literature. Dive into the top 10 literature blog posts of the year on the OUPblog:
OUPblog The top 10 history blog posts of 2021 By OUPblog team Travel back in time to the recent past and explore the OUPblog’s top 10 history blog posts of 2021. From dispelling Euro-centric myths of the Aztec empire to considering humanity’s future through the lens of environmental history, think outside the box with the latest research and expert insights from the Press’s history authors.
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast Holiday cheer [podcast] By Steven Filippi As we approach the end of 2021, we can look back at the previous two years of restrictions, lockdowns, COVID tests and vaccination lines, not to mention all the political strife… or we can look to the unknown, ahead to the new year. But let us pause for a moment and enjoy the now: a holiday season that should be livelier than last year’s. After all that’s gone on, we could use some old-fashioned holiday cheer.
How INGOs mediate China’s “going out” strategy By May Farid and Hui Li China has become a major player in global development. Its development finance now rivals World Bank lending in scale, and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has grown to embrace 140 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America.
OUPblog The top 10 science blog posts of 2021 By OUPblog team From the evolution of consciousness to cosmic encounters, the Brain Health Gap to palliative medicine, 2021 has been a year filled with discovery across scientific disciplines. On the OUPblog, we have published blogs posts showcasing the very latest research and insights from our expert authors at the Press. Make sure you’re caught up with the best of science in 2021 with our top 10 blog posts of the year:
Law Trove Test your legal knowledge with our festive law quiz! By Emily Richardson This festive season, it’s important to make sure you know the ins and outs of the law surrounding the holidays: for example, what circumstances would enable Father Christmas’s elves to take strike action, and what are the legal implications of the Naughty & Nice list? Test your legal knowledge with our themed quiz.
Charlie Brown's America A Charlie Brown Christmas: the unlikely triumph of a holiday classic By Blake Scott Ball A Charlie Brown Christmas was never supposed to be a success. It hit on all the wrong beats. The pacing was slow, the voice actors were amateurs, and the music was mostly laid back piano jazz (the opening theme, “Christmas Time is Here,” carried a strange, wintery melody built on unconventional modal chord progressions). It was almost like the program was constructed as a sort of anti-pop statement. In many ways, that’s exactly what it was. And that’s exactly why it so worried the media executives who had commissioned it.
The Chinese Lady: Afong May in Early America by Nancy E. Davis Afong Moy on the 21st century stage By Nancy E. Davis The story of Afong Moy, the first known Chinese woman on American soil, and the first Chinese person to come face to face with American audiences across the country has been told recently by both the historian Nancy Davis as well as the playwright LLoyd Suh. Davis explores Afong Moy’s life and the different lessons that can be learned through research as well as fictionalization.
Twinkle, twinkle, or stars and sparks By Anatoly Liberman Nothing is known about the origin of the phrase “Milky Way.” By contrast, the origin of the word “star” is not hopelessly obscure, which is good, because stars and obscurity have little in common.
The Right of Sovereignty by Daniel Lee The sovereign duties of humanity: re-examining Bodin’s theory By Daniel Lee Sovereignty is the grand prize of statehood in public international law, the touchstone of political independence. Its value derives from the monopoly it confers upon its holder, empowering it to do things that no else can—making and unmaking law, declaring war, signing treaties, establishing courts, laying taxes.
Oxford Music A history of the Carols for Choirs angel [gallery] By OUP Sheet Music A blog taking us through the many iterations of the iconic Carols for Choirs cover design, from the first version in 1961 through to the current design. The thread throughout all of the covers is an illustrated angel, which can be found on every cover version, in various shapes and sizes!
Down the rabbit hole By Edwin L. Battistella If you are a writer, you’ve probably gone down a rabbit hole at one point or another. The idiom owes its meaning to Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, in which Alice literally does that.
The Oxford Book of Carols Christmas with Ralph Vaughan Williams and The Oxford Book of Carols By Jeremy Summerly and John Francis, The inter-war Oxford Book of Carols (published in 1928) was the brainchild of Reverend Percy Dearmer—a socialist, high church Anglican liturgist who believed that music should be at the core of Christian worship. Today the OBC is a world-renowned publication that shines as as a beacon of experimentation within tradition: a visionary musico-poetic collection of the most profoundly partisan nature.
Protecting the protectors: how safe is life for humanitarian workers in conflict zones? By Daniela Irrera Despite the visibility of attacks in media reports, problems encountered by NGOs in conflict zones remain an under-researched and undervalued issue that deserves more attention.
The wiles of folk etymology By Anatoly Liberman Words, as linguistics tells us, are conventional signs. Some natural phenomenon is called rain or snow, and, if you don’t know what those words mean, you will never guess. But everything in our consciousness militates against such a rupture between word and thing.
Carols for Choirs Carols for Choirs: the journey to press By Sheet Music team A history of the first ‘Carols for Choirs’ book, first published in 1961. Looking at materials from the OUP archive, we trace the journey from the initial idea through to its eventual release and unexpected success.
The Women Are Up to Something Knowing one’s opinion is worth hearing By Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb Mary Midgley muses that the dearth of men in Oxford during WW2 helped her and her friends Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Iris Murdoch find their way into philosophy. But each of them took years to find her voice—Midgley longest of all. What held them back and what provoked them to finally speak up?
Winter etymology gleanings By Anatoly Liberman Both “thank” and “give” deserve our attention! And it is those two outwardly unexciting words that I’ll offer today as part of our etymological feast.
City Living: How Urban Dwellers and Urban Spaces Make One Another City spaces, pace bias, and the production of disability By Quill R Kukla How does our body shape our experience of living in a city? In this OUPblog, Quill R Kukla focuses on one fascinating dimension along which bodies are included in or excluded from spaces, namely pace.
November 2021 (24))
COVID-19 and mental health: where do we go from here? [podcast] By Steven Filippi, Meghan Schaffer, and and Christine Scalora The effects of COVID-19 reach far beyond mortality, triggering widespread economic and sociopolitical consequences. It is unsurprising to learn, after everything that has transpired in the past two years, that COVID-19 has also had a detrimental effect on our mental health.
V.S. Naipaul, Caribbean Writing, and Caribbean Thought by William Ghosh Homi K. Bhabha on V.S. Naipaul: in conversation with William Ghosh By William Ghosh “Literature, we’re told, is the immortality of speech, but in fact reputations fade quickly.” In this OUPblog, read foundational figure in postcolonial theory, Homi K. Bhabha, in conversation with William Ghosh, author of V.S. Naipaul, Caribbean Writing, and Caribbean Thought (Oxford 2020).
Oxford Libraries Green libraries tackling environmental challenges: University College Cork By Anni Valkama What might libraries do to help reduce the carbon footprint? We spoke to Martin O’Connor at University College Cork to find out how UCC Library chose to tackle the challenge and make their library greener.
A Concise Guide to Communication in Science and Engineering How research abstracts succeed and fail By David H. Foster The abstract of a research article has a simple remit: to faithfully summarize the reported research. After the title, it’s the most read section of the article. Crucially, it makes the case to the reader for reading the article in full. Alas, not all abstracts succeed.
International Law Mapping international law By Anders Henriksen The map highlights some fascinating examples of international law in action; examples across the globe examining how the law can, or cannot, be enforced across sovereign states.
From Halloween to Thanksgiving By Anatoly Liberman Both “thank” and “give” deserve our attention! And it is those two outwardly unexciting words that I’ll offer today as part of our etymological feast.
The Last Ghetto The society of Holocaust victims: what was life inside a Nazi camp like? By Anna Hájková To mark the 80th anniversary of the first transport to Theresienstadt on 24 November 1941, scholar Anna Hájková explores the social relations that formed within Nazi camps.
Freedom girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop Voicing 1960s femininity: not just a “girl singer” [playlist] By Alexandra M. Apolloni “The disc charts cannot stand many girls, no matter how gorgeous they look,” claimed Beatles manager Brian Epstein in A Cellarful of Noise, his memoir of the 1960s. He was explaining why he’d only ever represented one female performer—Cilla Black. His justification falls back on the then-conventional wisdom that girl singers were an anomaly, were each other’s competitors, and that there wasn’t an audience for their work.
Smashing the Liquor Machine 20 people you didn’t know were Prohibitionists By Mark Lawrence Schrad The full story of prohibition—one you’ve probably never been told—is perhaps one of the most broad-based and successful transnational social movements of the modern era. Discover 20 key figures from history that you didn’t know were prohibitionists.
The sky’s the limit By Anatoly Liberman English (uncharacteristically) has two, if not even three, words for the sphere above us: sky, heaven, and firmament.
The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune The musical genius of Tommy Tune: “old plus old equals new” By Kevin Winkler From the beginning, Tommy Tune was pulled as if by centrifugal force toward dance and the Broadway musical. He was taking dancing lessons by the age of five, but his early ambition to be a ballet dancer was abandoned when he shot up in height during his teenage years. He later joked about his extreme height, saying, “Sometimes, instead of thinking of myself as six-foot-six, I tell myself I’m only five-foot-eighteen.”
International Affairs Why increasing deglobalization is putting vulnerable populations at risk By Jarrod Hayes and Katja Weber The record of globalization is decidedly mixed. Whereas proponents tend to associate globalization with beneficial developments such as the expansion of democracy and improved access to goods and services, critics highlight the human costs: rising inequality and political and economic exploitation.
Oxford Scholarship Online Fake news, misinformation, and disinformation: journalism today? By Rebecca Olley [Reading list] Fake, false, inaccurate, misleading, and deceptive. This rhetoric is all too familiar to the news consuming public today. But what is fake news and how does it differ from misinformation and disinformation?
Willful Defiance Police-free schools: the new frontier in ending the school-to-prison pipeline By Mark R. Warren There is no research-based evidence that demonstrates that police improve safety in schools. As opposed to promoting safety, school police target students of color and those with disabilities, which starts them on the road to prison.
Many words for a small world and a little-known centennial By Anatoly Liberman What do we call the world in which we live? The specifically Germanic noun “world” is perhaps the most puzzling word known in this area.
The Arctic: A Very Short Introduction The Arctic Paradox: why the Arctic is caught in the conflicting pressures of global climate change By Klaus Dodds and Jamie Woodward The Arctic is now exceeding climate change predictions by decades—it features prominently in the Sixth IPCC Assessment Report (AR6) of the IPCC due in 2022, especially in relation to climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability.
Wondering about the subjunctive By Edwin L. Battistella “He wondered if he were hallucinating.” I came across that use of the subjunctive while listening to the audiobook of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Oxford Libraries The ultimate reading list for every academic librarian By Molly Dixon Whether you are looking to escape into the histories of some libraries or looking to expand your knowledge on the future of reading and research we’ve got something for every librarian with this reading list.
Engineering: A Very Short Introduction Engineering a new capitalism for the 21st century By David Ian Blockley Former Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney has observed that society has, unfortunately, come to embody Oscar Wilde’s old aphorism: “knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing”.
OUP climate change hub Five books on climate change you need to read By OUP science team Keep abreast of the latest climate science by delving into this reading list of five books on different elements of climate change.
Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military Resisting racism within America’s WWII military: stories from the frontline By Thomas A. Guglielmo America’s World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that’s the story many Americans have long told themselves… But the reality is starkly different. The military built not one color line, but a complex tangle […]
English idioms: etymological devilry in baking and printing By Anatoly Liberman It is curious how often those who have tried to explain the origin of English idioms have referred to the occupation of printers. Regardless of their success, the attempts are worthy of note.
The Science and Art of Interviewing Why depth interviewing is essential to understanding individuals and institutions By Kathleen Gerson and Sarah Damaske Once assumed to be a core research tool, many of today’s researchers have cast a skeptical eye on depth interviewing. These critiques reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about what depth interviews can accomplish.
Sustainability: What Everyone Needs to Know Sustainability in action: dismantling systems to combat climate change By Paul B. Thompson and Patricia E. Norris Some connection between sustainability and the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November is assumed, but the very idea of sustainability remains poorly understood.
October 2021 (34))
The appearance of the goddess Discord: Gustave Moreau and a mythical tradition By Mercedes Aguirre Usually considered as the first French Symbolist painter, Moreau rejected the dominant artistic trends of his time in order to explore his own anxieties and longings by returning to the Greek myths.
Oxford Research Encylopedias: Religion A pre-9/11 action movie with a Muslim hero shows what could have been By Robert Repino and Sana Khan In the fall of 1999, another action movie came and went, garnering disappointed reviews and a pittance in ticket sales. Adapted from Michael Crichton’s novel “Eaters of the Dead”, The 13th Warrior offered a surprising premise.
OUP logo How OUP is innovating for the future of open research By Rhiannon Meaden Innovations in open research can help to address disinformation, making a wider range of information accessible and available, ensuring reproducibility, and facilitating reuse.
Age and Ageing Caring for our most vulnerable: lessons from COVID-19 on policy changes in the care home sector By Adam Gordon If the true measure of any society is how it cares for its most vulnerable, then the catastrophic impact of COVID-19 on care home residents during the first wave of the pandemic was a sad indictment. Older people living in care homes are truly our most vulnerable.
How Welfare Worked in the Early United States What can early US welfare policies teach us about caring for our communities? By Gabriel Loiacono Every year, I spend the semester with 50 college sophomores pondering two questions. The first one is: how have people in the past cared for the neediest people in their community? The second is: how should we?
Spooks are spooks, but don’t ignore organic pumpkins By Anatoly Liberman We are one more week closer to Halloween, and pumpkins are ubiquitous. How did the pumpkin get its name?
OUP logo “I wouldn’t start from here”: a SHAPE route to open access By Andy Redman Open research may be the route to surfacing a definitional framework for the monograph in SHAPE disciplines. Director of Open Access, Academic, at OUP Andy Redman explores why in this blog post:
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast What is the impact of opening research? [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Ella Percival Open access is a publishing model that has been gathering momentum across the world for more than 15 years and each year, during the last week of October, the publishing and research sector comes together to celebrate it during International Open Access Week.
What policy and industry changes are needed to avert climate catastrophe? By Charles Weiss To avert catastrophic climate change will require huge changes in energy, transportation, land use, urban systems, infrastructure, and industry, involving government, business, educational and research institutions, civil society, and the general public. None of these restructurings will be easy.
OUP logo How is OUP contributing to the open research landscape today? By Rhodri Jackson As a mission-driven university press, we strongly support the opening up of research and the benefits for access and inclusion that OA brings. We want to ensure that the transition towards open research is an inclusive process—to use the title of OA week, “it matters how we open knowledge.”
The Dragon in the West 10 books on magic, monsters, and myths to read for Halloween [reading list] By OUP Arts & Humanities From its origins as an ancient Celtic festival celebrating the end of the harvest, over time Halloween has evolved into a day of trick-or-treating, scary films, costumes, and carving pumpkins.
Spooky Halloween: the origin of “spook” By Anatoly Liberman How can a ghost (any ghost) get its name, and why is the etymology of bogymen, gremlins, goblins, and spooks usually unknown?
Agincourt Mapping the great battles [interactive map] By Sarah Butcher Certain battles acquire iconic status in history. The victors have been celebrated as heroes for centuries, the vanquished serve as a cautionary tale for all, and nations use these triumphs to establish their founding myths. These battles are commemorated in paintings, verse and music, marked by monumental memorials, and used as the way points for the periodisation of history.
Epigeum logo Five key areas of communication for research integrity By Susan O'Brien Why do breakdowns in research teams occur? Often, it is due to a failure by all the team members to communicate clearly, honestly, and respectfully about the goals of the team and each individual, as well as expectations and understanding of responsible research conduct.
Cultural Psychology Can you have more than one cultural identity? By Robyn M. Holmes Forming our identity is an important developmental process that begins at birth. One critical component of our identity is our cultural identity, and one important aspect of our cultural identity is a sense of belonging.
Epigeum logo Six common types of plagiarism in academic research By Epigeum In recent years the importance of integrity in research has been under a spotlight, with increasing numbers of research institutions placing emphasis on their researchers undertaking training on the matter. However, the issue of plagiarism in academic research has not disappeared, and some recent stats and events clearly highlight this.
New pathways through later life: redesigning later life work and retirement By Dawn Carr In March of 2020, for many Americans and older workers especially, what it meant to go to work changed in an instant. As some workers moved their offices into their homes, others had to go to work and face significant risks to their health each day.
No Refuge How can we help Afghan refugees? By Serena Parekh The outpouring of support for Afghan refugees since the fall of the Taliban a few weeks ago is laudable. As the author of two books on our obligations to refugees, many people have been asking me about how we should respond to this crisis and what we can hope for Afghan refugees. There’s both a lot we in the United States can do and a lot we should be worried about.
An etymological meltdown: “thaw,” “dew,” and “icicles” By Anatoly Liberman A bit more is known about the origin of the words thaw and dew than about ice and snow. They are less impenetrable than those two, but they also contain riddles.
Understanding the Mental Health Problems of Children and Adolescents How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected children’s mental health? By Kirstin Painter and Maria Scannapieco, The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a year and a half fraught with unpredictability and change. Change and unpredictability can be stressful for anyone, but for children, change and disruption of routine is especially stressful.
Understanding Deviance in a World of Standards Why do companies deviate from standards and what shall we do about it? By Andrea Fried Standards appear as legal or quasi-legal rules and relate to a variety of topics, including product or service quality, information security, environmental performance, health and safety in the workplace, and many more. Much has been written, or rather suspected, about corporate cultures of companies where standards were broken terribly.
How can we solve the energy crisis and mitigate climate change? By Mark Rowlands Symptoms of the looming climate crisis abound: 50-year extreme heat events happening every year, melting of polar ice sheets, forest fires that encircle the globe, tropical cyclones of greater size, intensity and, as was very evident in Ida’s recent visit to New York, unprecedented levels of precipitation.
Nutrition Review Can what we eat have an effect on the brain? By Bo Ekstrand Food plays an important role in brain performance and health. In our review, we outline the role of diet in five key areas: brain development, signalling networks and neurotransmitters in the brain, cognition and memory, the balance between protein formation and degradation, and deteriorative effects due to chronic inflammatory processes.
Perceptions of Medieval Manuscripts Fragmentology: bits of books and the medieval manuscript By Elaine Treharne So many fragments of manuscripts exist that a new term—Fragmentology—has recently been applied to the study of these parts and parcels. Librarians, archivists and academics are paying more attention to what can be learned about textual culture from a folio cut, say, from a twelfth-century manuscript and later used by a binder to line the oak boards of a fifteenth-century book.
Responsible Citizens, Irresponsible States Who bears responsibility for the United States’ actions in Afghanistan? By Avia Pasternak Alongside the commemorations of the September 11 attacks, Americans marked twenty years since the United States’ invasion of Afghanistan. Scholars of international law still dispute whether the decision to invade Afghanistan was justified.
After ice expect snow By Anatoly Liberman Winter is round the corner, and the best way to prepare for it is to read a few murky stories about the etymology of the relevant words: “ice” and “snow.”
Walk with Me The activism of Fannie Lou Hamer: a timeline By Kate Clifford Larson Fannie Lou Hamer was a galvanizing force of the Civil Rights movement, using her voice to advance voting rights and representation for Black Americans throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Faced with eviction, arrests, and abuse at the hands of white doctors, policemen, and others, Hamer stayed true to her faith and her conviction in non-violent […]
MNRAS A cosmic census By Raphael Shirley, María Campos, Peter Hurley, Katarzyna Malek, and Seb Oliver A new census of the Universe will allow scientists to understand more about how galaxies are born, age, and die. The millions of galaxies that have been painstakingly catalogued come in many shapes and sizes and this new work shines a light on every variety that we can see.
Oftener and oftener By Edwin L. Battistella When I was growing up, someone in authority told me that way to pronounce often was offen, like off with a little syllabic n at the end. Often was like soften, listen, and glisten, I was warned, with a silent t.
10 books on palliative medicine and end-of-life care [reading list] By OUP Medicine team Each year an estimated 40 million people are in need of palliative care, 78% of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. This reading list of recent titles can help you to reflect on palliative medicine as a public health need.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Is food addiction contributing to global obesity? By Ashley Gearhardt and Johannes Hebebrand What is it about highly processed foods that causes such a public health threat? Why are people unable to quit even when they are highly motivated to do so? Evidence is growing that highly processed foods are capable of triggering addictive processes akin to addictive drugs like tobacco.
OUP celebrates their BMA 2021 Award winners We are delighted to announce the OUP published titles that have been presented with awards at this year’s British Medical Association Medical Book Awards.
Crusoe's Books The reader observed: from Saint Jerome to Scott of the Antarctic Across the centuries, in paintings and eventually in photography, one of the most common subjects for representation has been the reader.
September 2021 (30))
Black History Month: celebrating 10 people who made British history To observe UK Black History Month, we have curated a collection of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography articles exploring the lives of people of Black/African descent who had an impact on, or a connection to, the UK during their lifetime and the ways in which they made history.
Bimonthly etymology gleanings: September 2021 By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist tackles questions from readers.
America's Scientific Treasures Take a virtual tour of America’s national parks: the Grand Staircase By Brenda H. Cohen and Stephen M. Cohen Take a virtual tour of three of America’s national parks: the Grand Canyon, Zion Canyon, and Bryce Canyon, to get a complete picture of the West’s geology and landscape.
The neuroscience of consciousness by the Oxford Comment podcast What is public debt? [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Christine Scalora What do you think of when you hear the term “public debt?” If you’re familiar with the phrase, you might think about elected officials debating budgets and how to pay for goods and services. Or maybe it’s a vague concept you don’t fully understand.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Does “overeating” cause obesity? The evidence is less filling By David S. Ludwig The usual way of thinking considers obesity a problem of energy balance. Take in more calories than you expend—in other words, “overeat”—and weight gain will inevitably result. The simple solution, according to the prevailing Energy Balance Model (EBM), is to eat less and move more. New research shows that viewing body weight control as an energy balance problem is fundamentally wrong, or at least not helpful, for three reasons.
Classical Mythology Can interpretations of the Pandora myth tell us something about ourselves? By William Hansen According to the early Greek poet Hesiod (ca. 700 BC), the primordial human community consisted only of men, who lived lives of health and ease, enjoying a neighborly relationship with the gods. That relationship soured, however, after Prometheus deceived the Olympian gods for the benefit of mankind. In retaliation, Zeus schemed to punish men by […]
Varieties of Atheism in Science Stereotypes of atheist scientists need to be dispelled before trust in science erodes By David R. Johnson and Elaine Howard Ecklund Coping with a global pandemic has laid bare the need for public trust in science. And there is good news and bad news when it comes to how likely the public is to trust science. Our work over the past ten years reveals that the public trusts science and that religious people seem to trust science as much as non-religious people. Yet, public trust in scientists as a people group is eroding in dangerous ways. And for certain groups who are particularly unlikely to trust scientists, the belief that all scientists are loud, anti-religious atheists is a part of their distrust.
9780190936792 Keeping the peace: property and community By Bart Wilson When we think about the origins of property, we naturally, like Jean-Jacque Rousseau, think of land, of “the first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine,’ and found people simple enough to believe him.”
OUP icon logo Five models of peer review: a guide By Rhiannon Meaden and Sarah McKenna This blog post looks at five peer review models currently in use, describing what they mean for authors, reviewers and editors, and examines the various benefits and consequences of each.
The Review of Economic Studies From immigrants to Americans: race and assimilation during the Great Migration By Marco Tabellini and Vicky Fouka In recent decades, immigration has reshaped the demographic profile of many Western countries. The economic and political effects of immigration-induced diversity have been investigated by a growing number of studies across the social sciences.
Elderspeak: the language of ageism in healthcare By Clarissa Shaw and Jean K. Gordon Elderspeak or baby talk to older adults is frequent in the healthcare context. Although elderspeak is typically well-intentioned it arises from a place of implicit ageism and can have negative consequences for older adults, particularly those with dementia.
Ice: a forlorn hope By Anatoly Liberman Why is searching for the origin of “ice” a forlorn hope? Because all the Germanic-speaking people had the same word for “ice,” and yet we don’t know where it came from.
GigaScience Increasing the diversity and depth of the peer review pool through embracing identity By Scott Edmunds The theme of Peer Review Week 2021 is “Identity.” From carrying out open peer review GigaScience makes sure that early career researchers and students emerge from the shadows of their supervisors and are credited when they jointly carry out reviews. New initiatives are promoting review of preprints as a way to improve skills and join editorial boards and reviewer pools. GigaScience is participating in the Preprint Reviewer Recruitment Network and encourages reviewers and other journals to join.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Education Eradicating ableism with disability-positive K-12 education By Qudsiya Naqui More than half a century ago, powerful civil rights laws brought disabled children into American school systems, breaking down the physical barriers that held these young people at the margins of society. But attitudes towards disability as a devalued limitation persisted, holding social and cultural barriers between disabled and nondisabled people firmly in place.
An empire of many colours? Race and imperialism in Ancient Rome By Greg Woolf Romans sometimes worried that you couldn’t tell enslaved and free people apart. By the second century CE, many senators were descended from Gauls and Iberians, Carthaginians, Greeks, and Syrians—the very peoples Romans had conquered as they extended their empire. So, was the Roman empire unusually inclusive? Or even a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic civilization? None of that seems very likely.
Guided by the Mountains Well-known secret graveyards: (re)discovering the horrors of assimilation for Indigenous peoples By Michael Lerma The Kamloops Indian Residential School was part of a systematic Indigenous youth educational effort in Canada, with comparable projects in the United States, the purpose and intent of which is hotly debated today.
Which library matches your personality? [Quiz] By Mahrukh Khalid Which library matches your personality? Are you an old soul like the al- Qarawlyyin library? Quirky like the Culture Perth & Kinross Mobile Library? Give our short quiz a go to find out!
Enraged, Rattled, and Wronged: Entitlement's Response to Social Progress The Census and entitled resentment By Kristin J. Anderson From a psychological perspective, entitlement refers to one’s sense of deservingness. Entitled people believe they deserve more than others. For entitled white people, the latest Census data triggers panic at being replaced by those who have historically been on the margins.
Idioms and slang: two examples By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist discusses two slang idioms: “worth a Jew’s eye” and “to save one’s bacon”.
Economic Policy The importance of international coordination of environmental policies By Itzhak Ben-David, Yeejin Jang, Stefanie Kleimeier, and Michael Viehs The US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called on 6 July 2021 for tighter international coordination on carbon environmental policies. So why can’t individual countries implement their own environmental policies in an effective fashion so that global warming will be slowed down?
Urban Transformation in Ancient Molise Molise: the undiscovered Italian region By Elizabeth C. Robinson When planning a trip to Italy, the major cities of Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice are usually on the must-see list. Yet many people also yearn to find the “undiscovered hidden gem” waiting to be explored. For the latter group, Molise is waiting. This region is so underrated that Italians have a running joke: “Il Molise non esiste” (“Molise doesn’t exist”).
JNCI Studying cancer incidence in 9/11 first-responders: lessons learned for future disasters By James Cone This week on the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) disaster, we are provided with an opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned in the aftermath of this event and consider what can be done to reduce the health impacts of future disasters. Our latest study of cancer incidence among rescue and recovery workers exposed to the WTC disaster on 9 September 2001 demonstrates the value of ongoing surveillance of chronic health effects.
Dante's New Life of the Book The real scandal of Dante’s Beatrice By Martin Eisner 2021 saw the 700th anniversary of the death of poet Dante Alighieri. To mark this, we asked some of our authors to write for the OUPblog on Dante. In this blog, Martin Eisner author of “Dante’s New Life of the Book: A Philology of World Literature”, explores Dante’s divinization of a mortal woman, with specific reference to Beatrice from Dante’s the New Life (Vita nuova).
The Rise and Fall of Christian Ireland The continuing appeal of religious politics in Northern Ireland By Crawford Gribben One of the most curious features of sudden-onset secularisation on the island of Ireland has been the revitalisation of religious politics. This is most obvious in Northern Ireland, where within the last three months, the chaotic introduction of the Brexit protocol, loyalist riots, and a controversy about banning so-called “gay conversion therapy” have been followed by dramatic declines in electoral support for and leadership changes within the largest unionist party that can only be described as chaotic.
Two evil homonyms: “mother” and “haggard” By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist dives into the lexicographical history of two puzzling English homonyms: “mother” and “haggard.”
‘Look, I Overcame!’: contesting normative narratives with Dante’s Comedy By Nicolò Crisafi 2021 sees the 700th anniversary of the death of poet Dante Alighieri. To mark this, we asked authors of some of our new publishing on Dante to write for the OUPblog. Do comedies owe us a happy ending? When Dante called his masterpiece a “comedy” the explanation of his title was fairly straightforward. Comedies promise to […]
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet From La Source to Cold War cultural diplomacy, seven books on ballet [reading list] By OUP Music From its origins in the Renaissance, ballet has evolved in various distinct ways, with different schools around the globe incorporating their own cultures. Explore some of our recent titles that look at the history (and future) of ballet, consider some of its influential figures, and the role it played in Cold War cultural diplomacy.
Super takes off By Edwin L. Battistella Superman has been around for more than eighty years. The word “super” been a part of English much longer. It was borrowed into English from Latin, and in Old English we already find the word “superhumerale” to refer to a religious garment worn over the shoulders.
The hedging henchman and his hidden horse By Anatoly Liberman This is the second and last part of the henchman tale, of which the first part appeared a week ago (August 25, 2021). The difficulties confronting an etymologist are two: 1) We don’t know exactly what the word henchman meant when it first surfaced in Middle English, and 2) the obscure Medieval Latin gloss used […]
August 2021 (18))
The power of words [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Sarah Butcher We’re all familiar with the phrase “words have power” but in a political and cultural climate where we become more aware of the power that money, influence, and privilege have every day, how do people wield the power of words?
Why were Finnish schools so successful with distance and in-person learning during the pandemic? By Eduardo Andere On 18 March 2020, schools in Finland closed. On 14 May 2020, they reopened successfully. Why was Finland successful in transitioning to distance education and then back to face-to-face learning and teaching?
Oxford World's Classics Six summer reads from Oxford World’s Classics By Sarah Fabian This year, more than ever, we can appreciate the power of losing yourself in a great story. Here is a selection of six classic novels to see you through the rest of summer…
Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It Science denial: why it happens and 5 things you can do about it By Barbara K. Hofer and Gale M. Sinatra Science denial became deadly in 2020. Many political leaders failed to support what scientists knew to be effective prevention measures. Over the course of the pandemic, people died from COVID-19 still believing it did not exist.
The henchman’s dilemma By Anatoly Liberman I am aware of only two English words whose origin has provoked enough passion and bad blood to inspire a thriller. The first such word is “cockney” and the second is “henchman”.
How Nations Remember What does the history of Victory Day tell us about Russia’s national identity? By James V. Wertsch Every year on 9 May, Russia observes Victory Day as its most important national holiday. It celebrates the end of the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) by staging events that dwarf those of any other country. But Victory Day is not just about the past. It is also about national identity in the present, and as this identity project has changed, so has the memory of the war.
Convergence Mental Health A Transdisciplinary Approach to Innovation Closing the Brain Health Gap: addressing women’s inequalities By Erin Smith, Naoko Kawaguchi, Sandra Bond Chapman, Antonella Santuccione Chadha, Meryl Comer, Jessica Wolfe, William Hynes, Paul W. Zarutskie, and Harris A. Eyre There is a clear sex and gender gap in outcomes for brain health disorders across the lifespan, with strikingly negative outcomes for women. The “Brain Health Gap” highlights and frames inequalities in all areas across the translational spectrum from bench-to-bedside and from boardroom-to-policy and economics.
Chinese Journal of International Law The expanding horizons of national security and the China-US strategic competition—where are we heading? By Joel Slawotsky From Wall Street to Beijing Finance Street and beyond, one of the most important issues in international business and law is the changing conceptualization of national security. Corporations, businesses and investors are all affected by governmental decisions with respect to defending national security in the contexts of international investment, trade, and finance. The recent US […]
The proverbial ninepence By Anatoly Liberman The popularity of ninepence in proverbial sayings is amazing. To be sure, nine, along with three and seven, are great favorites of European folklore. No one knows for sure why just those numerals achieved such prominence.
SHAPE and societal recovery from crises By SHAPE team The SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) initiative advocates for the value of the social sciences, humanities, and arts subject areas in helping us to understand the world in which we live and find solutions to global issues. As societies around the world respond to the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, research from SHAPE disciplines has the potential to illuminate how societies process and recover from various social crises.
Native conquistadors: the role of Tlaxcala in the fall of the Aztec empire By David M. Carballo The Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica, leading to the collapse of the Aztec empire, would have been impossible were it not for the assistance provided by various groups of Native allies who sensed the opportunity to upend the existing geopolitical order to something they thought would be to their advantage. No group was more critical to these alliances than the Tlaxcaltecs.
Word namesakes, also known as homonyms By Anatoly Liberman Some homonyms are truly ancient: the words in question might sound alike or be nearly identical more than a millennium ago. But more often a newcomer appears from nowhere and pushes away his neighbors without caring for their well-being.
From the rise to the maturation of the platform economy By camille carlton, dafna bearson, john zysman, and martin kenney Today, digital platform firms are among the most valuable and powerful firms in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the movement of social and economic activity online, embedding platforms further into our lives.
How to chide according to rule, or the thin edge of the wedge By Anatoly Liberman Chide remains a word “of unknown origin,” even though the Online Etymological Dictionary mentions the hypothesis suggested in my 2008 An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology. Perhaps it might be interesting to some of our readers to know the history of research into the etymology of this verb.
Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest The three greatest myths of the Fall of Tenochtitlán By Matthew Restall 13 August 2021 marks the moment, exactly five hundred years ago, when Spanish conquistadors won the battle for Tenochtitlán, completing their astonishing conquest of the Aztec Empire, initiating the three-century colonial era of New Spain. At least, that is the summary of the event that has since predominated. In recent decades, scholars have developed increasingly informed and complex understandings of the so-called Conquest, and opinions in Mexico itself have become ever more varied and sophisticated.
Inspiring women in jazz, with Nikki Iles By Nikki Iles As a teenager, I took clarinet and piano lessons at the Royal Academy of Music on Saturdays. I always particularly loved the chamber groups and small group music-making, so in some ways, it’s no surprise that I ended up in the jazz world! My dad was a semi-pro jazz drummer and I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by the music of Oscar Peterson, Nat Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ella and George Shearing as I grew up.
A world without relative clauses By Edwin L. Battistella Where does the relative clause begin and the main clause end? Why does the teacher sometimes call them adjective clauses? Should I use that or which or who? And what is the story with restrictive and non-restrictive?
July 2021 (30))
What everyone needs to know about 2021 thus far By Sarah Fabian The year 2020 posed myriad challenges for everyone and now that we have reached the mid-way point of 2021, it is clear that, although the crises are not yet fully averted, the year thus far has already boasted some encouraging events.
Introduction to International Relations Fiddling while Rome burns: climate change and international relations By Jørgen Møller It is Wednesday morning, my wife and kids have left for work and school and I am sitting in my home office, which has a beautiful view of the Gudenå river valley. I have the whole day to myself, no teaching, no meetings, no administrative drudgery. I am currently working on three books, all under contract with Oxford University Press, and it is one of those bright spring mornings that are perfect for writing. What’s not to like?
Etymology gleanings for July 2021: tending my flock By Anatoly Liberman This week’s blog post concerns the origin of English “flock”, as in a flock of gulls and a tuft of wool. The two flocks are not related and the origin of the first is unknown. I am unable to unravel this knot, but I can perhaps explain how the problem originated and venture a precarious hypothesis.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Education Why climate change education needs more empathy By Derek Gladwin As citizens of this planet, we remain at an impasse when it comes to drastically changing the course of our environmental futures. At the heart of this impasse is climate change and the future of human and more-than-human survival. And yet, a significant key to potentially resolving climate change revolves around how we communicate with […]
The neuroscience of human consciousness [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Victoria Sparkman How can the study of the human brain help us unravel the mysteries of life? Going a step further, how can having a better understanding of the brain help us to combat debilitating diseases or treat mental illnesses? In this episode of The Oxford Comment, we focused on human consciousness and how studying the neurological basis for human cognition can lead not only to better health but a better understanding of human culture, language, and society as well.
Brain It’s time to use software-as-medicine to help an injured brain By Henry Mahncke Multiple mild Traumatic Brain Injuries (“mTBIs”) can put military service members at an elevated risk of cognitive impairment. Service members and veterans were enrolled in a trial with a new type of brain training program, based on the science of brain plasticity and the discovery that intensive, adaptive, computerized training—targeting sensory speed and accuracy—can rewire the brain to improve cognitive function. The trial found that the training program significantly improved overall cognitive function.
OUP Libraries Are UK public libraries heading in a new direction? By Katie Warriner, Trisha Ward, Karen Walker, and Ania Zminda Since early 2020, we’ve seen the phrase “the new normal” used everywhere to describe every aspect of our lives post-coronavirus. Undoubtedly, COVID-19 had a huge impact on the library sector with closures happening globally, equally seen among institutional libraries as well as public libraries. As a result, we’ve seen new initiatives being adopted and revised strategies implemented.
Empire of Ruins Let’s raise our taxes! Infrastructure and the American character By Miles Orvell If the infrastructure—roads, rails, water, and sewer lines—is the foundation of our economy, we are living on ruins and on borrowed time. The fragility of our infrastructure symbolizes the failure of a national ideology that has submerged public welfare under an ocean of private interests.
A Useful History of Britain Beyond history and identity: what else can we learn from the past? By Michael Braddick History is important to collective identity in the same way that memory is important to our sense of ourselves. It is difficult to explain who we are without reference to our past: place and date of birth, class background, education, and so on. A shared history can, by the same token, give us a shared identity—to be a Manchester United fan is to have a particular relationship to the Munich air disaster, the Busby babes, George Best, Eric Cantona, and so on.
The decay of the art of lying, or homonyms and their kin By Anatoly Liberman I have been meaning to write about homonyms for quite some time, and now this time has come. Here we are interested in one question only, to wit—why so many obviously different words are not distinguished in pronunciation, or, to change the focus of the enquiry, why language, constantly striving for the most economical and most perfect means of expression (or so it seems), has not done enough to get rid of those countless ambiguities.
The Legacy of Racism for Children “Stop acting like a child”: police denial of Black childhood By Keaton Carr, Malia Metelues, Kirsten Spears, and Margaret C. Stevenson On 29 January 2021, Rochester police responded to an incident involving a Black nine-year-old girl, who they were told might be suicidal. An extended police body camera video of the incident shows the agitated child, her mother, and an officer attempting to de-escalate the situation.
The case for readdressing the three paradigms of basic astrophysics By Zeki Eker A long held misunderstanding of stellar brightness is being corrected, thanks to a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society based on International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly Resolution B2.
The Realness of Things Past Have humans always lived in a “pluriverse” of worlds? By Greg Anderson In the modern West, we take it for granted that reality is an objectively knowable material world. From a young age, we are taught to visualize it as a vast abstract space full of free-standing objects that all obey timeless universal laws of science and nature. But a very different picture of reality is now emerging from new currents of thought in fields like history, anthropology, and sociology.
On beacons, tokens, and all kinds of wonders By Anatoly Liberman Let me begin by saying that the best authorities disagree on the etymology of “beacon,” and my suggestion with which I’ll finish this essay is my own.
Epigeum logo Navigating digital research methods: key principles to consider By Catherine Dawson What do learners need to know when introduced to research methods? Do learners from all disciplines need to know the same things? How would digital research methods be incorporated? Ten principles emerged from these questions.
Very Short Introductions The VSI podcast season two: Homer, film music, consciousness, samurai, and more By The VSI Podcast Team Listen to season two of The VSI Podcast for concise and original introductions to a selection of our VSI titles from the authors themselves.
A Roman road trip: tips for travelling the Roman Empire this summer By Kimberly Cassibry As Europe reopens, consider a Roman road trip that takes inspiration from an ancient travel guide. The Vicarello itineraries describe what we might call the scenic route from Cádiz to Rome. Glimpses of the empire’s superlative architecture can be found along the way, and emerging digital tools can put primary sources at your fingertips.
Whitman and the America yet to be: reconceptualizing a multiracial democracy By Kenneth M. Price In this OUPblog, Kenneth M. Price explores American poet Walt Whitman and what has often seemed to many to be a loss of Whitman’s early political and poetic radicalism after the war, and how it can be better understood as his own effort to reconceptualize a multiracial democracy.
Passion's Fictions from Shakespeare to Richardson: Literature and the Sciences of Soul and Mind Shakespeare and the sciences of emotion By Benedict S. Robinson What role should literature have in the interdisciplinary study of emotion? The dominant answer today seems to be “not much.” Scholars of literature of course write about emotion; but fundamental questions about what emotion is and how it works belong elsewhere: to psychology, cognitive science, neurophysiology, philosophy of mind. In Shakespeare’s time the picture was different. What the period called “passions” were material for ethics and for that part of natural philosophy dealing with the soul; but it was rhetoric that offered the most extensive accounts of the passions.
Outlandish but not crazy By Edwin L. Battistella The study of language has generated a lot of outlandish ideas: various bits of prescriptive dogma, stereotypes and folklore about dialects, fantasy etymologies, wild theories of the origin of language. Every linguist probably has their own list. When these ideas come up in classes or conversations, I have sometimes referred to them as crazy, wacky, loony, kooky, or nutty. I’m going to try to stop doing that.
Why did evolution create conscious states of mind? By Stephen Grossberg When we open our eyes in the morning, we take for granted that we will consciously see the world in all of its dazzling variety. The immediacy of our conscious experiences does not, however, explain how we consciously see.
Monthly gleanings for June 2021: odds and ends By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist responds to readers’ questions on “fieldfare,” “sparrow,” “heifer,” “snide,” and more.
Transgression and Redemption in American Fiction Where have you gone, Jimmy Gatz? Roman Catholic haunting in American literary modernism By Thomas J. Ferraro The year is 1924: the restriction acts designed to turn the tide of Eastern and Southern European immigration into a trickle have been signed into US law. However, nativist panic continues apace. In quick succession three titans of US literary modernism weigh in, each with the novel still judged their best: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House (1926), Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (1926).
Grove Music How well do you know Louis Armstrong? [Quiz] By OUP Music With a career that spanned five decades and different eras in jazz, Louis Armstrong is perhaps one of the best-known jazz musicians. Test your knowledge of this influential entertainer with our quiz.
Shakespeare and East Asia Adapting Shakespeare: shattering stereotypes of Asian women onstage and onscreen By Alexa Alice Joubin There has always been some perceived affinity between the submissive Ophelia and East Asian women. Ophelia is a paradox in world literature. Even when she appears to depend on others for her thoughts like her Western counterpart, the Ophelias in Asian adaptations adopt some rhetorical strategies to make themselves heard, balancing between eloquence and silence, shattering the stereotypes about docile Asian women.
Which law applies to negotiable instruments? By Benjamin Geva and Sagi Peari The law of negotiable instruments is known for its sophistication and internal complexity. For centuries it has provided an effective legal solution for the pertinent needs of domestic and international commerce, facilitating predictability, protection of parties’ justified expectations, and the elimination of the risk involved in the physical carriage of money. The internal balance of its rules, doctrines, concepts, and principles has been achieved through a slow and ongoing evolution—a Sisyphean effort of adjudication tribunals to balance of the interests of commercial actors, fairness, legal predictability, and commercial utility.
Whose streets? The picturesque, Central Park, and the spaces of American democracy By John Evelev Last summer, during the “Black Lives Matter” protests in US cities galvanized by the murder of George Floyd, it was common to hear marchers chanting “Whose streets? Our streets!” In some instances, police seeking to break up the protests also took up this chant, an ironic retort to the crowd’s claim to political power. These contesting claims to possession of the city streets framed a conflict over social representation in contemporary US life: “whose streets” are they really
Listening as a way to manage stage fright By Julie Jaffee Nagel It is as important for music teachers to listen to what music students and performers say as to the music they play. The incident I am about to describe further opened my eyes and ears.
Marie Madeleine: exploring language, style, and humour in the Acadian folksong tradition By Jeanette Gallant There are two main French speaking groups in Canada: the Québécois and the lesser-known Acadians, who have a fascinating but tragic history in Canada. After failing to establish a post on St Croix Island (present-day Maine) in 1604, the Acadians became the first French colonial group to settle on Canadian soil in 1605 (in present-day Nova Scotia), three years prior to the arrival of the Québécois.
Jewish American Writing and World Literature: Maybe to Millions, Maybe to Nobody What does it mean to think of the world “in Jewish”? By Saul Noam Zaritt Antisemitism has been increasingly in the headlines, from reports of violent incidents directly targeting Jews to the growing prominence of ethnonationalist discourse that makes frequent use of Jewish stereotypes. This surge in anti-Jewishness includes renewed attention to the medieval image of the wandering Jew, translated into contemporary parlance with the term “globalism.” It would be tempting to dismiss such ideas as uninformed distortions of Jewish culture and history. It may be useful then to think with the stereotype rather than against it. What does it mean to think of the world “in Jewish”? What might a vocabulary of Jewish worldliness reveal about the global present?
June 2021 (29))
On tokens, beacons, and finger-pointing By Anatoly Liberman Token is a Common Germanic word. The forms are Old English “tac(e)n”, Old High German “zeihhan”, etc. The English noun combined the senses “sign, signal” and “portent, marvel, wonder.” German “Zeichen” and Dutch “teken” are still alive but mean only “indication, sign.”
Mexican independence from Spain and the first Mexican emperor By Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly Mexico had been battling its way towards independence from Spain for some years when, in 1820, the Mexican-born officer, Agustín de Iturbide y Arámburu (1783-1824), proclaimed a new rebellion on behalf of what he called the Plan of Iguala. This called for Mexican independence, a constitutional monarchy with the Spanish king or another member of the Bourbon dynasty at its head, the Catholic religion as the only religion of Mexico, and the unity of all inhabitants, no matter what their origin, ethnicity, or social class.
How does ocean health impact life and livelihoods? [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Christina Fleischer In episode 62 of The Oxford Comment, we are joined by biological oceanographer Lisa Levin and Professor Ray Hilborn to better understand the multifold threats to our oceans posed by overfishing, climate change, and biodiversity loss, and the impact this will have on our lives and livelihoods.
Poetry and the Language of Oppression: Essays on Politics and Poetics Why literature must be part of the language of recovery from crisis By Carmen Bugan Recovery takes many forms, the most obvious being physical, mental, and economic. But there must also be a recovery and a newly-discovered sense of values that put the human struggle in perspective and bring the world community to a strongly-held respect for life. The role of language in the destruction of values as well as in their recovery cannot be overstated. Poetry records and expresses, and it keeps us alert to the spiritual consequences of our experiences.
OUP Libraries Innovation in libraries: the University of Johannesburg Library Innovation has been a buzzword in all industries amidst this “new normal” and libraries are having to change their approach rapidly in these challenging times. OUP representatives set out to find examples of truly innovative libraries from across the world and the first one in our series is focused on the University of Johannesburg Library, in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Missing the forest for the trees: interpreting the composer’s message By Donna Gunn We can get so bogged down with mysterious notation that we miss the point of the score: the composer’s message. Obsession over details—why did the composer use newly available extra keys in one piece but not another? Why did the composer use particular articulation in this spot but fail to maintain consistency later?
Sandbows and Black Lights The mermaid in the fishbowl: the rise of optical illusions and magical effects By Stephen R. Wilk The nineteenth century saw the publication of several books explaining how magical effects and spectral appearances could be performed using the science of optics. It started in 1831, when Sir David Brewster (famed for his discovery of Brewster polarization and inventing the kaleidoscope) published “Letters on Natural Magic.” In this book, Brewster showed how to produce images of ghosts using partially silvered mirrors and by using a magic lantern to project images onto screens or onto clouds of vapor.
Saint Napoleon? How Napoleon used religion to bolster his power By Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly Though not a believer himself, Napoleon was well aware that religion was a vital tool for any ruler, especially when many of his subjects were believers. As he said to his secretary, Emanuel Las Cases, on St Helena at the end of his life: “from the moment that I had power, I hastened to re-establish religion. I used it as foundation and root. It became the support of good morals, of true principles, of good manners.”
He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place of the Most High Exploring the choral music of Rebecca Clarke By OUP Sheet Music Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) is most commonly known as a violist and composer, in particular for her famous Viola Sonata (1919), which has remained one of the most significant in the instrument’s repertoire since its composition. Her Shorter Pieces for viola and piano, as well as a number of solo songs, have gained increasing recognition since the turn of the millennium, as more of her music has begun to be published and researched.
Extraordinary times: revisiting the familiar through the novels of Marilynne Robinson By Laura E. Tanner Last week, after more than a year of living in pandemic lock-down, my husband, my son, and I drove from our home outside Boston to the outer tip of Cape Cod, where we parked in a near empty lot and walked down a steep hill through the dunes to the ocean. “It’s still here,” I said aloud, trying to breathe in the sweeping expanse of the curved shore, the June light illuminating the water, the sound of waves and the sweep of terns. Like the trip we took as a young family to watch the sunset at Race Point Beach just days after 9/11, this encounter with the sublime felt like a blessing, a visceral recollection of the way that beauty opens us up to something larger than ourselves.
Now in the field with a fieldfare By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I wrote about the troublesome origin of heifer. The oldest recorded form of heifer is HEAHFORE. I promised to return to the equally enigmatic- fore. I even wrote that perhaps the etymology of the bird name “fieldfare” would throw additional light on heifer. Birds often follow herds of cattle for sustenance, so that my idea is, on the face of it, not unreasonable. Just for those who may be not quite sure what bird a fieldfare is, let me explain: it is a thrush.
Epigeum logo Career development: shaping future-ready academic researchers By Shelda Debowski There is pressure on researchers and academics to scale up their impact and reach, and to demonstrate their value. To meet these escalating expectations, they need access to quality learning opportunities that are fit for purpose, capability-focused, flexible, high quality, and impactful.
Earth’s wild years: the creative destruction of cosmic encounters By Simone Marchi We earthlings enjoy the spectacle of shooting stars, small fragments of asteroids and comets that burn in sudden flashes upon entry in the Earth’s atmosphere. The largest of these fragments pose a limited threat to us as their mid-air blasts can produce local damage to buildings and infrastructures. Larger events are increasingly rarer, but their consequences can be devastating on a global scale.
Duelling Grounds Seven new books on musical theater: from Hamilton to Oklahoma! [reading list] By OUP Music Whether you’re new to the stage or eagerly counting down the days until the curtains lift, explore some of our recent titles looking behind the scenes of musical theater.
Still plowing with my heifer By Anatoly Liberman Twenty-five years ago, quite by chance, I looked up the etymology of heifer in a dictionary and discovered the statement: “Origin unknown.” Other dictionaries were not much more informative, and I decided to pursue the subject. Thanks to this chance episode, etymology became my profession.
The Making of a Terrorist Thirteen new French history books [reading list] By OUP History Bastille Day is a French national holiday, marking the storming of the Bastille—a military fortress and prison—on 14 July 1789, in an uprising that helped usher in the French Revolution. In the lead up to the anniversary of Bastille day, we’re sharing some of the latest French history titles, for you to explore, share, and enjoy. We have also granted free access to selected chapters, for a limited time, for you to dip into.
Should we be worried about robots taking our jobs? The answer depends on labor market institutions By Jens Suedekum, Sebastian Findeisen, Wolfgang Dauth, and Nicole Woessner Do new technologies, such as robots, destroy jobs and cause mass unemployment? Many current and past commentators have forcefully made this point in the public debate, but new research published in the Journal of the European Economic Association suggests that “technological mass unemployment” is indeed not something we should worry about.
The Shock of America The rise and fall of the European Super League: when the American challenge backfires By David Ellwood In the long history of America’s influence on the politics of innovation in Europe, the case of the planned football Super League stands out. This is not because of the project as such, but simply because, of all the variety of responses Europe has produced when faced with the latest American novelty, none has provoked enthusiasm and rejection—above all rejection—with such extraordinary intensity, unity, and speed.
Not only food and drinks: how EU (and UK) law could also protect handicrafts By Andrea Zappalaglio The most important international agreement on Intellectual Property defines the concept of Geographical Indication as follows: “indications which identify a good as originating in the territory of a Member, or a region or locality in that territory, where a given quality, reputation or other characteristic of the good is essentially attributable to its geographical origin.” Why is it then that the “Kashmir Pashmina” is a protected GI in India while Harris Tweed-cloth is not an EU/UK GI?
Round me falls the night by Annabel Rooney Songs with words: choosing and interpreting texts for choral composition By Annabel Rooney Like many aspects of choral composition, choosing the words is a combination of practical and creative considerations. If you want your music to be performed (and most composers do!), thinking about who might sing the words, and on what occasion, is as important as their inspirational qualities.
Athens After Empire Archaeology, architecture, and “Romanizing” Athens By Ian Worthington The question of whether Athens was a Greek or Roman city seems straightforward, but among scholars there is some debate.
Monthly gleanings for May 2021: yesterday, tomorrow, and time concepts By Anatoly Liberman A curious exchange on the word “harebrained” in the periodical Notes and Queries in the first half of 1880 began with the statement that the word owes its origin to the idiom “as mad as a march hare.” But are hares “madder” than other wild animals? Probably not.
New York City and the path to neoliberalism in the 1970s [timeline] By Benjamin Holtzman In the late twentieth century, New York City transformed into a model of neoliberal governance. While at mid-century, city government maintained the most robust social democratic program in the country, by the late twentieth century, much of this program had been curtailed and the private sector and market had gained a far greater role in providing services previously maintained by government.
Where are the Martian scientists? By Edwin L. Battistella When Perseverance, the Mars rover, landed on the Red Planet on 18 February 2021, I found myself asking a familiar question: where are the Martian scientists?
Business and Management, Oxford Research Encylopedias Experiential learning: current contributions and future trends in practice By Anna B. Kayes and D. Christopher Kayes Nearly 40 years after the publication of David Kolb’s 1984 book, “Experiential Learning: Learning as the source of learning and development,” experiential learning remains one of the most influential theories of learning in management education.
Cambridge Journal of Economics Inequality and economics: let’s go back to Adam Smith By Benoît Walraevens Although the issue of economic inequality has long been neglected by economists, it has become increasingly important in academic and public debate over the past decade. International institutions long considered pro-liberal, such as the OECD and the IMF, are now openly calling on governments to take redistributive and tax justice measures to enable more inclusive and equitable growth.
Reena Esmail TaReKiTa Finding resonant spaces between Indian classical music and the Western choral tradition By Reena Esmail When I look back at my childhood, I see that I was just starting down the path that has defined the music I write: I was trying to find places between my cultural identities that felt resonant to me. TaReKi?a is one of those resonant places.
Grove Music Me, you, Europe, the Universe: recovery and revival at the 65th Eurovision Song Contest 2021 By Philip V. Bohlman Already during the initial spread of the coronavirus pandemic during the early months of 2020, when the organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest determined the world’s largest and most extravagant musical competition could not take place in May, plans were underway for its return a year later, on 22 May, 2021 in Rotterdam. The intervening year was one of introspection.
Eric Partridge and the etymology of slang (part two) By Anatoly Liberman Eric Partridge is deservedly famous among word lovers. His main area of expertise was substandard English, that is, slang and cant. In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist offers a tribute to an indefatigable word hunter and a great expert in the field that interests many people.
May 2021 (32))
100 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre By Randall Kennedy On 1 June 1921, mobs comprised of ordinary white Oklahomans destroyed Greenwood, a black neighborhood in Tulsa sometimes referred to as “Little Africa.” The rioters proceeded to subject their African American neighbors to injury, murder, looting, pillaging, and arson. At least a hundred residents of Greenwood were killed while thirty-five city blocks were torched, destroying churches, businesses, and all sorts of other dwellings. The riot rendered more than a thousand families homeless.
Nicotine & Tobacco Research Success of Ontario menthol cigarette ban: more menthol smokers quit tobacco By Michael Chaiton and Anasua Kundu Recently, the (FDA has expressed intention of banning menthol among tobacco products—a move that could have enormous impact on health in US and in particular on reducing the disparity of health faced by Black Americans. The province of Ontario, Canada implemented a ban on menthol-flavoured tobacco products in January 2017, before a nation-wide menthol ban on October 2017.
The British Journal of Social Work Can children’s rights be the scaffold for love in the care system? By Mariela Neagu A human rights approach places children’s dignity (and their voice) at the heart of the care system. Ensuring that carers and professionals engage with children in a meaningful way is the cornerstone for a system based on ethics of care and children’s rights.
Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy, and Society The robots are coming! But could they—and should they—take your job? By David Spencer and Gary Slater Will a robot take your job? The fear of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital automation as a growing threat to human labour has been on the rise in recent years.
Love Letter Finding music in the life and letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay By Sarah Dacey I first became aware of the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay after composer Alison Willis set one of her poems (‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’) for Juice Vocal Ensemble, a group I co-founded with fellow singers and composers, Kerry Andrew and Anna Snow. The collection from which this particular poem is taken won Millay the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 and helped to further consolidate her blossoming career not only as a poet but also as a writer of plays and short stories, receiving mass-recognition under the pseudonym, Nancy Boyd.
The kings of Prussia become German emperors and Berlin becomes an imperial city By Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly On 16 June 1871 the Prussian army, 42,000 strong, entered Berlin in triumph. Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, had been proclaimed German Emperor five months before in Versailles.
Charlie Brown's America 9 new books to explore our shared cultural history [reading list] By OUP History How did the Peanuts gang respond to–and shape–postwar American politics? How has a single game become a cultural touchstone for urban Chinese Americans in the 1930s, incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II, and Jewish American suburban mothers? Were 19th Century Brits very deeply bored? Cultural and social history bring to life the beliefs, understandings, and motivations of peoples throughout time. Explore these nine books to expand your understanding of who we are.
Eric Partridge as an etymologist By Anatoly Liberman Eric Partridge is deservedly famous among word lovers. His main area of expertise was substandard English, that is, slang and cant. In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist offers a tribute to an indefatigable word hunter and a great expert in the field that interests many people.
The SHAPE of things [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Ella Percival In January, Oxford University Press announced its support for SHAPE, a new collective name for the humanities, arts, and social sciences and an equivalent term to STEM. SHAPE stands for Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy and aims to underline the value that these disciplines bring to society. Over the last year or so, huge attention has—rightly—been placed on scientific and technological advancement but does that mean we’re overlooking the contribution of SHAPE in finding solutions to global issues?
OUP Libraries The impact of COVID-19 on distance learning universities: The Open University By Claire Grace The coronavirus pandemic greatly impacted traditional universities, with closures happening globally and students turning to remote learning. But what impact is COVID-19 having on institutions that historically teach mainly online?
Socio-Economic Review Cybervetting in hiring: the hunt for moral performances By Amanda Damarin and Steve McDonald In roughly 7 out of 10 workplaces in the US, HR professionals use cybervetting to get to “know a person” beyond information provided on a resume. But what are cybervetters really attempting to learn, what inferences do they make, and what does any of this have to do with how a candidate will perform on the job?
OUP logo Accessibility in academic publishing: more than just compliance By Dwyer Scullion If you’re lucky enough to be able to simply open a webpage and engage with the content hosted there, the likelihood is that you rarely think about what it would be like if you couldn’t do that. What if you were visually impaired but the page was indecipherable to your screen reader?
The “Ready… Set… Go!” phrase structure in Classical Era music By Donna Gunn We all know the joyful anticipation of that exciting phrase. Whether getting ready for a “race” with my granddaughter or waiting for the gun at the start of a half-marathon, just the thought of it brings a bit of an adrenaline rush. This mindset transcends culture, space, and time, and presents itself structurally in Classical Era music.
My dearest foe in heaven, or: not near but dear By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist explores the origin of “dear” and the development of the various senses of the word.
Fading signs of son preference By Jan Kabatek Son preference is a phenomenon that has strong historical roots in many western and non-western cultures. The positions of men and women in modern societies are becoming more aligned. In this context, it is natural to ask whether son preference is yet another social phenomenon that is losing its historical ground. Could it even be that in some domains of life such preference is already a thing of the past?
The US Congress The Senate’s unchanging rules By Donald A. Ritchie At his recent press conference, President Biden said that he came to the Senate 120 years ago. I knew exactly what he meant because I got there three years after him when I joined the Senate Historical Office in 1976, and it was a different world.
The Spanish Civil War: a nostalgia of hope By Kathleen Riley This summer will mark the 85th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War, a brutal struggle that began with a military uprising against the democratic Second Republic and ended, three years later, in victory for the rebels under General Francisco Franco. The enduring fascination of that conflict, its ability to grip the global imagination, belies its geographical scale and is testament to the power of art.
Why has Gaza frequently become a battlefield between Hamas and Israel? By Dov Waxman During the past decade, the eyes of the world have often been directed toward Gaza. This tiny coastal enclave has received a huge amount of diplomatic attention and international media coverage. The plight of its nearly two million inhabitants has stirred an outpouring of humanitarian concern, generating worldwide protests against the Israeli blockade of Gaza.
Public Policy and Aging Report The risks of privatization in the Medicaid and Medicare programs By Lori Gonzalez, LuMarie Polivka-West, and Larry Polivka Increasingly, two of the largest publicly supported healthcare programs, Medicaid and Medicare, are administered by for-profit insurance companies. The privatization of the Medicaid long-term care programs has been implemented largely through state managed care contracts with insurance companies to administer Medicaid LTC funds.
The Hidden History of Coined Words Do you know how these words were coined? [Quiz] By Ralph Keyes Successful word-coinages—those that stay in lingual currency for a good, long time—tend to conceal their beginnings. In The Hidden History of Coined Words, author and word sleuth Ralph Keyes explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems.
Monthly gleanings for April 2021 By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist revisits the word “bodkin” and its kin.
Evolutionary Biology Fascination of Plants Day: interview with a plant scientist By Mitchell B. Cruzan For Fascination of Plants Day on 18 May this year, we talked to Professor Mitchell Cruzan about his research into the evolved adaptations that distinguish plants from animals.
The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises The real crisis at the US border By Cecilia Menjívar Once again, we are exposed to daily doses of “border crisis” news. Calling the groups of immigrants arriving at the US Southern border a crisis has become an easy shorthand with sensationalist overtones. It provokes reactions across the range of political opinions, as well as among government officials and civil society actors alike. But is there really a crisis at the border? Or is this crisis located elsewhere? And whose crisis is it?
On SHAPE: a Q&A with Lucy Noakes, Eyal Poleg, Laura Wright & Mary Kelly By Eyal Poleg, Laura Wright, Lucy Noakes, and Mary Kelly OUP have recently announced our support for the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. To further understand the crucial role these subjects play in our everyday lives, we have put three questions to four British Academy SHAPE authors and editors—social and cultural historian Lucy Noakes, historian of objects and faith Eyal Poleg, historical sociolinguist Laura Wright, and Lecturer in Contemporary Art History Mary Kelly—on what SHAPE means to them, and to their research.
A Guide to Professional Resilience and Personal Well-Being Dear fellow nurses By Gloria Ferraro Donnelly Dear Fellow Nurses, I am honored to bring Nurse Week greetings, especially in this year of unprecedented demands. You may be heaving a sigh of relief as the pandemic winds down. You are fantasizing about “getting back to normal,” whatever “normal” means to you. However, your life as a practicing nurse is forever changed as a function of living through the crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Evolution of a Taboo The power of pigs: tension and taboo in Haifa, Israel By Max D. Price It might be an exaggeration to say a boar broke the internet. But when someone posted an image of wild boar sleeping on a mattress and surrounded by garbage from a recently-raided dumpster in Haifa, Israel in March, Twitter briefly erupted. In a recent article in The New York Times, Patrick Kingsley documented the uneasy relationship, not only between people and pigs, but also between the people who want the animals eliminated and those who welcome them. But Kingsley curiously omits an important detail: the drama over the fate of Haifa’s boar plays out against a backdrop of taboo and religious law.
Becoming Someone New Transformative choice and “Big Decisions” By Enoch Lambert and John Schwenkler Imagine being invited by a trusted friend to a “life-changing” event. Should you go? The event could be a church service, self-help talk, concert, movie, festival, hike, play, dinner party, book club, union organizing meeting, etc. What sorts of considerations do you reach for in making your choice? The philosopher L. A. Paul has put problems like these, termed transformative choices, on the map for philosophical and scientific inquiry.
Etymologies in bulk and in bunches By Anatoly Liberman Two things sometimes come as a surprise even to an experienced etymologist. First, it may turn out that such words happen to be connected as no one would suspect of having anything in common. Second is the ability of words to produce one another in what seems to be an arbitrary, capricious, or chaotic way, so that the entire group begins to resemble an analog of a creeping plant.
Poetry and the Language of Oppression: Essays on Politics and Poetics Lyricism as activism: Sigurd Olson and The Singing Wilderness By Carmen Bugan Placing the reader in the poetic and ethical space is the first step toward direct action that affects the larger human community: a step toward activism. Activism formalizes the values that inspire and ultimately direct our will—and action—to preserve and protect. By opening new worlds, other spaces, and creating experiences for the reader—and, crucially, letting the reader explore those worlds for herself or for himself—the lyric writer has an opportunity to create a protected zone for significant communication.
Journal of Complex Networks A complex networks approach to ranking professional Snooker players By Joseph O’Brien There is a data revolution taking place in sport whereby athletes are becoming increasingly aware of statistics and, moreover, devoted fans of said sports have amassed huge collections of historical results that readily allow for data-driven mathematical analysis to be conducted. Motivated by this, researchers at MACSI posed the following problem—who is the greatest snooker player of all time?
Five things you need to know about pronouns By Edwin L. Battistella First off, there are more pronouns than you might think. Personal pronouns get most of the attention nowadays, especially the widely accepted singular they and other non-binary pronouns. But personal pronouns are just one group among several.
Utopia's Discontents Fake news is not new: Russia’s 19th-century disinformation experiment By Faith Hillis Russian “information warfare”—from hacking to efforts to sow “fake news” abroad—has captured international headlines in recent years. Although Russian efforts to influence western opinion are usually seen as a product of the Cold War, they have a much longer lineage.
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Do we need artificial inventors? By Martin Stierle Artificial intelligence (AI) has started to unleash a new industrial revolution. It represents a significant technology advantage which already impacts today’s products and services and will drive tomorrow’s industries. Its key importance to the technological progress of future societies is beyond doubt and is reflected by a boom in patent applications on AI technology since 2013 in various industry sectors.
Spinoza Was Spinoza a populist? [Long read] By Mogens Lærke Recent studies of Spinoza’s political theory in a contemporary perspective often place it in one of two categories, depicting him either as a defender of individual free speech and liberal democracy or as a champion of radical democracy and collective popular power. For some, he is something like a liberal supporter of the equal individual rights of all citizens to express whatever is on their mind, an early defender of “free speech.”
Putting my mouth where my money is: the origin of “haggis” By Anatoly Liberman Haggis, to quote the OED, is “a dish consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, calf, etc. (or sometimes of the tripe and chitterlings), minced with suet and oatmeal, seasoned with salt, pepper, onions, etc., and boiled like a large sausage in the maw of the animal.”
How can feed additives enhance forage-based diets of beef cattle? [Infographic] By Laura Godfrey Beef cattle production systems often rely on forage-based diets, consisting of pasture, as a low cost and widely accessible method for feeding herds. Whilst there are financial and practical benefits to forage-based diets, it is important to note that seasonal variations in pasture availability and nutritive quality can impact cattle performance and nutrition. So, are there any solutions to this?
Environmental histories and potential futures [podcast] By Steven Filippi and Sarah Butcher This month marked the 51st observation of Earth Day, which has become one of the largest secular observances in the world. The discourse surrounding environmentalism exists primarily in the realms of science and politics, so we wanted to take this opportunity to talk to researchers who study humankind’s relation with the earth in a broader perspective.
The Venetian Bride From fortified castle to wedding venue: Venetian examplars of adaptive reuse By Patricia Fortini Brown What does one do with a castle? The Venetian Terraferma (and, indeed, all of Europe) is dotted with medieval castles that have long outlived the purposes for which they were intended. And yet, built of stone, they are costly to demolish and—more importantly—of great historical interest.
A Story of Us What if COVID-19 had emerged in 1719? By Lesley Newson and Peter J. Richerson We’re often told that the situation created by the attack of the new coronavirus is “unique” and “unprecedented.” And yet, at the same time, scientists assure us that the emergence of new viruses is “natural”—that viruses are always mutating or picking up and losing bits of DNA. But if lethal new viruses have emerged again and again during human history, why has dealing with this one been such a struggle?
How Genes Influence Behavior The “warrior gene”: blaming genetics for bad behavior By Jonathan Flint Belief in the existence of a “warrior gene” has been around for more than 25 years, one of many examples where genetic effects on behavior have been misunderstood.
Can skepticism and curiosity get along? Benjamin Franklin shows they can coexist By D. G. Hart No matter the contemporary crisis trending on Twitter, from climate change to the US Senate filibuster, people who follow the news have little trouble finding a congenial source of reporting. The writers who worry about polarization, folks like Ezra Klein and Michael Lind, commonly observe the high levels of tribalism that attends journalism and consumption of it. The feat of being skeptical of the other side’s position while turning the same doubts on your own team is apparently in short supply. The consequences of skepticism about disagreeable points of view for the virtues of intellectual curiosity are not good.
The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies The coming refugee crisis: how COVID-19 exacerbates forced displacement By Alexander Betts Refugees have fallen down the political agenda since the “European refugee crisis” in 2015-16. COVID-19 has temporarily stifled refugee movements and taken the issue off the political and media radar. However, the impact of the pandemic is gradually exacerbating the drivers of mass displacement.
Going out on a limb By Anatoly Liberman Etymologists often deal with a group of words that seem to be related, and yet the nature of the relationship is hard or impossible to demonstrate. Such groups are particularly instructive to investigate. I have long been interested in a possible connection between “limp” (adjective), “limp” (verb), and “lump.”
Appalling Bodies Putting transphobia in a different biblical context By Joseph A. Marchal Right-wing and reactionary forces in the USA and UK are once again stoking panic about trans people and practices of gender and sexual variation. Their arguments, though, rely upon faulty assumptions about gender, particularly in relation to history and religion.
Mind Shift by John Parrington What can neuroscience tell us about the mind of a serial killer? By John Parrington Serial killers—people who repeatedly murder others—provoke revulsion but also a certain amount of fascination in the general public. But what can modern psychology and neuroscience tell us about what might be going on inside the head of such individuals?
Corona and the crown: monarchy, religion, and disease from Victoria to Elizabeth By Michael Ledger-Lomas Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family have featured prominently in the British state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The expectation that the monarch should articulate a spiritual response to the threat of disease has deep roots. It took its modern form with Queen Victoria, whose reign decisively transformed the relationship between religion, the sovereign, sickness, and health.
The Last Word: The Hollywood Novel and the Studio System Hollywood on Hollywood: will the Academy “Mank” up for Citizen Kane snub? By Justin Gautreau It is no secret that movies about Hollywood come with built-in Oscar buzz. Hollywood loves movies about Hollywood, the saying goes.
OUP Libraries How well do you know your libraries? [Quiz] Were you born to be a librarian? Are you a library fan? Or do you just like a bit of trivia? Whatever your reasons it’s time to prove to us how well you know your libraries with this short quiz.
Respecting property takes two By Bart J. Wilson A claim of “This is mine!” is not the end of property. If it were, then property would be as purely subjective as “I want this” is. Rather, property requires that people other than me also know the circumstances of when my claim of “Mine!” is indeed true.
The Compleat Victory Pivotal moments in US history: a timeline of the Saratoga campaign By Kevin J. Weddle In the summer and fall of 1777, after two years of indecisive fighting on both sides, the American War of Independence was at a stalemate. Less than four months later, a combination of the Continental Army and Militia forces changed the course of the war.
Monthly gleanings for March 2021 By Anatoly Liberman In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist responds to readers’ queries, discussing “evil”, “wicked”, “sward”, “hunt”, “thraúo”, “trash”, and “tomorrow”.
Punching the Clock Taking stock of the future of work, mid-pandemic By Joe Ungemah This past month marked an anniversary like no other. On 11 March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and with it, normal life of eating out, commuting to work, and seeing grandparents came to a sudden halt. One year later, my new book about the intersection of psychology and the workplace was published. With wide-scale vaccinations on the rise, I thought it would be a good time to take stock of where we are and just how much has changed.
Arthur Sullivan Rehabilitating the sacred side of Arthur Sullivan, Britain’s most performed composer By Ian Bradley November 2018 saw the release of the first ever professional recording of Arthur Sullivan’s oratorio, The Light of The World, based on Biblical texts and focused on the life and teaching of Jesus. The critical reaction to this work, which had been largely ignored and rarely performed for over 140 years, was extraordinary.
“We don’t like either side very much”: British attitudes to the American Civil War By Jim Powell One hundred and sixty years ago, on 12 April, the Confederacy attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in Charleston harbour. The first shots of the Civil War had been fired. British attitudes to that war baffled both participants at the time, and perhaps still do.
When the World Laughs Does humor have a temperature? Movie comedy in Norway and Brazil By William V. Costanzo Can humor have a temperature? Do some like their comedy hot or cold? A quick survey of movies from Norway and Brazil invites us to consider how climate and geography can affect a people’s sense of humor.
Deceitful Media The Turing test is not about AI: it is about our tendency to project humanity onto things By Simone Natale As Artificial Intelligence technologies enter into more and more facets of our everyday life, we are growing accustomed to the idea of machines talking directly to us.
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt’s religious tolerance By Benjamin J. Wetzel Theodore Roosevelt is everywhere. Most famously, his stone face stares out from South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore. One of the most important but least recognized aspects of Roosevelt’s life are his ecumenical convictions and his promotion of marginalized religious groups. Through Roosevelt’s influence, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, and Unitarians moved a little closer toward the American religious mainstream.
Wallowing deeper and deeper in the garbage can (part three) By Anatoly Liberman In the series on “trash” and its synonyms, I called attention to Spitzer’s hypothesis on the origin of English “rubbish” and now I have unearthed Verdam’s idea that Dutch “karwei” may have something in common with English “garbage.” Resuscitating valuable ideas buried in the depths of old journals is an important part of etymologists’ work. Convincing refutation is as valuable as agreement.
Beer: A Global Journey through the Past and Present Ten refreshing books to read for National Beer Day [reading list] By Jo Wojtkowski Beer is one of the world’s oldest produced alcoholic beverages and since its invention some 13,000 years ago, people across the globe have been brewing, consuming, and even worshiping this amber nectar. Whether you prefer a pale ale, wheat beer, stout, or lager, from the cask or a humble bottle, beer enthusiasts can agree that the topic of beer is as complex as its taste.
Rivers of the Sultan Seven new books on environmental history [reading list] By OUP History The reciprocal relationship between humanity and nature may define the future of our life on this planet, but it is also an inescapable force in our history. To discover how the natural world has impacted the course of history, explore these seven new titles on environmental history.
American History Anti-Asian violence: the racist use of COVID-19 By Daryl Joji Maeda The recent spate of discrimination, harassment, and violence against Asian Americans has erupted amidst a campaign of fearmongering and disinformation that blames Asian people for the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than being a new phenomenon, the portrayal of Asian Americans as vectors of disease harkens back to a long, sordid, and violent history of anti-Asian racism and nativism.
Margaret Mead: A Twentieth-Century Faith Margaret Mead by the numbers By Elesha J. Coffman The life of anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978) spanned decades, continents, and academic conversations. Fellow anthropologist Clifford Geertz compared the task of summarizing her to “trying to inscribe the Bible—or perhaps the Odyssey—on the head of a pin.
The ABCs of modal verbs By Edwin L. Battistella Modals are a special group of helping verbs, e.g. “can” and “could.” The distinction between dynamic, epistemic, and deontic uses of modal verbs is one of the most puzzling pieces of the verb system. For me, the easiest way keep things straight is with the mnemonic ABC: for ability, belief, and canon. So when you encounter a modal, ask how it is being used. Is it A, B, or C?
MNRAS Jan 2021 Extreme collision of stellar winds at the heart of Apep, the cosmic serpent By Benito Marcote Apep is a stellar system named after the Egyptian god of chaos due to the spiral pattern of dust generated by its two member stars. Now, astronomers have looked at Apep’s heart with the highest resolution available. They have revealed the strongest shock produced by the collision of the extreme winds of the two stars in our Galaxy.
To you I owe the most: tales of debt from Shakespeare’s England to the present day By Laura Kolb Our debts today are largely owed to institutions: to banks, schools, hospitals. Sometimes, they are owed to companies that do nothing but buy and manage debt. In Shakespeare’s England, debt was just as necessary for day-to-day life as it is now—maybe more so—but rather than faceless corporations, debts were owed to other people.
Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic Nine challenges that American democracy faces [reading list] By OUP Social Sciences The 78th Midwest Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition will be held virtually this year from 14-18 April. This year’s conference will feature titles that explore the challenges facing democracy in the United States and in emerging democracies around the world. Drop by our virtual booth to talk to our attending staff and to see our newest books—including leading works in the field—and take advantage of our 30% conference discount.
Grove Music Winner of Grove Music’s 2021 spoof article contest By Anna-Lise Santella It’s April Fool’s Day, which means the time has come to reveal the winner of the 20th anniversary edition of Grove Music Online’s Spoof Article Contest.
Shakespeare before Shakespeare New discoveries about John Shakespeare: financial ruin and government corruption By Cathryn Enis and Glyn Parry A golden age for some, crooked and dishonest for others? Perhaps William Shakespeare grew up thinking this way about Elizabeth I and her ministers as disaster befell his father.
March 2021 (31))
From “trash” to “rubbish” and back to “trash” (part two) By Anatoly Liberman In the beginning, words for things wasted or thrown away tend to denote some concrete refuse and only later acquire a generic meaning. Yet, when several synonyms share the field, they are seldom fully interchangeable. Thus, trash, rubbish, junk, offal, and garbage either refer to different kinds of discarded objects or have different stylistic overtones. One also notices with some surprise that in Modern English, all such words are borrowings.
Government transparency and the freedom of information [podcast] By Steven Filippi In 1967, the Freedom of Information Act was passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson. Barring certain types of exemptions, the FOIA allows for American citizens to request access to records from federal agencies. Similar laws exist around the world, though each differ based on their respective countries’ political and cultural situations.
The Hidden History of Coined Words Do you know the hidden histories of these words? [Quiz] By Ralph Keyes Successful word-coinages—those that stay in lingual currency for a good, long time—tend to conceal their beginnings. In “The Hidden History of Coined Words,” author and word sleuth Ralph Keyes explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. Take our quiz and see how many hidden histories you know!
MNRAS Letters Giant hidden black hole discovered only 1.4 billion years after the Big Bang By Andreas Efstathiou, Katarzyna Malek, and Raphael Shirley Black holes are some of the most bizarre objects in the Universe but their existence is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity of Albert Einstein. Scientists have known for some time that much larger black holes with mass billions of times that of the sun existed as early as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. An international team of astrophysicists have discovered such a hidden giant black hole.
OUP Business and Management Top five OSO titles in Business and Management [reading list] By Phoebe Murphy-Dunn To celebrate the continuously expanding field of Business and Management, we reflect on some of the most popular topics researched by users of Oxford Scholarship Online this past year.
Animal Frontiers Swine fevers: how to prevent and control the spread [infographic] By Laura Godfrey With the world’s attention set on the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns have been growing over the lack of concentrated efforts in preventing the current spread of swine fevers. Both Classical Swine Fever and African Swine Fever cause high mortality in pigs but are the result of two unrelated viruses and, if safe and efficacious prevention methods are not present, can cause significant socioeconomic impacts in endemic countries.
“Trash” and its synonyms from a strictly historical point of view (part one) By Anatoly Liberman It is amazing how many words English has for things thrown away or looked upon as useless! The origin of some of them is transparent. Obviously, “offal” is something that falls off. Not all stories are so transparent. A case in point is “trash,” the subject of today’s blog post.
Internet Jurisdiction The jurisdictional challenge of internet regulation By Julia Hörnle The uncomfortable truth of internet regulation, which no government likes to admit openly, is encapsulated by one of the fundamental concepts of the law: jurisdiction.
Future War The future of war and defence in Europe By John R. Allen, Frederick Ben Hodges, and Julian Lindley-French We face a critical challenge: unless Europeans do far more for their own defence, Americans will be unable to defend them; but there can be no credible future defence of Europe without America!
Disability, access, and the virtual conference By Sonya Freeman Loftis Creating access for people with disabilities sometimes means fundamentally changing the nature of the thing that is made accessible. When we change the nature of the thing made accessible, we don’t just create access and inclusion for people with disabilities—we often create a new kind of experience altogether.
Picture World Victorian 3D: virtual adventures in the stereoscope By Rachel Teukolsky We’re used to travelling long distances to explore exotic new locations—but that hasn’t always been possible. So how did people visit far-flung spots in times gone by? Rachel Teukolsky, author of “Picture World: Image, Aesthetics, and Victorian New Media”, takes us on a fascinating journey in glorious Victoriana 3D, introducing us to the must-have virtual reality tech of the 19th century: the stereoscope.
A Line of Blood and Dirt Why borders are built on ambiguity By Benjamin Hoy During the nineteenth century, Britain, Canada, and the United States began to construct, in earnest, a border across the northern part of North America. They placed hundreds of markers across the 49th parallel and surveyed the land around them. Each government saw the border as a symbol of their sovereignty, a marker of belonging, and as the basic outline of their nation-states.
1837 To know Russia, you really have to understand 1837 By Paul Werth To know Russia, you really have to understand 1837. The assertion might seem strange. Even among historians of Russia, it is likely to produce head-scratching rather than nods of knowing approval. Most would point to other years—1613 and the birth of the Romanov dynasty; 1861 and the end of Russian serfdom; 1917 and the Bolshevik seizure of power—as more consequential. But in fact 1837 was pivotal for the country’s entry into the modern age and for defining many of Russia’s core attributes. Russia is what it is today, in no small measure, because of 1837.
Erard: A Passion for the Piano Family secrets and the demise of Erard pianos and harps By Robert Adelson Musicians from Haydn to Liszt were captivated by the rich tone and mechanical refinement of the pianos and harps invented by Sébastien Erard, whose firm dominated nineteenth-century musical life. Erard was the first piano builder in France to prioritise the grand piano model, a crucial step towards creating a modern pianistic sonority.
Oxford World's Classics How well do you know these literary classics by women? [Quiz] By Julia Baker Test your knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary classics penned by women!
The future is in the past By Anatoly Liberman “Not everybody may know that ‘yesterday’ is one of the most enigmatic formations in the Indo-European language family.” In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist explores the history of the adverb ‘yesterday’ and how the same word acquired two incompatible senses: ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow.’
The Librarian Reserve Corps: fighting COVID-19 with mediated information By Denise Smith, Isatou N'Jie, Jane Orbell-Smith, Joanne Doucette, and Victoria Smith Librarians have always been at the forefront of information needs and have provided critical assistance to patrons, public officials, and decision makers during uncertain times. The COVID-19 pandemic is no exception and has created an urgent, unprecedented demand for access to knowledge that is accurate, reliable, and timely.
Carginogenesis Addressing health inequity in disparities of cancer outcomes By Maeve Bailey-Whyte and Stefan Ambs Cancer disparities are largely explained by health care disparities, lifestyle factors, cultural barriers, and disparate exposures to carcinogens but even when these are accounted for—some of the cancer disparities stubbornly persist.
SHAPE today and tomorrow: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part two) By Julia Black and Sophie Goldsworthy This second part of our Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy, Director of Content Strategy & Acquisitions at OUP, and Professor Julia Black CBE FCA, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and President-elect of the British Academy, reflects on how SHAPE disciplines can help us to understand the impact of the events of the pandemic and look towards the future of SHAPE.
Chinese Antitrust Exceptionalism Chinese antitrust exceptionalism: a Q&A with Angela Huyue Zhang By Angela Huyue Zhang Angela Huyue Zhang discusses the development, enforcement, and exceptionalism of Chinese antitrust law, and its impact on competition law in the EU and the US.
Reading for words By Edwin L. Battistella I grew up in the golden era of standardized reading tests. We were taught to read for information, and our progress was tracked by multiple choice tests asking us “What is the main point of the passage?” In retrospect, it was bad training for reading (and for writing), and it took me a long time to change my habits.
Etymology gleanings for February 2021 By Anatoly Liberman Latin “forum” referred not only to a marketplace but also to a place of assembly for judicial and other business. Hence “forensic” meaning “pertaining to the forum or courts of law.”
American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction “The Real America”: immigration and American identity By David A. Gerber A new, in both tone and aspirations, presidential administration has taken office in the United States, and the prospect for significant change in the approach to immigration, one of the hot button issues advanced by President Donald Trump, is present at its inception.
Feminist Philosophy How women have shaped philosophy: nine female philosophers our authors admire By OUP Philosophy When asked to name a philosopher, it is more than likely that many of the major thinkers that spring to mind will be male. There is a long and rich tradition of female thinkers who have made important contributions to philosophy, and whose works merit further recognition. To celebrate Women’s History Month, we asked some of our authors to tell us about a female philosopher they admire, and why.
Making Deep History Turning geology into archaeology: how two businessmen changed the face of time By Clive Gamble On the afternoon of 27 April 1859, two top-hatted businessmen, standing in a gravel pit outside the French city of Amiens, were about to change history. Joseph Prestwich and John Evans had brought with them a photographer, scientific witnesses, and a great deal of zeal and perseverance to answer a longstanding question: how old was humanity?
Pensions Imperilled UK pensions provision has been imperilled by an epidemic of misunderstanding Pensions provision in the UK has been quietly revolutionised in recent years. However, far from rescuing pensions from demographic doom, recent policies have in fact further endangered our ability to secure a decent retirement income for citizens—in ways, I believe, many policy-makers are barely cognisant of.
Review of Finance The horizontal agency problem and how China deals with it By Fuxiu Jiang and Kenneth A. Kim Economies cannot grow unless they have well-functioning stock markets. Up until now, China was a striking exception to this rule. However, for China’s growth to continue, it recognizes that a well-functioning stock market must play a major role. Therefore, two important questions are the following. First, what is the nature of the agency problem in China? Second, what is the potential solution to this problem?
Neuroscience of Consciousness Why future “consciousness detectors” should look for brain complexity By Joel Frohlich Imagine you are the victim of an unfortunate accident. Unable to move or speak, you lie helpless in your hospital bed. How would anyone know that you—your thoughts, feelings, and experiences—are still there?
Folklore and etymology: imps and elves (or COVID-19 and backpain) By Anatoly Liberman The German for “to give a shot, to vaccinate” is “impf-en.” “Impf-” is an exact cognate of English “imp.” How can it be? This week, the Oxford Etymologist explores the language connection between vaccines, mischievous children, and Icelandic elves.
Transcending Dystopia Digging into the vaults of the unknown: the “Transcending Dystopia” research diaries By Tina Frühauf Research for Transcending Dystopia over the course of almost a decade was truly a journey, piecing together disparate snippets that have been transmitted in different repositories to gain insight into the musical practices and lives of Jews in postwar Germany. Among the 26 archives and private collections I consulted, two experiences stand out—the first being somewhat unusual, the second being quite extraordinary.
Credible Threat Nine books to make you think about gender politics in the political sphere By OUP Social Sciences For Women’s History Month, we have compiled a reading list of titles that explore women’s representation in politics and present bold ideas to improve the future for us all.
February 2021 (28))
Republicans at a crossroads? Probably not By James R. Skillen How did the Republican Party arrive at such a confused and divided state that Sen. John Thune had to ask whether it wanted “to be the party of limited government and fiscal responsibility, free markets, peace through strength and pro-life” or “the party of conspiracy theories and QAnon”? In reality, the party is both, and it has been so for some time.
Introducing SHAPE: Q&A with Sophie Goldsworthy and Julia Black (part one) By Julia Black and Sophie Goldsworthy OUP is excited to support the newly created SHAPE initiative—Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy. SHAPE has been coined to enable us to clearly communicate the value that these disciplines bring to not only enriching the world in which we live, but also enhancing our understanding of it. In the first instalment this two-part Q&A, we spoke to Sophie Goldsworthy and Professor Julia Black to find out more about SHAPE and what it means to them.
Journal of Animal Science The impact of heat stress on beef cattle: how can shade help? [infographic] By Laura Godfrey [infographic] Cattle well-being and performance is negatively impacted by extreme heat stress. Introducing shade as a mechanism to mitigate this is one way to offer relief.
Defending God in Sixteenth-Century India Beyond polemics: debating God in early modern India By Jonathan Duquette The early modern period in India (roughly from 1550 to 1750) has been increasingly understood as a time of heightened religious self-awareness—the fertile soil from which Hinduism emerged as a unified world religion. Yet it was also a tumultuous period of intense rivalry across scholarly and religious communities.
Zoological Journal Darwin’s queer plots in The Descent of Man By Ross Brooks This year, LGBT+ History Month coincides with the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s momentous sexological work The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, originally published on 24 February 1871. The occasion prompts reflection on Darwin’s highly equivocal handling of sex variations in the natural world, including intersexualities (“hermaphroditism”), transformations of sex, and non-reproductive sexual behaviours.
Darwin's Psychology Darwin’s theory of agency: back to the future in evolutionary science? By Ben Bradley Was Darwin a one-trick pony? The scientists who most laud him typically cite just one of his ideas: natural selection. Do any know that his theory of evolution—like his take on psychology—was drawn from a comprehensive analysis of organisms as agents? This fact has long been eclipsed by the “gene’s-eye view” of adaptation which gained a strangle-hold over biology during the twentieth century—and hence over sociobiology and today’s “evolutionary” psychology.
The Louvre and its environs By Anatoly Liberman What is the origin of the name Louvre? Dictionaries and websites say unanimously that the sought-for etymology is unknown or uncertain. Perhaps so, but we will see.
Black History Month square Ten empowering books to read in celebration of Black History Month By Jo Wojtkowski In observance of Black History Month, we are celebrating our prize-winning authors and empowering scholarship spanning a variety of topics across African American history, the civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, the Harlem Renaissance, jazz, and more. Explore our reading list and update your bookshelf with the most recent titles from these eminent authors.
Live after gravity Isaac Newton’s London life: a quiz By Patricia Fara Isaac Newton is known as the scientist who discovered gravity, but less well-known are the many years he spent in metropolitan London, and what precisely he got up to in that time…
John Rawls: Debating the Major Questions John Rawls: an ideal theorist for nonideal times? By Jon Mandle and Sarah Roberts-Cady John Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” was published fifty years ago. What is the connection between Rawls’s abstract theorizing about justice and work aiming to address real-world injustices?
Language Arts, Math, and Science in the Elementary Music Classrooom Tips for adapting the elementary music curriculum to online teaching By Kim Milai Teachers of the performing arts are adapting their classes to go online. The problems and challenges range from ensuring enough physical space for movement around each student’s computer to overcoming audio and video syncing delays during the live feed. But what about elementary music?
The skin of etymological teeth By Anatoly Liberman Is English “skin” related to Greek “skene”? The story of “skin” and some other words, partly synonymous with it, is worthy of attention.
Shakespeare and East Asia Five themes in Asian Shakespeare adaptations By Alexa Alice Joubin Since the 19th century, stage and film directors have mounted hundreds of adaptations of Shakespeare drawn on East Asian motifs, and by the late 20th century, Shakespeare had become one of the most frequently performed playwrights in East Asia.
Cultural Psychology What role does culture play in shaping children’s school experiences? By Robyn M. Holmes With increasing migration and the movement of people in the 21st century, many children are attending school in formal settings where cultural norms and practices at home may conflict with those children encounter at school. This experience places children in the position of having to navigate two different social worlds—home and school. In this blog post, Professor Robyn M. Holmes explores three key areas of cultural impact on children’s school experiences: parental beliefs and socialization practices, teacher perceptions, and school curricula and children’s learning.
Oxford World's Classics Which literary heroine are you? [quiz] By Julia Baker To best celebrate the online launch of the Oxford World’s Classics, discover which literary heroine you are most like with our quiz.
Love Lives The evolution of women’s love lives: a timeline By Carol Dyhouse Reaching from the middle of the twentieth century, when little girls dreamed of Prince Charming and Disney’s “Cinderella” graced movie screens, Carol Dyhouse charts the transformation of women’s love lives against radical social changes such as the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the acceleration of technological advancement, and improved access to contraception, bringing us up to the 2013 release of “Frozen.”
Getting Domesday done: a new interpretation of William the Conqueror’s survey By Stephen Baxter A new interpretation of the Domesday survey, the famous survey of England taken on the orders of William the Conqueror in 1086, has emerged from a major study of the survey’s earliest surviving manuscript. It is now clear that the survey was more even more efficient, complex, and sophisticated than previously supposed.
Empire of Ruins The ruins of the post-Covid city—and the essential task of rebuilding By Miles Orvell We are in the midst of a Covid economy that has decimated the cities of America. It’s essential for us all to recognize that we’re in this together and to support local and national efforts to rebuild, on the basis of a unified public consciousness that has been markedly absent from our divided nation in recent years.
“Gig” and its kin By Anatoly Liberman I received a query from my colleague, who asked me what I think about a possible tie between “Sheela na gig” and the English word “gig.” Therefore, I decided to devote a special post to it.
Grove Music Grove Music’s 2021 spoof article contest is now open! By Anna-Lise Santella I think we can all agree that recent months of pandemic and political unrest have been difficult ones, and often entirely bereft of humor. I am therefore pleased to announce the revival of the Grove Music Online Spoof Article Contest 2021.
Dead Zones Dead zones: growing areas of aquatic hypoxia are threatening our oceans and rivers By David Kirchman A lake, sea, or coastal ocean turns into a dead zone when the supply of oxygen from the atmosphere and photosynthesis is overwhelmed by the use of oxygen during organic material degradation.
Naturally speaking By Edwin L. Battistella The label “natural” connotes a certain imagery: freshly grown food, pure water, safe consumption. Things described as “natural” are portrayed as being simple and lacking the intervention of culture, industry, and artificiality. Let’s take a closer look.
Paediatrics & Child Health How the COVID-19 pandemic may permanently change our children’s world By Joan Robinson Who amongst us would have imagined that in late 2019 a normally uneventful event would change the world forever? As far as we can tell, all that happened is that a particularly clever virus (SARS-CoV2, which causes COVID-19) spread from an animal to a human.
Darwin's Historical Sketch: An Examination of the 'Preface' to the Origin of Species Ten things you didn’t know about Darwin By Christina Fleischer Charles Darwin’s birthday on 12 February is widely celebrated in the scientific community and has come to be known as “Darwin day.” In recognition of Darwin’s 212th birthday this year we have put together a list of ten interesting facts about the father of evolution.
Tsunami: The World's Greatest Waves How to survive a tsunami By James Goff and Walter Dudley If you, your family, or friends ever go near the shore of the ocean or a lake, you need to learn about tsunamis. Unfortunately, the current public perception of the tsunami hazards is all too often a three-step denial: (1) It won’t happen to me. (2) If it does, it won’t be that bad. (3) If it is bad, there’s nothing I could’ve done anyway. This perception must be changed in order to save lives and build a culture of tsunami hazard preparedness.
Etymology gleanings for December 2020 and January 2021 By Anatoly Liberman Impulses behind word formation never change. This statement surprised one of our readers. However, if we assume that most “natural” words are, at least to some degree, sound-symbolic and/or sound-imitative (onomatopoeic), such monosyllabic complexes as kob, kab, keb, kub, kid, kat, and their likes must have arisen again and again in the course of language history, even if every time they were tied to different objects.
Journeys through Galant expositions Joseph Riepel and a very long hello By L. Poundie Burstein Joseph Riepel’s celebrated music theory treatise, Anfangsgründe zur musicalischen Setzkunst, unfolds in a lively and witty manner. Most of its chapters are framed in the guise of lessons, presented as dialogues between a teacher and student.
My song is love unknown, by Becky McGlade A Q&A with composer Becky McGlade By Becky McGlade I was fortunate enough to rehearse daily with the Truro cathedral choristers from the age of 8 to 13 (in the days before girl choristers). This fostered in me a love for choral music and for singing, which has continued throughout my life.
January 2021 (29))
Why we can be cautiously optimistic for the future of the retail industry By Alan Treadgold Before COVID-19 struck with such vengeance, the retail industry globally was already in a state of accelerated and highly disruptive change, enabled by the transformative impacts of technology in general and digital connectivity in particular.
Oxford Bibliographies Is the “distant sociality” and digital intimacy of pandemic life here to stay? By Nathan Rambukkana Pandemic life has underscored how digital technology can foster intimate connections. As citizens of a world that suddenly feels both more alienated and radically—dangerously—connected, the term “social distancing” has been added to many of our vocabularies.
After the Black Death The Black Death: how did the world’s deadliest pandemic change society? By Mark Bailey COVID-19 has ignited global interest in past pandemics, and the Black Death of 1346-53 is the worst in recorded history. Recent research has transformed our understanding of this lethal disease, which coincided with environmental stress and rapid climate change. But in the long term it proved a watershed in human history, triggering a range of institutional, economic, and social changes that opened up the route to liberal modernity.
Language contact and idioms: out of India By Anatoly Liberman The overlap between English and French idioms is considerable. Familiar quotations from Classical Greek and Latin, to say nothing of the Bible, are taken for granted. A few idioms seem to have come from India, which is not surprising, considering how long British servicemen lived in that country. The Indian connection has rarely been discussed; yet it deserves a brief mention.
Open Access – Episode 58 – The Oxford Comment [podcast] By Steven Filippi Should academic research be available to everyone? How should such a flow of information be regulated? Why would the accessibility of information ever be controversial? Our topic today is Open Access (OA), the movement defined in the early 2000s to ensure the free access to and reuse of academic research on the Internet.
Hot contention, cool abstention Safety first? Considering protest reasoning 10 years on from the Arab Spring By Stephanie Dornschneider Could we expect new mass protests to mark the ten-year anniversary of the Arab Spring? New research investigates the cognitive processes underlying the protests, especially how the desire for “safety and stability” impacts the decision to protest or abstain.
Using Technology with Elementary Music Approaches Technology in the elementary music classroom after the pandemic By Amy M. Burns The pandemic will leave a lasting impression on music education for years to come. Though we do not have to use technology every day after the pandemic ends, there are ways to use technology that can level up and benefit music-making with elementary students.
A Century of Miracles, by H. A. Drake “Nero fiddled… Trump golfs”—but did Nero really fiddle while Rome burned? By H. A. Drake “Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs.” Nero’s fiddle is back in the news thanks to Bernie Sander’s criticism of President Trump’s pandemic leadership. But are we being entirely fair to Nero?
Movers & Stayers The splintering South: the growing effect of migration on Republican strongholds By Irwin L. Morris Migration patterns have laid siege to southern Republican dominance. Solidly red states a generation ago—Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina—are now purple or bright blue. The Democratic presence in Texas and South Carolina grows as Florida remains a battleground. These are all “fast growth” states. The remaining Republican bulwark represents a declining portion of the Southern electorate. If the South is the core of the modern Republican Party, its days are numbered.
Sister Style More than a Vogue cover: Madam Vice President Kamala Harris By Nadia E. Brown The Vogue cover photo controversy is much more than a disagreement over a styling choice. Black women’s bodies are political. Thus, the uproar over Kamala Harris’s Vogue cover must be read through a socio-cultural lens that acknowledges the intersectional salience of her racialized and gendered body.
Making Time for Making Music Online music-making with nearly no lag time—really! By Amy Nathan Susan Alexander found a way to fill the “big, depressing hole in your life where playing music with other people used to be” when she discovered JamKazam, one of several free music-making software programs that nearly eliminate the annoying lag time in sound transmission that occurs when musicians try to make music together on Zoom or Skype.
Coming to terms with recalcitrant kids and with mots populaires By Anatoly Liberman “Kid” has a few relatives outside English but in an English text it appeared only around 1200, in a poem so strongly influenced by the language of the Scandinavians that the fact of borrowing is incontestable: “kid” is an import from Danish.
Representation in Cognitive Science What is “representation” in the human brain and AI systems? By Nicholas Shea Neuroscience is beginning to make sense of what’s going on inside the human brain—a seemingly inscrutable organ of even great complexity. We can now see what some patterns of activity are, and we have an inkling of what they are doing, of how they track the environment, and subserve behaviour.
Hard White Trump and the mainstreaming of racism in American politics [long read] By Richard C. Fording and Sanford F. Schram [Long read] Trump’s racial demagoguery has been a persistent presence during his presidency but perhaps never more dramatically enacted than during the first presidential debate of the 2020 campaign, which was unlike anything we have ever seen in modern presidential history.
Essenes in Judaean Society: the sectarians of the Dead Sea Scrolls By Timothy H. Lim The sectarians reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls, identified with the Essenes, were not the isolated community of popular imagination that spent their days praying, studying scriptures, and waiting for one or two messiahs in the desert.
Understanding black holes: young star clusters filling up gaps By Sambaran Banerjee Since their groundbreaking discovery of gravitational waves from a pair of in-spiralling black holes back in 2015, the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration has detected nearly 70 candidates of such events, 50 being confirmed and published until now.
COVID-19 and pollution: double standards, quadruple bias By Jean-Frédéric Morin The difference between policy responses to COVID-19 and to environmental crises is striking. When faced with the pandemic, governments around the world (with a few notable exceptions) adopted draconian measures to limit the disaster. These measures are not inconsequential: it will take years to reduce unemployment and the public debt. Yet, they were sacrifices considered necessary to protect public health.
Cubs galore By Anatoly Liberman The time has come to find out where cub came from. “Cub,” which surfaced in English texts only in the early sixteenth century, turned out to be an aggressive creature: it ousted whelp, and later the verb “to cub” came into existence. The constant suppression of old words by upstarts is a process worth noticing.
Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know Questions on a Trump impeachment and invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment By Michael J. Gerhardt How does the Twenty-fifth Amendment work? Could the Twenty-fifth Amendment cause a problem for President Trump? Can President Trump be impeached if he is considered incompetent? Michael J. Gerhardt provides the answers in this extract from ‘Impeachment: What Everyone Needs to Know’.
Genome Biology and Evolution Good news for honey bees from 150-year-old museum specimens By Casey McGrath The past several decades have been hard on Apis mellifera, the Western honey bee. Originally native to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, Western honey bees have spread worldwide thanks to the nutritional and medicinal value of their honey, pollen, beeswax, and other hive products.
Annals of Work Exposures and Health Droplets, aerosols and COVID-19: updating the disease transmission paradigm By Rachael Jones The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent torrent of research has brought a simmering debate about how respiratory infectious diseases are transmitted to a boil, in full view of the public. The words airborne, aerosol, and droplets are now part of the daily news—but, why?
Posthuman Bliss? The Failed Promise of Transhumanism Playing to lose: transhumanism, autonomy, and liberal democracy [long read] By Susan B. Levin [long read] Transhumanists insist that their vision of the “radical” bioenhancement of human capacities is light-years removed from prior eugenics, which was state managed. This reassuring, empowering picture is undercut by transhumanists’ own arguments, which offer incompatible pictures of personal autonomy in relation to decisions about the use of bioenhancement technologies.
Henry James and the Art of Impressions Impressionism’s sibling rivalry By John Scholar Sixty world-famous impressionist paintings arrived at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from Copenhagen in March of this year, a whisker before lockdown was imposed. Instead of drawing box-office crowds, they sat in storage for four months. But then the Academy reopened its doors in August with the Covid-secure ‘Gauguin and the Impressionists’. That this exhibition sold out so quickly is testament not only to our hunger for unmediated culture after a period of captivity, but also to the enduring popularity of impressionism.
Was the dog-demon of Ephesus a werewolf? Apollonius of Tyana was a Pythagorean sage and miracle-worker whose life was roughly conterminous with the first century AD. He is often, accordingly, referred to as “the pagan Jesus.” We owe almost all we know about him to a Life written by Philostratus shortly after AD 217. In one of the biography’s more striking episodes (4.10), the great man eliminates a plague (a timely subject indeed for us!) that has fallen upon the people of Ephesus.
A mild case of etymological calf love By Anatoly Liberman As far as I can judge, the origin of “calf”, the animal, contains relatively few riddles, and in this blog, I prefer not to repeat what can be found in solid dictionaries and on reliable websites. But there is a hitch in relation to the frolicsome calf, the lower leg. That is why I decided to give calf a chance…
The Changing Energy Mix The economic and environmental case for electric vehicles By Paul F. Meier Electricity generation comes from many energy sources, including fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal, nuclear energy, and a variety of renewable sources such as wind, solar, hydroelectric, and biomass. For the transportation sector, however, energy comes primarily from crude oil.
Oxford African American Studies Center Women & Literature: Maya Angelou By Tasha M. Hawthorne Angelou’s creative talent and genius cut across many arenas. One of the most celebrated authors in the United States, Angelou wrote with an honesty and grace that captured the specificity of growing up a young black girl in the rural South.
Understanding un- By Edwin L. Battistella Recently I had occasion to use the word unsaid, as in what goes unsaid. Looking at that phrase later, I began to ponder the related verb unsay, which means something different.
Oxford African American Studies Center Women & Literature: Zora Neale Hurston By Susan Butterworth Susan Butterworth discusses the life and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston. A vibrant figure of the Harlem Renaissance, a fertile interpreter of black folklore, and a lyrical writer – Hurston had a fascinating career. By the time of her death however, she had sadly disappeared into poverty and obscurity.
December 2020 (24))
What everyone needs to know about 2020 By Julia Baker Across the globe, 2020 has proved to be one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory. From COVID-19 to the US Election, gain insight into some of the many events of 2020 with our curated reading list from the What Everyone Needs to Know® series.
Oxford African American Studies Center Women & Literature: Lorraine Hansberry By Margaret B. Winkerson In this article from “Black Women in America” (2nd Ed.), Margaret B. Winkerson looks at the life and works of Lorraine Hansberry, author of “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Oxford African American Studies Center Women & Literature: Alice Walker By Stefanie K. Dunning Like all of her heroines, Alice Walker is herself an agent of change. Walker once said that the best role model is someone who is always changing. Instead of desiring a long shelf life, Walker asserts that she wants to remain fresh. This commitment to fluidity and evolution characterizes both her life and her work.
Oxford African American Studies Center Women & Literature: Toni Morrison By Daniel Donaghy Toni Morrison occupies a central place in the literature of twentieth-century America. Her epic themes and characters, her unique and sophisticated style of storytelling, and her ability to recreate urgent, long-silenced voices have expanded what readers know about African American history and what they understand about the complex, often confusing relationships between race and gender in contemporary society.
Women and Gender in the Qur'an The Qur’an on Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and the Nativity By Celene Ibrahim A mention of the infant Jesus’s birth would likely not, for most Muslims, conjure up manger scenes, a shining star, or visits from shepherds. Instead, a more likely image would be of Mary alone and in labor at the foot of a palm. Rather than a swaddled infant resting in the hay among manger animals, the Qur’an describes mother and child resting next to a spring.
John Donne & the Conway Papers Finding the Melford Hall Manuscript By Daniel Starza Smith The Melford Hall Manuscript is a large, expensively bound manuscript volume containing previously unknown witnesses of nearly 140 poems by John Donne (1572-1631), one of the most outstandingly significant poets and preachers of the early modern period. Discovered by Gabriel Heaton of Sotheby’s during a routine survey of Melford Hall in Suffolk, and restored by sale by the prestigious […]
The Shogun's Silver Telescope by Timon Screech An astronomically good deal: King James I and the Shogun’s silver telescope By Timon Screech Over the winter of 1610-11, a magnificent telescope was built in London. It was almost two metres long, cast in silver and covered with gold. This was the first telescope ever produced in such an extraordinary way, worthy of a great king or emperor. Why was it made and who was it going to?
OUP Libraries Read & Publish in China: Chinese Academy of Sciences and OUP’s landmark cooperation By Kimi Zeng, Kunhua Zhao, and Rhodri Jackson Open scholarly communication leads to more readership, more impact, and ultimately better research. Oxford University Press (OUP) is the largest university press publisher of open access content. We published our first open access research in 2004 and launched our first fully open access journal in 2005.
IAFFAI Biotechnology: the Pentagon’s next big thing By Jingyuan Liu and Kai Liao Biotechnology has long been an important field of scientific research. But until recently, it has never been formally considered by any military as a significant technological investment opportunity, or a technology that could revolutionize the conduct of war.
The ubiquitous whelp By Anatoly Liberman Two types of hypotheses compete in etymology. One is learned and the other disconcertingly simple, so that an impartial observer is sometimes hard put to it to choose between them. English whelp resembles the verb yelp, obviously a sound-imitative word, like yap and yawp. Is it possible that such is the origin of whelp?
The Emotions of Internationalism The role of the university in international cooperation By Ilaria Scaglia Universities are crucial for international understanding and cooperation, especially during a pandemic. In the midst of a pandemic, we seldom hear universities mentioned as crucial sites for international understanding and cooperation.
Very Short Introductions 25 years of Very Short Introductions: listen to the anniversary podcast series By Rebecca Parker In 2020 we are proud to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of our Very Short Introductions. Listen to concise and original podcast episodes by our Very Short Introductions authors on a variety of dynamic topics for wherever your curiosity may take you.
Gems of Exquisite Beauty Nineteenth-century US hymnody’s fascination with classical music By Peter Mercer-Taylor How could it ever have seemed like a good idea to set one of the most familiar Christmas hymns in the English language to a tune intended by Mozart (a genius at close-binding music to drama) as a vehicle for a seductive outpouring of double-entendre?
Publius Obama, Trump, and education policy in US federalism By Kenneth K. Wong In just a few weeks, Joseph R. Biden Jr will take his oath as the 46th President of the United States. Like his predecessors in recent decades, Biden intends to use executive and administrative actions to pursue his policy agenda.
Eubie Blake: Rags, Rhythm, and Race 10 little-known facts about Sissle and Blake’s Shuffle Along By Ken Bloom and Richard Carlin Written, staged, and performed entirely by African Americans, Shuffle Along was the first show to make African-American dance an integral part of American musical theater, eventually becoming one of the top ten musical shows of the 1920s. Authors Richard Carlin and Ken Bloom provide a list of ten little-known facts about the show.
Why is religion suddenly declining? By Ronald F. Inglehart An analysis of religious trends from 1981 to 2007 in 49 countries containing 60% of the world’s population did not find a global resurgence of religion—most high-income countries were becoming less religious—however, it did show that in 33 of the 49 countries studied, people had become more religious. But since 2007, things have changed with surprising speed.
A year of listening to books By Edwin L. Battistella The COVID crisis has led me to rethink a lot that I’ve taken for granted. One the saving graces helping to get me through long days of remote teaching and evenings of doom-scrolling was the opportunity to take long walks.
Genome Biology and Evolution Unique adaptations allow owls to rule the night By Casey McGrath As the only birds with a nocturnal, predatory lifestyle, owls occupy a unique niche in the avian realm. Hunting prey in the dark comes with a number of challenges, and owls have evolved several features that leave them well-suited to this task.
OUP Libraries The changing role of medical librarians in a COVID-19 world By Ania Zminda “Health librarians really need to have a broad picture of the health environment to have an impact and connect all the dots ”, says Gemma Siemensma, Library Manager at Ballarat Health Services (BHS), Australia. Librarians “need to continue to excel in reference consultations and literature searching to advanced forms of evidence synthesis and critical appraisal,” she adds.
MNRAS Modifying gravity to save cosmology By indranil banik The unexpectedly rapid local expansion of the Universe could be due to us residing in a large void. However, a void wide and deep enough to explain this discrepancy—often called the “Hubble tension”—is not possible in standard cosmology, which is built on Einstein’s theory of gravity, General Relativity.
Etymology gleanings for November 2020 By Anatoly Liberman Why is there no “master key” to the closet hiding the origin of language and all the oldest words? Historians deal with documents or, when no documents have been preserved, with oral tradition, which may or may not be reliable. The earliest epoch did not leave us any documents pertaining to the origin of language.
Oxford Research Encyclopedias Social studies: learning the past to influence the future By Tommy Ender Learning history is complex; it requires an individual to be a critical thinker, develop different interpretations of history, and engage in analytical writing. I encourage these skills in my undergraduates when we discuss the past. However, within the US’ K-12 system, social studies have been relegated to the sidelines as education policymakers and administrators have focused on math and science since the start of the 21st century.
Beethoven: Variations on a Life Five overlooked Beethoven gems By Mark Evan Bonds Beethoven wrote an enormous quantity of music: nine symphonies, some fifty sonatas, seven concertos, sixteen string quartets, more than a hundred songs…the list goes on and on. It is almost inevitable that certain of these works have been relatively neglected by performers and the listening public alike. Here are a few overlooked gems.
November 2020 (29))
How to call for the police Crisis Intervention Team By Linda Tashbook When you call 911 for assistance with someone whose mental health symptoms are out of control specifically ask for crisis intervention officers with mental health training. Tell the dispatcher that the person you are calling about has a diagnosed mental illness and is experiencing a mental health crisis, explain what that illness is, and then after setting that foundation help prepare the officers for the scene by giving the 911 operator all of the details about the current behavior.
The Invention of Martial Arts Bruce Lee and the invention of martial arts By Paul Bowman Had he lived, Bruce Lee would have been 80 on 27 November 2020. This anniversary will be marked by countless people and innumerable institutions all over the world, from China to Russia to the USA, and almost everywhere in between. This is because, in the space of a few episodes of a couple of US TV series and four martial arts films, Bruce Lee changed global popular culture forever.
The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics How the #EndSARS protest movement reawakened Nigeria’s youth By A. Carl LeVan and Patrick Ukata Human Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have for many years documented alleged SARS abuses of civilians including extortion, rape, and extrajudicial killings. Over the years the police have repeatedly denied the allegations. The present #EndSARS protests started after a video surfaced that showed a SARS officer allegedly shooting a man in Delta State before driving off. This video set off peaceful protests across the country. However, unlike previous protests with clearly identifiable leadership structure which was susceptible to being arrested and charged to court by the government, this protest movement decidedly insisted on not having a central leadership. Rather, using social media and propelled mainly by young people, cutting across class lines, the protests have been largely peaceful and very coordinated.
Bizarre the world over By Anatoly Liberman The posts for the last two weeks dealt with the various attempts to trace (or rather guess) the origin of the word bizarre, and I finished by saying that the word is, in my opinion, sound-imitative. In connection with this statement a caveat is in order…
Diseases in the District of Main 1772-1820 The Jeremiah Barker Papers: medicine as practiced 200 years ago By Richard Kahn This is the story of a lost manuscript, an unpublished book written 200 years ago by a rural physician in New England—not one of the elites, but a preceptor-trained doctor who spent his long life taking care of people and writing about it.
Oxford Languages Lost for words? Introducing Oxford’s “Words of an Unprecedented Year” By Casper Grathwohl For over a decade, we have selected a word or expression that captures the ethos, mood or preoccupations of the last 12 months, driven by data showing the ways in which words have been used. But this year, how could we pick a word, or even a shortlist, to summarize the ways in which we’ve been continually knocked off our axis?
Athens After Empire Capturing your “rude” conqueror By Ian Worthington Roman civilization is one of the foundation stones of our own western culture, and we are often exposed in newspaper and magazine articles, books, and even TV documentaries to the glories of Roman art, architecture, literature (the chances are you’ve read Virgil’s Aeneid), rhetoric (we’ve all heard of Cicero), even philosophy. Yet in the late first century BC the Roman poet Horace wrote: “Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror and introduced her arts to the crude Latin lands” (Epistle 2.1.156). Did he really mean that Rome owed its cultural and intellectual heritage to the Greeks?
International Affairs When female peacekeepers’ “added value” becomes an “added burden” By Nina Wilen Calls for the increased participation of uniformed United Nations female peacekeepers have multiplied in recent years, fueled in part by new scandals of peacekeepers’ sexual abuse and exploitation (SEA), tarnishing the UN’s reputation, and in part by the will to show explicit progress at the 20th anniversary of the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
OUP Libraries Accessible libraries: “a different sense of reading” By Anja Lehmann and Ronald Krause The German Centre for Accessible Reading, dzb lesen, unites tradition with the modern world. Founded on 12 November 1894 as the German Central Library for the Blind, it has been a library for blind and visually impaired people for more than 125 years and is thus the oldest specialist library of its kind in Germany.
The Changing Energy Mix The case for investing in wind energy By Paul F. Meier If you spend time driving on the interstate highway system in the US, you may be surprised to see the rapid development of wind energy. This is especially true in the Great Plains where there is a seemingly endless array of wind turbines decorating the horizon. And, north of Los Angeles, the Tehachapi Mountain Range is home to almost 5,000 wind turbines.
Bizarre is who bizarre does: part two By Anatoly Liberman This post continues the discussion of “bizarre.” After the Basque etymology of this Romance adjective was rejected on chronological grounds, “bizarre” joined the sad crowd of “words of unknown (disputable, uncertain, undiscovered) origin.” However, several good scholars have tried to penetrate the darkness surrounding it. Each offered his own solution, a situation, as we will see, that does not bode well.
Athens After Empire Down but never out By Ian Worthington The Athenians were in a panic in 490 BC. A Persian army had landed at Marathon, on the coastline east of Athens, intent on capturing the city and even conquering all Greece. The famous battle of Marathon was Athens’ coming of age as a military power; a decade later its navy helped to block another Persian invasion (led by Xerxes), a stepping-stone to Athens’ rise as a wealthy imperial power.
A Playgoer's and Reader's Guide to Shakespeare So you think you know Shakespeare? [Quiz] By Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells In order to celebrate the release of Shakespeare: A Playgoer and Reader’s Guide, we created a quiz to see how well you know Shakespeare’s plays!
Brahms's Violin Sonatas Playing the opposite of what Brahms wrote By Joel Lester The first movement of Brahms’s Violin Sonata No. 1 in G, op. 78, has led many violin-piano duos either to ignore Brahms’s tempo markings or actually play the opposite of what he wrote. Joel Lester considers the what might we learn from this oddity.
Music & Autism A conversation on music and autism (part two) By Graeme Gibson and Michael B. Bakan In the second and final part of this interview, author Michael B. Bakan speaks to his co-author Graeme Gibson, Dr Deborah Gibson, and legendary science fiction author William Gibson about writing science fiction, musical influences, and essential lessons autism has taught them.
Oxford Research Encylopedias Teaching peace in a time of violence By Christian A. Bracho In September 2020, President Trump signed an order calling for a commission on “patriotic education,” in response to what he considered anti-American sentiments seeping into school curricula around the United States. He accused teachers of teaching a “twisted web of lies” by including lessons from the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which examines American history through the lens of the African slave trade.
The dubious importance of cultivating facial hair: the word “bizarre” By Anatoly Liberman Students learn to begin their papers with an introduction and end with a conclusion. The puny body is left to grow between those two boundary marks. I have never seen much use in this rigid scheme. However, today I have no choice but to follow this pattern and will write a long introduction. Most etymological […]
Music & Autism A conversation on music and autism (part one) By Graeme Gibson and Michael B. Bakan In the first part of this two-part interview, author of “Music and Autism,” Michael Bakan speaks to his co-author Graeme Gibson, Dr Deborah Gibson, and legendary science fiction author William Gibson about musical instruments and autism.
Parliamentary Affairs What can the Conservatives’ 2019 election win tell us about their current leadership? By Sam Power, Tim Bale, and Paul Webb It’s an old truism that a week is a long time in politics, which would probably make 11 months an absolute age during even the most halcyon times. So, reflecting on the lessons to be drawn from the victory of the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election does rather feel like a job for ancient historians rather than political scientists. But there remains much that we can learn from the recent past…
The History of Radiology Five famous doctors in literature By Arpan K. Banerjee Doctors have appeared in fiction throughout history. From Dr Faustus, written in the sixteenth century, to more recent film adaptations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the familiarity of these characters will be profitably read and watched by both experienced and future doctors who want to reflect on the human condition often so ably described by the established men and women of letters.
Reimagining our music classes for Zoom By Bruce Adolphe All of us who are devoted to music education are facing new challenges due to the pandemic, and while we are lucky and grateful to have extraordinary technology at our disposal, it is undeniably frustrating to be isolated from each other, to deal with inadequate sound quality, poor connections, and time delays. We need to temporarily but urgently reinvent how we teach and connect with students.
Journal of Music Therapy Countering college student stress: a Q&A By Kimberly Sena Moore, Jennifer Fiore, Carolyn Moore, and Lindsey Wilhelm Three music therapy scholars examine rising college student stress levels and how music might help.
Etymology gleanings for October 2020 By Anatoly Liberman It is better to be hanged for a sheep than for a lamb. The proverb has a medieval ring, but it was first recorded in 1678. The context is obvious: since the punishment is going to be the same (hanging), it pays off to commit a greater crime and enjoy its benefits while you are alive.
Spain: What Everyone Needs to Know Spain sets its hopes on the EU’s COVID-19 pandemic recovery fund By William Chislett Spain will receive a tsunami of money from the European Union’s COVID-19 pandemic recovery fund if it meets the strict conditions. The magnitude of the amount can be judged from the fact that it is more than the $12 billion Marshall Plan (equivalent to €112 billion today).
MNRAS Supermassive black holes: monsters in the early Universe By Tereza Jerabkova, Pavel Kroupa, Ladislav Subr, and Long Wang When matter is squashed into a tiny volume the gravitational attraction can become so huge that not even light can escape, and a black hole is born. A star such as the Sun will never leave a black hole because the quantum forces between matter stop this squeezing into a sufficiently small volume.
When deterrence doesn’t work By David P. Barash No one likes to be threatened, and yet we threaten and are threatened all the time. From animal self-defence to how we raise our children, from religious teaching to gun ownership, capital punishment and nuclear deterrence, threat is an ever-present tool employed to influence an often-unpredictable external environment. But does it always work? And what are the consequences when it doesn’t?
Girls, women, and intellectual empowerment By Melissa M. Shew and Kimberly K. Garchar Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nickname in law school was “Bitch.” Senator Elizabeth Warren was sanctioned by her GOP colleagues when “nevertheless, she persisted” in her questioning of soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Senator Kamala Harris reminded Vice President Mike Pence “I am speaking, I am speaking,” as he attempted to interrupt and speak over her in a recent vice presidential debate. CNN found it more important to report that two women won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry than to report the names of the women who won it. Though we may wish to think it otherwise, women and girls are still routinely silenced and excluded from positions of power, expertise, leadership, and full participation in the public sphere.
How did the passive voice get such a bad name? By Edwin L. Battistella Many grammatical superstitions and biases can be traced back to overreaching and misguided language critics: the prohibitions concerning sentence-final prepositions, split infinitives, beginning a sentence with a conjunction, or using contractions or the first person.
Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction A change in Brazil’s national populist government By Anthony Pereira As we approach 15 November, a national holiday marking the end of the Brazilian Empire and proclamation of the Brazilian Republic in 1889, and also a day of municipal elections, many Brazilians may be contemplating what has happened to their country and where it might be heading.
October 2020 (37))
Seven books for philosophical perspectives on politics [reading list] By OUP Philosophy Team 2020 has come to be defined by widespread human tragedy, economic uncertainty, and increased public discourse surrounding how to address systemic racism. With such important issues at stake, political leadership has been under enormous scrutiny. As the US election approaches, we’re featuring a selection of important books exploring politics from different philosophical perspectives, ranging from interrogating the moral duty to vote, to how grandstanding impacts public discourse.
Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America President Trump and the war against American Christianity By Crawford Gribben On 7 October, shortly after being hospitalised after contracting COVID-19, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to warn his supporters that “DEMS WANT TO SHUT YOUR CHURCHES DOWN, PERMANENTLY. HOPE YOU SEE WHAT IS HAPPENING. VOTE NOW.”
Scientism, the coronavirus, and the death of the humanities By Eric Adler The cause of the humanities’ current crisis is far older than critics of postmodern relativism allow—and more baked into the heart of the modern American university. In fact, one must look back to very creation of the American universities in the late nineteenth century to see why their triumph precipitated the marginalization of the modern humanities. The scientizing of our higher education amounts to the root of the problem, and without a deep-seated revolt against this process, the humanities will continue to wither.
Listening on the edge Listen now before we choose to forget By Mark Cave Memory is pliable. How we remember the COVID-19 pandemic is continually being reshaped by the evolution of our own experience and by the influence of collective interpretations. The Historic New Orleans Collection (THNOC), where I have worked for over two decades, asked me to design an oral history response to document the pandemic in our area.
A “baker’s dozen” and some idioms about food By Anatoly Liberman I decided to write this post, because I have an idea about the origin of the idiom baker’s dozen, and ideas occur so seldom that I did not want this opportunity to be wasted. Perhaps our readers will find my suggestion reasonable or refute it. I’ll be pleased to hear from them.
Voter fraud and election meddling [podcast] By Steven Filippi The topic of voter fraud and electoral meddling has been at the forefront of many a conversation over the last four years. Are foreign powers trying to sway our election in 2020? Is mail-in-voting safe from meddling? Will fear of COVID-19 decrease voter turnout?
Oxford Research Encylopedias: Communications Emo-truthful Trump-Biden 2020: another post-truth election By Jayson Harsin The US Presidential Election 2020 is the COVID-19 election saturated with post-truth political communication.
Music Therapy Perspectives The essential role of music therapy in medical assistance in dying By Amy Clements-Cortés and Joyce Yip In Western society, we spend a lot of time celebrating and welcoming new life, but very few cultures celebrate when a person dies. While death is not as taboo as 50 years ago, death is still a topic that many individuals are not comfortable speaking about in conversations.
Oxford Bibliographies Is gerrymandering “poisoning the well” of democracy? By Ryan Williamson Every ten years, the federal government administers the Census to determine the size of the population as well as how that population is distributed within and across states. These figures are then used to allocates seats within the US House of Representatives. States that grow faster than the rest of the country typically gain seats, necessarily at the expense of states that have lost residents or have experienced the slowest growth.
Oxford Research Encylopedias: Communications The fight against fake news and electoral disinformation By Bente Kalsnes Just as COVID-19 is a stress test of every nation’s health system, an election process is a stress test of a nation’s information and communication system. A week away from the US presidential election, the symptoms are not so promising. News reports about the spread of so-called “fake news,” disinformation, and conspiracy theories are thriving as they did in 2016.
Disorienting Neoliberalism What COVID-19 tells us about global supply chains By Benjamin L. McKean President Trump is not the only one bewildered by global supply chains today. Over the past 40 years, it has become normal for the production of many goods to be disaggregated and outsourced around the world. Transnational supply chains now represent 80% of global trade; they’re inextricable from our daily lives. Most people aren’t exactly surprised when their t-shirt comes from the other side of the globe or when their phone contains components from 43 countries, even if we can’t ever quite shake the feeling that there’s something uncanny about the contrast between these extraordinary distances and the ordinary purposes these goods serve.
Oxford Handbooks Online The politics of punk in the era of Trump By Judith A. Peraino Trump is Punk! It’s a hashtag. It’s a slogan on t-shirts and trucker hats. It’s a click-bait headline. Milo Yiannopoulos, a former Breitbart editor, may have started this buzz with his speech (delivered in drag) at Louisiana State University on 22 September 2016, in which he claimed that “being a Donald Trump supporter is the new punk” because it would “piss off your teachers, piss off your parents, piss off your friends.” Then in October, The Atlantic published “Donald Trump, Sex Pistol: The Punk Rock Appeal of the GOP Nominee,” and after the election, the New York Post ran an opinion piece with the headline “Trump is the Punk-Rock President America Deserves” (9 November 2016). Despite social media protestations, “punk” became shorthand for Trump’s rule-breaking, anti-establishment campaign filled with unapologetic vulgarity and appeals to white male grievance.
OUP Libraries The socially distanced library: staying connected in a pandemic By Femi Cadmus The concept of a socially distanced library would be considered the ultimate antithesis of the modern-day library. The past two decades have witnessed the evolution of the library from a mostly traditional space of quiet study and research into a bustling collaborative, social space and technology center.
International Open Access Week 2020: Opening the book By Andy Redman Often when we talk about open access OA, we talk about research articles in journals, but for over a decade there has been a growing movement in OA monograph publishing. To date, OUP has published 115 OA books and that number increases year on year, partly through an increasing range of funder initiatives and partly through opportunities to experiment.
Publicy Policy & Aging Report Reframing aging in contemporary politics By Patricia D'Antonio Aging is the universal human experience. We all begin aging from the moment we are born. In America, as we approach old age, we start to be treated differently.
International Open Access Week 2020: Get to know the team By Bethany Drew “In this world of ‘fake news’ and misinformation, free access to the primary literature is worth its weight in gold.” Hear more from OUP’s Open Access Publishing team on how open access research can transform the world.
Harlots all over the place By Anatoly Liberman Harlot turned up in English texts in the thirteenth century, acquired its present-day sense (“prostitute”) about two hundred years later, and ousted all the previous ones. Those “previous ones” are worthy of recording…
The poetics and politics of rap music in the UK By Justin Williams Looking at current events in the UK, one can conclude that the Kingdom is far from united. While media outlets such as the BBC and newspapers tell a particular story of the situation, I have found that there is a missing voice in these discourses which shed an important light on these contexts. The British rapper, or MC.
International Open Access Week 2020: What can a university press do to drive open access? By Ella Percival We’re taking a look at the open access publishing taking place at OUP and how the Press is working with researchers, societies, and libraries to support and develop the wider OA landscape. OUP is the largest university press publisher of OA content.
When is a patent price ever “unfairly high”? By Yuan Hao The boundaries between patent and antitrust are never crystal clear. Part of the confusion comes from patent law’s historical “monopoly” roots. In early 17th century England, those ‘letter patents’ that originated from meritorious artisans’ grants in Renaissance Venice, took an upsetting twist and degraded into a royal privilege to monopolize trades by those favored by the Crown.
Making Time for Music They may not be pros—but they’re recording artists now By Amy Nathan “If you give yourself to something that you think isn’t going to work, sometimes it does,” says retired school teacher and lifelong choir member Linda Bluth. She’s commenting on a surprising new musical bright spot that has popped up during the coronavirus pandemic: ordinary people becoming recording artists.
How cancer impacts older patients By Alice Kornblith The rapid growth of the population in the United States has resulted in an increase in the number of cancer patients who were diagnosed with having cancer when they were older. We need to learn more specifically in what ways cancer affects older cancer patients’ lives compared to those who are younger.
On the same page: Harlequin, harlots, and all, all, all By Anatoly Liberman Next comes harness, first recorded in English around 1300 with the sense “baggage, equipment; trappings of a horse.” But around the same time, it could also mean “body armor; tackle, gear,” as it still does in German (Harnisch). The route is familiar: from Old French to Middle English.
Journal of the European Economic Association The importance of occupational skills in understanding why individuals migrate By Alexander Patt, Jens Ruhose, Simon Wiederhold, and Miguel Flores Why do some individuals move to another country, while others don’t? This question is fundamental because it has important implications for the characteristics of migrants, for the speed of integration of migrants into the destination country’s labor market, and, more generally, for the impact of migration on the sending and destination country.
Beethoven: Variations on a Life Five things you didn’t know about Beethoven By Mark Evan Bonds Films like Immortal Beloved and Copying Beethoven, whatever their value as entertainment, have helped create an image of the composer that often runs counter to the historical evidence. Here are five things that might surprise you about the composer. He laughed a lot Most images of Beethoven—especially those done after his death—show him scowling. But […]
The emerging economic themes of the COVID-19 pandemic By Daniel Susskind The COVID-19 pandemic has created both a medical crisis and an economic crisis. The tasks currently facing policy-makers are extraordinary. The ideas, arguments, and proposals in a new special issue of OxREP are intended to support them in that urgent work.
Turn-taking in Shakespeare And thus Zoom turns us all to fools and madmen By Oliver Morgan With characteristic aplomb, then, Shakespeare has anticipated—by a good four hundred years—exactly what happens when more than three people try to chat informally via Zoom. The kind of interaction that would be relatively straightforward in person becomes torturously difficult. Everything takes longer. Everything requires more effort. Without careful attention to what linguists call “turn-taking,” things quickly descend into chaos.
9780190936792 Why do humans have property? By Bart J. Wilson Property is a rather old subject. We’ve been writing about it since at least the time of the Sumerian tablets, in part, because after four and a half millennia we still haven’t settled on what property is, who has it, how we get it, or even what it’s for.
Scientific communication in the shadow of COVID-19 By Alan Kelly One of the most fundamental processes within any scientific field is communication of results of research, without which research cannot have an impact. If any piece of research is worth doing, effort is expended in doing it, and the results are of interest, then the research is not truly complete until it has been recorded and passed on to those who need to know the findings.
How to write a byline By Edwin L. Battistella A while back, I wrote a post on How to Write a Biography, with some tips for long-form writing about historical and public figures. However, that’s not the only kind of biographical writing you might be called upon to do. You might need to write about yourself.
Where ideas go to die US journalism’s complicity in democratic backsliding By Michael McDevitt The unelected power of the Fourth Estate is never more evident—and potentially destructive—than during campaign seasons, when antagonists exploit the news to test authoritarian themes.
As daft as a brush and its kin By Anatoly Liberman Some similes make sense: for example, as coarse as hemp (or heather). Hemp and heather are indeed coarse. But cool as a cucumber? Many phrases of this type exist thanks to alliteration. Perhaps at some time, somewhere, cucumbers were associated with coolness, but, more likely, the simile was coined as a joke: just listen to coo-coo in it!
Rooting chimp communication in relevance theory By Charles Forceville The key assumption of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s relevance theory is that every act of communication comes with the promise (not the guarantee!) of being optimally relevant to its envisaged audience. Sperber and Wilson’s examples typically pertain to spoken face-to-face exchanges between two individuals: speaking Mary and listening Peter. A message gains in relevance for […]
MI5, the Cold War, and the Rule of Law MI5 and Russian interference, now and then By Keith Ewing, Joan Mahoney, and Andrew Moretta On 21 July 2020, the UK parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee published its long-delayed report on “the Russian threat to the UK.” Although heavily redacted, the report was wide-ranging and dealt with a number of issues, including the threat to democracy, highlighting concerns about potential Russian interference in the Scottish referendum in 2014, the EU […]
Dangerous Art by James Harold Is it rational to condemn an artwork for an artist’s personal immorality? By James Harold It is one thing to condemn Chuck Close, James Levine, or R. Kelly for their alleged wrongdoing, but another to regard their artworks as though they were somehow polluted by association with their creators.
The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes How well do you know the world of theatre? [Quiz] By Gyles Brandreth Gyles Brandreth has been collecting theatre stories since he was a boy—and he has collected more than a thousand of them for The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, an anthology of entertaining and illuminating stories about every aspect of the world of theatre, from the age of Shakespeare to the present day. How well do you know […]
Strategy Six leadership practices that create an agile organisation By David Mackay Leadership practices play a key role in shaping the form and outcomes of strategy processes in an organisation. As individuals and collectives to whom others pay attention, broader stakeholder attitudes and activities will be influenced by how leaders are perceived to think, talk, and act about strategy. This leadership influence on how strategy happens can […]
September 2020 (31))
Children’s games and some problematic English spellings By Anatoly Liberman Several years ago, I wrote a series of posts titled “The Oddest English Spellings.” Later, The English Spelling Society began to prepare a new version of the Reform, and I let a team of specialists deal with such problems. Yet an email from one of our regular correspondents suggested to me that perhaps one more […]
Standing as I do before God Sound relationships: exploring the creative partnership between poet and composer By Cecilia McDowall and Seán Street Composer Cecilia McDowall and poet Seán Street have collaborated on the creation of many choral works in recent years, from Shipping Forecast to Angel of the Battlefield. Here they discuss some of the challenges and pleasures of balancing words and music to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. *** Cecilia McDowall (CM): Writing for choral forces, characteristically, requires […]
MNRAS The enduring mystery of how galaxies grow up By indranil banik, Jan Pflamm-Altenburg, Moritz Haslbauer, Pavel Kroupa, and Srikanth Togere Nagesh Astronomers have discovered that there are two different types of galaxies in the Universe: elliptical galaxies and spiral galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are dead galaxies full of very old, red stars that move on chaotic random orbits around the centre of their galaxy in such a way that makes their shape look like fluffy footballs. On […]
Beethoven 1806 Beethoven’s virtual collaborations By Mark Ferraguto Since the onset of the pandemic, online platforms like Facebook and YouTube have become indispensable hubs of musical collaboration. Simply scroll down your Facebook feed to encounter collaborative virtual performances of everything from “Over the Rainbow” to Mahler’s Third Symphony, each one painstakingly assembled from individual recordings of sequestered singers and isolated instrumentalists. While physically distant musical collaborations […]
Multisensory Experiences The senses in an increasingly digital world By Carlos Velasco and Marianna Obrist We interact with the world around us with all our senses—such as sight, hearing, smell, but also much more! The senses are fundamental to our experiences. The research area of multisensory experiences considers the different human senses and their interactions when designing human experiences. This area is growing in academic fields such as Human-Computer Interaction, marketing, and the […]
Idioms are fun By Anatoly Liberman I have chosen this title for today’s post, because in our life everything is supposed to be fun. Grammar, as I have often noted, is no longer studied at our schools, because grammar is not fun. Neither are math and geography. I am happy to report that, according to my experience, idioms are fun. Even […]
A tribute to the fallen By Michael Ruse President Trump is reliably reported to have referred to soldiers who have fallen in battle as “losers” and “suckers.” Supposedly, on November 10, 2018, he refused to visit the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial, outside Paris. It was raining and he feared his hair would get mussed. On hearing this—reported in the Atlantic magazine—I was totally surprised […]
The Human Gene Editing Debate The slippery slope of the human gene editing debate By John H. Evans The ethical debate about what is now called “human gene editing” (HGE) began sixty years ago. At the time, eugenicist scientists wanted to use new knowledge about the structure of DNA to modify humans—to perfect the human species by making us more healthy, musical, intelligent, and generally virtuous. A consensus later formed that gene editing […]
Oxford African American Studies Center William Sanders Scarborough and the enduring legacy of black classical scholarship By Henry Louis Gates Jr., Mark Lawall, Michele Valerie Ronnick, and John W. I. Lee The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) was founded in 1881 as a place “where young scholars might carry on the study of Greek thought and life to the best advantage.” Today, the ASCSA is a center for research and teaching on all aspects of Greece, from antiquity to the present. Its campus in Athens […]
The New Oxford Organ Method Learning the least accessible instrument By Anne Marsden Thomas and Frederick Stocken Why would anyone choose to learn a musical instrument which is too large and expensive for almost every home, and only accessible if one is prepared to brave a lonely, cold, and dark old building? You guessed it: we are talking about the pipe organ. Yet despite this, the instrument continues to attract players of […]
Strategy Why business strategy needs to be flexible now more than ever By David Mackay In these unusual times, we need flexible approaches to business strategy more than ever. Strategy is commonly viewed as a roadmap outlining how to get from A to B. Typically created by the upper echelons of an organisation, “having a strategy” means that there is an agreed masterplan which co-ordinates organisational efforts and the use […]
Harlequin’s black mask By Anatoly Liberman This is the conclusion of the sequence begun three weeks ago: see the post for September 2, 2020. Last week’s gleanings delayed the climax. In 1937, Hermann M. Flasdieck, an outstanding German philologist, brought out a book on Harlequin. It first appeared as a long article (125 pages) in the periodical Anglia, which he edited. […]
The myth of the power of singing By Liz Garnett One morning in 2007 or 2008 I was listening to the news in my regular wait to turn onto the Birmingham Inner Ring Road, when I was surprised to hear a cheering headline: the UK government had pledged a significant sum of money to encourage singing in primary schools. Over the next few years, the […]
MNRAS How old galaxy groups stay active in retirement By Konstantinos Kolokythas As recently as the start of the 20th century, the idea that the Milky Way contained everything that existed in the Universe was predominant and astronomers were unaware of the existence of other galaxies or any kind of star systems outside our galaxy. A few observed nebulae that had been identified as clusters of stars […]
Global Health Impact by Nicole Hassoun How protecting human rights can help us increase our Global Health Impact By Nicole Hassoun As the COVID-19 pandemic surges across the world, justice and equality demand our attention. Does everyone have a human right to health and to access new essential medicines researchers develop? Can pharmaceutical companies patent the medicines and charge high prices, selling them to whoever can pay the most? How can data help us address global […]
The Tough Standard by Ronald Levant and Shana Pryor The role of masculinity in reforming police departments By Ronald F. Levant and Shana Pryor For decades there have been murders of unarmed black people by the police, which in recent years has been exposed and protested by the #BlackLivesMatter movement. This summer, unprecedented numbers of protesters have voiced their outrage in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the very recent and utterly senseless shooting of […]
Etymology gleanings for August 2020 By Anatoly Liberman These gleanings should have been posted last week, but I wanted to go on with Harlequin. That series will be finished next Wednesday; today, I’ll answer the questions I have received. The idea of offering more essays on thematic idioms was received very favorably, and I am grateful for the suggestions. Yet let me repeat […]
BioScience Bring living waters back to our planet By Rebecca Tharme, Julian Olden, Michael McClain, Angela Arthington, Mike Acreman, and Dave Tickner Demanding the Indian government take action to clean and save the nation’s Mother River, the Ganga, activist and former civil engineer Professor G.D. Agarwal died from heart failure in 2018, after fasting for 111 days. Agarwal’s hunger strike remains symbolic of the mounting desperation many of us feel faced with the fragility of rivers, lakes, […]
Eastern Medieval Architecture The reconversion of Hagia Sophia in perspective By Robert G. Ousterhout At the beginning of January 1921, a special service was held in the cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, with Orthodox and Episcopal clergy offering prayers in six languages—Hungarian, Greek, Arabic, Russian, Serbian, and English—for the restoration of Hagia Sophia as a Christian sanctuary. As reported in the New York Times, the […]
Becoming a Critical Thinker by Sarah Birrell Ivory Do you feel sorry for first year university students? By Sarah Birrell Ivory “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Said by Dickens many years ago but with eerie relevance to our current situation. The global pandemic is itself an overwhelming health tragedy. Moreover, it has laid bare so many other local, national, and global issues that have been simmering beneath the surface. […]
The Puzzle of Prison Order by David Skarbek Smaller prisons are smarter By David Skarbek There is a growing consensus across the political spectrum that the United States incarcerates far too many people and that this has tragic and unjust consequences that fall disproportionately on disadvantaged socioeconomic and minority communities. Yet, not only do we lock up too many people, but all too often they are incarcerated in prisons that […]
Introducing Shakespeare to young readers By Stanley Wells No one has a duty to like Shakespeare, just as no one is obliged to prefer coffee to tea, or classical music to pop, or soap operas to documentaries. On the other hand, just as it is highly inconvenient to know nothing about the internet, or how to boil an egg, so it is liable […]
What does a linguist do? By Edwin L. Battistella Linguists get asked that question a lot. Sometimes by family members or potential in-laws. Sometimes by casual acquaintances or seatmates on a plane (for those who still fly). Sometimes from students or their families. Sometimes even from friends, colleagues, or university administrators. It turns out that linguists do quite a lot and quite a lot […]
Six books for budding lawyers [reading list] By Craig Prescott and John Stanton In celebration of National Read a Book Day 2020 today, here are a list books for anyone working in, or interested in, the legal world. Studying for a law exam, or just looking for a court-based drama? Take a glimpse of the titles below and select one for yourself. My Brief Career: The Trials of […]
The Churchill Myths The defacing of Churchill’s statue By Steven Fielding During Britain’s strange summer of 2020 the statues of long-dead figures became live political issues. Black Lives Matter protesters threw slave-trader Edward Coulston’s effigy into Bristol harbour, an act that shocked many, but that was as nothing to the reaction provoked by the treatment meted out to Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square. During another […]
How text messages are helping people fight counterfeit medicine in Africa By Marius Schneider and Vanessa Ferguson According to World Health Organization statistics, 42% of detected cases of substandard or falsified pharmaceuticals between 2013-2017 occurred in Africa— substantially more than on any other continent. Poor, underdeveloped countries experience a penetration rate of approximately 30% of counterfeit pharmaceuticals as opposed to less than 1% in developed countries. In Ivory Coast, Adjame, the biggest […]
Antibody Therapeutics Searching for “magic bullet” antibodies to combat COVID-19 By Mitchell Ho Several cases of mysterious pneumonia (now called COVID-19) were reported in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China in late December 2019. SARS-CoV-2, a novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was later identified. In the past eight months, COVID-19 cases have been reported in 188 countries all over the world, with over 20 million confirmed cases and […]
Harlequin’s tricky name By Anatoly Liberman I am picking up where I left off last week. In the post for August 26, 2020, I discussed some words that surround Harlequin on a dictionary page. He ended up among harlots, harangues, and the harrowing of hell. I also touched on the possible origin of some European words for “war,” and in a […]
What the Home Intelligence unit revealed about British morale during the Blitz By Jeremy Crang During the Second World War, the morale of the British public was clandestinely monitored by Home Intelligence, a unit of the government’s Ministry of Information that kept a close watch on the nation’s reaction to events. Intelligence from a wide range of sources and every region of the United Kingdom was collected and analysed by […]
Gottfried Leibniz: the last universal genius By OUP Philosophy Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German seventeenth-century philosopher, an incredible logician, and one of the most important contributors to the philosophy of metaphysics, philosophical theology, mathematics, and ethics. His metaphysical career spanned over thirty years, and he was an inspiration to other contemporary philosophers from the Enlightenment period. Born in 1646 in Leipzig, Germany, Leibniz’s […]
Campus activists show us how to end gender-based violence By Ruth Lewis and Susan Marine Protest and resistance thrive proudly on many university campuses. In recent history, students and faculty have organized to protest the Vietnam war in the United States, recognize the occupation of Tiananmen Square in China, resist capitalism in France, and react to many other injustices. More recently, activism to decolonise SOAS in the United Kingdom, to […]
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Rebuilding better: designing the future of cities and governance By Eric Gordon and Gabriel Mugar In city and town meetings throughout the United States, “we need to rebuild better” has become a common refrain from progressive political leaders to communicate their response to COVID-19 and the subsequent demands for racial justice. It is shorthand for the urgency of economic recovery while acknowledging the reality of structural inequities. The pandemic’s indiscriminate […]
Generations science is bunk By Cort Rudolph, Rachel Rauvola, David Costanza, and Hannes Zacher The ideas of generations and generational differences are ubiquitous. Millennials are characterized as job-hoppers; Baby Boomers are painted as selfish and materialistic. Media accounts blame generations for everything from changes in red meat consumption to the declining popularity of high-heeled shoes, doorbells, and paper napkins. Generations are likewise accused of disrupting normative ways of life and social institutions; these ideas are alluded to and supported […]
Six of the best Italian comedies By William V. Costanzo An astonishing array of Italy’s finest films are comedies. Some of the most memorable performances by actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Giancarlo Giannini, and Roberto Benigni have been in comic roles. The humor in these comedies harks back to the commedia dell’arte street performers of the Italian Renaissance and, before that, to the Roman […]
Harlequin’s environment By Anatoly Liberman Marley was dead, to begin with, as all of us know. Likewise, the origin of the word Harlequin is controversial, to begin with. Henry Cecil Wyld’s excellent dictionary, to which I often refer, says that all ideas about the etymology of Harlequin are mere speculations. This is not true and was not quite true even […]
Communicating and connecting with your teenager leaving for college By Carol Landau In a previous post I described topics of conversations to have with a teenager leaving home for college. Equally, if not more important, is the process of communication. Understand the positive power of a strong family foundation. The power of a supportive family is almost unlimited. Let me be clear that a family does not need to […]
Urban Studies, city life, and COVID-19 [podcast] By Steven Filippi Oxford Bibliographies celebrates its 10th anniversary this year; in a decade, OBO has grown from 10 subject areas to over 40, and this fall will see the introduction of a new subject area that is highly relevant to our COVID-19-afflicted times: Oxford Bibliographies in Urban Studies.
How germs (or the fear of them) spawned Modernism By Victoria Rosner The world’s attention has been fully trained for many months on detecting a microbe that, inevitably, most people will never see for themselves: SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. We take for granted the invisibility of this new enemy. But when scientists first ventured the hypothesis that germs were the cause of many virulent diseases, […]
Addressing racism within academia: a Q&A with UNC-Chapel Hill PhD of Social Work Students By Anderson Al Wazni, Melissa Jenkins, and Stefani N. Baca-Atlas Anderson Al Wazni is a white Muslim woman, Stefani Baca-Atlas is a US-born Latina, and Melissa Jenkins is a biracial Black woman; all three women are doctoral students. They experience the world in different ways and have worked together to share their perspectives on challenges and opportunities for non-Black students with marginalized statuses to work […]
“Camping” with the Prince of Wales through India, 1921-22 By Joseph McAleer As senior correspondent of the London Times, Sir Harry Perry Robinson travelled the world in search of a good story. In November 1921 he was invited by the newspaper’s proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, to make a passage to India, following the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) on his nearly five-month goodwill tour of the East. For […]
The AI Delusion by Gary Smith Don’t blame AI for the A-Levels scandal By Gary Smith Many years ago, when I was a young assistant professor of economics, I had to endure a minor hazing ritual—serving for one year on the admissions committee for the PhD program. As a newbie, I was particularly impressed by a glowing letter of recommendation that began, “This is the best student I have had in […]
Inca Apocalypse by R. Alan Covey The apocalypse of the Inca empire [timeline] By R. Alan Covey The Inca Empire rose and fell over the course of a millennium, driven to its demise by internal strife and Spanish conquistadors. This timeline highlights a few key events from the rise of the Inca Empire to its apocalypse. ??? Header image by Eliazaro via Pixabay
How emerging adults can manage the uncertainty of the future [reading list] By Abigail Luke Jeffrey Arnett describes emerging adulthood as a distinct stage of development from the late teens through the twenties; a life stage in which explorations and instability are the norm. As they focus on their self-development, emerging adults feel in-between, on the way to adulthood but not there yet. Nevertheless, they have a high level of optimism […]
English idioms about family life and conjugal felicity By Anatoly Liberman Several friendly comments urged me to continue the series on English idioms I started last week (see the post for August 12, 2020). That post was devoted to naval phrases. The comments suggested all kinds of topics, sewing and cooking among them. However, not all subjects are equally easy to tackle. Though in the shoreless […]
How communities can help stop COVID-19 By Ted Lankester What impact will COVID-19 have on the world? We will be confronting the genius of COVID-19 for a long time and in many ways. At the time of writing this, coronavirus is increasing its multiple harms day on day. The world peak and many more national and regional peaks have not yet been reached. We […]
Why chemical imbalance is the wrong way to talk about depression By Elizabeth Ryznar Depression has often been described as a “chemical imbalance.” This description is helpful in that it shifts the view of depression from a moralizing, personal stance into a medical model, and it can help encourage people to receive treatment. However, the “chemical imbalance” model is outdated and inaccurate. The chemical imbalance theory started in the […]
How parents can support their teenagers starting college in uncertain times By Carol Landau How do you reassure and prepare for college during this time of crisis? I have been treating high school and college students for over 30 years and this is a season like no other. Previously, parents were often ambivalent; melancholy about their children growing up and moving away but happy for the privilege of college […]
Human rights must be the foundation of any COVID-19 response By Benjamin Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin The escalating Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic has challenged global health as never before. Within months, the disease swept across every country, exposing the fragility of our globalized world. Unlike anything seen since the Influenza pandemic of 1918, health systems have faltered under the strain of this pandemic, with cascading disruptions as borders closed, businesses shuttered, […]
Winston Churchill and the media in the 1945 British general election By Richard Toye Seventy-five years ago this week, the House of Commons in Britain began debating the legislative programme of Clement Attlee’s Labour government, elected by a landslide at the end of the previous month. John Freeman, one of the fresh intake of socialist MPs, declared boldly: “Today, we go into action. Today may rightly be regarded as […]
Coping with COVID deaths and what cinema tells us By Eelco Wijdicks It has come to this. We have reached an arbitrary new landmark in COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Inexorably oncoming, some respected epidemiologists are spooked by the specter of more waves and say we may go to 1 million. Such numbers would not make this pandemic any more unique. These large numbers, as any […]
Cyntoia Brown and the legacy of racism for children in the legal system By Kelly C. Burke and Margaret C. Stevenson Bette L. Bottoms In 2004, 16-year-old Cyntoia Brown shot and killed a man who paid her for sex – a position she was forced into by an older man who took advantage of her. Brown never denied shooting the man (in fact, she was the one who called the police the next day), but she claimed it was […]
Whatever happens, the Oxford Etymologist will never jump ship! By Anatoly Liberman One does not have to be a linguist to know that English is full of naval metaphors and phrases. How else could it be in the language of a seafaring nation?! Dozens, if not hundreds of metaphors going back to sailors’ life and experience crop up in our daily speech, and we don’t realize their origin. Nor should we, for speakers are not expected to think of the etymology of the words and collocations they use.
Petrostates in a post-carbon world By Giuliano Garavini “This is our biggest compliment yet.” Greta Thunberg answered with these words to the comments by OPEC’s Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo that climate concerns were becoming the organization’s “greatest threat.” An increasing number of people view fossil fuels, and petroleum in particular, as the key cause of climate change and thus as the greatest threat […]
How the healthcare system is failing people with eating disorders By Pamela K. Keel One death every 52 minutes occurs in the United States as a direct result of an eating disorder, according to a report by the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders, the Academy for Eating Disorders, and Deloitte Access Economics. I have studied eating disorders for over 30 years, and I was shocked by this […]
We hear Beethoven’s music as autobiography, but that wasn’t always the case By Mark Evan Bonds At a pre-COVID live performance of one of Ludwig van Beethoven’s cello sonatas, I was in the front row and had a great view of the musicians. Beethoven was watching, too, in the form of a scowling bust at the back of the stage. And the two just didn’t match. The music was playful and […]
Nine books on philosophy and race [reading list] By OUP Philosophy Team Featuring a selection of new titles from leading voices, and major works from across the discipline, the OUP Philosophy team has selected several of its important books exploring race from different philosophical perspectives. From David Livingstone Smith’s On Inhumanity, which provides an unflinching guide to the phenomenon of dehumanization, to Naomi Zack’s The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy […]
How to prepare students for jobs in the 21st century By Stephen Reed A common goal for educators is to identify, and then teach, cognitive skills that are needed for the workplace. In 2017 a group of investigators at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, investigated which skills are needed as a result of the rapid changes occurring as the United States shifted from an industrial […]
How summer camps adapted to COVID-19 (and everything else) By Meryl Nadel The ballfields are quiet. The lake is placid. The bunks/cabins are empty without towels and bathing suits hung out to dry. For summer camps, this summer season has been rife with challenges, including the difficult decision not to open. But challenge and change are not new to camps. Over the past century, camps have adapted […]
Raising a teenager with an eating disorder in a pandemic By B. Timothy Walsh and Deborah R. Glasofer Many people have already written about the difficulties we’re having in the midst of COVID-19 – they are numerous and far-reaching, some as insidious as the disease itself. As researchers and clinicians in the field of eating disorders, we are now challenged to consider how we can best help those who are quarantined with a […]
Five books related to power and inequality at work [reading list] By Rebecca Olley What is it like to work in the 21st century? Which factors influence our careers? Are there equal opportunities in society today? With a focus on technological advancements, both at home and at work, is reliance on technology beneficial for both employees and employers? Are workplaces using technology to exercise greater levels of control? Will the […]
Etymology gleanings for July 2020 By Anatoly Liberman Thanks everybody for the questions, comments, and suggestions! The state of Spelling Reform The six most promising schemes of reformed spelling, with summaries, can be found on the Society’s website (The English Spelling Society). The second (virtual) session of the International English Spelling Congress will probably take place in November. If you are interested in the fate of Spelling Reform, please register (it is free).
Nine titles on the frontiers of psychology research [reading list] By Sarah Butcher What is the responsibility of psychologists to their clients and their communities during times of crisis? Annually, the American Psychological Association meets to present the research and best practices to meet the needs of the profession and the broader world. These nine new titles present the latest, most advanced research to create a bridge between […]
The ethics of exploiting hope during a pandemic By Jeremy Snyder The COVID-19 pandemic has had enormous negative effects on people around the globe, including death and long-term health impacts, economic hardships including loss of savings, businesses, and careers, and the emotional costs of physical separation from friends and loved ones. Since the first emergence of COVID-19, people have hoped that these harms could be contained […]
Conjunction dysfunction By Edwin L. Battistella Everyone of a certain age remembers the FANBOYS of Conjunction Junction fame: for, and, nor, but, or, yet and so. In the lyrics of the 1973 song, we mostly hear about and, but and or with a brief mention of or’s pessimistic cousin nor. A conjunction’s function is to “hook up words and phrase and clauses” […]
Progressive American Christianity fosters racism By Kristopher Norris Theologian and priest Kelly Brown Douglas begins her book, What’s Faith Got To Do With It, with this question: if Christianity has been used for centuries to oppress black people, “Was there not something wrong with Christianity itself?” In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, many Christian leaders took to the streets in solidarity with […]
Forgotten Danish philosopher K E. Løgstrup By OUP Philosophy Very little attention has been paid to Danish philosopher Knud Ejler Løgstrup in the English-speaking word until recently. His philosophical interests focused on three strains in particular: ethics, phenomenology, and theological philosophy. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen from 1923 until 1930, though was inclined towards the philosophical aspects of the subject. He […]
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What we can learn from ancient Greeks about tyranny By Paul Woodruff In their brand-new democracy, the people of ancient Athens knew there was one form of government they never wanted to suffer through again: tyranny. But they loved to see plays depicting tyrants on stage. These rulers typically do not listen to advice or expert opinion. But authority figures who don’t listen don’t learn; they make […]
The technocratic politics of the American right By Jason Blakely Conservatives today often present themselves as populists running against a left said to be out of touch with the common people and enamored of technocratic rule by experts. This is, in fact, a longstanding critique found not only in grassroots ideological discourse but also in the work of conservative philosophers like Michael Oakeshott, who suggested that the left was […]
What we can learn from tragedy By Adam Hansen June 2020 marked the third anniversary of the Grenfell Tower disaster, when 72 people died as a result of a fire in a block of flats in one of the poorest parts of the richest parts of London. Before and since the fire, in recent years the United Kingdom’s most marginalised and vulnerable communities have […]
Exploring hypothetical thinking By Timothy Williamson What is hypothetical thinking? We do it continually. Consider making a decision, from choosing what to eat to choosing what to do about a dangerous disease. In deciding between options, you have to consider each of them, working out what’s likely to happen if you take it, then compare the results. A natural human way to […]
“Scram” and its ungainly kin By Anatoly Liberman On April 18, 2012, while discussing the etymology of shrimp, I wrote that I had once looked up the word scrumptious, to find out its origin. Much to my surprise, I read that scrumptious is perhaps sumptuous, with -cr- added for emphasis. On May 2, 2012, I attacked shrew. My romance with shr- ~ scr-words abated, but I never forgot it. Today, I’ll continue those two stories and again look at shr- and scr-.
Smartphones are pacifiers for tough times By Shiri Melumad The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated consumers’ reliance on new technologies in almost all aspects of their lives, from how they shop, to how they work, to how they communicate with colleagues and loved ones. While a number of technologies have played an important role in this transformation—such as the growth of reliance on video conferencing—among […]
Five things to know about F. Scott Fitzgerald By Philip McGowan Synonymous with the Jazz Age of the American 1920s which his novels did so much to define, F. Scott Fitzgerald hardly needs any introduction. Reading The Great Gatsby in school has become as much a rite of passage as first kisses and the furtive adolescent rebellion of drinking alcohol before coming of age. Much of […]
It’s cheaper to preserve the Amazon than we might think By Eduardo Souza Rodrigues “The cattle need ladders to graze here.” That is what my wife’s relatives used to tell her after they moved to the Amazon rainforest. She visited their farm when she was 13, and the planted grass was taller than she was. Grass grows tall there because of the substantial amount of nutrients left on the […]
How water conflicts hurt marginalized populations By Naho Mirumachi There are 286 international transboundary river basins that are shared by 151 countries. These basins are the source for water as well as livelihoods to 2.8 billion people. In many of these places the already vulnerable and marginalised are at great risk due to problems managing water. Sudden, sharp changes in these basins are not […]
Writing a non-fiction historical thriller By Jonathan Schneer The distinguished biographer, Ben Pimlott, used to say that historians should try to write like novelists. To my knowledge, he never developed the thought, but what he meant was clear. While the historical monograph may make a significant contribution to knowledge, too often it is boring to read. He wanted us to deploy the skills […]
Charles Darwin’s five-year journey [timeline] By Andrea Standrowicz Charles Darwin is most known for his journey to the Galapagos Islands, and for the work he published around the theory of evolution, The Origin of Species, as a result of that trip. And though his time in the Galapagos was vital to Darwin’s work, he also visited many other places, a small selection of […]
Dry and thirsty, part 2: “dry” By Anatoly Liberman The beginning of this story appeared a week ago, on July 15, 2020 (Cut and dried, Part 2), and we found out that the Old Germanic languages had two words for “dry”: thur-s- (from which Modern English has the noun thirst; thor-s is the Gothic form) and dreag-, the parent of dry. Seeing how concrete and unambiguous the idea of dryness is, we wondered why Germanic needed two synonyms for this word.
How much do you know about media law? [quiz] By Clare Weaver and Tyler Hawtin If you are working in the journalism industry, studying for an exam, or just interested in media law and journalism, we have had a bit of fun putting together a light-hearted quiz on media law in the United Kingdom. Take the quiz to test your knowledge or learn something new. Featured Image Credit: Women look […]
How we decide on cultural canons By Theodora A. Hadjimichael Libraries, museums, and galleries are a few of the places where humanity attempts to preserve and transmit its cultural memory. The contents change depending on the period, even the time of the year, the community, and the target audience, but the aim remains the same: to preserve and renew memory and by extension to transfer […]
What the United States can learn from Portuguese politics By Robert M. Fishman Donald Trump’s Independence Day attack on the culture of inclusion and equality highlights a problem long with us. Far from being united by principles enshrined in the country’s origins, America has long suffered deep discord over what lessons to draw from the nation’s history and how to tell the story of our past. Conflict over the treatment of […]
Three philosophical problems for curious people [reading list] By Sarah Lobar It is part of human nature to be curious and to want to know or learn something. There are papers that fulfil this yen for knowledge and explore some of the more unusual philosophical questions that you never knew you wanted to know the answer to, for example; What did the tortoise say to Achilles […]
How face masks can help us understand the world By Sarah Anne Carter When historians only focus on written sources, they risk missing vital aspects of the historical record. The material traces of the past, the things people have chosen, made or used, can offer important evidence allowing us to understand the historical value of the material world. We can understand the relationship between material culture and history […]
A philosopher’s perspective on the cruelty of Donald Trump’s immigration policies By Michael Blake The Trump administration announced earlier in the month that it was changing the rules for foreign students in the United States. Given that COVID-19 forced most universities to shift to online teaching, foreign students had been allowed to stay in the United States and continue their educations online. The Trump administration tried to take this […]
How John Harrison invented the first portable precision timekeeper By Jonathan Betts It’s been over 50 years now since Colonel Humphrey Quill wrote his biography (1966) of the great pioneer of the marine chronometer, John Harrison (1693–1776). Since then, there has been a increasing interest in Harrison and the events surrounding his inventions and discoveries. Indeed, over the years, this interest has caused something of a stir […]
Six books to help us understand eating disorders By Abigail Luke Some 70 million people worldwide have an eating disorder and, with the prevalence of disordered eating on the rise, it’s clear that this presents a significant public health issue. Despite this, many myths and misconceptions abound that are significant barriers to both treatment and public understanding of eating disorders. Anyone can develop an eating disorder, regardless of […]
What face masks and sex scandals have in common By Leslie Dorrough Smith While Donald Trump’s legacy will be marked by many things, we can add to the list his resistance to wearing a face mask in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which up until recently he had not done in public. The overt reason for his hesitancy to follow this mainstream medical advice is that Trump […]
Cut and dried, part 2: “dry” By Anatoly Liberman The murky history of the verb cut was discussed two weeks ago (June 24, 2020). Now the turn of dry has come around. When people ask questions about the origin of any word, they want to know why a certain combination of sounds means what it does. Why cut, big, den, and so forth?
How COVID-19 could help social science researchers By Anne Nassauer and Nicolas M. Legewie The US passed 2.5 million Covid-19 cases, there are more than 10 million confirmed cases worldwide, and global deaths passed 500,000 at the end of June. We face unprecedented challenges during this global pandemic and we may see profound and permanent changes to how we do things. Surveys and digital trace data have been used […]
How we experience pandemic time By Beryl Pong COVID-19 refers not only to a virus, but to the temporality of crisis. We live “in times of COVID” or “corona time.” We yearn for the “Before Time” and prepare for the “After Time.” Where earlier assessments of pandemic time focused on rupture, we are now reckoning with an open-ended, uncertain future. This endeavour would […]
How to listen when debating By Colin Swatridge Those Americans who call themselves Republicans are disinclined to take seriously the views of those Americans who vote for the Democrats; and those Democrats will rarely see merit in the views of Republicans. Few Israelis will give ear to the cause of the Palestinians; and few prisoners in Gaza will defend the right of the […]
Testing Einstein’s theory of relativity By Clifford M. Will Albert Einstein is often held up as the epitome of the scientist. He’s the poster child for genius. Yet he was not perfect. He was human and subject to many of the same foibles as the rest of us. His personal life was complicated, featuring divorce and extramarital affairs. Though most of us would sell […]
How companies can use social media to plan for the future By Maureen Meadows Many organisations use scenario planning to explore uncertainties in their future operating environments and develop new strategies. Scenario planning is a structured method for imagining possible futures based on the identification of key uncertainties in the external environment, and it may involve a variety of stakeholder groups from inside and outside the main organisation, including […]
How Broadway’s Hamilton contributes to the long history of small screen racial discourse By Kelly Kessler On 3 July 2020, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton—perhaps somewhat inadvertently—took its place alongside decades of Broadway shows and stars which had helped foster an awareness of American race relations via the small screen. When Disney won the $75 million bidding war for the global theatrical distribution rights of Hamilton, the filmed recording of the show’s original cast performing […]
How governments can promote real diversity By Robyn Klingler-Vidra and Ye Liu As with most of contemporary life, the pandemic has magnified the impacts of unequal access to technologically innovative employment on livelihoods. The COVID-19 digital divide has meant that some people continue to safely work and earn from home, while others are forced to decide whether to endure physical risk in order to get to work, […]
A little jazz piano: exploring the building blocks of music By bob chilcott Soon after the COVID-19 lockdown started, I began doing combined piano and theory lessons with my daughter, who is eleven, and her friend, who is a year or two older, using Skype. I tried to show them a little about some different functions that help to build a piece of music, and in the end […]
Social needs are a human right By Kimberley Brownlee In April 2020, an ER physician in Toronto, Ari Greenwald, started an online petition to bring tablets and phones to his patients in hospital, because hospitals had imposed strict No Visitor rules to limit the spread of COVID-19. Greenwald said that, “As challenging as this COVID-era of healthcare is for us all, the hardest part […]
Five tips for clear writing By Richard Toye Blaise Pascal, the seventeenth century mathematician and philosopher, once apologised for the length of a letter, saying that he had not had time to write a shorter one. All of us face situations where we need to compress much information into little space. Perhaps we have to fill in an online form with a character limit or write a cover letter for […]
How education could reduce corruption By Jay Albanese We live in an era of widely publicized bad behavior. It’s not clear if there’s more unethical behavior occurring now than in the past, but communications technology allows every corrupt example to be broadcast globally. Why are we not making better progress against unethical conduct and corruption in general? Morals are the principles of good […]
The scientific mysteries that led to Einstein’s E=mc^2 equation By John C. H. Spence Scientists deal with mysteries. As Richard Feynman once commented: “Science must remain a continual dialog between skeptical inquiry and a sense of inexplicable mystery”. Three examples: it is profoundly mysterious as to why mathematics can so accurately describe our physical world, and even predict events, such as the motion of the planets or the propagation […]
Etymology gleanings for June 2020 By Anatoly Liberman Response to some comments: The verb cut. The Middle Dutch, Dutch, and Low German examples (see the post for July 1, 2020) are illuminating. Perhaps we are dealing with a coincidence, because such monosyllabic verbs are easy to coin, especially if they are in at least some way expressive.
Why Brexit could make it harder to fight money laundering By Hugo D. Lodge The prime minister says the United Kingdom will not extend the Brexit transition period. The UK is leaving transition on 31 December 2020, with or without a deal. London lawyers have questioned whether intelligence sharing has become a political bargaining chip in ongoing negotiations. The City of London is asking whether Brexit risks making the UK’s money laundering […]
Is motion an illusion of the senses? By Demetris Nicolaides According to Aristotle, Zeno of Elea (ca. 490 – ca. 430 BCE) said, “Nothing moves because what is traveling must first reach the half-way point before it reaches the end.” One interpretation of the paradox is this. To begin a trip of a certain distance (say 1 meter), a traveler must travel the first half of it (the first 1/2 m), but before he does that he must travel half of the first half (1/4 m), and in fact half of that (1/8 m), ad infinitum.
Five great comedies from Hong Kong By William V. Costanzo At a time when Hong Kong’s status as a semi-autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China is under threat, we should not forget what the area’s former independence from the mainland once meant for its citizens and their cultural identity. During the 99 years that Hong Kong was under British governance, the tiny territory […]
Why we can’t tell if a witness is telling the truth By Adrian keane Imagine that you are a juror in a trial in which the chief witness for the prosecution gives evidence about the alleged crime which is completely at odds with the evidence given by the accused. One of them is either very badly mistaken or lying. On what basis will you decide which one of them […]
The dividing line between German culture and Nazi culture By Moritz Föllmer In November 1942, Anne Frank drafted a fictional advertising brochure for the rear part of the building in central Amsterdam that sheltered her and other Jews. Turning Nazi oppression on its head, she ruled that “all civilized languages” were permitted, “therefore no German.” Still, she was prepared to qualify the ban on the language of […]
Accept death to promote health By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea We all die and, despite some fanciful ideas to the contrary, we will, as a species, continue to do so. Our daily routines tend to distract us from this fact. However, because death is inevitable, we need to think about how we can live healthy lives, without ignoring how they end. Once we accept that […]
Don’t vote for the honeyfuggler By Edwin L. Battistella In 1912, William Howard Taft—not a man known for eloquence—sent journalists to the dictionary when he used the word honeyfuggle. Honey-what, you may be thinking. It turns out that honeyfuggler is an old American term for someone who deceives others folks by flattering them. It can be spelled with one g or two and sometimes with an o replacing the u. To honeyfuggle is to […]
Why are there different welfare states in the Middle East and North Africa By Ferdinand Eibl Most political regimes in the Middle East and North Africa are non-democratic, but the lived reality of authoritarian rule differs widely across countries. This difference is particularly apparent when it comes to social policies. While resource-abundant, labour-scarce regimes in the Arab Gulf have all established generous welfare regimes, the picture among labour-abundant regimes in the […]
There’s no vaccine for the sea level rising By William Rouse We will get by the current pandemic. There will be a vaccine eventually. There will be other pandemics. Hopefully, we will be better organized next time. Waiting in the wings are the emerging impacts of climate change, the next big challenge. There will be no vaccine to stem sea level rise.
Why victims can sometimes inherit from their abusers- even if they kill them By Brian Sloan It is a basic rule of English law that a person who kills someone should not inherit from their victim. The justification behind the rule, known as the forfeiture rule, is that a person should not benefit from their crimes and therefore forfeits entitlement. Many other jurisdictions have the same basic rule for fundamental reasons of public […]
Why big protests aren’t a good measure of popular power By Sandra Leonie Field The recent wave of protests of the Black Lives Matters movement in the United States and around the world has opened up a space of political possibility for proposals, like disbanding abusive police departments, which seemed radical and utopian only weeks earlier. In the broad sweep of history, a similar process has been seen time […]
Public health and Georges Canguilhem’s philosophy of medicine By OUP Philosophy Team Born in Castelnaudary in France 4 June 1904, Georges Canguilhem was a highly influential 20th century French philosopher of medicine. He took particular interest in the evolution of medical philosophy, the philosophy of science, epistemology, and biological philosophy. After serving in the military for a short period he taught in secondary schools, before becoming editor for Libres […]
Cut and dried By Anatoly Liberman A less common synonym of the idiom cut and dried is cut and dry, and it would have served my purpose better, because this essay is about the verb cut, and two weeks later the adjective dry will be the subject of a post. But let us stay with the better-known variant.
The history of Canada Day By Donald Wright Because they raise difficult questions about who we are and who we want to be, national holidays are contested. Can a single day ever contain the diversity and the contradictions inherent in a nation? Is there even a “we” and an “us”? Canada Day is no exception. Celebrated on 1 July, it marks the anniversary […]
June 2020 (43))
Five questions about PTSD By Barbara O. Rothbaum and Sheila A.M. Rauch Post-traumatic stress disorder is an often discussed, and often misunderstood, mental health condition, that affects up to 7% of adults during their lifetime. Here we answer five questions related to misconceptions that often prevent people from seeking care. 1. Is PTSD a veteran disease? While a significant minority of veterans suffer from PTSD, this disorder can impact anyone who has experienced life-threatening trauma. Approximately 70% of people […]
Why transforming higher education can promote racial equality By Cheryl Johnson-Odim I was very active politically in the 1960s, 70s, and the early 80s. Life became more difficult in the late 1980s with the arrival of a third child, and as I focused to publish enough to get tenure in a large Midwestern university. Today, as I look back on that time, I struggle with two […]
The criminal justice system’s big data problem By Sarah Lageson We are now witnessing enormous potential for criminal justice reform. State legislatures and mayoral offices are beginning to respond for calls for law enforcement transparency and broad shifts in police resources. At the same time, a broad range of private sector actors have publicly announced they will distance themselves from criminal justice institutions. Gannett, the […]
How understanding science can be made easy By Goren Gordon When I was a teenager, I was awed by popular science writings. I was most affected by Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind, with its detailed and fascinating account of quantum mechanics and relativity. However, it was not an easy read and it gave only one perspective of these amazing theories. Some 30 years later […]
How we can understand ourselves through games By C. Thi Nguyen Games are a distinctive art form — one very different from the traditional arts. Game designers don’t just create an environment, or characters, or a story. They tell you who to be in the game. They set your basic abilities: whether you will run and jump, or move around your pieces geometrically, or bid and […]
India Cooper and the art of copyediting By Joellyn M. Ausanka and Susan Ferber The editor behind many of Oxford University Press USA’s highest profile titles was not a staff member. But it is impossible to measure the significance of the impact she had on Oxford’s history, biography, and music lists. First hired as a freelance copy editor by OUP’s legendary managing editor, Leona Capeless, she became one of […]
Accepting uncertainty creates freedom By Cheryl Krauter We all want to be in control. Our quest for control in the current atmosphere of fear has resulted in the hoarding of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and face masks. In the illusion of control, we close our minds and our hearts to the possibility of the meaning we may discover during a time of […]
The blunt edge of “knife” By Anatoly Liberman The word knife came up in one of the recent comments. I have spent so much time discussing sharp objects (adz, ax, and sword) that one more will fit in quite naturally. The word that interests us today turned up in late Old English (cnif) and is usually believed to be a borrowing of Old Norse knífr (both i and í designate a long vowel, as in Modern Engl. knee)
The 1968 riots and what Trump could learn from LBJ By J. Samuel Walker The demonstrations that have spread across the country since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May unavoidably invite comparisons with the massive riots that occurred in more than one hundred cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April 1968. The most serious disturbances broke out in Washington, DC. […]
Art and theater after Stonewall [podcast] By Steven Filippi As we’ve seen over recent weeks, direct action is sometimes necessary in order to exact social change. On June 28, 1969 in Greenwich Village, a bastion for New York City’s gay community, a riot broke out after police raided the popular Stonewall Inn. The demonstration became the catalyst for the modern LGBTQ movement in the United States; it immediately led to organizing and the formation of gay rights groups in New York City, and the first New York Pride march occurred on the anniversary of the riot in 1970. The Stonewall riots truly transformed the United States of America.
Black lives matter in prisons too By Michael Rocque and Steven E. Barkan Recent events have spotlighted the pervasive and historic problem of racial disparities in criminal justice treatment in the United States. Videos of people seeking to use the police for racial control as well as videos of black people being killed by police have sparked outrage across the nation, and the world. Much of the attention, […]
How Buddhist monasteries were brought back from destruction By Gregory Adam Scott In Beijing in 1900, as the chaos of the Boxer Uprising raged on, a Buddhist monk arrived at Dafo Monastery, seeking master Datong to make him an offer. The visitor was abbot of Cihui Monastery and wanted to offer Cihui Monastery to Datong. Datong agreed, and he arrived at his new monastery to find it […]
Income inequality drives health disparities By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea Pretax incomes for the poorest 50% of Americans have stayed mostly unchanged for the past 40 years, widening income gaps in the country. We leave the question of why inequality matters for the economy to others. What is of concern to us is whether income inequality matters to our health, and, to the extent that […]
Understanding quantum mechanics [quiz] By Jim Baggott Mechanics is that part of physics concerned with stuff that moves, from cannonballs to tennis balls, cars, rockets, and planets. Quantum mechanics is that part of physics which describes the motions of objects at molecular, atomic, and sub-atomic levels, such as photons and electrons. Although quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory, on which […]
Why we should revive dead languages By Ghil‘ad Zuckermann Approximately 7,000 languages are currently spoken worldwide. The majority of these are spoken by small populations. Approximately 96% of the world’s population speaks around 4% of the world’s languages, leaving the vast majority of tongues vulnerable to extinction and disempowering their speakers. Linguistic diversity reflects many things beyond accidental historical splits. Languages are essential building […]
Are militaries justified in existing? By Ned Dobos Pacifism, in its most recognisable form, is an absolute, principled condemnation of war. Military abolitionism is the view that institutions devoted to war are not justified in existing. Most pacifists are also military abolitionists. This is unsurprising. After all, if you think that going to war is always wrong, then you’ll likely think that having […]
Why talk about bad actors versus good people misses the problem of systemic racism By Linda C. McClain In an eerie echo of the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump has denied that the brutal murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin reveals systemic racism and implicit bias in the U.S., instead describing it as a horrible act by a “bad apple.” Tweeting about law and order and vowing that the police […]
How an unlikely pair became legendary molecular biologists By Paul M. Wassarman In 1962 the Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded jointly to John Kendrew (1917-1997) and Max Perutz (1914-2002). They were the first scientists to accurately describe the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Enzymes, hormones, and antibodies are only a few examples of the many kinds of proteins present in all living organisms and knowledge of their […]
Growing up in the shadow of Sri Lanka’s civil war By Christina P. Davis Today’s Sri Lankan young adults grew up during the 26-year civil war between the Sri Lankan government and an insurgent group, the Tamil Tigers, between 1983 and 2009. People living in the Sinhala-majority south were far from battlefields in the north and east of the island, but Tamil minorities everywhere lived under ethnic tension and […]
Remembering Anna Arnold Hedgeman By Jennifer Scanlon As we reflect on the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and on the continuation of white supremacy’s enactment through police violence, we might also reflect on the region’s histories of integration and segregation, community building and racism, which in the Twin Cities as elsewhere have long gone hand in hand. Take, for example, the […]
English “brand” and the etymology of “sword”: the denouement By Anatoly Liberman With this post behind me, I’ll finally be able to beat my sword into a workable plowshare. Today, the immediate theme is the history of the word brand and its cognates, but it is also a springboard to an important conclusion.
Black studies for everyone By Armond R. Towns It is a sad commentary on the state of education in this society that educators hesitate to include a subject in the curriculum because students want to learn about it. —Armstead Robinson In 1968, Yale University hosted the Black Studies in the University symposium. A product of the student activism of Yale’s Black Student Alliance, the symposium would be important for […]
What literature can teach us about living with illness By Lisa Mendelman The recent interest in the epidemics of the last century coincides with growing media attention to the emotional ramifications of living with mass death and disease. COVID-19 has wrought an extended encounter with acute powerlessness and human frailty—a confrontation with mortality that is perhaps especially unmooring for those of us who live privileged lives. We […]
Eat your oats By Renee Korczak Old Fashioned, quick, instant and steel cut are all examples of oat varieties. Is one type of oat more nutritious than the other? No. All varieties of oats provide similar amounts of nutrients, calories, and fiber; a nutrient that is chronically underconsumed in the United States. Oats are an example of a whole-grain and full […]
Six French comedies you should see By William V. Costanzo Many of the top box office hits in France are little known in the United States and most have been comedies. While some of these have been remade by Hollywood (think of The Birdcage in 1996, Dinner for Schmucks in 2010, or The Upside in 2017), rarely are the remakes as good as the originals. […]
The emotional toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on teenagers By Carol Landau A growing body of evidence supports my clinical experience that younger people, high schoolers especially, are having more psychological problems during the pandemic than adults. There are many reasons for this. Adolescents are in the developmental stage of forming a new social world away from their parents. Social needs tend to dominate their lives and yet currently […]
Why politics is so polarized, even though Americans agree on most key issues By Carl Hunt, Lawrence Kuznar, and Stuart Kauffman In 1971, Jerry B. Harvey created “The Abilene Paradox” to describe a pernicious failure: mismanagement of agreement. The late professor and management consultant posited that “the inability to cope with agreement, rather than the inability to cope with conflict, is the single most pressing issue of modern organizations.” “Getting on the bus to Abilene,” as […]
Why research needs to be published in new and accessible formats By Charlotte Crouch Technological advancements, accessibility needs, and study practices have and will continue to develop at a rapid pace. We find, use, and publish research completely differently than we did 25 years ago. But Oxford University Press has been publishing Very Short Introductions throughout this period. Launched in 1995, these publications offer concise introductions to a diverse […]
Seven ways to talk to terminal patients By Elaine Wittenberg, Joy Goldsmith, Sandra Ragan, and Terri Ann Parnell Before COVID-19 arrived in our lives, chronic illness was considered the next worldwide pandemic. But COVID-19 did arrive and life as we knew it has radically changed. Healthcare workers, particularly nurses and physicians, are now having frequent palliative care (the area of end-of-life care that focuses on patient comfort) conversations although most are not trained […]
How to foster national resilience during a crisis By Katherine van Wormer Resilience means overcoming adversity by successfully adapting to negative life events, trauma, stress, or risk. At the individual level, people who are resilient draw on their own internal resources and aptitudes, and on external supports such as mutual aid networks. Community resilience refers to cultural strengths that insulate members from external attacks. Such attacks might […]
Etymology gleanings for May 2020 By Anatoly Liberman I promised not to return to Spelling Reform and will be true to my word. The animated discussion of a month ago (see the comments following the April gleanings) is instructive, and I’ll only inform the contributors to that exchange that nothing they wrote is new. It is useful to know the history of the problem being discussed, for what is the point of shooting arrows into the air?
Why global crises are political, not scientific, problems By Robert Garner In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize he was awarded in 2007, Al Gore, the former American Vice President, made the claim that “the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity.” The reason why Gore does not see climate change as a political […]
Six ways to reduce your environmental impact By F Stuart Chapin Over the last 50 years, human population has doubled, and global trade has increased ten-fold, drawing more deeply on Earth’s natural resources, warming the climate, and polluting the global environment. If current climate trends continue, a third of the global population will live in places warmer than the heart of the Sahara Desert 50 years […]
The life of Charles Dickens [timeline] By Kim Behrens Charles Dickens is credited with creating some of the world’s best-known fictional characters and is widely regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian age. Even before reading the works of Dickens many people have met him already in some form or another. Today marks the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death and to commemorate his life we created a short timeline showcasing […]
John Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy By OUP Philosophy Team John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist, and social reformer who developed theories that changed philosophical perspectives and contributed extensively to education, democracy, pragmatism, and the philosophy of logic, politics, and aesthetics in the first half of the twentieth-century. Born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1859, Dewey graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879. Following […]
How anti-immigration policies hurt public health By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea Immigration is neither a new issue nor an exclusively American one. In 2017, there were more than 250 million immigrants living worldwide, and about 2.4 million people migrate across national borders each year. Migration also occurs within national borders—it is estimated that more than 750 million people live within their country of birth, but in a […]
Everyone and their dog By Edwin L. Battistella A writer friend of mine posted a social media query asking for advice on verb choice. The phrase in question was “… since everyone and his poodle own/owns a gun…” Should the verb be in the singular or the plural? More than fifty people weighed in. Some reasoned that there was a compound subject […]
How paternity leave can help couples stay together By Arna Olafsson and Herdis Steingrimsdottir The birth of a child is accompanied by many changes in a couple’s life. The first few weeks and months are a time of acquiring new skills and creating new habits which allow parents to carry on with their other responsibilities while also caring for the new family member. Many decisions need to be made: […]
Twelve books that give context to current protests [reading list] By OUP Academic Cities across the United States have seen ongoing protests since the death of George Floyd while in police custody on 25 May. Conversations are taking place on social media as well as in the real world, and media coverage has been relentless. We at Oxford University Press would like to highlight some of our books across politics, history, and philosophy that we hope can contribute to the important conversations currently taking place and provide valuable context. Where possible, we’ve made some of these books available at no cost for a limited time.
The history of the word “sword”: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Last week (May 27, 2020), I discussed two attempts to solve the etymology of sword. The second of them would not have deserved so much attention if Elmar Seebold, the editor of the best-known German etymological dictionary, had not cited it as the only one possibly worthy of attention. His is a minority opinion, which does not mean it is wrong, though I believe it is.
What history can tell us about infectious diseases By John Ashton One of the remarkable achievements of the past hundred years has been the reduction of the global toll of death from infectious disease. The combination of applied biological science, improved living and working conditions, and standards of living, together with the benefits of planned parenthood, have transformed the health landscape for millions of people, not […]
How after school music programs have adapted to online music playing By Amy Nathan “OrchKids is working hard to stay ahead of the curve!” That’s the message delivered this spring to friends and supporters of OrchKids, a free after-school music instruction program for more than 2,000 Baltimore students, pre-K through high school. In March 2020, OrchKids staff had to totally change their way of teaching. The public schools where they […]
Eight books that make you think about how you treat the earth By Gabriella Baldassin The foods we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the climate that makes our planet livable all comes from nature. Yet, most that live here treat our planet superfluously, rather than something to be admired. During this COVID-19 pandemic, nature seems to be sending us a message: To care for ourselves […]
May 2020 (35))
Why recognizing different ethnic groups is good for peace By Cyrus Samii and Elisabeth King In a time of global crisis that has reproduced many inequalities and reinforced mistrust across lines of identity in diverse societies, one may easily succumb to a sense that meaningful redress and social cohesion are impossible. But, learning from contexts of large scale violence and civil war, there’s reason to believe that “recognition” based strategies can […]
Moving beyond toxic masculinity: a Q&A with Ronald Levant By Ronald F. Levant In 2018, the American Psychological Association released its first ever Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. At the time of the release, these guidelines were met with criticism by some who viewed them as pathologizing masculinity, but since the guidelines were released the discussion of “toxic masculinity” has spread to all areas of […]
Should we fear death? By Carl Solberg and Espen Gamlund We are currently faced with a global crisis. A virus has spread to all parts of our planet, and thousands of people have died from the coronavirus. Many people now fear that they are going to be sick and die. Fear of sickness can certainly be rational. It is more questionable whether fear of death is […]
Returning to the cutting edge: “sword” (Part 1) By Anatoly Liberman Those who have read the posts on awl, ax(e), and adz(e) (March 11, 18, and 25, 2020) will find themselves on familiar ground: once again “origin unknown,” numerous hypotheses, and reference to migratory words. This is not surprising: people learn the names of tools and weapons from the speakers of neighboring nations (tribes), adapt, and domesticate them. Dozens of such names have roots in the remotest prehistory.
How ancient Christians responded to pandemics By Michael Flexsenhar Ancient Christians knew epidemics all too well. They lived in a world with constant contagion, no vaccines, medieval medical practices, and no understanding of basic microbiology. Hygiene was horrendous, sanitation sickening. People shared “toilette paper”(a sponge-on-a-stick). Besides that, in the second and the third centuries CE, two pandemics rocked the Roman World. The first, the […]
How conspiracy theories hurt vaccination numbers By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea Near the end of 2018, data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that a small, but growing, number of children in the United States were not getting recommended vaccinations. One in 77 infants born in 2017 did not receive any vaccination. That’s more than four times as many unvaccinated children as the country […]
Why anti-vaxxers are rising again By Jack Gorman and Sara Gorman In the midst of a health crisis when our only hope is a new vaccine, many have begun to wonder how those with anti-vaccination sentiments might respond to the current COVID-19 crisis. Many have guessed that the only natural, rational response would be for anti-vaxxers to change their minds and wholeheartedly embrace the prospect of a new […]
Why the Eurovision Song Contest still matters in 2020 By Philip V. Bohlman What would be left of the Eurovision Song Contest once wrenched from the spectacle and ritual of its annual Grand Finale in May? Could it survive, stripped of glitz, pyrotechnics, and camp, its penchant for ever-expanding excess? Would the legions of fans worldwide, who love the contest, retain their passion and return in 2021? Such […]
How violent images can hurt us By Constance Duncombe and Helen Berents In January 2020, the world became aware of a novel coronavirus spreading beyond the borders of China. We saw bare supermarket shelves, hastily taped Xs on pavements outside shops, empty streets and parks juxtaposed against overrun emergency wards, the bruised and exhausted faces of healthcare workers and makeshift hospitals and burial grounds amidst what once […]
How working from home is changing our economy forever By Ariadna Estévez The virus lurks on car door handles, on doorknobs and the floor, on the breath of others or in a friend’s hug, on onions in the supermarket, and on the hands of the valet who parks your car. If you venture outside, everything and everyone is a threat. So, it is better to stay home, […]
“The devil to pay” and more devilry By Anatoly Liberman It is amazing how often the Devil is invoked in English idioms: he has certainly been given his due. Some phrases must go back to myths. The Devil and his dam reminds us of the ancient stories in which two monsters play havoc with human lives. A famous example is Grendel and his mother (Beowulf), but folklore is full of similar examples.
Pandemic practicalities and how to help teenagers manage time at home By Carol Landau It’s May and many of us have fond memories of springtime when we were in high school. There was some stress from exams and final papers to be sure, but also more outdoor activities, sports, banquets or awards assemblies, proms, and most of all, looking forward to the summer. High school students today, however, have […]
How a stork helped the UK get through the First World War By Joseph McAleer Harry Perry Robinson was elderly (age 54) and infirm at the outbreak of the First World War. But he was also a senior correspondent of The Times with a distinguished service record; a confidante of the proprietor, Lord Northcliffe; and a rabid patriot long convinced of the German threat to world peace. There was really no stopping […]
The persistence of white supremacy 50 years after the Jackson State tragedy By Nancy Bristow In the early morning hours of 15 May 1970, the Mississippi Highway and Safety Patrol and the Jackson city police marched deep into the campus of the historically black Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, leveled their weapons at students gathered outside a women’s dormitory, and let loose a 28-second barrage of bullets and buckshot […]
How to prepare for death By Peter J. Adams The main challenge in reflecting on one’s own death is the way the various aspects of death and dying are intertwined which make it difficult to discern personal mortality. First there is the prospect of me dying; of me entering whatever is in store at the end of my life. How long will it last? […]
Quantitative thinking during a pandemic By Steven J. Osterlind Today is not right. The weather is fine. My family and friends are healthy and waiting to hear from me, ready for ordinary things like coffee and conversation. Normally, I’d be taking my grandkids to daycare and checking up on grocery and laundry lists. Then, a bit of reading and some writing. But, instead of […]
The words of the day By Anatoly Liberman The readers of newspapers will have noticed the deadening repetition of the same words (I don’t mean pandemic, virus, distance, or opening—those are probably unavoidable). No, everybody nowadays hunkers down (the activity formerly reserved for the greatest leaders at their secret meetings), while many admire Sweden, where people trust their government.
How children going viral is shaping our world By Dr Bryoni Trezise Last year my seven-year-old daughter came home from school and “flossed” in the middle of our lounge room. For the uninitiated (as I was) and for the oldies (as I am), flossing is not your average teeth-cleaning ritual, but “a dance in which you move your hips from side to side while simultaneously moving your hands […]
The life and legacy of Florence Nightingale [timeline] By Molly Dixon This year, to celebrate the role nurses and midwives play in providing health services across the world, the World Health Organisation has declared that 2020 is the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. In honour of this, we are taking this opportunity to recognise the work of Florence Nightingale, a British nurse, statistician, […]
Envisioning a post-crisis world By Carl W. Hunt and Stuart A. Kauffman Early in World War II, in August 1941, before the United States had entered the war and Britain stood alone against Adolph Hitler, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill steamed in secret aboard their respective battleships and met off the coast of Newfoundland on HMS Prince of Wales. Their aim: Shape the Post […]
Is collecting medical data really essential for health care? By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea The United States spends an inordinate amount of money on health care. Much of this spending goes to data acquisition, to medical monitoring, and to assessment of how our health systems function. But are there other areas where money devoted to gathering health data might be better spent? Our health is a product of the […]
I’m the mother I am thanks to my daughter’s disability By Eva Feder Kittay On the first Mother’s Day that my daughter, Sesha, no longer lived at home with us, I received a lovely basket with various hand-crafted gifts from her. With help from her aide, she handed it over to me, and as I gushed she looked so very pleased. Mother’s Day is a time for children to […]
Understanding guilt in mother-child relationships By Matthijs Kalmijn “You never write…you never call….” The guilt-tripping mother is common stereotype in movies and TV. But how many adult children harbor feelings of guilt toward their aging parents? Who experiences this guilt, and why? About one in five adult children experience feelings of guilt toward their ageing mothers, based on data from a nationally representative […]
War, memory, and morale during a pandemic By Daniel Ussishkin In a seemingly natural way, reports of societal responses to the COVID-19 crisis in Britain invoked the very familiar images of the Blitz and the wartime Home Front more broadly. Such images and representations are now everywhere: references to the “Army of Volunteers” raised to aid vulnerable groups; notions of the spirit, character, resolve, or […]
Why performance poetry still matters after 24 centuries By Derek Attridge Glastonbury Festival, England, June 2019 AD: the spoken-word poet Kate Tempest performs her poems before a huge, enthusiastic audience. Panathenaia Festival, Athens, June 419 BC: the Greek rhapsode Ion performs the poems of Homer before a huge, enthusiastic audience. Is there a historical connection between these events 2,400 years apart? Western poetry had its beginnings […]
Five books to help us understand global health problems [reading list] By Bhawana Soni Health economics combines economic concepts with medical evidence to show how health care institutions function and how globalization affects global health problems. To raise awareness of the importance of the study of health economics, we have created a list of books along with free chapters that explore the policy concerns relevant to health systems in […]
Etymology gleanings for April 2020 By Anatoly Liberman I have read two comments on my post of April 29, 2020 and John Cowan’s post and came to the expected conclusion: even those who favor the idea of the Reform will never agree on what should change and in what order changes should be instituted. Every suggestion makes sense.
Confronting mortality in the COVID-19 pandemic By Mark Lazenby In the last four months, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has marched across the globe. It has stomped to every continent and, as of my writing, to 134 of the 195 countries in the world, sickening hundreds of thousands of people – and killing thousands of them – on its way to global […]
Music schools respond to COVID-19 shutdown By Amy Nathan Keeping Upbeat in Tough Times is the new motto for the San Francisco Community Music Center. The phrase sums up the school’s attitude toward the abrupt transition to online instruction that it had to make this spring, after local schools closed their doors because of a government-ordered mandate aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 […]
Why we need humour at a time like this By William V. Costanzo Comedy has always offered swift relief in times of stress. A good laugh can be good therapy, can lift us out of sadness and depression. Our sense of humor can restore us to high spirits and renew our sense of hope. Some scientists even believe that humor activates pathways in our brain that circumvent the […]
Figuring out phrasal verbs By Edwin L. Battistella English contains a bewildering number of so-called phrasal verbs: two- or three-word compounds that seem to consist of a verb and a preposition—things like bring up, fill in, give away, pay back, work out, and many more. The Oxford Phrasal Verbs Dictionary lists 6,000 of them in its 2016 edition. Native speakers of English learn these naturally in the course […]
Why the COVID-19 pandemic feels like a movie By Eelco Wijdicks I read there is a spike in streaming of the 2011 film Contagion by Steven Soderbergh. The film uses a made-up virus loosely modeled after a Nipah virus outbreak. Contagion opens with a black screen, and we hear a woman coughing. The fictional virus MEV-1 hits the brain (and not the lungs as in corona virus pandemics), and we […]
A pandemic of boredom By Andreas Elpidorou It was just the two of them: on a raft, lost, floating off the coast of Africa—the lone survivors of a shipwreck. Years before, struck with stupendous boredom, Hymie Basteshaw decided to become boredom’s master. He read what others wrote about boredom, studied its physiology, and discovered its secrets in the wavering folds of human […]
Intermittent fasting can help people in high-stress jobs By Hunter Waldman During times of crisis such as the COVID-19 outbreak, citizens often rely on first responders to ensure their daily living remains largely unaffected. However, behind the scenes, people serving in high-stress occupations (i.e. soldiers, police officers, nurses, firefighters, etc.) are often plagued with lack of sleep, shift work, poor eating habits and lack of access […]
A.J. Ayer and Logical Positivism By OUP Philosophy Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-89) was a philosopher and a leading English representative of Logical Positivism. He was responsible for introducing the doctrines of the movement as developed in the 1920s and 1930s by the Vienna Circle group of philosophers and scientists into British philosophy. Ayer’s philosophy was also influenced by empiricism of David Hume and the […]
April 2020 (43))
How childhood trauma resurfaces during COVID-19 By Ellen Walser deLara Children who are victims of bullying often suffer a sense of helplessness. They don’t know what to do during bullying episodes and they don’t really believe anything will change or anyone can intervene effectively. Children subjected to bullying say it makes them feel sick, afraid, and helpless. It can also lead to feelings of anxiety, […]
The ethics of defeating COVID-19 By Charles Smith, Jay Jacobson, Leslie Francis, and Margaret Battin Isolation, quarantine, cordon sanitaire, shelter in place, physical distancing. These were unfamiliar words just a few weeks ago. Now, your life and the lives of many others may depend on them. Isolation is the separation of someone who has been identified as ill so that she cannot spread the disease to others. Isolation requires careful management to […]
Spelling reform: not a “lafing” matter By Anatoly Liberman I keep receiving letters explaining to me the futility of all efforts to reform English spelling and even extolling the virtues of the present system. I will spend minimal time while rehashing what has been said many times and come to the point as soon as possible. The seemingly weighty but not serious objections are three. 1) If we reform spelling, we’ll lose a lot of historical information. Quite true, but spelling is not a springboard to an advanced course on etymology.
G.E.M. Anscombe on the evil of demanding unconditional surrender in war By John Schwenkler and Mark Souva During military conflict, what are the constraints on the things that a warring nation may do to achieve their objectives? And what constraints are there on the objectives that such a nation should have in the first place? A traditional answer to the first of these questions draws a sharp line at the deliberate killing […]
Denying climate change is hurting our health By Michael Stein and Sandro Galea In recent years, global environmental climate change has become a third rail in American culture, dividing us along political lines. The Republican party espouses a range of positions, from the denial of climate change (the earth is not getting warmer) to denial of our role in causing the problem (even if climate change exists, humans […]
How austerity measures hurt the COVID-19 response By Cristina Flesher Fominaya The 2008 global financial crash brought with it a series of aftereffects that are shaping how different nations face the current pandemic. Austerity politics took a firm hold across Europe and other countries whose economies were hard hit, with governments and financial institutions arguing that they were an unavoidable consequence of the crash. While many […]
Six tips for teachers who see emotional abuse By Viann Nguyen-Feng and Eric Rossen The scars of emotional abuse are invisible, deep, and diverse; and unfortunately, emotional abuse likely impacts more students than we think. Emotionally abusive behavior broadly consists of criticism, degradation, rejection, or threat. Emotional abuse (also known as psychological maltreatment or verbal assault) can happen anywhere, both within and outside of families, and can refer to […]
The process of dying during a pandemic By Gregory Eastwood The process of dying – what happens during those days, months, even years before we die – has changed a great deal in recent decades. We live longer than our parents and grandparents, we die for different reasons, we are less likely to die at home, we receive astonishing treatments, and our dying costs more. […]
Who is Dr. Doddipol? Or, idioms in your back yard By Anatoly Liberman Would you like to be as learned as Dr. Doddipol? Those heroes of our intensifying similes! Cooter Brown (a drunk), Laurence’s dog (extremely lazy), Potter’s pig (bow-legged), Throp’s wife (a very busy person, but so was also Beck’s wife)—who were they? I have at least once written about them, though in passing (see the post for October 28, 2015). They show up in sayings like as drunk as…, as lazy as…, as busy as…, and so forth. Many people have tried to discover the identity of those mysterious characters.
Space for concern: Trump’s executive order on space resources By James S. J. Schwartz Among the bevy of executive actions undertaken by President Donald Trump during the COVID-19 crisis is, of all things, an executive order (issued on 6 April 2020) promoting the development of space resources, which states in part that: Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer […]
Earth Day at 50: conservation, spirituality, and climate change [podcast] By Steven Filippi Today is Earth Day. In fact, it is the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, when, at the behest of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, an estimated 20 million people across the United States gathered to raise awareness for environmental protection and preservation.
COVID-19 and employment law in the UK By Astra Emir The last couple of weeks have seen a raft of new legislation in the United Kingdom, hurriedly passed to deal urgently with the coronavirus situation. It has clearly been drafted quickly, with guidance that goes well beyond the legislation, and so this has led to some confusion as to what exactly the law now says. […]
How we can equip ourselves against climate change By Ilan Kelman Earth Day highlights the need for climate action, but what role does human-caused climate change play in creating disasters? Science paints a nuanced picture, instructing us to focus on reducing vulnerabilities to weather and climate, irrespective of how the environment is changing. Starting with the basics, a disaster is a situation requiring outside help for […]
What the Civil War can teach us about COVID-19 By Jason Phillips More than any crisis in recent memory, the coronavirus pandemic is changing how Americans understand time and imagine the future. Greater threats, like climate change, loom on the horizon, but they haven’t transformed time, because slower perils do not disrupt life and shutter society like COVID-19. During this crisis, familiar rhythms that structure time seem […]
Is the fetus a resident or a body part? By Elselijn Kingma Pregnancy has variously been described as unique, confusing and full of ambivalence; as involving a doubling or splitting the person; and as challenging widely-held philosophical assumptions about firm distinctions between self and other or mind and body. But what, exactly, is pregnancy? What is this unique human – and mammalian – state? What is its […]
Eight rules for teaching during COVID-19 By Jennifer Snodgrass At 10:50 a.m. recently, I was all set to teach my Theory II class. My I-Pad was charged. I had the links queued up to the textbook for screen share, and I had already created several videos explaining the concepts. When the 11:00 a.m. hour arrived and only two students were visible on Zoom, my […]
Lessons learnt from Coronavirus and global environmental challenges By Amandine Orsini The whole world is now shaken by the tragic coronavirus pandemic. Despite its unprecedented and devastating dynamic, such a crisis provides crucial insights to the state of the current international system, including its capacity to respond to worldwide emergencies. This helps us gauge our system’s ability to tackle more long-term issues, such as the global […]
It’s time for the government to introduce food rationing By Robert Garner The current COVID-19 emergency has much to interest students of politics. Does it demonstrate that authoritarian regimes are able to tackle a pandemic rather more easily and efficiently than liberal democracies? Given the origin of the virus, what does it tell us about our relationship with non-human nature? Is the pandemic a product of globalization? […]
English, Chinese, and all, all, all By Anatoly Liberman I think I should clarify my position on the well-known similarities between and among some languages. In the comment on the March gleanings (April 1, 2020), our correspondent pointed to a work by Professor Tsung-tung Chang on the genetic relationship between Indo-European and Chinese. I have been aware of this work for a long time, but, since I am not a specialist in Chinese linguistics and do not know the language, I never mentioned my skeptical attitude toward it in print or in my lectures.
The importance of character during war By Michael D. Matthews Nearly 20 years of war following the events of September 11 has resulted in advances in military psychology that stand to improve the well-being of all people, military and civilian alike. The symbiotic relationship between psychology and the military traces back to World War I. With the advent of US involvement in the war, the […]
Can you tell the difference between real and fake therapy? [quiz] By Francis A. Martin Counseling and psychotherapy are professions that should be held to the highest standards—ethical standards, professional standards, and scientific standards, just as all health care services should comply with high standards. In providing health care services to clients, we are asking them to come to us in a state of vulnerability and trust that we are […]
Protecting workers from COVID-19 By John Cherrie,Sean Semple Everyone deserves to go home from work safe and healthy. Sadly, during the current pandemic that will not be the case; some workers will die because they became infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus, the official name for the virus responsible for COVID-19, in their workplace. We expect that employers will take all reasonable steps to protect their workers […]
Why COVID-19 could change how we work By Daniel Susskind and Richard Susskind During the coronavirus crisis, technology will help transform the work of professionals in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few weeks ago. AI and the Internet have already led to enormous advances for doctors, lawyers, teachers, auditors, architects, and many others. Technology has not just streamlined traditional ways of working, but also in […]
Children Aid’s Society neighborhood-based programs By Karen M. Staller Established in 1853, the Children’s Aid Society provided services to homeless children and poor families. Although CAS’s first secretary, Charles Loring Brace, is best known for the “orphan trains”—an initiative that placed children with families in the West—he also built an impressive network of community-based programs in the city. Starting from a small office on […]
Why we like a good robot story By Henry Wellman Jim and Kerry Kelly live in a small town in the rural Midwest. Their sons, Ben, six, and Ryan, twelve, attend the local public school. Their school district is always short staffed. The closest town is 40 miles away and the pay for teachers is abysmal. This year, the district’s staffing has hit a critical […]
Keeping social distance: the story of the word “aloof” and a few tidbits By Anatoly Liberman It is amazing how many words like aloof exist in English. Even for “fear” we have two a-formations: afraid, which supplanted the archaic afeard, and aghast. Aback, aboard, ashore, asunder—a small dictionary can be filled with them (but alas and alack do not belong here). The model is productive: consider aflutter and aglitter. One feature unites those words: they cannot be used attributively. Indeed, an asunder man and an astride rider do not exist.
The city will survive coronavirus By Thomas J. Campanella,Lawrence J. Vale In a recent essay, New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman asked “Can City Life Survive Coronavirus?” It seems an apt question in this extraordinary time of mandated retreat from public life. City streets and spaces normally teeming with people are nearly deserted now, evoking scenes from a Terry Gilliam film. In an effort to slow the […]
Why war stories could reinjure those affected By Tochi Onyebuchi When my mother was born, the Federal Republic of Nigeria was less than one year old. Language barriers, and eventually death, prevented me from asking my grandparents what life under the colonial rule of the Royal Niger Company had been like, their fates twisted and tugged by the company’s board of directors in London. I […]
Inspirational TV shows to watch during this pandemic By Charlotte E. Howell There are many ways people are passing time with staying home during the pandemic. Some are taking up new hobbies. Some are exploring virtual museums. Some may even be preparing for a neighborhood sing-along out their windows. But many people are turning to television to provide entertainment, comfort, and/or escape. Since the late 1990s, as […]
Untold stories of the Apollo 13 engineers By Brandon R. Brown Late on 13 April 1970, the night shift had started in Houston’s Manned Spaceflight Center. Engineers tried to sift through reams of odd data coming about the Apollo 13 spacecraft, from instrument readings to the confused reports from three astronauts. It looked like they were rapidly losing their oxygen supply. “First of all, we thought […]
Six jazz movies you may not know By Kevin Whitehead The film industry started making jazz-related features as soon as synchronized sound came in, in 1927: “I’m gonna sing it jazzy,” Al Jolson’s Jack Robin optimistically declares in the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer, before taking off on Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies.” (He gets closer to the jazzy mark whistling a quasi-improvised chorus of “Toot Toot […]
Why gun owners could be the decisive vote in 2020 By Mark R. Joslyn Recently, Joe Biden visited a construction plant in Michigan. A worker confronted Biden and accused the former vice president of “actively trying to diminish our Second Amendment right and take away our guns.” Biden, in turn, responded, “You’re full of shit.” The exchange continued, cameras rolling, Biden clearly sensed an opportunity, recognized the political value of the […]
Maths can help you thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic By Susan D'Agostino When Isaac Newton practiced social distancing during the Great Plague that hit London in 1665, he was not expected to transition from face-to-face work with scientist colleagues to a patchwork of conference calls and email. With no children underfoot who needed care at home, he concentrated on developing early calculus ideas. With no exposure to a […]
The Perfect Tenses in English By Edwin L. Battistella What could be simpler than grammatical tense—things happening now are in the present, things happening before are in the past, and things that haven’t happened yet are in the future. If only it were so easy. Consider the present tense. Its meaning often refers not to things happening right now but to some general state […]
How religious sects can be a force for good By Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye On Sunday, 29 March, Russell M. Nelson, president of the 16-million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, released a video from Salt Lake City calling on church members everywhere to join in a fast “to pray for relief from the physical, emotional, and economic effects of this global pandemic.” Some 71 years before, on […]
Why vaccines should be compulsory By Alberto Giubilini and Julian Savulescu Imagine we develop a vaccine against the coronavirus (COVID-19). Suppose the vaccine has some very small chance of some serious side effects, for instance seizures. However, this vaccine can save millions of lives globally, in the same way as other vaccines do. You are the prime minister and you have to decide whether to make […]
The surprising scientific value of national bias By Anne C. Rose Emotions seem by their very nature to defy scientific analysis. Private and evanescent, and yet powerful and determining, feelings resist systematic observation and measurement. We are lucky to catch a glimpse in a facial expression or inflection of speech. The emotions of animals are all the more difficult. Without words to communicate what might be […]
How downward social mobility happens By Jessi Streib The common story about downward mobility is one of bad luck: recent generations have the misfortune of coming of age during an economic downturn, a student debt crisis, declining job security, and, now, a pandemic. Of course, these factors relate to downward mobility, but they are not all that matters. The truth is that many […]
Re-reading Camus’s The Plague in pandemic times By Oliver Gloag Sometime in the 1940s in the sleepy colonial city of Oran, in French occupied Algeria, there was an outbreak of plague. First rats died, then people. Within days, the entire city was quarantined: it was impossible to get out, and no one could get in. This is the fictional setting for Albert Camus’s second most famous novel, The Plague (1947). And yes, there are some similarities to our current situation with the coronavirus. First, […]
Donald Trump’s insult politics By Edwin L. Battistella Political commentators and satirists love to mock Donald Trump’s verbal gaffs, his simplified vocabulary and vague, boastful speech. But if you judge his oratory by its effect on the audience, Donald Trump’s rhetoric, particularly with large crowds of enthusiastic supporters, is undeniably effective. People have studied the art of rhetoric for millennia – so how […]
Etymology gleanings for March 2020 By Anatoly Liberman Should it be business as usual with the Oxford Etymologist? Closing the blog until better days will probably not benefit anybody. The terrain is like a minefield, but I’ll continue gleaning.
Police enforcement measures to control social disorder in the midst of COVID-19 By Stephen Reicher and Clifford Stott As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads we have to take unprecedented steps to deal with it, people are being denied rights and resources they have long regarded as inalienable. And the police are in the unenviable position of having to enforce these restrictions. What happens when people feel they have to go out to work but […]
How G. E. M. Anscombe revolutionised 20th-century western philosophy By OUP Philosophy Team Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (b. 1919-d. 2001) was an important figure and gave significant contributions to the field of analytic philosophy, philosophy of mind, and moral and religious philosophy. Born in Limerick in March 1919 to Allen Anscombe and Gertrude Anscombe (nee Thomas), the family returned to England when her father returned from the British Army […]
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How to rate and rank potential doctoral students By Peter Erdi Graduate education, particularly the training of doctoral students, plays crucial role in the progress of society. Around 1,500 of the country’s 4,500 or so universities award doctoral degrees. In 2018 according to the Survey of Earned Doctorates 55,185 students were doctorate recipients in the United States. To match potential graduate students and graduate programs needs the […]
How to be an ally for transgender rights By Melissa R. Michelson and Brian F. Harrison The last day of March is the International Transgender Day of Visibility, celebrated each year to honor transgender people around the world and the courage it takes to live authentically and openly. It is also an opportunity to raise awareness about the severe, ongoing discrimination and violence that transgender people often face every day. Estimates […]
Why self-help won’t cure impostor syndrome By Katherine Hawley Do you feel as if your professional success is due to some kind of mistake? That you don’t deserve your grades, promotions, or accolades? That you’re somehow getting away with a fraud which could be uncovered at any moment? We have a name for that cluster of anxieties: you’re suffering from impostor syndrome. At the heart […]
A guide to parent self-care during the COVID-19 pandemic By Cara Kiff As school closures and quarantines take place across the globe, the overwhelming anxiety is palpable in the newfound realities of a pandemic. Trips to the grocery store are now strategized, as shoppers face empty shelves and shortages of household staples. This will undoubtably continue as anxiety thrives on uncertainty increasing stress and driving us to […]
Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen’s forgotten idol By Linda Bree In the first years of the nineteenth century the most prominent, and highly respected, novelist in Britain was a woman. It was not Jane Austen but her contemporary, Maria Edgeworth. Indeed Austen was herself a fan of the woman regarded as “the great Maria.” “I have made up my mind to like no Novels really, […]
A visual history of skyscrapers [infographic] By Julia Baker Where did the structural capability for skyscrapers come from? The 1860s saw the refinement of the Bessamer process, or a steel-making process, now largely superseded, in which carbon, silicon, and other impurities are removed from molten pig iron by oxidation in a blast of air in a special tilting retort, pushing skyscraper construction into unstoppable […]
Yesterday’s fake news: Donald Trump as a 1980s literary critic By Leigh Claire La Berge In 1987, during a CNN interview with Republican political consultant Pat Buchanan, author and real estate developer Donald Trump was asked about his taste in literature. “Well I have a number of favorite authors,” Trump replied. “I think Tom Wolfe is excellent.” “Did you read Vanity of the Bonfires?” Buchanan asks. “I did not,” Trump responds. […]
Why it’s so hard to write a William Wordsworth biography By Stephen Gill “A divine morning–At Breakfast William wrote part of an ode—Mr Olliff sent the Dung & William went to work in the garden.” This entry in Dorothy Wordsworth’s journal for 1802 is characteristically straightforward, but for the biographer how to deal with it is anything but. After years of unsettled wandering William and Dorothy Wordsworth had returned to the Lake District where […]
The story of “adz” By Anatoly Liberman I am picking up where I left off last week. The word adz(e) was coined long ago and surfaced more than once in Old English texts. It had several local variants, and its gender fluctuated: adesa was masculine, while adese was feminine. Also, eadesa and adusa have come down to us. Apparently, the tool had wide currency.
Seven classics for comfort reading [reading list] By Eleanor Chilvers The impact of the COVID-19 can be felt in all areas of our lives, with many staying at home for the next few weeks. Perhaps this is an opportunity to finally start your copy of War & Peace that’s been on the to-be-read pile for years or you find yourself revisiting old friends in Jane Austen’s world. […]
Why an Irish Buddhist resisted empire in Burma By Laurence Cox, Alicia Turner, and Brian Bocking On 2 March 1901, during the full moon festival at Rangoon’s Shwedagon pagoda, the Buddhist monk U Dhammaloka confronted an off-duty colonial policeman and ordered him to take off his shoes. Burmese pagodas are stupas, containing relics of the Buddha, so wearing shoes on them (as white colonials did) was a serious mark of disrespect. […]
How African presidents rig elections to stay in office By Michael Amoah There are at least 19 African countries where the heads-of-state have overstayed beyond their term limits via (un)constitutional revisions: Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo , Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Guinea (which is trying once more in 2020), Rwanda, Senegal, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. […]
The story of COVID-19, by the numbers By Mark Davis The COVID-19 pandemic was announced on 11 March 2020 by the World Health Organization, marking a turning point for the public health systems serving the health of constituent populations across the globe. This declaration moment is important for narrative on COVID-19 because it is the point at which it is accepted that the virus is not […]
Harvey Weinstein and the decriminalization of prostitution By Stuart P. Green The New York trial of Harvey Weinstein, which ended last month with a guilty verdict on charges of rape and sexual assault and an acquittal on more serious charges of predatory sexual assault, has already elicited extensive commentary from pundits of all stripes. Everyone wants to know what it will mean, for example, for the […]
How Title IX changed American ballet By Melissa R. Klapper It has been nearly 50 years since Title IX of the Education Amendments was passed in 1972, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex by federally funded entities. Title IX proved critical in opening many fields of endeavor to girls and women and is perhaps most famous for its impact on sports. According to Women’s […]
How New York City became a technology hub By Sharon Zukin Recently in New York, as in other cities, the coronavirus pandemic has spurred an urgent shift from working in offices to working at home and given a massive boost to digital platforms for telecommuting, teleconferencing, and online teaching. Yet the tech industry has also generated some of the most significant spaces for face-to-face interaction of […]
How olive oil promotes brain health By Gary L. Wenk Diets and superfoods are all the rage. From acai berries to the Zone diet, many a dietary trend has come along promising a range of benefits, such as weight loss, heart health, and improved cognition. But the science behind these claims is often sketchy at best. One dietary regime that has stood the test of […]
How work conditions shape healthcare By Mark Lazenby A few hours before he died, my patient, a 21-year-old man (a boy, really) who was undergoing treatment for a blood cancer came to my ward from the emergency department where he had presented with fever. His parents came with him. The emergency clinicians had begun the right protocol to address his fever. My duties, […]
The mystery of the Elder Pliny’s skull By Roy Gibson Has part of the body of the Elder Pliny, the most famous Roman victim of Vesuvius, been recovered? The story surrounding the relic is a source of continuing fascination. When Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E. the Elder Pliny was under 20 miles away. He was quite unaware that Vesuvius was a volcano, despite publishing Rome’s […]
How religion affects global pandemics By Katherine Brown People sometimes see religion as an unwelcome infection affecting the secular politics of international relations. Such attitudes easily present themselves in consideration of terrorism and violence. Religion is seen to distort and hamper the healthy peaceful progress of secular politics, operating as an outside pathogen that inflames tensions and challenges already present in global affairs. Religion […]
How strategists are improving team decision-making processes By Dr Mikko Arevuo How companies and teams make decisions can be very challenging. Poor or ill-structured decision-making processes can make the organization less successful and create destructive conflicts in decision-making teams. But there are a few strategies companies can try that help organizations make big decisions in a better way. People operate in complex and dynamic environments, making […]
How emotions affect the stock market By John Marsh Last year marked the 90th anniversary of Black Thursday, the October day in 1929 when stocks stopped gradually falling, as they had since the start of September, and started wildly crashing. All told, the Dow Jones dropped from 327 at the opening of trading on the morning of Tuesday, 22 October to 230 at the close […]
An etymological ax(e) to grind, followed by the story of the English word “adz(e)” By Anatoly Liberman Wherever we look for the history of the names of instruments and tools, we confront a similar problem: the available material is either too copious or too scanty. Last week (March 11, 2020), we followed a hectic but inefficient hunt for the etymology of the word awl, and I promised a continuation: a post on adz (spelled as adze in British English).
Governments should tackle air pollution by banning old cars By Francisco Gallego, Juan-pablo montero, and Nano Barahona Air pollution continues to be a serious problem in many cities around the world in part because of a steady increase in car use. In an effort to contain such a trend and persuade drivers to give up their cars in favor of public transport, authorities increasingly rely on limits to car use. Some places […]
Seven women who changed social work forever By Sadye Logan We celebrate National Professional Social Work Month each March. The theme for Social Work Month in 2020 is Generations Strong. This is a great opportunity to look at the lives of pivotal figures in the history of social work and social welfare. The seven women discussed below made important contributions to people’s lives and to social […]
Why cost-benefit analysis is flawed and how to improve it By Matthew D. Adler Cost-benefit analysis is a key component of the US regulatory state. How it works and the function it plays in policymaking is not widely understood, however. Even the most substantive media outlets rarely discuss it. But cost-benefit analysis is a linchpin of the regulatory process. Its structure and role—and its flaws—should therefore be grist for […]
Seven books on the fascinating human brain [reading list] By Abigail Luke The human brain is often described as the most complex object in the known universe – we know so much, and yet so little, about the way it works. It’s no wonder then that the study of brain today encompasses an enormous range of topics, from abstract understanding of consciousness to microscopic exploration of billions of neurons. […]
Why Iran’s dependence on China puts it at risk By Daniel Markey The depth of ties between China and Iran was revealed dramatically in late February 2020, when news broke that some of Tehran’s most senior officials had contracted the coronavirus. By early March, one of Iran’s vice presidents, the deputy health minister, and 23 members of parliament were reported ill. A member of the 45-person Expediency […]
What is the place of human beings in the world By Thomas Hofweber Philosophers disagree on what philosophy is supposed to do, but one popular candidate for what is part of the philosophical project is to try to understand the place of human beings in the world. What is our significance in the world as whole? What place do human beings have in the universe and in all of […]
How air pollution may lead to Alzheimer’s disease By Diana Younan Air pollution harms billions of people worldwide. Pollutants are produced from all types of combustion, including motor vehicles, power plants, residential wood burning, and forest fires so they are found everywhere. One of the most dangerous of these, fine particulate matter, is 20 to 30 times smaller than a strand of human hair. Their tiny […]
What good writers do By Martin Cutts In his novel Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez writes: Florentino Ariza moved through every post during thirty years of dedication and tenacity in the face of every trial. He fulfilled all his duties with admirable skill … but he never won the honour he most desired, which was to write one, just […]
Lessons for the coronavirus from the 1899 Honolulu plague By James C. Mohr Public health officials all over the United States—indeed globally—are trying to decide how to deal with the world’s coronavirus pandemic. They know the coronavirus originated in China, and they know they can identify it with certainty. But they do not know what might kill it, and they have no cure for anyone who contracts […]
Learning microbiology through comics What do most people know about microbes? We know that they are tiny creatures that can attack us, causing illness, and kill us. Recent outbreaks such as measles and the Wuhan coronavirus are discussed in the media heavily.
Why we like a good robot story By Kanta Dihal and Stephen Cave We have been telling stories about machines with minds for almost three thousand years. In the Iliad, written around 800 BCE, Homer describes the oldest known AI: “golden handmaidens” created by Hephaestus, the disabled god of metalworking. They “seemed like living maidens” with “intelligence… voice and vigour”, and “bustled about supporting their master.” In the Odyssey, Homer […]
Some of our tools: “awl” By Anatoly Liberman The names of weapons, tools, and all kinds of appurtenances provide a rare insight into the history of civilization. Soldiers and journeymen travel from land to land, and the names of their instruments, whether murderous or peaceful, become so called migratory words (Wanderwörter, as they are called in German: words errant, as it were). I […]
Let people change their minds By Alexandra Plakias Everyone does it. Some people do it several times a day. Others, weekly, monthly, or even just a few times in their lives. We would be suspicious, and rightly so, of someone who claimed never to have done it. Some have even become famous for doing it. Making a public show of it can make […]
Scientific facts are not 100% certain. So what? By Bradley E. Alger Science affects everyone. Generally, people want to trust what scientists tell them and they support science. Nevertheless, groups, such as climate-change deniers, tobacco industry employees, and others, find fertile ground for their obfuscatory messages in the public’s lack of understanding of science. While the entrenched economic, political, or social interests that feed the various controversies […]
Four women’s quest to end global poverty By Eveline Herfkens and Constantine Michalopoulos Gender matters for policymaking: there is no better evidence than the experience of four women who, twenty years ago, became ministers in charge of international development in their governments and collaborated to develop new approaches to end global poverty. Eveline Herfkens from the Netherlands, Hilde F. Johnson from Norway, Clare Short from the United Kingdom, […]
Nine books that make you think about a woman’s role in society [reading list] By Social Sciences Department at Oxford University Press Every year in March we celebrate Women’s History Month, a perfect time to be inspired by the triumphs of real-life heroes. Let us not forget the path it took to get this far and the tribulations that these women endured. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which granted […]
Transnational labour regulation and international trade: towards a complementary approach By Maayan Menashe In today’s globalised economy, the free movement of goods, services and capital impels countries to compete for trade and foreign investment by lowering their labour standards. International trade is therefore widely perceived as instigating regulatory competition between countries, or a ‘race to the bottom’. The challenge that international trade poses for countries’ labour standards has been a central concern of the International Labour Organization (ILO) since its establishment.
100 years of the Nineteenth Amendment and women’s political action By Holly J. McCammon and Lee Ann Banaszak On 28 August 2020 we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the day the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution was ratified. Although the Amendment did not enfranchise all women –African American, Native American, and Latina women would wait decades before they could vote on equal terms– the event is an important milestone in women’s political […]
How fake things can still help us learn By Erich Hatala Matthes We often appreciate things that have a certain weathered look about them. From clothes to home furnishings, people find aesthetic value in the distressed, the tarnished, the antique. Yet underlying this interest in the appealing look of age is an expectation that vintage things be of their vintage. Knockoffs, fakes, and otherwise inauthentic things are quick to undermine […]
Why law librarians are so important in a data-driven world By Femi Cadmus For well over a century, law librarians have been a force in leading research initiatives, preservation, and access to legal information in academia, private firms, and government. While these traditional skills emerged in a predominantly print era, there has been a perceptible expansion and recent acceleration of technological expertise. The profession has progressively become infused […]
Bring—brought—brought By Anatoly Liberman Soon after the previous gleanings (February 26, 2020) were posted, a correspondent asked me to clarify the situation with the “prefix” br- in breath and bring (see the post on breath for January 22, 2020). I mentioned this mysterious prefix in connection with Henry Cecil Wyld, who accepted its existence in bring but doubted its validity in breath. From a historical point of view, we have two different components, even if both go back to Indo-European bhre-. James A. H. Murray thought that br- in breath is a remnant of the root meaning “burn,” as in breed ~ brood, while br- in bring traces allegedly to the zero grade of the verb bear (zero grade is a term of ablaut; in this case, no vowel stands between b and r in br-; hence, “zero”); so Wyld, though, as we will see, the idea was not his. By contrast, in the full grade, as in bear, from Old Engl.
How women can support each other to strive for gender equality By Lennie Goodings Hovering over almost all women who stand up and insist on being heard is a putdown only used in for the female of the species; a word that is particular to the attempt to belittle and silence women. That word is “shrill.” It was used more liberally by detractors in the early days of feminism, […]
The physics of swarm behaviour By Helmut Satz The locusts have no king, and yet they all go forth in ranks, noted King Solomon some three thousand years ago. That a multitude of simple creatures could display coherent collective behavior without any leader caused his surprise and amazement, and it has continued to do so for much of our thinking over the following […]
Grammar in Wonderland By Edwin L. Battistella Lewis Carroll was a mathematically-inclined poet who published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1865 and Through the Looking-Glass in 1872 as well a number of poems and math and logic texts. Last summer I saw an outdoor production of Alice in Wonderland and it reminded me of all the linguistics in the two books. Carroll touches on questions of […]
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The remarkable life of philosopher Frank Ramsey By Cheryl Misak Frank Ramsey, the great Cambridge philosopher, economist, and mathematician, was a superstar in all three disciplines, despite dying at the age of 26 in 1930. One way to glimpse the sheer genius of this extraordinary young man is by looking at some of the things that bear his name. My favourite was coined by Donald […]
The scientists who transformed modern medicine By John Meurig Thomas ?Structural biology, a seemingly arcane topic, is currently at the heart of biomedical research. It holds the key to the creation of healthier, cleaner and safer lives, since it guides researchers in understanding both the causes of diseases and the creation of medicines required to conquer them. Structural biology describes the molecules of life. It […]
Etymology gleanings for January and February 2020 By Anatoly Liberman Anatoly Liberman addresses three comments left on recent posts, as well as recent letters sent to him.
The architectural tragedy of the 2019 Notre-Dame fire By Kevin D. Murphy Sometimes it takes a catastrophic loss for us to realize how important historic architecture and cityscapes are to our lives. For instance, repairs are still ongoing following a 2011 5.8 magnitude earthquake that caused more than $30 million dollars’ worth of damage to the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. And on 15 April 2019 a […]
How youth could save the Earth By Amandine Orsini Major global environmental problems threaten us. Recent scientific reports show that we are falling short on tackling climate change or stopping biodiversity loss, meaning that the Earth’s climate is under threat and natural species are undergoing a mass extinction wave. While these global environmental issues persist and become more urgent, policymakers have trouble elaborating and […]
Seven psychology books that explore why we are who we are [reading list] By Sarah Butcher Social Psychology looks at the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations. It asks how others’ actions and behaviors shape our actions and behaviors, how our identities are shaped by the beliefs and assumptions of our communities. Fundamentally it looks for scientific answers to the most philosophical questions of self. These seven books […]
How Roman skeptics shaped debates about God By John A. Jillions More than a third of all millennials now consider themselves atheist, agnostic or “religiously unaffiliated.” But this doesn’t mean that they have all given up on spiritual life. Some 28% of the unaffiliated attend religious services at least once or twice a month or a few times a year (and 4% go weekly). 20% of them […]
How sabre-toothed cats got their bites By Mauricio Anton Big cats are the most specialized killers of large prey among carnivorans. Dogs, bears, or hyenas have teeth fit to deal with non-meat food items like bone, invertebrates or plants. Not the cats: In the course of evolution they lost almost all teeth not essential for killing prey or cutting meat. But in the distant […]
How academics can leave the university but stay in academia By Daniel Ginsberg When “quit lit,” the trend of disillusioned PhDs writing personal essays about their decision to leave academia, hit its peak around 2013, I was just finishing my own PhD coursework. It seemed that every day, as I revised my dissertation proposal and worked on recruiting potential field sites, there was another column about the scarcity of tenure-track […]
Muddy waters By Anatoly Liberman When a word is isolated, etymologists are in trouble. A typical example is Engl. hunt, discussed last week (the post for February 12, 2020). But often, the cognates are so numerous that researchers are lost, embarrassed by the riches they face. This is what happens when we begin to investigate the origin of the English word mud.
Nine books to read for Black History Month [reading list] By Tyler Simnick The month of February has been officially designated Black History Month since 1976 in order to, in President Gerald Ford’s words, “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” In keeping with this tradition, we have gathered the below titles, which all engage in […]
Five philosophers on the joys of walking By Emily Thomas René Descartes argued that each of us is, fundamentally, a thinking thing. Thought is our defining activity, setting us aside from animals, trees, rocks. I suspect this has helped market philosophy as the life of the mind, conjuring up philosophers lost in reverie, snuggled in armchairs. But human beings do not, in fact, live purely […]
How dating apps reflect our changing times By Jeanette Purvis As we look forward to explore what’s next in love and sex, it makes sense to examine to the heart. That which lovers have once worn on their sleeve is now being navigated in the palm of our hands. With mobile devices and apps letting us literally explore desires with our fingertips, as social scientists […]
An etymologist is not a lonely hunter By Anatoly Liberman The posts for the previous two weeks were devoted to all kinds of bloodsuckers. Now the time has come to say something about hunters and hunting. The origin of the verbs meaning “hunt” can give us a deeper insight into the history of civilization, because hunting is one of the most ancient occupations in the world: beasts of prey hunt for food, and humans have always hunted animals not only for food but also for fur and skins.
How to teach history better By Trevor Getz These days, we often hear of a crisis in the discipline of history. It’s not a crisis of research. To be sure, there are debates and disputes over new methodologies, theoretical frames, the price and speed of publication, and even the relative value of publishing in public, digital, and traditional media. There is also the […]
How to diversify the classics. For real. By Philip Nel As (I hope) Barnes and Noble and Penguin Random House have just learned, appropriating the concept of diverse books for an opportunistic rebranding insults the idea they claim to honor. If you were off-line last week, here’s a brief recap. The bookseller and publisher announced (and then abandoned) plans to publish “Diverse Editions” – not books by writers of […]
Why the Great Recession made inequality worse By Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely Many compare the Great Recession to the Great Depression for its severity and scale. Yet, a decade later, it is clear that their consequences on the distribution of economic resources in the United States cannot be more different. The decades following the Great Depression substantially reduced the wealth of the rich and improved the economic […]
How to use maps to solve complex problems By Arnaud Chevallier Imagine that you’ve just been appointed the head of operations for a five-star hotel in Manhattan. Your boss calls you in her office on your first day and says: “Our biggest problem is how slow elevators are. Everyone complains about it, and we can’t have that. Speed them up.” How would you do it? Most […]
The problem with overqualified research By David H. Foster Not all research findings turn out to be true. Of those that are tested, some will need to be amplified, others refined or circumscribed, and some even rejected. Practicing researchers learn quickly to qualify their claims, taking into account the possibility of improved measurements, more stringent analyses, new interpretations, and, in the extreme, experimental or […]
Four reasons why the Indo-Pacific matters in 2020 By Kai He and Li Mingjiang If there is one place in the world that we need to keep our eyes on for a better understanding of the dynamics of international affairs in 2020, it is the Indo-Pacific region. Here are four reasons why. The Indo-Pacific is hard to define Politically, the Indo-Pacific is still a contested construct in the making. […]
How old music conservatories turned orphans into composers By Robert O. Gjerdingen If you approached bystanders on a street corner in sixteenth-century Naples and asked them “What do conservatories conserve?” the likely answers would not have been “performing arts” or “rare plants.” No, you would have been told confidently that conservatories conserved orphans and foundlings. These church-sponsored orphanages practiced a kind of alchemy—they took in defenseless little […]
Celebrating Black History Month with America’s top musicians [playlist] By Julia Baker Black History Month is cause for celebration and remembrance of black excellence throughout American history. This February, we’re celebrating with a playlist highlighting some of the most remarkable musicians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Beginning with ragtime pioneer, Scott Joplin, this playlist navigates through the many different musical movements created and perfected by black artists. Ragtime gave […]
Etymological insecticide By Anatoly Liberman This story continues the attempts of the previous week to catch a flea. Anyone who will take the trouble to look at the etymology of the names of the flea, louse, bedbug, and their blood-sucking allies in a dozen languages will discover that almost nothing is known for certain about it. . This fact either means that we are dealing with very old words whose beginnings can no longer be discovered or that the names have been subject to taboo (consequently, the initial form is beyond recognition), or, quite likely, both factors were in play.
The language gap in North African schools By Lotfi Sayahi When children start school in an industrialized country, their native language is for the most part the one used by the teachers. Conversely, in many developing countries, the former colonial languages have been proclaimed languages of instruction within the classroom at the expense of native indigenous languages. A third scenario is something in-between: The language […]
Using math to understand inequity By Cailin O'Connor What can math tell us about unfairness? Bias, discrimination, and inequity are phenomena that are deeply complex, context sensitive, personal, and intersectional. The mathematical modeling of social scenarios, on the other hand, is a practice that necessitates simplification. Using models to understand what happens in our social realm means representing the complex with something much […]
Six books to read to understand business innovation [reading list] By Bhawana Soni According to McKinsey & Company, 84% of executives agree on the importance of innovation in growth and strategy in their organizations but only 6% know the exact problem and how to improve in innovation. As the world is moving faster and getting more complex, it is important to find ways to constantly innovate for organizations and […]
Usage issues—How are you doing? By Edwin L. Battistella When people talk about grammar problems, they often mean usage issues—departures from the traditional conventions for edited English and the most formal types of speaking. To a linguist, grammar refers to the way that language is used—by speakers of all types—and the way that it works—how it is acquired, how it changes, and so on.
Henry David Thoreau and the nature of civil disobedience – Philosopher of the Month By OUP Philosophy Team Henry David Thoreau was an American philosopher, environmentalist, poet, and essayist. He is best known for Walden, an account of a simpler life lived in natural surroundings, first published in 1854, and his 1849 essay Civil Disobedience which presents a rebuttal of unjust government influence over the individual. An avid, and widely-read, student of philosophy from the classical to the contemporary, Thoreau pursued philosophy as a way of life and not solely a lens for thought and discourse.
January 2020 (23))
How the UK is facilitating war crimes in Yemen By Anna Stavrianakis More than 100,000 people have died in the war in Yemen since March 2015, including over 12,000 civilians killed in direct attacks. All parties to the war have committed violations of international law, but the Saudi-led coalition—armed and supported militarily and diplomatically by the United States and the United Kingdom primarily—is responsible for the highest number […]
How far can a flea jump? By Anatoly Liberman Stinging and gnawing insects are not only a nuisance in everyday life; they also harass etymologists. Those curious about such things may look at my post on bug for June 3, 2015. After hovering in the higher spheres of being (eat, drink, breathe: those were the subjects of my most recent posts), I propose to return to earth and deal with low, less dignified subjects.
Making Shakespeare a classic By Daniel Blank Despite his foundational status in today’s academy, William Shakespeare was not particularly welcome in the early modern English universities. In the 1570s and 1580s, just as the commercial playhouses were gaining steam in London, the authorities of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities enacted statutes banning “common stage players” from performing within university precincts. Chancellors lacked the […]
Taking a knee: sports and activism [podcast] By Robert Turner In the fall of 2016, the San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick created a firestorm when he took a knee during the national anthem. He was protesting police brutality perpetuated against African-American men, and the reaction to his simple act of dissent was immense.
“Breath” and “breathe” By Anatoly Liberman I decided to make good on my promise to complete a series devoted to a few words referring to the most basic functions of our organism. The previous posts dealt with eat, drink, and throat. Now, as promised, a story of breath is coming up. The basic word here is the noun breath; it already existed in Old English and had long æ. The verb breathe is a later derivative of the same root; it also had a long vowel.
Does Consciousness Have a Function? By Ryota Kanai Perhaps, the most fascinating question about consciousness is the Hard Problem. It’s the problem of explaining why and how subjective experiences arise from complex electrochemical interactions happening in the brain. It is Hard because the working of the brain should be fully described in term of physical interactions, leaving no room for subjective experiences to fit within our current views of the physical world.
How China spurs global dissent By Robert R. Bianchi China’s rulers launched the New Silk Road venture—a trillion-dollar development campaign that is often compared to the Marshall Plan—to promote connectivity across what they believed to be poorly integrated regions of Eurasia and Africa. Much to their surprise, however, they discovered that many of these societies were already wired to the hilt—not by the infrastructure […]
W. T. Stead: A Newspaper Prophet for a Secular Age? By Stewart J. Brown W. T. Stead (1849-1912) journalist, social reformer, women’s rights advocate, peace campaigner, and spiritualist–was one of the best-known public figures in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. He pioneered in Britain what was called the New Journalism, or journalism with a mission; he is well known for his investigative journalism and political activism.
Why doctors are like pilots By Abraham Fuks A recent analysis of the Boeing 737 Max disasters concludes that while technical malfunctions contributed to the crashes, “an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty.” Journalist William Langewiesche uses the term “airmanship” to encompass an array of skills and experience necessary to the safe and effective guidance of an airplane. “It includes a visceral sense of navigation, an operational understanding of weather and weather information, the ability to form mental maps of traffic flows, fluency in the nuance of radio communications and, especially, a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia and wings. Airplanes are living things.”
Innovative dynamism allows all to flourish By Arthur Diamond The poor who lack jobs often suffer from substance abuse, violence, and unstable families. As the suffering persists for many of these outsiders to our system, scholars and politicians on both the left and right ask how to reform or overturn our current economic system so that all can flourish. The Great Fact of economic […]
How well do you know Anne Brontë? [quiz] By Eleanor Chilvers Anne Brontë was born on 17 January 1820 and best known for her novels, Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. In honour of the bicentenary of Anne Brontë’s birth, we have created a quiz to help you determine how well you know the youngest member of the Brontë literary family. Quiz image: Anne Brontë. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Feature […]
Agency in Gerwig’s Little Women – but for whom? By Anne K. Phillips Summing up nineteenth-century American literature as Moby Dick and Little Women, Greta Gerwig, writer-director of the newest film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, argues that the latter is “one of our great works of American literature, but because it’s a women’s novel, it’s treated like an asterisk.” Little Women came into being because others had recognized gendered divisions in […]
Seven ideas for a new choral year By Ashley Danyew The New Year has arrived and with it comes that familiar feeling of a fresh start. Everything is bright and full of possibility. If you’re the planning type, you probably have a typed list of shiny goals and resolutions already hung in a prominent place to remind you of your intentions for this year. Even […]
Before you eat, drink, or breathe: “throat” By Anatoly Liberman At the end of 2019, I wrote about the origin of the verbs eat and drink. The idea was to discuss a few other “basic” verbs, that is, the verbs referring to the most important functions of our organism. My next candidate is breathe, but, before I proceed to discuss its complicated history, it may be useful to look at the derivation of the names of the organs that allow us to inhale the air and get the food through.
How to write about science or technology clearly By Oscar Linares, Gertrude Daly, and David Daly Today, English is the international language of science and technology. People around the world read and write science or technical articles in English. A clear writing style helps to make your work easier to read, both for the colleague down the hall, and the one on the other side of the world. One key to […]
The problem of consciousness By Peter Carruthers Many people find consciousness deeply puzzling. It is often described as one of the few remaining problems for science to address that is genuinely deep—perhaps even unsolvable. Indeed, consciousness is thought to present a challenge to the prevailing scientific image of the universe as physical through-and-through. In part this puzzlement arises because people are (at […]
Hilary Putnam on mind and meanings – Philosopher of the Month (January 2020) By OUP Philosophy Team Hilary Putnam was an American philosopher who was trained originally in the tradition of logical positivism. He was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the twentieth century and had an impact on philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology and metaphysics.
Women on the front lines: Military service, combat and gender By Ayelet Harel-Shalev and Shir Daphna-Tekoah The 1990s saw women beginning to fill a wider range of roles in the military, with many countries relaxing their bans on women serving in combat roles. As a result, women are able to fly combat aircraft, serve in artillery units, staff missile emplacements, serve as combat medics, and fill various other roles that involve potential combat exposure. Additionally, many more women are assigned to combat-support roles located on the front line. Yet most research on women involved in military life still concerns itself with the wives of enlisted men, women in civilian posts within the military, women that were sexually assaulted in the military, or women in non-combat-related military service. It is thus patently obvious that women combatants and veterans who fulfill assignments in conflict zones deserve closer attention.
Etymology gleanings for December 2019 By Anatoly Liberman Once again, my thanks are to everybody who read this blog in 2019 and commented on its fifty two posts. However, I still have to wave a friendly goodbye to the ghost of the year gone by and do some gleaning on the frozen field of December.
A Job I Never Expected By Thomas R Cole In her late eighties, my mother begins to lose her grip. Checks bounce. Bills are misplaced and go unpaid. Bottles of Grey Goose vodka appear more frequently in her recycling bin. Afraid for her safety, friends begin putting her in a cab after they finish playing bridge. Soon she is dropped from the group.
Codes and Ciphers By Edwin Battistella My book group recently read a 2017 mystery called The Lost Book of the Grail by Charlie Lovett. In the novel, an English bibliophile and an American digitizer track down a mysterious book thought to lead to the Holy Grail. The chief clue: a secret message hidden in the rare books collection of the fictional Barchester Cathedral Library.
Test how well you know police shows [quiz] By Rebecca Olley Are you currently studying for a legal exam? Do you need a revision break? Are you a fan of policing-based television series and movies? In celebration of National Trivia Day (United States) test your knowledge of police themed television series and films with our trivia quiz. Covering character relationships, places of work, and police rank… […]
Top Eight Developments in International Law 2019 By Merel Alstein For those who support and believe in the power of international law to effect positive change in the world, 2019 was difficult. There were however a number of important bright sparks, in the form of efforts to negotiate treaties on the protection of marine biodiversity, business and human rights, and the elimination of work place […]
December 2019 (20))
How linguistics can help us catch sex offenders By Emily Chiang and Tim Grant Between 2009 and 2011, a now convicted sexual offender in his early twenties was spending much of his time online persuading young girls and boys to produce and share with him sexual images and videos.
How to combat global economic challenges facing the 21st century By Bhawana Soni The world economy has been through a lot of challenges in recent years—from the challenges in healthcare, income inequality, restrictions in trade, and gender inequality and unemployment, to name a few. In this post, we’ve excerpted some thought-provoking chapters from recent titles that address central problems facing the field of economics today, while addressing some possible improvements.
Exploring the seven principles of Kwanzaa: a playlist By Meghann Wilhoite and Tim Allen Beginning the 26th of December, a globe-spanning group of millions of people of African descent will celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival of communitarian values created by scholar Maulana Karenga in 1966. The name of the festival is adapted from a Swahili phrase that refers to “the first fruits,” and is meant to recall ancient African harvest celebrations.
Why the holidays are the loneliest time for seniors By Deborah Carr The winter holidays are a time to celebrate family, friends, and community. But for the millions of older adults worldwide who have no family, few friends nearby, or are lonely and socially isolated, December is far from the most wonderful time of the year. A survey carried out by AARP in 2017 found that 28 percent of […]
How medieval English literature found a European audience By Aisling Byrne At some point in the year 1430, a scribe working in the city of Ceuta on the north African coast put the final touches to a story collection. The collection had travelled a great distance: through two languages and across well over a thousand miles.
Some of our basic verbs: “drink” By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I discussed the origin of the verb eat, which probably has the same root as the ancient Indo-European name of the tooth. Time will tell whether my idea to devote a few posts to such basic verbs will arouse any interest, but I decided to try again. So today the story will be devoted to the verb drink.
AI is dangerous, but not for the reasons you think. By Gary Smith In 1997, Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion. In 2011, Watson defeated Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the world’s best Jeopardy players. In 2016, AlphaGo defeated Ke Jie, the world’s best Go player. In 2017, DeepMind unleashed AlphaZero, which trounced the world-champion computer programs at chess, Go, and shogi. Perhaps computers have moved so far beyond our intelligence that we should rely on them to make our important decisions. Nope.
How pictures can lie By Emanuel Viebahn On 9 August 1997, The Mirror printed an edited photo of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Dodi Fayed on its front page. The edited photo shows Diana and Fayed facing each other and about to kiss, although the unedited photo reveals that at that point Fayed was facing an entirely different direction. Did The Mirror lie to its readers?
Why recognizing the Anthropocene Age doesn’t matter By Carlos Santana You’ve probably heard that we’re living in the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch in which human activity is the dominant geological process. If you’ve been attentive to discussion surrounding the Anthropocene, you probably also know that the Anthropocene Working Group, a panel of scientists tasked to make a recommendation as to whether geologists should formally recognize the Anthropocene, voted just a few months ago to recommend recognizing the new epoch.
Aunt Lydia could be the voice of conservative women By Carol Mason Fans of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 The Handmaid’s Tale proliferated as the novel’s scenarios came to resemble the realities of American women who were subject to more regulation and surveillance. In its 2019 sequel, The Testaments, Atwood gives us a different voice and a different tale, told largely from the perspective of someone who perpetuated the authoritarian regime instead of […]
Why scientists should be atheists By Mano Singham My friend and colleague George asked me, “Do you think a scientist can be an atheist?” I replied, “Not only can a scientist be an atheist, he should be one.” I was teasing because I knew what response George wanted to hear and this was not it. Sure enough, he shook his head. The only logical position that a scientist can take, he said, is to be an agnostic because we can never know the answer to the question of whether God exists or not.
Some of our basic verbs: “eat” By Anatoly Liberman Whoever the Indo-Europeans were and wherever they lived several thousand years ago, by the time they began to write, they had produced a word for “eat” that sounded nearly the same all over the enormous territory they occupied. In Latin, Celtic, Slavic, Baltic, Greek, Sanskrit, and beyond, the verb for devouring food resembles Engl. eat.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2019 is… By Alison Block After a close round of voting, the winner of our Place of the Year 2019 is the atmosphere! While the global conversation around climate change has increased in recent years, 2019 set many records – this past summer tied for the hottest one on record in the northern hemisphere, continuing the trend of extreme weather set […]
Why there is a moral duty to vote By Julia Maskivker In recent years, democracies around the world have witnessed the steady rise of anti-liberal, populist movements. In the face of this trend, some may think it apposite to question the power of elections to protect cherished democratic values. Among some (vocal) political scientists and philosophers today, it is common to hear concern about voter incompetence, which allegedly explains why democracy stands on shaky ground in many places. Do we do well in thinking of voting as a likely threat to fair governance? Julia Maskivker propose a case for thinking of voting as a vehicle for justice, not a paradoxical menace to democracy.
Why we don’t understand what a space race means By Mai’a K. Davis Cross Fifty years after the first moon landing, a quantum leap is underway in space as a domain of human activity. Over 70 countries have space programs and 14 have launch capabilities. These developments have involved intense cooperation across borders, both across public and private sectors.
Etymology gleanings for November 2019 By Anatoly Liberman I agree: no voice should be silenced, but it does not follow that every voice deserves equal respect. I called the previous two posts “Etymology and Delusion” and deliberately did not emphasize such words as madness, lunacy, and derangement, for perfectly normal people can also be deluded. In etymology, the line separating amateurs from professionals is in most cases easy to draw.
How hip hop and diplomacy made an unlikely partnership By Mark Katz Google “hip hop” and “diplomacy” and what images come up? Black men wearing gold chains and baggy clothes, holding microphones. White men in suits shaking hands, flanked by flags. The contrast is stark: informal/formal, loud/quiet, the resistance/the establishment, black/white. These images reflect common perceptions but also misconceptions about diplomacy and hip hop. Both are, in fact, more […]
How to address the enigmas of everyday life By John Kekes Here are some hard questions: Is the value of human life absolute? Should we conform to the prevalent values? The questions are hard because each has reasonable but conflicting answers. When circumstances force us to face them, we are ambivalent. We realize that there are compelling reasons for both of the conflicting answers. This is not an abstract problem, but a predicament we encounter when we have to make difficult decisions whose consequences affect how we live, our relationships, and our attitude to the society in which we live.
Philosopher of the Month – A 2019 Review By OUP Philosophy As 2019 draws to a close, we look back at the philosophers who have featured in our monthly Philosopher of the Month posts and their significant contribution to philosophy and the history of intellectual thought.
How to use the existential “there” By Edwin L. Battistella When I read something, one of the things I notice right away is overuse of non-referential there as a means of sleepwalking from topic to topic. Also known as the existential there, this grammatical form asserts the existence (or non-existence) of something and is often used to introduce new information, to shift the topic of discussion or to call something to mind.
November 2019 (34))
Why young people suffer more from pollution By Pamela Hill Around the world, young adults are voicing concern that the climate is in crisis and are correctly describing this as an intergenerational inequity. The adults who determine the quality of our air are continuing to burn fossil fuels, which release the pollutants that science shows could negatively and dramatically alter planetary conditions as early as […]
Rescuing capitalism from itself By Daniel W. Bromley In mid-August, 2019, 183 leaders of some of America’s largest companies—AT&T, American Airlines, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, Chevron, Caterpillar, Citigroup, and John Deere—issued a “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation” under sponsorship of the Business Roundtable.
Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth The driving force behind making Thanksgiving a national holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, who was born in 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire. After her husband’s death, Hale turned to writing to generate money. Her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England (1827) included an entire chapter devoted to a Thanksgiving dinner. Its publication brought Hale […]
Etymology and delusion, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Last week (November 20, 2019), I discussed one aspect of etymological lunacy. Looking for a (or even the) protolanguage is a sound idea, even though specialists’ efforts in this direction have been both successful and disappointing. The existence of Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Semitic can hardly be doubted; yet many crucial details remain unknown.
The truth about ‘Latinx’ [a revision] By Arturo Hernandez In recent years, the term Latinx has become popular in academic settings in English to designate a group of people without reference to gender, which is designated by -o and -a endings in some Romance languages. While academics and Twitter users have begun to use the term, only 2% of the U.S. population actually identifies with this word. Latinx has become so widely used that Elizabeth Warren has taken to using it on the campaign trail.
Connecting families through open adoption By Abbie E. Goldberg The term “open adoption” is unfamiliar to much of the general public, and yet it describes the reality of adoption today. These are adoptions in which there is some contact or exchange of information between birth families and adoptive families, before or after the adoption. With growing awareness of the benefits of openness for children […]
What is coercive control and why is it so difficult to recognize? By Charlotte Barlow, Sandra Walklate, and Kelly Johnson Engaging in controlling and/or coercive behaviour in intimate or familial relationships became a new criminal offence in England and Wales in December 2015. Coercive Control involves a pattern of abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten the victim. Four years on since the legislation was enacted and with no compulsory national level training or support, what has actually changed?
Eight things you didn’t know about George Eliot By Charis Edworthy Throughout her life, George Eliot was known by many names – from Mary Anne Evans at birth, to Marian Evans Lewes in her middle age, to George Eliot in her fiction – with the latter name prevailing in the years since her death through the continued popularity of her novels. Eliot has long been recognised as one of the greatest Victorian writers, in life and in death, having published seven acclaimed novels and a number of poems, in addition to her work as a translator and a journalist.
George Eliot 200th anniversary timeline By Eleanor Chilvers George Eliot (born Mary Anne Evans) was born 22 November 1819, 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of her birth. Eliot is considered one of the most important and influential writers in the history of English literature and her novels are often praised as being the prototypes for the modern novel, full of rich detail of English country life and complete with characters whose motivations are laid bare by the author’s probing psychological dissections.
What lies behind Asia’s thriving shadow education industry By Sun Sun Lim In another side of the country so glamorously showcased in the hit move Crazy Rich Asians, families in Singapore spent a staggering S$1.4 billion last year on academic enrichment for their school-going children. Behind this eye popping figure lies a thriving shadow education industry that provides a mind-boggling diversity of services, from brain stimulation classes for pre-schoolers to language immersion holiday camps and robotics workshops, not to mention grade-oriented academic tuition.
Etymology and delusion, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman In 1931, Ernest Weekley, the author of a still popular English etymological dictionary and many excellent books on the history of English words, brought out an article titled “Our Early Etymologists.” It appeared in Quarterly Review 257. In our fast-paced, Internet-dominated world, few people are inclined to leaf through old periodicals.
Announcing the shortlist for the Place of the Year 2019 By Alison Block and Ashley Noelle Over the past few weeks, hundreds of you voted on our eight nominees for Place of the Year 2019. While competition was fierce, we have our final four: New Zealand, Greenland, the Palace of Westminster, and the Atmosphere! But which one is most emblematic of 2019? Which location has truly impacted global discourse? Refresh your […]
From Stradivari to Spotify: How new technology has always inspired new music By Peter Townsend Successful composers, authors, and scientists have distinctive writing styles which define all their works. They are rarely in isolation from their contemporaries, so their work is inherently time stamped. Similarities can exist with their students and followers, so they set the pattern of writing over one or two generations.
The truth about ‘Latinx’ By Arturo Hernandez Editor’s Note: An updated version of this article addresses the error where the author incorrectly states that the plural neuter term in Latin is “Latinae.” Please read the updated article here. We regret the error. In recent years, the term Latinx has become popular in academic settings in English to designate a group of people without reference […]
What universities get wrong about free speech By Ulrich Baer When racist firebrands claimed a right to speak at various universities two years ago, free speech absolutists on the left and right rushed to their defense.
To-Day and To-Morrow; the rediscovered series that shows how to imagine the future By Max Saunders Almost a century ago a young geneticist, J. B. S. Haldane, made a series of startling predictions in a little book called Daedalus; or, Science and the Future. Genetic modification. Wind power. The gestation of children in artificial wombs, which he called “ectogenesis.” Haldane’s ingenious book did so well that the publishers, Kegan Paul, based a whole series on the idea.
Thomas Kuhn and the paradigm shift – Philosopher of the Month By OUP Philosophy Thomas S. Kuhn (b. 1922–d. 1996) was an American historian and philosopher of science best-known for his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) which influenced social sciences and theories of knowledge. He is widely considered one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.
“To lie doggo,” an idiom few people seem to know By Anatoly Liberman Last week (November 6, 2019), in passing, I mentioned my idea of the origin of the word dog and did not mean to return to this subject, but John Cowan suggested that I consider an alternative etymology (dog as a color word). I have been aware of it for a long time, but why is my idea worse?
Seven events that shaped country music By Richard Carlin Developed from European and African-American roots, country music has shaped American culture while it has been shaped itself by key events that have transformed it, leading to new musical styles performed by innovative artists. 1. 1927, Bristol, Tennessee: country music’s “Big Bang” In late July of 1927, New York producer Ralph Peer arrived in a […]
How meningitis has (almost) been conquered By Janet R. Gilsdorf Scientific discovery is often a messy affair. It’s sometimes intentional, sometimes accidental, sometimes cluttered with error, and always complicated. The ultimate value of scientific observations may not be recognized for many years until the discovery emerges to shed new insight on old problems and become etched in the scientific canon. Such is the story of the conquest of meningitis, a devastating infection of the brain that is usually fatal if not treated.
Video surveillance footage shows how rare violence really is By Anne Nassauer Watching the news, violence seems on the rise all around us. Most Americans think crime is going up, have a pessimistic outlook of the future, and feel increasingly unsafe. As a result, people accept more and more surveillance to protect themselves from violent and criminal behavior. Surveillance cameras are installed with the assumption that we need to fear […]
Introducing the nominees for Place of the Year 2019 By Alison Block and Ashley Noelle 2019 has been a year of significant events – from political unrest to climate disasters worldwide. Some of the most scrutinized events of the past year are tied inextricably to the places where they occurred – political uprisings driven by the residents of a city with an uneasy history, or multiple deaths caused by the […]
Q&A with author Craig L. Symonds By Craig L. Symonds There are a number of mysteries surrounding the Battle of Midway, and a breadth of new information has recently been uncovered about the four day struggle. We sat down with naval historian Craig L. Symonds, author of The Battle of Midway, newly released in paperback, to answer some questions about the iconic World War II battle.
How firms with employee representation on their boards actually fare By E. Han Kim, Ernst Maug, and Christoph Schneider Board-level employee representation has re-entered the political agenda. Even in countries that have traditionally been skeptical about giving employees more say in corporate decision-making now discuss board-level employee representation. Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May suggested changes in this direction in her country in 2017. More recently, Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the leading presidential […]
Two years into the opioid emergency By Michael Fraser Two years ago the Trump administration declared the opioid crisis in the United States a public health emergency, positioning federal agencies to respond to what has been called the public health crisis of our time. Congress followed, appropriating billions of dollars to federal agencies and state and local governments to support a variety of programs to address opioid addiction treatment and overdose prevention.
What we learned from the financial crisis of 2008 By Allen N. Berger, Philip Molyneux, and John O. S. Wilson It has been over a decade since the global financial crisis of 2007-2008, which threatened to destroy the financial system, and wreaked havoc on the financial well-being of households, firms, and governments.
Monthly gleanings for October 2019 By Anatoly Liberman I received a question about the origin of French adieu and its close analogs in the other Romance languages. This question is easy to answer. The word goes back to the phrase à Dieu “to God,” which is the beginning of the longer locution à Dieu commande, that is, “I commend (you) to God” or, if we remain with French, “je recommande à Dieu.” The European parting formulas are of rather few types.
Heretics to demigods: evangelicals and the American founders By Gillis J. Harp In recent years, many evangelicals have lauded the American Founders. It has become customary for them to heap effusive praise on the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Even those who were openly contemptuous of Christian orthodoxy such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine […]
Eight books to read to understand African economies [reading list] By Bhawana Soni Africa’s GDP growth is projected to accelerate to 4.0 percent in 2019 and 4.1 percent in 2020. The economy continues to improve in future. The study of African economy consists of trade, agriculture, finance and employment.
Why people disagree By Andrea Onofri People disagree. Human beings often express conflicting views about a variety of different issues, from food and music to science and politics. With the development of advanced communication technologies, this fact has become more visible than ever. (Think of Twitter wars.) The extent and depth of our disagreements can lead many to despair of making […]
Our souls make us who we are By Richard Swinburne The vast majority of today’s scientists and philosophers believe that human beings are just physical objects, very complicated machines, the essential part of which is our brain which is sometimes conscious. Richard Swinburne argues that on the contrary each human consists of a body which is a physical object, and a soul which is an immaterial thing, interacting with their body; it is our soul which is conscious and is the essential part of each of us.
Completing your verbs—infinitive and gerunds By Edwin L. Battistella Most of us have been told at some point that a sentence has a subject and predicate and that the predicate consists of a verb and an object—the girl kicked the ball. We may have been introduced to distinctions such as transitive, intransitive, and linking verbs (like carry, snore, and become, respectively). But there is much more to the intricacies of what must follow a verb.
The Kingmaker is a movie about Imelda Marcos that snubs earlier documentary By Celine Parreñas Shimizu My thrill in seeing Ramona Diaz’s film Imelda (2004), streaming for free online this month, was dampened by the hype surrounding a new film about the former first lady of the Philippines. I was puzzled to read about The Kingmaker (2019) by Lauren Greenfield, touted for its “unprecedented access” (Showtime) by a filmmaker “perfect” for the subject (Variety). Frankly […]
Polychromy in Greek and Roman sculpture [video] By Stephen Mann Coined by archaeologist and architectural theorist Antoine-Chrysostome Quatremère de Quincy, the term “polychromy” has been in use since the early 19th century to denote the presence of any element of colour in Greek and Roman sculpture.
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Seven things you didn’t know could kill you By Molly Dixon Medicine has advanced so much over the years, it’s hard to believe that some diseases still exist or don’t have a cure. Commonly known conditions such as cancer, stroke, and heart disease are scary enough, but there are plenty of other conditions that are potentially deadlier.
An etymological aid to hearing By Anatoly Liberman As promised, I am continuing the series on senses. There have already been posts on feel and taste. To show how hard it may be to discover the origin of some of our most basic words, I have chosen the verb hear. Germanic is here uniform: all the languages of this group have predictable reflexes (continuations) of the ancient form hauzjan.
How Brexit may have changed Parliament forever By Anne Dennett During 2019, the Brexit process has radically changed the dynamics between the prime minister and the House of Commons. Normally the United Kingdom’s government, led by the prime minister and her Cabinet, provides leadership, and drives and implements policy while Parliament exercises control over the government by scrutinising its actions and holding it to account.
How to communicate with animals By Tory Higgins More than ever, humans need to find new ways to connect to other animals. In the United States alone, over 150 million people have a pet. There are over 10,000 zoos worldwide, with each of the larger zoos having several thousand animals. These and millions of other animals rely on humans for their survival. It […]
Brexit: when psychology and politics clash By Bruce Hood With the recent publication of the UK Government’s Yellowhammer document outlining the financial disaster forecasted for Brexit, it would seem reasonable for people who voted to leave the European Union to change their opinions. Psychological research, however, suggests that once people commit to a decision, albeit a bad one, they are reluctant to change their minds. Why do […]
How birth shapes human existence By Alison Stone Many classic existentialists—Camus, Beauvoir, Heidegger—thought that we should confront our mortality, and that human existence is fundamentally shaped by the fact that we will die. But human beings do not only die; we are also born. Once we acknowledge that birth as well as death shapes human existence, existentialism starts to look different. The outlines of a ‘natal existentialism’ appear.
Our five senses: taste By Anatoly Liberman Having discussed the origin of the verbs smell (“The sense and essence of smell”) and feel (“Fingers feel, or feel free”), I thought that it might be worthwhile to touch on the etymology of see, hear, and taste. Touch, ultimately of onomatopoeic origin, has been mentioned, though briefly, in one of the earlier posts. I’ll begin the projected series with taste.
A full century later, the 1919 World Series remains the most historic of all By Charles Fountain What makes a World Series historic? It’s a given that fans of any particular team are going to remember the ones where their team triumphs. In San Francisco, the early 2010s will always be the time of the Giants and Madison Bumgarner. The mid-1970s are never going to be long ago in Cincinnati, where the […]
How alternative employment contracts affect low wage workers By Nikhil Datta, Giulia Giupponi, and Stephen Machin Contemporary labour markets are characterised by more atypical or alternative work arrangements. Some of these – like independent contractors – have emerged in the context of self-employment, while others – like zero hours contracts and temporary work – are evolutions of traditional employment contracts.
How Asia got richer By Deepak Nayyar Two centuries ago, in 1820, Asia accounted for two-thirds of world population and more than one-half of world income. The subsequent decline of Asia was due largely to its integration with the world economy shaped by colonialism and driven by imperialism. By 1962, its share in world income had plummeted to 15%. Even in 1970, […]
What does ‘Honest to God’ tell us about Britain’s “secular revolution”? By Sam Brewitt-Taylor On 17 March 1963, John Robinson, the Anglican bishop of Woolwich, wrote an article for the Observer entitled “Our Image of God Must Go.” He was writing to advertise his new book, Honest to God, which made a deeply controversial argument: that modern Christians would eventually find it necessary to reject classical theism. God Himself, Robinson argued, was causing […]
Brexit’s challenge to maritime security By Timothy Edmunds and Barry J. Ryan The politics of Britain’s security after Brexit are contentious and fast moving. But most discussion has focused on the security of land. The security of the sea has received less attention.
The Holocaust and the illusions of hindsight By Mark Roseman Historians’ 20-20 hindsight makes them in a way blind, trapped on the far side of history’s moving wall from the actors they wish to study. Nowhere is this truer than when writing the history of periods of great uncertainty and struggle. The only chance of understanding those caught up in the maelstrom of such moments, is to plunge, as far as that is possible, into the uncertain waters of their present.
Phyllis Tate – A Family Portrait By Colin and Celia Frank Colin and Celia Frank, the children of 20th-century composer Phyllis Tate, reflect on her life and works. Phyllis Tate, or Phyl as she was known to her friends, worked in what was then very much a man’s world, epitomized by a photo of members of the Composers’ Guild in which she is the only woman. […]
How rivers can help in climate change resilience By Ellen Wohl Resilience is a much-desired characteristic. The dictionary defines resilience of materials as the ability of a substance to spring back into shape – elasticity. Resilience is increasingly applied to individuals and institutions, as in the other dictionary definition: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties – toughness.
Fingers feel, or feel free! By Anatoly Liberman Now that I have said everything I know about the etymology of the word finger (see the posts on feeling fingers), and those who agree and disagree with me have also made their opinion public, one more topic has to be discussed, namely, the origin of the verb feel.
How to speak rugby By Simon Horobin For the uninitiated, the commentary on a rugby game – foot-up, hand-off, head-up, put-in, knock-on – can make it sound more like a dance routine than the bruising sport it really is. If you don’t know your forwards from your backs, or have no idea why a player might opt to go blind, this guide is for you.
Fake news gone viral: How misunderstanding scientific uncertainty leads to epidemics By Kevin McCain Recently, I went to a top oral surgeon at a university hospital to have a fairly routine procedure. While I was being prepped for surgery the attending nurse took me through the usual battery of questions.
How James Glaisher discovered the jet stream By Tim Woollings James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell are best known for a dramatic balloon ascent in 1862, in which they launched from Wolverhampton and reached heights above the top of Everest within an hour. The aeronauts went on to perform many highly successful ascents, recording invaluable data of the upper atmosphere. On one trip in 1864, Glaisher noted a characteristic warm, south-westerly wind blowing above the country. His thoughts proved to be well over a hundred years ahead of their time.
The connection between online hate speech and real-world hate crime By Matthew Williams National governments now recognize online hate speech as a pernicious social problem. In the wake of political votes and terror attacks, hate incidents online and offline are known to peak in tandem. This article examines whether an association exists between both forms of hate, independent of ‘trigger’ events.
Telling it like it is: opening up about my vulnerability By May-May Meijer It was quite a shock for me when the independent psychiatrist asked me during my forced stay in the mental hospital what I thought of my diagnosis “schizophrenia”. It was the first time I heard my diagnosis. For the rest of our conversation the diagnosis “schizophrenia” echoed in my head. I associated “schizophrenia” with: being […]
Mary Astell on female education and the sorrow of marriage (philosopher of the month) By OUP Philosophy Mary Astell is widely considered one of the first and foremost English feminists. Her pioneering writings address female education and autonomy in the early modern period and had a profound influence on later generation of feminists. Astell was born into a middle class family in 1666. Her father was Newcastle coal merchant who died when […]
Monthly gleanings for September 2019 By Anatoly Liberman Some more finger work: in the posts for September 25 and October 2, 2019, the etymology of the word finger was discussed. Some comments on the first one require further notice. Final -r. I deliberately stayed away from the origin of -r in fingr-, though I did mention the problem.
The journalist who created Jack the Ripper By Andrea Nini Many of us know the name Jack the Ripper. Perhaps we associate it with a dark shadow wearing a top hat and holding a knife in the middle of a foggy street in Victorian London. But not many of us know that this image is very far away from any reliable fact that has reached us about the 1888 tragic events that took place in Whitechapel.
Natural disasters make people more religious By Jeanet Sinding Bentzen Philosophers once predicted that religion would die out as societies modernize. This has not happened. Today, more than four out of every five people on Earth believe in God. Religion seems to be serving a purpose that modernization does not replace. New research finds that people become more religious when hit by natural disasters. They are more likely […]
The moral mathematics of letting people die By Theron Pummer Imagine that, while walking along a pier, you see two strangers drowning in the sea. Lo and behold, you can easily save them both by throwing them the two life preservers located immediately in front of you. Since you can’t swim and no one else is around, there is no other way these folks will […]
Reading, writing and readability—appreciating Rudolph Flesch By Edwin L. Battistella This October marks the thirty-third anniversary of the passing of Rudolph Flesch, the patron saint of brevity.
Nine articles on problems in access to mental health services [reading list] By Abigail Luke Mental Illness Awareness Week occurs every year in the first full week of October. This year, we’re focusing on the breaking down the barriers that prevent individuals with mental health issues from receiving adequate treatment.
The underrated value of stargazing By Chris Lintott When did you last look up at the night sky? Before the advent of streetlights, paying attention to the heavens above us would have been an everyday part of existence, as commonplace as noticing the weather. Now, as many of us hurry from brightly lit office buildings to the cosy lights of home, few remember […]
What American literature can teach us about human rights By Brian Goodman The arrival of a new child destroys a household’s ordinary sense of time. At least, it did for us. When our first son was born last fall, two leading scholars had just published books that each, in their own way, describe how contemporary US fiction has been shaped by the dramatic rise of human rights in global politics since the 1970s.
Feeling fingers, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Finger seems to be a transparent word, but this transparency is an illusion, for what is fing- (assuming that we understand what -er is)? Our story began last week (see the post for September 25, 2019), and I attempted to show that one of the two best-known etymologies of finger, namely, from the numeral five, is “less than fully convincing” (a common academic euphemism for “nearly unacceptable”).
The important role of animals in refugee lives By Benjamin Thomas White Refugees are people who have been forcibly displaced across a border. What do animals have to do with them? A lot.
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Banking regulation after Brexit By Charles Morris It is a truism that Brexit will have a significant impact on banks and the wider financial services industry. The loss of passports by UK firms has received some attention from the non-specialist media, and is relatively well-understood. However, the loss of passports, significant as it is, is just one of many issues. Others have received no or little coverage outside the industry. In this blog, we will touch upon some of them.
How Congress surrenders its constitutional responsibilities By Sean Theriault and Mickey Edwards If there is a single overriding narrative about the current Congress, the institution America’s founders considered the first and most important branch of government, it is that partisan warfare has rendered it almost impossible for Republicans and Democrats to agree on anything, and especially on any question of significance.
How to talk to your political opponents By Tory Higgins Imagine that you are having a heated political argument with a member of the “other” party over what the government should or should not do on various issues. You and your debate partner argue about what should be done about immigrants who want to come into the country. You argue about what should be done about the never-ending mass murder of people in schools, places of worship, and entertainment venues by killers using assault weapons. You argue about what should be done to improve employment and to improve the healthcare system.
The trouble with disease awareness campaigns By Rachel Kahn Best In October, pink ribbons promoting breast cancer awareness decorate everything from sneakers to buckets of fried chicken. In addition to breast cancer, October is simultaneously ADHD Awareness Month, AIDS Awareness Month, Down Syndrome Awareness Month, Rett Syndrome Awareness Month, and Selective Mutism Awareness Month. Campaigns to raise awareness about diseases have been a major feature […]
Why supply is the secret to affordable housing By Mario Polèse Housing has become unaffordable for all but the lucky few in many of the world’s great cities. Who can afford to live in New York or Paris? Yet, housing prices can be kept in check. Some cities have succeeded in doing so, as we shall see. The secret is simple: housing supply, which can be […]
Feeling fingers By Anatoly Liberman This will be a story of both protagonists mentioned in the title: the verb feel and the noun finger. However, it may be more profitable to begin with finger. In the year 2000, Ari Hoptman brought out an article on the origin of this word (NOWELE 36, 77-91). Although missed by the later dictionaries, it contains not only an exhaustive survey of everything ever said about the etymology of finger but also a reasonable conjecture, differing from those he had found in his sources, both published and unpublished.
Why love ends By Eva Illouz Western culture has endlessly represented the ways in which love miraculously erupts in people’s lives, the mythical moment in which one knows someone is destined to us; the feverish waiting for a phone call or an email, the thrill that runs our spine at the mere thought of him or her.
Music and spirituality at the end of life By Noah Potvin Music and spirituality are two mediums frequently – almost ubiquitously – partnered in cultures around the world with the intention of enhancing engagement with the divine. Spiritual practices are infused with music to intensify the transpersonal components of worship, meditation, and ritual. Correspondingly, musical encounters are infused with spiritually-based beliefs and practices to provide individuals […]
Why more democracy isn’t better democracy By Robert B. Talisse Democracy is necessary for a free and just society. It is tempting to conclude that democracy is such a crucial social good that there could never be too much of it. It seems that when it comes to democracy, the more the better. Yet it is possible to have too much democracy. This is not […]
The long trauma of revenge porn By Kristen Zaleski In case you haven’t been paying attention, the intersection of sexual violence and technology has become an invisible tidal wave heading for the shores of our smart phones. Revenge porn – academically known as image-based abuse, non-consensual pornography, or the non-consensual sharing of intimate images – is one of a host of cyber-sexual violations clustered […]
Looking back on 10 years of global road safety By Margaret M. Peden According to the World Health Organization there were 1.35 million road traffic deaths globally in 2016 and between 20 and 50 million more people suffered non-fatal injuries and/or disabilities. Most of these collisions occurred in low- and middle-income countries and involved pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists. In addition, road traffic collisions are the leading killer of those between 15 and 29 years of age.
Ten Facts about World Peace By Alex J. Bellamy The United Nations’ International Day of Peace is celebrated on 21 September each year, marking efforts to bring the world closer to a state of harmony and further away from violence. Here are some surprising facts about peace and the quest to achieve it:
Why hurricanes are deadly for older people By Deborah Carr Meteorologists have pinpointed 10 September as the peak of hurricane season. September is the most active month of the year for Atlantic hurricane season, and 2019 is no exception. In early September, Dorian devastated the Bahamas, and wreaked havoc on the southeastern United States. Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico in September 2017, just weeks after Harvey […]
The ‘What If’ moments of modern Britain By Andrew Hindmoor We often talk about there being days that “changed history”; modern British history has had its fair share of them. But what about the days that looked as though they would – but didn’t? Which days once felt like they would change everything but, with the benefit of hindsight, now seem false-starts? Here are three […]
Fears of a Latino invasion: demographic panic then and now By Juliet Hooker How are Donald Trump’s racist tweets about “rat-infested” Baltimore, his tacit endorsement of chants of “send her home” about representative Ilhan Omar at his rallies, and the mass shooting in El Paso, TX, targeting Latinos by a gunman concerned about a Mexican “invasion” of the United States connected?
(Sweet and) sour By Anatoly Liberman Last week (September 11, 2019), I discussed the origin of sweet and promised to tackle its partial opposite. Sour has been attested in nearly all the Old Germanic languages: nearly, because, like sweet, it never turned up in the Gothic gospels.
Cancer patient or cancer survivor? Understanding illness identity. By Melissa Thong and Volker Arndt The good news is that many people now survive their cancer. They are either cured or live with cancer as a chronic illness. However, life after cancer can vary between cancer survivors. Some are almost symptom free and return to a normal life after completion of treatment, while others could experience persistent side effects of cancer and treatment long after treatment has ended.
Slavoj Žižek on what really makes him mad By Slavoj Žižek What really makes me mad when I read critical (and even some favorable) reactions to my work is the recurring characterization of me as a postmodern cultural critic – the one thing I don’t want to be. I consider myself a philosopher dealing with fundamental ontological questions, and, furthermore, a philosopher in the traditional vein […]
Despite Brexit, there is still plenty to learn from government successes By Mallory Compton and Paul 't Hart For those who follow the news, it is all too easy to form the impression that governments are incompetent, slow, inefficient, unresponsive to ordinary citizens’ needs, and prone to overreach and underdeliver. Easy, since Brexit is currently the public’s main measure of the competence of government. And yet across many public policy domains, for most […]
Originality in Arabic music By Sami Abu Shumays How artists express individual style and creativity within the context of a cultural tradition is one of the central questions of Aesthetics. This is applicable to an extraordinary range of artistic practices across different cultures, although its answers and solutions differ widely. Our views on the problem can be easily distorted by the particular solution adopted in Europe and America in the modern period: to abandon traditions as much as possible and strive for total originality.
How the prime minister can suspend Parliament By Kara Dimitruk On 28 August, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson officially notified Parliament and the public of his decision to prorogue (i.e., suspend or end) the session by mid-September. Proroguing is the term for ending a legislative session of parliament. All sessions are technically prorogued and most in recent memory have happened without much ado. What makes […]
John Duns Scotus – The ‘Subtle Doctor’ – Philosopher of the Month By OUP Philosophy Team John Duns Scotus (b. c. 1265/1266–d. 1308) was one of the most significant Christian philosophers and theologians of the medieval period. Scotus made important and influential contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and natural theology. Little was known of his life but he was born in Scotland, became a Franciscan monk, spent his learning and professional life […]
Hispanic American heritage in the arts [slideshow] By Charis Edworthy Hispanic Americans are a core demographic of the United States, making up roughly 18% of the population. This highly diverse group includes recent immigrants and families whose US roots extend back many generations, with some ancestors originating from areas in southern US states that belonged to Mexico prior to the Mexican-American War (1846-48). To celebrate the achievements of […]
Continuing Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon By Kathryn Sutherland Unfinished works tease us. They come with baggage. They cling to their authors whose lives, in turn, weigh heavy upon them. Why were they broken off? How might they be continued?
Sweet (and sour) By Anatoly Liberman The post on the origin of the word smell has been read by more people than any other in recent months. On the wave of this unexpected popularity, I decided to write an essay or two on related themes. If they arouse enough interest, I may continue in the same vein.
Understanding the Multi-functional Nature of the Countryside By Andrew Davis, Katharine Foot, and Will Manley It is tempting to see the countryside through a haze of a pink washed nostalgia as somewhere where life continues with a perceived simplicity in tandem with the seasons and inherited practises. However, just as urban areas change and evolve, so does the countryside. With this, comes a more complex wordscape that combines the traditional language of […]
Seven things you don’t know about Johnny Hodges By Con Chapman Over the course of four decades, Cornelius “Johnny” Hodges became the most famous soloist in the Duke Ellington orchestra, and the highest-paid. His pure tone on the alto saxophone was his calling card, and he used it both on lush, romantic ballads and on bluesier numbers that kept the band grounded in the music of […]
Ten things you need to know to become a police officer By Robert Underwood Applying to become a police officer in the UK is undoubtedly complex and challenging. While there are variations in the minimum qualifications to join, many requirements for applicants are common to all forces. Applicants must be at least 18 years, must have been resident in the UK for more than three years, and must not have a criminal record. The format of Recruitment Assessment Centres and the health and fitness requirements are the same for all forces.
The last shot at American Idioms By Anatoly Liberman The use of metaphors is relatively late in the modern European languages; it is, in principle, a post-Renaissance phenomenon. The same holds for the idioms based on metaphors. No one in the days of Beowulf and perhaps even of Chaucer would have coined the phrase to lose one’s marbles “to become insane,” even if so long ago boys were as intent on collecting marbles as was Tom Sawyer.
The science behind ironic consumption By Caleb Warren When I turned 21, my friends brought me to a dive in East Atlanta called the Gravity Pub. The menu offered burnt tater tots, deep fried chili cheese dogs, and donut sandwiches. Happy hour featured rot-gut whiskey, red-eye gin, and one-dollar cans of Schlitz. We listened to Bon Jovi, Spice Girls, and a medley of yacht rock and boy band blue eyed soul crackling through rusty speakers.
A new twist on rapid evolution in the Anthropocene By Allison Snow Many people view evolution as an extremely slow, long-term process by which organisms gradually adapt and diversify over millennia. But researchers also have found that rapid evolutionary change can occur over mere centuries, or even decades. Such ongoing rapid evolution is the focus of a fast-moving field of empirical work, made easier by new techniques […]
Celebrating banned books week By Edwin L. Battistella Book banning is not a new phenomenon. The Catholic Church’s prohibition on books advocating heliocentrism lasted until 1758. In England, Thomas Bowdler lent his name to the practice of expurgating supposed vulgarity with the 1818 publication of The Family Shakespeare, edited by his sister.
August 2019 (36))
It’s not just young people who are pre-drinking By Jason Ferris Pre-drinking, the act of drinking at home before going out, is an issue of global concern due to its links with greater overall drinking across the night, and increased risk of assaults, injuries, and arrest. Generally people pre-drink due to the high cost of drinks in licensed premises, to socialize with friends, reduce social anxiety before going […]
11 books that deal with contemporary government and comparative political science [Reading List] By Muzaffar Bhatti Our Comparative Politics series deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterized by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. It is a series for not just students and teachers but for researchers of political science too. Books in the series range from coalition governance to […]
Monthly gleanings for August 2019 By Anatoly Liberman As is known, glamour is a spelling variant of glamor even in American English. The question I received was about the connection between glamour and grammar. The word glamour appeared in printed books only in the 18th century. It occurred in Scottish ballads and meant “magic, enchantment.”
The problem with Buddhist law in Sri Lanka By Benjamin Sconthal Several weeks after the Sri Lanka’s Easter tragedy, in which suicide attackers with links to ISIS killed more than 250 people in a series of coordinated bombings, the country’s president announced that he was releasing a Buddhist monk from prison. The monk, Ven. Galagoda Atte Gnanasara, was the country’s most controversial cleric, having risen to prominence […]
Reviewing for scientific journals: A how to By Michael Hochberg Scientific journals are complex ecosystems, bringing together different actors in what is loosely akin to an inquisitorial court of law. The chief editor is the judge. She will decide whether a manuscript goes out for review and makes the final decision should the paper be peer reviewed. Members of the editorial board are like council, […]
Why we need more biographies of suffragists By Susan Ware One of the most striking characteristics of the American women’s suffrage movement is that its history has traditionally been told through the lives of its leading figures. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Anna Howard Shaw, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Alice Paul and the organizations they founded and led dominate the story to […]
How helping disabled people find employment affects the job market By Barbara Petrongolo, Felix Koenig, and John Van Reenen Policy makers have long been concerned with helping people on disability benefits find some employment as this group has grown dramatically in recent decades. In the UK, as in several other countries, there are now many more people on disability benefits than on unemployment benefits.
Beyond open defecation: a free, clean India By Philipe Cullet The Right to Sanitation in India: Critical Perspectives, edited by Philipe Cullet, Sujith Koonan, and Lovleen Bhullar, represents the first effort to conceptually engage with the right to sanitation and its multiple dimensions in India. We sat down with editor Philipe Cullet to analyse the contributions of the law and policy framework to the realisation of the right to sanitation in India, the place the book holds in the socio-political landscape, and its international and comparative relevance.
What professors can do to boost student success By David Kirp Dear Professor, If you are at all like me, you have been living a mostly placid life as a professor. You do your research and sit on committees. Like most of your colleagues, you regard yourself as an above-average teacher, and you get okay student ratings. The only time you are pay attention to policy […]
Five fascinating facts about Leonard Bernstein and Japan By Mari Yoshihara On 25 August 2019, which would have been Leonard Bernstein’s 101st birthday, the busy centenary year filled with performances, exhibitions, publications, and events comes to a close. Much of Bernstein’s status as a world maestro tends to be discussed in terms of his relationship to Israel and Europe, but once we turn our attention eastward […]
Enoch Powell and the rise of neo-liberalism By Paul Corthorn The Conservative politician Enoch Powell is best known for his outspoken opposition to immigration, but he also adopted distinctive positions on a range of other prominent issues in the post-1945 era. Indeed, he was the most prominent early exponent of neo-liberalism, the free-market perspective linking economic and political freedom in British politics. Yet there has […]
Do we unfairly demonise food processing? By Alan Kelly Today, we constantly hear concerns about the dangers of processed food and it is sometimes portrayed as opposite to natural and healthy food. Is this warranted? What does ‘food processing’ even really mean? To a food scientist, food processing is any method used to make food safe to eat, enhance its stability, or change its form.
The sense and essence of smell By Anatoly Liberman This post owes its existence to a letter from our correspondent, who was surprised to discover that dictionaries call the origin of the word smell unknown. Not that two and a half pages later this origin will become “known,” but the darkness around it may become less impenetrable.
How the Ebola crisis affected people’s trust in their governments By Ali Sina-Önder, Markus Ludwig, and Matthias Flückiger Legitimacy and trust fundamentally determine a state’s ability to effectively implement policies. Without legitimacy, governments cannot rely on citizens to voluntarily comply with centrally mandated policies, making their implementation costly and the provision of public goods inefficient. This is particularly true in the case of public health interventions, where adherence to recommendations of governments determines the […]
The first gay president? By Thomas Balcerski The topic of the sexuality of President James Buchanan has become a talking point in the media of late due to the presidential campaign of openly gay candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg of Indiana. In that spirit, we turn to the life of our nation’s only bachelor president and his intimate personal relationship with William Rufus King of Alabama […]
How women are fighting sexist language in Russia By Valerie Sperling Coal miners are predominantly male, and kindergarten teachers predominantly female. Professions are gendered, as any Department of Labor survey, anywhere in the world, illustrates. And until the 1980s, the nouns used in English to describe some occupations were also gendered, such as fireman, or stewardess. Feminists in English-speaking countries fought this largely by neutralizing male […]
The future of humanitarian medicine By Amy Kravitz and Tammam Aloudat Humanitarian medicine aims to provide essential relief to those destabilized by crises. This concept, the humanitarian imperative, expands the principles of humanity to include, as a right, the provision of aid to those suffering the consequences of war, natural disaster, epidemic or endemic diseases, or displacement. Providing assistance to those in crises is a premise as […]
Why American cities remain segregated 50 years after the Fair Housing Act By Henry S. Webber Fifty years after passage of the Fair Housing Act, large urban areas still remain highly segregated by both race and income. A report last year in the Washington Post concluded that that although the United States is on track to be a minority-majority nation by 2044, most of us have neighbors that are the same race as us.
A 13-year-old scholar shares her research experiences By Nora Keegan I noticed that sometimes after using a hand dryer my ears would start ringing. At first I didn’t really pay attention to it, but then I wondered if they were too loud, and that was why my ears were hurting. Also, I noticed that in many cases, when children were in washrooms with hand dryers, […]
Eighty years of The Wizard of Oz By Walter Frisch The summer of 1939 was busy for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, one of Hollywood’s major studios, as it rolled out The Wizard of Oz, a movie musical almost two years in preparation. The budget for production and promotion was almost $3 million, making it MGM’s most expensive effort up to that time. A June radio broadcast introduced the songs and characters to the public.
Flatterers and bletherskites By Anatoly Liberman Almost exactly twelve years ago, on August 2, 2006 (see this post), when the world and this blog were much younger, I mentioned some problems pertaining to the etymology of the verb flatter. Since that time, I have written several posts on kl– and sl-words and discussed sound symbolism more than once. There is little […]
What went wrong with Poland’s democracy By Wojciech Sadurski Poland had been one of the most successful of the European states that embarked upon a democratic transformation after the fall of Communism. After joining the European Union, Poland has been held up as a model of a successful European democracy, with a reasonably consolidated rule-of-law based state and well-protected individual rights. And yet, this […]
History of clashes in and around Jewish synagogues By Michael Flexsenhar One Sabbath day in the late-second century CE, a slave and future pope named Callistus (Calixtus I) entered a synagogue and, hoping to die, picked a fight with the Jews. For the opening salvo, he stood and confessed that he was a Christian. A melee ensued. But the Jews only dragged Callistus before Rome’s city […]
Progressive black radio weighs in on Trump’s base By Micaela di Leonardo “Tom and Sybil, you guys lifted us up mightily for so many years,” said President Barack Obama to the Tom Joyner Morning Show anchors on 2 November, 2016. “I could not be more grateful.” Economic insecurity or racism? Immediately following Donald Trump’s shocking 2016 electoral-college presidential win, commentators rushed to explain the results by focusing on white […]
Robot rats are the future of recycling I just watched WALL-E for the first time in five years or so. It’s the story of a plucky little robot tasked with cleaning up the world by compacting rubbish into blocks and building structures out of the blocks to minimize the amount of land they take up. Of course, he falls in love and saves the […]
Why academics announce plans for research that might never happen By David H. Foster Why do academic writers announce their plans for further work at the end of their papers in peer reviewed journals? It happens in many disciplines, but here’s an example from an engineering article: Additionally, in our future work, we will extend our model to incorporate more realistic physical effects . . . We will expand the detection […]
Racial biases in academic knowledge By Ryuko Kubota The word of racism evokes individual expressions of racial prejudice or one’s superiority over other races. An outrageous yet archetypical example is found in the recent racist tweets made by the President Donald Trump, attacking four congresswomen of color by suggesting that they go back to the countries where they are originally from if they criticize America. […]
Some American phrases By Anatoly Liberman This is a continuation of the subject broached cautiously on July 17, 2019. Since the comments were supportive, I’ll continue in the same vein. Perhaps it should first be mentioned that sometimes the line separating language study from the study of history, customs, and rituals is thin.
Friedrich Schiller on Beauty and Aesthetics – Philosopher of the Month By OUP Philosophy Team German poet and playwright, Friedrich Schiller is considered a profound and influential philosopher. His philosophical-aesthetic writings played an important role in shaping the development of German idealism and Romanticism in one of the most prolific periods of German philosophy and literature. Those writings are primarily concerned with the redemptive value of the arts and beauty […]
How quantitative thinking shaped our worldview By Steven J. Osterlind Over the past couple of months or so, I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with individuals and groups about “us” — who we are and how we came to be ourselves. By “us,” I do not mean self-reflection and the introspection of following self-help conventions; rather, I mean the “us” to be our worldview: our thinking, acting, and doing.
How the Eurovision Song Contest has been depoliticized By Philip V. Bohlman When Duncan Laurence of the Netherlands briefly acknowledged his victory in the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest with the dedication, “this is to music first, always,” he was making a claim that most viewers would have found unobjectionable. Laurence’s hopefulness notwithstanding, the real position of music in the 2019 Eurovision Grand Finale on 18 May 2019 in Tel Aviv was more troubling than secure.
McCarthyism and the legacy of the federal loyalty program [video] By Anne Marie Turner As World War I finally concluded on November 11, 1918, the United States became swept up in a fear-driven, anti-communist movement, following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. From 1919-1920, the United States entrenched itself in the First Red Scare, the American public anxious at the prospect of communism spreading across continents.
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The international reporting you never see By Lindsay Palmer It’s your morning routine. You open your tablet, go to your favorite news app, and skim the headlines over a cup of coffee. Your screen floods with images of election protests in one region of the world, wars in another region, and diplomatic skirmishes in another. If you tap on an image and dive in for more information, you might see the familiar name or face of the foreign correspondent who is standing in the very places you’re reading about.
8 books to help us re-imagine populism and privilege [reading list] By Gabriella Baldassin The 115th American Political Science Association Annual Meeting’s conference theme is “Populism and Privilege”. It will highlight the self-identified populist movements around the globe, whose main unifying trait is their claim to champion the people against entrenched “elites.”
The life and work of Herman Melville By Eleanor Chilvers August 1st marks the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth. We have put together a timeline of Melville’s life to celebrate the event. ?? Feature Image credit: “Arrowhead farmhouse Herman Melville” by United States Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia.
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Monthly gleanings for July 2019 By Anatoly Liberman As always, many thanks to those who left comments and to those who sent me emails and asked questions. Rather long ago, I wrote four posts on the etymology and use of the word brown (see the posts for September 24, October 1, October 15, and October 22, 2014). The origin of the animal name beaver was mentioned in them too. Here I’ll say what I know about the subject.
Why Anna Burns’ Milkman is such a phenomenon By Clare Hutton Few contemporary novels will have had a year like Milkman by Anna Burns. It was published, without a great deal of fanfare or advance publicity, in May 2018. But then it began to attract attention by dint of being longlisted, and then shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Some were surprised when it won. I wasn’t. In the course of a long commute to work, I had listened to the remarkable audiobook of Milkman twice.
Constructing Organizational Life George R. Terry Book Award winners – past and present By OUP Business marketing team We are proud to announce that the winner of this year’s George R. Terry Book Award is Constructing Organizational Life, by Thomas B. Lawrence and Nelson Phillips. The George R. Terry Book Award is awarded to the book that has made the most outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge.
How microwaves changed the course of the Battle of the Atlantic By David Seagal Sir Robert Watson Watt is credited as the inventor of radar. In Britain radar was known as RDF (radio direction finding). The way that radar works is that pulses of microwave radiation of controlled frequency and polarisation are emitted from a transmitter. Some of these microwaves reach an object (an aircraft or submarine for example) directly […]
Why British communities are stronger than ever By Jon Lawrence Although it’s fashionable to bemoan the collapse of traditional communities in Britain and the consequent loss of what social scientists have come to call “social capital”, we should be wary of accepting this bold story at face value.
How Germany’s financial collapse led to Nazism By Tobias Straumann The summer of 1931 saw Germany’s financial collapse, one of the biggest economic catastrophes of modern history. The German crisis contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party. The timeline below shows historic events that led up to Adolf Hitler’s taking control of Germany.
Mangling etymology: an exercise in “words and things” By Anatoly Liberman We read that Helgi, one of the greatest heroes of Old Norse poetry, sneaked, disguised as a bondmaid, into the palace of his father’s murderer and applied himself to a grindstone, but so bright or piercing were his eyes (a telltale sign of noble birth, according to the views of the medieval Scandinavians) that even a man called Blind (!) became suspicious.
How medical marijuana hurts Mexican drug cartels By Evelina Gavrilova, Floris Zoutman, and Takuma Kamada Public support for marijuana legalization has grown substantially. The consumption of recreational marijuana has been legalized in Uruguay, Canada, and several US states. In addition, many European countries, most US states, and Thailand have passed laws that allow the consumption of cannabis for medical reasons. Given the growth in public support, it is important to […]
The surviving letters of Jane Austen By Steven Filippi Famed English novelist Jane Austen had an extensive, intimate correspondence with her older sister Cassandra throughout her life, writing thousands of letters before her untimely death at the age of 41 in July 1817. However, only 161 have survived to this day. Cassandra purged the letters in the 1840s, destroying a majority and censoring those that remained of any salacious gossip in a bid to protect Jane’s reputation.
Summer music camps aren’t just for kids anymore By Amy Nathan Kids aren’t the only ones about to head off to sleep-away summer camps. Scores of adults are packing bags—and musical instruments—to spend a week at summer programs that let them experience “camp food, lumpy beds, and music from 9:00 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.—what could be better? I return to work energized, inspired, and at peace. […]
Boris Artzybasheff, C. S. Lewis, and lost art By Stephanie L. Derrick In September 1947 the paths of two great minds and almost exact contemporaries crossed when Boris Artzybasheff painted a portrait of C. S. Lewis for the cover of Time magazine. Lewis was by then an established name in Britain and a rising star in America, while the distinctive style (if not name) of Russian-born New Yorker Artzybasheff […]
How will wars be fought in the future? By Tracey German Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the rise (and apparent fall) of ISIL in Syria and northern Iraq, and Chinese activity in the South China Sea have prompted renewed debate about the character of war and conflict, and whether it is undergoing a fundamental shift. Such assertions about the apparent transformation of conflict are not new; one […]
From the farm to rocket road: one engineer’s story By Brandon R. Brown Retired engineer Henry Pohl can vividly recall his first encounter with a rocket. During the early 1950s, the Army drafted him and shipped him from Texas to the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. “That dadgum thing looked pretty simple,” he says of the rocket engine. It didn’t look much bigger than the tractor engine back […]
The paradox of alliances– strong economics but fragile politics By John Child, David Faulkner, Stephen Tallman, and Linda Hsieh It’s not just in international relations that identity politics can sabotage opportunities to cooperate for mutual economic benefit. Much the same can happen to cooperation between firms. Organizations form alliances because they make strategic and economic sense. Yet often the potential for collaboration is undermined by the distrust and fears of the partners.
Did Caravaggio paint Judith Beheading Holofernes? By Keith Sciberras A disconcerting exclusion of alternative views and scholarship has marked the very carefully choreographed two-year long build-up toward the most controversial sale of a seicento picture this year—that of the so-called Toulouse Judith Beheading Holofernes, ascribed to Caravaggio.
Idioms: the American heritage By Anatoly Liberman Idioms, especially if we add proverbs and familiar quotations to them, are a shoreless ocean. Especially numerous are so-called gnomic sayings (aphorisms) like make hay while the sun shines, better safe than sorry, and a friend in need is a friend indeed. Their age is usually hard or even impossible to determine. Since most of them reflect people’s universal experience, they may be very old.
A forgotten African satirist: A.B.C. Merriman-Labor By Danell Jones In 1904, twenty-six-year-old A.B.C. Merriman-Labor stamped the red dust of Freetown’s streets from his shoes and headed for London. There he intended to prove his literary skill to the world. The Sierra Leone Weekly News had assured him that his color would no obstacle there, and he could “go anywhere, wherever his merits, either intellectual or social, will take him.”
Twenty years since Eyes Wide Shut By Robert P. Kolker and Nathan Abrams Twenty years after Stanley Kubrick’s death and the release of his last film, Eyes Wide Shut, the film and its director have reached a peak of popularity and public interest. The film met with a decidedly mixed reception on its original release as audiences, led to believe they were about to see an erotic film with […]
Nell Blaine, the artist who wouldn’t allow disability to cramp her style By Cathy Curtis The wonderful and amazing thing about Nell Blaine—whose polio attack came at age 37, during what appeared to be the peak of her career—is that the work she made afterward is far superior to the earlier paintings.
How austerity politics hurts prisoners By Nasrul Ismail The Battle of Dunkirk–the 1940 allied evacuation of 338,226 Belgian, British, and French troops from the beaches of Northern France–has been continually accentuated as a critical moment of the World War II. In “a miracle of deliverance,” as Winston Churchill, the then-prime Minister called it, hundreds of thousands of soldiers came together in a resourceful feeling of togetherness. Today, Dunkirk remains a symbol of determination against adversity.
The evolution of the book to the digital page By Dennis Duncan Ever the early-adopter, I recently bought myself a Kindle. The e-reader is now available in a variety of models pitched at a variety of price points. Mine is called a Paperwhite. The name, like much about the digital reading experience, looks to elide the gap between reading on paper and reading on a plastic screen.
Standing in Galileo’s shadow: Why Thomas Harriot should take his place in the scientific hall of fame By Robyn Arianrhod The enigmatic Elizabethan Thomas Harriot never published his scientific work, so it’s no wonder that few people have heard of him. His manuscripts were lost for centuries, and it’s only in the past few decades that scholars have managed to trawl through the thousands of quill-penned pages he left behind. What they found is astonishing—a glimpse into one of the best scientific minds of his day, at a time when modern science was struggling to emerge from its medieval cocoon.
From rabbits to gonorrhea: “clap” and its kin By Anatoly Liberman Three years ago, I discussed the origin of several kl– formations, all of which were sound-symbolic: kl- appeared to suggest cleaving, cluttering, and the like. In this context, especially revealing is the etymology of cloth. The problem with such consonant groups is that there is rarely anything intrinsically symbolic in them.
What America’s history of mass migration can teach us about attitudes to immigrants By Marco Tabellini International migration is one of the most pervasive social phenomena of our times. According to recent UN estimates, as of 2017, there were almost 260 million migrants around the world.
The worrying future of trade in Africa By Michael Ehis Odijie Africa is on the cusp of creating the African Continental Free Trade Area. This will be the first step on a long journey towards creating a single continental market with a customs union and free movement of people and investment – similar to the European Union.
Why the law protects liars, cheats, and thieves in personal relationships By Jill Elaine Hasday So how does the law respond to duplicity within dating, sex, marriage, and family life? People often assume that intimate deception operates in a completely private realm where courts and legislatures play no role.
The not-so ironic evolution of the term “politically correct” By Edwin L. Battistella Punctuation-wise, most of us fall between these two extremes. We are neither staccato nor breathless. Instead, we use punctuation to establish a comfortable pace for readers by grouping and emphasizing certain chunks of information.
G.E. Moore – his life and work – Philosopher of the Month By OUP Philosophy Team G.E. Moore (1873-1958) was a British philosopher, who alongside Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein at Trinity College Cambridge, was a key protagonist in the formation of the analytic tradition and central figure during the “golden age” of philosophy.
How technology is changing reproduction and the law By Dov Fox Millions of Americans rely on the likes of birth control, IVF, and genetic testing to make plans as intimate and far-reaching as any they ever make. This is no less than the medicine of miracles. It fills empty cradles, frees families from terrible disease, and empowers them to fashion their lives on their own terms.
The gender riots that rocked Cambridge University in the 1920s By Sarah Watling On 20 October 1921, a sombre procession took over King’s Parade, a usually bustling thoroughfare in Cambridge. A hearse made halting progress, bearing the weighty effigy of the Last Male Undergraduate, and accompanied in shuffling steps by ‘Mere Males’: bowed and wretched figures wearing long grey beards. Their sprightlier colleagues made speeches about the risks of female governance at the side of the road, hassled young women on bicycles and eventually raised the cry: “We Don’t Want Women!”
Etymology gleanings for June 2019 By Anatoly Liberman Like every journalist (and a blogger is a journalist of sorts), I have an archive. Sometimes I look through the discarded clippings and handwritten notes and find them too good to throw away. Below, I’ll reproduce a few rescued tidbits.
How feminism becomes a tool of neo-imperialism By Serene J. Khader Serene Khader explores the theory of “missionary feminism,” a set of epistemic values that creates a filter for the Western world to view the situations of “other” non-Western world women, for gain.
Connecting performance art and environmentalism By Jane Chin Davidson For many of us, the reality of global warming and environmental crisis induces an overwhelming sense of hopelessness because there seems to be a lack of real solutions for ecological catastrophes. The looming sense of crisis is the reason why people came out in droves to the Derwent River on an overcast day in June 2014 to participate in Washing the River, artist Yin Xiuzhen’s performance event in Hobart, Tasmania. Audience members took brushes and mops to engage in a ceremonial act, taking part in the symbolic cleansing of a monumental stack of 162 frozen blocks of dark brown ice made from the water of the Derwent River.
It’s not you, it’s me: the problem of incivility By Amy Olberding We regularly decry this or that latest episode of incivility, and can thereby find temporary satisfaction. Maybe we feel heartened to see the uncivil criticized, the critique itself a reassurance that incivilities still meet some resistance. Maybe we find relief in collective condemnation of the uncivil, solidarity in shared disapproval. Or maybe we just experience […]
How new technology can help advocates pursue transitional justice By Daniela Gavshon People today document human rights incidents faster than it can be processed or analysed. Documentation includes both official and unofficial information, ranging from reports and inquiries to news articles, press releases, statements, and transcripts. These can all serve as a record of a human rights violation.
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#MeToo and Mental Health: Gender Parity in the Field of Psychiatry By Gianetta Rands Psychiatry is not the only space in which women are silenced or burdened, but as a discipline it’s one lens through which we can analyse a larger phenomenon. Now more than ever, it’s essential to discuss, in real time, women’s experiences as health professionals and as patients in mental health services.
LGBT Pride month timeline: The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising By Panumas King 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a series of revolts by gay, lesbian, and transgender people against police harassment in Greenwich Village, New York City, in 1969. The riots are considered a pivotal moment in the LGBTQ rights movement.
How drawing pictures can help us understand wine By Kathryn LaTour It’s notably very difficult for most people to talk about wine. Part of this may because wine is a fairly complex product. But the language itself may also be a barrier to understanding.
Mad Pride and the end of mental illness By Mohammed Rashed When we think of mental illness we’re likely to recall experiences, behaviours, and psychological states that are bad for the individual: a person with severe depression loses all interest in life; another with anxiety might not be able to leave the house; auditory hallucinations can be terrifying; paranoia can make social interaction impossible; and delusions take the person away from a shared reality.
Seven! By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Five attitudes of mindfulness for the performing musician By Vanessa Cornett Mindfulness is the mental skill that can help musicians practice the more abstract philosophies of this performance mindset. A trendy synonym for awareness, mindfulness is simply the deliberate and nonjudgmental focus of attention on the thoughts and events of the present moment.
A visual history of slavery through the lens [slideshow] By Matthew Fox-Amato During the 1840s and 1850s, enslavers began commissioning photographic portraits of enslaved people. Most images portrayed well-dressed subjects and drew upon portraiture conventions of the day, as in the photograph of Mammy Kitty, likely enslaved by the Ellis family in Richmond, who placed an arm on a clothed, circular table.
Using technology to help revitalize indigenous languages By Mark Turin and Aidan Pine Our planet is home to over 7,000 human languages currently spoken and signed. Yet this unique linguistic diversity—the defining characteristic of our species—is under extreme stress, as are the communities that speak these increasingly endangered languages. The pressures facing endangered languages are as severe as those recorded by conservation biologists for plants and animals, and in many cases […]
First ladies throughout American history By Betty Boyd Caroli Attention to the spouse of the president of the United States has been a constant throughout American history, but the role of the first lady has changed over time. The first lady has always been an exemplar of idealized femininity and thus connected to expectations of the role women should play in society. While initially […]
What biodiversity loss means for our health By Aaron Bernstein Among the great lies I learned in medical school was that a human being was the product of a sperm and an egg. Yes, these gametes are necessary, but they are hardly sufficient to create and sustain a human life. Each one of us stays alive only with the help of trillions of other organisms – the human microbiome – that live on and in every surface of our body exposed to the outside world.
Numerals, especially the number nine, in folklore and language By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Michel Foucault on the insane, the criminals, and the sexual deviants By Panumas King Michel Foucault (1926-84) was one of the most influential and notable French philosophers and historians of ideas, best known for his theories on discourses and the relation of power and knowledge. His seminal works such as L’histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (1972, trs. as History of Madness, 2006), Surveiller et punir (1975, trs. as Discipline and Punish, 1977), and Histoire […]
Four remarkable LGBTQ activists By Charis Edworthy Around the world, the LGBTQ community faces inequality and discrimination on different levels. Although an increasing number of countries have legalised same-sex marriage in recent years, in countries such as Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, members of the LGBT community are still fighting for their simple right to exist. In the USA, much of LGBTQ activism […]
Why morning people seek more variety By Kelley Gullo, Jonah Berger, Jordan Etkin, and Bryan Bollinger Imagine two consumers, John and Mary. During a typical morning, John sluggishly drags himself out of bed after snoozing the alarm clock several times. He then brushes his teeth, bleary eyed, and slowly makes his way to the kitchen. His wife, Mary, has already poured him a cup of coffee. She’s bright-eyed, dressed, and ready […]
The trouble with how we talk about climate change By Lisa Reyes Mason and Jonathan Rigg It’s a rare day when the news doesn’t cover something related to climate change, whether biodiversity loss, climate refugees, retreating glaciers, or an extreme weather event. Though it’s broadly accepted that climate change is caused by “us,” at some level, we often assume the solutions are covered and controlled by experts, especially natural scientists, engineers, […]
How well do you know your fictional fathers? By Esther Morrison The relationship between parent and child is intricate and has been widely explored in literature through the ages. Particularly complicated is the role of the father. They are often portrayed as abusive or absent while the mother takes on the traditional nurturing role, but that’s not to say literature doesn’t have its fair share of gentle […]
Why urgent action is needed to avoid centuries of global warming By Eelco Rohling In the climate change debate, we often hear the argument that the climate has been changing since time immemorial. This is true, but if modern climate change differs from pre-historic climate cycles, the statement by itself is empty. We need to know how modern climate change compares with that of the past.
The impeachment illusion By Donald A. Ritchie The best barometer of political anger is how often the word “impeachment” appears in news stories, editorials, and Congressional rhetoric. These days, the references have grown exponentially, despite the House Speaker’s efforts to keep her members focused on legislation. The constitutional definition of “high crimes and misdemeanors” is vague enough to have encouraged members of […]
Two cruces: “slave” and “slur” By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
The Trump administration’s Africa policy By Nick Westcott Does President Donald Trump have a policy on Africa, and if so what? The answer to this question is both interesting and revealing. President Trump does not seem to pay much attention to Africa. Apart from his well-publicised comments to a group of senators in January 2018 dismissing the whole of Africa as “shithole countries,” he has not […]
When narcolepsy makes you more creative By Isabelle Arnulf At night, the surrealist poet Saint-Pol-Roux used to hang a sign on his bedroom’s door that read: “Do not disturb: poet at work.” Indeed, may sleep increase our creativity? The link between creativity and sleep has been a topic of intense speculation, mainly based on anecdotal reports of artistic and scientific discoveries people have made while dreaming.
Why posh politicians pretend to speak Latin By Gordon Campbell When Jacob Rees-Mogg wished to criticise the judges of the European Union, he said, “Let me indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of EU judges.” The meaning of the jocular term (the action of judging something to be worthless) is not as important as its source—the Eton Latin Grammar. Latin and Latinate English flow readily from the […]
Quiz: How well do you know Albert Camus? By Panumas King The Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus (1913-1960) is one of the best known French philosophers of the twentieth century, and also a widely-read novelist, whose works are frequently referenced in contemporary culture and politics. An active figure in the French underground movement, a fearless journalist, and an influential thinker in the post-war French intellectual life, Camus’s experience of growing up in troubled and conflicted times during the World War I and Nazi occupation of France permeate his philosophical and literary works.
250 Years of Oxford weather By Stephen Burt Talking about the weather is a national obsession. Thomas Hornsby talked about the weather, or at least wrote about it, in Oxford back in the mid-eighteenth century. His surviving diaries from 1767 mark the commencement of the longest continuous single-site weather records in the British Isles, and one of the longest anywhere in the world.
Why even Mormons are pushing for LGBT inclusion By Jana Riess A decade ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was licking its wounds after its disastrous involvement in California’s Proposition 8. The church had won a coveted victory—Proposition 8 passed, effectively outlawing same-sex marriage in the state—but lost the war of public opinion. When Americans found out that Mormons had funded an estimated 50%–70% […]
Etymology gleanings for May 2019: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
What early modern theater tells us about child sexual abuse By Scott A. Trudell The sexual abuse of children endemic in the Roman Catholic Church is once again in the news, with Pope Francis mandating reporting within the Church. The Catholic Church is not alone; investigative journalists have revealed a pattern of sexual misconduct among Southern Baptist pastors and deacons over a twenty-year period, involving more than seven hundred victims.
The effects of junk science on LGBTQ mental health By Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano Studies and statistics can be interpreted in wildly different ways. It’s concerning how false and misleading uses of data collected about LGBTQ people affect our communities. In general, studies and resulting data about LGBTQ people and mental health are a positive step in moving toward culturally competent mental health care for all. For example, the Williams […]
What is the Middle Voice? By Edwin L. Battistella Punctuation-wise, most of us fall between these two extremes. We are neither staccato nor breathless. Instead, we use punctuation to establish a comfortable pace for readers by grouping and emphasizing certain chunks of information.
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Keep eating fish; it’s the best way to feed the world By Ray Hilborn The famous ocean explorer, Sylvia Earle, has long advocated that people stop eating fish. Recently, George Monbiot made a similar plea in The Guardian – there’s only one way to save the life in our oceans, stop eating fish – which, incidentally, would condemn several million people to starvation. In both cases, it’s facile reasoning. The oceans may suffer from […]
Predicting the past with the periodic table By Ben McFarland Predicting the future is the pinnacle of what science can do. It’s impressive enough for a scientist to look at existing data and compose a theory explaining it. It’s even more impressive for a scientist to predict what data will look like before they are collected. The periodic table is central to chemistry precisely because […]
Etymology gleanings for May 2019 By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Bryant Park Reading Room 2019 By Lindsey Stangl Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series. Established in 1935, the Bryant Park Reading room was created by the New York Public Library as a refuge for thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression.
Water scarcity, warfare, and the paradox of value By Scott M. Moore Back in 1995, then World Bank Vice President Ismail Serageldin made an important prediction about the future: “The wars of the next century will be fought over water.” Thankfully, No wars have been fought strictly over water in modern history. In fact globally the number of international agreements over water far exceeds the number of international conflicts. That paradox shows that water can be just as powerful a driver of cooperation as of conflict between nations, regions, and communities. But that doesn’t mean Serageldin is wrong.
Investing in women’s reproductive health makes economic sense By Debra Lancaster and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers There is no gender equality without access to reproductive health services, including access to contraceptives and safe abortions. In fact, economists are paying increasing attention to the economic benefits of investing in women’s reproductive health and finding gains not only for women but also for their families and for the economy at large.
The eclipse that proved Einstein’s theories By Steven Carlip The confirmation of Einstein’s new general theory of relativity on the 29th of May 1919 made headlines around the world. Arthur Stanley Eddington’s measurement of the gravitational deflection of starlight by the Sun was a triumph of experimental and theoretical physics.
The surprising similarities between Game of Thrones and the Hebrew Bible By David G. Garber Note: This post contains spoilers for the series finale of Game of Thrones. From prophecies and their cryptic interpretations to stories of warring kings and their exploits, the narrative world that George R. R. Martin has created in his fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, shares much in common with the narrative world of the Hebrew […]
High pressure processing may be the future of food By Alan Kelly For millennia, mankind has understood that we can apply heat to raw food materials to make them safe to consume and keep their quality for longer. Cooking is even credited as being key to human evolution, as its discovery (a trick unique to humans) greatly reduced the amount of energy bodies needed to digest and extract nutrients from food, allowing saved energy to be diverted into useful pathways such as those which developed more sophisticated brains.
Albert Camus and the problem of absurdity By Panumas King Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a French philosopher and novelist whose works examine the alienation inherent in modern life and who is best known for his philosophical concept of the absurd. He explored these ideas in his famous novels, The Stranger (1942), The Plague (1947), and The Fall (1956), as well as his philosophical essays, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) and The Rebel (1951). […]
Using economics to find the greatest superhero By Brian O'Roark In case you missed it, the world was recently saved by the Avengers, a Marvel Comics superhero, super-team who defeated Thanos, a genocidal maniac of galactic proportions. However, the real victory belongs to Disney, which owns the Marvel movie properties. Avengers: Endgame annihilated the record for the largest opening weekend box office haul, raking in […]
How to protect your family from sun exposure this summer By Yelena Wu and Kenneth Tercyak Sun exposure is the primary risk factor for skin cancer: increased exposure due to ozone depletion is expected to lead to increases in the incidence of skin cancers, including melanoma. Sun exposure in childhood is predictive of skin cancer later in life.
Queen Victoria’s 200th birthday By Charis Edworthy and Katy Roberts Few lives have been as heavily documented as Queen Victoria’s, who kept a careful record of her own life in journals from a young age. In celebration of Victoria’s 200th birthday today, discover six facts you may not have known about one of the longest-reigning British monarchs.
Imitation in literature: inspiration or plagiarism? By Colin Burrow Imitation is a complex word with a long and tangled history. Today, it usually carries a negative charge. The Oxford English Dictionary’s second definition of the word is “a copy, an artificial likeness; a thing made to look like something else, which it is not; a counterfeit.” So an imitation of a designer handbag might be a tatty […]
Why climate change could bring more infectious diseases By Lidiya Angelova Human impact on climate and environment is a topic of many discussions and research. While the social, economic, and environmental effects of climate change are important, climate change could also increase the spread of infectious diseases dramatically. Many infectious agents affect humans and animals. Shifts of their habitats or health as a result of climate change and […]
Disbanding the etymological League of Nations By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Is social media a platform for supporting or attacking refugees? By Nina Hall On March 15th 2019, a white nationalist opened fire during Friday prayers, killing fifty Muslims and injuring at least fifty others in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The attack was the largest mass shooting in New Zealand’s history and came as a shock to the small and remote island nation which generally sees itself as free from the extreme violence and terrorism seen elsewhere in the world.
James Harris, the black scientist who helped discover two elements By Jeannette Brown The year 2019 is the 150th anniversary of the publication of Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev’s Periodic Table. The Periodic Table is a tabular arrangement of all elements. Mendeleev developed it to recognize patterns of the known elements. He also predicted that later scientists would fill in new elements in the gaps of his table. Today’s […]
Should the people always get what they want from their politicians? By John Owen Havard Should we listen to the voice of “the people” or the conviction of their representatives? Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has inspired virulent debate about the answer. Amidst Theresa May’s repeated failure to pass her Brexit deal in the House of Commons this spring, the Prime Minister appealed directly to the frustrations and feelings of the people. “You the public have had enough,” she asserted in a speech of March 20.
A linguistic League of Nations By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Looking at Game of Thrones, in Old Norse By Carolyne Larrington The endtime is coming. The night is very long indeed; sun and moon have vanished. From the east march the frost-giants, bent on the destruction of all that is living. From the south come fiery powers, swords gleaming brightly. A dragon flies overhead. And, terrifyingly, the dead are walking too.
Why banishment was “toleration” in Puritan settlements By Samuel Stabler Typically, sociologists explain the growth of religious toleration as a result of people demanding religious freedom, ideals supporting tolerance becoming more prevalent, or shifting power relations among religious groups. By any of these accounts, Puritan New England was not a society where religious toleration flourished. Yet, when contrasted to a coterminous Puritan venture on Providence Island, it becomes clear that New England’s orthodox elite did […]
How do we measure the distance to a galaxy and why is it so important? By Ignacio Trujillo On March 3, 1912, Henrietta Swan Leavitt made a short contribution to the Harvard College Observatory Circular. With it she laid the foundations of modern Astronomy. Locked in solitude due to her deafness, Leavitt was the first person to discover how to measure distance to galaxies, thus expanding our understanding of the Universe in one giant leap.
5 things we should talk about when we talk about health By Sandro Galea Americans spend more money on health than anyone else in the world, yet they live shorter, less healthy lives than citizens of other rich countries. The complex reason for this is the multiple factors that affect our health. The simple reason is the fact that people seldom talk about these factors. Here are five things […]
The worrying ideology that helps Trump’s new friendship with Brazil By Mark Sedgwick As the conflict develops in Venezuela between the US-backed Juan Guaidó and the incumbent government of Nicolás Maduro, one staunch supporter of the United States position is Brazil.
Why politicians do care what the UN thinks By Joshua Busby, Craig Kafura, Jonathan Monten, and Jordan Tama In a January 2019 press briefing at the White House, US National Security Adviser John Bolton flashed a legal pad with “5,000 troops to Colombia” written on it, a not-so hidden message to contested Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that the United States was considering sending troops to the region. Maduro is presiding over a Venezuela in economic […]
Preaching as teaching in the Medieval church By Christopher Cannon We have long assumed that medieval sermons were written for the laity, that is, those with no Latin and probably minimal literacy. But most of the sermons that survive in English contain a significant amount of Latin. What did a medieval lay person understand when he or she heard a sermon?
Can plants help us avoid a climate catastrophe? By David Beerling The amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by burning of fossil fuels is at a staggering all time high of 34 billion tonnes, having risen every decade since the 1960s.
On snuff and snout By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
5 of the most important women working in endocrinology By Caitlin R. Ondracek PhD Gender inequality persists in all sectors of society, including science and medicine disciplines. While female clinicians and researchers are increasing in number and now comprise almost 50% of medical school graduates in the United States, they remain underrepresented in scholarly publications and academic positions (20% to 49% of researchers in 12 countries and regions). Although nearly half of medical […]
What stops us from following financial advice? We may be more biased than you think By Oscar Stolper and Andreas Walter While improving consumers’ financial literacy has finally received the attention it deserves among policymakers, many people still lack the knowledge to make informed financial decisions. Thus, when it comes to financial matters, the majority of households turn to advisors. Clearly, however, advisors’ recommendations—however beneficial they might be—do not translate into informed financial decisions if clients […]
Using punctuation to pace By Edwin L. Battistella Punctuation-wise, most of us fall between these two extremes. We are neither staccato nor breathless. Instead, we use punctuation to establish a comfortable pace for readers by grouping and emphasizing certain chunks of information.
Economics can help us protect the world’s wildlife By Nick Hanley and Jason Shogren People affect nature, nature affects people. This interaction of humans and nature creates opportunities and risks to both. One major challenge today is how to protect biodiversity. Across the world, scientists tell us the diversity and abundance of life on earth is declining. From coral reefs affected by bleaching and pollution, to lions in Africa, […]
Eight facts about past poet laureates By Charis Edworthy The poet laureate has held an elevated position in British culture over the past 350 years. From the position’s origins as a personal appointment made by the monarch to today’s governmental selection committee, much has changed about the role, but one thing hasn’t changed: the poet laureate has always produced poetry for events of national […]
How research and policy affect responses to sexual violence By Jelke Boesten and Marsha Henry Sexual violence in war has never been as visible as in the last ten years or so. We talk about it in global and national policy spaces, the media reports about sexual violence in conflicts around the world, and research in this area is booming.
How historians research when they’re missing crucial material By Matthew S. Seligmann It can be deeply frustrating to know that that all the answers on a particular topic were once on a scrap of paper that is now gone forever. However, neither the blank page nor the dreaded word ‘weeded’ need be an insuperable barrier to historical research. Alternative sources nearly always exist; it is just a matter of finding them.
9 forgotten facts about Leonardo da Vinci By Steven Filippi For over 500 years, the masterful works of Leonardo da Vinci have awed artists, connoisseurs, and laypeople alike. Often considered the first High Renaissance artist, Leonardo worked extensively in Florence, Milan, and Rome before ending his career in France, and his techniques and writings influenced artists for centuries after his death. However, to refer to Leonardo da Vinci as just an artist minimizes his role in numerous areas of study; in addition to painting, sculpture, and drawing, the quintessential “Renaissance Man” left an indelible mark on architecture, engineering, science, philosophy, and even music.
Sniff—snuff—SNAFU By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Exploring the Da Vinci Requiem By Cecilia McDowall Wimbledon Choral Society and conductor, Neil Ferris, commissioned me to write the Da Vinci Requiem to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci’s death. Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 at the Château du Clos Lucé, Amboise, France; Wimbledon Choral Society will premiere the work in the Royal Festival Hall, London, on 7 May 2019.
April 2019 (37))
Gardens and cultural memory By Gordon Campbell Most gardens are in predictable places and are organised in predictable ways. On entering an English suburban garden, for example, one expects to see a lawn bordered by hedges and flowerbeds, a hard surface with a table for eating al fresco on England’s two days of summer, and a water feature quietly burbling in a corner.
Writing about jazz in the post-modern gig era By Barry Kernfeld How should music reference works deal with jazz in the era of multi-genre freelancing? Back in November 1983, when I asked Stanley Sadie, series editor for Grove Dictionaries of Music, if he’d ever thought of having a New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, jazz seemed to be a reasonably coherent genre with a connected succession of styles. Maybe I was just being young, naive, ignorant. Or maybe the notion of jazz as something coherent hadn’t yet started to completely unravel, even though all sorts of challenges were nipping at it, especially as the fusions emerged (jazz-rock, jazz-funk, and so forth).
How Rabindranath Tagore reshaped Indian philosophy and literature By OUP Philosophy Team Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a highly prolific Indian poet, philosopher, writer, and educator who wrote novels, essays, plays, and poetic works in colloquial Bengali. He was a key figure of the Bengal Renaissance, a cultural nationalist movement in the city.
Racist jokes may be worse than racist statements By Claire Horisk Jane Austen’s Emma Woodhouse tells her father, “Mr. Knightley loves to find fault with me, you know—in a joke—it is all a joke.” Mr. Knightley isn’t joking, as he and Emma know; he presents his criticisms without a hint of jocularity. But if Emma persuades Mr. Woodhouse to believe Mr. Knightley is joking, he “would not suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by everyone.” A little over 200 years after Emma was published, the comedian Roseanne Barr defended a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, President Obama’s former adviser, in a further tweet, “It’s a joke—”.
In America, trees symbolize both freedom and unfreedom By Jared Farmer Extralegal violence committed by white men in the name of patriotism is a founding tradition of the United States. It is unbearably fitting that the original Patriot landmark, the Liberty Tree in Boston, sported a noose, and inspired earliest use of the metaphor “strange fruit.” The history of the Liberty Tree and a related symbol, […]
Can the taste of a cheese be copyrighted? By Eleonora Rosati Copyright is an intellectual property right that vests in original works. We know that works like novels, paintings, photographs, sculptures, and songs are examples of what copyright law protects.But how far can copyright protection go? Can copyright protect, say, a perfume or the taste of a food product?
Why Robinson Crusoe is really an urban tale By Thomas Keymer Robinson Crusoe (1719) was Daniel Defoe’s first novel and remains his most famous: a powerful narrative of isolation and endurance that’s sometimes compared to Faust, Don Quixote or Don Juan for its elemental, mythic quality.
On getting in (and out of?) scrape By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Poetry: A Very Short Introduction: a Q & A with Bernard O’Donoghue For National Poetry Month, we sat down with Bernard O’Donoghue, author of Poetry: A Very Short Introduction. O’Donoghue discusses the importance of poetry, the influence social media has, and his own process when it comes to writing. Eleanor Chilvers: Why is poetry important? Bernard O’Donoghue: Poetry seems to have been thought important in all known societies, […]
Notre-Dame, a work in progress By Richard Ingersoll At dusk on Monday, April 15th, just in time for the evening news, the world was treated to the horrendous spectacle of uncontrollable flames licking the roof of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. The fire spread from a scaffold that had been installed six months earlier for restorations.
Who invented modern democracy? By Joanna Innes Did modern democracy start its long career in the North Atlantic? Was it invented by the Americans, the French and the British? The French Revolution certainly helped to inject modern meaning into a term previously chiefly associated with the ancient world, with ancient Greece and republican Rome.
Spring gleaning (Spring 2019) By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Explaining Freud’s concept of the uncanny By Mark Windsor According to his friend and biographer Ernest Jones Sigmund Freud was fond regaling him with “strange or uncanny experiences with patients.” Freud had a “particular relish” for such stories. 2019 marks the centenary of the publication of Freud’s essay, “The ‘Uncanny.’” Although much has been written on the essay during that time, Freud’s concept of the uncanny is often not well understood.
Will robots really take our jobs? By Daniel Aaronson and Brian Phelan Will computer technology and robotics lead to the automation of our jobs, leading to rising job losses and income inequality? Or could the use of technology intended to replace certain low-wage jobs lead to offsetting employment growth in other types of jobs?
At least in Green Book, jazz is high art By Krin Gabbard I’m anxiously awaiting the release of Bolden, a film about the New Orleans cornettist Buddy Bolden (1888 – 1933) who may actually have invented jazz. But since Bolden will not be released until May, and since April is Jazz Appreciation Month, now is a good time to talk about the cultural capital that jazz has recently acquired, at least in that […]
12 of the most important books for women in philosophy By Panumas King To celebrate women’s enormous contributions to philosophy, here is a reading list of books that explore recent feminist philosophy and women philosophers. Despite their apparent invisibility in the field in the past, women have been practising philosophers for centuries.
Is it right to use intuition as evidence? By Nevin Climenhaga Dr. Smith is a wartime medic. Five injured soldiers are in critical need of organ transplants: one needs a heart, two need kidneys, and two need lungs. A sixth soldier has come in complaining of a toothache. Reasoning that it’s better that five people should live than one, Smith knocks out the sixth soldier with […]
Harold Wilson’s resignation honours – why so controversial? By Toby Harper On February 6 Marcia Falkender, the Baroness Falkender, died. She was one of the late Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s closest and longest-serving colleagues, first as his personal then political secretary. An enigmatic figure, she has been variously reviled, mocked, and defended since the end of Wilson’s political career.
The Cambridge Philosophical Society By Susannah Gibson In 2019, the Cambridge Philosophical Society celebrates its 200th anniversary. When it was set up in 1819, Cambridge was not a place to do any kind of serious science. There were a few professors in scientific subjects but almost no proper laboratories or facilities. Students rarely attended lectures, and degrees were not awarded in the […]
How industry can benefit from marine diversity By Peter N. Golyshin Oonagh McMeel Manuel Ferrer The global economy for products composed of biological materials is likely to grow 3.6% between now and 2025. This in response to serious environmental challenges the world will face. Such products have enormous potential to provide solutions to global challenges like food security, energy production, human health, and waste reduction. This economic growth may strongly […]
National Women’s History Month: A Brief History By Emily S. Johnson Every year, I teach a course on U.S. women’s history. Every year, I poll my students to find out how many of them encountered any kind of women’s history in their pre-college educations. They invariably say that they didn’t learn enough about women (this is a self-selecting group after all), but they also easily recite key components of U.S. women’s history: the Salem witch trials, Sojourner Truth, the nineteenth amendment, Rosie the Riveter, second-wave feminism, among others.
Yes means yes: why verbal consent policies are ineffective By Donna Freitas Communication around sex on college campuses tends to be poor in general—not only do students struggle to communicate and have hang-ups and fears about communicating, but hookup culture is one that privileges noncommunication. After all, what better way to signal a casual attitude toward your partner than to ignore him or her? Because students are […]
Germanic dreams: the end By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
What makes the EU, the UN, and their peers legitimate? By Klaus Dingwerth Antonia Witt The first “Brexit” is almost a century old, and it did not even involve Britain. It occurred on 14 June 1926, when Brazil notified the League of Nations it would leave the world organization. Paraguay, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Venezuela, and Peru, together with Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, followed in the 1930s. […]
What makes arrogant people so angry? By Alessandra Tanesini Arrogant people are often intolerant of questioning or criticism. They respond to genuine and even polite challenges with anger. They are bullies that attempt to humiliate and intimidate those who do not agree with, or explicitly defer to, their opinions. The arrogant feel superior to other people and arrogate for themselves special privileges. This sense of entitlement […]
What is kidnap insurance? By Anja Shortland Millions of people live and work in areas where they cannot rely on the state to keep them safe. Instead, their security is provided by armed groups: for example, community or clan militias, warlords, rebel movements, drug cartels, or mafias – i.e. local strongmen that can defend their territory against intruders and keep order within it. But their deal with the population usually goes far beyond providing physical security.
When the movie is not like the book: faithfulness in adaptations By James Harold The 2018 movies Crazy Rich Asians, It, Black Panther, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, Mary Poppins Returns, and Beautiful Boy have very little in common with one another, except the fact that all are based on popular books.
W(h)ither the five-paragraph essay By Edwin L. Battistella I was surprised to learn from my students that many of them are still being taught to write the five-paragraph essay in high school. You know it: an introductory paragraph that begins with a hook and ends in a thesis statement.
Why do girls outperform boys on reading tests around the world? By Margriet van Hek All around the world, girls outperform boys on reading tests. Why is this? In and outside of academia, people have been concerned about girls’ under-performance in math, or more generally: STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). There have been fewer academic studies and media coverage about boys’ under-performance in reading. This is surprising, since it might offer an explanation for boys’ lagging educational attainment today.
Three big threats to wildlife in 2019 By Charlotte Parr Our Planet, Netflix’s new nature documentary voiced by David Attenborough, arrives on the online streaming platform today. The series explores the wonders of the natural world, focusing on iconic species and stunning wildlife spectacles.
Why the forgotten alternative translations of classical literature matter By Stuart Gillespie The English-language heyday of classical verse translation, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, produced works that people still read, enjoy, and study today. Translation has been central in what we now call the reception of ancient poetry through the ages.
Does gender bias influence how people assess children’s pain? By Brian D. Earp and Katelynn E Boerner A recently published paper in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology has attracted much media attention for its analysis of a subject that has long been debated: how do our beliefs about male-female differences influence our decision-making? Specifically, do our beliefs about the pain expressions of boys and girls influence our assessment of their pain experience? The authors found that when adult […]
Perchance to dream? Ay, there’s the rub By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
How to really build a better economy By William G. Gale Through our tax and spending policies, we can expand our economy or let it wither; make society more equal, or less; expand opportunity or continue to let tens of millions of struggling families fend for themselves. There is a way to pay for the government that people want, and shape that government and the economy in ways that serve us all.
Why most scientists think birds are dinosaurs – and you should too By Joyce C. Havstad We used to think—and many of us were taught in school—that the dinosaurs went extinct many millions of years ago. But now it seems like this might not be the case.
What can we learn from meme culture? By Simon Evnine If you go on-line, the chances are that you have encountered memes. What exactly is a meme? Some people take memes to be simply images with added text. The artist Barbara Kruger is often cited as a pre-internet forerunner of this practice.
From orientalism to ornamentalism By Alyssa Russell Recently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art hosted an exhibit called China Through the Looking Glass. The exhibition’s spectacular and unabashed display of Orientalist commodification and appropriation charmed many and repelled others. The exhibition, extended months beyond its original schedule due to its enormous popularity, reminds us how enduring the so-called Asian fetish still is in western culture and how […]
March 2019 (47))
New ways to think about Autism and why it matters By Neil S. Greenspan What’s wrong with using the word “spectrum” to describe autism? Perhaps some would suggest that the precise terminology used for referring to these medical conditions is relatively unimportant. In fact, the current terminology facilitates views that distort or oversimplify reality and may be causing harm.
The maestro speaks: Ennio Morricone on life and music By Steven Filippi Over his esteemed six decade career, Italian composer Ennio Morricone has scored hundreds of movies across numerous genres, most famously the Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone.
Celebrating notable women in philosophy: Philippa Foot By Panumas King This March, in honour of Women’s History Month, and in celebration of the achievements and contributions of women to the field of philosophy, the OUP philosophy team honours Philippa Foot (1920–2010) as its Philosopher of the Month. Philippa Foot is widely regarded as one of the most distinctive and influential moral philosophers of the twentieth-century.
What Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel tells us about women’s music By Angela Mace Christian Everyone loves a good plot twist. And what better plot twist than finding out that a work of art, scientific discovery, or other creation was the achievement not of a well-known man, but rather a woman? Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was a talented composer of the early 19th century who worked mostly in private. As an upper-class woman with […]
Perchance to dream? Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
How singing in a choir can improve life for seniors By Amy Nathan “When my mother died, the music stopped in my house,” said Isabel Heredia. Her mother wasn’t a professional singer, “but she had a fantastic voice. She sang at parties.”
Social Work The myth of a color-blind justice system in America By Susan McCarter Ever wonder why Lady Justice looks the way she does? She is modeled after the Roman goddess Iustitia and is an allegorical personification of the justice system. She is usually depicted with a scale in one hand, a sword in the other, and wearing a blindfold. Why? Well, she is to use the scale to weigh the evidence.
How Tony Blair’s special advisers changed government By Dr. Jon Davis Tony Blair is one of the great conundrums of our time. We all know his legacy, from the widely-condemned invasion of Iraq to bequeathing a great National Health Service to the United Kingdom. But how he governed, how decisions were made, is still hotly debated. Was he radical, was he “unconstitutional”? Public service reform, from […]
Has China’s one child policy increased crime? By Dandan Zhang, Lisa Cameron, and Xin Meng China’s launched its one child policy in 1979 as a means of reducing population growth in the world’s most populous nation. Several authors draw attention to the potential for crime and social conflict – and a 2013 study finds that crime is higher in provinces with higher ratios of men to women.
The ethics of the climate emergency By Robin Attfield During the last few days of February we experienced the warmest Winter day since records began, with a high of 20.6 degrees (Celsius) at Trawscoed in mid-Wales. As if that was not enough, the record was broken again the next day with 21.2 degrees at Kew Gardens.
Better detection of concussions using vital signs By Ryan CN D’Arcy As a father of a young ice hockey player, I’m all too familiar with every parent’s concern about concussions. As a neuroscientist, I chose not to accept that it was okay to rely on subjective and error-prone tests to understand how best to care for our brains after concussion. We dared ourselves to think bigger, and to […]
Four important women who championed peace By Charis Edworthy Though history favours the warriors, monarchs, and rebels, female pacifists and mediators behind the scenes were just as vital in the fight for equality.
The long-term effects of life events on happiness are overestimated By Reto Odermatt and Alois Stutzer Positive events were linked to a strong increase in life satisfaction, and negative events to a strong decrease. However, people overestimate how long the effect of an event continues. Recently married people, for example, overestimate how happy they will be in five years.
Women of substance in Homeric epic By Lilah Grace Canevaro Men carve meaning into women’s faces; messages addressed to other men. In Achilles’ compound, the message had been: Look at her. My prize awarded by the army, proof that I am what I’ve always claimed to be: the greatest of the Greeks. Pat Barker’s book The Silence of the Girls is one of a wave of novels giving a […]
Reconsidering the period room as a museum-made object By Marie-Ève Marchand Period rooms were widespread among European museums during the last decades of the nineteenth century, and became popular in North American institutions in the early twentieth. But the debate about whether period rooms are “authentic” or “fake” tends to ignore what they really are: a museum-made object.
Uncovering social work’s scientific rigor By Jeane W. Anastas It seems that we know more about the “heart” of social work—the dedication to service—than we do about its “head”—the contributions the profession has made to other areas of research.
On sluts and slatterns By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Notable female microbiologists you’ve never heard of By lidiya angelova Female microbiologists many not have had professor or doctor in front of their names, instead listed as laboratory assistants or technicians, but in many cases their skills were critical for numerous notable discoveries. It is worth reminding ourselves who they are and how they changed the world for good.
Warning: music therapy comes with risks By James Hiller and Susan C. Gardstrom Bob Marley sings, “One good thing about music—when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Although this may be the case for some people and in some circumstances, we dispute this statement as a global truth.
Theranos and the cult of personality in science and tech By Dr Sunny Bains Elizabeth Holmes was a chemical engineering student who dropped out of Stanford to found Theranos: a silicon-valley start-up company that, at one point, was valued at US$9 billion. Her plan was to be another Steve Jobs. Today, she is facing fraud and other criminal charges.
The future of borders in the Middle East By Ariel Ahram The collapse of Arab regional order during the 2011 uprisings provided a chance to reconsider the Middle East’s famously misshapen states. Most rebels sought to control the central government, not to break away from it. Separatist, in contrast, unilaterally sought territorial autonomy or outright secession.
How boring was life in the British Empire? By Jeffrey Auerbach For centuries, the British Empire has been portrayed as a place of adventure and excitement. Novels and films, from Robinson Crusoe to Lawrence of Arabia, romanticized the empire. Yet in 1896, after only one month in India, twenty-one year old Winston Churchill declared Britain’s largest and most important colony “dull and interesting.”
The case for citizenship for US immigrants serving in the military By Michael J. Sullivan The United States has a long history of immigrant military service. Immigrants who serve in the armed forces during declared hostilities, including the period after 11 September 2001, are eligible for expedited naturalization.
Seven reasons why failure is impossible for feminists By Gail Ukockis In 1906, an 86-year-old woman greeted a room full of suffragists who were still fighting for the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony made her last public statement: “But with all the help with people like we have in this room, failure is impossible.” She died a month later, and it took until 1920 for women […]
When a river is dammed, is it damned forever? By Jeff Duda, Ryan Bellmore, and George Pess Since the dawn of advanced civilizations, humanity has sought to manage the flow of rivers. Protection from floods, water for drinking and irrigating crops, and extraction of resources like food and energy are among the most popular reasons for building dams.
Beer before wine – can we avoid hangovers that way? By Jöran Köchling Dr Kai Hensel As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, many dread the incapacitated hangover of the day after – when the nausea hits you and you cannot do anything but lay in bed and every movement worsens your pounding headache. Wouldn’t it be helpful to have ways to lessen the burden of alcohol-induced hangover? A hangover is a complex […]
Truth and truthfulness in democracy (and the problem of Brexit) By Kai Spiekermann When it comes to democracy, the cynics are having a field day. Whether it’s Brexit or Trump – it’s currently popular to be a pessimist, or – more politely – a “realist” about democracy.
Is there room for creative imagination in science? By Tom McLeish Not just once, but repeatedly, I have heard something like “I just didn’t see in science any room for my own imagination or creativity,” from young students clearly able to succeed at any subject they set their minds to. It is a tragedy that so many people do not perceive science as a creative. Yet […]
Why do homo sapiens include so much variety? By Felipe Fernández-Armesto The past is a mess. To pick a path through the mire, historians have appealed to providence, progress, environmental determinism, class struggle, biology and fate. No explanation has worked – so far. But try shifting perspective: look for the broadest possible context, the most suggestive comparisons. Climb the cosmic crow’s nest. Imagine what history might […]
The “sl”-morass: “slender” and “slim-slam-slum” By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
9 books to help us reimagine international studies The 60th International Studies Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition will be held in Toronto from March 27th – March 30th. This year’s conference theme is “Re-visioning International Studies: Innovation and Progress.”
Can we solve environmental problems without international agreements? By Hamish van der Ven While the problems associated with consumption are well-known, international agreements to address them have fallen short of expectations.
Rediscovering Francesco de’ Medici’s private Renaissance room By Lindsay Alberts Between 1570 and 1575, Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, commissioned a private studiolo – a small room – in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. Four centuries later, a discovery in the archive changes our understanding of one the last great Renaissance studies.
Is Trump’s assault on international law working? By Harold Hongju Koh For centuries, international law has functioned as an instrument of nation-states working in concert, acting out of a sense of legal obligation. Since World War II, this combination of state practice driven by legal obligation—in the form of both treaties and customary international law—has served as a prime mechanism for shaping and addressing complex global responses to pressing planetary challenges.
The brave new world of cannabis: chronic vomiting By Christopher N Andrews A young patient, let’s call him Chad, goes to the doctor. He complains of attacks of nausea from the moment he wakes up in the morning. Sometimes his belly hurts as well. It’s been happening, on and off, for years. He gets cold and shaky. At times, it will progress to full-fledged vomiting, uncontrollable with any medications. The nausea is unbearable. Sometimes, getting in a very hot shower will take the edge off the nausea, but not always. In many cases a trip to the emergency room is needed for rehydration and intravenous anti-nausea medications.
Fanny Burney in her own words By Charis Edworthy Born in 1752, Frances Burney (better known as Fanny Burney) was well known as a satirical novelist in her time, anonymously publishing her first book, Evelina, in 1778. Despite her literary influence, Fanny Burney is a name unknown to many aside from the most ardent scholars. Did you know, for instance, that the title of Jane Austen’s Pride and […]
Women in law: a legal timeline By Rebecca Olley In celebration of International Women’s Day, explore our interactive timeline detailing women’s legal landmarks throughout history. Covering from 1835, when married women’s property laws began to be reformed in America, through to future considerations on how the English judiciary system can continue to improve diversity, delve into the key milestones of women’s legal history. In […]
Reflecting on gender justice By Gina Heathcote, Jo Wojtkowski, Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom, Sandra Fredman, and Valerie Sperling The Charter of the United Nations (signed in 1945), was the first international agreement to uphold the principle of equality between men and women. Since then there have been many significant achievements in the struggle for the international protection of women’s rights, most notably the United Nation’s landmark treaty the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the second most widely ratified human rights treaty in existence.
Up at Harwich and back home to the west via Skellig By Anatoly Liberman It turned out that the melancholy idiom send one to Coventry may not have anything to do with that town. To reinforce this unexpected conclusion, I’ll relate another story. At one time, the phrase up at Harwich existed; perhaps it is still known in the eastern counties.
Schizophrenia and ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky By Emilio Fernandez-Egea Schizophrenia is the most iconic of all mental illnesses but both its conceptualization and causes remain elusive. The popular image portrays patients convinced of being persecuted and hearing voices that nobody else can hear.
The growing role of citizen scientists in research By Andrew M. Allen A movement is growing where science is no longer restricted to academics but instead it has become a pursuit for the public in general. Nature lovers have unwittingly been acting as data collectors, especially people that create lists of wildlife they see at home, in the park, or during a hike. Birdwatchers are known for […]
Public support for tax hikes on the rich is nothing new By Matt Guardino In a 60 Minutes interview in early January, newly elected US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started a serious political debate when she suggested creating a new 70% tax bracket for annual incomes above $10 million.
Contemporary lessons from the fall of Rome By H. A. Drake It’s a time-honored game, and any number can play. The rules are simple: just take whatever problem is bothering you today, add the word “Rome,” and voilà. You have just discovered why the mightiest empire in Western history came to an end.
Where did the phrase “yeah no” come from? By Edwin L. Battistella I’ve noticed myself saying “yeah no.” The expression came up in a class one day, when I had asked students to bring in examples of language variation. One student suggested “yeah no” as an example of not-quite standard California English.
Could too low blood pressure in old age increase mortality? By Sven Streit With increasing age, blood pressure rises as a consequence of arterial stiffness, caused by the biological process of ageing and arteries becoming clogged with fatty substances, otherwise known as arteriosclerosis. Large hypertension trials showed that lowering blood pressure in people over 60 is beneficial and lowers the risk of heart attacks, stroke, and all-cause mortality, even in people over 80. Since arterial hypertension, high blood pressure in the arteries, is the most important preventable cause of cardiovascular disease, it seemed obvious for at least two decades to treat hypertension without restrictions even patients over 60.
Celebrating women in politics: 10 books you need to read for Women’s History Month We’ve compiled a brief reading list that explores the achievements and challenges of women in politics.
Why gender matters so much in policy making By Susan L. Averett, Laura M. Argys, and Saul D. Hoffman The 2018 U.S. elections changed many things, including, most notably, the gender composition of elected representatives in Washington and throughout the country. Both the Senate and House of Representatives are now nearly 25% female, a record high and more than double the percentage of 20 years ago. Nine women are currently serving as governors (tying […]
February 2019 (37))
Frederick Douglass’ family and the roots of social justice By Celeste-Marie Bernier Frederick Douglass. Just the name alone is enough to inspire us to think of a life lived in activism and an unceasing fight for social justice. But there are other names in the life story of Frederick Douglass that are far more unknown to us, those of his daughters and sons: Rosetta, Lewis Henry, Frederick Jr., Charles Remond and Annie Douglass.
The birth of exoplanetary science By Karel Schrijver The hunt for exoplanets was inspired by advances in understanding of the formation of stars: it was becoming clear that the gases that were contracting to form new stars were somehow shedding the bulk of their energy of rotation, while new observations were revealing disks full of gas and dust, spinning around such forming stars, and containing a lot of energy of rotation.
In Coventry and elsewhere By Anatoly Liberman There is no reason why we should not continue our journey and go to Coventry, a town in Warwickshire, 94 miles away from London. The name was widely known to those who lived through World War II because of the devastating bombing raid on Coventry in November 1940.
How six elements came together to form life on Earth By David W. Deamer How did life begin? We will never know with certainty what the Earth was like four billion years ago, or the kinds of reactions that led to the emergence of life at that time, but there is another way to pose the question. If we ask “how can life begin?” instead of “how did life begin,” that simple change of verbs offers hope.
Letters from the Antebellum By Whitney Davis While tensions continued to boil in the United States with the outbreak of the civil war in 1861 on the horizon, those aiming to assist slaves in securing their freedom often used letter correspondences to plan escape routes and share elated stories of their successes.
Five ways to help musicians think like entrepreneurs By Jeffrey Nytch Entrepreneurship for musicians need not be mysterious. It’s really just a different way of looking at your world and capitalizing on opportunities. How do you develop that kind of mindset? Here are five things you can start doing that may help you think like an entrepreneur.
There are no aliens… at least officially By D.W. Pasulka “There are no aliens, officially, at least….” Elon Musk, writing on his Twitter account, is one of a number of smart technopreneurs who considers that if there is extraterrestrial life, it would most likely already be observing us, and, it will be technological. Artist and singer David Bowie came to a similar conclusion years ago, […]
The ongoing significance of racism in American medicine By Tina K. Sacks Healthcare for black people seems to hover somewhere between willful neglect and overt malfeasance. We need only look to the ongoing lead poisoning disaster in Flint, Michigan, or the black maternal mortality crisis as examples.
The state of black cinema in 2019 By Peter Lurie This year’s Academy Awards presentation takes places at the end of Black History Month. The congruence of this fact with the increased profile of heretofore minority cinema is more than felicitous. Since the Twitter campaign #Oscarsowhite following the announcement of the 2015 nominations, both the Academy and the motion picture industry have made visible efforts to promote work by Asian, Latino, and African-American directors, writers, actors, and musicians.
Animal spotlight: 7 facts about North American eagles By Bioscience, Integrative Comparative Biology, The Auk, and The Condor From Bald Eagle Appreciation Days in Wisconsin to soaring Golden Eagles as a tradition at Auburn University, North American eagles are viewed as stately and powerful creatures. However, these two resident eagles of North America have not survived without a struggle.
Philosopher of the Month: Plato [infographic] By Panumas King This February, the OUP Philosophy team honours Plato (c. 427–347 BCE) as their Philosopher of the Month. Together with Socrates and Aristotle, Plato is recognized as one of the most influential figures of ancient Greek philosophy.
Black Press: The advent of the first African American newspapers By Whitney Davis In the decades preceding the Civil War, the free black community in the North struggled both for freedom from racial oppression and for the freedom of their enslaved southern brethren. Black newspapers reflected these twin struggles in their own fight for survival—a fight that most black newspapers in the antebellum era lost in a relatively short time.
Going places By Anatoly Liberman When one reads the obsolete phrase go to, go to, the meaning is still understood quite well. After to, one “hears” the word hell. However, directions vary, and the origin of the idioms beginning with go to is less trivial than it may seem.
Do events like Davos really make a difference? By Diane Stone Convening the relevant stakeholders to global problems through conferences like that at Davos is the first step towards developing effective and coordinated action.
Some value safety, others value risk By Valerie Tiberius No one has ever crossed the Antarctic by themselves and without help from other people or engines. To me, this is very unsurprising and uninteresting. No one (outside of superhero movies) has ever shrunk themselves to the size of an ant, or turned back time by causing the earth to rotate backwards either. Big deal. […]
A bull-session with bacteria By Arthur S. Reber Arthur S. Reber’s new book argues that consciousness was present in the first living cells, and that even the simplest of organisms, the prokaryotes like bacteria, are sentient. In this piece, he imagines what it would be like to sit down with two bacteria and hear their opinions on consciousness, and how their sentience helps them keep alive despite the best efforts of humans.
Ice Cube and the philosophical foundations of community policing By Luke Hunt The recent “First Step Act” is the most significant federal criminal justice reform in decades. Still, it is a modest first step. The law eases the sentences of some inmates in federal prison, but it will not impact the problem of mass incarceration significantly because it does not address the many inmates incarcerated in state and local facilities.
Who decides how much the world can warm up? [Video] By Anne Marie Turner and Stephen Mann Over the past 20 years, scientists and governments around the world have wrestled with the challenge of climate change. The Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement, and other international climate negotiations seek to limit warming to an average of two degrees Celsius (2°C). This objective is justified by scientists that have identified two degrees of warming as the point at which climate change becomes dangerous.
Congratulations to Cyberwar Oxford University Press has won the 2018 R. R. Hawkins Award, which is awarded by the Association of American Publishers to a single book every year to “recognize outstanding scholarly works in all disciplines of the arts and sciences.”
Can Self-Help Save the World? By Jaime Kucinskas Mindfulness meditation, which has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years, is commonly associated with a wide-ranging set of contemplative practices aimed at training oneself to pay “attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and nonjudgmentally,” as defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Healthcare, and Society.
Oral sex is good for older couples By Hui Liu, Shannon Shen, and Ning Hsieh Is it difficult or even embarrassing to imagine grandparents having oral sex? Indeed, most studies of oral sex focus on adolescents or younger adults, while research on sexuality in late life is primarily focused on sexual dysfunctions from a medical perspective, contributing to the prevailing stereotype that most older adults are sexually inactive or asexual […]
Dissecting the verb “hitchhike” By Anatoly Liberman It is hard to believe how recent the verb hike is. Slightly more than a hundred years ago, The Century Dictionary (CD) found a slot for hike only in the supplement.
Black History Month: a reading list By Eleanor Robson and Mara Sandroff February marks the celebration of Black History Month in the United States and Canada, an annual celebration of achievements by Black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S history. Dr. Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life, which initiated the first variation of Black History month, titled, Negro History Week in 1926 during the second week of February. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History expanded the February celebration in the early 1970’s, renaming it Black History Month, however, it was not until 1976 that every president designated the month of February as Black History Month.
What the Paris Peace Conference can teach us about politics today By Anand Menon, Margaret MacMillan, and Patrick Quinton-Brown One hundred years ago, the treaty of Versailles, the centerpiece of a set of treaties and agreements collectively known as the Paris Peace Settlements, was signed in the glittering hall of mirrors in the former home of France’s Sun King.
The Man who Mapped LSD By Amanda Feilding Ingesting 250 micrograms of the compound, Albert Hofmann experienced strong sensory and cognitive alterations, which reminded him of mystical episodes of his youth. That was the advent of the modern psychedelic age, which would go on to change society fundamentally.
Photography and sex in Amos Badertscher’s Baltimore By Barry Reay The Baltimore photographer Amos Badertscher has been cataloguing queer lives in his city since the 1960s: male sex workers and their girlfriends, the 1990s Baltimore and Washington club culture, transgender people, crack and heroin addiction, and the impact of AIDS. His is the largest extant photographic record of the short lives of hustlers (male sex […]
Simone de Beauvoir at the movies By Lauren Du Graf Does it make you less of an intellectual woman, any less of a feminist, to derive insight and even pleasure from films where women appear as instruments in the service of male desire?
Preventing miscommunication: lessons from cross-cultural couples By Kaisa S. Pietikäinen We might expect that people will have trouble understanding one another when they are using a foreign language, but several studies have found that overt misunderstandings are relatively uncommon in such situations. The reason for this is that when people can anticipate that some problems of understanding may occur, they adapt the way they speak.
150 Years of the Periodic Table 2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the creation of the periodic table, and it has been declared the International Year of the Periodic by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Etymology gleanings for December 2018 and January 2019 By Anatoly Liberman In December and January, the ground, as we know from the poem about two quarrelling little kittens, was covered with frost and snow, so that there has not been too much for me to glean, but a few crumbs were worth picking up.
How to do fact checking By Edwin L. Battistella The actor Cary Grant once said of acting that, “It takes 500 small details to add up to one favorable impression.” That’s true for writing as well—concrete details can paint a picture for a reader and establish credibility for a writer. Details can be tricky, however, and in the swirl of research and the dash of exposition, it is possible to get things wrong: dates, names, quotes, and facts.
How to see inside a pyramid: the power of the mysterious Muon By Nicholas Mee By the mid-1930s, just five fundamental particles were known. This concise collection of building blocks revealed the true nature of matter and light. Three types of particle: electrons, protons, and neutrons, formed the wide array of atoms known to chemistry.
Happy Chinese New Year! By Julie Kleeman This year, the Chinese New Year begins today, February 5th, and people all around the world will be ringing in the year of the Pig. Oxford Chinese Dictionary editor, Julie Kleeman, shares some insight into the traditions associated with the Chinese New Year celebrations.
The best strategies to prevent cancer By Kiashini Sriharan February 4th marks World Cancer Day and this year, the launch of a new three year campaign called “I Am and I Will,” led by the Union for International Cancer Control. The focus lies on emphasising the importance of each person’s role in the fight against cancer, and reinforcing that everyone has the power to reduce the […]
The Treaty of Versailles: A Very Short Introduction By Michael Neiberg National self-determination was supposed to be the answer to the so-called “ethnic problem” of the 19th century. The prewar, multi-ethnic Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian empires, all on the wrong side of history, had disappeared at the end of the First World War never to return.
Based on a true story [podcast] By Diana Walsh Pasulka In the world of film, members of the audience perceive what they see on screen as realistic, even if what they’re seeing is not actually real. The role and influence of academic consultants has been debated as the impact of historical films in the lens of educating a populous is in question. On this episode, […]
Raising daughters changes fathers’ views on gender roles By Joan Costa-Font, Julia Philipp, and mireia borrell-porta Researchers who have looked into attitudes towards gender are divided. While some posit that attitudes can change over the life course, others argue that they are formed before adulthood and remain fairly stable thereafter. We explored this question in greater detail by studying the effect of raising daughters on parental attitudes.
January 2019 (22))
The last shot at “robin” By Anatoly Liberman What else is there to say about robin? Should I mention the fact that “two Robin Redbreasts built their nest within a hollow tree” and raised a family there?
Happy sesquicentennial to the periodic table of the elements By Eric Scerri The periodic table turns 150 years old in the year 2019, which has been appropriately designated as the International Year of the Periodic Table by the UNESCO Organization.
The challenges of representing history in comic book form By Trevor Getz When I wrote my first graphic history, based on the 1876 court transcript of a West African woman who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court, in 2012, I received a diverse and gratifying range of feedback from my fellow historians. Their response was overwhelmingly but not universally positive.
Why terminology and naming is so important in the LGBTQ community By Stephanie Schroeder and Teresa Theophano It is imperative that we explore the evolution of queer identity with regard to mental health, detail experiences that foster resilience and stress-related growth among people, and examine what comes after marginalized sexual orientation and gender identity status is disentangled from their historical association with the concept of mental illness.
Are our fantasies immune from morality? By Anna Cremaldi and Christopher Bartel Immoral fantasies are not uncommon, nor are they necessarily unhealthy. Some are silly and unrealistic, though others can be genuinely disturbing. You might fantasize about kicking your boss in the shins, or having an affair with your best friend’s spouse, or planning the perfect murder.
A possible humble origin of “robin” By Anatoly Liberman Some syllables seem to do more work than they should. For example, if you look up cob and its phonetic variants (cab ~ cub) in English dictionaries, you will find references to all kinds of big and stout things, round masses (lumps), and “head/top.”
Philosopher of The Month: William James (timeline) By OUP Philosophy Team This January the OUP Philosophy team honours William James (1842-1910) as their Philosopher of the Month. James was the founder of pragmatism, an influential Harvard philosopher and scholar on religion and was arguably considered one of the dominant figures in psychology of his day, before Sigmund Freud.
The rightful heirs to the British crown: Wales and the sovereignty of Britain By Sioned Davies The dating and chronology of the tales are problematic – they were probably written down sometime during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, against a background which saw the Welsh struggling to retain their independence in the face of the Anglo-Norman conquest. Although Wales had not developed into a single kingship, it certainly was developing a shared sense of the past, and pride in a common descent from the Britons.
What can history tell us about the future of international relations? By Georg Sørensen and Jørgen Møller According to Cicero, history is the teacher of life (historia magistra vitae). But it seems fair to say that history has not been the teacher of International Relations. The study of international relations was born 100 years ago to make sense of the European international system, which had just emerged from four years of warfare.
The robin and the wren By Anatoly Liberman In Surrey (a county bordering London), and not only there, people used to say: “The robin and the wren are God’s cock and hen” (as though the wren were the female of the robin, but then the wren is indeed Jenny). In Wales, the wren is also considered sacred.
The tortures of adapting Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela’ By Thomas Keymer The term “bestseller” is a bit of a stretch for the eighteenth century, when books were expensive (though widely shared), and information about print-runs is hard to come by. But if any early novel deserves the title, it’s Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, which on publication in 1740 rapidly caught the imagination of Britain, Europe, and indeed America (the Philadelphia printing by Benjamin Franklin was the first unabridged American edition of any novel).
Music in history: overcoming historians’ reluctance to tackle music as a source By Matt Karush Music histories like these do not offer anything as technical as a musicological analysis, yet they treat music as much more than a soundtrack. They delve deeply into the stylistic attributes, technological production and commercial distribution of music, while situating it within broader contexts shaped by migration, empire, and war, as well as by racial, ethnic, and gender hierarchy.
Protest songs and the spirit of America [playlist] By James Sullivan In a rare television interview, Jimi Hendrix appeared on a network talk show shortly after his historic performance at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair. When host Dick Cavett asked the guitarist about the “controversy” surrounding his wild, feedback-saturated version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Hendrix gently demurred.
In the face of such ridicule, why would any sane women run for office? By Gail Ukockis No matter one’s political affiliation, it is worth noting that ridicule has been a strategy of silencing women in politics for centuries.
Cervical cancer and the story-telling cloth in Mali By Eliza Squibb and Kathleen J. Van Buren Around the world, the arts are being used within communities to address local needs. For such projects to be most effective, program participants must: ensure that their program goals are locally-defined; research which art forms, content, and events might best feed into their program goals; develop artistic products that address their goals; and evaluate these products to ensure their efficacy.
Life as a librarian in the Maori community By Moana Munro I wanted to make a difference and support a growing shift to acknowledging and reclaiming Maori language, history, traditions and culture. Due to my work as a Kaitiakipukapuka Maori, I have made many connections with local iwi (tribal groups) and their marae (community spaces). There is a growing awareness that libraries are not just about books; they are community spaces where people can share, learn, and engage with each other.
On Robin and robin By Anatoly Liberman “Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake scuffled down from the bank and said: ‘My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the large-pattern leather ulster’(and by this he meant the Crocodile) ‘will jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson’.
A new geological epoch demands a new politics By John S. Dryzek and Jonathan Pickering Young people have become increasingly vocal in castigating older generations for their failure to act on climate change. University students are at the forefront of campaigns to divest from fossil fuels. A group of 21 young Americans launched a high-profile court case against the US government to pursue a legal right to a stable climate.
How sibling rivalry impacts politics By Bernard Capp Was Ed Miliband right to stand against his brother David for the leadership of the Labour party in 2010? Or should he have stepped aside to give his elder brother a clear run? There was much media debate over his decision to challenge David, and relations between the brothers have remained cool and distant to […]
How women really got the vote By Jad Adams The most important date is 1949, when the populous nations of China, India and Indonesia enfranchised women; that was 40 per cent of the world’s female population. What was driving these enfranchisements? The great movements of women’s suffrage, where tens of nations enfranchised in a few years, are associated with national solidarity and re-organisation.
The continuing life of science fiction By David Seed In 1998 Thomas M. Disch boldly declared in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World that science fiction had become the main kind of fiction which was commenting on contemporary social reality. As a professional writer, we could object that Disch had a vested interest in making this assertion, but virtually every day news items confirm his argument that SF connects with an amazingly broad range of public issues.
How to use the passive voice By Edwin L. Battistella Writing instructors and books often inveigh against the passive voice. My thrift-store copy of Strunk and White’s 1957 Element of Style says “Use the Active Voice,” explaining that it is “more direct and vigorous than the passive.” And George Orwell, in his 1946 essay on “Politics and the English Language,” scolds us to “Never use the passive where you can use the active.”
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Stories behind Oxford’s top 10 carols and Christmas pieces for 2018 By Hannah Smith The OUP hire library is a hive of activity running up to Christmas. Months in advance, the hire librarians receive requests for perusal scores of longer Christmas works. From September, hundreds orders for carols flood in – sometimes up to 15 carols in one order!
Top ten developments in international law in 2018 By Merel Alstein This year was, once again, one of great political turmoil. The international legal order is not immune from the impact of the rise of populism and increasingly strained relations between many of the world’s most powerful states. A positive view is that we are witnessing a period of global re-adjustment. A more negative take is that there is a real risk of the fabric of the international legal order, created so carefully in the aftermath of the First and Second World Wars, unravelling.
OUP Philosophy Philosophy in 2018: a year in review [timeline] By OUP Philosophy Team 2018 has been another significant year for the philosophy world and, as it draws to a close, the OUP philosophy team reflects on what has happened in the field. We’ve compiled a selection of key events, awards, and anniversaries, from the bicentenary of the birth of Karl Marx to Martha Nussbaum winning the Berggruen Prize and the death of the philosopher Mary Midley.
Will Congress penalize colleges that increase tuition? By Edward A. Zelinsky Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa will serve as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee during the upcoming 115th Congress. Senator Grassley’s decision to lead the Finance Committee may have important consequences for the nation’s colleges and universities.
The history of holiday traditions [podcast] One of the best parts of the holiday season is that everyone celebrates it in their own unique way. Some traditions have grown out of novelty, such as eating Kentucky Fried Chicken dinners on Christmas in Japan. Others date back centuries, like hiding your broom on Christmas Eve in Norway to prevent witches and evil spirits from stealing it to ride on.
A Christmas Carol cover book A classic christmas dinner with the Cratchits “There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!”
Carbon tax myths By Gilbert E. Metcalf Over a two-week period in November 2018, the Camp Fire, the deadliest forest fire in California history, burned over 150,000 acres, killed more than 80 people, and destroyed some 18,000 buildings. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report documents the unusually warm and dry conditions that sparked this fire.
Dancing politics in Argentina By Victoria Fortuna Argentina’s rich history of 20th and 21st century social, political, and activist movements looms large in popular imagination and scholarly literature alike. Well-known images include the masses gathered in the Plaza de Mayo outside the iconic pink presidential palace during populist President Juan Domingo Perón’s first terms (1946-1955). This scene was imprinted in popular culture, for better or worse, by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita.
On observing one’s past By Christopher McCarroll Let me share a memory with you. It’s a childhood memory, about an event from when I was around 13 or 14 years old. My father and I are playing soccer together. He is the goalkeeper, standing between the posts, I am the striker, taking shots from outside the box.
A European peace plan turns 325 By Andrew R. Murphy 2018 marks the 325th anniversary of the publication of William Penn’s Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe, which proposed, among other things, the establishment of a European Parliament.
How politicians tried to sell Brexit to us By Steven McKevitt If we examine the two campaigns in terms of their message strategy, i.e. the way in which they sought to influence swing voters, significant differences become apparent.
From “odd,” “strange,” and “bad,” to reclaiming the word “queer” By The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, and Holly Yanacek The adjective queer poses etymological problems. Its sense of “strange, odd, peculiar, eccentric” is given an initial Oxford English Dictionary (OED) date of 1513; thus John Bale in 1550 writes of chronicles that “contayne muche more truthe than their quere legendes.”
Brian Eno’s Music for Airports 40 years later By John T. Lysaker Forty years ago, Brian Eno released Ambient 1: Music for Airports and Virgin-EMI has just given it a deluxe vinyl re-issue. The first work to formally identify itself as “ambient,” it garnered modest attention and a bit of derision; Rolling Stone referred to it as “aesthetic white noise.”
Feeling my oats for the last time this year By Anatoly Liberman Having sown my wild oats (see the post for December 12, 2018), I can now afford the luxury of looking at the origin of the word oat. It would be unfair to introduce the holiday season by discussing a word of unknown etymology. A Christmas carol needs a happy end, and indeed I have something reassuring to say.
OUP Mexico on Place of the Year 2018 By Mara Sandroff Mexico is the 2018 Place of the Year, and we are celebrating its win. To get to know Mexico better, we asked our friends at OUP Mexico what they love most about their country. From fresh guacamole to the warmth of the people, their responses bring Mexico to life.
The merits of and case for Land Value Taxation By Iain McLean and Martin Rogers Politics matters for tax as tax matters for politics. The high-minded Scottish economist Adam Smith had ‘four maxims of taxation’: 1) Tax should be progressive. 2) Tax should be certain, not arbitrary. 3) Tax should be paid at the time most convenient to the contributor. 4) Tax should take as little from the contributors as possible to pay for the state.
A timeline of American music in 1917 By E. Douglas Bomberger The entrance of the United States into World War I on April 6, 1917 inspired a flood of new music from popular songwriters. Simultaneously, the first recording of instrumental jazz was released in April 1917, touching off a fad for the new style and inspiring record companies to promote other artists before year’s end.
Bob Chilcott shares his memories of Sir David Willcocks By bob chilcott I joined King’s College Choir as a boy treble in 1964. This was a time of real energy in the media, recording and concert world, and this possibly brought a different kind of perspective to David’s work with the choir. There were a number of firsts for the choir around this time.
The evolution of the word “terror” By The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, and Holly Yanacek Terror comes into English in the late fourteenth century, partly from Middle French terreur, and partly directly from Latin terror. The word means both “the state of being greatly frightened” and “the cause of that state,” an ambiguity that is central to its future political meanings. In Early Modern English, terror comes to stand for a state of fear provoked on the very edge of the social.
OUP Philosophy 2018 Philosophers of the Year: Schopenhauer, Marx, Merleau-Ponty [quiz] By Panumas King This December, the OUP Philosophy team marks the end of a great year by honouring three of 2018’s top Philosophers of the Month. The immeasurable contributions of Arthur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx and Maurice Merleau-Ponty to the field of philosophy ensure their place among history’s greatest thinkers.
Desires for power: sex scandals and their proliferation By Amanda Lucia The unapologetic authoritarianism of guru-disciple relationship makes it a revealing case study through which to analyze power relations, particularly those related to physical touch and sexuality. As I argue in a recent article, “Guru Sex,” in the guru-disciple relationship there are social conventions surrounding touch, what I call haptic logics.
Place of the Year 2018: Mexico, a year in review By Madeline Johnson In mid-January, a group of divers from the Gran Acuifero Maya (GAM) project connected two underwater caverns in eastern Mexico, revealing what was believed to be the biggest flooded cave on the planet.
What do you value most in life? [quiz] By Christopher Peterson, Martin Seligman, and Stephanie King Everyday choices are guided by a person’s strongest character virtue, and show what they value most in life. This personality quiz,based on a psychometrically validated personality test developed by expert psychologists, will help you discover what your defining character virtue is and how it can help guide your future life choices.
Improvising with light: Nova Express psychedelic light show By Jonathan Weinel Paul Brown is best known for his work as an artist creating visual art that uses self-generating computational processes. Yet before Paul started creating art with computers, he worked with Nova Express, one of the main psychedelic light shows performing in Manchester and the North of England during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Did emotional appeals help to win the Brexit referendum? By Steven McKevitt “[Brexit] was a big fundamental decision: an emotional decision,” said Nigel Farrage in an interview with The Guardian’s John Harris in September 2018. For once at least the former UKIP leader, a key figure in the campaign to Leave the European Union, was 100% right.
The adventures of a nitrogen atom By William B. Irvine You have more than six hundred muscles in your body. Pick one of those muscles at random—say one of the eight in your tongue. Its cells will contain protein fibers. These consist of long chains of amino acids, which in turn contain nitrogen atoms. Now pick, at random, one of those nitrogen atoms.
There’s a map for that: tracing pathways through the ever-changing brain By Jack M. Gorman Within the brain, there are many different substructures, each connected by axons and dendrites to multiple other substructures. In the 1970’s, neuroanatomy courses meant memorizing something that looked as complicated as the New York City subway map.
Making music American: a playlist from 1917 By E. Douglas Bomberger The entrance of the United States into World War I on April 6, 1917 inspired a flood of new music from popular songwriters. Simultaneously, the first recording of instrumental jazz was released in April 1917, touching off a fad for the new style and inspiring record companies to promote other artists before year’s end.
Sowing one’s etymological oats By Anatoly Liberman For many years I have been studying not only the derivation and history of words but also the origin of idioms. No Indo-European forms there, no incompatible vowels, not consonant shifts, but the problems are equally tough.
How does the Supreme Court decide what the Constitution means? By Jay M. Feinman The US Constitution declares itself to be “the supreme law of the land.” Unfortunately, the meaning of the constitutional text is not always clear. Consider the abortion case Roe v. Wade.
How to face the moral challenges of organizations from the inside By Lisa Herzog When you enter your workplace on Monday morning, is it you who enters it, or is it someone else? A mask, a role you play in order to get through the work day? And does that matter? Many people would say it is a matter of choice, or perhaps of aesthetic sensibilities, whether or not you want to play a role in your job, or be true your own self.
Donuts, dogs, and de-stressing: library programs to ease student stress By Katie Bennett To help prepare their patrons for the long hours of studying, writing, and prepping, librarians have created anti-procrastination, stress-relieving events that seek to ease the pain of the finals push. We chatted with librarians from the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada about their specific programs, and the impact they have on students’ health and well-being during this tense time.
How video may influence juror decision-making for police defendants By Margaret C. Stevenson and Cynthia J. Najdowski In recent years, these videos [depicting police brutality] have become increasingly available to the public and widely disseminated, fueling the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement demanding justice for minority victims of police violence. Yet, little research has explored how video is impacting juries when police actually go to trial as defendants.
The past, present, and future of MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States By Gary Totten Gary Totten is Editor-in-Chief of the journal MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. In this interview session, we ask Gary Totten a few questions to learn more about his work, and the coming work for the field and the journal.
Dynasties: tigers and their solitary homes By Charis Edworthy Tasked with closing BBC documentary Dynasties, tigers are very unlike any of the other species featured throughout the series. Find out more about this solitary big cat through our selection of facts about how tigers behave and interact with others.
There are two different types of Jane Austen fans By E.M. Dadlez There is a theory current among many of my fellow Janeites about what kind of a Jane Austen devotee one can be. Either, it is said, one unreservedly cleaves to the Austen of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, or one emphatically embraces the Austen of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.
Have you heard of René Blum? By Judith Chazin-Bennahum Well? Have you? If not, it’s probably because René Blum’s lifelong career in the arts has been safely hidden from the history books. Only his brother Léon Blum, the first Socialist and Jewish Prime Minister of France, received enormous attention. But Judith Chazin-Bennahum knows why René Blum deserves to be remembered: because he was an extraordinary man. Chazin-Bennahum’s book introduces the reader to the world of the Belle Epoque artists and writers, the Dreyfus Affair, the playwrights and painters who reigned supreme during the late 19th century and early 20th century period in Paris. Below she provides us with just a few of his most impressive accomplishments.
Why paying tax can be good news for companies By Colin Mayer For the past 35 years, Ipsos MORI, the UK market research company, has undertaken a survey of which professions in Britain people trust. Each year, they ask 1,000 people whether they trust people in different professions to tell the truth.
A surprisingly religious John Stuart Mill By Timothy Larsen Your most recent book, John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, is in OUP’s ‘Spiritual Lives’ series and is essentially a religious biography of Mill. Mill decided that strictly in terms of proof the right answer to that question of God’s existence is that it is ‘a very probable hypothesis’.
Hasidic drag in American modern dance By Rebecca Rossen On 27 February 1932, the American modern dancer Pauline Koner presented a concert at New York City’s Town Hall. For the occasion, Koner, who was Jewish, premiered Chassidic Song and Dance, a solo in which she portrayed a young Hasidic Jew. Her characterization of an Eastern European Jew was not so different from the other exotics that constituted Koner’s repertory in the 1930s.
Forty years of democratic Spain By William Chislett Spaniards are celebrating with some fanfare the 40th anniversary of their democratic constitution that was approved overwhelmingly in a referendum on 6 December 1978, sealing the end of the 36-year dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, the victor of the country’s civil war. Whichever way one looks at it, Spain has been transformed profoundly since then.
Words always matter By Thomas Holtgraves The run-up to the recent mid-term elections saw commentators across the political spectrum claiming that “words matter.” Much of this was in response to violent acts – in particular the Pittsburgh Synagogue massacre and the pipe bombs sent to Democrats – that some argued was a consequence of Donald Trump’s rhetoric. Words always matter of course. But due to the timing and the stakes – in this instance, an upcoming mid-term election of considerable consequence – it turned into a literal war of words. Language was weaponized to an extent not seen before.
Etymology gleanings for November 2018 By Anatoly Liberman I used to post my “gleanings” on the last Wednesday of every month, but it is perhaps more practical to do it on the first Wednesday of the month following, for, given this schedule, I can also answer the most recent questions. Plants and the home of the Indo-Europeans I used gorse in the previous […]
Kosher beers for Hanukkah By Garrett Oliver I always knew that my family was a little different, but it wasn’t until my mid-teens that I realized exactly how weird we were. An African-American family living in the suburban greenery of Hollis, Queens, at the outskirts of New York City, we thought little of the fact that my father’s big hobby was hunting game birds. With dogs, no less. Often on horseback.
The secrets of newspaper names By Edwin L. Battistella A few years ago, two colleagues of mine traveled around the country documenting what was going on in the newspaper industry, talking to editors, reporters, and publishers in all 50 states. Reading their book, Practicing Journalism: The Power and Purpose of the Fourth Estate, I was struck by the great passion of journalists and their commitment to public service.
Let us now praise human population genetics By Harry Ostrer Exactly who are we anyway? Over the last generation, population genetics has emerged as a science that has made the discovery of human origins, relatedness, and diversity knowable in a way that is simple not possible from studying texts, genealogies, or archeological remains. Viewed as the successor to a race science that promoted the superiority of some human groups over others and that provided a basis for prejudice, forced sterilization, and even extermination, population genetics is framed as a discipline that is based on discovery using the amazing content of fully sequenced human genomes and novel computational methods.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2018 is… By Madeline Johnson Our polls have officially closed, and while it was an exciting race, our Place of the Year for 2018 is Mexico. The country and its people proved their resilience this year by enduring natural disasters, navigating the heightened tensions over immigration and border control, engaging in civic action during an election year, and advancing in the economic sphere. The historic events in Mexico in 2018 have resonated with our followers.
On the Town and the long march for civil rights in performance By Carol J. Oja As we celebrate the golden anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a significant aspect of the struggle for racial equality often gets ignored: racial activism in performance. Actors, singers, and dancers mobilized over the decades, pushing back against racial restrictions that shifted over time, and On the Town of 1944 marked an auspicious but little-recognized moment in that history.
Healthy aging and the Mediterranean diet By Rozalyn Anderson In this Q&A, Rozalyn Anderson, PhD and Co-Editor in Chief of the biological sciences section of The Journals of Gerontology, Series A, sits down with Luigi Fontana, PhD, and Mediterranean Diet expert.
How video may influence juror decision-making for police defendants By Margaret C. Stevenson and Cynthia J. Najdowski In recent years, these videos [depicting police brutality] have become increasingly available to the public and widely disseminated, fueling the launch of the Black Lives Matter movement demanding justice for minority victims of police violence. Yet, little research has explored how video is impacting juries when police actually go to trial as defendants.
Dynasties: painted wolves on the prowl By Charis Edworthy The endangered painted wolves are unusual in the animal kingdom for their cooperative social system. In the penultimate episode of BBC’s Dynasties, Sir David Attenborough is educating us about painted wolves and we’ve gathered some facts for you to enjoy as an accompaniment to the show.
Plato’s mistake By norman solomon It started innocently enough at a lunch-time event with some friends at the Randolph Hotel in the centre of Oxford. ‘The trouble with Islam …’ began some self-opinioned pundit, and I knew where he was going. Simple. Islam lends itself to fanaticism, and that is why Muslims perpetrate so much violence in the name of religion. The pundit saw himself as Christian, and therefore a man of peace, so I had my cue. ‘Look out of the window. Over there in the fork of the road you see the Martyr’s Memorial. In 1555 the Wars of Religion were in full spate, Catholics were burning Protestants at the stake, Protestants were no less fanatical when their turn came, and things got even worse with the Civil War. So why are Muslims any worse?’
Celebrating the Christmas season with choral music By johnny goodson For many people, the celebration of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season begins as they wind their way through St. Olaf College’s buildings during the first weekend of December to attend the annual St. Olaf Christmas Festival.
A better way to prevent the spread of HIV By Richard A. Crosby, Ralph J. DiClemente HIV prevention is now focused on finding at least 90% of the existing cases, putting at least 90% of those people in HIV treatment, and keeping the virus from multiplying in the body among 90% of those people retained in care (known as durable viral suppression). Despite these admirable goals, known as the United Nations’ “90-90-90” programme, HIV transmission rates have not declined since 2011.
November 2018 (66))
Place of the Year 2018 contenders [quiz] By Mara Sandroff Before we announce the 2018 Place of the Year, we are looking back at the diverse places that topped the shortlist. Myanmar, North Korea, Mexico, the International Space Station, and the Pacific Ocean all have unique histories and have topped international headlines this year. Take this quiz to see how well you know each of our contenders.
Improving immunizations for older people By Barbara Resnick The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends multiple immunizations for older adults, including flu, two pneumonia vaccines, vaccination against herpes zoster, and a one-time tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis vaccine. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 63% of annual hospitalizations, and 90% of influenza-related mortality, occurs in people over 65. Fortunately influenza vaccinations can prevent hospitalizations related to respiratory illness and even more importantly, vaccination may prevent an increased risk for stroke and myocardial infarction that occurs following the flu.
Travels with “gorse” in search of its kin By Anatoly Liberman In the long history of this blog, I have rarely touched on the origin of plant names, but there have been posts on mistletoe (December 20, 2006) and ivy (January 11, 2017). Some time ago, a letter came with a question about the etymology of gorse, and I expect to devote some space to this plant name and its two synonyms.
the psychology of music What can psychology tell us about music? By Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis Music can intensify moments of elation and moments of despair. It can connect people and it can divide them. The prospect of psychologists turning their lens on music might give a person the heebie-jeebies, however, conjuring up an image of humorless people in white lab coats manipulating sequences of beeps and boops to make grand pronouncements about human musicality.
Meet the editors of International Studies Quarterly: a Q&A with Brandon Prins and Krista Wiegand By Brandon Prins and Krista E. Wiegand Brandon Prins and Krista E. Wiegand will become the new lead editors of International Studies Quarterly, the flagship journal of the International Studies Association, in 2019. We asked them about trends in international studies scholarship and teaching, what global issues aren’t getting the attention they should, and their goals for the journal.
Dynasties: lions with pride By Charis Edworthy Lions are arguably the most respected and feared creatures of the animal world. It is no surprise that their group structure has once more been examined in BBC’s Dynasties.
Immigration, the US Census, and political power By Michael Anthony Lewis As I write these lines, a key court case has begun in New York. That case centers on the US Census. At issue is the Trump administration’s addition of a question to the Census which will ask people whether they’re US Citizens.
The politics of “political” – how the word has changed its meaning By The Keywords Project, Colin MacCabe, and Holly Yanacek Over the course of history, the word “political” has evolved from being synonymous with “public sphere” or “good government” to meaning “calculating” or “partisan.” How did we get here? This adapted excerpt from Keywords for Today: A 21st Century Vocabulary explains the evolution. The problems posed by political result from a combination of the term’s semantic shift over the last several centuries and the changing face of post-national politics that have become so important since mid-twentieth century.
Reflections on anthologising By john rutter The year was 1968 and I was a young postgraduate music student walking down King’s Parade in Cambridge when I saw the revered figure of David Willcocks, director of King’s College Choir, striding towards me. He had rock-star status in Cambridge and beyond, and although I knew him from his weekly harmony and counterpoint classes which I had attended, I wasn’t quite sure whether to nod politely, say ‘good afternoon, Mr Willcocks’, or hurry past hoping he hadn’t noticed me. Fortunately he spoke first.
National Day of Listening [podcast] In 2008, StoryCorps created World Listening Day for citizens of all beliefs and backgrounds to record, preserve, and share the stories of their lives. This year, we invite you to celebrate by listening to our podcast, The Oxford Comment.
alcohol and alcoholism Anywhere, anytime: children’s exposure to alcohol marketing By Tim Chambers and Louise Signal Alcohol and Alcoholism publishes papers on the biomedical, psychological, and sociological aspects of alcoholism and alcohol research, provided that they make a new and significant contribution to knowledge in the field.
What is the role of a doctor in 2018? By Binay Gurung The winner of the Clinical Placement Competition 2018 is Binay Gurung. We asked Binay to tell us more about the inspiration behind his entry, and about his time in the Nepalese hospital featured in his picture.
The politics of food [podcast] Gearing up for Thanksgiving and the holiday season brings excitement for decorations and holiday cheer, but it can also bring on a financial burden – especially where food is concerned. The expectation to host a perfect holiday gathering complete with a turkey and trimmings can cause unnecessary pressure on those who step up to host family and friends.
Plant lore: gorse By Anatoly Liberman In the long history of this blog, I have rarely touched on the origin of plant names, but there have been posts on mistletoe (December 20, 2006) and ivy (January 11, 2017). Some time ago, a letter came with a question about the etymology of gorse, and I expect to devote some space to this plant name and its two synonyms.
It’s time to raise the retirement age again By Edward A. Zelinsky Since the election, we Americans have engaged in a healthy debate about the Electoral College. My instincts in this debate are those of an institutional conservative: Writing our Constitution from scratch today, we would not have designed the Electoral College as it has evolved. However, institutions become embedded in societies. To further this debate, consider these three contentions often heard today about the Electoral College.
How well do you know William Godwin? [quiz] By Panumas King In October, William Godwin (1756–1836) was featured as our Philosopher of the Month. He was a leading political philosopher and public intellectual during the crisis in British politics in the 1790s and achieved fame with the publication of his treatise ‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’.
What is “toxic” about anger? By Ephrem Fernandez What is anger? In essence, anger is a subjective feeling tied to perceived wrongdoing and a tendency to counter or redress that wrongdoing in ways that may range from resistance to retaliation. Like sadness and fear, the feeling of anger can take the form of emotion, mood, or temperament.
What Matthew Shepard’s interment taught us about religion By Brett Krutzsch On 26 October 2018, twenty years after two men in Wyoming brutally murdered gay college student Matthew Shepard, the Washington National Cathedral hosted a service to inter Shepard’s ashes in a permanent memorial. More than four thousand people attended the service that was co-led by the Reverend Gene Robinson, the first openly-gay elected bishop of […]
On animal sight and behaviour By Michael Land I have spent the last fifty years studying the eyes and vision of animals, including man. During that time there have been many discoveries and ideas from vision research that have intrigued me, most of these are known to other scientists, but not more widely.
Detroit music [quiz] By Mark Slobin Detroit is known as the birthplace of Motown Records, but there’s more to the musical history of the city than just that, due to the key role of the public schools in music training, the impact on music of the auto companies and the media, and the huge variety of ethnic music-making across Detroit’s 139 square miles.
A lesson in allegorical storytelling [podcast] By Howard Schwartz National Novel Writing Month challenges writers from all over the world to complete a 50,000-word novel within the month of November. To help guide our readers who have taken on the challenge, we reached out to three-time National Jewish Book Award winner Howard Schwartz. Howard offers a deeper reading of “The Lost Princess,” and his analysis demonstrates the power of allegories as literary devices.
Place of the Year 2018 nominee spotlight: International Space Station By Madeline Johnson The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest single structure humans have ever put into space. The spacecraft is in orbit 240 miles above Earth, and is both a home and a science laboratory for astronauts and cosmonauts. The station took 10 years and more than 30 missions to assemble, beginning in November 1998 when […]
International law regarding use of force By Alexandra Hofer Through the power of precedent, international incidents involving the use of force help to clarify the meaning and interpretation of jus ad bellum, the corpus of rules arising from international custom and the United Nations Charter that govern the use of force. UN Charter Article 2(4) forbids states from using force in their international relations. Exceptions to this prohibition are acts taken in self-defence under UN Charter Article 51 or under the auspices of a UN Security Council authorization to use force under Article 42. States can also consent that another state use force in its territory, for example to combat rebel or terrorist actors. In certain cases, state practice gives rise to new interpretations of existing rules or novel exceptions emerge.
Dynasties: emperor of all penguins By Charis Edworthy Of the seventeen species of penguin in existence, the emperor penguin is arguably the most well-known and heavily documented. In the second post of our Dynasties blog series, we’ll be exploring how emperor penguins build their dynasties.
Graffiti artists are gaining recognition—and rights By K. E. Gover Graffiti used to be thought of primarily as vandalism—as a furtive, illegal activity that defaced public property. It was seen as both a reflection of and contributor to urban decay. However, several recent high-profile lawsuits involving what is now called “exterior aerosol art” reveal just how far graffiti has advanced in cultural esteem and recognition as a legitimate art form.
Big money, dark money, and the two Gilded Ages By Robert E. Mutch The 2018 midterm elections were the most expensive in history, and much of the money that financed them was undisclosed, or “dark.” There has always been big money in elections, of course, and some of it has always been dark. In the first Gilded Age, all campaign contributions were made in secret.
Why is it so difficult to throw away fetuses? By Tinne Claes It has been five years since I started my research on anatomy in 19th century Belgium, but I remember my first visit to an anatomical collection like it was yesterday. It was the beginning of autumn and the temperature was cool enough to cause a slight numbness in my hands. I was not yet used to the piercing smell of alcohol and formaldehyde; a smell that soaked into my clothes and skin, and that I immediately associated with death.
George Balanchine: mythology and reality By James Steichen There are few choreographers with more influence in the world of ballet than George Balanchine. Over three decades after his death, his ballets are performed somewhere on the planet virtually every day. Two prominent dance institutions continue his legacy—the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet—and dancers who worked alongside him lead important companies and schools across America from Miami to Seattle.
Time for new targets to treat blocked arteries By Heather Y. Small and Sarah Brown The human cardiovascular system relies on continuous circulation to ensure it functions to meet the needs of the body. Like a fish must remain in water, body organs and tissues require a constant supply of blood. A loss of blood flow, dependent on severity and duration, can result in a loss of oxygen,
Place of the Year 2018 nominee spotlight: Myanmar By Madeline Johnson Extreme violence and discrimination has led to a humanitarian crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. Throughout 2017 and 2018, Rohingya refugees have been crossing the border into Bangladesh in fear of their lives. United Nations officials have described the crisis as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” In 2018, mid-October reports revealed that the number of […]
Twelve philosophy books everyone should read: from Plato to Foucault [slideshow] By OUP Philosophy Team This month, to mark World Philosophy Day, we’ve curated a reading list of historical texts by philosophers that shaped the modern world and who had important things to say about the issues that we wrestle with today such as freedom, authority, equality, sexuality, and the meaning of life.
Why We Fall for Toxic Leaders By Jean Lipman-Blumen The Oxford Word of the Year is a word or expression chosen to reflect the passing year in language. Every year, the Oxford Dictionaries team debates over a selection of candidates for Word of the Year, choosing the one that best captures the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of that particular year. The 2018 Oxford Word […]
Place of the Year 2018 nominee spotlight: Mexico By Madeline Johnson Mexico has had an eventful 2018, both on the national and international stage. With conversations centered on immigration, natural disasters, economic advancements, and political protests, the country and its people have been front and center. On November 5, Mexico City received their first wave of migrants from a large group of people travelling through Mexico […]
The Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine is recruiting! We’re looking for medics to join our team to contribute to the eleventh edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine. Unique among medical texts, the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine is a complete and concise guide to the core areas of medicine that also encourages thinking about the world from the patient’s perspective, offering […]
Stan Lee on what is a superhero By Stan Lee What is a superhero? What is a supervillain? What are the traits that define and separate these two? What cultural contexts do we find them in? And why we need them? Editors Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and Peter Coogan, PhD collected a series of essays examining these questions from both major comic book writers and editors, such as Stan Lee and Danny Fingeroth, and leading academics in psychology and cultural studies, such as Will Brooker and John Jennings.
Sick of sickness! Recovering a happier history By Hannah Newton Horrible histories are not just for young readers: adult historians also seem to have a penchant for painful tales of disaster and distress. This is especially apparent in the realm of medical history, where it has been said that before the birth of modern pharmaceutics the complete recovery of health was so rare that it barely existed as a concept.
Place of the Year 2018 nominee spotlight: Pacific Ocean By Madeline Johnson A study in March of 2018 revealed that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), the world’s largest collection of ocean garbage, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles. That’s twice the size of Texas, or three times the size of France. The mass weighs 88,000 tons, a number which is 16 times higher than […]
Resisting slavery By Susan Valladares Once known by the name of “Bristol”, he gained notoriety as “Three-Fingered Jack”; the slave (anti)hero whose actions so fascinated the eighteenth-century imagination that his story was variously told and retold in popular treatises, novels, chapbooks, and plays.
World antibiotic awareness: are we doing enough? By Kiashini Sriharan Microorganisms resistant to treatment pose as one of the biggest threats to global healthcare and have been identified to be present globally. This current healthcare crisis is more generally known as antimicrobial resistance, and refers to the ability of bacteria, viruses or parasites to stop an antimicrobial from working.
Remaking Europe after the First World War By Conan Fischer In the wake of the November 11, 1918 armistice between Germany and the Allies, high-minded idealism confronted a mélange of very unpleasant realities. All the belligerents had claimed to be fighting for a noble set of aims, and the United States President, Woodrow Wilson, went further. He proposed the creation of a supranational agency, the League of Nations, to govern international relations in a pacific age of transparent, altruistic diplomacy.
Russian disinformation – How worried should we be? By Yevgeniy Golovchenko The Russian government’s use of disinformation, i.e. intentionally misleading content, has raised serious concern not only among Russia’s neighbors, but also in Western nations more broadly. Responses to the perceived threat range from attempts to monitor the disinformation, to U.S. court’s legal indictment of Russian individuals and companies.
Remembering the final moments of The Great War [excerpt] By Peter Hart 11 November 2018 marks 100 years since the end of the Great War. Victory came at a great cost, seeing millions of fatalities in one of the deadliest wars in history. In the below excerpt from The Last Battle, World War I historian Peter Hart shares testimonies about the war’s end from the men who fought until the eleventh hour.
Dynasties: chimpanzees and their community By Charis Edworthy Sir David Attenborough returns to our screens tonight narrating a new nature documentary: Dynasties. We will be starting the series with one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, who we diverged from roughly six million years ago: chimpanzees.
How disconnecting from digital pressures can boost learning By Jennifer Rauch If we do “reflect on our phone use in society” and make student success the top priority, we can summon the collective will to realize the benefits of smartphone constraints. This means overcoming some logistical obstacles.
The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing Existentialist By Jonathan Webber At the end of the second world war, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre launched the “existentialist offensive,” an ambitious campaign to shape a new cultural and political landscape. The word ‘existentialism’ was a popular neologism with no clear meaning. They wanted to profit from its media currency by making their philosophy its definition. Sartre’s talk “Existentialism is a Humanism” was an instant legend.
Place of the Year 2018 nominee spotlight: North Korea By Madeline Johnson North Korea dominated the headlines in 2018 with historic meetings and heightened tensions over nuclear threats. This year Kim Jong-Un, Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Supreme Leader of North Korea, has met with multiple world leaders, and has been vocal about his stance on the North Korean nuclear program. This has ignited […]
Promoting digital technologies for disease prevention among Latinos By Yoshimi Fukuoka and Julie Hooper Half of Americans live with at least one chronic disease, such as diabetes, hypertension, or heart disease. Chronic diseases take an economic toll and account for a large proportion of health care costs.
The 1950s is a vanished world, but have we made social progress? By Anthony F. Heath Britain has seen huge social changes over the course of my lifetime. The world of the 1950s, when I grew up in a modest suburb of Liverpool, has vanished forever. The material standard of living we enjoyed then would nowadays seem to be distinctly substandard. We didn’t have a family car; I shared a bedroom with my older brother; and there was no television set, though we did have a telephone – a rather unfamiliar contraption which we were all too scared to use. There never seemed to be quite enough to eat and we were all rather skinny. There was no problem of obesity in our family, but we didn’t grow particularly tall. Today’s younger generation tower over us.
Ypres: the city of ghosts By Mark Connelly and Stefan Goebel Today’s Ieper still has thousands of British visitors, with tourism as important to the economy of the city as it was in the twenties. But, in addition to the British, the Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders are now coming in even greater numbers, as well as people from many other nations fascinated and intrigued by meeting the last great eyewitness left of the Great War: the landscape. Modern Ieper is a world forged and shaped in the furnace of a conflict that ended one hundred years ago this November.
Attacking a loaf of bread By Anatoly Liberman This post returns to loaf, noun, which, incidentally, has nothing to do with loaf, verb (but see the picture)! Since loaf, from hlaif-, appears to be a more ancient word for “bread” (as noted in the posts for October 17 and October 24), people must have coined bread, to designate the product that was different from the old one.
Place of the Year 2018 Shortlist: vote for your pick By Madeline Johnson Oxford’s Place of the Year campaign pulls together the most significant places and events of the year. The 2018 shortlist of nominees brings to light impactful moments in global history, influencing the environment, international relations, humanitarian crises, and space exploration. Explore each of our locations and vote for who think should be recognized as Oxford’s […]
Facing the challenges of serving the public as an academic By Maria Lee What does it mean to be an academic? To be an academic working in environmental law? One part of our multi-faceted role is what I am calling “public service”—trying to make our small portion of the world a slightly better place. Public service is difficult. Its demands, however, are rather similar to those we face […]
The German Revolution of 1918-19: democratic ancestry or subjective liberation? By Moritz Föllmer The German Revolution of 1918-19 has never been easy to identify with, and its hundredth anniversary once again throws this difficulty into sharp relief. While it is salutary in principle to appreciate Germany’s often forgotten democratic history, there is a price to pay for downplaying the complexity of the transition from wartime to postwar society in favour of a political narrative for our times.
Stress management in the work place [infographic] By Anne Marie Turner Employees in the modern work force are faced with obstacles every day that prompt stress. These work-related stressors can lead to different kinds of strains that affect both the health and the well-being of the employee and the organization. Various types of stress management interventions, guided by organizational development and work stress frameworks, may be […]
The fiddle and the city By Mark Slobin The violin holds special importance to me as part of my upbringing in Detroit, both as part of the musical world of my Jewish community and as an example of the citywide belief in music education. The Detroit that I grew up in had a pulsating inner musical life from the many populations that Detroit attracted to and housed in its vast industrial landscape. For the Jews, the violin literally had a special resonance.
Life science documentaries Did that moving episode of Blue Planet II pique your interest? Are you excited to discover the secrets of animal families in Dynasties? Delve deeper into key themes raised in these documentaries by exploring our existing blog series.
The history of The Declaration of the Rights of the Child By James Marten Virtually every news cycle seems to feature children as victims of military actions, gun violence, economic injustice, racism, sexism, sexual abuse, hunger, underfunded schools, unbridled commercialism—the list is endless. Each violates our sense of what childhood ought to be and challenges what we believe childhood has always been. But the ideas that shape our notions of childhood emerged less than a century ago. Reformers and policy-makers had struggled toward creating a modern childhood since the 1830s.
Does the personalisation of politics have any benefits for democracy? By Jack Corbett and Wouter Veenendaal Democracy in the twenty-first century appears to have reached a fork in the road. On the one hand, over recent decades we have witnessed an explosion in the popularity of democratic norms and values around the globe to the extent that all but two countries label themselves as democracies, which if nothing else indicates how […]
Learning from nature to save the planet By Tony Prescott Our planet is out of balance as the result of our technologies. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that global temperatures could reach a frightening plus +3° by the end of the century, our ocean ecosystems risk being overwhelmed by non-degrading plastic waste, open rubbish tips scar the landscape and pollute our water supplies […]
A fresh look at clichés By Edwin L. Battistella Recently a friend gave me a copy of It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Clichés by lexicographer Orin Hargraves. I was intrigued to read it because I had been wondering about clichés for some time.
Are we misinformed or disinformed? By Gill Bennett “Disinformation” is a common term at present, in the media, in academic and political discourse, along with related concepts like “fake news”. But what does it really mean? Is it different from misinformation, propaganda, deception, “fake news” or just plain lies? Is it always bad, or can it be a useful and necessary tool of statecraft? And how should we deal with it?
From the archive: revolutionary discoveries and celebrated voices [timeline] By Charis Edworthy From Darwin to Desmond Tutu, and numerous Nobel Prize winners in between, discover which well-known academics have published in our journals over the course of 140 years through our interactive timeline.
What to do about Syria? By Reed M. Wood The chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria on 7 April 2018 by the military forces of Bashar al-Assad brought renewed calls for international action to protect civilians and resolve the brutal internal conflict that has persisted for over seven years and produced as many as half a million deaths. Despite calls for action by many Western governments, direct action and intervention have generally been in short supply, perhaps in part because Western observers do not perceive Assad as a particular threat or sufficiently villainous to warrant strong action.
Concern for global democracy By Erica Frantz A new report by the Democracy Project finds that a majority of Americans view democracy in the United States as weak and getting weaker. Even worse, nearly half of Americans express concerns that the United States is in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country.”
Are you ballot ready? The 2018 midterm elections could see the highest turnout for a midterm since the mid-1960s, another time of cultural and social upheaval. Michael McDonald, Professor of Political Science at the University of Florida, predicted to NPR that “between 45-50 percent of eligible voters will cast a ballot.”
Time to abandon “beyond reasonable doubt” By Adrian keane and paul mckeown In England and many other countries around the world, the standard of proof to be met by the prosecution in order for the jury to convict an accused is proof “beyond reasonable doubt” or proof that makes the jury “sure” of guilt. These phrases are supposed to convey a very high standard of proof.
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Etymology gleanings for October 2018 By Anatoly Liberman I have received a letter with a query about whether kibosh might be a borrowing from Hebrew. Both the Hebrew and the Yiddish hypotheses on kibosh are discussed in detail in the book by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little on this intractable word (Routledge, 2018).
Twenty-five years of the medieval area with the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: A Q & A with Dr. Henry Summerson By Henry Summerson Dr Henry Summerson was a research editor for the medieval area (pre-1500) from 1993, and in charge of the medieval era Dictionary between 2004 and his retirement at the end of September. Here he answers questions about the past achievements and future prospects of the Dictionary’s coverage of Britain’s early history.
How digital artists are questioning artificial intelligence By Jonathan Weinel Steve Goodman is best known for his work DJing as Kode9 and running the Hyperdub record label, one of the pioneering forces of UK bass culture and dubstep since 2004. Through releases by Kode9 & The Spaceape, and Burial, Hyperdub captured a sound that embodied the high-pressure claustrophobia and hyper-surveillance of urban environments in the 21st Century.
The Heart-Head-Hands Approach to Building Inclusive Classrooms (infographic) By Stephen Mann Increasingly, teachers are being asked to adopt their classrooms to include students with a wide backgrounds and capabilities. The placement of students with diverse abilities in a regular school does not guarantee high-quality education, though. In order to help teachers build an inclusive classroom we have created this guide using the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Who remembers Goffman? By Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz Erving Goffman died 36 years ago, in 1982, but his work is still frequently cited (Google Scholar documents 260,399 citations as of this writing) and he is certainly remembered by many. This is a meditation on when we remember to think of (and credit) the originator of an idea, and when we don’t, and what difference it makes.
Does poverty cause terrorism? By Todd Sandler On 11 September 2001 (9/11), some 17 years ago, four hijackings of US commercial planes by al-Qaida terrorists led to almost 3,000 deaths and over 6,000 injuries, and profoundly changed our sense of security.
Philosopher of The Month: William Godwin [timeline] By Panumas King This October, the OUP Philosophy team honours William Godwin (1756–1836) as their Philosopher of the Month. Godwin was a moral and political philosopher and a prolific writer, best-known for his political treatise ‘An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice’ and ‘Things as they were or Caleb Williams’, a political allegorical novel.
Animal of the Month: More to the bee than just honey By Sydney Cameron Great truths are often so pervasive or in such plain view as to be invisible. This is the case with bees and their food plants, the world’s quarter million flowering plant species, especially because it’s easy to overlook small things in a world in which whales and elephants hold the imagination of the public. Little […]
Why major in dance? A case for dance as a field of study in universities in 2018 By Allegra Romita and Nancy Romita Parents, provosts, and authors of recent articles/discussion boards are questioning the purpose or viability for dance programs in contemporary university structures. An article in Dance USA from 2015 presents a narrow view of the role of collegiate dance. Understanding the wider lens on dance education, it can be an excellent path to career success. College programs in dance transcend training an elite artist/athlete.
Place of the Year 2018 Longlist: vote for your pick By Madeline Johnson With 2018 nearing an end, we are excited to announce the longlist for the Oxford University Press Place of the Year. From a cave in Chiang Rai, to historical political summits, to young activists marching for their lives, we explored far and wide for our contenders. Now it’s your time to choose. Learn more about […]
Technology, privacy, and politics [podcast] All eyes are on the U.S. political landscape heading into the 2018 Midterm Elections in November. With all 435 seats of the House of Representatives and about one-third of Senate spots up for grabs, the next decade of politics lies in the hands of voters.
Returning to our daily bread [Part II] By Anatoly Liberman Bread may not be a very old word, but it is old enough, and, whatever its age, its origin has not been discovered. However, the harder the riddle, the more interesting it is to try to solve it. Even if the answer evades us, it does not follow that we have learned nothing along the way.
On White Fury By Christer Petley By 1807, Simon Taylor’s anger was running hot. This old slaveholder was, by then, approaching seventy, and the abolitionist campaign, which he had vehemently opposed since it first began two decades earlier, was on the brink of a major success.
It Keeps Me Seeking By Andrew Steane Sometimes spouses will look back on the time of their getting to know one another and say, half-jokingly, that on a given occasion one was putting the other to the test.
The language of victory: 8 ancient phrases used by Emperor Justinian By Madeline Woda When writing about the Justinian era, historian Peter Heather chooses to use both Greek and Latin terminology as a way to bring Justinian’s legacy to life. We’ve listed out some of the terms that help detail the political and martial history of Emperor Justinian.
Will Egypt have another uprising? By Bruce K. Rutherford Egypt is well-known for its exceptionally rich history. For many, the country is synonymous with ancient wonders such as the pyramids of Giza and the royal tombs of Luxor. However, in January 2011, modern Egypt suddenly leapt to the center of the public’s imagination. Over a period of 18 days, millions of Egyptians engaged in sit-ins, strikes, and demonstrations as well as pitched battles with the security forces.
So you think music is beneficial for people with dementia? By Orii McDermott and Felicity Anne Baker Social media often highlights how music awakens strong emotional reactions in people with dementia. Music activities are generally regarded as inclusive and enjoyable for all, and there is a strong sense among the general public that “music is good for people with dementia”.
Food labels: Can they help us to pick healthy portions? By Hannah May Brown From packaged food products on the supermarket shelves to calories listed on menus in fast food outlets, food labels and the nutrition information they contain are all around us. But what effect do these labels have on consumers? Does food marketing influence what you actually eat?
From Darwin to DNA: evolution, genomics, and conservation of the Galapagos giant tortoises By Evelyn Jensen, Joshua Miller, Michael Russello, and Adalgisa Caccone Established in 1903, Journal of Heredity covers organismal genetics across a wide range of disciplines and taxa. Articles include such rapidly advancing fields as conservation genetics of endangered species, population structure and phylogeography, molecular evolution and speciation, molecular genetics of disease resistance in plants and animals, genetic biodiversity and relevant computer programs.
Technology picks up its sword in the service of social justice By John G. McNutt Most Americans think of activism primarily in the context of and petitioning our elected representatives. It’s true that elected officials do have an important influence on the development of policies and programs that affect the lives of Americans—issues like immigration, reproductive rights, gun violence, mass incarceration, sexual harassment, and the opioid crisis are front and center in November’s election.
Two Cheers for Inconsistency? : Orwell’s Doublethink By David Dwan How concerned should we be about consistency? The answer if you were George Orwell would seem to be not very much. Orwell was, to use one of his own phrases, a “change-of-heart man.”
The ABCs of successful aging By Alan D. Castel Despite some people saying that the secret to longevity is all in the genes (so pick your parents wisely!), there is a lot we can to do age well. In fact, most of these secrets are really good things to do at any age in life.
Sitting down with author and historian Colin G. Calloway By Colin G. Calloway The National Book Award is an American literary prize given out each year by the Nation Book Foundation. Five judging panels made up of writers, literary critics, librarians, and booksellers determine a long list, award finalists, and award winners for a selection of categories. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with historian Colin G. Calloway, whose book The Indian World of George Washington has been long listed for the Nonfiction National Book Award. In the interview below, Colin discusses the research behind his book, the complicated relationship between George Washington and Native Americans, and his one key takeaway from Washington’s life.
Ask OUP: we answer your questions about US elections In September, we asked our followers to send us questions regarding the U.S. midterm elections using the hashtag #AskOUP. We compiled a list of our favorite questions, and answered them below.
Not by “bread” alone [Part I] By Anatoly Liberman Two recent posts (part 1 and part 2) were devoted to the origin of the word bride, and it occurred to me that a quick look at a few other br-words might be of some use. Breed, brood, and bread have been more than once invoked in trying to explain the etymology of the troublesome Germanic noun. […]
Alain Locke, Charles S. Johnson, and the establishment of Black literature [excerpt] By Jeffrey C. Stewart In March of 1924, Charles S. Johnson, sociologist and editor of Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, approached Alain Locke with a proposal: a dinner was being organized with the intention to secure interracial support for Black literature. Locke, would attend the dinner as “master of ceremonies,” with the responsibility of finding a common language between Black writers and potential White allies.
Alexander the Great in numbers [quiz] By Frank L. Holt Have you got Alexander’s number? The Treasures of Alexander the Great: How One Man’s Wealth Shaped the World explains the career of the Macedonian king by exploring a set of mind-blowing numbers. Test your knowledge of Alexander’s life with this quiz!
Oscar Wilde’s lecture tour of the US By Michèle Mendelssohn After Oscar Wilde graduated from Oxford, he moved to London and fell into unemployment and although he tried his hand at different jobs he couldn’t find any stable source of income. However, he did become friends with some of the celebrities of the day and attracted the attention of the caricaturist of Punch magazine, which eventually brought him to the attention of theatre promoter Richard D’Oyly Carte.
The embracement of student-created visuals in the music room By Kim Milai When students walk into a music room, there is an opportunity to inspire them with a visually stimulating learning environment. This doesn’t mean filling every wall and space with dozens of posters, papers, and colors. This means creating a visual environment which acknowledges your students’ participation and input into the class.
Oxford Think Festival: 10th – 18th November 2018 By Kim Behrens Oxford University Press is delighted to once again partner with Blackwell’s Oxford to host a weekend of talks and discussions. After three successful years as the Oxford Philosophy Festival, the event returns this year as the Oxford Think Festival.
Environmental law and the core of legal learning: framing the future of environmental lawyers By Eloise Scotford and Steven Vaughan Environmental law has not been taught or seen as a ‘core’ legal subject, giving environmental law academics freedom to teach the subject in many different ways. This structural sidelining, however, belies important questions about how teaching environmental law relates to the core of legal learning. We are not suggesting that there is a core of […]
Ants are picky when using tools for foraging By Gábor Lorinczi Tool use, once considered unique to our species, is now known to be widespread in the animal kingdom. It has been reported in most of the major taxonomic groups, with notable exceptions being myriapods, amphibians and reptiles. In insects, one of the best documented examples of tool use is seen in members of the ant […]
The ‘New Woman’ & American literature In late 19th and early 20th-century America, a new image of womanhood emerged that began to shape public views and understandings of women’s role in society. With the suffrage and labor movements, the “new woman” emerged. These modern women were attending colleges, rejecting domesticity, asserting themselves politically in public, and becoming a part of the cultural landscape through literature. As the 12th century progresses, the voices of women pushed for more self-discovery and freedom from society’s traditional limitations.
Financial capability for all By Margaret Sherraden Millions of U.S. families find themselves in precarious financial circumstances, living on the wrong side of the growing income and wealth divide. Despite the recent economic recovery, average wages buy about the same amount of goods and services as they did 40 years ago. The federal minimum wage, adjusting for inflation, buys less today than it did in 1968. Income increases have mostly gone to top income earners. Meanwhile, household wealth is even more concentrated.
Tips for Surviving and Thriving During the Foundation Programme By Catriona Hall, George Collins, Nina Hjelde, and Tim Raine As the new university year begins, many newly-qualified trainee doctors will have already started their training for The Foundation Programme. The UK Foundation Programme (FP) is a two-year standard training programme, established in 2005, for all UK trainee doctors which builds upon medical school training with the generic skills and capabilities needed during specialty training. […]
Consent on campus minisode [podcast] By Jes Lukes As students head back to university to start their fall semester, the conversation of consent will no doubt surround them on campus. But what can actually be defined as consent? Where do students learn what consent actually means? On this minisode of The Oxford Comment, we hop on a call with Jes Lukes, co-owner of “A Room of One’s Own” an independent book store in the heart of college town Madison, Wisconsin.
Moral resilience – how to navigate ethical complexity in clinical practice By Cynda Rushton Clinicians are constantly confronted with ethical questions. Recent examples of healthcare workers caught up in high-profile best-interest cases are on the rise, but decisions regarding the allocation of the clinician’s time and skills, or scare resources such as organs and medication, are everyday occurrences. The increasing pressure of “doing more with less” is one that […]
Animal of the month: the evolution of the imperfect honeybee By Robin Crewe and Robin Moritz Honey bee colonies have historically been considered as marvels of evolution resulting in perfectly cooperative and harmonious societies, and exemplars of what we humans might achieve. This is an appealing image to many, but it is of course a caricature. Nobody is perfect, not even honey bees.
Are you an informed voter? [quiz] With the 2018 U.S. midterm elections quickly approaching, it’s important that Americans feel prepared to enter the voting booths. To help our U.S. readers feel better prepared on election day, we created a quiz to test your knowledge on key political issues.
Coming together side by side: avocational musicians performing with professionals By Amy Nathan “It’s such a big deal for non-pros to come in and play with the orchestra, throwing themselves into the ‘deep end.’ Our orchestra musicians are respectful and supportive of them,” says Larissa Agosti, who coordinates the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra’s Rusty Musicians and B-Sides programs, which let avocational musicians perform side-by-side with this Canadian orchestra’s pros.
Sitting down with author and historian Colin G. Calloway By Colin G. Calloway The National Book Award is an American literary prize given out each year by the Nation Book Foundation. Five judging panels made up of writers, literary critics, librarians, and booksellers determine a long list, award finalists, and award winners for a selection of categories. We recently had the opportunity to catch up with historian Colin G. Calloway, whose book The Indian World of George Washington has been long listed for the Nonfiction National Book Award. In the interview below, Colin discusses the research behind his book, the complicated relationship between George Washington and Native Americans, and his one key takeaway from Washington’s life.
The bride all dressed in white bows out [Part II] By Anatoly Liberman So where did the word bride come from? Granted, the initial meaning of bride is not entirely clear, but neither is it hopelessly opaque. Whatever the interpretation, the bride has always been a woman who will soon become a wife, and the mystery surrounding the sought-after etymology comes as a surprise, regardless of whether the initial sense of the noun was “the woman to be married,” “the woman after the consummation of the marriage rite,” or even “daughter-in-law” ~ “a new female member of the adopting family.”
Of gutters and ecosystems: the 50th anniversary of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act By Ellen Wohl “Rivers are the gutters down which flow the ruins of continents.” – Luna B. Leopold Luna Leopold understood that rivers are far more than gutters. In a 1964 textbook, he wrote figuratively of the role of river channels in transporting sediment to lower elevations. In other writings, however, Leopold’s understanding of rivers was closer to […]
Dystopia: an update By Gregory Claeys True aficionados of the earthly apocalypse cannot fail to have noted the deepening pessimism in discourses on what is often euphemistically referred to as “climate change”, but what should be designated “environmental catastrophe”. The Paris Agreement of 2015 conceded the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, albeit without binding nations to either achieve this specific target or impose specific binding targets in turn on the worst offenders, namely the fossil fuel industries.
Serena redux: waiting to exhale By Tina K. Sacks By now, much has been written about the Serena Williams-Naomi Osaka-Carlos Ramos fiasco at the 2018 US Open. During the women’s final, the umpire, Carlos Ramos, issued Williams a warning for suspected coaching from her player’s box.
How well do you know Arthur Schopenhauer? [quiz] By Panumas King This September, OUP Philosophy honors Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) as the Philosopher of the Month. Schopenhauer was largely ignored by the academic philosophical community during his lifetime, but gained recognition and fame posthumously.
Why was Jerusalem important to the first Muslims? By Robert G. Hoyland With the completion of the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in the reign of ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705), Muslims demonstrated the importance of Jerusalem to the world. But why should Islam have had any interest in this city?
The strange and unusual laws of Italy [interactive map] By Fiona Parker and Sophie Power The International Bar Association Annual Conference will be held in Rome from 7th October through 12th October. It is one of the largest annual events for international lawyers, renowned for its exceptional line-up of speakers from around the world, excellent networking opportunities, and global mission to promote and develop key issues in law.
Is there a comma after BUT? By Edwin L. Battistella According to editors and grammarians, there is no comma after the word but at the beginning of a sentence. But it is something I see a lot in sentences like “But, there were too many of them to count” or “But, we were afraid the situation would get worse.”
John Kerry and the Logan Act By Edward A. Zelinsky The Logan Act won’t go away. Most recently, prominent commentators criticized former Secretary of State John Kerry’s conversations with the leaders of Iran, arguing that such discussions violated the Logan Act.
Pros and cons of GMO crop farming [infographic] By Stephen Mann In the agricultural industry, recombinant DNA technology allows for DNA to be transferred from one organism to another, creating Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). Four crops constitute the vast majority of the GM crop production: maize, canola, soybean, and cotton. Since 1995, GM crops have been grown commercially and the global area sown to these crops has expanded over 100-fold over the past two decades.
‘Service included?’: tipping in the 19th and early 20th century London restaurant By Brenda Assael If the letters and commentary sections of national newspapers are anything to go by, the question of whether, and how much, to tip is a source of vexation for restaurant patrons in early 21st century London. There has also been more recent criticism of proprietors not passing on tips to their wait staff.
Research, collection, preservation, and more: Japan’s Kyoto International Manga Museum By Sookyung Yoo Many people both in and out of Japan may be acquainted with the word “manga,” even if they don’t follow it. Manga has played a significant role in Japanese culture for the last century and has recently gained the respect of a wider audience.
The history of manned space flight [infographic] By Steven Filippi The Soviet Union launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, into space in October 1957, initiating the scientific rivalry between the USSR and the United States at the height of the Cold War. In the subsequent decades, the Soviet and American space programs traded milestones as they each embarked upon manned space flight and the exploration of space.
Renewing the Centre? By Paul Wetherly Have recent events – notably the election (and re-election) of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party following the Conservative victory in the 2015 general election, and the 2016 vote to leave the EU leading to a ‘hard Brexit’ strategy from the Conservative government – revitalised British politics by breaking from the centrist politics […]
‘Unnecessary’ and ‘risky’ – the end of ENT surgery in the NHS? By John S. Phillips and Sally Erskine In July this year, NHS England announced that it planned to cease funding four surgical procedures entirely, and to limit funding for thirteen others. Within this list of procedures, three ear, nose and throat procedures were identified: tonsillectomy for tonsillitis, grommet insertion for glue ear and surgery for snoring. The mainstream media provided mixed opinions, […]
Bioremediation: using microorganisms to clean up the environment By lidiya angelova Microorganisms are known for their ability to adapt to any environment. We can find them in the most hazardous places on Earth. Their invisible work has led to visible results - terraforming the planet billions of years ago and converting it into the viable green world that is today. Their ability to utilize and adapt to any available substrate in order to gain energy kept the balance in the ecosystem until humans become dominant species.
Dignified debates: a better way to argue about politics By Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Rebecca Roache expressed a common feeling when in 2015 she blogged, “I am tired of reasoned debate about politics.” Many people today find arguments unpleasant and useless. That attitude is both sad and dangerous because we cannot solve our social problems together if we know that we disagree but do not understand why. Luckily, arguments can help us accomplish a lot even in extreme cases.
Etymology gleanings for September 2018 By Anatoly Liberman Many thanks to those who have commented on the recent posts and written me privately. My expertise is in Germanic, with occasional timid inroads into the rest of Indo-European. Therefore, I cannot answer questions about Arabic and Chinese. Below, I’ll say something about Hittite, but, obviously, for my information I depend on the authority of others.
Humanities and scientific explanation: the need for change By Andrew Steane For too long, presentations of science for the general public, and education in schools, has suggested that science wields a sort of hegemonic power, as if its terms and methods gradually replace and make redundant all other discourse; the only reason it has not yet completed its conquest is that the world is complicated—but it is only a matter of time…
Danger, devotion, and domestic life in Renaissance Italy By Mary Laven Renaissance Italians had many ways of warding off danger. They would hang strings of coral above their beds or place Agnus Dei—small pendants decorated with the Lamb of God and containing fragments of wax from the Easter candle burned at St Peter’s in Rome—in their infants’ cribs.
Social isolation and loneliness: unique links with healthy lifestyle behaviors during aging By Lindsay Kobayashi Social isolation and loneliness are gaining increasing attention as risks to health and well-being among older adults worldwide. In the United States, about one-third of Americans aged 60 and over are estimated to feel lonely, and one-quarter of Americans aged 65 and over live alone.
Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month with author, professor, and social worker, Melvin Delgado By Melvin Delgado Born and raised in the South, Bronx by Puerto Rican parents, Melvin Delgado’s research and work has centered on the strengths of communities of color in urban areas. He’s written extensively on social work with Latinos, social justice and youth practice, and most recently the sanctuary movement. We asked Dr. Delgado to answer some of our questions about social work with the Latinx community to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month.
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Cardiologists and nephrologists – the importance of collaboration Bridging the gap between health problems of the heart and kidneys continues to be a talking point amongst specialists. Across both fields, there is clear evidence and recognition that kidney function can affect cardiac health. Kidney patients are vulnerable to a higher level of cardiovascular events as a risk factor and vice versa.
What are environmental laws? By Hannah Charters “Environmental law ensures that collective action in relation to environmental problems is authoritative and consistent with the rule of law and other principles of legitimate action.” – Elizabeth Fisher, Environmental Law: A Very Short Introduction
The wisdom of Henry Clay: advice for the modern-day politician By James Klotter Henry Clay succeeded as Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Secretary of State, leader of his party in the Senate, and as “The Great Compromiser.” But most of all, he was a political model for generations. In that capacity, his words speak to us still.
Thoughts on the origin of the word “bride” [Part I] By Anatoly Liberman The blog named “The Oxford Etymologist,” which started on March 1, 2008, and which appears every Wednesday, rain or shine (this is Post no. 663), owes many of its topics to association. Some time ago, I wrote about the puzzling Gothic verb liugan “to lie, tell falsehoods” and “to marry” (August 15, 2018) and about the etymology of the English verb bless (October 12, 2016).
How do Christians make God present? A stack of index cards By Ingie Hovland For some, mediating forms may include physical things like churches and communion wafers. For others, mediating forms may also include bodily states such as the experiences of worship, or patterned behavior such as prayer.
Consent on campus [podcast] By Donna Freitas and Brendan Kiely As students head back to university to start their fall semester, the conversation of consent will no doubt surround them on campus. But what can actually be defined as consent? Where do students learn what consent actually means? From the time of adolescence, students are taught the notion of consent, which impacts how they view the term in their later life.
Coronations and composite states: the Austrian-Habsburg case By William D. Godsey To mark the 65th anniversary of her coronation, Queen Elizabeth II has given a rare interview in which she talked about the event from the extraordinary perspective of the main participant. Her delightful remark that crowns “are quite important things” betrayed intimate familiarity with the meaning of the ceremonial trappings associated with an ancient tradition that in most places has now died out.
All about quotations [quiz] By Kim Behrens As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, ‘By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote’. Quotations are an essential part of language and are used widely by almost everyone, sometimes out of context and sometimes wrongly attributed.
A quarter century into the exoplanet revolution By Karel Schrijver In 1969, half a century ago, astronauts first landed on Earth’s sole moon. The first successful robotic landers touched down on the much more distant Venus and Mars in 1970 and 1976, respectively, and in the same decade spacecraft flybys provided the first, fleeting close-ups of Jupiter and Saturn. It was not until two decades […]
Missing Persons? Aboriginal people in Western Australian mental hospitals By Philippa Martyr Indigenous Australians, like most indigenous peoples, have a long history of engaging with European-style mental health services both in and out of the colonial era. However, their history is poorly documented and largely unexplored.
This Side of Paradise —Looking Back, A Century Later By Sally Koslow “He fancied that in a hundred years he would like having young people speculate on whether his eyes were brown or blue.” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote these words in This Side of Paradise approximately a hundred years ago. While speculation on the eye color of Amory Blaine, Fitzgerald’s protagonist, may not currently be top of mind, the author himself, as well as his debut novel, most assuredly are.
Imagining lost books in the age of Cambridge Analytica By Lindsay Ann Reid I don’t think it coincidental that, at approximately the same historical moment when online sites and services began (both overtly and covertly) preserving and mining our textual interactions en masse, wider culture evinced a perceptible surge of interest in the lost books of past, pre-digital eras.
2018 Midterm Elections HQ | Oxford University Press The United States midterm elections will decide who controls the Senate and House during the remaining years of the Trump Administration’s first term. In order for the Democrats to gain control over the House, they would need to see a net gain of 24 seats. To regain control of the Senate, Democrats would need to keep all of their seats and capture two of the Republican seats for a 51-49 majority. Of the seats up for election, 35 are held by Democrats, and 9 are held by Republicans. We’ve pulled together a collection of related books, articles, and social media content to help our readers better understand these elections. Be sure to check back each week, and follow our hashtag #BallotReady for more Midterms 2018 content.
Animal of the month: an interactive experience with the eastern cottontail rabbit Earlier this month, we explored the world of rabbits and facts to enhance our knowledge of the ubiquitous mammal. Now on international rabbit day, we are focusing on the eastern cottontail rabbit, the most common species in North America. What makes it different from other rabbit species? What commonalities can be found across species?
Paradigms lost, wisdom gained By David P. Barash Tycho Brahe lived with a hand-crafted nose made of brass after his real one was sliced off in a duel. Mr. Brahe was a renowned 16th-century Danish astronomer and a great empirical scientist whose data were used to formulate Johannes Kepler’s three laws of planetary motion. But for our purposes, Tycho Brahe is especially interesting for something other than his prosthetic schnoz or his contributions to astronomy, but for a notable mistake. Confronted with his own irrefutable evidence that the known planets of his day (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) revolved around the Sun, Brahe was nonetheless committed to the prevailing biblical view of a geocentric universe. So he devised an ingenious model in which those planets indeed revolved around the Sun … but with the resulting conglomeration obediently circling a central and immobile Earth!
Are spirits in space? Exploding spirits and absolute theories of space and time By Emily Thomas Humans exist in space. Our bodies are three dimensional: we have length, breadth, and depth. In the 17th century, philosophers worried about what else exists in space. Teapots. Trees. Planets. All these things seem to exist in space too. What about spirits?
Science, where are we going? From intellectual passion to a market-driven system By Gianfranco Pacchioni With over 10 million active researchers, more than 2 million scientific articles published each year, and an uncontrolled spread of bibliometric indicators, contemporary science is undergoing a profound change that is modifying consolidated procedures, ethical principles that were deemed inalienable and traditional mechanisms for the validation of scientific outputs that have worked successfully for the last century.
Selecting repertoire for upper voices – a conductor’s perspective By Joanna Tomlinson and Neil Ferris Choosing inspiring and appropriate choral repertoire for young people can be a challenge but with a huge amount of new music and arrangements being written for upper voice choirs, conductors have some fantastic options to choose from.
Does TCJA Tax Churches? Should It? By Edward A. Zelinsky Does the new federal tax law, commonly known as the Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), tax churches as some have argued? If so, is this tax appropriate? The answers are “yes” and “yes.” The TCJA provisions taxing qualified transportation fringes treat secular and religious employers alike, including houses of worship. In a world of […]
Is Mars still alive? By Stephen James O’Meara Less than 50 days after this year’s World Space Week (4-10 October)—a global network of over 1,000 space-related organizations celebrating the role space plays in bringing the world together for peaceful purposes—NASA’s InSight spacecraft is scheduled to land near the Red Planet’s equator to take the planet’s pulse.
Spotify Playlist: Broadway tunes in pop culture By Laurence Maslon Popular singers have been covering Broadway for years, introducing show tunes into the mainstream of music. These covers have popularized iconic Broadway tunes and broadcasted show tunes to a larger audience beyond Broadway.
Blood is thicker than water By Anatoly Liberman Not too long ago (12 October 2016), I wrote a post about the etymology of the verb bless and decided that my next topic would be blood, because bless and blood meet, even if in an obscure way. But more pressing business—the origin of liver (21 March 2018) and kidney (11 April 2018)—prevented me from meeting that self-imposed deadline. Today, Dracula-like, I am ready to tackle blood.
Northeast India: a new literary region for IWE By Nandana Dutta It’s a young literature – this body of English writings from the eight states of India’s Northeast. Often evaluated in comparison with the rich tradition of Assamese literature (from the largest state in the region and going back several centuries) and overshadowed by the growing dominance of a ‘mainstream India-centred’ Indian writing in English, it began to emerge into the literary-critical scene at the turn of the 20th century, without a splash and with extreme modesty.
Re-thinking post-war theatre architecture By Alistair Fair The official opening on 14 June 2018 by the Queen and Duchess of Sussex of Chester’s new cultural ‘hub’, Storyhouse, offers a timely moment to consider the theatre as a building type. Storyhouse is an interesting re-thinking of what an Arts building can be. It combines a theatre, cinema, library, and café, in an attempt to break down boundaries between artistic and institutional structures.
Was it right to pass Israel’s Nation-State Basic Law? By Gideon Sapir Recently, Israel’s Knesset passed by a 62-55 margin, Basic Law: Nation-State. Israel does not have a formal constitution, but rather a set of basic laws with quasi-constitutional status. Among these basic laws are those that deal with structural issues, as well as those that anchor human and civil rights.
Beyond “The Brady Bunch:” stepfamilies in later life By I-Fen Lin and Susan L. Brown When we think about stepfamilies, images of the perennially popular TV show The Brady Bunch likely spring to mind. Young single parents unite in marriage, bringing together their children from prior unions to form a stepfamily.
Not your grandmother’s women’s lib movement: Femen’s uncivil disobedience By Candice Delmas Oksana Shachko died on 23 July 2018. She co-founded the feminist socialist collective Femen in her native Ukraine ten years ago, to fight against patriarchy’s three central forms—dictatorship, the sexual exploitation of women, and established religion. One of Femen’s first protests was a guerrilla theater performance protesting sexual harassment at the university.
Malaria Prevention: An Economic Perspective By Bénédicte Apouey, Gabriel Picone, and Joshua Wilde In 1998, the Roll Back Malaria partnership – the largest global platform in history for coordinated action towards reducing the burden of malaria – was created to fund a series of health initiatives and malaria control interventions in affected countries. However, in spite of large successes in reducing both the incidence of and fatalities from […]
Multiple inheritances: how the art of Romare Bearden reflects 21st century identities By Mary Schmidt Campbell Bearden’s collages, which burst onto the art world scene in the fall of 1964, made a compelling aesthetic argument for multiple cultural inheritances. He called his vision “the Prevalence of Ritual,” and it was first manifest in Projections, black and white photographic blow ups of collages.
What would Margaret Cavendish say? By Deborah Boyle Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673) was a philosopher, poet, essayist, and fiction writer, and she had opinions. Lots of them, on topics from the cause of thunder, to the qualities of a good book translator, to the value of diverse opinions themselves (her assessment on this last point: “Several Opinions, except it be in Religion, do no harm.”).
Philosopher of the Month: Arthur Schopenhauer [slideshow] By OUP Philosophy Team This September, the OUP Philosophy honors Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) as the Philosopher of the Month. Schopenhauer was largely ignored by the academic philosophical community during his lifetime, but gained recognition and fame posthumously.
Pain is real to patient and provider when empathy is present By Beth Hogans “Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.” - George Orwell, 1984 In 2004, the World Health Organization in cooperation with the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and the […]
A bright spot in the dark: Gamma and X-rays tell us the story of the Galactic Centre By Manuel Arca Sedda The central regions of galaxies are extremely crowded places, containing up to a few hundreds of millions of stars. They are generally extremely dense environments, where a variety of phenomena occur frequently.
The price of precarious labour in contemporary warfare By Maya Mynster Christensen One year previously, a British private security company providing services for the US government reached an agreement with the Sierra Leonean government to employ up to 10,000 Sierra Leonean ex-servicemen for security contracting in Iraq.
Changing migrants’ mindsets can improve their intercultural experiences By Joshua Katz, Kimberly A. Noels, and Nigel Mantou Lou Immigrants who are not fluent in the local language not only have trouble communicating, but may also feel that they don’t fit into the society in which they live, or that majority members might reject them due to their lack of fluency.
Do you know your Broadway show tune covers? [quiz] By Laurence Maslon Broadway musicals have enchanted America for decades, so much so that show tunes have made their way into popular culture via recordings by famous artists. These Broadway covers have launched these show tunes into legendary pop culture fame.
Of course, “our objectionable phrase” By Anatoly Liberman Of course is such a trivial phrase that few, I am afraid, will be interested in its history. And yet, what can be stranger than the shape of this most common two-word group?
Is the American special education system failing children with autism? By Dr. Bryna Siegel We sat down with Dr. Bryna Siegel and asked about the effectiveness of the modern special education system. In the video below, Dr. Siegel discusses how the push for academic inclusion may actually be putting children with autism at a disadvantage, and offers advice to help parents and educators build better futures for these students as they enter adulthood.
5 essential focuses in Sociology By Steven Filippi Sociology is a rather new discipline; while its founding theorists lived during the Enlightenment, seminal figures like Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber shaped the field amid the rise of industrialization and modernity. The scientific and political upheavals of the 19th and 20th centuries brought about a new understanding of how society worked. It is truly a crucial field of study in today’s interconnected world.
An archaeology of early radio production: doing sound historiography without the sound By Shawn VanCour What did early US radio sound like? During radio’s initial rise to prominence in the 1920s, before the “golden age” of network broadcasting in the 1930s and 1940s, what kinds of programming, production practices, and performance styles greeted audiences’ ears when they tuned into this new medium?
Revealing the past of childhood before history By Robin Derricourt Through most societies of the human past, children comprised half the community. Archaeologists and their collaborators are now uncovering many aspects of the young in societies of the deep past, too long the ‘hidden half’ of prehistory.
Animal of the month: 8 facts about rabbits Popular as pets, considered lucky by some, and widely recognised as agricultural nuisances, rabbits are commonplace all over the world. Their cute, fluffy exterior hides the more ingenious characteristics of this burrowing herbivore, including specially-adapted hind legs, extra incisors, and prolific breeding capabilities. Whilst rabbits thrive in most areas, certain species face the common struggle of their specialist habitats being destroyed, and myxomatosis has devastated rabbit populations in the past, at one point destroying 99% of the rabbit population of the United Kingdom.
Dental students and the smell of fear By Preet Bano Singh and Valentina Parma Human communication takes many forms, but picturing humans using chemical mechanisms to send messages leaves us skeptical. However, this concept becomes more plausible when we think of communication mediated via pheromones in animals.
A brief look at the post-WWII American military [excerpt] By Joseph T. Glatthaar From the ashes of World War II emerged two victorious superpowers: the United States and the Soviet Union. At the end of the war, America in particular was left with exceptional military strength, a monopoly on atomic weapons, and a home front intact.
Can “ultra-brief” mindfulness reduce alcohol consumption in heavy drinkers? By Sunjeev Kamboj Scientific interest in mindfulness has grown exponentially since the 1980s. Clinical researchers have been asking whether these practices—which are based on ancient Eastern (Buddhist) contemplative traditions—can be used as psychotherapeutic techniques to ameliorate depression, chronic pain, and addictive behaviour.
What type of choir director are you? By Ashley Danyew Think about the choir directors you’ve had in the past. What were they like? Each one likely had a different approach to leading, conducting, and communicating. What makes a great leader? Which communication style is most effective? Let’s begin with leadership style.
Religion and literature in a secular age By Mark Knight There is a long history of people exploring the relationship between religion and literature. We might go back to sacred texts from different traditions and think, for instance, about why there is such a vast array of literary forms in the Judaeo-Christian Bible.
Are casual hookups sexually empowering for college women? By Jennifer Beste Pursuing this question in conversation with undergraduates inside and outside of the classroom for over ten years, I have found that the vast majority of young women experience hookup culture as disempowering.
Is Punk (or any alternative culture) an antidote to authoritarian, neotraditionalist nationalism? By Raymond Patton April 30th this year marked the 40th anniversary of the massive Rock Against Racism rally and concert in London, at which some hundred thousand people marched into Victoria Park to the sound of punk and reggae bands, including X-Ray Spex, fronted by Afro-British Poly Styrene.
Table talk: How do you pay your dues? By Anatoly Liberman To find out how you pay your dues, you have to read the whole post. It would be silly to begin with the culmination. The story will be about phonetics and table talk (first about phonetics).
Reinventing the textbook in environmental law: time for something new? By Stuart Bell I have spent most of the last 30 years in a Sisyphean state of writing and rewriting an environmental law textbook. The process of producing new editions every 2-4 years has involved too many late nights, missed holidays, and general angst.
Meet the editors of Diseases of the Esophagus By Giovanni Zaninotto and Neil Gupta This year, professionals and researchers studying the esophagus will convene in Vienna for the 2018 World Congress of the International Society for Diseases of the Esophagus (ISDE 2018). Before the conference gets started, we’ve talked with Drs. Giovanni Zaninotto and Neil Gupta, co-editors-in-chief of the journal Diseases of the Esophagus, about their views on the field and the academic research in the journal.
Fracturing landscapes: a history of fences on the U.S.-Mexico divide By Mary E. Mendoza In the short, roughly ten-mile stretch, I saw nearly twenty different fence designs made up of at least six different kinds of materials. In one place, there were four fences still standing; each fence representing some previous phase of construction and a stark reminder that Trump’s prototypes aren’t new at all, they are part of a long historical trend.
Long, short, and efficient titles for research articles By David H. Foster The title of a research article has an almost impossible remit. As the freely available representative of the work, it needs to accurately capture what was achieved, differentiate it from other works, and, of course, attract the attention of the reader, who might be searching a journal’s contents list or the return from a database query.
The universality of international law By Jo Wojtkowski The 14th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law will take place at the University of Manchester, from 13th September through 15th September. This is one of the most important events in the international law calendar, attracting a growing network of scholars, researchers, practitioners, and students.
The flow of physics By David Nolte Galileo was proud of his parabolic trajectory. In his first years after arriving at the university in Padua, he had worked with marked intensity to understand the mathematical structure of the trajectory, arriving at a definitive understanding of it by 1610—just as he was distracted by his friend Paolo Sarpi who suggested he improve on the crude Dutch telescopes starting to circulate around Venice.
Hamburger semantics By Edwin L. Battistella The students in my class were arguing a question of semantics: is a hamburger a sandwich? One student noted that the menu designer at the restaurant where she worked couldn’t decide if a Chicken Burger should be listed under Hamburgers or Sandwiches.
How Trump beat Ada’s big data By Gary Smith The Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential primary was supposed to be the coronation of Hillary Clinton. She was the most well-known candidate, had the most support from the party establishment, and had, by far, the most financial resources. The coronation went off script. Barack Obama, a black man with an unhelpful name, won the Democratic nomination and, then, the presidential election against Republican John McCain because the Obama campaign had a lot more going for it than Obama’s eloquence and charisma.
Fake news: a philosophical look at biased reasoning [excerpt] By Simon Blackburn In the search for moral truth, when we learn what is “right,” we in turn learn what is “wrong.” But how can we know whether our conclusions are sound, or the result of biased reasoning? In the following shortened excerpt from On Truth, Simon Blackburn examines how our minds move, and questions whether or not we’re capable of seeking out “truth.”
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Modelling roasting coffee beans using mathematics: now full-bodied and robust By Nabil Fadai Coffee is one of the most traded commodities in the world, valued at more than $100 billion annually. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur looking for the next big coffee venture, you’ll probably still care about how to make the 2.25 billion cups of coffee globally consumed every day as delicious as possible.
How much do you know about opioids? [quiz] By Amy Cluett PAINWeek, the largest US pain conference for frontline clinicians with an interest in pain management, takes place this year from 4th September to 8th September. The conference focuses on several different aspects of pain management, and indeed many different methods of pain management exist.
Remembering Sterling Stuckey, OUP author and scholar on Slave Culture By Tim Bent Many of us at Oxford noted with sadness the death of Sterling Stuckey on August 15th at the age of 86. Stuckey was the author of Slave Culture: Nationalist Theory and the Foundations of Black America, which OUP first published in 1987 and re-issued 25 years later, and which was a foundational text in our understanding of the culture of slavery—its complexity and richness in its defining forms of resistance, resilience, and celebration.
Taking your better self to school: 5 renewals for teachers By Peggy D. Bennett For teachers, “back to school” can convey eagerness and excitement. It can also evoke fear, anxiety, and dread. Few of us have the pleasure of thriving in our schools every day, every year. If we learned of ways to bolster ourselves would we try them?
Etymology gleanings for August 2018 By Anatoly Liberman In a jiffy: Stephen Goranson has offered several citations of this idiom (it means “in a trice”), possibly pointing to its origin in sailor slang. English is full of phrases that go back to the language of sailors, some of which, like tell it to the marines, by and large, and the cut of one’s jib (to cite a few), are well-known.
Ringtone wins the 2018 George R. Terry Book Award By Seth Cotterman We are proud to announce that the winner of this year’s George R. Terry Book Award is Ringtone: Exploring the Rise and Fall of Nokia in Mobile Phones, by Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson.
Teenage rebellions: families divided by religion in the Reformation By Rosamund Oates Teenage rebellion is nothing new and religion can be a powerful flashpoint between parents and their children, convinced that the older generation has got it all wrong. As radical Islam attracts teenagers in 21st century Europe, so in early modern England the Reformation produced versions of Protestantism and Catholicism that provided powerful ways for children to reject their parents’ beliefs.
How the mindful brain copes with rejection By Alexandra Martelli and David Chester Whether it’s being left out of happy hour plans or being broken up with by a significant other, we can all relate to the pain of social rejection. Such “social pain” is consequential, undermining our physical and mental health. But how can we effectively cope with the distressing experience of being left out or ignored? Mindfulness may be an answer.
A guide to the APSA 2018 conference By Seth Cotterman The 114th American Political Science Association Annual Meeting & Exhibition will be held in Boston this year from August 30th – September 2nd. This year’s conference theme “Democracy and Its Discontents,” explores the challenges facing democracy in the U.S. and in emerging democracies around the world. Drop by the OUP booth (#315) to visit with […]
Reciprocal loyalty in consumer transactions By Adrian Kuenzler Conventional wisdom holds that the interplay of demand and supply of goods in a free market economy, as if through an invisible hand, provides us with material wealth. This vantage point is based on Adam Smith’s reference to an economy where most of mankind lived in small communities, where self-interest was restrained by a desire to be esteemed by others, and personal relationships bound overweening opportunism.
The cost of the American dream By Melinda Lewis In its simplest form, the American Dream asserts that success should be determined by effort, not one’s starting point. This is the promise on which most Americans base their hopes and the calculus that is supposed to govern our institutions.
Exploring Indigenous modernity in North America By Josh Garrett-Davis I work at a history museum with vast Native American collections, and I see every day how stubborn narratives of Native “disappearance” in modern America persist in institutions and among the public. Recent activism and art have begun to present a “reappearance,” but non-specialists have been offered few stories of the paths Native people actually took between, to use iconic incidents, the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973.
Who is Leonard Bernstein? By Alyssa Russell Best known as the composer of Candide and West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein had an immensely versatile career. Born on August 25, 1918, Bernstein’s career spanned decades, leaving a lasting impression through his work as a conductor, composer, and music educator.
How well do you know Saint Thomas Aquinas? [quiz] By Catherine Pugh This August, the OUP Philosophy team honours Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) as their Philosopher of the Month. Aquinas is a well-known figure in theology and his ideas are becoming increasingly studied within the discipline of philosophy. His work on Aristotle and his two major texts Summa contra Gentiles and Summa Theologiae have gained him the reputation of being one of the greatest philosopher-theologians of his time.
Race and political division during American Reconstruction [excerpt] By Allen C. Guelzo Despite succeeding in reuniting the nation after the Civil War, American Reconstruction saw little social and political cohesion. Division—between North and South, black and white, Democrat and Republican—remained unmistakable across the nation. In the following excerpt from Reconstruction: A Concise History, Allen C. Guelzo delves into the complicated nature of race and politics during this […]
Improving patient outcomes in weight loss surgery By Tomasz G Rogula “Globesity” (the global pervasiveness of obesity) is an epidemic issue across both developed and developing countries. For many nations obesity is a major health issue, but especially the United States.
Animal of the month: the pride [interactive guide] Pride is one of the most widely-recognised animal collectives in the world. We often picture lions among their family unit, whether they be standing proudly together or hunting down a doomed antelope. These famous social groups are usually formed of between three and ten adult females, two or three males, and the pride’s latest litters of cubs, and they live together (most of the time) across Africa and in the Gir Forest Sanctuary.
Do you have what it takes to be a copper? By Elena Jones Are you studying to become a police officer? Perhaps you have considered volunteering as a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO)? Whether you are a student of policing, or simply interested in police theory, you can test your knowledge with our short policing quiz.
The potential preventive promise of music By Kimberly Sena Moore I became a parent around the time I started working in childhood mental health, providing music therapy to children with complex trauma histories. Through these experiences, I became aware both personally and professionally of the profound impact a child’s early environment has on their social and emotional development outcomes and later behavioral and academic ones.
The shortest history of hatred continued and partly concluded By Anatoly Liberman As a matter of fact, it is a long story, because the distant origin of hate—the word, not the feeling—is far from clear. As usual, we should try to determine the earliest meaning of our word (for it may be different from the one we know) and search for the cognates in and outside Germanic. At the beginning of the month (see the post for 1 August 2018), a good deal was said about the Gothic language.
Big Data and the Happiness of Cities By Jason M. Barr In today’s world of big data and mass media saturation, statistics and graphs are constantly being thrown at us. For researchers, wading through, and making sense of, the sea of numbers is as much about the journey as the destination. But for most people who are simply trying to live their lives, all these facts […]
World Humanitarian Day minisode [podcast] Humanitarianism is an active belief in the value of human life. World Humanitarian Day is held every year on 19 August to pay tribute to aid workers who risk their lives in humanitarian service, and to rally support for people affected by crises around the world. On this minisode of The Oxford Comment, Marketing Coordinator, Katelyn Phillips, speaks […]
The allure of the peasant in organic farming By Gregory A. Barton Idealizing pre-modern life has a long history in western culture. When Europeans discovered the vast new world of the Americas, new visions and possibilities arose in their imagination, not just of the Native Americans that populated the new continent, but of Europeans themselves. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes understood Native Americans to live in a pre-civil condition, savages ridden with violence.
Why We Fall for Toxic Leaders By Jean Lipman-Blumen School shootings, terrorism, cyberattacks, and economic downturns open the door to toxic leaders. Small wonder these dangerous, seductive leaders attract followers worldwide. Toxic leaders typically enter the scene as saviors. They promise to keep us safe, quell our fears, and infuse our lives with meaning and excitement, perhaps, even immortality. Yet, as history grimly attests, […]
Ten perspectives on music and autism, from ten people on the spectrum By Michael Bakan Since the emergence of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the oft-noted musical proclivities of people on the autism spectrum have generated much interest. Reports of savant-like abilities, extraordinary feats of musical memory, and disproportionately high rates of perfect pitch abound, along with a high degree of emphasis on music’s importance in therapeutic interventions.
Teaching environmental privilege is integral to environmental justice By Christina L. Erickson Privilege has become a serious area of inquiry in recent years. White privilege and male privilege have hit the spotlight, as has racial disparities in police brutality and the #MeToo movement highlighting workplace harassment and sexual assault.
The Plastic Age By Charlotte Zaidi Recently, the issue of single-use plastic and its impact on the environment has come to the fore, with many companies vowing to cut back their plastic use, and increased media coverage across the globe. It isn’t difficult to see why there is a growing passion for addressing the problem of plastic—its environmental significance is truly shocking—and in 2016 the Ellen MacArthur Foundation published a report that concluded there will be as much plastic in the ocean as fish by 2020.
World Humanitarian Day [podcast] By Alexandra Eurdolian, Belinda Gurd, Robert Wicks, and Sarah Gehlert On this episode of The Oxford Comment, we take a look at the challenges faced by humanitarians today. Host Erin Katie Meehan sat down with Health & Social Work editorial board member Sarah Gehlert, Belinda Gurd and Alexandra Eurdolian of the UNOCHA, and esteemed psychologist Robert J. Wicks to explore important questions about humanitarianism.
The Grainy and Grisly History of Crime Photography By Elena Jones Judicial photography dates back to Belgium in the 1840’s when the earliest known photographs of criminals were taken within prisons by prison officials. In Switzerland, 1852, Carl Durheim was commissioned by Attorney General Jacob Amiet, and tasked with taking photographs of arrested vagrants in Bern. During this period, judicial photography was used by local authorities to document individuals who travelled, and were unknown to local police.
One hundred years of poems “counter, original, spare, strange” By Lesley Higgins Who doesn’t like a centenary? Whether solemn, festive, or celebratory, a centenary can be very instructive, whether conducted individually or collectively. It is a way of acknowledging—often honouring—the past and, at the same time, reassessing the present and imagining the future in the context of the previous event or exemplary person.
The multigenerational struggle for women’s suffrage in the United States [timeline] By Stephen Mann The Women’s Suffragist movement spans multiple generations. 72 years passed between the Seneca Falls convention in 1848 and the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. During that time, women skillfully organized, mobilized, and built a powerful social movement to achieve their long-sought goal. Let’s look back at the events that led up to that […]
Oral disease or random object? [quiz] By Amy Cluett, Keith Hunter, Max Robinson, Michael Pemberton, and Phillip Sloan How can medical professionals tell whether individuals have a disease? The simple answer is that body tissues are examined under the microscope, but the long answer involves reams of research and hours of study and intense examination.
Revolutionary Music and the Social Fabric of Rebellion By David Brenner Rebels are central actors in civil wars. However, their perspectives and lifeworlds remain little understood. In fact, many studies on civil war suffer from what Ranajit Guha criticised as the “prose of counterinsurgency”: scholars often infer the logic of rebellion from second-hand accounts, many of which are produced in the interest of state power. Insofar as scholarship has been interested in the rebel perspective, it mostly focuses on the strategic calculus of revolutionary elites.
Can the auto industry improve spinal fusion surgery? By Ahmed M. Raslan, Jeffrey S. Raskin, and Jesse J. Liu Systems science is the study of how component parts of a system interact with each other. It may seem counterintuitive to consider that medical care and systems science are linked, but in fact the component parts of a care cycle are infinitely complex.
The multifaceted art of lying By Anatoly Liberman In 1882, Mark Twain gave a short speech titled “On the Decay of the Art of Lying,” not his best or wittiest. I assume that Oscar Wilde did not miss the published text of that speech, for seven years later, he brought out a kind of treatise in the form of a dialogue with a similar title, namely, “The Decay of Lying—An Observation,” one of his most powerful and brilliant (as always, too brilliant) essays.
Regifting ideas: How an obscure idea from animal breeding helps us to understand genome evolution By Bruce Walsh One of the more satisfying aspects of science is that an often fairly technical or obscure idea from one field can later turn out to be a key guiding principle in another, rather distant, field. One such example is a historical result from the theory of animal breeding that now provides critical insight into the way evolution structures genomes.
Democracy and political violence: the case of France By Chris Millington Does democratic politics eliminate political violence? Are citizens of a democracy prepared to resolve their political differences solely at the ballot box? The fighting at Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017 suggests that these are questions as relevant today as at the highpoint of European political confrontation during the interwar years.
Editing The Scarlet Pimpernel By Nicholas Daly Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) is one of those popular novels that we tend to assume we already know without having read it. This tale of the French Revolution has been adapted many, many times, for the stage, small and large screens, and radio, and it has been frequently parodied over the decades, most famously, perhaps, by the Carry On team with Don’t Lose Your Head (aka Carry on Pimpernel).
Putin’s stability becomes Russia’s stagnation By Brian D. Taylor Russia may seem to be on the march globally, but at home Russia is running in place. This inertia is the flip side of Putin’s domestic image as stability tsar, bringing an end to the “wild 90s” that followed the Soviet collapse. Back in 2010, Putin credited his policies with Russia’s successful bid to host […]
The Geneva Conventions and the minimum standards of humanity By Robert Cryer On the occasion of World Humanitarian Day, it seems appropriate to look to the basic principles of humanitarian law, which show what is always unacceptable. Prior to 1949, there was little international humanitarian law applicable to non-international armed conflicts, although such conflicts were becoming increasingly prevalent and overtaking their international counterparts.
The vocation of youth By Michael Baizerman and Ross VeLure Roholt We all benefit when young people understand their strengths and talents and use these to make the world a better place through direct action, service, and leadership. We use the idea of vocation to describe this process of them coming to understand their strengths and talents and how these can be applied to address issues they care about in their community.
Seven myths about feigning By Henry Otgaar and Mark L. Howe Defendants may feign psychiatric disorders to reduce their criminal responsibility. From its detection and prevalence, to its connections with psychopathy, this extract from Finding Truth in the Courtroom debunks seven common myths about feigning, and why people do it.
The ever-evolving US Supreme Court By Linda Greenhouse Justice Byron R. White, who served on the Supreme Court for 31 years (1962-1993), once observed that every time a new justice joins the court, it’s a new court. His observation may sound counter-intuitive: after all, a new justice joins eight incumbents. Can a single new member make such a difference?
Animal of the month: 10 facts about lions Lions have enchanted humans since early Antiquity, and were even represented in European cave paintings from 35,000 years ago. They are regularly the main characters in folklore and allegory, appearing everywhere from African folktales to the Bible. It is not hard to see why lions are so ubiquitously revered. Their fearsome yet stunning appearance, combined with their endearing hunting tactics and formidable roar, answers any questions as to why early societies named the lion ‘King of the Beasts’, and indeed explains why this name is still used today.
Celebrating the NHS at 70 On the 5th of July 2018, the National Health Service (NHS) celebrated its 70th anniversary. Aneurin Bevan, the Minister for Health, founded the NHS in 1948 with the aim of bringing together hospitals, doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, and opticians under a single umbrella organisation for the first time.
Reflections on two decades of string teaching By David Blackwell and Kathy Blackwell In England, we have the expression ‘Carrying coals to Newcastle’ – a pointless action, since the place in question already has a bountiful supply. In Spain, they take oranges to Valencia and in Portugal, honey to a bee-keeper. If not quite as plentiful as oranges or honey, publishers’ lists are filled with beginner violin repertoire – what possible motivation could there be to write and publish more?
The shortest history of hatred: Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman It would be unwise to leave the topic of emotions (see the posts on anger, dread, and fear), without saying something about hate and hatred. Although hate refers to intense dislike, it is curious to observe how diluted the word has become: today we can hate orange juice, a noisy neighbor, even our own close relative, and of course we hate not finding the objects we have mislaid. For some reason, to dislike, have little regard for, and resent are not enough for expressing our dissatisfaction.
Understanding academic impact: fear and failure, stealth and seeds By Matthew Flinders Failure is an unavoidable element of any academic career. For all but a small number of ‘superstar über-scholars’, most of the research papers we submit will be rejected, our most innovative book proposals will be politely rebuffed and our applications for grants, prizes and fellowships will fall foul of good fortune.
The Little Red Book vs. the Big White Book By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham There are some similarities between former Chairman of the Communist Party of China Mao Zedong’s most famous book, Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (“The Little Red Book”) and current General Secretary Xi Jinping’s The Governance of China (“Big White Book”)—the second installment of which came out last year, each volume the same cream color and featuring the same photograph of the author.
Five significant discussions in history By Steven Filippi History is the academic study of the human race and everything that humans have done stretching back millennia. Though it may tell stories of the past, it is certainly not dead.
Medical education and the good doctor By Rick Fraser (Guest Author) “Ahhhhh” moans a 16-year-old girl, her face contorted in pain as she lies on a stretcher in a busy emergency room corridor. Her distress is elicited by gentle prods to her abdomen by a young surgeon summoned by the ER staff.
Why I Oppose the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact By Edward A. Zelinsky Connecticut, where I live, is the most recent state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. The Nutmeg State was wrong to join this Compact, designed to ensure that the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote also wins in the Electoral College.
Studying law in the UK: Are you ready? By Kimberley Payne Your favourite club at school was the debating society, and you managed to negotiate an increase in pocket money as a teenager – it was obvious you were going to study law. But how much do you really know about studying for a law degree in the UK? How many people apply? And what pathways […]
Celebrating Emily Brontë By Helen Small Only one birthday is “celebrated” in Wuthering Heights. It doesn’t go well. The young Catherine Linton begins her 16th birthday with a modestly optimistic plan to buck the established family pattern of solitary mourning to mark the date when she came into the world (“a puny, seven months child”), but her mother died two hours later.
Are you a forensic psych expert? By Stephanie King The moment a defendant walks into a courtroom, everyone is trying to get in their head to figure out if they actually committed the crime, and what could have driven them to the act. That’s why expert testimony from mental health experts can be critical for juries, especially in high-profile cases. Do you think you […]
Where to put hyphens By Edwin L. Battistella After reading a draft of something by a colleague, I asked her how she decides when to use hyphens. She responded tartly: “Hyphens. You mean like in well-spoken, or half-assed? I’m not sure. I don’t care for them.” Personally, I’m a big fan of hyphens and sarcasm won’t deter me. Personally, I’m a big fan of hyphens and sarcasm won’t deter me.
Philosopher of the month: Saint Thomas Aquinas [timeline] By Catherine Pugh This August, the OUP Philosophy team honours Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224/5-1274) as their Philosopher of the Month. The Italian philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar is regarded by many as the greatest figure of scholasticism. Thomism and Neo-Thomism are both popular schools of thought related to the philosophical-theological ideas of Aquinas.
Laudable mathematics – The Fields Medal Kicking off the International Congress of Mathematicians 2018 in Rio de Janeiro was this year’s Fields Medal awards ceremony, celebrating the brightest young minds in mathematics. The prize is awarded every four years to up to four mathematicians under the age of 40, and is viewed as one of the highest honours a mathematician can receive.
Etymology gleanings for July 2018 By Anatoly Liberman Work on a project for reformed spelling is underway (under way). Three comments and letters have come to my notice. Masha Bell called our attention to useful and useless double letters. No doubt, account and arrive do not need their cc and rr, and I am all for abolishing them. I won’t live long enough to see acquire spelled as akwire, but perhaps aquire will satisfy future generations?
Modified gravity in plane sight By Indranil Banik, David O'Ryan, and Hongsheng Zhao Our Galaxy—the Milky Way—is a vast rotating disk containing billions of stars along with huge amounts of gas and dust. Its diameter is around 100,000 light years.
July 2018 (66))
Back to school reading list for educators By Stephen Mann Packing up your beach towels and heading back to the class room? To help make lesson planning and curriculum writing easier, we have prepared you a reading list from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.
Epidemics and the ‘other’ By Samuel Cohn A scholarly consensus persists: across time, from the Plague of Athens to AIDS, epidemics provoke hate and blame of the ‘other’. As the Danish-German statesman and ancient historian, Barthold Georg Niebuhr proclaimed in 1816: “Times of plague are always those in which the bestial and diabolical side of human nature gains the upper hand.”
Hegemonic comeback in Mexico? The victory of López Obrador By Alejandro García Magos On 1 July, Mexicans elected a new president. The results confirmed what the polls had been predicting for months: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, won by a landslide of over 50% of the vote—more than 30 points over the second place candidate, Ricardo Anaya of the National Action Party (PAN).
Making sense of President Trump’s trade policy By Sean D. Ehrlich Trade policy was a cornerstone of US President Donald Trump’s campaigns, both in the primary and general, and has often been a centerpiece of his agenda since in office. Trade policy is once again at the forefront with the recently concluded G-7 summit, largely revolving around the President’s threatened steel tariffs on Canada and the EU which followed recent negotiations with China over a possible trade war.
Giving young people a voice: a follow-up on El Sistema USA programs By Amy Nathan “Music is my life. I will never stop playing cello,” says Vanessa Johnson, one of the young people whose early experiences with music are featured in the book The Music Parents’ Survival Guide (2014). Since more than four years have passed since it went to press, we are checking in with some youngsters to see how they are doing, focusing on those who participated in free after-school programs inspired by El Sistema, Venezuela’s music-education system which emphasizes ensemble playing right from the start.
From Galileo’s trajectory to Rayleigh’s harp By David Nolte A span of nearly 300 years separates Galileo Galilei from Lord Rayleigh—Galileo groping in the dark to perform the earliest quantitative explorations of motion, Lord Rayleigh identifying the key gaps of knowledge at the turn into the 20th century and using his home laboratory to fill them in. But the two scientists are connected by a continuous thread.
Which Brontë sister said it? [quiz] By Kayla Kavanagh Emily Brontë, born 200 years ago on 30 July 1818, would become part of one of the most important literary trinities alongside her sisters, Charlotte and Anne. Emily’s only novel, Wuthering Heights, polarised contemporary critics and defied Victorian convention by depicting characters from “low and rustic life.”
Wars of national liberation: The story of one unusual rule II By Kubo Macák In the first part of this post, I discussed the chequered history of Article 1(4) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions. This provision has elevated so-called “wars of national liberation” to the level of inter-state armed conflicts as far as international humanitarian law (IHL) is concerned—albeit only for the parties to the Protocol.
Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, and North Korean human rights By Louis René Beres US President Donald Trump traveled to Singapore to negotiate urgent nuclear matters, and not to discuss North Korean violations of basic human rights. Any such willful US indifference to these violations in another country, especially when they are as stark and egregious as they are in North Korea, represents a sorely grievous disregard for America’s vital obligations under international law.
Women artists in conversation: Tiff Massey Q&A [Part II] By Kathy Battista Tiff Massey is a young artist whose work ranges from wearable sculpture to large-scale public interventions. In the first of this two-part interview, Massey spoke with Benezit Dictionary of Art editor Kathy Battista about her work as well as her vision for bringing art education to underserved areas of Detroit. In the second part of the interview, Massey speaks about her influences and beginnings as an artist.
How well do you know Merleau-Ponty? [quiz] By Panumas King This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61) as their Philosopher of the Month. Merleau-Ponty was a leading French phenomenologist and together with Sartre founded the existential school of philosophy. He was best known for his major work, Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945, Phenomenology of Perception) which established that the body was the centre of perceptions and medium of consciousness.
Innovation: in and out of the Budongo By Alan G. Gross In 2014, PLOS Biology published an article about a cousin of ours, a member of the Sono Community of wild chimpanzees in the Budongo Forest in northwestern Uganda. In a video shared in relation to the study, an alpha male, NK, gathers moss from a tree trunk just within his reach, a prize he will use to lap up water in a nearby pool.
Ten facts about dentistry By Amy Cluett You use it every day; it’s a facial feature that everybody sees; and one that enables almost all animals to survive. We’re talking, of course, about the mouth.
How ‘the future’ connects across subjects By Very Short Introductions ‘Today’s world is complex and unreliable. Tomorrow is expected to be more so.’ – Jennifer M. Gidley, The Future: A Very Short Introduction From the beginning of time, humanity has been driven by a paradox: fearing the unknown but with a constant curiosity to know. Over time, science and technology have developed, meaning that we […]
Animal of the Month: 4 figures behind orca captivation beyond Blackfish “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince (1943). The 2013 release of the documentary Blackfish revolutionized the way the world has since focused on orcas. Yet orca captivity in the United States and Canada predates the documentary by almost five decades. So who was behind the plight of these orcas? Using Jason M. Colby’s Orca: How We Came to Know and Love the World’s Greatest Predator, we compiled a list of figures behind the half century of orca captivity beyond Blackfish.
70 years of Middle Eastern politics, leaders, and conflict [infographic] By Steven Filippi Since the end of the Second World War and the founding of Israel in 1948, the Middle East has been a bastion for the world’s economic, political, and religious tensions. From its economic hold on energy consumption to its complicated, generations-long military conflicts and its unfortunate role as a hotbed of terrorism, the volatile politics of the Middle East have had and will continue to have global implications into the future.
One-sided etymology By Anatoly Liberman There is a feeling that idioms resist interference. A red herring cannot change its color any more than the leopard can change its spots. And yet variation here is common. For instance, talk a blue streak coexists with swear (curse) a blue streak. One even finds to swear like blue blazes (only the color remains intact). A drop in the bucket means the same as a drop in the ocean. We can cut something to bits or to pieces, and so forth.
“Fitting in” in the global workplace By Stephen J. Moody With ever-increasing global mobility, today’s workers often find themselves struggling to get along in workplace cultures different from their native norms. Many disciplines, from managerial sciences to linguistics to education, have a vested interest in understanding and addressing these challenges. Research focuses on how international workers adapt to new environments and how local workers accommodate foreign colleagues.
Celebrating the Fields Medal [infographic] This year, 2018, sees the world’s mathematics community come together once more at the International Congress of Mathematicians, hosted for the first time in South America in Rio de Janeiro. A highlight at every ICM is the announcement of the recipients of the Fields Medal, an award that honours up to four mathematicians under the age of 40, and is viewed as one of the highest honours a mathematician can receive. Here we honour past Fields Medal winners who we are proud to name as our authors. Hover over each name to learn a little more about who they are and what their contributions have been.
Isobel and me: medieval sanctuary and Whig history By Shannon McSheffrey For the last fifteen years I have been having an intense dialogue in my head with a long-dead historian, Isobel D. Thornley (1893-1941). Isobel is my best frenemy. Two pieces she wrote in 1924 and 1932 remain standard citations for one of my favourite subjects, medieval sanctuary; this is a feat of scholarly longevity that few of her contemporaries can boast.
Find the missing millions By Philippa C Matthews A young man in my clinic avoids eye contact. Peaked cap pulled low, he directs his unfocused gaze into a corner of the room. Recently diagnosed with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, he doesn’t know whether to believe this news, how to process it, or what it means for his future.
How Oscar Wilde got his big break By Michèle Mendelssohn In the late 1870s, when he was still a student, Oscar Wilde gathered his college friends for a late night chat in his Oxford room. The conversation was drifting to serious topics. “You talk a lot about yourself, Oscar,” one of them said, “and all the things you’d like to achieve. But you never say what you’re going to do with your life.”
Remembering Joseph Johnson By John Bugg Given his near half-century career, the Romantic-era publisher Joseph Johnson (1738-1809) left behind a notably small archive. We know from a letter he wrote on today’s date in 1799 that he destroyed some of his correspondence and business documents while serving a two-year sentence for seditious libel in King’s Bench Prison (imprisonment was a fate that progressive publishers were all too familiar with during the 1790s).
Living with hysteria: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wall-Paper” By Rebecca Coffey Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the semiautobiographical short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper,” was a first-wave feminist determined to live a fully actualized life of work for the common good. Born in Connecticut in 1860, she was a lecturer on ethics, labor, and feminism, and was also the niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Charlotte grew up in poverty and was particularly interested in bettering the economic straits of women. Her family moved so often that she was largely home-schooled and self-taught.
Wars of national liberation: The story of one unusual rule I By Kubo Macák If someone was to make a ranking of the most controversial rules of international law, Article 1(4) of Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions would very likely make the top 10. The Geneva Conventions themselves probably need little introduction; these four international treaties were adopted in the aftermath of World War II and now form the core of international humanitarian law (IHL).
New narrative nonfiction minisode [podcast] After the 2008 recession, print book sales took a hit, but now BookScan has recorded consistent growth in print book sales year over year for the past five years. What has been driving these sales? Surprisingly, adult nonfiction sales. Covering topics from history, politics and law, nonfiction saw a growth of 13 percent during the […]
Shark Week 2018 By Charis Edworthy With their huge, sharp teeth and menacing demeanor, it’s no wonder this ocean predator has long struck fear into the hearts of many. Thanks to films like Jaws and Sharknado, sharks have gained a reputation for killing and eating humans, yet there are under 100 unprovoked shark attacks each year, and even fewer fatalities—you’re more likely to be killed by lightning or a bee sting than you are by a shark!
Japan’s pivot in Asia By Richard J. Samuels and Corey Wallace In East Asia, the Brexit vote served as a reminder of how abruptly the improbable could become entirely possible. Could the unwinding of long-taken-for-granted assumptions about regional order and its supporting institutions also take place in Asia? Trump’s election, not even five months later – and then his overture to Pyongyang – made these prospects even more tangible. These concerns are manifest in four policy domains.
Women artists in conversation: Tiff Massey Q&A [Part I] By Kathy Battista Tiff Massey is a young artist whose work ranges from wearable sculpture to large-scale public interventions. She is the first African-American woman to graduate from Cranbrook Academy of Art’s MFA in Metalsmithing. She cites her influences as ranging from 1980s hip-hop culture and her hometown of Detroit to African art and Japanese fashion.
Who discovered Newton’s Laws? By Prasenjit Saha and Paul A. Taylor Newton’s famous remark, “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” is not in his published work, but comes from a letter to a colleague and competitor. In context, it reads simply as an elaborately polite acknowledgment of previous work on optics, especially the work of the recipient of the letter, Robert Hooke.
New narrative nonfiction [podcast] After the 2008 recession, print book sales took a hit, but now BookScan has recorded consistent growth in print book sales year over year for the past five years. What has been driving these sales? Surprisingly, adult nonfiction sales. Covering topics from history, politics and law, nonfiction saw a growth of 13 percent during the last fiscal year.
Librarians on bikes: cycling through US libraries By Beth Cramer and John Boyd After working for 26 years as academic librarians, we have reached a point in our careers where we are right-sizing professionally and personally. This year, we requested and were granted a nine-month contract, enabling us to pursue our dream of cycling across the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Astoria, Oregon.
Pidgin English By Anatoly Liberman There will be no revelations below. I owe all I have to say to my database and especially to the papers by Ian F. Hancock (1979) and Dingxu Shi (1992). But surprisingly, my folders contain an opinion that even those two most knowledgeable researchers have missed, and I’ll mention it below for what it is worth. Several important dictionaries tell us that pidgin is a “corruption” of Engl. business, and I am not in a position to confirm or question their opinion.
Immuno-oncology: are the top players changing the field? By Kiashini Sriharan Immunotherapy is a form of treatment to improve the natural ability of the immune system to fight diseases and infections, with immuno-oncology (IO) focusing on combatting cancer specifically. Novel immunotherapies are a possible solution for cancers that don’t respond to standard cancer treatments, either as standalone or in combination therapy.
Who are the super-rich and why they are paid so much? By Vincenzo Carrieri, Michele Raitano, and Francesco Principe ne of the most common arguments against contemporary capitalism is that it generates extreme inequalities. Few individuals – it is often said – earn huge earnings, while the rest of society has to struggle to make ends meet. But, who are the super-rich and why they are paid so much? Observing the composition of top incomes reveals a striking novelty for what concerns the “who” question.
Enjoying our Universe [slideshow] What do we mean by “the Universe”? In the physics community, we would define “the Universe” as all “observable things”, ranging from the entire cosmos to stars and planets, and to small elementary particles that are invisible to the naked eye. Observable things would also include recently made discoveries that we are slowly coming to understand more, such as the Higgs boson, gravitational waves, and black holes.
The goals of medicine do not stop at the edge of the body By Eric J. Cassell Over the last 100 years, the world, people, and our society have changed beyond measure. So have diseases, and we are now almost 75 years into the first ever age where cure of disease, successful organ transplants and near complete recovery from trauma has been possible. Despite all of this change, however, medical school curricula have hardly changed in a hundred years.
London keeps it psychedelic at audio-visual performing arts festival By Jonathan Weinel Entering into a darkened room crowded with people, there is a powerful smell of incense. A robed figure touches the forehead of each initiate, uttering an incantation. In the centre, a figure crouches, swaying slightly, engaged in some kind of mystical ritual.
Shariah: myths vs. realities By John L. Esposito and Natana DeLong-Bas For many in the West today, “Shariah” is a word that evokes fear—fear of a medieval legal system that issues draconian punishments, fear of relegation of women and religious minorities to second-class citizenship, fear of Muslims living as separate communities who refuse to integrate with the rest of society, and fear that Muslims will seek to impose Shariah in America and Europe.
Animal of the Month: 5 facts you should know about misnomered orcas For centuries, orcas have accrued a myriad of different names: Orcinus orca (which translates roughly as “demon from hell”), asesinas de ballena (whale killers), Delphinus orca, grampus, thrasher, blackfish, killer whale, to name a few. The names of these animals are overtly violent, but what do we actually know about the alleged “demons from hell”? This month, we want look at the facts about killer whales, and debunk the centuries-old mystery and fear surrounding orcas.
Where do our teeth come from? [excerpt] By Hugh Devlin and Rebecca Craven We all know that we start with baby teeth which fall out and are replaced with adult teeth, but do we really know why? Where do our baby teeth come from in the first place? This adapted extract below from the Oxford Handbook of Integrated Dental Biosciences highlights how our teeth form, why they erupt through our gums when they do, what causes teething pains, and when baby teeth should begin to appear.
A Q&A with composer Will Todd By Will Todd British composer and pianist Will Todd has worked at the Royal Opera House, the Lincoln Center in New York, London’s Barbican, and with Welsh National Opera, award-winning choirs The Sixteen, the BBC Singers, and Tenebrae. His music is valued for its melodic intensity and harmonic skill, which often incorporates jazz colours. We caught up with Will to ask him a few questions about his inspiration and approach to composition.
The gleaner continues his journey: June 2018 By Anatoly Liberman My discussion of idioms does not rest on a solid foundation. In examining the etymology of a word, I can rely on the evidence of numerous dictionaries and on my rich database. The linguists interested in the origin of idiomatic phrases wade through a swamp. My database of such phrases is rather rich, but the notes I have amassed are usually “opinions,” whose value is hard to assess. Sometimes the origin of a word is at stake.
Brexit threatens food supplies and Ministers know it By martin mckee and Tim Lang The story on the front page of The Sunday Times on 3 June 2018 pulled no punches. Headlined “Revealed: plans for Doomsday Brexit”, it reported on leaked government papers planning for a “no deal” Brexit scenario. They warned that the port of Dover could collapse on day one of exiting the EU, with major food shortages within a few days and medicines shortages within two weeks.
It’s not just decline and fall anymore… By Oliver Nicholson One evening in mid-October 1764 the young Edward Gibbon sat among the ruins of the Capitol at Rome. The prospect before him must have looked like a Piranesi print–bony cattle grazing on thin grass in the shade of shattered marble columns. It was then and there that he resolved to write the history of the decline and fall of Rome.
Keeping high risk patients healthy at home By Colin W. O'Brien Staying on top of multiple chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart failure can be a challenge for even the most well-resourced patient – imagine doing so while battling homelessness and schizophrenia. The result is often frequent trips to the emergency department and the hospital. Not surprisingly, many healthcare systems have started implementing programs to address the needs of these patients.
Stars in the telescopic eye: LVHIS and the nearby Universe By Bärbel Koribalski Spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and its neighbour, the Andromeda Galaxy, contain about 100 billion stars each, the light of which can be seen by eye. Also visible are small amounts of dust, typically enshrouding the sites of young star formations.
Philosopher of The Month: Maurice Merleau-Ponty [slideshow] By Panumas King This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-61) as their Philosopher of the Month. Merleau-Ponty was a French phenomenologist and together with Sartre founded the existential philosophy. His work draws on the empirical psychology, the early phenomenology of Husserl, Saussure’s structuralism as well as Heidegger’s ontology. His most famous work Phénoménologie de la […]
Professionalizing leadership – development By Barbara Kellerman Learning to lead should consist of a certain sequence in a certain order. Like doctors and lawyers, and for that matter like preachers and teachers and truck drivers and hairdressers, leaders should first be educated, then trained, and then developed. Previously we have addressed leadership education and training. What finally is meant by leadership development? How are leaders developed – as opposed to educated or trained?
The varieties of shame By Krista K. Thomason When my grandmother died in 2009, my far-flung family returned to east Texas to mourn her. People she had known from every stage of her life arrived to pay their respects. At a quiet moment during the wake, my aunt asked my grandfather how he felt about seeing all these people who loved him and who loved my grandmother. He answered, “Shame” and started to cry.
Nonsurgical challenges in surgical training By Rachel J Kwon Surgical cases dramatized in popular culture are loosely based on reality, but surgery is decidedly less glamorous on a daily basis. Before embarking on my own surgery training, I mentally prepared myself for the long hours and expected demands of caring for sick surgical patients, but looking back, the lessons I remember most came from small, quiet, and often unexpected moments.
Smoke from wildland fires and public health By Jonathan Long Firefighters, forest managements, and residents are preparing for another fire season in the western part of the United States. Wildfires burn large expanses of forested lands in California, but it’s not just rural Californians who need to worry about effects of such fires. Residents in urban areas and neighboring states experience the through smoke from hundreds of miles away.
Did Muslims forget about the Crusades? By Michael Lower The crusades are so ubiquitous these days that it is hard to imagine anyone ever forgetting them. People play video games like Assassin’s Creed (starring the Templars) and Crusader Kings II in droves, newsfeeds are filled with images of young men marching around in places like Charlottesville holding shields bearing the old crusader slogan “Deus vult” (God wills it!), and every year books about the crusades are published in their dozens, informing readers about the latest developments in crusader studies.
The ascent of music and the 63rd Eurovision Song Contest By Philip V. Bohlman At a speed few can fathom, nationalism has become the dirtiest word in all of European cultural politics. Embraced by the right and rising populism, nationalism seemingly poses a threat to the very being of Europe. Nationalists proudly proclaim a euroscepticism that places the sovereignty of self over community.
Monthly gleanings for June 2018 By Anatoly Liberman The post on pilgarlic appeared on 13 June 2018. I knew nothing of the story mentioned in the comment by Stephen Goranson, but he always manages to discover the sources of which I am unaware. The existence of Pilgarlic River adds, as serious people might say, a new dimension to the whole business of pilgarlic. Who named the river? Is the hydronym fictitious? If so, what was the impulse behind the coinage? If genuine, how old is it, and why so called? What happened in 1883 that aroused people’s interest in that seemingly useless word?
The Ancient Celts: six things I learned from Barry Cunliffe By George Currie Confession: I’m not an archaeologist nor a historian—at least not in any meaningful sense, though I do delight in aspects of both. But I was lucky enough to see Barry Cunliffe speak about the Ancient Celts at the Oxford Literature Festival earlier this year and then to have front row seats to the recording of this podcast, and I wanted to share a little of what I’ve learned.
Angling for less harmful algal blooms By Brent Sohngen and Wendong Zhang Blooms bring to mind the emerging beauty of spring—flowers blossoming and trees regaining their splendor. These blooms, unlike spring flowers, are odorous, unpleasant, and potentially toxic. They deter families from engaging in water-related recreational activities such as going to the shore. They discourage anglers from going fishing, which, in turn, affects those who depend on the local fishing economy.
The greatest witch-hunt of all time By Emerson W. Baker Imagine that a man comes to the highest office in the land with absolutely no political experience. As a young man, he had arrived in the big city to make his fortune and became one of the richest and most famous men in America by making big deals and taking great risks. Some schemes worked out and others did not.
Beyond nostalgia: understanding socialism markets By Benjamin Julien Hartmann, Katja H. Brunk, and Markus Giesler From Che Guevara t-shirts and Honnecker’s Hostel to Mao mugs and Good Bye, Lenin!—why do millions of consumers in China, Germany, Hungary, Poland, and other former socialist societies still insist on the superiority of socialist products and brands? The standard explanation offered by consumer sociologists and historians is that these thriving socialism markets stimulate political opposition, a yearning for the “better” socialist past.
The end-of-life sector needs concrete solutions to be truly person-centred By Natalie Koussa In recent years the language used to describe what constitutes good end-of-life care has changed. ‘Shared-decision making’, ‘patient autonomy’, ‘choice’ and ‘advance care planning’ have become buzzwords. This is to be welcomed, of course, but has the sector really changed in practice? According to several policy reports, in addition to feedback from people who use end-of-life services, not particularly.
How Wayfair opens the door to taxing internet sales By Edward A. Zelinsky In a much anticipated decision, the US Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. declared, by the narrowest of margins, that a state may require an internet seller to collect sales and use taxes even if the seller lacks physical presence in the state seeking to impose the obligation to collect its tax. Wayfair is an important decision, though much of the popular reporting about it has been overstated.
“Our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” By Ricardo A. Herrera This year, as the United States celebrates 242 years of independence, I cannot help but reflect upon the sort of country that the Second Continental Congress hoped to create and, more importantly, the sort of men they envisioned leading it. The men who declared independence were men of their time, as indeed was the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson.
From Eugène Rougon to Donald Trump: Émile Zola and politics By Brian Nelson Zola modeled the characters, plot, and settings of his novel His Excellency Eugène Rougon (1876) on real people and events, drawing on his own experience as a parliamentary reporter in 1869–71 and secretary in 1870 to the Republican deputy Alexandre Glais-Bizoin. But the novel is not a mere chronicle of politics during the French Second Empire (1852–70).
How much do patents matter to innovation? By Thomas F. Cotter Patents—rights that governments grant to inventors for new inventions—pervade the modern world. The US alone grants about 300,000 of them annually, mostly for components of, or methods relating to, larger end products. Your smartphone, for example, contains thousands of patented features; but even many seemingly simpler items, such as cosmetics, often contain one or more.
The politics and power of nostalgia By Matthew Flinders The summer exam season is now upon us so let me start this month’s blog with a simple question: ‘What role does nostalgia play in explaining ‘the populist signal’?’ A recent report suggests that the role of nostalgic narratives has become a central element of contemporary politics that tap into (and to some extent fuel) anti-political sentiments amongst the public.
How to write a biography By Edwin L. Battistella This year I’ve been reading a lot of biographies and writing some short profile pieces. Both experiences have caused me to reflect back on a book-length biography I wrote a few years ago on the little-known educator Sherwin Cody. Writing a book-length biography was a new experience for me at the time. I learned a lot along the way. Here are a few tips based on my experience.
June 2018 (78))
Rediscovering ancient Greek music By Armand D'Angour At the root of all Western literature is ancient Greek poetry—Homer’s great epics, the passionate love poems of Sappho, the masterpieces of Greek tragedy and of comic theatre. Almost all of this poetry was or originally involved sung music, often with instrumental accompaniment.
Birkbeck crowned winners of the OUP and ICCA National Mooting Competition 2018 By Kimberley Payne Congratulations to the Queen’s University Belfast team represented by Darren Finnegan and Conor Lockhart, who were crowned champions of the OUP and BPP National Mooting Competition 2016-2017, which took place at BPP Law School, Holborn on 22 June 2017. His Honour Judge Gratwicke returned once again to preside over the final and kept the students on their toes with some keen questioning.
Sports impairment in youth with inflammatory bowel disease By Christopher F Martin, Jessica P Naftaly, Kristin L Schneider, Michael D Kappelman, Rachel J Walker, and Rachel Neff Greenley Over 80,000 children and adolescents in the United States live with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which includes Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis. These are chronic autoimmune diseases that cause inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract.
An interactive view of the giraffe Giraffes are some of the best-known, well-loved animals of the African safari. But today, many variations of these long-necked herbivores are listed as vulnerable or endangered due to habitat depletion and poaching.
Real sex films capture our changing relationship to sex By Belinda Middleweek and John Tulloch In 2001, the film Intimacy was screened in London as the first “real sex” film set in Britain. With a French director and international leads (the British Mark Rylance and New Zealander Kerry Fox), the film was controversial even before screening.
Five critical concerns facing modern economics By Steven Filippi Due to the nature of globalization and the interconnectedness of modern human society, the discipline of economics touches on other areas of study such as politics, environmentalism, and international relations. This is especially true for the tumultuous times in which we live.
Top attributes that prove you’re already an entrepreneur By Jeffrey Nytch Time and again I’ve heard musicians express some variation of the following sentiment: “I guess entrepreneurship is fine for some folks, but that’s not me. I’m a musician, not an entrepreneur.”
Full of fear: really dreadful By Anatoly Liberman Fear is a basic emotion in all living creatures, because it makes them recognize and avoid danger. It is therefore no wonder that so many words for it have been coined. Language can describe fear by registering the physical reaction to it, for instance, shaking and trembling (quite a few words for “fear” in the Indo-European languages belong here) or trying to flee from the source of danger, as in Greek phobós, known from the suffix -phobe and all kinds of phobias (phébomai “I fear; I flee from”; its Russian cognate beg- designates only “running”).
Bridging partisan divides over scientific issues By Steven Vigdor The current era in the Western hemisphere is marked by growing public distrust of “intellectual elites.” The present U.S. administration openly disregards, or even suppresses, relevant scientific input to policy formulation.
Basic goods as basic rights By Kenneth A. Reinert f we were to try summarizing the many statements on human rights within the United Nations system, it might be as follows: basic goods are basic rights. True, there was an old approach to human rights that focused exclusively on “negative” political rights and cast doubt on “positive” subsistence rights. For example, it has been argued that we should not focus on economic or social rights because this would distract attention from political rights.
Drenched in words: LGBTQ poets from US history By Laura Knowles John F. Kennedy stated that “When power narrows the areas of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” Poetry attempts to reclaim awareness of the world through language, an entirely human construct that can only be pushed so far but one that is pushed repeatedly and necessarily in order to articulate what it means to be human. Throughout American history, LGBTQ poets have explored myriad themes including identity, sexuality, and historical and political landscapes, in order to comprehend and chronicle human experience.
Reluctant migrants in Italy By Eileen Ryan The attempted murder of six African immigrants in the streets of the northern province of Macerata in February 2018 brought to mind an earlier history of black bodies in Italy. In April 1943, the fascist Ministry of Italian Africa transported a group of over fifty Africans to Macerata from Naples. Today, immigration is transforming Italy to an increasingly diverse country.
The scary truth about night terrors By phil starks Do you know what it’s like to stand near, but helplessly apart, from your child while he screams out in apparent horror during the night? I do. I did it almost nightly for months. It wasn’t necessary. My six-year-old son is one of many children who experienced night terrors. Like most of these children, he has a relative who experienced night terrors as well–I had them when I was a child. Night terrors are not bad dreams or nightmares.
Martin Luther’s Polish revolution By Natalia Nowakowska Last year, Playmobil issued one of its best-selling and most controversial figurines yet, a three-inch Martin Luther, with quill, book, and cheerful pink plastic face. This mini-Luther celebrated the 500th anniversary of the Reformation
European Public Law: facing the challenge of decline By Armin von Bogdandy and Alexandra Kemmerer In recent years, Europe has lost much of its promise. The financial crisis, the debt crisis, the refugee crisis, the apparent systemic deficiencies of national and supranational governance structures, as well as a fading confidence in democratic government, have led to a certain impression of “messiness.”
Philosopher of the month: Mulla Sadra [quiz] By Catherine Pugh This June, the OUP Philosophy team honours Mulla Sadra (1571 – 1640) as their Philosopher of the Month. Mulla Sadra was born in Shiraz, southern Iran, but moved around when he was studying and for the many pilgrimages he embarked on in in his lifetime. He later returned to Shiraz when he began teaching and taking on followers of his philosophy.
Gulls on film: roadkill scavenging by wildlife in urban areas By Amy Schwartz The impact of roads on wildlife (both directly through wildlife-vehicle collisions, and indirectly due to factors such as habitat fragmentation) has likely increased over time due to expansion of the road network and increased use and number of vehicles. In the UK, for example, there were only 4.2 million vehicles on the roads in 1951, compared to 37.3 million by the end of 2016.
Gun control is more complex than you think By Hugh LaFollette In the public debate over gun control, many people talk as if our only options are to support or oppose it. Although some endorse more expansive views, many still talk as if our choices are quite limited: whether to support or oppose a small number of
Who cares about scholarly communication? By Rick Anderson Is there really anything that everyone needs to know about scholarly communication? At first blush, the answer might seem to be no.
Nine “striking” facts about the history of the typewriter By Steven Filippi The first machine known as the typewriter was patented on 23rd June 1868, by printer and journalist Christopher Latham Sholes of Wisconsin. Though it was not the first personal printing machine attempted—a patent was granted to Englishman Henry Mill in 1714, yet no machine appears to have been built—Sholes’ invention was the first to be practical enough for mass production and use by the general public.
The Kuleshov Fallacy By Murray Smith The face has long been regarded as one of the major weapons in the arsenal of cinema—as a tool of characterization, a source of visual fascination, and not least, as a vehicle of emotional expression.
Orangutans as forest engineers By Adam Munn and Mark Harrison Orangutans quite literally are “persons of the forest,” at least according to their Malay name (orang means “person” and hutan is “forest”). But this is more than just a name. As well as their distinctively “human” qualities, these large charismatic fruit-eaters are also gardeners, forest engineers responsible for spreading and maintaining a wide array of tree species.
Global health as a social movement: Q&A with Dr. Joia Mukherjee By Joia S. Mukherjee and Peter Drobac What is social entrepreneurship? In essence, it’s about using the tools of entrepreneurship—opportunity, resourcefulness, innovation—to address stubborn social and environmental problems. A defining feature of social entrepreneurship is the concept of systemic change; that is, change that addresses the underlying social, political, and economic forces that conspire to exclude the poor and marginalised from the opportunities that many of us take for granted.
Securing the future of the Male Voice Choir By Edward-Rhys Harry During a ‘question and answer’ session at a recent music convention, four contemporary composers of choral music faced a plethora of musicians from all types of backgrounds and traditions. Amongst a selection of interesting and searching questions asked, one brought an eerie silence to the room. The question was: ‘Would you consider writing for a male choir?’
Law Teacher of the Year announced at the Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching conference By Rose Wood Oxford University Press hosted its annual Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching Conference at Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool on 20 June. Playing a central role at the conference were the six Law Teacher of the Year Award finalists. Delegates learned what it was that makes them such exceptional teachers, and heard first–hand about their teaching methods, motivations, and philosophies. The conference concluded with current Law Teacher of the Year, Nick Clapham of the University of Surrey, naming Lydia Bleasdale of the University of Leeds as this year’s winner.
Competing territorial and maritime claims in the South China Sea By Joshua Hagen The Spratly Islands are small. In fact, this remote archipelago is just a collection of rocky islets, atolls, and reefs scattered across the southern reaches of the South China Sea.
Numbers and historical linguistics: a match made in heaven? By Barbara McGillivray and Gard B. Jenset Whatever you associate with the term “historical linguistics,” chances are that it will not be numbers or computer algorithms. This would perhaps not be surprising were it not for the fact that linguistics in general has seen increasing use of exactly such quantitative methods. Historical linguistics tends to use statistical testing and quantitative arguments less than linguistics generally. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Holographic hallucinations, reality hacking, and Jedi battles in London By Jonathan Weinel In 1977, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope captivated audiences with stunning multisensory special effects and science-fiction storytelling. The original Star Wars trilogy sent shockwaves of excitement through popular culture that would resonate for years to come. Beyond the films themselves, the Star Wars universe extended into a wider sphere of cultural artefacts such as toys, books and comics, which allowed audiences to recreate and extend the stories.
The Oxford Etymologist waxes emotional: a few rambling remarks on fear By Anatoly Liberman It is well-known that words for abstract concepts at one time designated concrete things or actions. “Love,” “hatred,” “fear,” and the rest developed from much more tangible notions. The words anger, anguish, and anxious provide convincing examples of this trend. All three are borrowings in English: the first from Scandinavian, the second from French, and the third from Latin. In Old Norse (that is, in Old Icelandic), angr and angra meant “to grieve” and “grief” respectively.
Refugees, citizens, and camps: a very British history By Jordanna Bailkin Today, very few people think of Britain as a land of camps. Instead, camps seem to happen “elsewhere,” from Greece to Palestine to the global South. Yet during the 20th century, dozens of camps in Britain housed tens of thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians, and Vietnamese.
How nations finance themselves matters By Patrick Bolton and Haizhou Huang To understand how nations should finance themselves it is fruitful to look at how corporations finance themselves, how they divide their financing between debt and equity. Corporations typically issue equity when they need financing for a new profitable investment opportunity, when their shares are overvalued by the stock market, or when they need to raise funds to service their debt obligations.
The evisceration of storytelling By Sujatha Fernandes In his seminal essay “The Storyteller,” published in 1936, the German philosopher Walter Benjamin decried the loss of the craft of oral storytelling marked by the advent of the short story and the novel. Modern society, he lamented, had abbreviated storytelling. Fast forward to the era of Facebook, where the story has become an easily digestible soundbite on your news feed or timeline.. Complexity is eschewed,
How deaf education and artificial language were linked in the 17th century By David Cram and Jaap Maat Before the 1550s, it was generally believed that people who are born deaf are incapable of learning a natural language such as Spanish or English. This belief was nourished by the observation that hearing children normally acquire their speaking skills without explicit instruction, and that learning to read usually proceeds by first connecting individual letters to individual speech sounds, pronouncing them one by one, before a whole word is read and understood.
The 2018 classics book club at Bryant Park Reading Room By Cassidy Donovan Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series. The Bryant Park Reading Room was first established in 1935 by the New York Public Library as a refuge for the thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression.
Why are there so many different scripts in East Asia? By Peter Kornicki You don’t have to learn a new script when you learn Norwegian, Czech, or Portuguese, let alone French, so why does every East Asian language require you to learn a new script as well? In Europe the Roman script of Latin became standard, and it was never seriously challenged by runes or by the Greek, Cyrillic, or Glagolitic (an early Slavic script) alphabets.
Why consumers forget unethical business practices By Rebecca Reczek Imagine a consumer, Kate, who enjoys shopping for fashionable clothing, but who also cares about whether her clothing is produced ethically. She reads an article online indicating that fashion giant Zara sells clothing made by allegedly unpaid workers, but a few days later ends up buying a new shirt from Zara. She either forgets that Zara may be mistreating workers, or she mistakenly recalls that they are one of the brands that have agreed to a strict code of ethical labor practices, including paying a living wage to all workers.
Revitalizing the Epistemology of Religion By Matthew A. Benton Philosophers studying epistemology debate the exact nature of knowledge, typically by examining the “evidence” behind one’s beliefs: logical processes, sensory perception, and so on.
Andy Warhol’s queerness, unedited By Jennifer Sichel “I think everybody should like everybody” is one of Andy Warhol’s most iconic quotes. If you type it into Google image search, you get back a grid of dorm-room posters, inspirational desktop wallpaper, t-shirts, and baby onesies. Seeping into popular culture, Warhol’s quote has become a simple, cheeky mantra for how to live the good life—a reminder to get back to the basics.
A good death beyond dignity? By Sebastian Muders According to the Australian euthanasia activist Philip Nitschke, to choose when you die is “a fundamental human right. It’s not just some medical privilege for the very sick. If you’ve got the precious gift of life, you should be able to give that gift away at the time of your choosing.” This view combines two extreme standpoints in the debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Top 10 facts about the giraffe This June, people around the globe are marking World Giraffe Day, an annual event to recognise the bovine dwellers of the African continent. While these long-necked herbivores remain a firm favourite of the safari, there remains much about the giraffe which is relatively unknown. In order to celebrate our Animal of the Month, we bring you 10 amazing facts about the giraffe.
C.P. Snow and thermodynamics, 60 years on By Dennis Sherwood It’s nearly 60 years since C.P. Snow gave his influential “Two Cultures” lecture, in which – among many other significant insights – he advocated that a good education should equip a young person with as deep a knowledge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics as of Shakespeare. A noble objective, but why did Snow highlight this particular scientific law?
Five things you might not know about Edmund Burke By Emily Jones Edmund Burke (1730-1797) was an Irishman and a prominent Whig politician in late 18th century England, but he is now most commonly known as “the founder of modern conservatism”—the canonical position which he has held since the beginning of the 20th century in Britain and the rest of the world.
How (un)representative is the British political class? [QUIZ] By Peter Allen The fact that the British political class doesn’t fully reflect the diversity seen in the population as a whole is hardly news. However, many people don’t fully appreciate exactly how unrepresentative its members are, or the specific (and sometimes slightly odd) ways in which the political class differs from Britain as a whole.
Five ways entrepreneurship is essential to a classical music career By Jeffrey Nytch The other day, I posted something on my professional Facebook page about entrepreneurship and my compositional activities, and someone who I don’t know commented: “Forget entrepreneurship. Just compose.” (Well, they actually put it in somewhat more graphic terms, but in the interests of decorum…) This sentiment is nothing new: resistance to “the e-word” continues; if anything it’s intensified in recent years as entrepreneurship has become an over-used buzzword.
The amorous and other adventures of “poor pilgarlic” By Anatoly Liberman The word pilgarlic (or pilgarlik and pilgarlick) may not be worthy of a post, but a hundred and fifty years ago and some time later, people discussed it with great interest and dug up so many curious examples of its use that only the OED has more. (Just how many citations the archive of the OED contains we have no way of knowing, for the printed text includes only a small portion of the examples James A. H. Murray and his successors received.) There is not much to add to what is known about the origin of this odd word, but I have my own etymology of the curious word and am eager to publicize it.
Crises and population health By Joshua M. Sharfstein On the day after the horrific shooting that claimed the lives of 17 students at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the local state representative predicted what would happen next. “Nothing.”
The IMF’s role in the evolution of economic orthodoxy since the Crisis By Ben Clift The IMF & World Bank’s Spring meetings with finance ministers and central bankers, which took place in Washington DC recently, are one key forum where the IMF performs its mandated role as conduit of international economic co-ordination. The IMF uses its knowledge bank, expertise and mandate for economic surveillance and coordination to act as global arbiter of legitimate or ‘sound’ policy.
She Preached the Word Ten things to know about women’s ordination in the United States By Dr. Benjamin Knoll and Cammie Jo Bolin Pope Francis recently appointed three women for the first time to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, an important advisory body to the Pope on matters of Catholic orthodoxy. He has also recently established a commission for studying the role of women deacons in the early Christian church. While encouraging for supporters of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, Pope Francis has also made it clear that he is keeping the door firmly shut in terms of the possibility of women priests.
The gravity of gravitational waves By Stefano Vitale Rarely has a research field in physics gotten such sustained worldwide press coverage as gravity has received recently. A breathtaking sequence of events has kept gravity in the spotlight for months: the first detection(s) of gravitational waves from black-holes; the amazing success of LISA Pathfinder, ESA’s precursor mission to the LISA gravitational wave detector in space; the observation — first by gravitational waves with LIGO and Virgo, and then by all possible telescopes on Earth and in space — of the merger of two neutron stars, an astrophysical event that likely constitutes the cosmic factory of many of the chemical elements we find around us.
Divine victory: the role of Christianity in Roman military conquests By Peter Heather The Roman Empire derived its strength from its military conquests: overseeing territories across Europe, Africa and Asia. Before Christianity, emperors were praised and honored for their successes on the battlefield; as Christianity took root throughout Rome, it was used as a means to elevate emperors to an even greater status: raising them from successful imperialists to divinely appointed leaders.
Looking back at 100 years of flu [timeline] By Anna Shannon This year is the centenary of the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918. However, it was only by 2010 that the industry had started universal flu vaccine trials, following the Swine flu pandemic in 2009. Explore the last hundred years of flu, as we mark the Spanish flu centenary, from the four major pandemics to the medical advances along the way, with this interactive timeline.
The scientist as historian By Subrata Dasgupta Why should a trained scientist be seriously interested in science past? After all, science looks to the future. Moreover, as Nobel laureate immunologist Sir Peter Medawar once put it: “A great many highly creative scientists…take it for granted, though they are usually too polite or too ashamed to say so, that an interest in the history of science is a sign of failing or unawakened powers.”
Economic inequality, politics, and capital By John Attanasio Economic inequality and campaign finance are two of the hottest topics in America today. Unfortunately, the topics are typically discussed separately, but they are actually intertwined. The rise of US economic inequality that economist Thomas Piketty chronicles in his renowned book Capital in the Twenty-First Century – starting in the late 1970s and continuing through today – coincides remarkably with the US Supreme Court’s decision of Buckley v. Valeo.
Why We Need Religion The power of the religious imagination [excerpt] By Stephen T. Asma Although often divided between believers and non-believers, or sacred and secular, spirituality is not dichotomous. Some believers accept the concept of God, but reject the literal existence of God. Some non-believers dismiss religious parables as fiction, but embrace the history and culture that comes with religion. This excerpt from “Why We Need Religion” examines these intermediate positions, and explores how religious imagination helps us find connection and meaning in a mystifying world.
When and why does Islamic law oblige Muslims to fast? By John L. Esposito and Natana DeLong-Bas An important prophetic tradition maintains that “Islam was built upon five ‘foundations.’” The Five Pillars, (the profession of faith [shahadah], daily prayers [salat], almsgiving [zakat], the fast of Ramadan [sawm], and the pilgrimage to Mecca [Hajj]) blend the theological with the legal and represent the fundamental principles of personal and collective faith, worship, and social responsibility that unite all Muslims and distinguish Islam from other religions.
History books for Dads [reading list] By Marissa Lynch In recent years, consumer surveys have shown an upward trend in Father’s Day gift-giving. According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. Father’s Day spending in 2017 hit record highs: reaching an estimated $15.5 billion. This change could be related to nature of modern fatherhood: today’s dads report spending an average of seven hours per week on child care (nearly triple what fathers reported 50 years ago). To celebrate Father’s Day, we put together a video collection of books we think dads will love. More details about each book can be found in the list below. If you have any reading suggestions for Father’s Day, please share in the comments section!
Performing for their lives: LGBT individuals seeking asylum By Sarilee Kahn and Edward J. Alessi The UN Refugee Convention promises safe haven to individuals who, having crossed an international boundary, can prove a well-founded fear of persecution based upon one of five categories. Least well-defined of these categories, and most ambiguous among them, is ‘membership in a particular social group.’ How does one prove lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender ‘membership’?
Studying mass murder By Ugur Ümit Üngör In the twentieth century, 40 to 60 million defenseless people were massacred in episodes of genocide. The 21st century is not faring much better, with mass murder ongoing e.g. in Myanmar and Syria. Many of these cases have been studied well, both in detailed case studies and in comparative perspectives, but studying mass murder is no picnic.
Improving care for the family and friends who care for cancer patients By Margaret L. Longacre, Allison J. Applebaum, Mitch Golant, and Joanne S. Buzaglo Many individuals in the United States will receive a cancer diagnosis this year. Such a diagnosis is upsetting to those who receive it and overwhelming to those—relatives or friends—who love them. Cancer is rarely experienced in isolation.
Safe and supportive schools for LGBTQ-GNC students By Stacey S. Horn and Stephen T. Russell Within its first month, the Trump administration revoked federal guidelines designed to promote protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or gender non-conforming youth (LGBTQ-GNC) public school students. This move received significant media attention, much of which focused on the challenges of growing up LGBTQ-GNC, and the unique role of schools as places that should be safe and supportive for all students.
French Anglicisms: An ever-changing linguistic case By Valérie Saugera English loanwords have been pushing their way into languages worldwide at an increasing rate, but no language has a history of national resistance as staunch as French. In France where language is an affair of state, opposition to Anglicisms, fronted by the Académie française, is explicitly linguistic (Anglicisms are superfluous and faddish items which must be replaced by French words) and implicitly political (Anglicisms are imports from the hegemonic United States, and the donor status of English exists at the expense of French).
Etymology gleanings: May 2018 [Part 2] By Anatoly Liberman With one exception, I’ll take care of the most recent comments in due time. For today I have two items from the merry month of May. The exception concerns Italian becco “cuckold.” I don’t think the association is with the word for “beak; nose.” Becco “cuckold” is probably from becco “male goat.” If so, the reference must be to the horns, as discussed in the previous post.
Smashing black holes at the centre of the Milky Way By Alessia Gualandris and Manuel Arca Sedda The centre of the Milky Way is a very crowded region, hosting a dense and compact cluster of stars—the so-called nuclear star cluster—and a supermassive black hole (SMBH) weighing more than 4 million solar masses. A star cluster is an ensemble of stars kept together by their own force of gravity. These large systems are found in the outskirts of every type of galaxy, being comprised of up to several million stars.
The global plastic problem [podcast] By Judith S. Weis, Daniel K. Gardner, and Philip J. Landrigan June 5th is World Environment Day. It is the UN’s most important day for encouraging worldwide awareness and action for the protection of our environment. World Environment Day is the “people’s day” for doing something to take care of the Earth—locally, nationally, or even globally. This year’s host is India and their theme of “Beat Plastic […]
What you need to know about plastic pollution By Stephen Mann “There’s a great future in plastics,” Mr. McGuire said to recent-grad Benjamin Braddock at his graduation party in one of the most iconic films of the twentieth century, the Graduate. This scene captures more than just the mere parting words of some career advice the older generation tends to give young people at their graduation parties, it signals something more cultural—indeed, more industrial—that had been so prevailing at the time, and so worrisome now.
Stroboscopic medicine By Abraham Fuks The stroboscope is an ingenious device of rapidly flashing lights that allows engineers and scientists to freeze motion and capture brief slices of time. The resulting image is akin to examining a single frame of a motion picture that provides a sharp image, albeit one without context and with neither past nor future. This is now, sadly, an apt metaphor for contemporary clinical encounters.
Legal leadership and its place in America’s history and future By Peter Hoffer This past year, I wrote a book about lawyers’ service in the American Civil War, I argued that the lawyers’ part in the US and Confederate cabinets and in their respective Congresses made a civil war a little more civil, and allowed that out of horrific battle came a new respect for rule of law, as well as a new kind of positive, rights-based constitutionalism.
Defining a network The scientific study of networks is an interdisciplinary field that combines ideas from mathematics, physics, biology, computer science, statistics, the social sciences, and many other areas. It is a relatively understudied area of science, but its multidisciplinary nature means that an increasing amount of scientists are engaging with it.
Taxing donor-advised funds By Edward A. Zelinsky Congress should extend two taxes to donor-advised funds which currently apply to private foundations. First, Congress should apply to donor-advised funds the federal tax on private foundations’ net investment incomes. Second, Congress should extend to donor-advised funds the federal penalty tax imposed upon a private foundation if it fails to pay out annually an amount of at least equal to five percent of its assets.
Levels of editing of a scientific paper By Dawn Field There are four key steps to crafting a paper and getting it ready for submission just as there are four levels for editing or reviewing a paper. These steps will help you develop and perfect your idea before it is read. It is just as important to edit your research as it is to copy edit for grammar before turning in your submission.
The history and importance of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council By Jacob Turner and Lord Mance The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) signifies different things to different people. It is both a court and an advisory body. It rules on disputes ranging from the personal, such as the inheritance of a hereditary title amid accusations of historic infidelity, to those of great public importance, such as the validity of elections, or significant commercially, such as the ownership or control of Turkey’s largest mobile phone company.
Philosopher of the month: Mulla Sadra [infographic] By Catherine Pugh This June, the OUP Philosophy team honours Mulla Sadra (1571 – 1640) as their Philosopher of the Month. An Iranian Islamic philosopher, Sadra is recognised as the major process philosopher of the school of Isfahan. Mulla Sadra is primarily associated with ‘metaphilosophy’, but also maintains sovereign status as a spiritual leader for the Islamic East.
Putting modifiers in their place By Edwin L. Battistella Sometimes I misplace things—my sunglasses, a book I’m reading, keys, my phone. Sometimes I misplace words in sentences too, leaving a clause or a phrase where it doesn’t belong. The result is what grammarians call misplaced or dangling modifiers. It’s a sentence fault that textbooks sometimes illustrate with over-the-top examples like these.
Taking pride in standing up for the transgender community By Michael P. Dentato At the beginning of 2017, following the tumultuous election season it was my hope that there would be few changes made to the years of progress for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) civil rights and equality. It was clear that prior to the election of 2016, the Obama administration, U.S. Supreme Court, and the Justice Department were committed to promoting social justice for LGBTQ individuals, and most especially the transgender community.
Fosse Time!: innovation and influence in the films of Bob Fosse By Kevin Winkler Despite numerous honors throughout his illustrious career, including being the only director to earn the “triple crown” of show business awards—the Oscar, Emmy, and Tony—all in one year, Bob Fosse remains underrated in terms of his influence on the presentation of dance on film. From Sweet Charity, his first film as a director, through his multiple Oscar-winning Cabaret, to his autobiographical, Felliniesque All That Jazz, Fosse created a template for filming dance that has remained influential and remarkably vital years after these films first appeared.
Can environmental DNA help save endangered crayfish? By Eric R. Larson Most people have a passing familiarity with crayfish: as an occasional food item, or as animals routinely caught by children wading in streams and ditches in the summer. Yet few people likely realize how astoundingly diverse crayfish are globally. Our planet is home to approximately 600 species of crayfish, which use habitats ranging from caves to streams and lakes to terrestrial burrows.
Kidney transplants, voucher systems, and difficult questions By James Stacey Taylor It is commonly said that necessity is the mother of invention, and this was certainly the case at UCLA Medical Center in 2014 . Howard Broadman, then aged 64 and a retired judge from San Diego County, California, was concerned that his grandson, Quinn Gerlach, would be unable to secure a transplant kidney when he needed one. And so began the first “voucher system” for kidney procurement.
May 2018 (68))
Drug-resistant infections and the misuse of antibiotics in children By Theoklis Zaoutis Antibiotics are among the most commonly prescribed drugs used in human medicine and have saved countless lives. But misuse and overuse of these important medications accelerates the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, one of the biggest threats to global health. As experts who focus on this problem in children prepare for the Ninth Annual International Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Conference, held from 31 May to 1 June, Dr. Theoklis Zaoutis, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, shared several insights on drug resistance and antibiotic use among children.
Etymology Gleanings: May 2018 By Anatoly Liberman Still with the herd: Man, as they say, is a gregarious animal, and wearing horns could become the male of our species, but etymology sometimes makes unpredictable leaps. I of course knew that Italian becco means “cuckold” (the image is the same in all or most of the Romance languages, and not only in them), but would not have addressed this sensitive subject, had a comment on becco not served as a provocation. So here are some notes on cuckoldry from a linguistic point of view.
Markets aren’t natural: governments have to make them work By Steven K. Vogel hether we recognize it or not, “marketcraft” constitutes a core government function comparable to statecraft. By marketcraft, I refer to all the things governments do to make markets function and flourish, like corporate law, antitrust policy, intellectual property rights, and financial regulation. Marketcraft has profound implications for economic performance, social welfare, and national power – so we should want to get it right.
Voltaire on death By Alyssa Russell Voltaire, the French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher, wrote over 20,000 letters over his lifetime. One can read through his letters to learn more about his views on democracy and religion, as well as the soul and afterlife. The following excerpts from his letters show how his thoughts and ideas about death and the soul evolved over time.
What is a mathematical model? By Richard Brown As a mathematician who focuses his attention on a field called dynamics, I am often asked when queried about my area of specialty, exactly what is a dynamical system? I usually answer something like: “I study the mathematics underlying what is means to model something mathematically.” And this seems to work as most people have a basic understanding that mathematics is used in science and engineering to model either a physical or an abstract process and to mine it for information.
When corporations do the right thing By Amanda Porterfield Delta Airlines was one of more than a dozen companies to cut ties with the NRA after the school shooting in February 2018 that left 17 dead in Parkland, Florida. In a similar spirit six months earlier, CEOs from major American corporations spoke out against racial violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, President Trump’s inadequate response to the violence of white supremacists and their racist rhetoric prompted CEOs from Merck, General Electric, Apple, Goldman Sachs, Unilever, Armor, Dow, and Pepsi to separate themselves from him.
Mind-body connection: a psychosomatic approach to women’s health By Mira Lal For millennia, medicine has been applied towards three main areas of the human condition: the mind, the body, and the spirit. Traditional Chinese medicine was similar to ancient Indian medicine in that it sought to create a holistic approach to treating illness, and recognised the contributions of psychological and social aspects in disease management.
Which law applies to adjudicate litigation with a foreign element? By Sagi Peari We live in a rapidly changing world with the constant presence of so-called “foreign elements” in legal cases. Take, for example, a car accident between an Ontario resident and a New York resident that took place in Mexico, or a contract signed in Japan between English and German residents with respect to delivery of goods in Brazil. Given the multitude of “foreign elements” in the factual bases of these cases, which state’s law should the domestic court apply to adjudicate the litigation? Should this be Ontario, New York, Mexico, English, German, Japanese, Brazilian law or even some other?
Thomas Kuhn and the T. S. Kuhn Archives at MIT By K. Brad Wray After I completed a book on Thomas Kuhn, the author of Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I thought I knew a lot about him. In my book, I argue that Kuhn’s recent, less frequently read work is key to understanding his views. Then I began to look in detail at Kuhn’s past and the influence his early work had in fields other than philosophy of science. I came across an intriguing and unexpected remark by Thomas Walker, a political scientist, in Perspectives on Politics.
Investment law leads to more investment: A faulty premise? By Taylor St John If a government ratifies investment treaties and provides foreigners with access to investor-state arbitration, they will receive additional foreign investment. This has been the premise of investment law for over 50 years. Is it true? Two decades of studies testing this premise have been inconclusive. Since statistics on foreign investment are notoriously unreliable, they are unlikely to provide a clear answer anytime soon.
OUP Philosophy Karl Marx: A Reading List By OUP Philosophy Team The OUP Philosophy list boasts cutting-edge scholarship including monographs handbooks and textbooks suitable for graduate and undergraduate use, plus journals, online products, and a collection of scholarly editions. For the latest news, resources, and insights from the Philosophy team, follow us on Twitter @OUPPhilosophy.
25 years of contemporary war crimes tribunals By Diane Orentlicher Much as a single discovery can transform science, paradigm shifts in international law can emerge with astonishing speed. Twenty-five years ago, the UN Security Council sparked such a shift when it created a war crimes tribunal to punish those responsible for “ethnic cleansing” in the former Yugoslavia.
How can research impact patients’ health in the “real world”? By Leah Zullig As an academic researcher, my primary goal is to improve population health. I was trained in innovative study designs, rigorous analytic approaches, and taught that fidelity to the methods is of the utmost importance. However, it is just as important that patients actually use the programs that we design to improve their health. Unfortunately, the few health programs that actually make it into the community can take years—even decades—to get there.
Animal of the Month: 8 things threatening koalas [slideshow] Despite being found only on one continent in the world, many of us appreciate everything koalas have to offer. We celebrated this endearing marsupial earlier this month on Wild Koala Day and have continued the revelries by providing interesting facts throughout the month. Highlighting this iconic Australian mammal is of continued importance as the wild population continues to decrease. According to some estimates, the koala population in Queensland between 1996 and 2016 decreased by as much as 80%. Here, we present some of the leading threats Phascolarctos cinereus face in their bid to survive in the modern world.
Winged words: the importance of birds in the ancient world By Jeremy Mynott One good reason for studying the natural history of the ancient world is that it takes us outside the bubble we happen to be living in now, and enables us to look back at our world from the outside, as it were, and perhaps see it differently. As T.S. Elliot famously said, “the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
Encyclopedia editions in the digital age By Anna-Lise Santella When Grove Music Online launched its new website last December, it marked the beginning of a new era for the encyclopedic dictionary that serves as a primary reference tool for music scholars. Grove has been in continuous publication since 1879 and online since 2001, but the version of Grove that was published on December 2017 remade the dictionary for the first time as “digital first”—that is, with online prioritized over print—and is thus Grove’s first truly digital edition.
April 2018 (76))
Science and spectacle: exposing climate change through the arts By Stephen Mann Despite scientific consensus about the reality of climate change, one of the challenges facing the scientific community is effectively facilitating an understanding of the problem and encouraging action. Given the complexity of the issue, its many interdependencies, and lack of simple solutions, it’s easy to ignore. For many people, the threat of climate change feels distant and abstract—something they don’t easily perceive in their day-to-day lives. One of the ways that might help people grasp the real complexities of climate change is through narratives and storytelling.
Considerations for peacemaking and peacekeeping By Stephen Mann Since the end of the Cold War, there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to peacekeeping. Consequently, peace has generated considerable interest in the areas of education, research, and politics. Peacekeeping developed in the 1950s as part of preventive diplomacy. It has since become an essential component of conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Peacebuilding has become embedded in the theory and practice of national governments, nongovernmental organizations, and regional and global intergovernmental organizations. Most regional intergovernmental organizations now have departments for peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.
The agonies of the Multilateral Trading System By Mathias Kende As of late, the Multilateral Trading System has been beset by several serious agonies. The symptoms have been obvious. The 11th Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which took place in December 2017 in Buenos Aires, has demonstrated that the WTO’s rule-making function is no longer performing as expected: with the exception of a shared willingness to collectively and constructively work further on the issue of disciplining fishery subsidies, it did not result in any new normative multilateral outcome. Likewise, the WTO’s dispute settlement function has been affected by a stalled selection process for its new judges. If this situation persists, the WTO might cease to be the Multilateral Trading System’s final legal arbiter.
The social importance of dance in the 17th and 18th centuries By Alyssa Russell In the 21st century, dance is a part of life—it can be an occupation, a part of traditional weddings, a hobby, and a pastime, among other things. However, it is regarded quite differently than it was in the time of the Enlightenment, when it was a much more important part of regular social life, especially for the wealthier classes. In this time, young adults went to dance instructors to make sure they were properly trained for the social activities they would soon be a part of. Read on for excerpts of correspondence from Electronic Enlightenment highlighting just how important dancing was to everyday life in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Trust in face-to-face diplomacy By Nicholas Wheeler President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, are due to meet for a historic summit in an as yet undisclosed location to try and resolve the nuclear stand-off on the Korean peninsula. For academics that study the potential of face-to-face diplomacy to de-escalate and transform conflicts, the summit is a fascinating case for testing the validity of their theories and prescriptions.
Soil protists: a fertile frontier in biology research By enrique lara and stefan geisen For many years, soil has been considered the ultimate frontier to ecological knowledge. Soils serve many ecosystem functions for humans; for example, they provide the basis for most of our nutrition. Yet, the organisms which act as the catalysts for those services—i.e. the soil microbiota—still remain a relatively unexplored field of research.
Treating people with Alzheimer’s: The non-pharmacological approach. By Steven R. Sabat On 2 January 2018, National Public Radio’s Terry Gross interviewed British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, who discussed Alzheimer’s disease and how “much better treatment” for the disease is about ten years away. The improved treatment to which Dr. Jebelli was referring was pharmaceutical/biomedical treatment. Indeed, the vast majority of stories in the mass media about treatment for Alzheimer’s focuses on the long hoped for biomedical treatment, emerging from drug trials or genetic approaches or both, that can stop the progress of the disease or prevent its occurrence. There is, however, a vast difference between treating a disease and treating people diagnosed with the disease — and this difference is especially critical where people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and their families and friends are concerned.
Supporting grieving students at school following crisis events By Jacqueline A. Brown and Shane R. Jimerson Tragic events such as recent natural disasters and shootings at school affect many children and families. Although these events typically receive immediate media coverage and short-term supports, the long-term implications are often overlooked. The grief among children and adolescents experiencing significant loss generally emerges during the weeks and months following such tragic events. Although there are variations in the expression of grief, bereaved children and adolescents often struggle to meet the cognitive demands of school. Professionals at school, including, school psychologists, school counselors, and other mental health professionals have a tremendous opportunity to help identify and support students in need.
Finding meaning in poetry The Oxford Dictionary defines poetry as a piece of writing expressing feelings and ideas that are given intensity by particular attention to diction. Poetry at its core is a uniquely personal form of expression. To honor National Poetry Month, we’re sharing what poetry means to the writers of the Pavilion Poetry Series, including a sample from Nuar Alsadir’s new collection Fourth Person Singular. Maybe it will inspire to explore what poetry means to you.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Adam Smith? [quiz] By Panumas King This April, the OUP Philosophy team honors Adam Smith (1723-1790) as their Philosopher of the Month. You may have read his work, but how much do you really know about Adam Smith? Test your knowledge with our quiz.
How will population ageing affect future end of life care? By Anna Bone Increasing population ageing means that deaths worldwide are expected to rise by 13 million to 70 million per year in the next 15 years. As a result, there is an urgent need to plan ahead to ensure we meet the growing end of life care needs of our population in the future. Understanding where people die, and how this could change in the future, is vital to ensuring that health services are equipped to support people’s needs and preferences at the end of life.
Global Health Days – immunity and community By Paul Klenerman 24 April marks the start of World Immunization Week – an annual campaign first launched in 2012. The week is one of 8 WHO international public health events, which include those targeting major infectious diseases – World AIDS day, World Tuberculosis (TB) day, World Malaria day, and World Hepatitis Day. These infections share a few features with each other which mean they all will continue to be global health threats.
World Intellectual Property Day quiz By Sophie Power Every year on 26 April, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) celebrates World Intellectual Property Day to promote discussion of the role of intellectual property in encouraging creativity and innovation. As demonstrated by French shoemaker Christian Louboutin’s recent appeal to the European Court of Justice to determine the validity of the trademark protecting the famous red sole, intellectual property law is as relevant as ever. Do you know your rights as a creator?
The road to safe drugs By Muhammad H. Zaman Healthcare is expensive, and not just in high income countries. Those who are suffering or struck by illness in resource limited countries are often unable to afford services that can provide them the care they need. Inequitable access to health services continues to be among the greatest public health challenges of our time. Since becoming […]
Who sang it best?: a Chicago mixtape By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Chicago is arguably one of the most famous Broadway musicals of the 20th century, if not the most famous. Based off Maurine Dallas Watkins’ satiric 1926 play, it has spawned a Tony Award-winning revival and Academy Award-winning movie version. Songs like “All That Jazz” and “Cell Block Tango” have become household tunes and were recorded as singles by jazz and pop singers alike. So many versions of the same song can lead to contention: was Chita Rivera’s original “All That Jazz” the most varied interpretation, or does one prefer the breathiness of Renée Zellweger’s raw (if underdeveloped) take on it? How “jazzy” should the song be? (It is a show tune, after all).
Etymology gleanings for April 2018 By Anatoly Liberman Part 1: A Turning Point in the History of Spelling Reform? On 30 May 2018 the long-awaited International Spelling Congress will have its first online meeting. “The Congress is intended to produce a consensus on an acceptable alternative to our current unpredictable spelling system. The goal is an alternative which maximizes improved access to literacy but at the same time avoids unnecessary change.
Animal of the Month: ten facts about penguins Penguins are some of the most varied and remarkable creatures on the planet. With 17 extant species’ inhabiting the earth, this bird family contain a vast range of sizes, habitats, skills, and behaviours. This April, to honour our animal of the month, we celebrate 10 amazing facts about the penguin.
Gregory of Nyssa's Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts The New Testament: Jewish or Gentile? By Ann Conway-Jones A recent phenomenon in New Testament research is the involvement of Jewish scholars. They perform the vital task of correcting Christian misunderstandings, distortions, stereotypes, and calumnies, with the aim of recovering the various Jewish contexts of Jesus, Paul, and the early Christian movement.
From early photography to the Instagram age By Alix Beeston In our contemporary moment, as our digital spaces are saturated with feeds and streams of images, it’s clearer than ever that photography is a medium poised between arresting singularity and ambiguous plurality. Art historians have conventionally focused on the singularity of the photograph and its instant of capture. But the digital turn has prompted many scholars to reconsider photography in its many serialized incarnations.
WANTED: An alternative to Competency-Based Medical Education By J. Donald Boudreau Nicaragua (1984): In a hospital—or at least what was labelled as a hospital—a physician receives an elderly woman in a hypertensive crises. He administers the only anti-hypertensive medication available—Reserpine—a drug that is now rarely used because of its side effects. To his profound dismay the patient suffers a stroke and dies a few hours later. There are no morgues in such rural hospitals. There are no ‘funeral parlours’ in the villages. Families take their departed loved ones home for burial.
How will Billy Graham be remembered? By Elesha J. Coffman Billy Graham’s death on 21 February, 2018, unleashed a flood of commentary on his life and legacy, much of it positive, some of it sharply negative. Both the length of his career and the historical moment at which he died contributed to the complexity of this discussion. His views on many subjects, including nuclear proliferation, the environment, global humanitarianism, and women’s ordination, changed over time.
The choppy waters of beach ownership: a case study By Gregory S. Alexander Martins Beach is a spectacular stretch of coastline south of Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County, California. It is a well-known fishing spot, a family picnic destination, and a very popular surfing venue. For nearly a century, the owners of the beach allowed visitors routinely to access the beach using the only available road. In 2008, billionaire Vinod Khosla bought Martins Beach and the surrounding property. After two years of complying with the county’s request to maintain access to the beach, Khosla permanently blocked public access. A California environmental organization filed suit against the property owner.
Earth Day 2018: ending pollution [quiz] By Beth Bauler Happy Earth Day! Celebrated across the world, this day was created to help raise awareness and encourage action around environmental protection. This year’s earth day focus is on ending plastic pollution. Plastic pollution is threatening the survival of our planet, and is especially harmful within marine environments.
The international community struggles to end civil wars. How can international organizations help? By Johannes Karreth and Jaroslav Tir Violent armed conflicts elsewhere in the world have equally devastating consequences. Despite these dramatic developments, the international community faces a massive challenge of how to respond to emerging political violence in a decisive and effective manner.
Sustainable libraries: a community effort By Katie D. Bennett To celebrate Earth Day, Katie D. Bennet takes a look at how environmentally conscious libraries from all over the world are using using sustainable architectural methods to achieve their green-goals. The team at the Vancouver Community Library shed some light on the steps they have taken to build an environmentall sustainable library that aligns with the ideals of the community.
The promising strategy of rewilding By Stephen Mann Since the 1950s there has been dramatic increase in threats to the world’s plant and wildlife. Scientists around the world agree that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. In response, numerous laws have been enacted in order to halt or slow down this rate of extinction. Scientists and conservationists have teamed up and developed new methods in the field of conservation biology to combat this issue.
What can brain research offer people who stutter? By Jen Chesters There’s something compelling about watching a person who stutters find a way to experience fluent speech. British TV viewers witnessed such a moment on Educating Yorkshire, back in 2013. When teenager Musharaf Asghar listened to music through headphones during preparations for a speaking exam, he found that his words began to flow. Singers, like Mark Asari who is currently competing on The Voice UK, also demonstrate how using the voice in song, rather than speech, can result in striking fluency.
Learning to live in the age of humans By Erle C. Ellis A new “great force of nature” is so rapidly and profoundly transforming our planet that many scientists now believe that Earth has entered a new chapter in its history. That force of nature is us, and that new chapter is called the Anthropocene epoch. Will the Anthropocene become a story of awakening and redemption, or a story of senseless destruction? At this point in Earth history, the Anthropocene is still young and the jury is still out.
Rome: the Paradise, the grave, the city, the wilderness By John Pemble The following is an abridged extract from The Rome We Have Lost by John Pemble and discusses how Rome, the eternal city, the centre of Europe and, in many ways, the world evolved into a city no longer central and unique, but marginal and very similar in its problems and its solutions to other modern cities with a heavy burden of “heritage.” These arguments illuminate the historical significance of Rome’s transformation and the crisis that Europe is now confronting as it struggles to re-invent without its ancestral centre—the city that had made Europe what it was, and defined what it meant to be European.
Learning about the First World War through German eyes By Jonathan Boff Thanks to the ongoing centenary commemorations, interest in the First World War has never been higher. Whether it be through visiting the poppies at the Tower, touring the battlefields of Belgium and France, tracking grandad’s war or digging in local archives to uncover community stories – unprecedented numbers of people have come face to face with their history in new and exciting ways.
Next lane please: the etymology of “street” By Anatoly Liberman As long as there were no towns, people did not need the word street. Yet in our oldest Germanic texts, streets are mentioned. It is no wonder that we are not sure what exactly was meant and where the relevant words came from. Quite obviously, if a word’s meaning is unknown, its derivation will also remain unknown. Paths existed, and so did roads. Surprisingly, the etymology of both words (path and road) is debatable.
Paris in Translation: Eugène Briffault’s Paris à Table [excerpt] By Eugène Briffault “When Paris sits down at the table, the entire world stirs….” Eugène Briffault’s Paris à Table captures the manners and customs of Parisian dining in 1845. He gives a panoramic view of the conception of a dish (as detailed as the amount of coal used in stoves) to gastronomy throughout the city—leaving no bread roll unturned as he investigates how Paris eats. The below excerpt from Paris à Table (translated into English by J. Weintraub) provides statistics to capture the magnitude of the Parisian way of life.
2019, the year of the periodic table By Eric Scerri The periodic table turns 150 next year. Given that all scientific concepts are eventually refuted, the durability of the periodic table would suggest an almost transcendent quality that deserves greater scrutiny, especially as the United Nations has nominated 2019 as the year of the Periodic Table. These days it seems that physics gives a fundamental explanation of the periodic table, although historically speaking it was the periodic table that gave rise to parts of atomic physics and quantum theory. I am thinking of Bohr’s 1913 model of the hydrogen atom and his extension of these ideas to the entire periodic table.
Reverse-mullet pedagogy: valuing horror fiction in the classroom By Mathias Clasen Are you familiar with the mullet? It’s a distinctive hairstyle—peculiarly popular in continental Europe in the 1980s—in which the hair is cut short on the top and sides but left long at the back. Whatever the aesthetic gravity of the mullet, it comes with a philosophy. The philosophy of the mullet is this: “Business in the front, party in the back.” I’ll argue that the reverse holds true for the horror genre, didactically speaking. Horror fiction is sexy. Horror has zombies. It has ghosts and vampires. It has Hannibal Lecter and Jigsaw, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and Leatherface. It has cannibal hillbillies and crazed college kids.
The life of an activist-musician: Japanese rapper ECD By Noriko Manabe When the family of the Japanese rap pioneer and activist ECD aka Ishida Yoshinori announced on 24 January 2018 that he had passed away, the music and activist worlds let out a collective sigh of mourning. Zeebra, Japan’s most commercially successful rapper, cried audibly while honoring him on his radio show. Meanwhile, political theorist Ikuo Gonoi credited his constant presence in demonstrations with creating a “liberal moment” mixing culture and politics. But who was ECD, and what were his contributions to Japanese culture?
We can predict rain but can’t yet predict chronic pain By Steven George Accurate weather forecasts allow us to prepare for rain, snow, and temperature changes. We can avoid driving on icy roads, pack an umbrella, or purchase sunblock, depending on what is predicted. Forecasting also generates information trustworthy enough to evacuate a city at risk from a category 4 hurricane. Meteorology has come a long way; today satellite data inform sophisticated computer weather models. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for forecasting chronic pain. In most cases, health care providers can’t anticipate early or accurately enough which patients might develop long-lasting pain.
Impunity for international criminals: business as usual? By Kriangsak Kittichaisaree The shocking images capturing the atrocities of armed conflicts in Syria have so shocked the world that, in March 2011, the UN General Assembly set up the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) to assist in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in Syria. The most serious crimes under international law are generally understood to be acts of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The international support for the IIIM gained traction after the reported confirmation that chemical weapons had been used in Syria.
Women artists in conversation: Zoe Buckman [Q&A] By Kathy Battista Zoe Buckman is a young artist and activist whose work in sculpture, photography, embroidery, and installation explores issues of feminism, mortality, and equality. She was born in London in 1985 and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Buckman was a featured artist at Pulse Projects New York 2014 and Miami 2016, and was included in the curated Soundscape Park at Art Basel Miami Beach 2016. Her new public work, Champ, produced in collaboration with the Art Production Fund, is located on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Sweetzer Avenue in front of The Standard in West Hollywood.
“The American People”: current and historical meanings By Louis René Beres Virtually all US politicians are fond of “The American People.” Indeed, as the ultimate fallback stance for any candidate or incumbent, no other quaint phrase can seem so purposeful. Interesting too, is this banal reference’s stark contrast to its original meaning. That historic meaning was entirely negative. Unequivocally, America’s political founding expresses general disdain for any truly serious notions of popular rule.
What’s the deal with genetically modified (GM) foods? By Mary M. Landrigan and Philip J. Landrigan It’s complicated; but here is a quick summary of what the controversy over genetically modified foods is all about. GM engineering involves reconfiguring the genes in crop plants or adding new genes that have been created in the laboratory. Scientific modification of plants is not something new. Since time began, nature has been modifying plants and animals through natural evolution, meaning that the plants and animals that adapt best to the changing environment survive and pass their genes on to their offspring. Those that are least fit do not survive.
How well do you know the US Supreme Court? [quiz] By Stephen Mann The Supreme Court is at the heart of the United States of America’s judicial system. Created in the Constitution of 1787 but obscured by the other branches of government during the first few decades of its history, the Court grew to become a co-equal branch in the early 19th century. Its exercise of judicial review—the power that it claimed to determine the constitutionality of legislative acts—gave the Court a unique status as the final arbiter of the nation’s constitutional conflicts. From the slavery question during the antebellum era to abortion and gay rights in more recent times, the Court has decided cases brought to it by individual litigants, and in doing so has shaped American constitutional and legal development.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Adam Smith [Timeline] By Panumas King This April, the OUP Philosophy team honors Adam Smith (1723-1790) as their Philosopher of the Month. Smith was an eminent Scottish moral philosopher and the founder of modern economics, best- known for his book, The Wealth of Nations (1776) which was highly influential in the development of Western capitalism.
Better health care delivery: doing more with existing resources By Boaz Ronen, Joseph S. Pliskin, and Shimeon Pass The healthcare sector faces challenges which are constantly escalating. Populations are growing worldwide and so is the share of the elderly in society. There is a constant proliferation of new medications, diagnostic methods, medical procedures and equipment, and know-how. This huge progress greatly improves the quality of medical treatment but at the same time increases its costs. Governments and authorities are allocating ever growing budgets to healthcare systems but the increased budgets do not cover the increased costs of providing quality healthcare to the public.
Revered and reviled: George Washington’s relationship with Indian nations By Colin G. Calloway During George Washington’s presidency, Indian delegates were regular visitors to the seat of government. Washington dined with Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Kaskaskias, Mahicans, Mohawks, Oneidas, and Senecas; in one week late in 1796, he had dinner with four different groups of Indians on four different days—and on such occasions the most powerful man in the United States followed the customs of his Indian visitors, smoked calumet pipes, exchanged wampum belts, and drank punch with them.
Animal of the Month: the lesser known penguins Penguins have fascinated zoologists, explorers, and the general public for centuries. Their Latin name—Sphenisciformes—is a mixture of Latin and Greek derivatives, meaning ‘small wedge shaped’, after the distinctive form of their flightless wings. The genus of penguins comprises more than just the famous Emperors of the Antarctic, and while public awareness is growing, many of the seventeen extant members of this bird family, their habitats, and threats to their survival, remain relatively unknown.
Short History of the Third Reich [timeline] By Kim Behrens and Robert Gellately Historians today continue raising questions about the Third Reich, especially because of the unprecedented nature of its crimes, and the military aggression it unleashed across Europe. Much of the inspiration for the catastrophic regime, lasting a mere twelve years, belongs to Adolf Hitler, a virtual non-entity in political circles before 1914.
Are you of my kidney? By Anatoly Liberman It is perfectly all right if your answer to the question in the title is “no.” I am not partial. It was not my intention to continue with the origin of organs, but I received a question about the etymology of kidney and decided to answer it, though, as happened with liver (see the post for 21 March 2018), I have no original ideas on this subject.
The modern Prometheus: the relevance of Frankenstein 200 years on By Helena Nicholson This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s acclaimed Gothic novel, written when she was just eighteen. The ghoulish tale of monsters—both human and inhuman—continues to captivate readers around the world, but two centuries after Shelley’s pitiably murderous monster was first brought to life, how does the tale speak to the modern age? The answer is that the story remains strikingly relevant to a contemporary readership, through its exploration of scientific advancements and artificial intelligence.
The real price of legitimate expectations By Dr Alexander Brown In early February, the British Legal Aid Agency (LAA) agreed to provide funds to the families of people killed in the 1982 Hyde Park bombing as they pursue a civil lawsuit against the main suspect in the case, John Downey.
In defense of beating dead horses: probing a subtle universe By Steven Vigdor A February 2017 Workshop on Robustness, Reliability, and Reproducibility in Scientific Research was sponsored by the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The workshop was part of NSF’s response to growing concerns in Congress triggered by increasing media coverage of an apparent lack of reproducibility among findings, especially in clinical sciences. The participants, spanning diverse scientific subfields, were charged to assess the extent of any problems of reliability and reproducibility, and to formulate next steps toward solutions.
What causes oral cancer and how can we prevent it? By Hugh Devlin and Rebecca Craven We know that excessive consumption of alcohol is detrimental to oral health, but why? We know that tobacco smoking, alcohol, and poor oral hygiene cause increased acetaldehyde levels in saliva. Alcohol itself is not carcinogenic, but it is metabolised to acetaldehyde which has been strongly implicated in the development of oral cancer. The variation between people in how they metabolize alcohol might explain why some are at greater risk of cancer than others.
Resisting doomsday: The American antinuclear movement By Paul Rubinson An aging TV personality occupies the White House. Representing the Republican Party, he denounces his predecessors for coddling the nation’s enemies. Not long after taking office, he begins rattling nuclear sabers with the country’s most dangerous nuclear rival, threatening complete destruction and promising victory in nuclear war. His rhetoric concerns people at home and abroad. Just as this description applies to Donald Trump in 2017, it also characterizes Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. A longtime critic of his predecessors’ détente policy, Reagan took a fierce stand toward the Soviet Union.
The Quotable Guide to Punctuation Quiz Part Two By Stephen Spector Correct punctuation is vital for clear, accurate, and natural writing. Anyone preparing a course assignment, applying for a job or for college admission, or doing any other formal writing needs to know the standard conventions of punctuation. Do you consider yourself a punctuation expert? Do you know the differences between parentheses and square brackets? Test your knowledge with this quiz.
Being Church as Christian hardcore punk By Amy McDowell What is church? In the social sciences, church is ordinarily conceptualized as a physical gathering place where religious people go for worship and fellowship. Church is sacred; it is not secular. With this idea of church in mind, sociologists find that U.S. Christian youth (particularly young white men) are dropping out of church. Some are dropping out because they have lost faith in God. Others, however, are leaving church because they feel alienated from organized religion, not because they stopped being Christians. This rise in “unchurched believers” raises a question: how are Christian youth creating and expressing church beyond the confines of a religious institution?
Musician or entrepreneur? My journey began with popcorn By Jeffrey Nytch “Entrepreneurship.” It’s such a troublesome word, partly because it’s been overused and misapplied such that it’s become a buzz-word – which is never conducive to clarity of meaning or purpose. But it’s also a difficult word to get our hands around because it has many different meanings and can play out in so many ways. So what is it about entrepreneurship that I feel is so important for us in classical music to embrace? I can remember quite clearly the moment when I began the path towards entrepreneurship: that moment when you realize you have to change the way you’ve been thinking about things and the way you’ve been approaching a problem.
The art of microbiology By Sarah Adkins, Rachel Rock, and Jeff Morris Sir Alexander Fleming famously wrote that “one sometimes finds what one is not looking for”. The story of Fleming’s serendipitous discovery of penicillin in the 1920s is familiar to most microbiologists. While the Scottish scientist and his family were on vacation, a fungal contaminant spread across – and subsequently killed – a lawn of bacteria growing on agar plates from one of his experiments.
The astronomer Johannes Stöffler and the reform of Easter By C. Philipp E. Nothaft In 1518, Johannes Stöffler published the 290-page Calendarium Romanum magnum. This carefully carfted ensemble of astronomical tables and detailed supplementary treatises that qualifies as one of the most impressive manifestations of the mathematical culture of the Northern Renaissance. Find out about the history of the Calendarium and its importance in the debate regarding the date the church celebrates Easter
National Volunteer Month: a reading list By Deborah Carr On 20 April 1974, President Richard M. Nixon declared National Volunteer Week, to honor those Americans whose unpaid “efforts most frequently touch the lives of the poor, the young, the aged and the sick, but in the process the lives of all men and women are made richer.” This commemoration has since been extended to a full month to recognize those who offer their time, energy, and skills to their communities.
American Renaissance: the Light & the Dark By Stephen Mann The American Renaissance—perhaps the richest literary period in American history, critics argue—produced lettered giants Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Emily Dickinson. Much like the social and historical setting in which it was birthed, this period was full of paradoxes that were uniquely American.
The strange case of Colonel Cyril Wilson and the Jihadists By Philip Walker The aftermath of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 and the settlement in the Middle East after the First World War still resonates, world-wide, after a century. It is not only the jihadists of the so-called Islamic State and other groups who rail against the Sykes-Picot Agreement—the secret arrangement between Britain, France, and Russia that carved up much of the territory of the Ottoman Empire. Many moderate Muslims have a rankling feeling of betrayal, being aware that Sykes-Picot contradicted the British promise—albeit a vague one—of a large independent territory for Sherif Hussein of Mecca, the leader of the Arab Revolt, if he would rise up against the Ottomans, Britain’s wartime enemies.
The four principles of medicine as a human experience By David Rosen and Uyen B. Hoang The standard in medicine has historically favoured an illness- and doctor-centered approach. Today, however, we’re seeing a shift from this methodology towards patient-centered care for several reasons. In the edited excerpt below, taken from Patient-Centered Medicine, David H. Rosen and Uyen Hoang explore four core principles that underlie the foundation of this clinical approach.
The return of opiophobia By Robert C. Macauley Opiophobia (literally, a fear of opioids or their side effects, especially respiratory suppression) has been around for a long time. Nowadays it’s primarily prompted by the opioid epidemic that has caused a five-fold increase in overdose deaths over the past two decades. With opioids implicated in over 40,000 deaths in the United States each year, interventions such as daily milligram limits, short-term prescribing, and “risk evaluation and mitigation strategies” are important public health measures.
What to do about tinnitus? By Erin Martz and yahav oron Tinnitus (i.e., ear or head noises not caused by external sounds) is common among the general population across the world. Tinnitus can be experienced as a “ringing in the ears.” It can also sound like a hissing, sizzling, or roaring noise. It can be rhythmic or pulsating. Tinnitus can be a non-stop, constant sound or an intermittent sound that disappears and returns without a pattern. It can occur in one or both ears.
Crime and the media in America By Stephen Mann The modern media landscape is filled with reports on crime, from dedicated sections in local newspapers to docu-series on Netflix. According to a 1992 study, mass media serves as the primary source of information about crime for up to 95% of the general public. Moreover, findings report that up to 50% of news coverage is devoted solely to stories about crime. The academic analysis of crime in popular culture and mass media has been concerned with the effects on the viewers; the manner in which these stories are presented and how that can have an impact on our perceptions about crime. How can these images shape our views, attitudes, and actions?
How Atari and Amiga computers shaped the design of rave culture By Jonathan Weinel I can still recall the trip to Bournemouth to get the Atari ST “Discovery Pack.” The Atari ST was a major leap forward from our previous computer, the ZX Spectrum, offering superior graphics and sound capabilities. It also had a floppy disk drive, which meant it was no-longer necessary to listen to extended sequences of noise and coloured bars while the game loaded (this was an exercise in patience at the time, though retrospectively these loading sequences seem more interesting due to the similarities with experimental noise music!)
Etymology gleanings for March 2018: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Thanks to all of our readers who have commented on the previous posts and who have written me privately. Some remarks do not need my answer. This is especially true of the suggestions concerning parallels in the languages I don’t know or those that I can read but have never studied professionally. Like every etymologist, I am obliged to cite words and forms borrowed from dictionaries, and in many cases depend on the opinions I cannot check.
The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism Wonder, love, and praise By D. Bruce Hindmarsh T. S. Eliot admired the way seventeenth-century poets could bring diverse materials together into harmony, and for whom thought and feeling were combined in a unified sensibility. However, he famously described a kind of dissociated sensibility that set in at the end of the century with the advent of mechanical philosophy and materialist science.
Modernization of mortuary practice and grief By Claire White-Kravette Modern western mortuary practices are characterized by the professionalization of the management and presentation of the corpse. These practices serve as a stark contrast to those in traditional societies across the world and those throughout history. Changes to how we treat and dispose of the dead are such that industrialized societies have become outliers on the spectrum of the world’s cultures.
Conflict-resolution mantras for the workplace and everyday life [infographic] By Marissa Lynch Great leaders show composure during stressful situations. But remaining cool and collected in times of crisis is easier said than done, partly due to our own behavioral patterns. Allowing ourselves to become tethered to a particular agenda or resolution puts us at risk for increased stress and diminished communication. Being open to personal change is the first step to improving conflict-resolution habits. Self-management allows leaders to more effectively manage conflicts. Mantras (or internal chants) are a great way to self-manage: these small reminders can help us control our emotions and, in turn, any conflicts that arise.
A guide to the ISA 2018 conference By Elena Jones Founded in 1959, the International Studies Association is one of the oldest interdisciplinary associations, dedicated to understanding international and global affairs. With a world-wide presence and growing influence, the ISA is instrumental to the promotion and funding of International Studies. Their annual convention will take place between 4-7 April, this year in San Francisco.
Arranging the music of J. S. Bach By David Blackwell If composers and arrangers have long reworked the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, they have followed the lead of none other than the composer himself, for Bach was an inveterate transcriber of his own music and the music of others. For solo organ Bach transcribed Vivaldi’s Concerto for two violins Op. 3 No. 8, while his G major Concerto BWV 592 acknowledged the musical efforts of Prince Johann Ernst, nephew of his employer at Weimar, discreetly tidying and improving details in the process. Bach’s great Mass in B minor is a compilation of his earlier compositions, while the exuberant opening sinfonia of Cantata No. 29 is an expansion of the Prelude from his E major Partita for solo violin.
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Jerusalem’s property tax By Edward A. Zelinsky hen is a property tax dispute between a church and a municipality an international controversy? When the church is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the municipality is the city of Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is one of the holiest sites in Christianity. The Church takes its name from what is traditionally believed to be the tomb of Jesus located within the Church.
Triggered ideas: finding inspiration By Dawn Field Where do find your ideas? Are they buried deep in you and suddenly percolate up? Are they glimmers that appear over time until they coalesce into ‘an idea’? Are they reactions to something you see, hear, or do. Likely, you’ve experienced all three and certainly all are the result of accumulated experiences. The last one is special though, in being what we can call ‘triggered’. Something triggered your emotions or imagination and you acted in response.
Air Power: how aerial warfare has changed and remained the same By Frank Ledwidge This year is the centenary of the Royal Air Force (RAF), which was the first independent air force. Before I started writing Aerial Warfare, I would have assumed the answer to the question, ‘what was the first air arm?’ to be an early 20th century affair, armed with rickety biplanes.
The death of democracy in Stump City By Matthew Flinders Some might say that in a world that is arguably defined by a complex set of global challenges (think food security, transnational organised crime, antibiotic resistance, sustainable development, etc.) you might think that the fate of a few trees in a post-industrial city in northern England is hardly worth the political equivalent of a raised eyebrow. You would be wrong. From healthy street tree stock to political laughing stock….
The language of strategic planning By Edwin L. Battistella My university just completed a round of strategic planning, its periodic cycle of self-evaluation, redefinition, and goal setting. Many of my colleagues were excited about the opportunity to define the future. Others were somewhat jaded, seeing such plans as bookshelf documents to be endured until the next planning cycle. Still others were agnostics, happy to see us have a good strategic plan but determined not to let it get in their way.
March 2018 (90))
Artificial intelligence in oncology By Kiashini Sriharan There is no denying the presence of computers in our everyday life, whether it’s through phones, personal virtual assistants such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, or video games. Lately, the interest and development surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) has escalated, and the opportunities to embrace this within the healthcare industry seem to be growing.
Female first: aerial women in mythology, pop culture, and beyond By Serinity Young The sacred is where you find it. We would be foolish to ignore human awe in contemplating the eternal stability of the night sky and envy for the flight of birds that seemed to fly between the earthly, somewhat troublesome world of constant change, and what appeared to be eternal heavenly realms. The ancient depictions of winged females, and not winged males, suggest women were perceived as having some special power that men did not.
What is allowed in outer space? By Christopher D. Johnson Humanity is no longer just exploring outer space for the sake of leaving flags and footprints. On February 6, the SpaceX Corporation conducted a successful first flight of its Falcon Heavy rocket, capable of carrying 63,800 kg (140,700 lb) to Low Earth Orbit (LEO), a capability not seen since the Apollo era. As the rocket’s reusable stages can be refueled and reflown, this rocket is a significant innovation and not merely a return to past capabilities.
Collaboration for a cure: harnessing the power of patient data By Taz Cheema I am a classic example of a fitness fanatic who uses a wearable device to count my steps, measure my heart rate, and track my sleep pattern. Every day, I am armed with data gathered about my physical activity, alerting me as to whether I’ve been slacking in the gym or eating too many bags of crisps. There is no doubt that now, more than ever, we live in a world where ‘big data’ is ubiquitous in influencing our daily decisions.
Is there a gender bias in teaching evaluations? By Friederike Mengel, Jan Sauermann, and Ulf Zölitz Why are there so few female professors? Despite the fact that the fraction of women enrolling in graduate programs has increased over the last decades, the proportion of women who continue their careers in academia remains low. One explanation that could explain these gender disparities are gender-biased teaching evaluations. Outcomes of teaching evaluations affect hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions.
The unexpected role of nature at Amiens Cathedral [slideshow] By Mailan S Doquang Medieval church designers drew on nature in surprising and innovative ways. Organic forms appear in unexpected places, framing the portals that provide access to sanctified spaces, punctuating interior walls and supports, and hanging from the vaults that soar above the beholder. These foliate sculptures are often characterized as mere ornamentation, devoid of meaning or purpose.
Brain tumour awareness: The end counts too By Kiashini Sriharan Here in the United Kingdom, we have the worst survival rates for brain cancer in Europe, with just 14% of patients surviving for ten or more years. Whilst prognosis for most other types of cancer has improved, brain tumour survival rates have remained stagnant, with no game-changing new drugs being developed in the last fifty years. As brain tumours progress, the aggressive nature of the disease becomes apparent.
That’s what she said: celebrating women in history [slideshow] By Laura Knowles Achievements, contributions, and developments made by women have often gone overlooked or unacknowledged throughout world history. In 1909, “National Women’s Day” was held on 28 February in New York, which was amended to “International Women’s Day” two years later.
Etymology gleanings March 2018 By Anatoly Liberman One of the questions I received was about dent, indent, and indenture. What do they have in common with dent- “tooth,” as in dental and dentures? Dent, which surfaced in texts in the 13th century, meant “stroke, blow” (a noun; obviously, not a derivative of any Latin word for “tooth”) and has plausibly been explained as a variant of its full synonym or doublet dint.
Misconceptions of vaccines By Anna Shannon Vaccines help to provide immunity against diseases. Sadly, there are a number of misconceptions surrounding vaccines, leading to some areas of the community opting not to vaccinate. This has a negative impact as decreasing immunisation rates can lead to an increase in diseases that can be prevented by vaccines, as was seen with the whooping cough in California.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion Aftering critical theory: reimagining civil “religion” By C. Travis Webb Why haven’t the insights of critical theory been more widely incorporated into the work of religious studies scholars in particular, and humanists more generally? Conversely, why have critical theorists missed the cross-cultural patterns of signification that have shaped post-tribal hierarchies for millennia, when they are so adept at finding hidden epistemological linkages within western political hegemonies?
An interview with March Mammal Madness founder Dr. Katie Hinde By Dr. Katie Hinde and Nicole Taylor March Mammal Madness was created by Dr. Katie Hinde of Arizona State University and is a program which presents a bracket of 64 species of animals. Participants use scientific research to predict which species would win in a face-off. Virtual “battles” between contenders are then narrated on Twitter using scientific research and an element of chance. The species are narrowed down and eventually one winner is declared.
The untold story of ordinary black southerners’ litigation during the Jim Crow era By Melissa Milewski Discover how Henry Buie, Moses Summerlin, Lurena Roebuck, and almost a thousand other black soutnerners managed to successfully litigate civil cases against white southerners throughout the 85 years following the Civil War. Many different tactics needed to be deployed during this period of injustice, and in a system where those in power often had very different interests and perspectives than their own.
Opportunity recognition: the heart of entrepreneurial thinking By Jeffrey Nytch With the 2018 Winter Olympics over, I’m reminded of one of the key traits all entrepreneurs possess and all would-be entrepreneurs must develop: the ability to recognize opportunities. You see, one of my favorite Olympic sports is bobsledding. I love the speed and excitement, the precision with which the sleds must be steered to gain the most speed—but also avoid disaster. I’m also fascinated by the tracks themselves.
How our financial system has gotten out of control [excerpt] By David Kinley Capitalism has been a key force behind human progress for centuries. But as the power of the finance sector has grown, public interests have been sidelined, and human rights concerns have been ignored. The following shortened excerpt from Necessary Evil takes a look at how the finance sector has repeatedly failed to advance the human condition, and why its level of political influence is dangerous for humanity.
Prohibition and its discontents [Q&A] By W. J. Rorabaugh The Eighteenth Amendment to the US Constitution banned alcohol from 1920 to 1933. Sometimes called the “noble experiment,” this disastrous public policy reduced tax revenues, made gangsters rich, and failed to stop drinking. Alcohol consumption did drop some, but regular drinkers turned to bootleg liquor and moonshine. In the following interview the historian W. J. Rorabaugh discusses prohibition and its discontents.
The eleventh hour: a look at the final battles of the Great War [timeline] By Marissa Lynch On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the Great War came to an end. Conventional accounts of the war often allow these closing battles to be overshadowed by opening moves and earlier battles. However, the human costs behind the Allied victory cannot be truly understood without examining the summer of 1918. Using personal accounts featured in The Last Battle, the timeline below captures the final battles of World War I through the eyes of the men fighting them.
Editing Arthur Machen By Aaron Worth f the challenges Arthur Machen presents to an editor, two, in particular, have shadowed me during the preparation of this new collection of his stories. The first is simply the special sense of responsibility one feels when curating the work of a deeply loved writer—for even when Machen’s reputation has been at low ebb (as, often enough, it has been), he has always had a hard core of devoted admirers.
Corporate governance from a federal law perspective By Marc I. Steinberg Traditionally, American states have regulated the sphere of corporate governance, encompassing the relations among and between a corporation, its directors, its officers, and its stockholders. With respect to publicly-held companies, Delaware, known as the jurisdiction with an expert judiciary in company law, sound precedent and legislative flexibility, reigns supreme as the state where the greatest number of such enterprises incorporate.
Italian election reflects voters unhappiness with current economy By Andrea Lorenzo Capussela On 4 March Italians surprised pollsters and observers. They awarded most votes to the centre-right coalition, as predicted, but within it they preferred the conservative League, which quadrupled its votes, to Silvio Berlusconi’s party and its post-fascist allies. Voters punished the Democratic Party (PD), which dominated the past parliament, more harshly than expected. And they rewarded the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (5SM) far more than expected.
“Watermelon snow” on glaciers: sustaining life in colour By Roman Dial Glacier surfaces around the world often host active communities of specialized organisms, including annelids in Alaska , insects in the Himalayas, and rotifers in Iceland. But these organisms, like all life, need liquid water in order to survive. The most strikingly visible signs of life on glaciers come from the microbes responsible for “watermelon-snow” – so-called both for its colour, and its smell.
The Quotable Guide to Punctuation quiz By Stephen Spector Correct punctuation is vital for clear, accurate, and natural writing. Anyone preparing a course assignment, applying for a job or for college admission, or doing any other formal writing needs to know the standard conventions of punctuation. Do you consider yourself a punctuation expert?
OUP Philosophy What is it like for women in philosophy, and in academia as a whole? By Catherine Pugh During Women’s History Month, the OUP Philosophy team has been celebrating Women in Philosophy throughout history and in the present day. While it is easy for most of us to name male philosophers, it is far more difficult for people to name female philosophers even though their influence has been just as great as their male counterparts.
Shaping the legacy of Dame Cicely Saunders [excerpt] By David Clark She arrived in 1938, at age twenty-one, for the Michaelmas term. In that year, there were 850 women studying at the University, making up a record 18.5% of the student body. Cicely elected to read Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (P.P.E.). This programme of study had been established at Oxford in the 1920s as an alternative to ‘Greats’ or Classics. It was generally known as ‘Modern Greats’.
The secret of the Earth By Roy Livermore One of the questions currently keeping astrobiologists (the people who would like to study life on other planets if only they could find some) awake at night is, what is the crucial difference that allowed the emergence and evolution of life on Earth, while its neighbours remained sterile? In their violent youth, all the inner planets started out with so much surplus heat energy—from planetary accretion and radioactive decay—that their surfaces melted to form magma oceans hundreds or thousands of kilometres deep.
You’ve got internet!– connecting rural areas By Peter F. Orazem and Younjun Kim Twenty years ago, if you wanted internet access in many rural areas of America, you had to plug your computer into a phone line, listen to the dialing sound, and hope for the best. Today many people can easily join the cyber world at reliable speeds that few imagined decades ago. Although the percentage of people with broadband has increased, many in rural communities still lack broadband access and the accompanying benefits.
Ten fascinating facts about the Marshall Plan By benn steil In 1947, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s rise in Europe, US officials under new Secretary of State George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct Western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking confronted Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions.
Is Debussy an Impressionist? By Eric Frederick Jensen From the start, audiences liked Claude Debussy’s music. Critics, perplexed by its originality, were less enthusiastic. It seemed so non-traditional that they found it difficult to grasp, and a challenge to categorize. That’s what eventually led to the term Impressionism being applied to it. It became an easy way both to classify it and make it seem less unusual. Prior to linking Debussy to it, Impressionism was solely associated with the visual arts.
Addressing international law in action By Jo Wojtkowski The 112th American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (4-7 April 2018) will focus on the constitutive and often contentious nature of ‘International Law in Practice’. Practice not only reifies the law, but how it is understood, applied, and enforced in practice shapes its meaning and impacts the generation of future international rules.
Digging into the innards: “liver” By Anatoly Liberman Etymological bodybuilding is a never-ceasing process. The important thing is to know when to stop, and I’ll stop soon, but a few more exercises may be worth the trouble. Today’s post is about liver. What little can be said about this word has been said many times, so that an overview is all we’ll need. First, as usual, a prologue or, if you prefer, a posy of the ring.
History in 3 acts: a brief introduction to Ancient Greece [excerpt] By Robin Waterfield Ancient Greek history is conventionally broken down into three periods: Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic. However, the language used to describe them highlights an oversight made by generations of historians. By dubbing one period of history as “Classical,” scholars imply that the other two periods are inferior, simplifying the Archaic age as a mere precursor to and the Hellenistic age as a lesser descendant of the Classical age.
Celebrating the first women Fellows of the Linnean Society of London By Sandra Knapp Diversity in science is in the news today as never before, and it is hard to imagine what it might have been like to be a woman scientist in 1900, knocking at the doors of learned societies requesting that women be granted the full advantages of Fellowship. It might seem trivial to us now, but in the past these societies were the primary arena in which discussions took place, contacts were made and science progressed.
The forgotten history of free trade: the Medici dynasty and Livorno By Corey Tazzara The Medici had everything, almost. They got immensely rich as bankers during the fifteenth century. As patrons of the arts they assembled some of the finest collections in Italy. They placed two scions on the papal throne as Leo X and Clement VII. They won political control over the city of Florence. The Medici lacked only one thing to render their earthly felicity complete: they lacked a port city.
How did the plague impact health regulation? By Anne-Emanuelle Birn What do we think of when we hear the word “plague”? Red crosses on boarded-up doors? Deserted medieval villages? Or maybe the horror film-esque cloak and mask of a plague doctor? Unsurprisingly, the history of plague and its impact on health regulation is more complex and far-reaching than many assume. This extract from the Textbook of Global Health looks at the medical and environmental legacy of pandemics.
The science behind the frog life cycle [interactive guide] Most of us remember learning the life cycle of a frog when we were young children, being fascinated by foamy masses of frogspawn, and about how those little black specks would soon be sprouting legs. That was a while ago, though. We think it’s about time that we sat you down for a grown-ups’ lesson on the life cycle of a frog. Frog eggs face a plethora of challenges from the moment they are laid.
Arranging The Lark Ascending for small string ensembles By martin gerigk I discovered the violin and piano version of The Lark Ascending in my youth, and I still remember how much I loved playing the violin part, unaccompanied. I was impressed by the programmatic transformation of the underlying poem as well as the liberating setting of the pentatonic scale and transcendent cadenza. Even then, I was already thinking of adapting this wonderful work for a different instrumentation.
Nuclear warfare throughout history: World War II [timeline] By Rodric Braithwaite With the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the nature of military conflict was changed forever. The nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union escalated throughout the twentieth century, limited by “Deterrance,” a policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD).
To be a mother and a scientist By Magdolna Hargittai Years ago, while researching my book Women Scientists, I asked famous women scientists to name the greatest challenge in their life. Almost without exception, they noted the difficulty of adjusting their family obligations and their work. Chemist Rita Cornforth, wife and colleague of the Nobel laureate John W. Cornforth, said: “I found it easier to put chemistry out of my mind when I was at home than to put our children out of my mind when I was in the lab.”
A visual history of the New York Crystal Palace [slideshow] By Edwin G. Burrows When New York’s Crystal Palace opened in 1853, it quickly became one of the most celebrated landmarks in the city. But five years later, the building was gone—engulfed in flames and reduced to a heap of smoldering debris. The below photographs from The Finest Building in America recapture the sensation and spectacle behind the New York Crystal Palace: a building that mattered so much to antebellum Americans and New Yorkers, yet was never rebuilt.
How Trump is making China great again By Astrid H. M. Nordin and Mikael Weissman Over the last year, scholars, pundits, and policymakers interested in China have rhetorically asked whether US President Donald Trump will make President Xi Jinping’s China “great again.” There is now mounting evidence that the answer to that question is “yes.” Since his inauguration, there are a number of ways in which Trump has contributed to China’s rise, and Xi Jinping’s tightening grip on power.
“Alas, poor YORICK!:” death and the comic novel By Ian Campbell Ross Tragedy provokes sorrow and concludes with downfall and death. Comedy elicits laughter and ends happily. Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy is one of the funniest novels of world literature. But does the work, overshadowed by death, end happily? Can death and comedy mix? “Everybody dies. If you are going to take that badly, you’re doing it wrong. So you have to take it as a joke.” The sentiments of the celebrated Spanish cartoonist Antonio Fraguas, Forges, who died on 22 February 2018, might echo those of Sterne, whose own death took place 250 years ago on 18 March 1768.
OUP Philosophy Landmark moments for women in philosophy [timeline] By Catherine Pugh This March, the OUP Philosophy team are celebrating Women in Philosophy. Throughout time, women have had to fight for their place in history, academia, and the philosophy discipline. To honour their contributions, we will be highlighting women and their achievements in the field of philosophy all throughout Women’s History Month.
Lützen and the birth of modern warfare By Peter H. Wilson The battle of Lützen between the imperial and Swedish armies was fought about 19km southwest of Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, on Tuesday 16 November 1632. It was neither the largest nor the bloodiest battle of the Thirty Years War (1618-48), Europe’s most destructive conflict prior to the twentieth-century world wars, but it is certainly the best remembered today. Lützen’s place in military history has even wider resonance.
The changing face of women in medicine By Evie Watts As a current fourth year medical student in the United Kingdom, I am in a year in which the number of females supersedes the number of males. This trend certainly isn’t unique to my own medical school, with a General Medical Council (GMC) report stating that women now make up 55% of all undergraduate medical students. This current trend is a change, as in the past medicine has always been a male-dominated profession.
Fifty years on: what has plate tectonics ever done for us? By Roy Livermore In 2004, John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister in Tony Blair’s New Labour government, remarked, “the tectonic plates appear to be moving”, referring to the impending downfall of Mr Blair. Since then, the tectonic plates metaphor has been applied to just about every major political transition, including events following the UK referendum on leaving the European Union and the election of Donald Trump as US President.
Advancements by women throughout history [Timeline] By Analise Mifsud and Lauren McNamara “It is well known that women receive little or no attention in traditional history writing.” In honour of women’s history month, we will be looking at the vital role of women in history. Based on numerous journal articles and covering various periods between the 1300s and 1950s the timeline highlights key figures and movements that contributed towards the advancement of women across various regions.
Acknowledging identity, privilege, and oppression in music therapy By Candice Bain, Catherine Boggan, and Patrick R. Grzanka As clinical music therapy professionals who are goal- and solution-oriented, how much time do we spend considering our client’s experience outside the therapy room? How might taking the time to learn about a client’s multifaceted identity affect the therapeutic relationship? Furthermore, how do our own personal identities, beliefs, and experiences affect our relationships with clients? In answering these questions, we begin to scratch the surface of making our practice more intersectional.
An exercise in etymological bodybuilding By Anatoly Liberman To an etymologist the names of some organs and body parts pose almost insoluble problems. A quick look at some of them may be of interest to our readers. I think that in the past, I have discussed only the words brain and body (21 February 2007: brain; 14 October 2015: body). Both etymologies are hard, for the words are local: brain has a rather inconspicuous German cognate, and the same holds for body. I risked offering tentative suggestions, which were followed by useful, partly critical comments. As usual, I see no reason to repeat what I said in the past and would like to stress only one idea. Etymologists, when at a loss for a solution, often say that the inscrutable word could enter Indo-European or Germanic, or Romance from some unknown, unrecorded language (such languages are called substrates).
Social media and plastic surgery: quality over quantity By Foad Nahai There is no shortage of stress factors in anyone’s daily life, but how does the stress of social media effect plastic surgeons who are required each day to bring their A game to every operative procedure they perform? As initially conceived, social media was intended to connect people globally. But now, it’s the cause of the third leading psychological disorder in the United States—social anxiety disorder.
Humanism—from Italian to secular By craig kallendorf Humanism doesn’t get much good press these days. In many circles it comes accompanied by an adjective—secular—and a diatribe: A war of philosophy and of what defines morality is being fought daily in the media, judicial benches and legislative halls across the Western world. On one side stand fundamentalist Protestantism and conservative Catholicism and on the other side secular humanism.
The hippie trail and the search for enlightenment By Brian Ireland The Hippie Trail was one of the last, great expressions of the counterculture during the mid-1950s to late 1970s. Headed to the East, the most celebrated route was from London to Kathmandu, although many stopped in India or went on to Australasia, and there were subsidiary routes to the Mediterranean, to Morocco and to the Middle East.
Europeans and Britain’s wider world By Stephen Conway Is the wider world really the alternative to Europe that some of today’s commentators claim? Britain’s eighteenth-century experience suggests not. Then, the supposed alternatives, in the eyes of some contemporaries, were Europe and empire. But look more closely at Britain’s empire, and we can see that its development, defence, and expansion owed much to other Europeans.
Ten virtual reality games that simulate altered states By Jonathan Weinel The recent resurgence of virtual reality (VR) has seen an exciting period of innovation in the format, as developers explore the fresh new possibilities that it brings. VR differs from the video games you might play on a standard television in that the head-mounted display engulfs the visual field, producing a more immersive sensory experience. In VR, not only can you see a virtual environment, but you can also turn your head to look around it.
Professionalizing leadership – education By Barbara Kellerman “In the past, leadership and teaching how to lead were considered the most consequential of all human endeavors.” Barbara Kellerman looks at three crucial areas of learning leadership; leadership education; leadership training; and leadership development. In this post, she discusses the importance of leadership education and how it should be approached and improved.
How do black holes shape the cosmos? By Dylan Nelson At the center of every galaxy is a supermassive black hole. Looking at the wider scale, is it possible that these gravity monsters influence the overall structure of our universe? Using a new computer model, astrophysicists have recently calculated the ways in which black holes influence the distribution of dark matter, how heavy elements are produced and distributed throughout the cosmos, and where cosmic magnetic fields originate.
The OUP citizenship quiz By Kate Roche Far from fading into obscurity as the world moves towards a more interconnected and globalized future, the concept of citizenship is enjoying something of a renaissance. It is an almost constant feature in world news, as nations move to secure their positions by either welcoming or denying new citizens to cross their borders, and the contentious issue of citizenship for sale gains evermore traction.
Sexuality and the Holocaust By Anna Hájková When, at one point in 2008, Nancy Wingfield approached me with the idea that I should write a paper about prostitution in Theresienstadt, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. That was probably for the best, because before long, I was confronted with hostile, personal attacks from survivors, which demonstrated quite clearly how sensitive the topic was.
What is the future of the European Union? By Catherine E. De Vries The European Union (EU) is facing turbulent times. Over half a century of integration has created a profound interconnectedness between the political, economic, and social fates of member states. At the same time, however, the fortunes of member states have started to diverge dramatically. The Eurozone crisis for example unmasked deep structural imbalances across the Union.
OUP Philosophy Women in philosophy: A reading list By Catherine Pugh This March, in recognition of Women’s History Month, the OUP Philosophy team will be celebrating Women in Philosophy. The philosophy discipline has long been perceived as male-dominated, so we want to recognize some of the incredible female philosophers from both the past and the present.
Ascending to the god’s-eye view of reality By W. M. Stuckey Frank Wilczek famously wrote: “A recurring theme in natural philosophy is the tension between the God’s-eye view of reality comprehended as a whole and the ant’s-eye view of human consciousness, which senses a succession of events in time. Since the days of Isaac Newton, the ant’s-eye view has dominated fundamental physics. We divide our description of the world into dynamical laws that, paradoxically, exist outside of time according to some, and initial conditions on which those laws act.
All the president’s tweets By Stephen Spector It seems long ago now, but in his victory speech in 2016, Donald Trump promised to unite us as a nation. He finally has, at least around one issue: nearly seven of every ten Americans wish he would stop tweeting from his personal account, including a majority of Republicans. Melania said that she rebukes her husband all the time for his tweets, but she accepts that in the end “he will do what he wants to do.”
The illegal orchid trade and its implications for conservation By Amy Hinsley When most people think of illegal wildlife trade, the first images that spring to mind are likely to be African elephants killed for their ivory, rhino horns being smuggled for medicine, or huge seizures of pangolins. But there is another huge global wildlife trade that is often overlooked, despite it involving thousands of species that are often traded illegally and unsustainably.
Women in China, past and present By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom and Maura Elizabeth Cunningham As we celebrate the lives and accomplishments of women around the world as part of Women’s History Month, we offer a brief look at changing gender roles in different periods of China’s past, and at a group of contemporary activists pushing for greater equality between men and women in the current era. In two excerpts on women from their forthcoming book, China in the 21 Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom place events that have taken place since Xi Jinping took power into a long-term historical perspective.
Designers in silico By Antti Oulasvirta, Per Ola Kristensson, and Xiaojun Bi A puzzling observation: the progress epitomized by Moore’s law of integrated circuits never resulted in an equivalent evolution of user interfaces. Over the years, interaction with computers has evolved disappointingly little. The mouse was invented in the 1960s, the same decade as hypertext. Push buttons and the QWERTY layout existed in the 19th century and the display-plus-keyboard setup was used in the Apollo program.
World Kidney Day 2018: include, value, empower By Kiashini Sriharan This year on the 8th March, World Kidney Day coincided with International Women’s Day. With chronic kidney disease affecting 195 million women worldwide, the chosen theme ‘Kidneys & Women’s Health: Include, Value, Empower’ only feels apt. Despite playing a vital role in the body maintaining homeostasis, kidney health is often overlooked by many of us, and if neglected could lead to serious health implications for both men and women.
What is biblical archaeology? [Extract] By Eric H. Cline “These were some of the original questions in biblical archaeology that intrigued the earliest pioneers of the field. They still resonate today but are far from being answered.” In the following excerpt from Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, Eric H. Cline explains the interests of biblical archaeologists, and explores the types of questions that those in the field set out to answer.
Using the arts for change on International Women’s Day By Kathy Battista With every generation comes difficult and contested times that shape history. In the United States, where we are experiencing one of the most divided society in decades, the sentiment feels omnipresent and pervasive. For women and those of nonconforming gender, the issues at stake are even more expansive than the gun laws, environmental concerns, or tax reforms that are on the minds of our citizens.
Women in economics: female achievement in a male-dominated field By Esther Morrison Women in economics are underrepresented. A lack of diversity runs the risk of constraining or distorting the field’s intellectual development. To mark International Women’s Day, we have listed below the achievements of five influential female economists. The list does not fully represent the little diversity that does exist in economic research, but we hope that it will open up important discussions that need to be had.
Animal of the Month: 13 facts about frogs The Anura order, named from the Greek an, ‘without’ and oura, ‘tail’, contains 2,600 different species and can be found in almost every continent on Earth. These are frogs, and they comprise 85% of the extant amphibian population on earth. They hop around our gardens, lay swathes of frothy eggs in our ponds, and come in a wide variety of exciting colours, but apart from that, how much do you really know about them?
Neanderthal cave art By Paul G. Bahn On 23 February this year, the American journal Science published an article by an international group of scientists and prehistorians. It presented a series of dates obtained from layers of calcite that had formed on top of drawings in three Ice-Age-decorated caves in Spain: La Pasiega in the north, Maltravieso in the centre, and Ardales in the south. The results—c. 64-66,000 years ago—are so early that it makes it certain that Neanderthals must have made these markings on cave walls.
Seven women you may not know from music history By Alyssa Russell The historical record of women making music extends back as far as the earliest histories and artifacts of musical performance. For example, artwork from Ancient Greece and Rome suggest that women’s choruses were featured in rituals and festivals. And throughout Chinese imperial history the courts, civil and military officials and wealthy households employed women to sing, dance, and play musical instruments.
The origin of so long By Anatoly Liberman So long, a formula at parting (“good-bye”) is still in use, unlike mad hatter and sleeveless errand, the subjects of my recent posts, and people sometimes wonder where it came from. I have little of substance to say about the formula’s origin, but, before I say it, I would like to make the point I have made so many times before.
Which famous woman from STM are you? By Charlotte Zaidi Throughout our history, women have made varied and important contributions to the fields of science, technology, and medicine. Their pioneering work, often fought against overwhelming social prejudice, still affects our lives to this day. Women’s History Month is the ideal time to celebrate the achievements of female scientists and medics from past to present—and perhaps discover some new inspiration.
9 facts about women and the economy By Eden Joseph Women’s economic empowerment is a key issue, as it is noted that “when more women work, economies grow.” To celebrate International Women’s Day, we have some key facts that demonstrate that changes still need to be made to help women became an active part of economics; whether it is through studying economics itself or the number of women who work in the field, to employment.
Exploring religious diversity in higher education By Bradley Nystrom and Jeffrey Brodd In his recent post, “Declining Exposure to Religious Diversity” (24 January), Jeremy Bauer-Wolf notes some striking results of a survey conducted by the Interfaith Youth Core of more than 7,000 students at 122 American colleges and universities. The survey measures the extent of their interfaith experiences on campus, and tracks developments in their attitudes toward religious diversity.
Why the past is disputed and academic historians (don’t) matter By Björn Weiler In all these instances, academic historians have either been sidelined, or have become the victims of politically motivated onslaughts. Still, the disputes per se are not a late modern phenomenon. Similar debates occur in any society that records its past. They form part of historical culture. Having a past and knowing it was considered to be a mark of civilisation. But where did this need for a past come from?
What’s in her name? By Patricia Fara It must top the list of famous misquotes: Shakespeare’s Juliet did not say “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” But she did ask “What’s in a name?” thus pinpointing a problem that still vexes women today. When I turned 40, I rebranded myself from Pat to Patricia, a shift that was personally gratifying yet had no serious effects. But some women have had to contemplate more serious consequences.
Creating a natural health system By William Bird Public health has seen multiple revolutions over history: from the recognition of the connection between water, sanitation, and health, to breakthroughs in medicine and genetics. We are currently in the midst of a new revolution in public health where humans are recognised as social beings connected to their community and their environment.
Who danced it best?: Bob Fosse’s “Hot Honey Rag” By Kevin Winkler The revival of Chicago, the 1975 Bob Fosse musical, has been playing on Broadway and around the world for more than two decades, and is now the longest running American musical in Broadway history. That’s quite a turnaround from its original production. In 1975, Chicago had the bad luck to open the same season as A Chorus Line, and its cynical depiction of 1920s Windy City murder and corruption didn’t connect with audiences like the earnest, striving dancers who put their lives on the line for a chance at Broadway gold.
The political process case to overturn Quill v. South Dakota By Edward A. Zelinsky By deciding to review Wayfair v. South Dakota, the US Supreme Court has thrust itself into the long and contentious debate about the proper tax treatment of internet sales. As I argue, the Court should use this opportunity to overturn Quill v. North Dakota.
In 2018, the CJEU will determine the future of the Internet By Dan Svantesson In its amicus brief submitted in relation to the US Microsoft Warrant case, the European Commission emphasised that: “In the European Union’s view, any domestic law that creates cross-border obligations should be applied and interpreted in a manner that is mindful of the restrictions of international law and considerations of international comity.” (Amicus brief, p. 5)
Romance and reality: clinical science in liver transplant for alcoholism By Thomas P. Beresford Many view organ transplantation as one of the miracles of modern medicine: preserving a person’s life by providing a new liver, heart, lung, kidney, or other organ where the original vital organ has failed. One sees the transplant surgeon as the proverbial knight in shining armor riding a white horse and impaling the demons of death and disease on the end of his sharp-pointed lance.
Greenwashing the garrison state By Peter Harris Across the globe, the garrison state has “gone green” as national militaries have become partly involved in stewardship of the natural environment. On the face of it, this is a puzzling development. After all, protecting plants and animals from the depredations of humankind is not a job that most people expect from women and men in uniform.
How to spot ambiguity By Edwin L. Battistella Not long ago, a colleague was setting up a meeting and suggested bringing along spouses to socialize after the business was done. Not getting a positive reply, she emailed: “I’m getting a lack of enthusiasm for boring spouses with our meeting.” A minute later, a second, clarifying email arrived indicating that she “meant boring as a verb not an adjective.” She had spotted the ambiguity in the first message.
Introducing March Mammal Madness By Nicole Taylor March is a notable month for basketball enthusiasts across the United States, as college teams face off and are narrowed down to one final champion. But for those of us who aren’t as inclined to get in on the sporting excitement, there is an alternative: March Mammal Madness (MMM). MMM was started in 2013 by Dr. Katie Hinde, Associate Professor at Arizona State University.
Engaging African music in music theory By Kofi Agawu The most recent publication by leading theorists Michael Tenzer and Pieter van den Toorn brings to the fore issues relating to the analysis of African music. Well known for work on Balinese music and for championing the new movement towards analysis of world music, Tenzer here indulges a long-standing interest in African music by exploring deep parallels between two compositions: a beautifully elusive flute-and-voice piece recorded in 1966 by Simha Arom and Genevieve Taurelle and given the title Hindehu; and Nhemamusasa, a standard item from the Shona mbira repertoire recorded by Paul Berliner in 1977.
Celebrating women in STM [timeline] By Amy Cluett and Melanie Pheby Throughout the month of March, Oxford University Press will be celebrating women in STM (science, technology, and medicine) with the objective of highlighting the outstanding contributions that women have made to these fields. Historically many of the contributions made by women have gone unsung or undervalued, and these fields have been male-dominated and inaccessible for women to enter.
Voice classification: system or art? By Adriana Festeu The process of ‘creating order’ through categorisation has always constituted an essential part of our social progress because of its measurable functionality. Vocal categorisation has been no exception, but given that all singing voices are unique – the musical equivalent of fingerprints – any attempt at fitting them neatly into categories ought to generate a clear justification for how this might benefit the art as well as the performer.
Women artists in conversation: Narcissister By Kathy Battista Narcissister is a Brooklyn based artist whose work includes performance, dance and activism as essential elements. She continues the tradition of second wave feminist artists, such as Adrian Piper, Lorraine O’Grady, Carolee Schneemann, etc., who challenged the status quo in their examination of gender roles, sexuality and equal rights. Narcissister wears a trademark vintage mask in most works, obscuring her identity and provoking the viewer to think of the artist as an “everywoman” rather than about an individual experience.
Why so much fuss about the history of emotions? By Joanna Innes The history of emotions has emerged as one of the fastest growing areas of historical study in recent years, no doubt helped by the fact that almost all historical topics have emotional aspects. Joanna Innes discusses newly established centres, publications, and the establishment of intellectual bridges between various subjects in furthering the promotion of this field of study.
February 2018 (75))
Defiant rulers and (real) superheroes: Black History Month By Henry Louis Gates The first incarnation of Black History Month began in 1926, when Carter G. Woodson, historian and author, established an observance during the second week of February coinciding with the birthdays of social reformer Frederick Douglass and President Abraham Lincoln. The month-long celebration was then proposed at Kent State University, Ohio, in February 1969, beginning the following year.
Etymology gleanings: February 2018 By Anatoly Liberman Everybody’s path to etymology: From time to time I receive questions about etymology as a profession. Not long ago, someone from a faraway country even expressed the wish to get a degree in etymology. I can refer to my post of April 2, 2014. This month, a correspondent asked me to say something about why I became an etymologist. The history of my career cannot be interesting to too many of our readers, so I’ll be brief and rather tell a story.
Playerless playtesting: AI and user experience evaluation By Samantha Stahlke and Pejman Mirza-Babaei Over the past few decades, the digital games industry has taken the entertainment market by storm, transforming a niche into a multi-billion-dollar market and captivating the hearts of millions along the way. Today, the once-deserted space is overcome with cascades of new games clamouring for recognition.
Dr. Victor Sidel: a leader for health, peace, and social justice By Barry S. Levy Victor (Vic) Sidel, M.D., who died in late January, was a national and international champion for health, peace, and social justice. Among his numerous activities, he co-edited with me six books on war, terrorism, and social injustice that were published by Oxford University Press. Vic left an extensive legacy in the residents and students whom he trained, in the organizations that he strengthened, in the scholarly books and papers that he edited and wrote, and in the policies and programs that he promoted for a healthier, more peaceful, and more equitable world.
In celebration of twentieth century African American literature By Steven Filippi Since the first poems published by former slaves Phyllis Wheatley and Jupiter Hammon around the time of the American Revolution, African American literature has played a vital role in the history and culture of the United States. The slave narratives of figures such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Wilson became a driving force for abolitionism before the Civil War, and the tumultuous end of Reconstruction brought about the exploration of new genres and themes during the height of the Jim Crow era.
Prohibition: A strange idea By W. J. Rorabaugh American politics is frequently absurd, often zany, and sometimes downright crazy. Among the most outrageous past ideas was the legal Prohibition of alcohol, which was put into the US Constitution as the Eighteenth Amendment in 1920. Prohibition lasted until 1933, when the Twenty-First Amendment brought repeal and tight government regulation of alcohol.
T.E. Lawrence and the forgotten men who shaped the Arab Revolt By Philip Walker T.E. Lawrence, known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” has provoked controversy for a hundred years. His legend was promoted in the 1920s by the American Lowell Thomas’s travelogue; renewed in 1935 through his book Seven Pillars of Wisdom; and revived in 1962 by the epic film Lawrence of Arabia. The hype should not blind us to the fact that Lawrence’s contribution to the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 against the Turks was indispensable.
Barristers, solicitors, and the Four Inns of Court of England By Richard Samuel After many years of attempting to explain the need for two kinds of lawyer in the United Kingdom to exasperated and confused European colleagues – and even US ones – I have lighted on the following language. Solicitors are a primary market of legal services. They are profit-sharing organisations in which senior lawyers manage teams of junior lawyers to do almost everything their clients want.
The fungus that’s worth $900 billion a year By Nicholas P. Money From the dawn of history, human civilizations have prospered through partnership with the simple single-cell fungus we call yeast. It transforms sugars into alcohol, puffs up bread dough with bubbles of carbon dioxide, and is used to produce an assortment of fermented foods. It has become the workhorse of modern biotechnology as the source of life-saving medicines and industrial chemicals.
Zhongguo and Tianxia: the central state and the Chinese world By Salvatore Babones China is playing an ever-increasing role on the world stage of international relations, and it is starting to bring its own vocabulary to the part. The terminology that comprises the core lexicon of international relations theory originates from Greek and Latin, and it was developed to describe and interpret the configurations of power that have been common in Western history. Chinese scholars are now actively mining the Chinese historical experience to develop new terms to apply both to their own past and to an ever-changing present.
Excessive gambling and gaming recognised as addictive disorders By John B. Saunders There is no doubt that excessive gambling can cause a huge mental, personal, and financial toll for the gambler and the members of their family. The nature of excessive gambling and whether it constitutes a disorder has been the subject of much research, debate, and controversy in recent years.
Alain Locke, Charles S. Johnson, and the establishment of Black literature [excerpt] By Jeffrey C. Stewart In March of 1924, Charles S. Johnson, sociologist and editor of Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, approached Alain Locke with a proposal: a dinner was being organized with the intention to secure interracial support for Black literature. Locke, would attend the dinner as “master of ceremonies,” with the responsibility of finding a common language between Black writers and potential White allies.
The counter-revolution in Europe By Jan Zielonka Several months after the fall of the Berlin Wall Ralf Dahrendorf wrote a book fashioned on Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France called Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. The intention was to explain the extraordinary events taking place in Europe around 1989.Today we are witnessing an equally turbulent period in Europe, however heading in the opposite direction.
Making babies: 21st century reproduction By Monika Piotrowska Today, it is our understanding of the start of life, not its end, that’s being challenged. What does it take to reproduce? Once again, technological advancements are challenging one of our most familiar biological concepts. It used to be that there were only two ways for something to reproduce: either through the sort of sexual reproduction typical of most animals or through the asexual reproduction characteristic of things like bacteria.
In memoriam: Jimmie C. Holland, MD By William Breitbart Jimmie C. Holland, MD, internationally recognized as the founder of the field of Psycho-oncology, died suddenly on 24 December 2017 at the age of 89. Dr. Holland, who was affectionately known by her first name, “Jimmie,” had a profound global influence on the fields of Psycho-oncology, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Oncology.
Facts about Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems By Jonathan F. S. Post Of all Shakespeare’s great plays his most frequently published work in his lifetime his erotic poem, Venus and Adonis. Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Poems may often feel less familiar than his plays, but they have also seeped into our cultural history. Within them, they reveal much about the Bard himself and include a number of surprises. Here are a few lesser known facts about Shakespeare’s sonnets and poems.
Animal of the Month: Interactive guide to polar bear anatomy From white fur to large paws, we all know what the largest bear species in the world looks like, but how much do you actually know about the anatomy of polar bears? So far this month, we have explored how climate change affects our Animal of the Month. Now, we would like to take some time to appreciate the anatomy of the polar bear, particularly the ways in which the bear has adapted to its environment and lifestyle.
An’t please the pigs By Anatoly Liberman My database on please the pigs is poor, but, since a question about it has been asked by an old and faithful correspondent, I’ll say about it what I can. Perhaps our readers will be able to contribute something to the sought-for etymology. When a word turns out to be of undisclosed or hopelessly obscure origin, we take the result more or less in stride, but it comes to many as a surprise to hear that the circumstances surrounding the emergence of an idiom are beyond reconstruction.
The ‘most wonderful plants in the world’ are also some of the most useful ones By Aaron Ellison In the popular imagination, carnivorous plants are staples of horror films, high-school theater productions, and science-fiction stories. Many a child has pleaded with her parents to buy yet another Venus’ fly-trap to replace the one she has just killed by over-stuffing it with raw hamburger rather than the plant’s natural diet of flies, ants, and other small insects.
200 years of Parkinson’s disease By Gavin Gordon The 200th anniversary of James Parkinson’s seminal Essay on the Shaking Palsy gives cause for commemoration and reflection. Parkinson’s astute observation and careful description of only six patients led to one of the earliest and most complete clinical descriptions of Parkinson’s disease. With the concept of a syndrome still not fully realised, Parkinson was among the first writers to unify a set of seemingly unrelated symptoms into one diagnosis.
The Reformation and Lutheran baroque By Bridget Heal The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century has long been associated with a reprioritization of the senses, with a shift from visual to verbal piety and from religious images to words. In many parts of northern Europe, the rich visual culture of the late-medieval church—sculptures, altarpieces, paintings, stained glass, and ecclesiastical treasures—fell victim to the purifying zeal of iconoclasts.
Should public health leaders get on the genomics train? By Colleen M. McBride Tier 1 genomic applications, backed by strong evidence of their clinical utility, support population screening to identify those at heightened risk for inherited cancers and cardiovascular disease. While accounting for less than 10% of the population, these individuals and families account for disproportionate morbidity and mortality and can benefit from targeted prevention efforts.
Putting George Enescu back on the musical map By Benedict Taylor Even by the standards of musical genius, George Enescu (1881–1955) was quite an extraordinary figure. A musician of a precocity that rivals Mozart or Mendelssohn, Enescu was equally proficient as a composer, performer, and teacher. Remembered nowadays primarily as a violinist, he numbers securely among the foremost instrumentalists of the twentieth century and a very capable cellist besides.
On our craving for generality By Stuart Glennan Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his Blue Book, chastised philosophers for what he called “our craving for generality.” Philosophers (including the earlier Wittgenstein of the Tractatus) certainly have exhibited this craving, and despite his admonishment, we continue to do so.
A new generation wrestles with the gender structure By Barbara J. Risman What’s happening with kids today? A few years ago, liberals were confidently– and conservatives dejectedly– predicting that Millennials were blurring traditional distinctions between the sexes both in the workplace and at home, operating on “the distinctive and historically unprecedented belief that there are no inherently male or female roles in society. So what are the Millennials’ gender politics?
George Washington and eighteenth century masculinity By Maurizio Valsania We want George Washington—the President of all Presidents, the Man of all Men—to be a certain way. We want him to be an unalloyed male outdoing, singlehandedly, all the other competitors. We want him strong and rude, rough and rugged, athletic and hypersexualized, a chiseled torso, a Teddy Roosevelt, a Tarzan, and a John Wayne: “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
Will common law dispute resolution bring banks to Paris after Brexit? By Richard Samuel The European continent operates a legal system derived from the Napoleonic Code, first enacted in 1804. Napoleon was, I venture to point out, and without meaning to be too critical, a revolutionary dictator. He gathered four eminent jurists together and, as dictators are wont to do, ordered that they produce an all-encompassing system of law for his judges to administer to the nation. .
Taking stock of the Catalan independence bid By Karlo Basta “It is clear that Catalonia’s political landscape has been transformed. “With the high drama of October now in the rear view mirror, the push for Catalonia’s independence has largely receded from international headlines. Yet, it leaves in its wake a number of open questions. In this brief piece, I consider three that are particularly illuminating of broader patterns of politics in multinational states.
10 tips for getting your journal article published By Mark J. McDonnell and Steward T. A. Pickett Writing a paper that gets accepted for publication in a high-quality journal is not easy. If it was, we’d all be doing it! Academic journals publish articles that are well-written, and based on solid scholarship with a robust methodology. They must present well-supported stories and make significant contributions to the knowledge base of the journal’s specific discipline.
Ten things you may not know about women and liberty By Jacqueline Broad and Karen Detlefsen Imagine that you’re a married woman living in a bleak dystopian world in which you’re barred from higher education, you’re forbidden from owning your own property, you have no freedom of movement outside your own home, and your husband might sexually assault you at any time, with impunity.
The economic relationship between Mexico and the United States By Roderic Ai Camp Mexico and the United States share a highly integrated economic relationship. There seems to be an assumption among many Americans, including officials in the current administration, that the relationship is somehow one-sided, that is, that Mexico is the sole beneficiary of commerce between the two countries. Yet, economic benefits to both countries are extensive.
Has “feminism” beaten “complicity” or are feminists complicit too? By Sara de Jong According to Merriam-Webster Dictionaries,“Feminism” is Word of the Year 2017,” as announced by a headline in The Guardian. “Complicit” was a strong runner-up in Merriam-Webster’s Competition though, and came in first place on the Dictionary.com list. Both “feminism” and “complicit” have been around for some time, so it is not as if 2017 gave birth […]
How well do you know George Berkeley? [quiz] By Catherine Pugh This February, the OUP Philosophy team honours George Berkeley (1685-1753) as their Philosopher of the Month. Berkeley was born in Ireland but travelled Europe, lived in America, and eventually settled in London. He is best known for his work in metaphysics on idealism and immaterialism. How much do you know about the life and work of George Berkeley?
The neurology of the Winter Olympics By Jeffrey S. Kutcher The human brain is a wonder and a marvel. At the same time, it is enigma and frustration. Given all it has accomplished, it continues to perplex. This is why I became a neurologist. For me, combining the apex of all organic structures with the vast unknown of cerebral neuroscience produces a daily wonder that is worth dedicating a life’s work to. To that end, I find myself somewhere over the North Pole hurling towards PyongChang, South Korea.
A Q&A with composer David Bednall — part 2 By David Bednall We like to get an insight into the musical lives of Oxford composers by asking them questions about their artistic likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges.. In part 1 we spoke to composer David Bednall in August 2017 about what motivates him, and how he approaches a new commission. Here he tells us why he wanted to be a composer, the challenges he faces, and his musical guilty pleasures.
Freemasonry and the public sphere in the UK By Andreas Önnerfors Freemasonry once again hit the headlines of UK media on New Year’s Eve 2017, revealing the contentious nature of the place of secrecy in public life. Just having concluded the celebration of its tercentenary anniversary year, the United Grand Lodge of England found itself at the center of controversy. How far can membership in a masonic lodge be regarded as incompatible with the exercise of a public office?
Outreach ideas by librarians, for librarians By Lynsay Williams For university libraries, it can sometimes be difficult to get students—especially new students— comfortable with coming into the library and engaging with library staff. We asked some librarians how they get creative with their student outreach to welcome students to campus and to the library. By welcoming students back with these events every quarter, librarians remind them that they are the reason university libraries are here.
Cosplay is meaningless…and that can be a good thing By G. R. F Ferrari Cosplay is meaningless, and that can be a good thing. Cosplayers use only their appearance to evoke the imagined action of the character they play; they strike poses, but those poses do not make up a story. At some competitions, admittedly, cosplayers may perform brief skits or mimes in character. None of this amounts to a story, but it does resemble what a guest at a fancy dress party might get up to — and I compared that behaviour to the performance of a ham actor.
The US led liberal international order is in crisis By Inderjeet Parmar One year into President Trump’s administration serious questions are being asked about the nature and extent of the ‘crisis’ of the US-led liberal order, and its hegemonic state. After the Cold War’s end, the triumph of liberalism seemed all but certain. Though success bred its own international challenges, liberals were ready for them. Until November 2016.
Questions and answers: January 2018 etymology gleanings By Anatoly Liberman The most ancient roots: The question concerned the root ro- that is said to underlie the English words oar and row. Where did the root come from? This question is almost equal to the more basic one, namely: “How did human language come into being?” The concept of the root is ambiguous. When we deal with living languages, we compare words like work, works, worked, rework, worker, and the rest and call their common part their root.
Want to know the Latin for “true love”? By Thea Thorsen Then Ovid is your man – and woman, as the case may be … Fidus amor. That’s “true love” in Latin. Historically, such love is often claimed to have emerged with the troubadours of twelfth century Provence. The troubadours used the Occitan term fin amor for this kind of love rather than the more famous […]
The weight of love: ‘love locks’ as emotional objects By Sarah Randles On the night of 8 June 2014, a section of the metal barrier on the Pont des Arts in Paris collapsed under the weight of thousands of padlocks which had been attached to it. Since the first decade of the twenty-first century, it has become increasingly common for famous (and sometimes less famous) bridges, and, increasingly, other monuments, to become encrusted with small padlocks in celebration of romantic love.
Simon of Montfort and the Statutes of Pamiers By G.E.M. Lippiatt “Kill them. The Lord will know those that are his.” This statement, attributed to a Cistercian abbot at the sack of Béziers in 1209, encapsulates for the modern mind the essence of the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1229). However, a view of the Albigensian Crusade that encompasses only its violence will miss a great deal of the movement’s significance.
The future of precision medicine By Richard Barker In April 2003, researchers from the Human Genome Project published the result of their painstaking work; a complete sequencing of the human genome. This ground-breaking feat has ushered in the current “post genomic” era of medicine, whereby medical treatment is becoming increasingly personalised towards an individual’s specific lifestyle and genetic makeup.
Happy, healthy, and empowered in love By Catherine Luz Marrs Fuchsel If, as Tolstoy says, all happy families are alike, then why is it so challenging to identify what it is—psychologically and sociologically—that makes them so happy? We can easily identify the markers of unhealthy relationships; for example, domestic violence—commonly known as intimate partner violence in an academic setting—is controlling behavior rooted in the power and control by one person over another.
Saving Butch Cassidy’s charitable legacy By Edward A. Zelinsky Paul Newman died in 2008, leaving behind a wonderful legacy of films and philanthropy. Of his many iconic movie roles, my favorite is Butch Cassidy. Unfortunately, Mr. Newman’s death in real life triggered a tax problem which now threatens his charitable bounty. Congress almost solved this problem in the new tax law passed in December 2017 but, at the last minute, failed to do so.
My author. My friend? By John Holliday Imagine you’ve sat down with your favorite novel. While you’re reading, what do you feel? If, in part, it’s an emotional connection with a character, you’re not alone. This is a common experience; and plenty has been written about it, in both popular and scholarly spaces. Because it’s powerful and strange, this feeling. Powerful enough to make you cry. Strange in that it’s fictional characters we’re talking about.
Darwin Day 2018 By Katy Roberts Monday, 12th February 2018 is Darwin Day, so-called in commemoration of the birth of the father of evolutionary biology, Charles Darwin, in 1809. The day is used to highlight Charles Darwin’s contribution to evolutionary and plant science. Darwin’s ground-breaking discoveries have since paved the way for the many scientists who have come after him, with many building on his work.
Who keeps the dog in a divorce? By Polly Morgan In the 1937 film The Awful Truth, Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are getting divorced and arguing over Mr Smith, their terrier. ‘Custody of the dog will depend on his own desires’ says the judge. ‘Send for the dog!’ Put in the middle of the courtroom, the dog eventually runs to Dunne – who has snuck a dog toy up her sleeve.
Beware the thesaurus By Edwin L. Battistella Someone recently asked me if I knew another word for entertaining. “What’s the context?” I replied, wondering if the writer was looking for an adjective like enjoyable or interesting or a gerund like wining and dining or possibly even a verb like pondering. “Use it in a sentence.” “Never mind,” she said, “I’ll just use the thesaurus button.” The what?
How and why to study folk epistemology By Mikkel Gerken Folk epistemology may be roughly characterized as the (mostly tacit) principles, presuppositions, and principles that involve epistemological notions such as knowledge, evidence, justification etc. Folk epistemological notions have not been as empirically well-studied as folk psychological notions such as belief, desire, and intention.
The optics of a cabinet reshuffle: PR vs reality By Jessica Smith Reshuffles are a chance to revive the fortunes of a Prime Minister by changing the faces of their Cabinet and Government. January’s offered much but delivered less; the occupants of key Cabinet positions remained in place after all. May’s big beasts stood their ground, seemingly immovable; Justine Greening was the most prominent and the only woman to exit the Cabinet.
Can saunas help decrease risk of high blood pressure? By Francesco Zaccardi and Jari Laukkanen In Finland, sauna bathing has been practiced for centuries, either for pleasure, but more importantly also for reasons of hygiene and maintenance of health. Many curative and magical e?ects have been attributed to its practice and seldom has it been thought to cause any disease. The benefit of the sauna lies in its increased temperatures. Heat therapy has many bene?ts for human physiology.
What happens when a volcano erupts? By Amelia Carruthers and Steven Filippi Volcanoes are incredibly complex geological systems. They are capable of generating many dangerous effects in the form of lava follows, fallout, and lahars – as well as associated hazards such as seismic shocks, tsunamis, or landslides. About 500 million people currently live in regions of the world directly subject to volcanic risk, and it is estimated that about 250,000 persons died during the past two centuries as a direct consequence of volcanic eruptions.
Poaching with Piers Plowman By Sebastian Sobecki When an army of Kentish insurgents gathered south of London on 12 June 1381, the firebrand priest John Ball is said to have addressed them with a subversive proverb: “When Adam delved and Eve span, where was then the gentleman?” On the following day, the rebels flooded into London, orchestrating spectacles of political violence. They razed the sumptuous Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, King Richard II’s despised uncle, and beheaded both the treasurer of England and the archbishop of Canterbury.
A new approach to experimentally lengthening sleep in short-sleeping teens By Tori Van Dyk Short sleep is common in teens, particularly on school nights, with a majority obtaining less than the eight to ten hours recommended. Many factors contribute to insufficient sleep during adolescence including increased social and academic demands, bedtime autonomy, the use of electronics, and early school start times coupled with a biological and behavioral tendency to stay up later.
Perpetrator Intervention Programmes – a mechanism to effect positive change? By Louise Crowley In the preamble to the Istanbul Convention, the Council of Europe recognises “that violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power… and is one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men.” Justice for victims requires not only an end to violent events but also the securing of a safer environment in the longer term.
Animal of the Month: Eight ways climate change affects polar bears An icon of the Arctic, the polar bear is a fairly common sight in the news, whether it’s because the polar ice caps are melting or because of a cute new arrival at a zoo. But how exactly has habitat loss and climate change affected the well being of polar bears?
Etymology gleanings for January 2018: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Odds and ends: I am delighted to say that in January I received unusually many questions. When this blog came into existence, the idea was that I would be flooded by “notes and queries,” as happens to word columnists who work for newspapers. That is why the last week of every month was reserved for answers. But all these years the traffic has been modest, and sometimes my replies were limited to what I had read in the comments. January and the beginning of February 2018 have been an exception; hence the extended “gleanings.”
Sing, Ward, Sing By Stephanie Li While the title of the latest issue of American Literary History, “What is Twenty-First-Century African American Literature?” is meant as a provocation to understand and define the key elements of a new literary period, there is an easier way to answer the question. Eighteen years into our new century key texts have already emerged as canonical. What is Twenty-First-Century African American Literature? Answers
The Islamic monuments of Spain: four centuries ago and today By Antonio Urquízar-Herrera Spanish historians and antiquarians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries revised the medieval reception of Islamic monuments in the Peninsula as architectural wonders and exotic trophies. They endeavoured to re-appropriate these hybrid architectures by integrating them into a more homogeneous cultural memory focused on Spain’s Roman and Christian past.
What does my cancer gene mutation mean for my family? By Charité Ricker For 15 years I have counseled patients about what it means to carry a mutation in a gene that can lead to a higher risk of developing cancer. Hundreds of times I have said, “A mutation was found.” Our patients have different mutations in different genes. They come from different parts of the world. They speak a variety of languages, and bring their cultural heritage and expectations to our sessions.
Can you pick up the ‘core’ of ten languages in a year? By Dawn Field I previously wrote about how Scientific English is a specialized form of language used in formal presentations and publications. It is rich in ‘rare’, or extremely low frequency words, and the colocations that define them (i.e. we ‘sequence a genome’ or ‘stretch of ‘DNA’). Learning to comprehend the meaning of such formal language requires considerable exposure and writing it well truly exercises one’s knowledge of the ‘long tail’ of vocabulary.
Responding to the rise of extremist populism By Benjamin A. Schupmann The rise of extremist populism in recent years places liberal democracy, not to mention committed liberal democrats, in an awkward position. There has been an alarming rise in public support for such extremist movements, even in established liberal democratic states. In states such as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and Venezuela, democratically elected governments are enacting illiberal and anti-democratic political goals and values into law and in some cases directly into their constitutions.
Does nationalism cause war? By John Hutchinson Nationalism is often blamed for the devastating wars of the modern period, but is this fair? Critics pinpoint four dangerous aspects of nationalism: its utopian ideology (originating in the late 18th century), its cult of the war dead, the mass character of its wars, and its encouragement of the break-up of states. I argue, however, that the case against nationalism is not proven.
Jacopo Galimberti on 1950s and 1960s art collectives in Western Europe By Jacopo Galimberti The phenomenon of collective art practice in the continental Western Europe of the late 1950s and of the 1960s is rarely discussed. Jacopo Galimberti looks at a comparative perspective, engaging with a cultural history of art deeply concerned with political ideas and geopolitical conflicts in his book Individuals Against Individualism. He focuses on artists and activists, and their attempts to depict and embody forms of egalitarianism opposing the Eastern bloc authoritarianism as much as the Free world’s ethos.
The healthiest body mass index isn’t as simple as you think By David Carslake The body mass index (BMI) is a crude but useful measure of how heavy someone is for their weight. It consists of your weight in kilograms, divided by the square of your height in metres. Guidelines suggest that a BMI between 18.5 and 25 is healthy for most people. You are classed as overweight if it is 25-30 and obese if it is more than 30.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: George Berkeley [timeline] By Catherine Pugh This February, the OUP Philosophy team honours George Berkeley (1685-1753) as their Philosopher of the Month. An Irish-born philosopher, Berkeley is best known for his contention that the physical world is nothing but a compilation of ideas. This is represented by his famous aphorism esse est percipi (“to be is to be perceived”).
Nuclear deterrence and conflict: the case of Israel By Louis René Beres “Deliberate ambiguity” notwithstanding, Israel’s’ core nuclear posture has remained consistent. It asserts that the tiny country’s presumptive nuclear weapons can succeed only through calculated non-use, or via systematic deterrence. srael must plan for the measured replacement of “deliberate ambiguity” with certain apt levels of “disclosure.” In this connection, four principal scenarios should come immediately to mind.
What are the critical brain networks for creativity? By Emmanuelle Volle and David Bendetowicz The concept of creativity is imbued with two contradictory notions. The first notion usually considers that a creative production is the result of high-level control functions such as inhibition, mental manipulation, or planning. These functions are known to depend on the anterior part of the brain: the prefrontal cortex.
Community healing and reconciliation: a tale of two cities By George Jacinto and Joshua Kirven Community healing and reconciliation has been a focus of many nations in response to civil war, genocide, and other conflicts. Over the past 12 years there has been a growing number of high profile murders of African American youth in the United States. Some communities have responded to the incidents offering examples of how communities may work together to move forward.
How well do you know Jean-Jacques Rousseau? [quiz] By Panumas King This January, the OUP Philosophy team honors Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as their Philosopher of the Month. Rousseau was a Swiss writer and philosopher. He is considered one of the most important figures for his contribution to modern European intellectual history and political philosophy. His books have attracted both admiration and hostility during his lifetime.
World Cancer Day 2018: Is prevention worth more than cure? By Kiashini Sriharan World Cancer Day is on the 4th of February. The purpose is to increase global awareness and get as many people talking about the disease as possible. Essentially, unite people from all around the world in the fight against cancer—and with worldwide incidence set to increase to 21.7 million by 2030, the fight is now. 2018 is the last in the three year ‘We Can. I can.’ campaign
Composer Alan Bullard in 10 questions By Alan Bullard Occasionally, we ask Oxford composers questions about their musical likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges. We spoke to Alan Bullard about who or what inspires him, his writing habits, and what he likes to do when he’s not composing.
The joys and challenges of compiling a new organ anthology By Robert Gower Faced with a blank sheet of paper, how does one begin when an invitation is received to compile an anthology of music? Compiling the two recent volumes, Oxford Book of Christmas Organ Music for Manuals and Oxford Book of Lent and Easter Organ Music for Manuals, has been a rewarding journey of musical discovery, which I decided had to begin at Perry Barr in north east Birmingham, on the campus of the University of Central England, at the library of the Royal College of Organists.
January 2018 (76))
Truth, lies, and the Reformation By Andrew Hadfield We are obsessed with lying, a subject which has been much in the news recently. Indeed, a main concern has been the production of ‘fake news’, news that is a lie. The issue is of fundamental importance: if we don’t have proper evidence and accurate testimony then we can never get to the truth. The Reformation shows us that this is not a new phenomenon, but one that has been ever-present in history.
Etymology gleanings for January 2018: Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman My most recent post (mad as a hatter) aroused a good deal of criticism. The reason is clear: I did not mention the hypothesis favored in the OED (mercury poisoning). Of course, when I quoted the medical explanation of long ago, I should have written the last set of hypotheses… instead of the last hypothesis. I find all medical explanations of the idiom untenable, and I should have been explicit on this point, rather than hiding behind polite silence.
Legal rights are not all right: when morality and the law collide By Jens Beckert and Matías Dewey In early November 2017, media outlets hailed the Paradise Papers as a major scoop: 13.4 million leaked documents revealed the financial details of some of the world’s leading brands, politicians, sports stars, and musicians. But this was to be no repeat of last year’s Panama Papers, in which well-known names appeared relating to criminal acts l; the Paradise Papers failed to reveal a single crime. So why was it considered news?
Dr. William H. Harris reflects on his career advancing orthopedic surgery By William H. Harris To mark the release of Vanishing Bone, in Part One of our Q&A with Dr. William H. Harris we discussed the fascinating story of how he came to identify, and later cure, the severe bone destruction affecting individuals who had undergone total hip replacement surgery. In this second interview, Dr. Harris reflects on his remarkable career; including what inspired him to pursue orthopaedic surgery, how he balances his two roles as a surgeon and clinician-scientist, and his advice for aspiring surgeons.
Knowledge of the Holocaust: the meaning of ‘extermination’ By Bart Van Der Boom Did ordinary Dutchmen know of the Holocaust during the war? That might seem an easy question to answer. Research has shown that the illegal press, Dutch radio broadcast from London, and even exiled queen Juliana characterized the deportation of the Jews almost from the beginning in the summer of 1942 as mass murder, destruction and, in the Queen’s words, “systematic extermination.”
Seven key skills for managing science [video] By Ken Peach “Management” is a word we often associate with commerce and the business community, but the act of managing is common to most human activity, including academia. While there is a myriad of tools available for learning how to manage business, there are few resources out there which discuss the skills needed to manage academic scientific research.
Feminist themes in TV crime drama By Gray Cavender and Nancy C. Jurik The fictional world has always featured women who solve crimes, from Nancy Drew to Veronica Mars. Although men crime-solvers outnumbered women on TV, women detectives have increasingly become more commonplace. This trend includes the policewomen depicted on CSI and Law & Order: SUV as well as private detectives like Veronica Mars and Miss Phryne Fisher who are the chief protagonists of their series.
Interpreting a new work by John Rutter By Kerson Leong The young violinist Kerson Leong looks back with affection on his preparations for the premiere and subsequent recording of a work by John Rutter. The work, featuring a solo violin part of great lyricism and transparency, was moulded by the composer to fit Leong’s particular playing style.
Oxford Medicine Online The Death Cafe: A medium latte and a chat about dying By Amy Cluett In early 2011, Jon Underwood decided to develop a series of projects about death – one of which was to focus on talking about death. Jon read about the work of Bernard Crettaz, the pioneer of Cafes Mortéls which were themselves inspired by the cafes and coffeehouses of the European Enlightenment. Motivated by Bernard’s work, Jon immediately decided to use a similar model for his own project, and Death Cafe was born.
The hippie trail and the question of nostalgia By Sharif Gemie The term ‘hippie’ was coined around 1965; the term ‘hippie trail’ began to circulate in the late 1960s: it referred principally to the long route from London (or sometimes Amsterdam) to Katmandu. This was not an actual path, although disparate travellers often, by coincidence, followed a route that led through the same cafés, campsites, border-crossings, […]
5 great unsolved philosophical questions The discipline of philosophy covers the study of everything from the nature of knowledge, art, language, and the very nature of existence, to moral, ethical, and political dilemmas. Stemming from the Greek word “philosophia” there isn’t much that philosophers haven’t disputed over the years. Despite this, there are many key debates and great philosophical mysteries that remain unsolved—and quite possibly always will.
Should Politics be taught within secondary school? By Elena Jones Despite the higher youth turnout than originally anticipated, it has been estimated that around one third of millennials did not vote in the EU Referendum. But could a better understanding of the European Union, and political affairs in general be achieved if Politics were taught more widely in schools? Would more young people be willing to engage with politics?
Animal of the Month: 13 nutty squirrel species [slideshow] Most of these critters belong to the Sciurus genus which is from the ancient Greek, “skia” meaning shadow or shade, and “oura” for tail. Despite the variation within these different members of the same family, the evolutionary record shows that squirrels have actually changed very little over millions of years. If it ain’t broke…
Mad as a Hatter By Anatoly Liberman About every well-known English idiom one can nowadays find so much interesting material on the Internet that almost nothing is left for an ambitious etymologist to add. Mad as a hatter has been discussed especially often, and my detailed database contains nearly nothing new. Yet I decided to join the ranks of the researchers of […]
The Origins of the Reformation Bible By Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade One of the side effects of the Protestant Reformation was intense scrutiny of the biblical canon and its contents. Martin Luther did not broach the issue in his 95 Theses, but not long after he drove that fateful nail into the door of the Wittenberg chapel, it became clear that the exact contents of the biblical canon would need to be addressed. Luther increasingly claimed that Christian doctrine should rest on biblical authority.
Writing the first draft of history in the Middle Ages By Michael Staunton The end of the twelfth century and the start of the thirteenth century proved to be a time where history seemed to be moving an an unusual speed. It as a period where one piece of remarkable news could hardly be apprehended before it was overtaken by another even more extraordinary. It is known as the Angevin dynasty, the era of Henry II, Thomas Becket, Richard the Lionheart, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and more.
A few bad apples: Stalin, torture, and the Great Terror By Lynne Viola On 10 January 1939, Stalin wrote that the Central Committee of the Communist Party had permitted the use of what was euphemistically called “the application of physical measures of persuasion” in interrogations from 1937. To date, there is no extant written order on the use of torture during the Great Terror. Stalin’s admission demonstrates conclusively that directives on torture came from the top.
Music and touch in Call Me By Your Name By Ivan Raykoff A rich sensuality of touch permeates Luca Guadagnino’s new film Call Me By Your Name, based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name. This tactile quality comes through not only in its evocative visual imagery: close-ups of hands and fingers and feet, shoulder rubs, sweaty bare skin glistening in the sun, bodies lounging on lush grass or jumping into chilly spring-fed ponds, soft-boiled eggs and ripe fruits bursting with juices, the broken limbs and pitted patina of ancient bronzes.
Let’s talk about death: an opinions blog By Oxford Medicine Death and dying surrounds us, yet many of us see it as an uncomfortable taboo subject. As part of a series of articles on encouraging an open dialogue around death and dying, we asked various healthcare professionals, academics, and members of the public who have experienced palliative care the following question: How important is it that we as a society are open to discussing death and dying?
A Q&A with Laura Knowles, marketing executive for online products By Laura Knowles We caught up with Laura Knowles, who joined Oxford University Press in January 2017 as a Digital Marketing Coordinator with the UK Primary Education division. Since October 2017 she is a Marketing Executive for the Global Online Products team. She talks to us about working on online products, her own experience in publishing, her OUP journey so far, and some of her favourite books.
Are the gods indifferent? By Louis B. Rosenblatt It’s an old question, at least as old as Prometheus. Are the gods indifferent or is there something in the scheme of things that cares? The ancient tale of Prometheus neatly parses its reply – yes and no. Zeus is indifferent to humanity; we are small change. But not Prometheus. His concern for our plight leads him to give us fire, which as Aeschylus explains is more than the warming flames of the hearth.
Miscarriages of justice By Christopher Hilliard Today we take it for granted that anyone convicted of a crime should be able to appeal to a higher court. However, this wasn’t always so. English lawyers traditionally set great store in the deterrent value of swift and final justice. Over the course of the nineteenth century, reformers pressed for the establishment of a court that could review sentencing and order retrials on points of law or new evidence. These advocates of change met with fierce resistance from the judiciary and much of the legal profession, and the cause of reform had little success until a spectacular miscarriage of justice came to light.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Jean-Jacques Rousseau [timeline] By OUP Philosophy Team This January, the OUP Philosophy team honors Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) as their Philosopher of the Month. Rousseau was a Swiss writer and philosopher, considered important for his contribution to modern European intellectual history and political philosophy. He is best known for Social Contract (1762) with its famous opening line: “Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.”
Biofilms: advantage for bacteria, threat for medical devices By Vera Carniello It has been known for centuries that bacteria tend to adhere to solid surfaces, forming a slimy and slippery layer known as biofilm. Bacterial biofilms are complex microbial communities protected by an extracellular matrix composed of polysaccharides, proteins, and nucleic acids. The extracellular matrix improves biofilm cohesion and its adhesion to surfaces.
The Jewish experience in the United States [extract] By David N. Myers To a great extent, Jews have realized the promise of Washington’s America. They have been much admired, in no small part because of the belief that they are the progenitors of the biblical spirit on which America was built. It was this recognition that prompted Washington’s successor, John Adams, to declare of the Jews in 1808: “They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth.”
Alan Turing and evil Artificial Intelligence By Diane Proudfoot In November 2017, the Future of Life Institute in California—which focuses on ‘keeping artificial intelligence beneficial’—released a slick, violent video depicting ‘slaughterbots’ [some viewers may find this video distressing]. It went viral. The tiny (fictional) drones in the video used facial recognition systems to target and destroy civilians.
Unravelling bone destruction in total hip replacements with William H. Harris By William H. Harris When orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. William H Harris discovered massive bone destruction around a total hip replacement that he had implanted, he was startled and dismayed. In fact, he had identified a new condition, “periprosthetic osteolysis”, which came to be the leading factor in failure of total hip replacement (THR) surgery. While THR surgery dramatically reversed severe arthritis of the hip, the same operation simultaneously created a relentless “particle generator” in the body.
Touching hearts: an interview with John Rutter By bob chilcott and john rutter “You’ve got to have technique: composition is like aircraft design; you can’t just go in and do it without training. You’ll never find your voice if you don’t have the technique to express what you want to say.” One of the most prolific of choral music composers, John Rutter is known throughout the world for music which has sustained choirs for almost half a century. Here he is in dialogue with composer Bob Chilcott.
Catalan language, identity, and independence By Kathryn A. Woolard The Catalan sovereignty movement came to a head on 1 October 2017 in a beleaguered referendum declared illegal by the Spanish government, which sent in thousands of police and civil guard troops, used force against would-be voters, confiscated ballot boxes, and jailed civic leaders and elected officials on charges of sedition. The political crisis for the Spanish state as well as Catalonia continues.
First person pronouns and the passive voice in scientific writing By David H. Foster Imagine you are explaining your research to a friend. You might say “I tested this factor” or “We examined that effect”. But when you later prepare a written version for a scientific journal, you would probably eliminate the “I” and “we” in favour of the passive voice, which, unfortunately, can sometimes present a challenge.
Exploring the Scottish and African diasporas By Steven Niven Since 1801, the fifth anniversary of his death, January 25 has become synonymous with the poet Robert Burns, widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and celebrated worldwide. One of the lesser-known aspects of Burns’ life is that he almost moved to Jamaica to become an overseer; his tumultuous relationship with ‘ungrateful’ Jean Armour also attributed to his resolution to sail as an emigrant to Jamaica.
Finding ‘the weird’ in psychedelic art By Jonathan Weinel The concepts of altered states and psychedelia creep in to a great deal of visual art. According to Lewis-Williams, some early forms of Palaeolithic rock art may have been shamanic in origin, and represent forms seen during visionary states. 18th Century works such as Fuseli’s The Nightmare (1781) depicted the ‘old hag’ phenomenon, a type of hypnagogic hallucination that is experienced on the threshold of sleep, during which a person feels as though a daemon or other supernatural entity is suffocating them.
An oar in every man’s boat By Anatoly Liberman Not too long ago, one of our constant correspondents proposed the etymology of Greek koupí “oar.” I do not know the origin of that word and will probably never know. Koupí did not show up in my most detailed dictionary of Classical Greek, and I suspect that we are dealing with a relative late coinage. By way of compensation, I decided to write something about the origin of Engl. oar and about some other words connected with it.
Monteverdi turns 450 By Roseen Giles The year of 2017 has proved an exciting year for anniversaries. From the quincentennial of Martin Luther’s 95 theses of 1517, or the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation in 1867, to the centenary of the 1917 Russian revolutions, the historic events commemorated this year call us into celebration as much as they urge us into reflection and contemplation.
In search of political prisoners: A dialogue with Padraic Kenney By Padraic Kenney States around the world imprison people for their beliefs or politically-motivated actions. Oppositional movements of all stripes celebrate their comrades behind bars. Yet they are more than symbols of repression and human rights. Padraic Kenney discusses his new book, Dance in Chains: Political Imprisonment in the Modern World, which seeks to find universal answers to questions about the meaning and purpose of imprisonment.
A brief history of libel By Steven W. May and Alan Bryson At a Cambridge court hearing in 1584, Margery Johnson reported that she heard Thomas Wylkinson refer to “the said Jane Johnson thus ‘A pox of God on thee, bitch fox whore, that ever I knew thee.’” If Wylkinson indeed called down such a curse on Jane, he was guilty not of libel, but of slander, a verbal attack on another person. Libel, in contrast, is defined as defamation by written or printed words, pictures, or in any form other than by spoken words or gestures.
Screen Communist laughter By Mark Steven “History is thorough and passes through many stages while bearing an ancient form to its grave.” So wrote Karl Marx in 1843, as he reflected on the collapse of Germany’s old regime whilst looking toward a revolutionary horizon. “The last phase of a world-historical form,” he adds, “is its comedy.” According to Marx, comedy has revolutionary value in that it allows us to part happily with the superannuated ways of the past.
Advance care planning: an illusion of choice? By Anjali Mullick Over the last decade or so, patients have been encouraged to think ahead, and make clear their wishes and plans for a time when illness may render them unable to makes decisions about their care for themselves. This process we know as Advance Care Planning (ACP). Intuitively, as a hospice physician trained in Palliative Medicine, ACP seems to me like a good thing to do, with those patients who are willing to do it.
The changing nature of retirement By Gwenith G. Fisher Whether you are approaching retirement, or are a few years or decades away from thinking about leaving the workforce, it is likely that you will be affected by the changing nature of retirement. Maybe it’s not your own retirement that is on the forefront of your mind, but your spouse or partner’s. Perhaps your parent or another family member is trying to navigate the complexities of their pension, all the while trying to decide whether and how to retire.
Strangest things: The peculiar Byzantine Empire [quiz] By Anthony Kaldellis From stories of saints and relics to the (not-so) mundane traditions of daily life, Byzantium has long been regarded as one of history’s most curious civilizations. Rising from the rubble of the Roman Empire, this complex Christian society was a birthplace of literature, art, and architecture. How much do you know about Byzantine culture?
Philosophy: Eternal topics, evolving questions By Daniel Stoljar Philosophers are famous for disagreeing on the issues that interest them. Is morality objective? Is the mind identical to the body? Are our actions free or determined? Some professional philosophers will say no to these questions—but an almost equal number will say yes. Moreover, empirical data bears this out.
10 fascinating facts about Lucha Libre By Stephen Mann Over the course of the 20th century, Lucha Libre—or professional wrestling—has become a stable of urban Mexican culture. Dating back all the way to the 1800s, professional wrestling has become a distinctly national rendition of an imported product. Within the past 20 years, it has gained international acclaim for its distinctive style: an incredible acrobatic ring style and the highly recognizable masks.
For the people, by the people: democracy in the US and India [excerpt] By Alyssa Ayres India is the world’s largest democracy. However, despite its shared political system with the United States, India’s approach to human rights and foreign policy differs greatly from its Western counterparts. The following excerpt from Our Time Has Come highlights the key differences between the American and Indian democratic systems.
New NHS treatments: a real breakthrough for breast cancer? By Kiashini Sriharan In November last year, after much debate over cost, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) approved two new drugs for treatment of breast cancer for use on the NHS. Although first approval happened some time ago, this decision to make palbociclib and ribociclib available on the NHS, gives thousands more people access.
Going back to instrumental lessons By Pedro de Alcantara Three existential questions are useful to all of us: “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?” The publication of The Integrated String Player got me thinking about these questions in regards to my trajectory as a cellist. I decided to go back to school, so to speak. This is my report.
No-impunity as a global constitutional principle By Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo One of the fundamental principles of global law is to prohibit the impunity of those responsible for serious violations of human rights. The no-impunity principle is part of the founding principles of the global community, norms of a public nature, protecting the supreme values of the world community as a whole, including the fundamental rights of individuals and peoples.
Animal of the Month: Ten things you didn’t know about squirrels Whether they’re gray or red, climbing a tree or scurrying on the ground, squirrels are one of the most ubiquitous mammals in the world. They are found in almost every habitat imaginable from tropical rainforests to deserts, avoiding only the most extreme conditions found in the high polar and arid desert regions. Different types of squirrels are indigenous to almost every continent including the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The 12 challenges of social work [slideshow] By Rowena Fong, James Lubben, and Richard P. Barth The Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI), spearheaded by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), represents a major endeavor for the entire field of social work. We have identified 12 of the most persistent social issues, such as homelessness, social isolation, mass incarceration, and economic inequality, as well as generating interventions that can be taken to scale in the slideshow below.
A five-day guide to resiliency in the New Year By Robert Wicks In a world that values busyness, it is often easy to prioritize personal responsibilities over personal fulfillment. Phrases like I wish I had the time and once things settle down justify an all-too-common postponement of happiness and self-care. In the following excerpt from Night Call, acclaimed psychologist and author Robert Wicks details a five-day guide to self-care designed to fit even the busiest of schedules.
Catching someone by the toe By Anatoly Liberman From time to time I receive questions too long for my monthly gleanings. The same happened last week. A reader wanted to know the origin of the eena, meena (or eenie, meenie) rhyme. Although not much can be said with certainty about this matter, a few facts have been established. The Internet devotes a lot of space to this “jingle.”
The massacre at Paris By Tom Hamilton When the church bells rang out in Paris on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1572, they heralded a massacre. At dawn, on royal orders the Catholic civic militia assassinated the admiral Gaspard de Coligny and other Protestant leaders. Their cry that “the king wills it!” preceded thousands of killings of Protestants in cities across France during the month that followed.
Four ways to improve your career in the New Year By julia richardson, michael b. arthur, and svetlana n. khapova With the New Year underway, many are in the process of evaluating their career trajectories for 2018. However, establishing obtainable objectives can be overwhelming if you’re unsure of your long-term goals. Using insights from An Intelligent Career, we’ve pulled together a list of ways that you can make sense of your career and set your objectives for 2018.
Beethoven’s Ninth at the G-20 By Alexander Rehding The world leaders who had gathered in Hamburg, Germany, this summer for the twelfth G-20 summit on 7 July 2017 found an unusual item on their itinerary: a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony.
Taxation and religion in 2018 By Edward A. Zelinsky 2018 will be an interesting year for those concerned about the intersection of taxation and religion. Two important issues – the constitutionality of the parsonage allowance and the future of the Johnson Amendment – are primed for further controversy in the year ahead. Several months ago, Judge Crabb agreed with the FFRF that Section 107(2) is unconstitutional.
Communication in palliative care [reading list] By Rebecca Parker Palliative care is now a cemented service offered by health care services globally, and in the United Kingdom the hospice care sector provides support to 200,000 people each year. The care given to the terminally ill, as well as their family and friends is vital in supporting individuals through what is, for most, the most challenging time of their lives. This care ranges from clinical medical practice to spiritual support, and aims to put individuals in as much comfort as is possible.
Top ten developments in international law in 2017 By Merel Alstein Two thousand and seventeen was, once again, a dramatic year in terms of world affairs. Fears about a rising tide of nationalism were stemmed by the failure of far-right parties to win majorities in the Dutch, French, and German elections but the impact of arguably 2016’s biggest upheaval – the election of President Trump – was felt far and wide.
Life after death: posttraumatic growth after the loss of a loved one [video] By Donald L. Rosenstein and Justin M. Yopp Can trauma lead to positive change? Posttraumatic growth is a phenomenon experienced by those who have undergone trauma. After facing a traumatic event, those who experience posttraumatic growth endure a period of psychological struggle before eventually finding a sense of personal growth. The process can be long and difficult, and isn’t experienced by everyone who survives a traumatic event.
What you can learn at a writing retreat By Edwin L. Battistella Recently I attended a writing retreat for faculty at my university. It was a three-day weekend break from email, grading and meetings. A dozen academic writers from a variety of disciplines gathered under the roof of a spacious rental home near a lake to talk about their projects, share strategies and concerns, and write for long stretches at a time.
Global health as equity By Joia S. Mukherjee Images of a Loa Loa worm crawling across a woman’s eye, a man’s leg swollen, unrecognizability from filariasis, a child comatose from malaria: these are the images often used to start a lecture on global health. The people suffering from these exotic maladies are undoubtedly of people of color who hail from communities and countries impoverished by a succession of geopolitical forces in direct opposition to human rights.
Emerging infectious diseases: Q&A with Michel A. Ibrahim By Michel A. Ibrahim Defined as “the branch of medicine which deals with the incidence, distribution, and possible control of diseases and other factors relating to health”, the field of epidemiology is a widely-encompassing field. Issues under this branch range from incarceration and health to environmental issues to gun violence. In recent years, global outbreaks have also brought epidemiology to the forefront with the reemergence of infectious diseases such as Ebola and Zika.
Organisms as societies By Jonathan Birch In the 19th century, biologists came to appreciate for the first time the fundamentality of the cell to all life. One of the early pioneers of cell biology, Rudolf Virchow, realized that the discovery of the cell brought with it a new way of seeing the organism and described it as a ‘cell state’. In the 20th century, this metaphor fell out of favour, but recent trends in biology suggest a revival.
Putin and patriotism: national pride after the fall of the Soviet Union [excerpt] By Shaun Walker Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin undertook the formidable task of uniting a restless and disorganized Russia. Throughout the early 1990s, the national narrative behind USSR’s regime remained unclear—causing national pride to deteriorate in the confusion. In the following excerpt from The Long Hangover, journalist Shaun Walker sheds light on how Putin used Russia’s victory in World War II to reestablish patriotism within the new Russia.
Drive-through healthcare: Is retail thinking what patients want? By Timothy J. Hoff Retail thinking is spreading quickly in health care. It promises greater convenience and speed for delivering basic health care services — but it isn’t what patients really want. Retail thinking views patients as consumers: faceless targets for buying services and products that aren’t always health-related. It’s the thinking behind technology-assisted health care services, like ZocDoc, Amwell, and One Medical, which quickly triage symptoms or serve up medical advice.
Why visit Vermeer? By Jane Jelley An exhibition of paintings by Johannes Vermeer caused a frenzy in Washington DC in 1995. The National Gallery of Art was booked to capacity, and there were lines of hopeful visitors queued around the block, despite sub-zero conditions outside. Vermeer has just returned to Washington, and the gallery staff expects a full house, but have things changed now? Why would you bother to go to a museum to see great art? With the tap of a finger, you can see masterpieces up close on your screen; you can get nearer than any museum attendant would ever allow.
How many ‘Earths’? Rich findings in the hunt for planets of other stars By David A. Rothery Ever since it was realised that the stars are other suns, people have wondered whether any of them are accompanied by planets, or ‘exoplanets’ as we now call them. Speculation along these lines were among the charges that led to Giordano Bruno being burned at the stake in the year 1600. It is only since the 1930s that astronomers seriously thought they had the observational tools to be able to find out.
Getting high on virtual reality By Jonathan Weinel It’s a chilly November evening, but inside Apiary Studios in East London, things are heating up as the venue gradually fills with people. The atmosphere is electric; everyone is here for the Cyberdelics Incubator, an event aimed at showcasing the latest in psychedelic arts projects using immersive media and techno-wizardry.
Ten steps to take when starting out in practice By Jeffrey E. Barnett and Jeffrey Zimmerman Starting out in practice is challenging; especially if your training did not include much of an emphasis on practice development. Most training programs don’t as they have very tight curriculums and focus on teaching the core knowledge and skills needed to prepare one to be a competent and effective clinician. Leaving out the core business of practice skills needed to create a sustainable practice environment can make the transition into private practice quite challenging and anxiety provoking.
National Trivia Day [quiz] By Cassidy Donovan Each year, National Trivia Day is observed across the United States on 4 January. To celebrate, we cracked open books from our What Everyone Needs to Know series and pulled some facts. From facts about advertising to tidbits about the human brain, put your knowledge and trivia skills to the test by taking our quiz below!
The first “Citizen Enemy Combatants” and the war on terror today By Amanda L. Tyler The United States Department of Defense has acknowledged that it is holding a natural-born United States citizen in its custody in Iraq as an enemy combatant. The prisoner, who the government states were fighting for ISIS and turned himself over to United States allies in Syria, has now been in military custody for over four months.
First things first By Anatoly Liberman I seldom, if ever, try to be “topical” (I mean the practice of word columnists to keep abreast of the times and discuss the words of the year or comment on some curious expression used by a famous personality), but the calendar has some power over me. The end of the year, the beginning of the year, the rite of spring, the harvest—those do not leave me indifferent.
Quotes of the year: 2017 [quiz] By Susan Ratcliffe 2017 certainly was a year to remember – from Donald Trump being inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States of America, to the United Kingdom formally triggering Brexit with Article 50; from Britain releasing its first new pound coin in 30 years, to Facebook reaching two billion monthly users. Celebrities, politicians, and athletes were as vocal as ever last year when it came to current events, but do you know Theresa from Trump, or Putin from a pensioner? Which famous face tried to discourage middle-aged men from wearing Lycra, and who assumed their new role would be easier?
ASSA 2018: a conference and city guide By Erin Cavoto The annual Allied Social Science Association meeting takes place this year on 5 January – 7 January 2018 at the Philadelphia Marriott in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This three-day meeting hosts over 13,300 of the leading minds in economics to gather and share new ideas and achievements in the field. With such wide range of sessions, panels, and events to attend, we’ve selected a few to help narrow down your list.
“Yes I can!”: the psychology behind lasting personal growth By Michael Bar-Eli Approximately 80% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned by the second week of February. But what makes these goals so difficult to achieve? One theory is that our resolutions are often too big to manage. Sticking to major changes like dieting and exercise can become overwhelming—causing us to give up after any initial set-backs.
ORE Latin American History When the kids outsmarted the dictators By Timothy Wilson and Mara Favoretto Decades before the internet was invented, young Argentines documented police brutality without iPhones, met and discussed their movement without social media, and even protested repression without marches. How? Through another of the most powerful and subversive media ever devised: rock music.
The rise of female whistleblowers By Andrea Hickerson Until recently, I firmly believed whistleblowers would increasingly turn to secure, anonymizing tools and websites, like WikiLeaks, to share their data rather than take the risk of relying on a journalist to protect their identity. Now, however, WikiLeaks is implicated in aiding the election of Donald Trump, and “The Silence Breakers,” outspoken victims of sexual assault, are Time’s 2017 Person of the Year.
Ten reasons to love thinking By Dawn Field Thinking is one of the great human abilities. Anyone can do it, anytime, anywhere. One of the best places in the world to be is inside one’s head, thinking. If you love to dwell in thought, perhaps you are made for the academic life. Perhaps you are meant to be a ‘creative’: producing art, music, novels, or some other product of original thought. Perhaps you have the DNA of an engineer, designer, or systems analyst – you enjoy problem solving, the ultimate hard think.
December 2017 (86))
The impossible behavior of light By Frank Levin At the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Young proved that light was a wave phenomenon. He did so by illuminating a screen (in an otherwise darkened room) with a beam of sunlight that had passed through a card with two slits in it. The proof was the interference pattern on the screen, whose alternating light and dark portions could only have occurred if light consisted of waves, not particles.
Are there true philosophical theories that we cannot believe? By Bart Streumer Few philosophical theories are so hard to believe that no philosopher has ever defended them. But at least one theory is. Suppose that you think lying is wrong. According to a view that is known as the error theory, you then take lying to have a certain feature: you ascribe the property of being wrong to lying. But the error theory also says that this property does not exist.
Philosophy in 2017: a year in review [timeline] By Catherine Pugh This year a lot happened in the field of philosophy. As we come to the end of 2017, the OUP Philosophy team have had a look back at the past year and its highs and lows. We’ve compiled a selection of the key events, awards, anniversaries, and passings which went on to shape philosophy in 2017, from Alvin Plantinga receiving the Templeton Prize to the death of Derek Parfit.
Glioblastoma’s spectre in the Senate By Ashkaun Razmara With his right arm extended – pausing for just a moment – Senator John McCain flashed a thumbs-down and jarred the Senate floor. Audible gasps and commotion followed. At 1:29 am on 28 July, Senator McCain had just supplied the decisive “Nay” vote to derail the fourth and final bill voted on that night. With that, a seven-year pursuit to undo the Affordable Care Act had collapsed.
Carols for Choirs: a history By Abigail Le Marquand-Brown As Christmas draws to a close, so too does the busiest time of year for OUP’s Hire Library. Unsurprisingly, the majority of our most-hired materials this year have come from one of the most authoritative carol collections available to choirs today: the Carols for Choirs series and 100 Carols for Choirs. Whilst many singers are likely to have sung from this book, it is unlikely that many know the story of its conception.
A Q&A with the Editor of Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education, Susan Easterbrooks By Susan Easterbrooks “The field has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, yet in many ways it remains the same. We have benefitted from advancements in technology that have improved listening technology.” Susan Easterbrooks is Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education. We sat down with Susan to discuss her background, the developments in deaf education, and the challenges scholars face in the field.
Etymology gleanings for December 2017 By Anatoly Liberman At the end of December, it is natural to look back at the year almost spent. Modern etymology is a slow-moving coach, and great events seldom happen in it. As far as I know, no new etymological dictionaries have appeared in 2017, but one new book has. It deals with the word kibosh, and I celebrated its appearance in the November “Gleanings.”
Does the route to equality include Indigenous peoples? By Natalia Szablewska and Krzysztof Kubacki At the time of writing, many Australians are preoccupied with the recent result of the same-sex marriage survey (with 61.6% voting in favour of marriage equality). The survey’s result is indicative of a shift in the thinking about ‘rights’ in general, but also about ‘equality’ and what it means in practice. Unsurprisingly also, and as evidenced throughout the public and social media, all those who advocate for more open and inclusive society are pleased by what looks like a public surge for a social change.
New year, new you: 13 books for self-improvement in 2018 By Marissa Lynch Last year, twitter highlighted the most popular New Year’s resolutions for 2017—which included losing weight, reading more, and learning something new among the most common goals. With 2018 quickly approaching, people all over the world are taking the time to reflect on themselves and determine possible resolutions for the coming year. We’ve put together a reading list of self-improvement books to help our readers reflect and stick to their goals in the New Year.
Animal of the Month: Reindeer around the world We all know Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. But do you know about the different subspecies of reindeer and caribou inhabiting the snowy climes of the extremes of the northern hemisphere? As Santa Claus travels the globe, here’s an exploration of the possible types of reindeer that are pulling his sleigh.
Choosing Normative Concepts Normative thought and the boundaries of language By Matti Eklund Consider this little story. On a planet somewhere far away there’s a community, the Tragic. The Tragic are deeply moral, in the sense of caring deeply about doing the right thing, even when that isn’t in their self-interest. They are also very successful in figuring out what’s the “right” thing, in their sense of right. So they very often do what’s “right” in their sense.
Advertising in the digital age By Mara Einstein Although advertising is not new, due to digital technologies people are now attacked with ads every day, 24 hours a day. As more data about us continues to be collected through these digital means, the issues of privacy and surveillance tend to arise. In the following excerpt from Advertising: What Everyone Needs to Know.
Questioning the magical thinking of NHS RightCare By Greg Dropkin When drafts of Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STP) for the 44 “footprints” of the NHS in England began to surface last year, a phrase caught my eye: “Championing the NHS Right Care approach to others within commissioner and provider organizations and building a consensus within the teams of those organizations”. This was the first bullet point for clinical leadership, from the 30 June 2016 version of the Cheshire and Merseyside STP.
How well do you know your December celebrations? n many countries throughout the modern world, December has become synonymous with the celebration of Christmas. Despite this focus, there are many other December celebrations including the Buddhist Rohatsu and Jewish Hanukkah, secular festivities such as Kwanzaa and Hogmanay, and ancient Roman rituals such as Saturnalia. Discover some fascinating (and lesser-known) facts on these December celebrations.
Some of the mysteries of good character By Christian B. Miller he topic of character is one of the oldest in both Western and Eastern thought, and has enjoyed a renaissance in philosophy since at least the 1970s with the revival of virtue ethics. Yet, even today, character remains largely a mystery. We know very little about what most peoples’ character looks like. Important virtues are surprisingly neglected. There are almost no strategies advanced by philosophers today for improving character.
The war on Christmas: a two thousand year history [timeline] By Gerry Bowler Is there a war on Christmas? Yes. And it’s been fought for almost two thousand years. Since their earliest incarnation, Christmas festivities have been criticized and even outlawed. In the timeline below, historian and Christmas expert Gerry Bowler takes a look at this long history—from nativity protests in 240 through the billboard wars of 2014.
“I’m not very good at making conversation” By Debra A. Hope, Richard G. Heimberg, Cynthia L. Turk During the festive period from Christmas to New Year, we can often find ourselves in situations that we are uncomfortable with, making conversations with people we don’t know, and sometimes struggling with social anxiety. In the following extract from Managing Social Anxiety, Workbook, the authors explore cognitive restructuring, and how it can be useful to prepare ourselves for uncomfortable social situations.
Emigration and political change By Massimo Anelli and Giovanni Peri International mobility has been reshaping the economies and societies of countries over the course of human history. In Europe, during recent years, media and policy-makers have been focused on immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East who cross the Mediterranean Sea to look for opportunities in Europe. However, another important but much less noticed mobility phenomenon has been on the rise.
Harnessing the power of technology in medical education By James Gupta Virtual Reality. Augmented Reality. Gamified Learning. Blended Learning. Mobile Learning. The list of technologies that promise to revolutionise medical education (or education in general) could go on, creating an exciting yet daunting task for the course leaders and educators who have to evaluate them.
Renewed activism, not budget cuts, needed to end the AIDS epidemic By Joia S. Mukherjee Policy makers, organization, and governments have worked side-by-side with people living with AIDS as part of a global social movement for three decades. The success of the movement for HIV treatment access not only garnered billions of dollars of new money for HIV treatment, but also served to shift the public health paradigm from prevention-only to the provision long-term treatment.
The New Year is approaching. What else is new? Or a chip off the old block By Anatoly Liberman Many things are new. The vocabulary of the Germanic languages shows its great potential when new objects have to be described. Even to characterize people wearing shiningly new clothes English has a picturesque phrase, namely, he/she has come (or stepped) out of the bandbox.
The search for doctors in primary care By Timothy J. Hoff There is a physician workforce crisis in primary care, both in the United States and United Kingdom. In the UK, half or more general practice physician training positions have been difficult to fill in certain parts of the country. In the US, the American Association of Medical Colleges estimates that by 2025 there will be a shortfall of between 15,000 and 35,000 primary care physicians nationally.
To understand modern politics, focus on groups, not individuals By Jennifer Nicoll Victor Modern politics seems very ego-centric. It’s common and rational to focus attention on particular individuals, or individual leaders, and puzzle over their actions.For several decades, the social scientific approach to politics also focused on individuals as the unit of interest to explain outcomes and behaviors. On the other hand, we tend to talk about politics in terms of relationships and networks.
Of microbes and Madagascar By Melissa Manus Microbes are everywhere. On door knobs, in your mouth, covering the New York City Subway, and festering on the kitchen sponge. The world is teeming with microbes—bustling communities of invisible organisms, including bacteria and fungi. Scientists are hard at work cataloging the microbial communities of people, buildings, and entire ecosystems. Many discoveries have shed light on how culture and behavior shape these communities.
Is yeast the new hops? By Brian Gibson In recent years we have seen a revolution in brewing and beer drinking. An industry once dominated by a small number of mega brands has shifted so that bars and retailers across the world are offering a seemingly endless variety of beers produced by craft or speciality breweries. In the midst of all this new […]
Christmas on 34th Street: a history of NYC department stores [excerpt] By Mike Wallace Each year, department stores in New York City decorate their windows with ornate holiday displays. Taking on festive themes with dazzling lights, crystals, and figurines, these stores aim to entice shoppers and encourage passers-by to get into the holiday spirit. In the following excerpt from Greater Gotham, Mike Wallace discusses the history of these famous department stores and their connection to the economy of New York City.
A composer’s Christmas: David Bednall By David Bednall “I think that Christmas carols are deeply embedded in our psyche (even if many are not actually that old) and provide a reminder of our childhood, which is why we are drawn to them so powerfully.” We recently caught up with composer David Bednall to find out how he celebrates Christmas traditions, why music is important to people at Christmas time, and the sense of hope that Christmas brings.
Newton and the perils of the imagination By Rob Iliffe In the 17th century, there were two contradictory attitudes to the imagination or ‘phantasy’. For many it was valued as the source of wit and invention; but for others it was the basis of deception, superstition, and mental illness. It was John Calvin, a century earlier, who had warned that the mind was a dungeon and a factory of idols. English puritan writers followed in his wake, cautioning against the seductive tendencies of the unregenerate imagination
Good and evil: the role of smugglers in the migrant crisis [excerpt] By Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano Since its inception in 2000, International Migrants Day has served as a platform to discuss human rights issues affecting migrants. This year, the UN is focusing on safe migration in a world on the move—opening up an international dialogue about how to ensure safe and systematic migration during times of instability. The migration system today is largely dependent on smugglers: as millions seek to escape violence and economic inequality, many become dependent on criminal networks to facilitate their transport.
Suing a company when you didn’t use its product By Mark Herrmann Ordinarily, American law says that you can sue a company only if you used the company’s product and that product injured you. Due to an odd quirk of pharmaceutical law, people who live in several of the United States are about to learn whether that fundamental principle remains true. The United States Food and Drug Administration tells pharmaceutical manufacturers what the manufacturers can say on a drug’s labeling.
Concerned scientists — World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: Second Notice By Nick Houtman It’s been 25 years since more than 1,700 scientists, including a majority of the world’s living Nobel laureates in the sciences, co-signed the Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. This startling document published by the Union of Concerned Scientists, expressed concern about ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine fishery collapses, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth.
Franz Brentano: 100 years after By Mark Textor Franz Brentano died on the 17 of March 1917. His main work Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) combines an Aristotelian view of the mind with empiricist methodology inspired by the likes of William Hamilton and John Stuart Mill. Brentano’s philosophical program was to show that every concept can ultimately be derived from perceptions: he was a concept empiricist.
English usage guides By Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade My own collection of usage guides. I’ve collected quite a few of them since the start of the Bridging the Unbridgeable project in 2011. The aim of the project is to study usage guides and usage problems in British and American English, as well as attitudes to disputed usages like the split infinitive, the placement of only, the flat adverb, and many more.
Connecting clinical presence and clinical knowledge in music therapy By Elaine Abbott In all clinical practices, students must learn to make meaning of clinical information such as, “What does it mean that the client said this or did that? What is the client’s body saying when it does or does not do this?” For music therapy students, there is the additional consideration of music, namely “What does it mean when the client plays music like this? What does it mean when the client hears this music like that?”
Race, gender, and flash photography By Kate Flint The cover of Flash! shows a smiling African-American woman, who holds a Graflex Speed Graphic camera. The flash bulb, invented at the very end of the 1920s, was rapidly adopted by both professional and amateur photographers. The star of this particular image, however, is less the photographic equipment than the woman who holds it. She signals the intertwined presence of race, gender, and flash photography.
What is the value of rationality, and why does it matter? By Ralph Wedgwood In the past, most philosophers assumed that the central notion of rationality is a normative or evaluative concept: to think rationally is to think properly or well—in other words, to think as one should think. Rational thinking is in a sense good thinking, while irrational thinking is bad. Recently, however, philosophers have raised several objections to that assumption.
Oxford Reference 5 canon-breaking influences on modern literature By Steven Filippi In the modern world, the idea of literature has taken on new meaning as new concepts and technologies have emerged with the changing culture. From internet memes and viral content, to ecocriticism and even the occasional zombie—enjoy a wander through a five captivating and eclectic topics in the world of literature.
A composer’s Christmas: Malcolm Archer By Malcolm Archer “Many people believe they have lost the faith they had in childhood, and the magic of Christmas has gone for them. Christmas music has the ability to re-awaken those beliefs and re-kindle that magic.” We spoke with composer Malcolm Archer about the pleasure of driving his 1964 Austin Healey 3000 on crisp December days, the magic of the Christmas story, and spending Christmas in Chicago.
Animal of the Month: 12 facts about reindeer The reindeer, also known as caribou in North America, is a species of deer of the tundra and subarctic regions of Eurasia and North America. From tales of glowing red noses to debates about the physics behind their annual circumnavigation around the world, talk of reindeer is at an all-time-high this time of year. But there’s a lot more to this charismatic winter mammal than their sleigh-pulling abilities.
Hubert Parry (1848-1918) By Robert Quinney 2018 sees the centenary of the death of Hubert Parry, one of the finest and most influential musicians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Over the last few months I have had the privilege of making the first critical edition of his late choral masterpiece, the Songs of Farewell, with reference to the autograph manuscripts, held in the Bodleian Library, and a set of early printed versions.
The word “job” and its low-class kin By Anatoly Liberman This post is in answer to a correspondent’s query. What I can say about the etymology of job, even if condensed, would be too long for my usual “gleanings.” More important, in my opinion, the common statement in dictionaries that the origin of job is unknown needs modification. What we “know” about job is sufficient for endorsing the artless conclusions drawn long ago. It would of course be nice to get additional evidence, but there is probably no need to search for it and no hope to dig it up.
Will 2018 be a turning point for tuberculosis control? By Mishal Khan Although tuberculosis (TB) has plagued mankind for over 20,000 years and was declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in the early 1990s, political attention and funding for TB has remained low. This looks set to change for the first time. On 17 November 2017, 75 national ministers agreed to take urgent action to end TB by 2030.
Ten key facts about Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria By Jorge Duany Puerto Rico, this year’s Place of the Year, has been in the media spotlight in the last year for several reasons. First, the island is undergoing its most severe and prolonged economic recession since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Between 2006 and 2016, Puerto Rico’s economy shrank by nearly 16 percent, and its public debt reached more than 73 billion dollars in 2017. Second, the island is experiencing a substantial population loss, largely due to emigration.
Communities can prevent violence By Larry Cohen Every day the news is flooded with stories of different types of violence. On what seems like a daily basis, we’re bombarded with relentless reports of violence in this country. Our register of national tragedies keeps growing: hate crimes, mass shootings, and #Metoo headlines are only the most recent outbreaks of an epidemic of violence in our homes, public spaces, and communities.
Ten facts about the evolution of Hollywood By Stephen Mann Movie-going has been an American pastime since the early 20th century. Since 1945 we have seen Hollywood rise to its apex, dominating movie theaters across the globe with its massive productions. It was not always this way, though. Below are 10 facts about the evolution of the American film industry after the Second World War.
Ten facts about Panpipes By Vivian Yan The panpipes or “pan flute” derives its name from the Greek god Pan, who is often depicted holding the instrument. Panpipes, however, can be found in many parts of the world, including South America, Oceania, Central Europe, and Asia.
Revitalizing culture through the remnants of colonization By Sarah Rivett In the summer of 1791, Thomas Jefferson sat with three elderly women of the Unkechaug tribe of Long Island. Convinced that these women were among the last living speakers of Unkechaug, Jefferson transliterated a list of Unkechaug words on the back of an envelope alongside the English translation.
The first contracting white dwarf By Sandro Mereghetti and Sergei Popov White dwarfs are the remnants of solar-like stars that have exhausted the reservoir of fuel for the nuclear fusion reactions that powers them. It is widely believed, based on theoretical considerations, that young white dwarfs should experience a phase of contraction during the first million years after their formation. This is related to the gradual cooling of their interior which is not yet fully degenerate.
Unfitness to plead law and the fallacy of a fair trial By Anna Arstein-Kerslake Cognitive disability is not well accommodated in criminal justice systems. Yet, people with cognitive disability are overrepresented in these systems. Unfitness to plead law is one legal mechanism that is purported to assist when a person with cognitive disability is charged with a crime. The aim of such laws is claimed to be to prevent an individual with cognitive disability to have to engage in a trial process.
Human Rights Day: a look at the refugee crisis [excerpt] By Alexander Betts and Paul Collier Human Rights Day, held on On 10 December every year, honors the UN’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a document which details the rights that all human beings, regardless of race, religion, nationality, or religion, are entitled to. The following excerpt from Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World takes a look at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, an agency tasked with protecting the human rights of stateless people throughout the world.
Our Blue Planet By Katy Roberts Over the last seven weeks, our Blue Planet II series has focused on the underwater habitats and marine life that live on “our blue planet”, featuring an assortment of captivating creatures, including manta rays, blennies, spinner dolphins, sea turtles, octopus, starfish, and whales; in many different habitats, from the darkest depths, to coral reefs, coastal tide pools, the open ocean, and underwater forests.
A Naive Realist Theory of Colour The problem of colour By Keith Allen Colours are a familiar and important feature of our experience of the world. Colours help us to distinguish and identify things in our environment: for instance, the red of a berry not only helps us to see the berry against the green foliage, but it also allows us to identify it as a berry. Colours perform a wide variety of symbolic functions: red means stop, green means go, white means surrender.
Five favorite “Rainbows” By Walter Frisch “Over the Rainbow,” voted the greatest song of the twentieth century in a survey from the year 2000, has been recorded thousands of times since Judy Garland introduced it in The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Even the most diehard fans, including myself), are unlikely to have listened to every version.
The philosopher of Palo Alto By John Tinnell Apple’s recent product launch on 12 September has cast into the mainstream technologies that were first envisioned by Mark Weiser in the 1990s, when he was Chief Technologist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Though Weiser died in 1999, at the age of 46, his ideas continue to inspire cutting-edge smartphone innovations. Now is a good time to revisit Weiser’s ideas.
Why physicists need philosophy By Richard Healey At a party, on a plane, in the locker-room, I’m often asked what I do. Though tempted by one colleague’s adoption of the identity of a steam-pipe fitter, I admit I am a professor of philosophy. If that doesn’t end or redirect the conversation, my questioner may continue by raising some current moral or political issue, or asking for my favorite philosopher.
A holy revolution By William Whyte With hundreds of churches built, rebuilt, or restored in the nineteenth century, they can be found nearly everywhere today. Out of thousands of possible choices, below are five characteristic specimens — four small churches and one large synagogue — that explain Victorian belief.
Three millennia of writings – a brief history of Chinese literature By Taiping Chang Chinese scholars traditionally have considered the Han fu-rhapsody, Tang shi-poetry, Song ci-song lyrics, and Yuan qu-drama, as the highest literary achievements of their respective dynasties. However, Chinese literature embraces a far wider range of writing than these four literary genres. Explore a treasure trove that offers rich information about Chinese society, thought, customs, and social and political movements
Defining moments in cardiology By Charlotte Zaidi and Melanie Pheby In 1967, Christiaan Barnard carried out the first ever human-to-human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. The patient and recipient of a new heart was 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky, and the success of the operation took centre-stage in the world’s media as hourly bulletins followed his recovery.
Allowing the past to speak By David Caruso, Abby Perkiss, and Janneken Smucker Beginning in January a new editorial team will take over the OHR, bringing in some fresh voices and new ideas. Before we hand over the reins, we asked the new team, composed of David Caruso, Abigail Perkiss, and Janneken Smucker, to tell us how they came into the world of oral history. Check out their responses and make sure to keep an eye on our social media pages in the coming weeks for more.
Christmas at King’s College, Cambridge By andrew hammond “The Christmas season is something that takes up a lot of head-space here at King’s from quite a long time before October, primarily due to our service on Christmas Eve, the famous ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s.’ Andrew Hammond, Chaplain of King’s College, gives us a behind-the-scenes peak into famous for their annual live broadcast Service of Nine Lessons and Carols service on Christmas Eve.
Brexit versus UK higher education By Paul Temple Higher education has generally been reckoned to be one of the UK’s success stories, competing with the best American universities and setting the standard against which universities in other European countries measure themselves. UK universities receive roughly €1bn a year from European programs, as well as scooping up many of the brightest students from around Europe who want to study in Britain.
Pain relief and palliative care around the world By David Clark Around the world access to pain relief and to palliative care services is emerging as a growing public health issue. In many countries getting appropriate pain relieving drugs for those with advanced disease is constrained by overly-zealous laws and procedures. Likewise the provision of palliative care education, research and delivery, although making some headway and achieving policy recognition in places, is still extremely limited, often where the need is greatest.
Using evolutionary history to save pangolins from extinction By Philippe Gaubert, Agostinho Antunes, Warren E. Jonhson, Shu-Jin Luo Pangolins, or scale-bodied anteaters, are a unique lineage of mammals exclusively feeding on ants and termites. Eight species are distributed across Africa and Asia. They all show extraordinary adaptation to myrmecophagy (specialized diet of ants and termites), including a scaled armor covering the body and tail that protects them from bites (both from bugs and large predators!)
Nine of diamonds, or the curse of Scotland: an etymological drama in two acts. Act 2, Scene 2 By Anatoly Liberman See the previous posts with the same title. We are approaching the end of the drama. It will be a thriller without a denouement, a tragedy without catharsis, but such are most etymological dramas. Putting the kibosh on the origin of a hard word or phrase is an almost impossible endeavor. Heraldry for etymologists and a note on unlikely candidates – It has been said, and for good reason, that, whenever people played cards, every man whose unpopularity made him hated by the people and bearing as arms nine lozenges could be referred to as the curse of Scotland.
Test your knowledge of the English legal system By Rose Wood The English legal system has a long history of traditions and symbolism. Do you know your periwigs from your powdered wigs, your judicial dress from your barrister’s robes, and your green bags from your gavels? While some of the quirks and traditions of the English legal system may seem archaic, even bizarre, they from part of the fundamental constitution of UK culture and are therefore of relevance to anyone with an interest in it.
Labour unions and solidarity in times of precarity By Virginia Doellgast, Nathan Lillie, and Valeria Pulignano =Labour unions have traditionally been at the forefront of the struggle to improve job security, pay, and working conditions. The widely observed growth in precarious work in recent decades is a result of union weakness, as they are increasingly likely to lose these battles. Many have argued that unions often promote the job security of their ‘insider’ core members at the expense of more precarious ‘outsiders.’
Open access: reflections on change By Sally Rumsey Sally Rumsey shares her reflections on the changing open access environment and experiences from the University of Oxford. Cast your mind back 15 years to the earlier days of open access. In 2002 the University of Oxford contributed to the SHERPA project, with a collaborative pilot between the then OULS (Oxford University Library Services) and OUP. In 2006 we set up a new institutional repository service that launched very quietly in early 2007.
1917: A reading list By Katelyn Phillips In order to fully understand key moments in history, it is important to review the culture that created them. As 2017 draws to a close, we have compiled a reading list that will help to contextualize history from 100 years ago. Transport yourself to a truly world-changing year in our shared history — 1917 — with any of the following titles.
Illustrating Streptococcus pneumoniae By Ditte Høyer Engholm According to the WHO, Streptococcus pneumoniae (also known as pneumococcus) is the fourth most frequent microbial cause of fatal infection. These bacteria commonly colonize the upper respiratory tract and are the most common cause of bacterial pneumonia and meningitis. Although much is known about pneumococcal biology and the diseases it causes, there are still many questions about the molecular biology and cellular processes of the bacterium.
10 great writers from China’s long literary history By Steven Filippi China is one of the world’s oldest countries, and its long history goes hand in hand with its rich literary tradition. The names Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Sun Tzu are well-known around the world, but many of China’s poets, philosophers, and novelists remain hidden gems to outsiders. Take a look at the list below and discover 10 of China’s greatest writers, from the Zhou dynasty to the 20th century.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2017 is… Our polls have officially closed and the results are in: our Place of the Year for 2017 is Puerto Rico. Although it was a tight race between Catalonia and Puerto Rico in both the long- and shortlist polling, the events that have occurred in this Caribbean Island in the past year have truly resonated with our followers who partook in voting.
What the House-Senate Conference Committee should do about the Johnson Amendment By Edward A. Zelinsky The Johnson Amendment is the part of Internal Revenue Code Section 501(c)(3) which bans tax-exempt institutions from participating in political campaigns. The US House of Representatives has passed H.R.1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, to revise the Code. Section 5201 of H.R. 1 would modify the Johnson Amendment. H.R. 1 gets three things right and wrong about the Johnson Amendment.
The legacies of the “Russian” Revolution(s): World War II By Mark Edele This year marks the centenary of the Russian Revolution. This event has often been reduced to the urban upheaval that gripped Petrograd (St Petersburg) throughout 1917 and which culminated in the Bolsheviks taking power in October. The Soviet Union traced its legitimacy back to this event, and many other aspiring revolutionaries were inspired by it too—some still are to this day.
How much do you know about cheetahs? [Quiz] Today, 4 December, is International Cheetah Day! Cheetahs are easily distinguished from other cats due to their distinctive black “tear stain” markings that create two lines from eye to mouth, their black spots on tawny fur, and black rings at the end of their long tails. Cheetahs also stand apart from other large cats due to their loose and rangy frame, small head, high-set eyes, and slightly flattened ears.
Towards a study of the role of law in the Arab Spring By Nimer Sultany The Arab Spring has been the subject of a growing body of scholarship. Much of this commentary has hitherto related to political and economic analysis of the events that took place in many Arab countries since December 2010. Nevertheless, the role of law remains understudied. There are several inter-related temporal, empirical, and theoretical difficulties that impede a proper analysis of the role of law in the Arab Spring.
Major medical incidents [timeline] By Paul Hunt, Ian Greaves, Rebecca Parker Major incidents are defined as any incident ‘that requires the mobilisation and use of extraordinary resources’; with the NHS further expanding the definition of such events as ‘any incident where the location, number, severity, or type of live casualties requires extraordinary resources’. There have been many major incidents throughout history that have required an ‘extraordinary’ response by emergency services, medical personnel, and government bodies.
How to write a conclusion By Edwin L. Battistella Writing essays is complicated work, and writing the ending to an essay is often the hardest part of that work. Endings are tough for several reasons. You may be tired from writing–or tired of what you have written. You may feel that you have made your point sufficiently and that no more needs to be said or can possibly be said. However, the ending is your last chance to make an impression.
Beethoven in space By Alexander Rehding Katie Paterson has always wanted to shoot Beethoven to the moon. In Earth-Moon-Earth (2007) the Scottish conceptual artist translated a performance of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata into Morse code, sent the radio signals to the moon, and recaptured the reflection.
Misattributed quotations: do you know who really said it? [quiz] By Susan Ratcliffe The seemingly simple task of asking who said what has perhaps never been more difficult. In the digital age, quotations can be moved around, attributed, questioned, re-appropriated, and repeated in the blink of an eye. If someone is “widely quoted” as saying something and it sounds more or less right, many people take this to be sufficient proof of the quotation’s origin. With that said, do you really know who said what?
POTY 2017 nominee Spotlight: the sun [excerpt] By Fred Espenak and Mark Littmann How big is the Moon in the sky? What is its angular size? Extend your arm upward and as far from your body as possible. Using your index finger and thumb, imagine that you are trying to pluck the Moon out of the sky ever so carefully, squeezing down until you are just barely touching the top and bottom of the Moon, trapping it between your fingers. How big is it?
A neurocognitive view on the dimensions of Schadenfreude and envy By Adolf M. Garcia, Agustin Ibáñez, and Hernando Santamaria-Garcia We usually think highly about ourselves, tending to believe that our prosocial nature prioritizes positive emotions about others. Yet, as highlighted by Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons, this is not always true. Empathy (that is, the ability to become attuned with others’ feelings) is the basis of cooperation and one of the core links holding human groups together.
The Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine: a timeline By Lynne Viola Between the summer of 1937 and November 1938, the Stalinist regime arrested over 1.5 million people for “counterrevolutionary” and “antisoviet” activity and either summarily executed or exiled them to the Gulag. This was Stalin’s “Great Terror” and, contrary to popular belief, the largest number of victims were not elites or “Old Bolsheviks,” but common people. Below is a timeline of The Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine.
OUP Philosophy Philosophers of the year, 2017: Beauvoir, Nietzsche, & Socrates [quiz] By Catherine Pugh This December, the OUP Philosophy team is celebrating three of 2017’s most popular philosophers of the month: Simone de Beauvoir, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Socrates. Test your knowledge with our quiz.
A brief history of HIV [excerpt] By Dorothy H. Crawford The first of December is World AIDS Day: a day to show support for those living with HIV, to commemorate those we have lost, and ultimately unite in the fight against HIV. To combat this pandemic though, we need to understand how the virus – and the wider virus group – reacts with the human body. In the following excerpt from Virus Hunt, Dorothy H. Crawford discusses the discovery and history of HIV and the retrovirus family.
Holding a duality: ambiguity and parenting a child with special needs By Lisa C. Freitag In a 2013 interview on NPR celebrating the publication of her memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, author Emily Rapp made two surprisingly different statements. In her book and on-the-air, Rapp said that she treasured every moment she’d had with her son Ronin, whose short life with Tay-Sachs Disease was the subject of her memoir. Indeed, her telling of Ronin’s story is vibrant, and her joy in sharing that story shines through her work.
A composer’s Christmas: Sarah Quartel By Sarah Quartel “It’s like a favourite carol or particular descant is a member of the family that comes once a year and gets the prized spot at the dinner table.” We caught up with composer Sarah Quartel to find out what she loves about Christmas, how the season inspires her composing, and how she spends her Christmas day.
November 2017 (107))
Who wrote Gulliver’s Travels? By Alyssa Russell Originally published anonymously, Jonathan Swift sent the manuscript for the satirical masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels to his publisher under a pseudonym and handled any correspondence and corrections through friends. As such, even though close friends such as Alexander Pope knew about the publication, Swift still kept up the ruse of feigning ignorance about the book in his correspondence with them.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: North Korea By Waheguru Pal Sidhu Today Northeast Asia confronts the world with a volatile mix of geopolitical competition and nuclear threats unseen since the beginning of the Cold War. The imbroglio over a nuclear armed and very dangerous Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) involving the United States, China, Republic of Korea (ROK), and other actors epitomizes this peril.
One’s “own” voice? By Francesca Vella Sometimes personal and professional lives get tangled in unexpected ways. As I was writing an article on the nineteenth-century celebrity soprano Jenny Lind (1820-1887), a colleague who’d been asked to send comments on an early draft alerted me to a problem: I wasn’t writing, or so they thought, with my “own voice.” Their comment got me thinking—first of all, about the basis for their claim.
Etymology gleanings for November 2017 By Anatoly Liberman A time-consuming kibosh – Long ago (19 May 2010), I wrote a post on the origin of the mysterious word kibosh, part of the idiom to put the kibosh on “to put an end to something.” The discussion that followed made me return to this subject in 28 July 2010, and again three years later (14 August 2013). Since that time, the word has been at the center of attention of several researchers, and last month a book titled Origin of Kibosh by Gerald Cohen, Stephen Goranson, and Matthew Little appeared (Routledge Studies in Etymology.
Curcumin: common dietary supplement turned anti-cancer compound? By Ajay Goel Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most aggressive malignancies in the world. It is currently the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States and is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths as early as 2030. Although recent advancements in cancer treatments have improved the overall outcome […]
Is “food waste” really wasted food? By The Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Food waste has become a major cause for concern in the United States. Or at least, that’s what some prominent organizations suggest. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that the United States wastes 103 million tons of food. The statistics suggest that food waste is a problem, but how do these organizations calculate them? And what, exactly, is food waste?
Citizen scientists can document the natural world By Mariangeles Arce H. and Maureen A. O'Leary At the start of the 21st century, it may come as a surprise that we still have not catalogued the detailed anatomy or traits of most plants, animals and microbes whether they are living or fossil species. That we lack much of this basic information – how species’ cells are constructed, what their physiology is like, the details of their bones, muscles or leaves – may be remarkable given that the study of comparative “morphology” (sometimes called “phenomics”) has been underway for centuries.
Understanding secularism [excerpt] By Andrew Copson “The separation of religious institutions from state ones had also been a feature of societies elsewhere, and at other times in history.” What is secularism? In the following extract from Secularism: Politics, Religion, and Freedom, Andrew Copson breaks down 3 different parts of the definition of secularism, its history, and how its meaning has developed over time.
Historical Commemoration and Denial in Australia By Bain Attwood Last month a statue commemorating Captain James Cook in Hyde Park in Sydney, Australia was attacked, the words ‘Change the date’ spray-painted on it. This act continues recent protests by indigenous people and their supporters which have called for the changing of the day upon which Australia celebrates its founding: 26 January 1788.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Catalonia By Klaus Dodds The Catalan independence movement was frequently in the news in 2017, earning Catalonia its place among the nominees for Oxford University Press’s Place of the Year. While tensions seemed to come to a head this year, the independence movement has a long history of clashes with the Spanish government, beginning with the separatist movements of the mid-19th century.
Modernizing classical physics: an oxymoron? By David D. Nolte Open most textbooks titled “Modern Physics” and you will see chapters on all the usual suspects: special relativity, quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, solid state physics, particle physics and astrophysics. This is the established canon of modern physics.
What’s wrong with electric cars? By Peter Rez Recently, we’ve heard that Volvo are abandoning the internal combustion engine, and that both the United Kingdom and France will ban petrol and diesel cars from 2040. Other countries like China are said to be considering similar mandates.
Where is scientific publishing heading? By Jens Nielsen As researchers, we are unlikely to spend much time reflecting on one of the often-forgotten pillars of science: scientific publishing. Naturally, our focus leans more towards traditional academic activities including teaching, mentoring graduate students and post docs, and the next exciting experiment that will allow us to advance our understanding.
Many rivers to cross – can the Ganges be saved? By Victor Mallet The Ganges is known as a wondrous river of legend and history. After decades of false starts, scandals, and wasted money under previous governments, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a campaign in 2014 to clean the Ganges and save it for future generations. Find out more about the Ganges, its problems, and what can be done to save it with our interactive map.
The building blocks of ornithology By Henry McGhie Museum collections are dominated by vat collections of natural history specimens—pinned insects in glass-topped drawers, shells, plants pressed on herbarium sheets, and so on. Most of these collections were never intended for display, but did work in terms of understanding the variety and distribution of nature.
The problem with a knowledge-based society By Gerbrand Tholen In the last few decades, few concepts have spoken to the imagination of economists like the ‘knowledge based economy’ or ‘knowledge economy’ within Western policy circles. There has been a consensus that Western economies have entered a phase in economic history called the ‘knowledge’ or ‘knowledge-based’ era. The brains of the workforce are thought to be the most important contributor to today’s wealth creation.
The final piece of the puzzle By Vicky Neale When a group of people collectively solve a jigsaw puzzle, who gets the credit? The person who puts the final piece in the puzzle? The person who sorted out the edge pieces at the beginning? The person who realised what the picture was of? The person who found the puzzle pieces and suggested trying to put them together? The person who managed the project and kept everyone on track? The whole group?
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Puerto Rico [quiz] By Lucie Taylor In September 2017, two powerful hurricanes devastated Puerto Rico. Two months later, 50% of the island is still without power, and residents report feeling forgotten by recovery efforts. From the controversy of hiring a small Montana-based electrical company, Whitefish, to restore power to the island; to the light shone on the outdated Jones Act, the humanitarian crisis following the hurricanes catapulted Puerto Rico to the world stage.
An overview of common vaccines [slideshow] By Kristen A. Feemster Vaccines represent one of the greatest public health advances of the past 100 years. A vaccine is a substance that is given to a person or animal to protect it from a particular pathogen—a bacterium, virus, or other microorganisms that can cause disease. The slideshow below was created to outline common child and adolescent vaccines from Kristen A. Feemster’s Vaccines: What Everyone Needs to Know.
In memoriam: Ray Guillery By Lizzie Burns The seventh of April 2017 brought with it the sad passing of Ray Guillery FRS, celebrated neurophysiologist and neuroanatomist, world leader in thalamo-cortical communication, and Dr Lee’s professor of anatomy and fellow of Hertford College, Oxford, from 1984 to 1996. Dr Lizzie Burns kindly shares her memories of working with Ray on his final book, The Brain as a Tool, for which she was the illustrator.
Beer and brewing by numbers [infographic] By George Currie Beer has been a vitally important drink through much of human history, be it just as a drink that was safe to consume when water might not have been, through to having significant economic and even political significance. The earliest written laws included regulations on beer, tax income from beer funded centuries of British imperialist conquests, and beer is the subject of the oldest international trademark dispute.
In the zone: how balancing stress levels improves performance [excerpt] By Michael Bar-Eli Athletes’ maximum performance, also known as peak performance, is often characterized or accompanied by what is called a “flow state” or “peak experience.” Athletes describe this state as being “on automatic pilot,” “totally involved,” “hot,” “on a roll,” “in a groove,” or “in the zone.” An excellent example is provided by the great German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn in the 2001 champions league final game, between his team FC Bayern Munich and FC Valencia.
Engaging with history at #OHA2017 By Gabriale Payne For most Americans, Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks for all of the best things in life: family, friends, football, and, of course, heaps of delectable food. Few care to spend any time thinking about the myths that underlie American perceptions of the holiday, and even fewer can appreciate how and why this holiday is frequently observed as a day of mourning among many Native Americans.
A composer’s Christmas: Alan Bullard By Alan Bullard Alan Bullard is a highly respected composer of both instrumental and choral music. He has written many well-loved carols and Christmas works and edited a number of volumes of Christmas carols. To mark the start of the Advent season, we asked him to tell us a bit about his Christmas traditions and what it is about Christmas that inspires his writing.
Rethinking the singalong By Kim Milai When two young veterans came to our elementary school to give a talk and show slides about their experience in Afghanistan, the children were captivated with their presentation. The slides brought to life much of what the soldiers saw and experienced. As the music teacher, I planned to have the children say thank you in a musical way. I didn’t choose a patriotic song, but a song that exemplified the love and appreciation we all had for these soldiers. I chose one song that the entire student body of the school could sing together.
Thanksgiving traditions from Oxford University Press [slideshow] By Marissa Lynch To celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we’ve asked Oxford employees to share their holidays traditions. Referencing The Oxford Companion to Food, we put together a slideshow of fun food facts to accompany some of our favorite traditions.
Animal of the month: badgers at Wytham Woods [video] By David W. Macdonald, Chris Newman, and Lauren A. Harrington Distinctive and familiar, loved and loathed by different sections of the public, the badger is iconic of the British countryside. But Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) has discovered that, due to their sensitivity to prevailing weather, badgers, like the proverbial canary in a coal mine, are also sentinels of climate change.
Nine of diamonds, or the curse of Scotland: an etymological drama in two acts: Act 2, Scene 1 By Anatoly Liberman Battles, butchers, and tyrants – CULLODEN. The battle of Culloden took place on 16 April 1746 between the forces of the Catholic “Young Pretender” Charles Edward Stuart, who was at the head of the Jacobites, and those of the government, led by Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland.
Key UK legislation 1987-2017 [timeline] By Kimberley Payne Where were you in 1987? Platoon wins the best picture Oscar, the Channel Tunnel gets the go ahead, and The Great Storm batters South East England. Meanwhile in a Greek restaurant in Shepherd’s Bush, Francis Rose and publisher Alistair MacQueen come up with the idea of the Blackstone’s Statutes series. Thirty years later the series is still going strong thanks to careful editorship and a conscientious selection of legislation.
The value of mistakes By Taly Reich, Daniella Kupor, and Rosanna K. smith John Pierre, a renowned pastry chef, is making a new batch of chocolate. Not paying attention, he leaves the chocolate in the oven for an extra five minutes by mistake, resulting in the chocolate having a different taste than he had intended. In light of this chef’s mistake, how interested are you in buying this chocolate? Companies, in general, hesitate to release mistakes, much less advertise them to consumers as a unique product.
Tired spirits? What happens when Pentecostalism becomes middle class? By Jens Köhrsen Pentecostalism is a Christian revival movement. It emerged at the beginning of the 20th century and is marked by a focus on the Holy Spirit and its gifts. Pentecostals believe that the Holy Spirit can award them specific gifts such as the gifts of healing, prophecy, and speaking in tongues. In terms of membership growth, Pentecostalism has been the most successful religious movement in the 20th century.
Multiple choice questions for the MRCP Part 1 [quiz] By Neil Herring and Robert Wilkins The MRCP (UK) Part 1 exam set by the Royal College of Physicians is designed to test doctors on a wide range of topics to determine if they have the required level of knowledge to begin their postgraduate training as physician. The exam, which is sat over one day and features 200 multiple-choice (best of five) questions, can first seem very daunting; that’s why we’ve created this quiz to fit easily into your revision schedule.
The politics of contamination By Daniel Weimer Since entering office, the Trump administration has diverged from its predecessor on many fronts. Environmental regulation and drug control are two prime examples. Under Scott Pruitt, the EPA has loosened or eliminated numerous Obama administration rules on pollution and jettisoned climate-change research. At the Department of Justice, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has instructed federal prosecutors to seek maximum penalties for drug-law offenders
Announcing the Place of the Year 2017 shortlist: vote for your pick As we approach the end of 2017, we are also winding down our search for the Place of the Year. Thank you to those of you who participated in the voting period for our Place of the Year 2017 longlist, which took us from Puerto Rico in the tropics to the Arctic further north, to beyond our planet and into the Sun. The top four contenders have moved on to the next round into our shortlist, and we need your help again.
To be or not to ‘be’: 9 ways to use this verb [excerpt] By David Crystal As short as it is, the verb ‘be’ has a range of meanings and uses that have developed over the last 1,500 years. It is—after ‘the’—the second most frequent word in the English language, and if you’re not afraid to use it, it can help you become a better writer. For National Novel Writing Month, we’ve laid out the various uses of ‘be’, taken from the Story of Be, to help aid you with your writing.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Russia By Timothy J. Colton This year, Russia was chosen as one of the nominees for Oxford University Press’s Place of the Year. Russia dominated the news cycle throughout the year—from investigations on their interference in the 2016 US elections to Kremlin’s interventions in Ukraine and Syria. The following excerpt from Russia: What Everyone Needs to Know provides an overview of President Vladimir Putin and his meteoric rise to power.
Cheese and wine pairings for the holiday season [infographic] By Marissa Lynch Cheese continues to be a staple of dining and entertainment. In 2012, cheese consumption in the U.S. was 33.5 lbs per capita— a number that is set to increase to 36.5 lbs by 2024. Referencing The Oxford Companion to Cheese and The Oxford Companion to Wine, we’ve put together a selection of cheese and wine pairings for the holiday season.
Reinforcing the patriarchy: tricksters in literature and mythology By Lucie Taylor Have you ever noticed how much your favorite stories have in common? Boy meets girl, falls in love, gets married. Hero goes on a quest, meets a wise old man, and saves the day. There’s a reason for this repetition, if you believe the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung. Jung found that his psychotherapy patients would tell stories containing elements of ancient mythology, even when they had never been exposed to these myths.
Does a student’s college funding source influence their field of study? By Arne L. Kalleberg and Natasha Quadlin “There are two dominant narratives about the function of higher education today.” Higher Education has changed dramatically over the past few decades, and debates over college costs have intensified. Examining how college funding is associated with course selection, Social Forces Editor Arne L. Kalleberg interviews Natasha Quadlin about her research about the effects of college funding sources.
How China and Russia are reshaping international politics By Marcin Kaczmarski Growing wealth and power of non-Western actors have been fuelling the debate on the future of global politics for the last decade. The West’s internal difficulties, such as the Eurozone crisis, Brexit, and the wave of populism, have weakened its determination to defend the status quo, and increased the importance of regional-level international politics. China and Russia stand out as the most vocal critics of Western domination
Are boys genetically predisposed to behavioural problems? [excerpt] By Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman Are boys naturally more aggressive or is that just a social construct by society? Can so-called “macho behavior” be unlearned or is it intrinsic? This International Men’s Day, authors Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman seek out those answers and more in the below excerpt from The Stressed Sex: Uncovering the Truth About Men, Women, and Mental Health.
Capitalism and the value of technology [excerpt] By David Harvey Technology has undoubtedly changed how the economy operates, from the steam engine to the smartphone. But are machines a legitimate source of value in a capitalist society? In the following excerpt from Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, David Harvey delves into Marx’s Capital to better understand the value of man and machinery in a technology-dependent world.
Place of the Year 2017: behind the longlist By Katelyn Phillips As the year comes to a close, Oxford’s Place of the Year campaign gives us the opportunity to reflect on the world events of 2017. The slideshow below features our longlist of nominees, all of which have made a major political, economic, or scientific influence over the past year. Take at the list below and let us know who you think should be recognized as Oxford’s Place of the Year 2017.
What is Thanksgiving? A Brit’s guide to the holiday By Amelia Carruthers Thanksgiving is one of the most important holidays in the US calendar. However for those who have never lived in America, the celebration can seem perplexing and often down-right bewildering. Here in the Oxford offices at Oxford University Press, we thought we may have understood the basics, but on researching more into the holiday, we have been left with many more questions than answers. For instance, what is a “Turkey Trot” or sweet potato pie, and if television is to be believed – do people actually go around the table saying what they’re thankful for?
Are you the favorite child? The science of favoritism By Alex Jensen, J. Jill Suitor, and Megan Gilligan We are frequently asked why we spend our professional careers studying favoritism, after all, parents don’t really have favorites. Or do they? A woman recently approached us after a lecture we gave and told us about caring for her aging mother. Her story captures the importance of this issue. She visited her mother daily in the final year of her mother’s life to feed, bathe, and care for her.
The birth of a new carol By James Kevin Gray “This is why I dedicated Little Babe Born of Mary to my son Mason, so that I might be reminded of the part I play in helping him reach his fullest and brightest potential.” James Kevin Gray is the composer of the Christmas Carol Little Babe, Born of Mary. He is also one of our newest composers. We had a chat with him to find out more about the motivations, inspirations, and his process behind this piece.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: the Arctic [video] By Peter Wadhams The Arctic sea ice has been seen to be in steady retreat since about 1950, a retreat which has recently sped up with an additional factor of thinning. In summer now there is only a quarter of the volume of ice that there was in summer in 1980. This process shows every sign of continuing, so that the Arctic will be ice-free for part of the year. Obviously we view this as a product of global warming, but why should it concern us in other ways?
Philosophical curiosities from around the world [slideshow] By Marissa Lynch and Roy Sorensen Today is World Philosophy Day! Introduced by UNESCO in 2002, World Philosophy Day aims to promote the global importance of philosophical thought. To celebrate, we’ve created a slideshow of philosophical puzzles from A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities: A Collection of Puzzles, Oddities, Riddles, and Dilemmas to test your thinking. Take a look at the slideshow below to see if you can answer these riddles from around the world.
Brexit and the flow of personal data By Andrew Murray At the moment the media, political parties and the legal establishment are all focussed on the big questions of Brexit. What happens to the Northern Ireland border? What does Brexit mean for farmers? And what does it mean for the future of the Nations and regions of the UK? However potentially the most problematic aspects of Brexit are not the big issues but the small technical details
World Philosophy Day 2017: political philosophy across the globe [map] By Catherine Pugh The third Thursday in November marks World Philosophy Day, an event founded by UNESCO to emphasise the importance of philosophy in the development of human thought, for each culture and for each individual. This year, the OUP Philosophy team have decided to incorporate the Oxford Philosophy Festival theme of applying philosophy in politics to our World Philosophy Day content.
What can we all do to tackle antibiotic resistance? By oxford journals Welcome to the Oxford Journals guide to antibiotic resistance. 13th – 19th November marks World Antibiotic Awareness Week, an annual international campaign set up by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to combat the spread of antibiotic resistance, and raise awareness of the potential consequences. Even better, it’s not just scientists, politicians, and medical professionals who can work towards a solution
Nine of diamonds, or the curse of Scotland: an etymological drama in two acts: Act 1 By Anatoly Liberman The origin of this mysterious phrase, “nine of diamonds,” has been discussed for over two hundred years. Nor are surveys wanting. I cannot say anything on this subject the world does not know, and I have no serious preferences for any of the relatively promising hypotheses.
Place of the Year 2017 Longlist: Vote for your pick With the end of 2017 approaching, and in conjunction with the publication of the Atlas of the World, 24th edition, today we launch our efforts to decide on what the Place of the Year (POTY) 2017 should be. Many places around the world (and beyond) throughout the past year have been at the center of historic news and events, but which location was the most noteworthy?
Found: a viable, alternative model of the firm? By Graeme Salaman and John Storey The single-minded pursuit of shareholder value courts a tolerance of malpractice which sets the scene for a race to the bottom. At the heart of the system is the model of the modern corporation. In many ways, it now seems unfit for purpose in the context of the global economy. The John Lewis Partnership is illustrative of an alternative approach.
5 facts that help us understand the world of early American yoga By Anya P. Foxen Long and varied as yoga’s history on the Indian subcontinent may be, its comparatively short residency on American soil is no less interesting. Early American yoga—a concept held together only by the fact that it appears to belong to a cast of characters who call themselves yogis—oscillates between the menacing and the marvelous, the magical and the mechanical, the strange and the familiar.
Inter-racial relationships laid the foundations for immigration in Britain By David Holland In the public imagination the inter-war period is today characterised as a period of economic, moral and political collapse among European nations. Crippling economic depression, ethnic ultra-nationalism, fascism, eugenics, anti-Semitism and racism are all closely and inseparably linked with the years between 1918 and 1939.
How to write for an encyclopedia or other reference work By Edwin L. Battistella From time to time, many of us will have the opportunity to write for a reference work like an encyclopedia or a handbook. The word encyclopedia has been around for a couple of thousand years and comes from the Greek term for general education. Encyclopedias as general reference books came about in the eighteenth century and the most ubiquitous when I was a student was the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Children behind bars: a look at the American juvenile justice system [extract] By Cara H. Drinan In this excerpt from The War on Kids: How American Juvenile Justice Lost Its Way, we follow author Cara Drinan as she travels prior to the 2012 presidential election, to visit the first of many of these young inmates whom she would come to know during her research.
Engendering communication – Episode 42 – The Oxford Comment By SJ Miller and David E. Kirkland In a constantly changing world, it’s only natural that language continues to evolve as well. Words or phrases that no longer apply are phased out and in their place emerges lexicon that better reflect the diversity of gender, race, and sexuality in contemporary culture. From under-privileged children being taught how to read at home with cookbooks, to groups of students who adopt the use of new words to better explain experiences they see in their own communities
Festival Dohori in the Kathmandu Valley By Anna Marie Stirr Nepal’s rural hills are famous for the all-night songfests in which conversational dohori and other folk songs are sung, much more so than the Kathmandu Valley. But there are a few places in the capital city and surrounding valley that also have long traditions of gathering and singing at religious festivals.
Marital rape in a global context: from 17th century to today By Kersti Yllö Sexual violence in marriage has a history as long as the institution of marriage itself. But for millennia, marital rape – like other forms of sexual assault – was considered a private trouble not a public issue. Early rape laws defined the assault as a property crime against the husband or father whose wife or daughter was “defiled.” Under this framework marital rape was an oxymoron since a wife was legally a husband’s sexual property.
On writing: nine quotes from classic authors By Katelyn Phillips You’ve gotten through the first week of National Novel Writing Month. Have you’ve been hitting your word count? Writing 1,665 words every day may not sound like a lot, but sitting down in front of a blank page each day begins to feel like a struggle. Find some inspiration from these Oxford World’s Classics authors!
5 tips for teaching social media By Ben Shields How can instructors equip students with the skills and knowledge to become effective social media professionals? Three years ago, I left my position as a social media director and transitioned back to academia to focus on this critical question. Since then I have experimented with a variety of pedagogical approaches. Here are a few tips that I have found to be consistently helpful in the classroom.
What counts as discrimination? By Sandra F. Sperino Recent news headlines have focused on allegations of sexual harassment against film tycoon Harvey Weinstein. While the allegations are troubling, they also provide us with an opportunity to consider whether employment discrimination law would properly respond to them. In the United States, the answer is not as clear as one might hope.
An extinction event for foundations? By Steven Dean and Dana Brakman Reiser Private foundations – the legal entities that have funded social innovations as diverse as breakthrough civil rights litigation and the development of the 911 emergency response system – may be nearing an end. This is certainly not because they have spent down their endowments; the largest still contain billions of dollars and as of 2014 independent and family foundation endowments still contained over $700 billion in assets.
A writer’s guide to witches in pop culture [timeline] By Willem de Blécourt and Owen Davies From The Wizard of Oz to Harry Potter, witchcraft is a linchpin of contemporary fantasy writing—with each writer applying their own twist. Referencing The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, we’ve put together a timeline of pop-culture’s most well-known depictions of witchcraft.
The plot thins By Kathleen Stock In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark, the heroine teaches in Edinburgh in the 1930s. She has a special set of favourites amongst her pupils, loves one-armed Roman Catholic art teacher and WW1 veteran Teddy Lloyd, and sympathises with Mussolini. A member of her set, Sandy, eventually sleeps with Lloyd and then becomes a nun, writing a book called The Transfiguration of the Commonplace.
Morals and the military [an excerpt] By George Lucas In honor of Veterans Day, we would like to focus on the men and women around the world who have been committed to the defense of their countries and their fellow citizens. Replacing Armistice Day in 1954, this holiday serves to recognize victims of all wars and the US veterans who have served honorably in the military. However, in times of war, the distinction between moral and immoral are unclear
Four NYC-inspired sundaes for National Sundae Day By Marissa Lynch November 11 is National Sundae Day. To celebrate, we’ve created four New York City–themed sundae recipes, inspired by Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919. Take a look at the recipes below and get a taste of NYC—no matter where you are in the world.
“Thank you for your service” isn’t enough [excerpt] By Nancy Sherman On this Veterans Day, we honor those fallen and herald those still fighting. We also examine what more can be done in terms of listening and understanding those who have seen the perils of war firsthand. In this excerpt from AfterWar: Healing the Moral Wounds of our Soldiers, author Nancy Sherman shares with us her time spent with a veteran of Afghanistan and his feelings on those who expect so much from soldiers and can only offer thanks in return.
On burnout, trauma, and self-care with Erin Jessee By Erin Jessee Last week, Erin Jessee gave us a list of critical questions to ask to mitigate risk in oral history fieldwork. Today, we’ve invited Jessee back to the blog to talk more in-depth about her recently published article, “Managing Danger in Oral Historical Fieldwork,” spotting signs of trauma during interviews, and dealing with the sensitive nature of oral history.
Sentence structure for writers: understanding weight and clarity [extract] By David Crystal Some sentences just sound awkward. In order to ensure clarity, writers need to consider more than just grammar: weight is equally important. In the following extract from Making Sense, acclaimed linguist David Crystal shows how sentence length (and weight) affects writing quality.
The history of medical ethics By Charlotte Zaidi On the 20th of August 1947, 16 German physicians were found guilty of heinous crimes against humanity. They had been willing participants in one of the largest examples of ethnic cleansing in modern history. During the Second World War, these Nazi doctors had conducted pseudoscientific medical experiments upon concentration camp prisoners and the stories that unfolded during their trial
50 years after the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement By Claire M. Renzetti From 15-18 November, members of the American Society of Criminology (ASC) will gather in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the ASC’s annual conference. The theme of this year’s meeting is Crime, Legitimacy, and Reform: 50 Years After the President’s Commission. Specifically, 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of the final report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice
Singing insects: a tale of two synchronies By Michael D. Greenfield What is a chorus, what is an insect chorus, and why might we be interested in how and why singing insects create orchestral productions? To begin, chorusing is about timing. In a chorus, singers align their verses with one another in some non-random way. When singing insects form a chorus, the alignment may only be […]
Animal of the month: nine facts about badgers Badgers are short, stocky mammals that are part of the Mustelidae family. Although badgers are found in Africa, Eurasia, and North America, these animals are possibly best-known from their frequent appearance in literature, such as “Badger” from The Wind in the Willows and Hufflepuff’s house animal in the Harry Potter series, and for being a 2003 internet sensation.
Crime and punishment, and the spirit of St Petersburg By Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nicolas Pasternak Slater, and Sarah J. Young Crime and Punishment is a story of a murder and morality that draws deeply on Dostoevsky’s personal experiences as a prisoner. It contrasts criminality with conscience, nihilism with consequences, and examines the lengths to which people will go to retain a sense of liberty. One of the factors that brought all these things together was the novel’s setting, around the Haymarket in St Petersburg, where the grandeur of the imperial capital gives way to poverty, squalor, and vice.
What’s going on in the shadows? A visual arts timeline By William Chapman Sharpe Although cast shadows lurk almost everywhere in the visual arts, they often slip by audiences unnoticed. That’s unfortunate, since every shadow tells a story. Whether painted, filmed, photographed, or generated in real time, shadows provide vital information that makes a representation engaging to the eye. Shadows speak about the shape, volume, location, and texture of objects, as well as about the source of light, the time of day or season, the quality of the atmosphere, and so on.
The last piece of wool: the Oxford etymologist goes woolgathering By Anatoly Liberman I have never heard anyone use the idiom to go woolgathering, but it occurs in older books with some regularity, and that’s why I know it. To go woolgathering means “to indulge in aimless thought, day dreaming, or fruitless pursuit.” Sometimes only absent-mindedness is implied.
National Family Caregivers (NFC) Month: a reading list By Deborah Carr National Family Caregivers (NFC) Month is celebrated each November, in honor and recognition of the roughly 40 million Americans providing care to an adult family member or loved one. In 1997 President William J. Clinton signed the first NFC Month Presidential Proclamation, articulating that “Selflessly offering their energy and love to those in need, family caregivers have earned our heartfelt gratitude and profound respect.”
The end of liberalism By Samuel Bowles Fifty-nine years ago, William Proxmire of the now-Rust Belt state of Wisconsin took the floor of the US Senate in support of a bill that would lower tariffs on imported goods. My then-boss had brought with him a few hundred of the many pro-free-trade letters that our office had received in support of the bill. Liberalism — and not just a reduction in trade barriers — is now in trouble.
The history of Acupuncture [timeline] By Amy Cluett and Rebecca Parker With its roots stretching back to over 6,000 years BCE, Acupuncture is one of the world’s oldest medical practices. This practice of inserting fine needles into specific areas of the body to ‘stimulate sensory nerves under the skin and in the muscles of the body’ is used widely on a global scale to alleviate pain caused by a variety of conditions.
Is there definitive proof of the existence of God? By Yujin Nagasawa When Kurt Gödel, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, died in 1978 he left mysterious notes filled with logical symbols. Towards the end of his life a rumour circulated that this enigmatic genius was engaged in a secret project that was not directly relevant to his usual mathematical work. According to the rumour, he had tried to develop a logical proof of the existence of God.
Celtic goddesses to inspire writers [slideshow] By Reneysh Vittal In Greek Mythology, the muses were called upon by artists and musicians to guide and inspire their work. This National Novel Writing Month, we’ve traveled to the Celtic isles to call upon some lesser known goddesses to help inspire different genres and tropes you may wish to put to paper. Referencing Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes, we’ve pulled together a list of five Celtic goddesses for writers.
Sharia courts in America? By Michael Broyde Islamic courts need not be scary so long as they adopt the general framework used for religious arbitration in America. Islamic arbitration tribunals have a place in America (just like any religious arbitration does), but Sharia Courts must function consistent with American attitudes and laws towards religious arbitration tribunals generally. By observing how Jewish rabbinical courts are regulated by US law and function within their religious communities, one sees that Islamic courts could be another example of the kind of religious arbitration that is a well-established feature of the American religious life.
Unanswered questions in Gone with the Wind’s main title By Nathan Platte If asked to recall a melody from Gone with the Wind, what might come to mind? For many, it’s the same four notes: a valiant leap followed by a gracious descent. This is the beginning of the Tara theme, named by composer Max Steiner for the plantation home of Scarlett O’Hara, whose impassioned misunderstandings of people and place propel the story.
Fake facts and favourite sayings By Susan Ratcliffe When the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations was first published in 1941, it all seemed so simple. It was taken for granted that a quotation was a familiar line from a great poet or a famous figure in history, and the source could easily be found in standard literary works or history books. Those early compilers of quotations did not think of fake facts and the internet. “Fake facts”, or perhaps more accurately misunderstandings, have been around in the world of quotations for a long time.
The constitutionality of the parsonage allowance By Edward A. Zelinsky Under Internal Revenue Code Section 107(2), “ministers of the gospel” can exclude from the federal income tax cash payments from their congregations and other religious employers for such ministers’ housing. The IRS and the courts have held that this income tax exclusion applies to clergy of all religions including rabbis, cantors, and imams. Income tax-free housing payments to clergy are commonly denoted as “parsonage allowances.”
Herpes and human evolution: a suitable topic for dinner? By Simon Underdown Politics and religion are always topics best avoided at dinner and it’s perhaps not too much of a stretch to add STIs to that list. But it was over dinner at King’s College, Cambridge that my colleagues Charlotte Houldcroft, Krishna Kumar, and I first started to talk about the fascinating relationship humans have with Herpes.
Pain medicine and addiction: A reading list By Rebecca Parker On the 10 August 2017, President Donald Trump declared a ‘national emergency’ in the United States – the cause: the country’s escalating opioid epidemic. This drug crisis has rapidly become one of the worst in American history, with data showing that in 2016 up to 65,000 people died from drug overdoses. Officials state that for citizens under 50 they are the leading cause of death, and opioid-specific overdoses make up two-thirds of all those recorded.
Catalan independence in the Spanish Constitution and Courts By Asier Garrido Muñoz Following the recent ‘referendum’ and now declaration of independence, the status of Catalonia has become a hotly debated issue. As often happens in such cases, context is everything. It is not possible to appraise the perceived legitimacy of the respective claims without a clear picture of who says or does what in the particular legal environment (see mutatis mutandis the ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada on the secession of Québec, para. 155).
A Q&A with art historian Janet Wolff on memoir writing By Janet Wolff Janet Wolff is a renowned art historian and writer. A combination of memoir, family history, and cultural criticism, Janet Wolff’s Austerity Baby is more than just your typical memoir; touching on themes of exile, displacement, and mortality – all of which remain relevant today. In this interview, Wolff recounts her inspiration, process, and family discoveries during her writing and research.
“Too Many” Yabloesque Paradoxes By Roy T Cook The Yablo Paradox (due to Stephen Yablo and Albert Visser) consists of an infinite sequence of sentences of the following form: S1: For all m > 1, Sm is false. S2: For all m > 2, Sm is false. S3: For all m > 3, Sm is false. : : : Sn: For all m > n, Sm is false. Sn+1: For all m > n+1, Sm is false. Hence, the nth sentence in the list ‘says’ that all of the sentences below it are false.
Cybercrime as a local phenomenon By Federico Varese and Jonathan Lusthaus Nicolae Popescu was born in the small city of Alexandria, a two-hour bus ride south of Bucharest. After organising a digital scam to sell hundreds of fictitious cars on eBay, and pocketing $3 million, he was arrested in 2010 but eventually was released on a technicality.
The importance of physics for humanists and historians By James W. Cortada If you studied history, sociology, or English literature in your post-secondary education, it was probably in part because physics was too hard to understand or not as interesting. If you did not pay attention to quiet developments in the world of physics over the past several decades, you missed some very interesting important discoveries. Today, physics is not what our parents or even any of us who went to high school or university in the last quarter of the twentieth century learned because the physicists have been busy learning a lot of new things.
Can microbiology tell us exactly what killed the Aztecs? The arrival of the Spanish conquistadors to Mexico in the 1620s marked the beginning of the end for the indigenous people. With an estimated population of between 15 and 30 million at this point, this dropped dramatically to only two million by 1700: the result of battles, famine, drought, and perhaps most significantly, infectious diseases. The following Q&A investigates how microbiology contributed to the ruin of the once-flourishing Mesoamerican culture.
Six questions to ask before you hit record By Erin Jessee Erin Jessee’s article “Managing Danger in Oral Historical Fieldwork” in the most recent issue of the OHR provides a litany of practical advice about mitigating risk and promoting security. The entire article is well worth a read, but for the blog we’ve asked Jessee to provide us a list of some of the most important questions for oral historians to think about in evaluating and limiting exposure to risk.
Shakespeare, Sinatra, and the Philosophy of Aging [excerpt] By Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum Aging in the world of entertainment is portrayed in a variety of ways. In some cases it’s graceful and elegant; in others it’s manic and doddering. Shakespeare has dealt with this subject numerous times with vast reinterpretations in productions through the centuries. In this excerpt from Aging Thoughtfully: Conversations about Retirement, Wrinkles, Romance, and Regret, authors Martha C. Nussbaum and Saul Levmore look at the classic example of King Lear, and how different portrayals of this elderly character can be a reflection of how people see aging and infirmity in modern times.
Crisis in Catalonia By William Chislett Spain is living through sad times. The Catalan parliament’s illegal proclamation of an independent state has sparked the most serious constitutional crisis since the failed coup in 1981. But unlike that crisis, this one has no easy solution. All the stereotypes that Spaniards are incapable of living together, epitomised by the 1936-39 Civil War, are being reinforced.
The Bolivarian (r)evolution: the perpetual liberation of Venezuela By Kajsa Norman Ignoring both domestic and international protests, Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro has recently overseen the creation of a Constituent Assembly with the power to dissolve parliament, rewrite the constitution, and remove any remaining checks on his power. But this should not be interpreted merely as a power grab by yet another desperate ruler. History’s invisible hand is at work, playing out a recurring theme that has haunted Venezuela since its formation by Simón Bolívar.
The origins of performance anxiety By Julie Jaffee Nagel Noted psychologist and educator Erik Erikson has written about human development from a biological, psychological, and social perspective encompassing the entire life cycle. His famous chart “The Eight Stages of Man” is in his book Childhood and Society (1950). I have found his ideas particularly helpful to understanding the importance of development in musicians, particularly so since children begin to study musical instruments at very young ages.
Which fictional TV Lawyer are you? [quiz] By Kimberley Payne and Rose Wood Have you ever watched a legal drama on TV and wondered what kind of lawyer you’d be? Perhaps you’d have a soft spot for the underdog, or maybe you’d take on any case so long as the money was good? Perhaps you are particularly keen on criminal justice, or maybe overseeing takeovers and mergers is more your style. Take our quiz to find out which TV lawyer you might be.
October etymological gleanings continued By Anatoly Liberman There is a good word aftermath. Aftercrop is also fine, though rare, but, to my regret, afterglean does not exist (in aftermath, math- is related to mow, and -th is a suffix, as in length, breadth, and warmth). Anyway, I sometimes receive letters bypassing OUP’s official address. They deal with etymology and usage.
Oxford Philosophy Festival, 16th–19th November 2017 By Catherine Pugh Oxford University Press and Blackwell’s are delighted to team up once again to host the Oxford Philosophy Festival to celebrate the quest for knowledge and ideas. This year, our theme centres around applying philosophy in politics. Come and join us as we discuss religious liberty and discrimination with John Corvino, the benefits of a marriage-free state with Clare Chambers, the true nature of the oil industry with Leif Wenar, and much more
“Take control”: delusions of sovereignty By Howell A. Lloyd The phrase “take control” served as a mantra for the Vote Leave campaign in the United Kingdom’s referendum of 2016 about its membership of the European Union. The country was held to the same constraints and obligations as the EU’s other twenty-seven members. the United Kingdom, as the campaigners declared, could not manage its own borders, organise its own trade, define and regulate the rights of its own citizens, and, above all, determine its own laws.
Happy National Author’s Day from OUP [slideshow] By Marissa Lynch The first of November is National Author’s Day–a day to honor authors and the books that they write. To celebrate, we’ve put together a slideshow of Oxford’s authors pictured at events throughout the year.
Q&A with R. Andrew Chesnut on Santa Muerte By R. Andrew Chesnut Santa Muerte, a skeleton saint, has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. In the US she’s become especially popular among Euro-American LGBTQ individuals. We spoke to R. Andrew Chesnut, author of Devoted to Death, about the history and origins of Santa Muerte, why she has gained popularity recently, and the process and challenges of his research on the Bony Lady.
October 2017 (121))
How well do you know Confucius? [quiz] By John Priest This October, the OUP Philosophy team honors Confucius (551 BC–479 BC) as their Philosopher of the Month. Recognized today as China’s greatest teacher, Confucius was an early philosopher whose influence on intellectual and social history extended well beyond the boundaries of China. His lessons emphasized moral cultivation, stressed literacy, and demanded that his students be enthusiastic, serious, and self-reflective.
Horror films reinforce our fear instincts: Q&A with John Carpenter By Mathias Clasen John Carpenter’s classic suspense film Halloween from 1978 launched the slasher subgenre into the mainstream. The low-budget horror picture introduced iconic Michael Myers as an almost otherworldly force of evil, stalking and killing babysitters in otherwise peaceful Haddonfield. It featured a bare-bones plot, a simple, haunting musical score composed by Carpenter himself, some truly nerve-wracking editing and cinematography
Apparitions in the archives: haunted libraries in the UK By Emma French This Halloween we turn our sights to the phantoms haunting the libraries and private collections of Britain. From a headless ghost, to numerous abnormalities surrounding a vast collection of magical literature from a late ghost hunter, here are some stories around apparitions that have been glimpsed among the stacks – you can choose whether or not you believe them to be true….
Doing the right thing: ethics in the Zombie Apocalypse [video] By Greg Garrett From popular television shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones to countless films, video games, and comics, stories of the Zombie Apocalypse have captivated modern audiences. With horror and fascination, we watch, read, and imagine the decimation of human society as we know it at the hands of the undead.
J. S. Bach and the celebration of the Reformation By Daniel R. Melamed The figure most closely identified with the Protestant Reformation is, of course, Martin Luther. But after him probably comes Johann Sebastian Bach, who spent much of his musical career in the service of Luther’s church. As the world marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on 31 October 2017, we can remember that Bach and his contemporaries also took careful note of Reformation anniversaries, commemorating them in liturgy and music.
From segregation to the Supreme Court: the life and work of Thurgood Marshall By Henry Louis Gates Jr and Larry S. Gibson Marshall (2017) recounts one of the most contentious Supreme Court cases in American history, represented by Thurgood Marshall, who would later serve as the first African American Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Directed by Reginald Hudlin, with Chadwick Boseman playing the title role, the film establishes Marshall’s greatest legal triumph, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in which the Court declared the laws allowing for separate but equal public facilities (including public schools) inherently unconstitutional. The case, handed down on 17 May 1954, signalled the end of racial segregation in America and the beginning of the American civil rights movement. In 2013, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Editor in Chief of the Oxford African American Studies Center, spoke with Larry S. Gibson, Professor of Law at the University of Maryland, whose book Young Thurgood: The Making of a Supreme Court Justice recounts the personal and public events that shaped Marshall’s work.
A Q&A with plant scientist, Hitoshi Sakakibara By Hitoshi Sakakibara The reason for my specializing in plant science is that plants are autotrophic organisms supporting life on the earth, and plants give us a wide range of benefits, such as food, materials, and medicine. After my starting university around the mid-80s, I realized that there is great potential hidden in plant science because there are still so many fundamental unanswered questions.
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace: an audio guide By Amy Mandelker Tolstoy’s epic masterpiece intertwines the lives of private and public individuals during the time of the Napoleonic wars and the French invasion of Russia. Balls and soirees, the burning of Moscow, the intrigues of statesmen and generals, scenes of violent battles, the quiet moments of everyday life–all in a work whose extraordinary imaginative power has […]
9.5 myths about the Reformation By Peter Marshall Did the The Reformation laid the foundations of the modern world? This year marks the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation and Martin Luther’s nailing of his 95 Theses to the doors of Wittenberg Castle Church. But how much of what we think about it is actually true? To coincide with this occasion, Peter Marshall addresses 9.5 common myths about the Reformation.
Legal scholarship and methodology in the era of big data By Liz Fisher In a recent Financial Times article, the journalist and anthropologist Gillian Tett reflected on the significance of Cambridge Analytica’s (CA) work in relation to Donald Trump’s successful 2016 Presidential Campaign. While Hilary Clinton had run a campaign using what was understood as traditional ‘political’ data, CA had collected many thousands of data points on people, much of it amassed from their online consumer and social identities.
Blue Planet II returns By Katy Roberts Blue Planet returns to our television screens tonight as Blue Planet II, 16 years after the first series aired to great critical acclaim. The series, fronted by Sir David Attenborough, focuses on life beneath the waves, using state-of-the-art technology to bring us closer than ever before to the creatures who call the ocean depths their home. Over the coming weeks, we’re going to be sharing a selection of content from our life science resources
Are we all living in the Anthropocene? By Matthew Henry In 2000, atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer published a short but enormously influential article in Global Change Newsletter. In it, they proposed the adoption of a brand new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. Their argument: humans have had and will continue to have a drastic impact on the planet’s climate, biodiversity, and other elements of the Earth system, and the term “Anthropocene” – from the Greek anthropos, or “human” – most accurately describes this grim new reality.
Public lands, private profit By Adam M. Sowards Although no signature legislation has passed, President Trump and his congressional allies have already made several consequential changes, notably in the ways that the administration is undermining the public lands system. Americans have long contended over public lands, as we should. And that is a historical oddity, because perhaps nowhere in the world do people love private property as much as in the United States.
Constitutional resistance to executive power By Lawrence Friedman In a blog post following the election of Donald J. Trump, Professor Mark A. Graber examined the new president’s cavalier attitude toward constitutional norms and predicted that, “[o]ver the next few years, Americans and constitutional observers are likely to learn whether the Framers in 1787 did indeed contrive ‘a machine that would go of itself’ or whether human intervention is necessary both to operate the constitution and compensate for systemic constitutional failures.”
How welcoming practices and positive school climate can prevent bullying By Ron Avi Astor What happens when a student or parent first walks in to a new school? What welcoming practices occur during the initial registration process, when parents first complete a set of forms, when they hear the first hello, or when students are first introduced to teachers and classmates? Are students and parents greeted with warmth, guidance, and understanding, or is it a cold administrative process?
Open Access: Q&A with GigaScience executive editor, Scott Edmunds By Scott Edmunds and Victoria Sparkman The 10th Annual International Open Access Week is marked as 23-29 October 2017. This year, the theme is “Open In Order To…” which is “an invitation to answer the question of what concrete benefits can be realized by making scholarly outputs openly available?” To celebrate Open Access Week, we talked to Scott Edmunds, Executive Editor for GigaScience.
How well do you know quantum physics? [quiz] By Michael G. Raymer Quantum physics is one of the most important intellectual movements in human history. Today, quantum physics is everywhere: it explains how our computers work, how lasers transmit information across the Internet, and allows scientists to predict accurately the behavior of nearly every particle in nature. Its application continues to be fundamental in the investigation of the most expansive questions related to our world and the universe.
When rivers die – and are reborn By Victor Mallet Most of the great cities of the world were built on rivers, for rivers have provided the water, the agricultural fertility, and the transport links essential for most great civilizations. This presents a series of puzzles. Why have the people who depend on those rivers so often poisoned their own water sources? How much pollution is enough to kill a river? And what is needed to bring one back to life?
Disaggregation and the war on terror [excerpt] By David Kilcullen The early years of the 21st century are marred by acts of violence and terrorism on a global scale. Over a decade later the world’s problems in dealing with international threats are unfortunately far from over. In this excerpt from Blood Year: The Unraveling of Western Counterterrorism, author David Kilcullen looks back on a time he was called upon to help develop a strategy for the Australian government in fighting this new global threat.
Marketing-driven government (Part 2) By Jeff French When marketing is used in government, its impact is often limited because it is dogged by a short-term, fragmented approach influenced by political time cycles. Government marketing is often characterised by an overemphasis on broadcast communications, including digital platforms, to the exclusion of a more citizen-centric approach focused on listening, relationship building, and social networking.
Hop heads and locaholics: excerpt from Beeronomics By Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski Beer drinkers across the United States observe the National American Beer Day annually on 27 October. Over the last decade two IPAs, craft beer and microbreweries have taken over the American beer market and continue their steady growth. This extract from Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski’s Beeronomics discusses some of the strategies of the American craft beer movement.
Harry Potter at the British Library: Challenges, Innovations, and Magic By Philippa Peall Last Friday the Harry Potter: A History of Magic exhibition opened at the British Library. It is a much anticipated showcase of Harry Potter artefacts, including many from the vaults of Bloomsbury and J.K. Rowling herself.
The relevance of the Russian Revolution [video] By Laura Engelstein This year, 2017, marks the centennial of the Russian Revolution, a defining moment in time with ripple effects felt across the world to this day. In the following video, author Laura Engelstein sits down with Oxford University Press editor Tim Bent to discuss the history of the revolution, its global impact, and her book Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921.
Animal of the month: Bats and humans around the world Bats are one of the most ubiquitous mammals living on this planet. Only humans are more widespread. So it would not be an impossible assumption that humans and bats have interacted for as long as the two species have inhabited the world. Bats are found in almost every type of habitat, apart from the most inhospitable. As this is the case, we’ve taken a look at some interesting cases of human-bat interaction through the ages.
Stage fright and mental ghosts: managing stage fright as a growth process By Julie Jaffee Nagel William: I played in a violin recital a couple of weeks ago. I had played the music many times before but in that concert I really messed up my finger work passages – one in particular – and then I started feeling that my memorization was shaky. I was a nervous wreck and couldn’t wait to finish. I cannot figure this out. I feel haunted that it is going to happen again and again. JJN: This sounds terribly upsetting – both your concerns about your playing and your worries about trying to figure it out on your own and not being able to do that. Has this kind of thing happened before? Do you typically try to figure things out on your own?
Etymology gleanings for October 2017 By Anatoly Liberman Singular versus plural. What feel(s) like failed relationships…. The dilemma is as old as the hills: English speakers have always felt uncertain about the number after what. An exemplary treatment of this problem will be found in the old editions of H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage (the entry what 2).
Hannah Arendt and the source of human values By Steven Maloney Hannah Arendt was a literary intellectual, defined by Thomas Pynchon as, “people who read and think.” Like Socrates, Hannah Arendt thought and went where thought took her. Arendt’s thinking led her many places, but one of the more interesting topics she thought about was the source of human values.
The current conflict between Spain and Catalonia explained By Ma.Àngels Viladot Spain is a state split into autonomous communities, three of which—Catalonia, Galicia, and Basque Country—are denominated historic communities, having their own languages that coexist co-officially with Castilian, the official language of Spain. All the autonomous communities in Spain have their Statutes of Autonomy, the basic institutional legislation for an autonomous community, recognized by the Spanish Constitution of 1978.
Workplace bullying and the law By Keith Patten Is the law able to offer any assistance to victims of workplace bullying? Let me recite an example, which is all too commonplace. Daniel* worked in an office in local government in the UK. When he was bullied by his manager he didn’t even realise it at first. The conduct was subtle. He would be given more than his fair share of the unpopular tasks. Everything he did was criticised, not aggressively, but constantly.
The Protestant Reformation and the upside of historical amnesia By Thomas Albert Howard On October 31, the Western world will mark a momentous date: 500 years since an obscure German monk, Martin Luther, putatively nailed his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door of Wittenberg, Saxony, thereby launching Protestant Christianity and, if you believe some historians, the modern world. That many people can’t remember what the Protestant Reformation was all about might not please scholars.
New finds from the Antikythera shipwreck By Alexander Jones The Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities recently announced that the latest season of diving at the famous Antikythera Shipwreck — notable among other things as the findspot of the Antikythera Mechanism, an ancient Greek astronomical gearwork device now recognized to be the most complex and sophisticated scientific instrument surviving from antiquity — had located a concentration of large metal objects buried under the seabed, one of which was recovered: the right arm, lacking just two fingers, from a bronze statue.
Marketing-driven government (Part 1) By Jeff French Marketing is an approach to social programme design and delivery that should underpin how governments and not-for-profit agencies develop and select policy, shape how services are delivered, and build sustained partnerships with citizens and other stakeholder organisations. However, marketing is a very often misunderstood and misapplied within Government
Would you survive the zombie apocalypse? [quiz] By Rebekah Edwards The zombie apocalypse presents many challenges – for both the prepared and unprepared. As if dodging an aggressive and cannibalistic undead horde constantly in pursuit of brains isn’t enough, you must also forage for food, find shelter, and brave the elements in a world growing more inhospitable by the minute. Technology is no longer reliable, the creature comforts that we take for granted are no longer guaranteed, and our sense of safety is completely compromised.
Village echoes (and reverb, and delay): the drums of Nepal’s rural festivals and the booming speakers of urban dohori restaurants By Anna Marie Stirr Nepal’s dohori restaurants aim to reproduce festive rural environments in urban areas, with folk music and dance performances onstage, and opportunities for restaurant guests to sing and dance themselves. One of the first things that newcomers notice is how loud these restaurants are.
Beyond the cold fact: The WPA narratives, Brazil’s black peasants, and the conduct of oral history By Oscar de la Torre When the 1988 Constitution recognized and gave lands to black rural communities descending from slaves, the black peasants of Brazil made a sudden entrance into the country’s political realm.
Test your knowledge of the Russian Revolution [quiz] This year marks the centenary of one of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. In 1917, Russia’s old order was swept away, with the dissolution of the monarchy and the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, leading to the founding of the first Communist state. The changes to life in Russia which followed were huge and far-reaching — not only for citizens, but for the international community as well.
How do we decide whom to rely on?: A Q&A with Mario L. Small By Mario L. Small When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant-a person to vent to or a sympathetic ear with whom to talk things through. How do they decide on whom to rely? In theory, the answer seems obvious. In practice, what people actually do often belies these expectations.We sat down with Mario L. Small, to answer some key questions into how we decide whom to rely on and social networks.
Humankind’s battle to conquer the seas By George Currie The relationship, through history, between humans and the sea has been one of conflict and conquest. The dangers of traveling on such a fickle, treacherous, and alien environment could easily mean death for early seafarers and explorers (and indeed it still can today). What is even more impressive, and perhaps mind-boggling, is that those venturing to sea in pre-history did not know what they would find, if anything at all. So why did humans first take to the sea? What drove them to surf and sail into the unknown? One reason may be our inquisitive nature.
What brought down the coal industry and will its recent recovery last? By Alexander Ovodenko During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump ran for office on a platform that included supporting the coal industry. His open embrace of coal mining gave hope to an industry that has experienced a steady decline in production and jobs since the mid-2000s. In 2016, coal production reached its lowest point since 1978, when the US population was only 70% of what it is today.
On theory and consensus in science: a journey in time By Frank S. Levin In ordinary discourse, a theory is a guess or a surmise, as in “that’s only a theory.” In science, however, a theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is supported by confirmed facts and/or observations. Verification of a theory’s predictions ensures its eventual acceptance by the community of scientists working in the particular discipline.
The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic The art of witchcraft: six illustrations [slideshow] By Owen Davies Witchcraft dates back 5,000 years to the beginning of writing. Its history offers glimpses into the human psyche and has excited the minds of artists, playwrights, and novelists for centuries. Referencing The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, we’ve pulled together a slideshow of six fascinating facts about the history of witchcraft.
Life in the fast lane: how quickly can a new species evolve? By Mario Vallejo-Marin The world is changing fast, and evolution is not staying behind. The curious case of a new species of flower that evolved in the north isles of Scotland shows that evolution can create new species in a matter of years. The environment around us is changing rapidly as a human population of seven billion consumes resources more quickly than the planet can replenish them, and technology helps us reach the most remote corners of the planet.
Bullying beyond the schoolyard By Ellen Delara When you stretch a rubber band, even after many times, it will likely return to its original form. We call this resilience. When children are stretched and bent out of shape due to bad experiences they encounter, we expect they will be resilient too and snap back to their previous self. However, after various types of difficult or traumatic interactions, children are not the same. The analogy of the rubber band does not hold up.
Are we losing a generation of younger doctors? By Timothy J. Hoff We live in challenging times for physicians, who are required to do things that are wearing them out and making them feel bad about their jobs. Surveys showing large percentages of doctors burned out, dissatisfied with their work or regretting their career choice point to something deeply psychological that is happening to many doctors—something that should make all of us very concerned.
10 questions with composer Sarah Quartel By Sarah Quartel Sarah Quartel is a Canadian composer, conductor, and educator known for her fresh and exciting approach to choral music. Her music is performed by children and adults around the world, and celebrates the musical potential of all learners by providing singers access to high quality and engaging repertoire. We spoke with Sarah about why she composes, how she approaches writing, and the pieces that mean the most to her.
What is the land question in India today? By Anthony P. D'Costa Land in the process of development can be viewed as a commodity, and like other commodities, can be bought and sold. Such a transformation presupposes that land historically was not a commodity. Peasant cultivators eked out a subsistent lifestyle and feudal lords taxed the peasants. Property rights as we know it did not exist then. Land was not owned, sold, or bought.
Alternative music classes: why not guitar? By Bill Swick The National Association for Music Education (NAfME) formerly known as MENC is the world’s largest arts education association. Amongst its many roles, NAfME holds annual conferences to provide professional development and support to active music educators.
The reign of law in international investment decision-making By Diane Desierto, Ian Laird, and Frederic Sourgens The second Investment Claims Summer Academy took place on 6-7 July 2017 at Lady Margaret Hall and focused on the role of international law in international investment decision-making. The Summer Academy opened with a quote from Sir Hersch Lauterpacht’s 1933 The Function of Law in International the International Community:
Climate change: a call for government intervention [video] By Peter Wadhams “The world is facing a catastrophe.” It is too late for individuals to make a significant difference in the preservation of ice caps. At the current rate of global warming, government intervention is needed. In the following video and excerpt from A Farewell to Ice, Peter Wadhams, one of the world’s leading experts on polar ice, discusses the role that governments around the world need to play in order to combat global warming.
Not finding Bigfoot By Boria Sax The Renaissance is remembered as a time of renewed interest in scientific investigation, yet it also brought a huge increase in sightings of fantastic creatures such as mermaids and sea serpents. One explanation for this apparent paradox is that the revival of classical art and literature inspired explorers to look for the creatures of Greco-Roman mythology. Another reason was the expansion of trade. Cryptids, fantastic creatures that elude established terms of description, tend to arise on the boundary of two or more cultures.
10 facts about cymbals By Vivian Yan Cymbals are a highly versatile instrument of ancient origin. In the West, they have been used not only in orchestral music, but also in jazz and popular music. From being played very quietly to making a striking splash in the orchestra, composers and musicians have found the instrument to be widely adaptable.
Revenons à nos moutons! By Anatoly Liberman I keep returning to my sheep and rams because the subject is so rich in linguistic wool. Last time (see the post for 11 October 2017), I looked at the numerous etymological attacks on sheep and came to rather uninspiring results.
Divali in the White House? By Amanda Lucia When Barack Obama became the first U.S. President to celebrate Divali in the White House in 2009, he sent a message to South Asian Americans that they are a part of the American national narrative. His actions were not only about lighting lamps and the remembrance of Indic myths, but they were also about the […]
7 financial tips and facts By Erin Cavoto For most, October marks the beginning of autumn, Halloween celebrating, and preparation for the holiday season. However, what some might not realize is that October is also Financial Planning Month. Financial planning and budgeting can be a difficult, confusing area. In honor of Financial Planning Month, we decided to outline facts to provide some insight and tips on budgeting, investing, and retirement.
Balancing compassion and self-care in a troubled world By Robert Wicks Originating from the Latin “compati,” (to suffer together), compassion can lead to a greater understanding of human suffering. However, the vulnerability that comes along with compassion can often lead to increased feelings of stress and anxiety. In the video below, psychologist Robert J. Wicks describes the consequences of inordinate compassion.
Creeds and Christian freedom By Wolfram Kinzig It is no exaggeration to say that, historically speaking, next to the Bible the early Christian creeds are the most important texts of Christianity. Paradoxically in many western churches today these texts are regarded with a high degree of suspicion. Creeds are recited but are little understood, and in the minds of many might as well be abolished altogether.
Top ten reasons string teachers may want to teach guitar: staying employed By Bill Swick In no particular order, here are ten reasons why string teachers may want to teach guitar. This list was originally created to for a presentation at a national conference for the American String Teachers Association.
Light pollution: absent information in risk communication By Jari Lyytimaki Lights, lights everywhere, but what about the risks of light pollution? The world has experienced an unprecedented environmental change during the past century as the electric light has permeated our nights. In the near future, this change may accelerate because of increasing use of new illumination technologies such as LED lights. In most parts of urbanized world the disappearance of natural darkness is easy to observe even with bare eyes.
Crime and Punishment: From Siberia to St. Petersburg By Sarah J. Young Before the serial publication of Crime and Punishment in the prominent literary journal The Russian Messenger in 1866, the reception of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s works, and his reputation as a writer, had been somewhat mixed. The story of his career marks one of the most dramatic falls from grace and rise again stories in literary history.
Revisiting Broadway’s forgotten genius By Howard Pollack Born into poverty in Richmond, Virginia, John Latouche (1914-1956) even as a youth established himself as both a rascal and a genius. After dropping out of Columbia his sophomore year (but not before scandalizing the university with his risqué lyrics to the school’s 1935 Varsity Show, Flair-Flair: The Idol of Paree), he won a coterie of devoted admirers among New York’s artistic elite for his witty and suggestive cabaret songs.
Invest in food security; end hunger By Sarah McKenna World Food Day is celebrated on 16th October each year, commemorating the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Various events take place around the world, promoting worldwide awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger, and the need to ensure food security and nutrition for everyone. Some of the statistics provided by the FAO are staggering:
100 years since the world shook [excerpt] By Laura Engelstein The fall of the Romanov dynasty may have occurred in an instant, but the wheels were set in motion long before 1917. The effects of the Russian revolution were felt far beyond the borders of Eastern Europe and changed the course of world history forever. In this centenary year, Laura Engelstein, author of Russia in Flames: War, Revolution, Civil War, 1914-1921, takes us back to the brutal battles that took place at the beginning of the 20th century, and gives us reason as to why we need to revisit it now.
A Chopin-inspired reading list By Meg Lemke I have always read “classics,” alongside contemporary titles, as an editor who desires to be informed by the past in shaping new publications; and a human who loves to read. We bring our personal and political lens to any work, and what makes reading and re-reading classics such an intellectually pleasurable occasion is to engage […]
How Oscar Wilde’s life imitates his art By Michèle Mendelssohn The idea that life imitates art is one of Oscar’s best yet most often misunderstood. It is central to his philosophy and to his own life. Take The Decay of Lying, for example, an essay in the form of a dialogue that he wrote in the late 1880s. What did he call the interlocutors? Why Cyril and Vyvyan, the names of his two young sons, of course. But the piece’s intellectual party really gets started when Wilde has his learned young gentlemen interview each other. Naturally, what is uppermost in their minds is the relationship between life and art.
Perpetual peace By Randall Lesaffer In the fall of 1697, the great powers of Europe signed a series of peace treaties at Rijswijk [Ryswick], near The Hague, which ended the Nine Years’ War (1688–1697), in which France was opposed by a great coalition of the Holy Roman Emperor, Britain, the Dutch Republic, and Spain. In its first article, the peace treaty between Britain and France, signed on 20 September 1697 (21 CTS 409), stated that, henceforth, there would be ‘universal and perpetual peace’
Disaster or disturbance: environmental science of natural extremes By Ellen Wohl Hurricane Harvey. Hurricane Maria. Natural disasters that will go down in the history of certain communities as ‘the big one’. Hurricanes and floods are disasters for human communities because of the loss of life and property and the damage to infrastructure. When I consider the recent hurricanes as an environmental scientist, however, I do not see them just as disasters.
The point of depression By Charles Foster There has been a great deal of speculation about the evolutionary significance and origins of depression. What selective advantage does it confer? Does it allow the patient to concentrate on complex and important problems? Is it a type of pain that, like physical pain, causes us to pull back from danger? Is it a type of behavioral quarantine, causing us to hole up in a safe place while dangers stalk around outside?
Lionfish: the perfect invader By Brian W. Bowen and Christie Wilcox The invasion of the Caribbean by Indo-Pacific lionfishes happened seemingly overnight. In the early 2000s, the first papers were published about lionfish sightings in places like Florida, half a world away from their native range—by 2010, they were almost everywhere in the Caribbean, and even now, they continue to expand the edges of their invasive Atlantic range.
Understanding physician-assisted death [excerpt] By L.W. Sumner When it comes to end-of-life treatment, patients currently have a few different options available to them. One option, refusal of treatment, is when a decisionally capable patient is put in the driver’s seat with respect to medical treatment under the doctrine of informed consent. Another option is pain management, where palliative medicine is administered to entirely eliminate, or reduce pain to a level that the patient finds tolerable.
Nine things you didn’t know about love and marriage in Byzantium By Anthony Kaldellis The Byzantine civilization has long been regarded by many as one big curiosity. Often associated with treachery and superstition, their traditions and contributions to the ancient world are often overlooked. Referencing A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities, we’ve pulled together nine lesser known facts about love and marriage in Byzantium.
When our tribes become bullies By Kathryn Brohl Tribalism’s slide into bullying has become seemingly pervasive. We’ve all seen how it contaminates schools, sports, and work. In all of these collective institutions there is a drive to form tribes—often motivated by a desire for constructive kinship, but just as frequently for purposes of control, and exclusion. The change begins at home with parents who understand that hate causes violence.
How does circadian rhythm affect our lives? By Steven Filippi The 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to American biologists Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of the molecular mechanisms that control circadian rhythm in organisms. Their work began in the 1980s with the study of fruit flies, from which they were able to identify the […]
A Tale of Two New York Cities [excerpt] By Alessandro Busà New York is a city of many things to many people. But more and more those people are being divided. Those who have the means to live in comfort and splendor, and those struggling to survive in a once vast urban landscape that grows smaller and smaller with each year. In this excerpt from his book The Creative Destruction of New York City, author and urban scholar Alessandro Busà, gives us the lay of this new land where all are welcome, particularly if they can afford it.
Animal of the month: 10 facts about bats Bats are often portrayed in popular media as harbingers of doom and the embodiment of evil. They’re consistently associated with death, malevolent witches, and vampires. Batman, with his bat-like attributes, is easily the most sinister superhero in the league. Most people will have seen or heard about this creature, but what do we really know about them? So this month, ending on All Hallows’ Eve, we are celebrating this misunderstood mammal.
Wielding wellness with music By Kimberly Sena Moore The intersection between music and health occurs on a continuum of care ranging from the personal use of music to “feel better”, to professional music therapy work. While music therapists may work more often in the professional end of the continuum, our experiences and knowledge as clinicians and scholars provide us a unique perspective on […]
The feminist roots of modern witchcraft [excerpt] By Owen Davies Throughout modern history, witchcraft has been predominately practiced by women. Historically, women were considered more likely than men to partake in magic due to their inherent moral weakness and uncontrolled sexual nature. Unsurprisingly, as witchcraft spread throughout the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, it captured the interest of the growing feminist movement.
Who said what about Margaret Thatcher? [quiz] By Susan Ratcliffe No-one was neutral about Margaret Thatcher. During her premiership (and ever since), she has inspired both wild enthusiasm and determined opposition, and many vivid descriptions as a result. Many critics have described Margaret Thatcher as divisive, accusing her of paying little attention to social issues. Do you know which of these remarks were made by her supporters and which by her opponents?
Sheepskin and mutton By Anatoly Liberman This is a sequel to the previous post of 4 October 2017. Last time I mentioned an embarrassment of riches in dealing with the origin of the word sheep, and I thought it might not be improper to share those riches with the public.
A twenty-first century reinterpretation of dreams? By Helen Taylor Robinson But, on this occasion, it is also thanks to a certain Donald Woods Winnicott—perhaps most of all—that this commemorative moment in history takes place. Winnicott, as President of the British Psychoanalytic Society, was instrumental in raising awareness and funds in the 1960s for getting this same statue by Nemon cast and put up in North London for the first time.
Buddhist nationalists and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar part II: the rise of religious nationalism and Islamophobia By Michael Jerryson, Abby Kulisz, and Sarah Seniuk Since August over 420,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar, citing human rights abuses and seeking temporary refuge in Bangladesh. In part one we looked at the background and context of the Rohingya crisis. In this second part of Sarah Seniuk’s and Abby Kulisz’s interview with Michael Jerryson, they look at the role of Buddhist nationalism and the impact of Islamophobia in the developing crisis.
Women at work: New York City at the turn of the 20th century By Mike Wallace New York City was rapidly expanding at the turn of the 20th century: the five boroughs had just unified, skyscrapers were going up, and the economy was booming. In the following extract from Greater Gotham, historian Mike Wallace discusses how the New York City’s flourishing economy influenced the career opportunities available to women in the early 1900s.
Cognitive biases and the implications of Big Data By Adrian Kuenzler Big Data analytics have become pervasive in today’s economy. While they produce countless novelties for businesses and consumers, they have led to increasing concerns about privacy, behavioral manipulations, and even job losses. But the handling of vast quantities of data is anything but new.
World Mental Health Day 2017: History of the treatment of mental illness By Amelia Carruthers, Catherine Pugh, and Stephanie King The tenth of October marks World Mental Health Day. Organized by the World Health Organization, the day works toward “raising awareness of mental health issues around the world and mobilizing efforts in support of mental health.” Mental health has been a concern for thousands of years, but different cultures have treated mental illnesses very differently throughout time.
A short walk per day: a look at the importance of self-care By Robert J. Wicks “What have you been doing that has been especially important over the past several years?” In the following video and shortened excerpt from Night Call, Robert J. Wicks explains how this question helped him realize the importance of striking a balance between compassion for others and self-care.
Avoiding World War III: lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis By David G. Winter An American president, recently made aware of a new potential nuclear threat to US cities, declared that any nuclear missile launched against any nation in the western hemisphere would require “a full retaliatory response.” The chair of the House Armed Services Committee argued that the United States should strike “with all the force and power and try to get it over with as quickly as possible.”
Can marriage officers refuse to marry same-sex couples? By Eva Brems and Stijn Smet Freedom of religion and same-sex equality are not inherently incompatible. But sometimes they do seem to be on a collision course. This happens, for instance, when religiously devout marriage officers refuse to marry same-sex couples. In the wake of legal recognition of same-sex marriage around the world, states have grappled with civil servants who cannot reconcile their legal duties with their religious beliefs.
Energy and contagion in Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life By Paul-François Tremlett Emile Durkheim was a foundational figure in the disciplines of sociology and anthropology, yet recapitulations of his work sometimes overlook his most intriguing ideas, ideas which continue to have contemporary resonance. Here, I am going to discuss two such ideas from Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (originally published in 1912 and then in English in 1915), his concept of energy and contagion.
Biology Week 2017: 10 facts about fungus By Katy Roberts Organised by the Royal Society of Biology, Biology Week (7-15th October) is a nationwide celebration of the biological sciences, from microbes to photosynthesis, from yeast to zooplankton. The 8th October is UK Fungus Day, so to celebrate this, and Biology Week as a whole, we’ve put together a list of things you may not know about fabulous fungus!
American personhood in the era of Trump By T.M. Lemos After the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on 12 August, 2017, the people of the United States waited anxiously for a response from their president. Sure enough, the first response came that day, denunciatory but equivocal. He condemned the violence coming from “many sides,” a response many found dissatisfactory considering that it was not counterprotesters but the alt-right who were responsible.
Philosopher of the month: Confucius [infographic] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This October, the OUP Philosophy team honors Confucius (551 BC–479 BC) as their Philosopher of the Month. Recognized today as China’s greatest teacher, Confucius was an early philosopher whose influence on intellectual and social history extended well beyond the boundaries of China. Born in the state of Lu during the Zhou dynasty, Confucius dedicated his […]
Time for international law to take the Internet seriously By Dan Svantesson Internet-related legal issues are still treated as fringe issues in both public and private international law. Anyone doubting this claim need only take a look at the tables of content from journals in those respective fields. However, approaching Internet-related legal issues in this manner is becoming increasingly untenable. Let us consider the following: Tech companies feature prominently on lists ranking the world’s most powerful companies.
The history of the library By Amelia Carruthers Our love of libraries is nothing new, and history records famous libraries as far back as those of Ashurbanipal (in 7th-century BCE Assyria) and Ancient Greek Alexandria. As society and culture have progressed, so too have our libraries. Even epochs such as the Middle Ages (known erroneously as the “Dark Ages” for its lack of […]
Pushed to extremes: the human cost of climate change By Anderson Al Wazni However, a parallel and equally disturbing trend is happening ecologically in the US, with the rejection of climate change science and the withdrawal from the Paris Accord. Though climate change may at first appear to be a separate issue from the xenophobia and anti-refugee mindset, they are more inextricably tied to one another than we are led to believe.
Does anyone know what mental health is? By Anna Alexandrova The concept of mental health lives a double life. On the one hand it denotes a state today universally valued. Not simply valued but newly prioritised by governments, hospitals, schools, employers, charities and so on. Expressions such as “mental capital” or “mental wealth of nations” appear in official reports and high profile articles emphasising the […]
Moses Jacob Ezekiel, Confederate soldier and American Jewish sculptor By Samantha Baskind Every few months brings news about the Confederate flag or Confederate monuments, and their legitimate or illegitimate place in American culture.
Fire prevention: the lessons we can learn By Sandro Galea The United States spends more on health than any other economically comparable country, yet sees a consistently mediocre return on this investment. This could be because the United States invests overwhelmingly in medicine and curative care, at the expense of the social, economic, and environmental determinants of health—factors like quality education and housing, the safety of our air and water, and the nutritional content of our food.
The frailty industry: too much too soon? By Steve Parry Fashions come and go, in clothing, news, and even movie genres. Medicine, including geriatric medicine, is no exception. When I was a trainee, falls and syncope was the “next big thing,” pursued with huge enthusiasm by a few who became the many. But when does a well-meaning medical fashion become a potentially destructive fad? Frailty, quite rightly, has developed from something geriatricians and allied professionals always did to become a buzz word even neurosurgeons bandy about.
A Q&A with composer David Bednall — part 1 By David Bednall David Bednall is Organist of the University of Bristol, Sub Organist at Bristol Cathedral and conducts the Bristol University Singers. He has a busy career as a composer also, and has published many works. In this occasional series we ask Oxford composers questions based around their musical likes, influences, and challenges. We spoke with David about his composing habits, and his most difficult work to write.
Why do so many people believe in miracles? By Yujin Nagasawa Belief in miracles is widespread. According to recent surveys 72% of people in the USA and 59% of people in the UK believe that miracles take place. Why do so many people believe in miracles in the present age of advanced science and technology? Let us briefly consider three possible answers to this question. The first possible answer is simply that miracles actually do take place all the time.
A prison without walls? The Mettray reformatory By Oliver Davis The Mettray reformatory was founded in 1839, some ten kilometres from Tours in the quiet countryside of the Loire Valley. Over almost a hundred years the reformatory imprisoned juvenile delinquent boys aged 7 to 21, particularly from Paris.
Why solar and wind won’t make much difference to carbon dioxide emissions By Peter Rez We all like the convenience of electrical energy. It lights our home and offices, and drives motors that are needed in heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems that keep us buildings comfortable no matter what the temperature is outside. It’s essential for refrigeration that secures our food supply. In short, it makes modern life with all its comfort and conveniences possible.
How Twitter enhances conventional practices of diplomacy By Constance Duncombe The attention given to each “unpresidential”tweet by US President Donald Trump illustrates the political power of Twitter. Policymakers and analysts continue to raise numerous concerns about the potential political fall-out of Trump’s prolific tweeting. Six months after the inauguration, such apprehensions have become amplified. Take for instance Trump’s tweet in March 2017 that “North Korea is behaving very badly.
The 5 best and worst things about gigging in a blues band (when you’re an academician) By Julia Simon For the last 16 years, I have been “supplementing” my day job as a professor by gigging in blues bands. There are advantages–that are also disadvantages–to the double life.
Sheep and lambs on an etymological gallows By Anatoly Liberman Animal names are so many and so various that thick books have been written about their origins, and yet some of the main riddles have never been solved.
World Space Week: a reading list Space exploration has dominated human imagination for the most of the last 125-odd years. Every year we learn more about what lies beyond the limits of Earth’s atmosphere. We learn about extraterrestrial resources, such as metals on asteroids or water on the Moon; we discover new exoplanets that may be able to support life; we research new technologies that will get us onto planets a little closer to home, such as Mars.
Sanders-scare By Richard S. Grossman Overpromising was a central feature of Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency. He was going to build a big, beautiful wall and make the Mexicans pay for it. He was going to unleash a secret plan to defeat ISIS. And he was going to repeal Obamacare and replace it with something really terrific. Unfortunately, Donald Trump and the Republicans aren’t the only ones making unrealistic promises.
More than just sanctuary, migrants need social citizenship By Nancy Berlinger In 1975, the English author John Berger wrote about the political implications of immigration, at a time when one in seven workers in the factories of Germany and Britain was a male migrant – what Berger called the ‘seventh man’. Today, every seventh person in the world is a migrant. Migrants are likely to settle in cities.
Buddhist nationalists and ethnic cleansing in Myanmar part I: an introduction to the current crisis By Michael Jerryson, Abby Kulisz, and Sarah Seniuk Who are the Rohingya and what is exactly happening to them right now? Since August over 420,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar, citing human rights abuses and seeking refuge in Bangladesh. Sarah Seniuk and Abby Kulisz interview Michael Jerryson, a scholar who works on Buddhist-Muslim relations in Southeast Asia, in order to learn more about the background to this current crisis.
World literature: what’s in a name? By Walter Cohen What is world literature, and why are (some) people saying such bad things about it? You might think world literature would be easy to define. You might think it should refer to all the literature in the world, past and present. And you might think that the study of world literature — which goes back […]
Mapping Reformation Europe By Graeme Murdock Maps convey simple historical narratives very clearly–but how useful are simple stories about the past? Many history textbooks and studies of the Reformation include some sort of map that claims to depict Europe’s religious divisions in the sixteenth century.
A national legacy of bullying By Jonathan fast In the 1990s a rash of school shootings changed the landscape of American childhood. Research eventually revealed that they all had one characteristic in common: the shooters had all been victims of bullying. Suddenly, bullying, an activity that had been more or less ignored for centuries, or praised as a way of toughening up the next generation, took the spotlight as a source of personal misery and potential public menace.
Bracing for the worst flu season on record By Anna Shannon This year, 2017, is braced to historically be the worst flu season ever recorded, according to the Nation Health Service (NHS). Doctors and hospitals may struggle to cope with the increase in demand, following the spike of influenza cases from Australia and New Zealand, who have recently come out of their winter season.
The 21st Century Music Curriculum- Why Guitar? By Scott Seifried In her keynote speech at Vision 2020: The Housewright Symposium on the Future of Music Education held at Florida State University in 1999, composer Libby Larson shared the story of her daughter’s experience playing saxophone in middle school band.
Finding reliable information on Latin America in the Internet flood By William Beezley Recent political rhetoric filled with such hot button words as “drugs,” “immigrants,” “the Wall,” and “terrorists” serves in place of diplomacy that represents the interests of the United States while remaining respectful toward other nations. This blather is the result of loose-lipped politicians who prefer media quips to thoughtful commentary about policy. Although the United […]
The House Appropriations Committee and the Johnson Amendment By Edward A. Zelinsky he Committee on Appropriations of the US House of Representatives, in a so-called rider to the pending federal budget bill, has proposed significant procedural restrictions on the IRS’s ability to enforce the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment is the provision of the Internal Revenue Code which prevents all tax-exempt institutions (including churches) from participating in political campaigns.
An American Kaiser? By David G. Winter Despite differences in historical era and social background, the Kaiser who ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918 and the American president who parlayed a real-estate empire into electoral (if not popular) victory displayed remarkably similar temperament. As Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen suggested, “Germany used to have a leader like Trump,” adding that “it’s not who you think.”
Love, Madness, and Scandalous Women in Politics [timeline] By Johanna Luthman In Love, Madness, and Scandal, author Johanna Luthman chronicles the life of Frances Coke Villiers, Viscountess of Purbeck. Forced by her father into marrying Sir John Villiers; the elder brother of royal favorite, the Duke of Buckingham; Frances then fell for another man, Sir Robert Howard. While her husband succumbed to mental illness, she gave birth to Robert’s child.
Kate Chopin, the “mother-woman” By Meg Lemke Kate Chopin married at 20 years old and birthed six children within nine years. The Awakening, which she published in 1899, is arguably written to reject that an artist’s offspring would presume to occupy the first line to any discussion of her work.
H is for History: making the case for studying environmental law history By Ben Pontin In our ‘time of change’ – which in the United Kingdom largely revolves around Brexit but takes different forms elsewhere – it is important for environmental lawyers to think about history. How, though, are we to do so, given that history is the most underdeveloped area of socio-legal environmental law, with very little literature to guide the way?
Quotes make me shudder By Edwin L. Battistella The practice of using punctuation to indicate verbatim speech seems to have had its origins in the diple, a caret-like ancient Greek marking used to call attention to part of a text. By the late 15th century, the diple had been replaced by a pair of inverted commas placed in the left margins to indicate […]
Lovely LISA By Nicholas Mee One of the amazing ideas to emerge from Einstein’s theory of general relativity was the possibility of gravitational waves rippling their way across the cosmos. It took a century to verify this prediction. Their existence was finally confirmed by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory) in September 2015.
September 2017 (121))
Understanding Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth status [excerpt] By Jorge Duany Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico has a peculiar status among Latin American and Caribbean countries. In the excerpt below, author Jorge Duany provides the necessary background for understanding the inner workings of the Commonwealth government and the island’s relationship to the United States. How did Puerto Rico become a US Commonwealth?
Power and politeness: key drivers behind profanity and self-censorship [excerpt] By Michael Adams Social conventions determine why we use profane language. The deliberate use (or avoidance) of profanity is often a socially conscious decision: self-censorship may be driven by politeness, while profane language may be used to establish a sense of power. The following shortened excerpt from In Praise of Profanity by Michael Adams takes a look at the connotations behind of profanity and analyzes the social drivers behind its usage.
Can we reduce the US prison population by half? By Matthew Epperson Over five years ago, a colleague and I began a conversation that eventually led to the development of the Smart Decarceration Initiative. The aim of this initiative is to advance policy and practice innovations in order to substantially reduce incarceration rates, while simultaneously addressing racial and behavioral health disparities in the criminal justice system and maximizing public safety and well-being.
The life and works of Elizabeth Gaskell By Mara Sandroff On 29 September 2017, we celebrate the 207th birthday of Elizabeth Gaskell, a nineteenth century English novelist whose works reflect the harsh conditions of England’s industrial North. Unlike some of her contemporaries, whose works are told from the perspectives of middle class characters, Gaskell did not restrict herself, and her novels Mary Barton and Ruth feature working class heroines.
The story behind the image By Roxanne Tajbakhsh A clinical placement abroad is a unique and eye-opening experience for any young medic. Away from the organised bustle of the hospital wards and state-of-the art lab equipment, they must learn to overcome cultural, linguistic, and environmental barriers in order to deliver exceptional care to those in need. In June, our 2017 Clinical Placement Competition came to a close.
Listening to ‘all our stories’: An insider’s guide to #OHA2017 in the Twin Cities By Gabriale Payne A few weeks ago we began counting down to the OHA Annual Meeting, which is now just around the corner. Today, as promised, we bring you an insider’s look at Twin Cities from Gabriale Payne, who will be our correspondent on the ground throughout the conference. Enjoy her tips, and add your own suggestions in the comments below or on Twitter using the hashtag #OHA2017.
A Conversation With ALSCW President Ernest Suarez, Part 2 By Ernest Suarez Last week, we shared an interview with Ernest Suarez, president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), the society who publishes Literary Imagination. Today, we continue the conversation, and with it, we are able to get an even closer and more personal look into the life of a literary academic.
An insight into choral singing in the UK [infographic] By Abigail Le Marquand-Brown and Elanor Caunt Some say it is the effect of Gareth Malone’s TV programme The Choir, others claim that it is a result of research pointing to the many health benefits to singing in a choir; whatever the cause, it is undeniable that choral singing in the UK has seen something of a renaissance in recent years. Explore this infographic to find out more about the state of choral singing in the UK.
Reflections on music’s life lessons By Julie Jaffee Nagel I find myself reflecting upon my own experiences in music as a student, a piano teacher, a performer, a psychologist and a psychoanalyst. How did I get from “then” to “now”? Who assisted me along my winding journey? Do you ever wonder these things about yourself?
How well could you manage a crime scene? By Rebecca Parker The role of a crime scene manager is one which is complex; it requires a wide range of forensic, policing, and practical knowledge. A crime scene manager must be well organised, observant, and meticulous to ensure that the processing of crime scenes follow rules.
Integrative Environmental Medicine How ‘green’ are you at work? [quiz] By Anna Shannon With sea level rising and ice caps rapidly melting, the danger signs of global warming are evident, increasing the need to be environmentally friendly. However, much of this focus is on being environmentally friendly at home. Many of us spend a large proportion of our time at work, making it just as crucial to be ‘green’ at work, as we are at home.
The death of secularism By Andrew Copson Secularism is under threat. From Turkey to USA, India to Russia, parts of Europe and the Middle East, secularism is being attacked from all sides: from the left, from the right, by liberal multiculturalists and illiberal totalitarians, abused by racists and xenophobes as a stick with which to beat minorities in diverse societies, subverted by religious fundamentalists planning its destruction.
The soldier and the statesman: A Vietnam War story By Gregory Daddis We need to “send someone over there as a cop to watch over that son-of-a-bitch.” “I have no confidence” in him. “I think he’s run his course.” These remarks—excerpts from conversations between President Richard M. Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger—left little doubt about how the White House’s inner circle viewed the top US general in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams.
Five things you didn’t know about “Over the Rainbow” By Walter Frisch “Over the Rainbow,” with music by Harold Arlen and E. Y. “Yip” Harburg, is one of the most beloved songs of all time, especially as sung by Judy Garland in her role as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 MGM film The Wizard of Oz. The song itself is familiar all over the world. But some things […]
Etymology gleanings for September 2017 By Anatoly Liberman Cognates and borrowing once again It has been known for a long time that the only difference between borrowing and genetic relation is one of chronology. Engl. town once meant “enclosure,” as German Zaun still does. Russian tyn also means “fence.” There is a consensus that the Russian word is a borrowing from Germanic because […]
Race in America: parallels between the 1860s, 1960s, and today [extract] By James M. McPherson The American Civil War remains deeply embedded in our national identity. Its legacy can be observed through modern politics—from the Civil Rights Movement to #TakeAKnee. In the following extract from The War That Forged a Nation, acclaimed historian James M. McPherson discusses the relationship between the Civil War and race relations in American history.
Mahbub ul Haq: pioneering a development philosophy for people By Khadija Haq Mahbub ul Haq was the pioneer in developing the concept of human development. He not only articulated the human development philosophy for making economic development plans but he also provided the world with a statistical measure to quantify the indicators of economic growth with human development. In the field of development economics, Haq was regarded as an original thinker and a major innovator of fresh ideas.
Following the trail of a mystery By Daniel C. Taylor What would you think, when crossing a Himalayan glacier, if you found this footprint? Clearly some animal made the mark. This print is in a longer line of tracks, and shows not just one animal. The print looks like a person’s … but that gigantic toe on what is a left foot has the arch on the outside of the foot. Big toe on one side, the arch on the other, three tiny toes? And the longer line of footprints suggests that a family of mysteries walked the route.
Stoicism, Platonism, and the Jewishness of Early Christianity By Troels Engberg-Pedersen The last few decades have taught us that speaking of Stoicism, Platonism, and Judaism as constituting a single context for understanding Early Christianity is not a contradiction (Stoicism and Platonism here; Judaism there), but rather entirely correct. The roots of Christianity are obviously Jewish, but in the Hellenistic and Roman periods Judaism itself was part of Greco-Roman culture.
Leipzig’s Marx monument and the dustbin of history By Andrew Demshuk What could Karl Marx have to do with Charlottesville? At an historic moment when debates rage about the fate of memorials across much of the United States, it is instructive to explore how the politics of memory have evolved for contentious monuments on another continent. In communist East Germany, oxidized brass and copper semblances of […]
Let the world see By Christopher Metress When Emmett Till’s body arrived at the Illinois Central train station in Chicago on 2 September 1955, the instructions from the authorities in Mississippi were clear: the casket containing the young boy must be buried unopened, intact and with the seal unbroken. Later that morning, Till’s mother, Mamie Till Bradley, instructed funeral home director Ahmed Rayner to defy this command.
On serendipity, metals, and networks By Miljana Radivojevic and Jelena Grujic “What connects archaeology and statistical physics?”, we asked ourselves one evening in The Marquis Cornwallis, a local Bloomsbury pub in London back in 2014, while catching up after more than a decade since our paths crossed last time. While bringing back the memories of that time we first met when we were both 16, it hit us that our enthusiasm for research we did as teenagers had not faded away
From Saviors to Scandal: Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker [timeline] By John Wigger The history of American televangelism is incomplete without the Bakker family, hosts of the popular television show the PTL Club. From their humble beginnings to becoming leaders of a ministry empire that included their own satellite network, a theme park, and millions of adoring fans. Then they saw it all come falling down amidst a federal investigation into financial mishandling, charges of fraud, and a sex scandal with a church worker.
Free speech and political stagflation By Gregory P. Magarian First Amendment Law is distorting public debate. We need the Supreme Court to do better. Public political debate in the United States seems to have run off the rails. The gulf between Republicans and Democrats in political opinions, views of the other party, and even factual beliefs keeps growing. Big money dominates the electoral process. Journalists and political dissenters face relentless hostility.
Banned, burned, and now rebuilding: Comics collections in libraries By Carol Tilley Comics is both a medium—although some would say it’s an art form—as well as the texts produced in that medium. Publication formats and production modes differ: for instance, comics can be short-form or long-form, serialized or stand-alone, single panel or sequential panels, and released as hardcovers, trade paperbacks, floppies, ‘zines, or in various digital formats. […]
Mathematical reasoning and the human mind [excerpt] By Luke Heaton Mathematics is more than the memorization and application of various rules. Although the language of mathematics can be intimidating, the concepts themselves are built into everyday life. In the following excerpt from A Brief History of Mathematical Thought, Luke Heaton examines the concepts behind mathematics and the language we use to describe them.
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: an audio guide By Rosamund Bartlett Anna Karenina is a beautiful and intelligent woman, whose passionate love for a handsome officer sweeps aside all other ties—to her marriage and to the network of relationships and moral values that bind the society around her. Her love affair with Vronsky is played out alongside the developing romance between Kitty and Levin, and in […]
1617: commemorating the Reformation [excerpt from 1517] By Peter Marshall Martin Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg is one of the most famous events in Western history – but did it actually happen on 31 October 1517? In this shortened excerpt Peter Marshall looks at the commemoration of the Reformation’s centenary in 1617 that further cemented the idea that Martin Luther posted his theses on the 31 October 1517 precisely.
What do the people want? By John Morison It has become commonplace for Government departments at all levels to ask people for their views. It seems as if no new policy or legislative plan can be launched without an extensive period of consultation with all those who may be affected. The UK government’s website page for ‘Consultations’ lists 494 consultations published already this year out of a total of 3,796 since the decade began.
Breaking down the Internet’s influence on grammar and punctuation [excerpt] By David Crystal The Internet has become a key part of modern communication. But how has it influenced language structure? Surprisingly, formal writing remains unchanged. Informal writing, however, has seen an influx of stylistic changes. In the following shortened extract from Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of English Grammar, renowned linguist David Crystal breaks down the grammatical and syntactical evolution of language in the Internet-era.
Reforming the sovereign debt regime By Skylar Brooks and Eric Helleiner Since the start of its debt crisis in 2010, Greek citizens have suffered through seven years of agonizing austerity to satisfy the conditions of multiple consecutive bailouts from their official sector creditors – the so-called ‘Troika’, composed of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). And for what? What went wrong? There are many valid answers to this question.
Why we still believe in the state By Vincent Depaigne How do we explain the resilience of the modern state? State power, whether expressed by politicians, parliamentarians, policemen, or judges, seems to be routinely questioned. Yet, the state as an institution remains. The constitutional state is today the universal expression of power despite its constant questioning and its lack of ability to maintain a minimal order in large parts of the world.
The mystery behind Frances Coke Villiers [extract] By Johanna Luthman Frances Coke Villiers was raised in a world which demanded women to be obedient, silent, and chaste. At the age of fifteen, Frances was forced to marry John Villiers, the elder brother of the Duke of Buckingham, as a means to secure her father’s political status. Defying both social and religious convention, Frances had an affair with Sir Robert Howard, and soon became pregnant with his child. The aftermath of their affair set Frances against some of the most influential people in seventeenth century England.
Philosopher of the month: Mary Wollstonecraft [quiz] By John Priest This September, the OUP Philosophy team honors Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) as their Philosopher of the Month. Wollstonecraft was a novelist, a moral and political philosopher, an Enlightenment thinker and a key figure in the British republican milieu. She is often considered the foremother of western feminism, best known for A Vindication of the Rights of […]
A conversation with ALSCW President Ernest Suarez- part 1 By Ernest Suarez We seldom have opportunity to get the inside-scoop on a journal from those who work so hard to make it possible. We caught up with Ernest Suarez, president of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), the society who publishes Literary Imagination.
From lawyer to librarian: one woman’s journey By Isabel Hermida Cornelio In our household, reading came as easily as breathing. It was a part of our identity, ingrained and passed down through generations of scholars, writers, and thinkers in our family tree. It was a joy and it felt necessary to life. Bedtime stories, visits to the bookstore, talks about books, and buying books on trips abroad with our parents were second nature to my sister and me.
The switch to electric cars By Nick Jelley Much has been written about autonomous, driverless vehicles. Though they will undoubtedly have a huge impact as artificial intelligence (AI) develops, the shift to electric cars is equally important, and will have all sorts of consequences for the United Kingdom. The carbon dioxide emissions from petrol and diesel cars account for about 10% of the global energy-related CO2 emissions
Trump, trans, and threat By Anna L. Weissman On 26 July, 2017, President Trump tweeted his plan to ban transgender individuals from serving in the military. Besides the “tremendous medical costs” that he cited (which is actually less than a thousandth of 1% of the Defense Department’s annual budget), Trump referenced the idea of “disruption.” When I read the tweet, a thought crossed my mind: What exactly is being disrupted?
Smile like you mean it By Murray Smith “With a camera you can go into the stomach of a kangaroo,” mused Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. “But to look at the human face, I think, is the most fascinating.” It is hard to contest Bergman’s claim that “the great gift of cinematography is the human face” – or at least that it is one such gift.
Love and hate politics By Michael Hardt ‘Love versus hate’ has become a standard frame for describing today’s primary political divide. In the face of the world-wide rise of right-wing movements and governments, and especially since the demonstration of fascist and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, it is generally taken for granted that hatred is the prime motivation for the most horrible and destructive political forces.
Erich von Stroheim, the child of his own loins By Fanny Lignon Even though Erich von Stroheim passed away 60 years ago, it is clear that his persona is still very much alive. His silhouette and his name are enough to evoke an emblematic figure that is at once Teutonic, aristocratic and military.
America’s darkest hour: a timeline of the My Lai Massacre By Howard Jones On the morning of 16 March 1968, soldiers from three platoons of Charlie Company entered a group of hamlets located in the Son Tinh district of South Vietnam on a search-and-destroy mission. Although no Viet Cong were present, the GIs proceeded to murder more than five hundred unarmed villagers.
Seven reasons to get your memory evaluated By Andrew E. Budson A question that I am often asked by family members, friends, and even by other physicians and nurses that I work with, is “Should I get my memory evaluated?” Partly, the question is asked because they have noticed memory problems, and are struggling to sort out whether theses lapses are an inevitable part of normal aging versus the start of something more ominous, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
A Q&A with oncologist Pamela Goodwin By Pamela Goodwin Like many oncologists, Dr. Pamela Goodwin first developed an interest in oncology following seeing a family member affected by cancer. Today, she leads JNCI Cancer Spectrum as Editor-in-Chief, publishing cancer research in an array of topics. Recently, we interviewed Dr. Goodwin, who shared her thoughts about the journal, the field of oncology, and her visions for the future.
Trashing Thurse, an international giant By Anatoly Liberman While working on my previous post (“What do we call our children?”), which, among several other words, featured imp, I realized how often I had discussed various unclean spirits in this blog. There was once an entire series titled “Etymological Devilry.” Over the years, I have dealt with Old Nick, grimalkin, gremlin, bogey, goblin, and […]
Invasion: Edwardian Britain’s nightmare By David G. Morgan-Owen mages of future war were a prominent feature of British popular culture in the half century before the First World War. Writers like H.G. Wells thrilled their readers with tales of an extra-terrestrial attack in his 1897 The War of the Worlds, and numerous others wrote of French, German, or Russian invasions of Britain.
Tolkien trivia: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” By Kim Vollrodt “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit” – the opening line of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit is among the most famous first lines in literature, and introduces readers to the most homely fantasy creatures ever invented: the Hobbits. Hobbits are a race of half-sized people, very similar to humans except for their […]
Cultural shifts in protest groups By Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Protest and counterculture in America have evolved over time. From the era of civil rights to Black Lives Matter, gatherings of initially small groups growing to become powerful voices of revolution have changed the way we define contemporary cultural movements. In this excerpt from Assembly, authors Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri examine how some minority protest groups have adapted over time to be more inclusive in their organizational models without having a sole defined leader.
To be a great student, you need to be a great student of time management By Darren A Smith You might be brilliant. An exceptional student. But if you can’t get your paper in on-time, revise ahead of the exam, or juggle a busy student & home life, then no-one will ever know how you brilliant you are. Time management is the skill that unlocks everything else. If you want to get more done you need to be a great student of time management because this is the key that can open every door.
Nikolai Trubetzkoy’s road to history By Edwin Battistella A century ago, the Russian Revolution broke out in November of 1917, followed by a bloody civil war lasting until the early 1920s. Millions of families were displaced, fleeing to Europe and Asia. One of the many emigrant stories was that of Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy. Trubetzkoy was from a well-known aristocratic family in tsarist Russia, […]
Q&A with editors Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler By Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler “Jews are becoming increasingly familiar with the New Testament as a source of Jewish history.” Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler are the editors of the new second edition of The Jewish Annotated New Testament. We caught up with them to discuss and ask questions related to the editing process, biblical studies, and the status and importance of Jewish-Christian relations.
Involving kids in music: a lifelong gift By Amy Nathan “My status as a musician hasn’t been a large part of my public identity since the beginning of high school. I took lessons and practiced at home, and that was it. But even that yielded other, more private lessons that my flute seemed to teach me. Those lessons will stay with me for much longer,”
7 questions we should ask about children’s literature By Philip Nel White nationalism is on the rise in the US and nativism is in the ascendant across the globe. What role can literature for children play in teaching the next generation to be more empathetic, to respect difference, and to reject hatred?
Why do humans commit extraordinary evil? By Guenter Lewy The hideous deeds committed by members of ISIS raise the question why humans alone, among the species, at times engage in mass killings of their own kind. We can find help in understanding this vexing issue by looking at the men who organized and carried out the Nazis’ attempted destruction of the Jewish people known as the Holocaust.
Three top tips for writing sociology essays By Andrew Balmer and Anne Murcott Give the reader a guide to your argument. Much as you would give someone directions in how to get to where they’re going, tell your reader what steps you will take, what the key turning points will be, why it is important to take this route and, ultimately, where you will end up. In other words, tell your reader exactly what you will conclude and why, right at the beginning.
Singing resistance on the border By Derek Xavier García At an early age, Américo Paredes was preoccupied with the inexorable passing of time, which would leave an imprint in his academic career. Devoting his academic career to preserving and displaying Mexican-American traditions through thorough analysis and recording of folk-songs, it is clear that Paredes kept his focus on beating back the forces of time and amnesia. Indeed, Paredes’ lessons are still very much relevant today.
The trouble with elite cities By Alessandro Busà The transformation of the city into a pricey commodity for sale is one of the most profitable ventures in the current phase of capitalism. This is why private players and local governments are eager to invest monumental resources in the production and promotion of this ever more sophisticated, ever more seductive money-making machine: the city.
Challenging ageism through burlesque performance [video] By Kaitlyn Regehr and Matilda Temperly Five years ago, Kaitlyn Regehr and Matilda Temperley, documentarian and photographer respectively, set off for Las Vegas to interview members of the League of Exotic Dancers. At the Burlesque Hall of Fame, these legends—thriving sixty years past the supposed prime of burlesque—have created a community in “Old Vegas” where they continue to perform half-century-old routines.
Silas Marner, Threads, and Weaving [an excerpt] By Juliette Atkinson Repetition and storytelling are bound in the novel’s representation of weaving, a theme that exemplifies the manner in which Silas Marner deftly moves between fable and realism. Classical mythology and fairy tales are crowded with weavers. Silas’s insect-like activity (he is reduced ‘to the unquestioning activity of a spinning insect’ and ‘seemed to weave, like the spider, from pure impulse, without reflection’ (p. 14)) calls to mind the myth of Arachne, who boldly challenged a goddess to a weaving contest.
The morality of genocide By Herman T. Salton Among the thousands of pictures displayed in that monument to human depravity which is the Tuol Sleng Centre outside Phnom Penh —now part of Cambodia’s “dark tourism” circuit—, one stands out. It is the picture of a middle-aged man, eyes wide open, his identity reduced to a plastic sign bearing the inmate number “404” pinned to his collar. The image is conspicuous not because of any sign of violence—unlike other images at the former school turned-into-torture-centre, and then museum—but because of the man’s facial expression.
The traps of social media: to ‘like’ or not to ‘like’ By Gill Grassie A recent Swiss case reported in the media has raised the spectre of criminal liability and/or defamation for merely ‘liking’ a 3rd party post on Facebook. Whilst this may have been the first time that this specific issue has come up in court it may not be the last! We are all already very aware of the trouble that can result from indulging in posts and tweets on line which may cause offence but until now merely ‘liking’ a post has not, to the author’s knowledge, given rise to any liability.
Healthcare during Harvey By Kevin Schwechten As an emergency room doctor, I was boots on the ground! I work at several companies and have several different hospitals I go to, Houston and Beaumont. Just after the storm hit Beaumont, record floods swamped the area. And I drove in to work. Through two feet of water. But after arrival, I manned my post and an extraordinary thing happened. Most of us in my neighborhood are pilots with small planes and it’s a great life.
William Dean Howells and the Gilded Age [excerpt] By Richard White Through his writing, novelist and critic William Dean Howells captured the political and social aftermath of the Civil War. Given his limited involvement in politics, Howells’ works focused on the lives of common people over the uncommon, whom he deemed “essentially unattractive and uninteresting.” In the following excerpt from The Republic For Which It Stands, […]
After Mosul, are borders and state sovereignty still an issue in the Middle East? By Raffaella A. Del Sarto and Asli S. Okyay After three years of ISIS occupation, the Iraqi army reconquered most of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, in July. As the self-declared caliphate—the world’s richest terrorist organization—has been losing considerable territory over the last two years, and with the international borders of most states in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) still intact, is the survival of the state system in the region still an issue of concern?
Back to biology: a reading list By Science Marketing Team Autumn is here and it’s time for students to head back to University. To help our biology students ease back into their studies, we’ve organized a brief reading list. Whether you’re studying human biology, ecology, or microbiology – these selections will help undergraduate and graduate students get back into the swing of things this new school year.
Should bluegrass go to college? yes By Jocelyn Neal On July 5, 2017, Ted Lehmann’s weekly bluegrass column in No Depression asked this provocative question: Bluegrass goes to college, but should it? Through deft turn of phrase, Lehmann hints that the answer may be no, and that perhaps both the music’s historical integrity and today’s aspiring performers might not be best served via the college route.
How a failed suicide affects the brain By Gary L. Wenk The numerous factors that induce someone to think about suicide, the “ideators,” are often different from those who actually attempt suicide, the “attempters.” For example, the traditional risk factors for suicide, such as depression, hopelessness, many psychiatric disorders, and impulsivity, strongly predict suicide ideation but weakly predict suicide attempts among ideators.
The coinage of the Roman Emperor Nerva (AD 96-98) By Nathan T. Elkins On 18 September, in AD 96, the 65 year-old senator, Nerva, became emperor of Rome (Figure 1). His predecessor, Domitian, was assassinated in the culmination of a palace conspiracy; there is no evidence that Nerva had anything to do with the plot.
The independence of Anne Bradstreet By Wendy Martin When the eighteen year old Anne Bradstreet first arrived in the New World in 1630, she confessed that “her heart rose.” She had made the voyage on the Arbella from England to Salem, Massachusetts with her extended family as part of the Puritan “Errand into the Wilderness.” Bradstreet’s resolution to write from her personal experience as a woman is the wellspring of her most memorable poetry.
Introducing Jessica Barbour, the one behind the OUP Summer Choir Session By Sarah Lee and Vivian Yan This year New York Oxford University Press office started a Summer OUP Choir Session! Originally, it began as a holiday initiative in the Winter of 2014–ending with a spectacular performance at the holiday party.
Aesthetics and politics: Donald Trump’s idea of art and beauty By Louis René Beres President Donald Trump’s description of Confederate statues as “beautiful” merely mirrors his previously-mentioned objects of aesthetic preference. Before the statues, there was the “beautiful wall,” an oddly-conceived barrier prospectively bedecked with a “beautiful door.” But it’s not just about walls and buildings. Mr. Trump’s most frequent references to beauty have had to do with women.
Boredom’s push By Andreas Elpidorou There are crimes of passion, those of rage and of love. And then, there are crimes of boredom. Arson, animal abuse, and murder have all been committed in the name of boredom.
Who is the expert on your well-being? By Anna Alexandrova The “science of well-being” (aka positive psychology, quality of life or happiness studies) applies scientific method to what was previously personal, inscrutable, philosophical–happiness and good life.
How to fight climate change (and save the world) By Peter Wadhams The ice caps are melting. Within a few years the North Pole will likely be ice-free for the first time in 10,000 years, causing what some call the “Arctic death spiral.” In the following excerpt from A Farewell to Ice, Peter Wadhams explains what we can do today to fight climate change. What can we do, both individually and collectively, to try to save the world? There is a massive list, of course, but I will pick out a few actions that might make a real difference.
Discussing family medicine: Q&A with Jeffrey Scherrer By Jeffrey Scherrer Family medicine plays a large role in day-to-day healthcare. To further our knowledge of the primary care landscape, we’re thrilled to welcome Jeffrey Scherrer, PhD, as the new Editor-in-Chief of Family Practice, a journal that takes an international approach of the problems and preoccupations in the field. Jeffrey sat down with us recently to discuss his vision for the journal’s future and his work in research and mentorship.
Diving into the OHR Archive By Andrew Shaffer One of my favorite tasks as the OHR’s Social Media Coordinator is interviewing people for the blog. I get to talk to authors of recent articles from the OHR, oral historians using the power of conversation to create change, and a whole lot more.
A Q&A with composer Malcolm Archer By Malcolm Archer Malcolm Archer’s career as a church musician has taken him to posts at Norwich, Bristol, Wells Cathedrals, and St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. As a composer, Malcolm has published many works; his pieces are widely performed, recorded and broadcast and are greatly enjoyed for their approachable nature and singability. We spoke with Malcolm about his writing, his inspiration, and his career ambitions besides being a composer.
Philosopher of the month: Mary Wollstonecraft [infographic] By Catherine Pugh, John Priest, and Panumas King This September, the OUP Philosophy team honors Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) as their Philosopher of the Month. Wollstonecraft was a novelist, a moral and political philosopher, an Enlightenment thinker and a key figure in the British republican milieu. She is often considered the foremother of western feminism, best known for A Vindication of the Rights of […]
The three principles of democracy [excerpt] By James T. Kloppenberg Whether or not true democracy can ever be achieved remains uncertain. Historian James T. Kloppenberg argues that while democracy can be defined as an ethical ideal, the practical definition of democracy is too contentious to be adopted as a political system. The following shortened excerpt from Toward Democracy analyzes three contested principles of democracy: popular sovereignty, autonomy, and equality.
Can narcolepsy research help solve one of the greatest medical mysteries of the 20th century? By Leslie A. Hoffman In late 1916, while the world was entrenched in the Great War, two physicians on opposing sides of the conflict started to encounter patients who presented with bizarre neurological signs. Most notably, the patients experienced profound lethargy, and would sleep for abnormally long periods of time. One of the physicians, Constantin von Economo, was at the Psychiatric-Neurological Clinic at the University of Vienna.
A mission to Saturn and its discoveries Cassini was the NASA-developed Saturn orbiter, and Huygens was the European-built probe that sat on-board, which would eventually descend on to the surface of Saturn’s biggest moon, Titan. Cassini will come to an end on 15th September 2017, when it makes its final approach to Saturn, diving in to the atmosphere (sending data as it goes), and finally burning up and disintegrating like a meteor.
Strategy challenged, part 2 By Mark Gibson An overlooked aspect of the conductor’s rehearsal procedure is the precise planning of any given rehearsal and of the rehearsal trajectory, from first reading to final dress, toward the end of “peaking” at the concert.
What do we call our children? By Anatoly Liberman In the Indo-European languages, most words for “mother,” “father,” “son,” and “daughter” are very old—most (rather than all), because some have been replaced by their rivals. Thus, Latin filia “daughter” is the feminine of filius “son,” and filius has nothing to do with son, which is indeed ancient.
What are the moral implications of intelligent AGI? [excerpt] By Margaret A. Boden The possibility of human-level Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) remains controversial. While its timeline remain uncertain, the question remains: if engineers are able to develop truly intelligent AGI, how would human-computer interactions change? In the following excerpt from AI: Its Nature and Future, artificial intelligence expert Margaret A. Boden discusses the philosophical consequences behind truly intelligent AGI.
Will the real Robinson Crusoe please stand up? By Alvin Birdi It is difficult to think of a literary narrative, other than Robinson Crusoe, that economists have so enthusiastically appropriated as part of their cultural heritage. The image of Robinson, shipwrecked, alone, and forced to decide how to use his finite resources, has become almost emblematic in the teaching of the problem of choice in economics.
Back to physics: a reading list Back to university means picking out the best textbooks to use for your studies. If you’re just starting out in your first year of studies or are pursuing further degree in a more specialized field, we have some great resources to explore. From the basics of fundamental physics to the intricacies of understanding light-matter interaction, this list provides the best starting point for under-graduates and post-graduates alike.
Moses Mendelssohn’s Hebrew politics By Elias Sacks How tolerant and diverse should a society be? Are there limits to the views that a society should accept? Can individuals from diverse backgrounds join together to contribute to the common good, and what happens when tensions arise between different groups? Given the events of 2016-2017, such questions stand at the forefront of American civic life. Questions relating to diversity and tolerance loomed large in Mendelssohn’s life.
Racist medicine: a history of race and health By Christopher Willoughby In 1999, the human genome project declared race a biological fiction with no basis in the genetic code. Despite this position, many physicians and medical scientists continue to use race in genetic studies, drug tests, and general practice. Since racial medicine persists, the question emerges: what’s the historical relationship between the medical profession and race? […]
Which reptile are you? [quiz] Reptiles have inspired some of the most recognizable characters in popular fiction including the gold-hoarding Smaug, the iconic dragon trio from Game of Thrones, and the mascot of Hogwarts’ most infamous house, Slytherin. How do your personality traits match up to those of our reptilian comrades? Find out which reptile you most closely resemble!
Infrequently asked questions: The Monologic Imagination By Julian Millie and Matt Tomlinson In the online age, a tried and true method of conveying a lot of information succinctly is the “Frequently Asked Questions” portion of a webpage. In the spirit of honesty and forthrightness, we’re naming our contribution to this blog “Infrequently Asked Questions.”
Taxing or exempting the church By Edward A. Zelinsky Religious entities pay more taxes than many people believe. Moreover, churches and other religious organizations are treated quite diversely by different taxes and by different states. Sometimes churches and other religious entities are taxed in the same fashion as secular organizations and persons are.
Five fascinating questions physicists are seeking to answer From Copernicus to Einstein, the field of Physics has changed drastically over time. With each new theory, further hypotheses appear that challenge conventional wisdom. Today, although topics such as the Big Bang Theory and General Relativity are well-established, there are still some debates that keep physicists up at night. What are your thoughts on the five of the biggest current debates in Physics?
Rebuilding New York City By Lynne B. Sagalyn In the weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, New York City’s position as the center of the financial world came into question. Now, 16-years after the day that could have permanently changed the course of New York’s history, downtown Manhattan rebuilt both its buildings and status of importance. Lynne B. Sagalyn examines the economic impact of the World Trade Center’s fall and rise in the following excerpt from Power at Ground Zero.
Russia, sanctions, and the future of international law By Lauri Mälksoo The current geopolitical and military troubles between the West and the Russian Federation are simultaneously also international legal troubles. One of the interesting aspects of the Western sanctions against Russia since 2014 has been that Moscow has criticized them as ‘illegal’. There are two elements in Moscow’s unexpected argument. On the one hand, Moscow denies any wrongdoing, from international legal perspective, in Ukraine.
The value of money [excerpt] By David Harvey Money. The root of all evil. It can’t buy you love, but it makes the world go round. Few people understood the vast complexities of currency better than Karl Marx. His book Capital, is seen by many as the authoritative theoretical text on economy, politics, and materialist philosophy. Its vast critiques have fostered new studies on capitalist practices relating to what exactly is ‘value’, many of which are still referenced today by countless economic experts.
The Asian financial crisis: lessons learned and unlearned By Yilmaz Akyüz Governments no doubt draw lessons from financial crises and adopt measures to prevent their recurrence. However, these often address the causes of the last crisis but not the next one. More importantly, they can actually become the new sources of instability and crisis. This appears to be the case in Asia where the lessons drawn from the 1997 crisis and the measures implemented thereupon may be inadequate.
The dangerous stigma behind military suicides [excerpt] By John Bateson Terms such as “Soldier’s Heart,” “shell shock,” and “Combat Stress Reaction” have all been used to describePost Traumatic Stress Disorder in the military. War and PTSD have a long history together, as does the stigma behind mental health within military culture.In the following excerpt from The Last and Greatest Battle John Bateson discusses the dangers of underreported PTSD and the steps we can take to help prevent military suicides.
Allen Ginsberg and Ann Coulter walk into an auditorium… By Matt Theado Ann Coulter, a controversial right-wing author and commentator, was tentatively scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley on April 27 until pre-speech protests turned into violent clashes, and her speech was canceled. In response, Coulter tweeted, “It’s sickening when a radical thuggish institution like Berkeley can so easily snuff out the cherished American right to free speech.”
Taxing multinationals – has the international tax system been fixed? By Richard Collier and Joseph L. Andrus Over the last few years, concerns have been repeatedly voiced about the effectiveness of the international tax system. Much of the debate has focused on the rules which deal with the allocation of income within multinational groups of companies. These concerns are illustrated by several recent high-profile disputes relating to the use of tax haven vehicles which involve companies such as Google, Starbucks, Amazon, and Apple.
A new view of authoritarianism and partisan polarization By Matthew D. Luttig Democrats and Republicans are increasingly polarized. Partisan strength is up, feelings toward the two parties are more extreme, and partisans are more intolerant of the other side. What gives rise to the partisan divide in American politics? One prominent theory is that Democrats and Republicans are polarized today because they differ psychologically. Republicans have become more authoritarian and Democrats less so.
George Washington’s early love of literature [excerpt] By Kevin J. Hayes Unlike his contemporaries Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton—George Washington isn’t remembered as an intellectual. But for what he lacked in formal education, Washington made up for in enthusiasm for learning. His personal education began at an early age and continued throughout his adult life. In the following excerpt from George Washington: A Life in Books, historian Kevin J. Hayes gives insight into Washington’s early love of literature.
How long should children fast for clear fluids before general anaesthesia? By Mark Thomas Anyone who has had a general anaesthetic will be well aware of the need to fast beforehand. ‘Nil by mouth’ (NBM) or ‘NPO’ (nil per os, os being the Latin for mouth) instructions are part of everyday life on pre-operative wards. This withholding of food and liquids before a general anaesthetic is necessary is because of the risk of the full stomach emptying all or parts of its contents into the patient’s lungs.
Top tips for a healthy heart By Melanie Pheby Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the most common cause of death in the UK, and is also a major killer worldwide. CHD is caused by fatty deposits building up in a person’s coronary arteries and can lead to symptoms including heart attacks, angina and heart failure. The chances are that you’re already aware of many of the key contributing lifestyle factors which cause people to develop CHD
How well do you know the history of physics? [quiz] By Steven Filippi Less than four centuries separate the end of the Renaissance and the theories of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton from the development of quantum physics at the turn of the 20th century. During this transformative time, royal academies of science, instrument-making workshops, and live science demonstrations exploded across the continent as learned and lay people alike absorbed the spectacles of newfound technologies, devices, and innovations.
A photographer at work: Martin Parr behind the scenes By Nasir Hamid Martin Parr is one of Britain’s best-known contemporary photographers, with a broad international following, and President of Magnum, the world-famous photo agency. His social documentary style of photography turns a wry and sometimes satirical lens on British life and social rituals, lightened by humour and affection. Parr turned his lens on life at the University of Oxford, capturing the day-to-day life of the colleges and University at work and play.
National Beer Lover’s Day playlist By George Currie 7 September is National Beer Lover’s Day, a day to celebrate a shared passion for a drink that has been brewed for over 5000 years. Why not enjoy your favourite lager or ale with some beer-related music to get you into the spirit of things. Our beer-infused song selection takes you from the cheery delights of The Housemartins’ to Julian Cope’s “As the Beer Flows Over Me”. We have plenty of anthems, and plain old drinking songs to provide the soundtrack to your Beer Lover’s Day celebrations.
10 facts about the bassoon By Vivian Yan Rising to popularity in the 15th century, the bassoon is a large woodwind instrument that belongs to the oboe family and looks similar to the oboe in terms of coloring and use of the double reed. The bassoon enabled expansion of the range of woodwind instruments into lower registers.
“O dearest Haemon”: the passionate silence of Sophocles’ Antigone By Patrick Finglass Anyone reading Sophocles’ Antigone in the Oxford Classical Text of 1924, edited by A. C. Pearson, will sooner or later come across the following passage. Antigone has defied Creon’s decree that the body of her brother Polynices, who had recently fallen in battle when waging war against his homeland of Thebes, should be left unburied; discovered, she has been brought before the new ruler.
A few bogus etymologies: “tantrum,” “dander,” “dandruff,” and “dunderhead,” along with “getting one’s goat” Bogus, tantrum, and dander are fairly recent additions to the vocabulary of English. Like so many newcomers, they are words of unknown etymology. My greatest ambition is to promote their status from “unknown” to “uncertain.”
Don’t play politics with the debt ceiling By Richard S. Grossman It must be frustrating to be a Congressional Democrat these days. The minority party in both the House and Senate and having lost the White House, the only thing keeping the Democrats relevant is a dysfunctional White House and a disunited Republican majority in Congress. There is, however, one area in which they should drop any obstructionism and play ball with the Republicans—raising the debt ceiling.
Can burlesque be described as “feminist”? By Kaitlyn Regehr and Matilda Temperley Is burlesque an expression of sex-positive feminism, or is it inherently sexist? In the following excerpt from The League of Exotic Dancers: Legends from American Burlesque, documentarian Kaitlyn Regehr and photographer Matilda Temperley share narratives by burlesque dancers who embraced this form of art as an early expression of women’s rights.
Werner Herzog’s hall of mirrors By Brad Prager Werner Herzog turns 75 this September and remains as productive as ever. More than only a filmmaker, he directs operas, instructs online courses, and occasionally makes cameo appearances on television shows including Parks & Recreation and The Simpsons. He has been directing films for nearly six decades, and he released three feature-length films within months of each other in 2016.
Organ Donation Week: A reading list In light of Organ Donation Week (4-11th September 2017), we have drawn together a collection of articles around the same theme. Our reading list includes articles and chapters which inform, showcase, and discuss the latest research, key issues, and cases of interest in organ donation. The collection offers a sample of the breadth of content available on this topic
What drives displacement and refuge? By Alexander Betts and Paul Collier Global refugee numbers are at their highest levels since the end of World War II, but the system in place to deal with them, based upon a humanitarian list of imagined “basic needs,” has changed little. In this excerpt from Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World, authors Paul Collier and Alexander Betts explain the cause and effect of mass violence, a far too common pre-cursor to refugee crises and global displacement.
“The law is my data”: The socio-legal in environmental law By Steven Vaughan When I left practice to start my PhD, I was made to do a master’s degree in research methods as a condition of my doctoral funding. The ‘made’ in that first sentence is wholly intentional. I was quite clear, and quite vocal, that I had no interest in, and no need to study, methods. I knew exactly what form my PhD was going to take: an analysis of EU chemicals regulation using a new governance lens.
The conceptual evolution of mass and matter [excerpt] By Jim Baggott We learn in school science class that matter is not continuous, but discrete. As a few of the philosophers of ancient Greece once speculated nearly two-and-a-half thousand years ago, matter comes in “lumps.” If we dig around online we learn that we make paper by pressing together moist fibers derived from pulp. The pulp has an internal structure built from molecules (such as cellulose), and molecules are in turn constructed from atoms (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen).
Two paradoxes of belief By Roy T Cook The Liar paradox arises via considering the Liar sentence: L: L is not true. and then reasoning in accordance with the: T-schema: F is true if and only if what F says is the case. Along similar lines, we obtain the Montague paradox (or the paradox of the knower) by considering the following sentence: M: M is not knowable. and then reasoning in accordance with the following two claims: Factivity: If F is knowable then what F says is the case.
How to Begin and End Paragraphs By Edwin L. Battistella We should pay more attention to paragraphs. I know that sounds obvious, but what I’m fretting about is the advice that beginning writers get to begin paragraphs with topic sentences and end with summary sentences. Such a topic sandwich—filled in with subpoints, supporting sentences, and examples—lends itself to formulaic writing. This strategy of tell them […]
How to educate your child in the seventeenth century By Alyssa Russell The end of summer and beginning of autumn mean that children and young adults worldwide are heading back to school. While much has changed since the time of the seventeenth century – which children were allowed to go to school and which weren’t, and what they were taught there, for example – one thing that has not changed is the worry a parent feels about their child getting the best education they can.
What hearing voices reveals about hallucination and speech perception By Ben Alderson-Day and Cesar Lima Hearing things that other people do not – in other words, an auditory hallucination – is something that approximately 5-15% of the population experience at some point in their lives. For people with a psychiatric disorder such as schizophrenia, the experience of auditory hallucinations can often be bewildering and upsetting. However, for some people unusual sensory experiences can be an important and meaningful part of their lives.
Working class narratives in the twenty first century By Virginia Espino With school getting back in session, today on the blog we are exploring how instructors are using oral history in the classroom. The piece below, from filmmaker and UCLA Lecturer Virginia Espino explores the power of oral history to connect students to their campus community, and to help them collaboratively rethink what working class identity means in the modern era.
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Fifth Rhythm Changes Conference 2017 By Walter van de Leur On Thursday, 31 August, the Fifth Rhythm Changes Conference, themed “Re/Sounding Jazz” will kick off at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Rhythm Changes conferences are the largest jazz research conferences in the field, bringing together some 150 researchers from all over the globe. This year’s edition is produced in collaboration with the Conservatory of Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam.
Etymology gleanings for August 2017: “Getting on one’s wick” and other “nu-kelar” problems of etymology By Anatoly Liberman Dark. I am sorry for the unavoidable pun, but the origin of most adjectives for “dark” is obscure. This is what etymological dictionaries of German tell us about dunkel and finster.
Richardson / Laclos: A Mash-up of the Eighteenth-Century Novel By Karin Kukkonen What if the two most notorious libertines of the eighteenth-century novel, Samuel Richardson’s Lovelace and Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ Marquise de Merteuil, had met each other? Can their joint manipulations bring about victory for libertinism in the bourgeois novel? A mash-up of the eighteenth-century novel attempts an answer.
Microbiology in the city of arts and sciences By Sarah McKenna This year saw the biggest Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS) Congress to date, with over 2,700 delegates from 85 countries, including Australia, North America, and South Korea gathering in Valencia, Spain. Not only was it the biggest, it was also the most engaged; over 3,000 abstracts were submitted, over 220 delegates received FEMS Congress Grants to be able to attend, and nearly 250 speakers.
PTL and the history of American evangelicalism By John Wigger Over the course of fourteen years, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker built their local TV broadcast into an empire, making them two of the most recognizable televangelists in the United States. But their empire quickly fell when revelations of a sex scandal and massive financial mismanagement came to light. In the following excerpt John Wigger demonstrates the power of religion on American culture by tracing the fall of the PTL.
America’s forgotten war By Mark Whalan You probably don’t know it, but we are now in the centennial year of US entry into World War One. On April 2nd 1917, President Woodrow Wilson addressed a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany. Wilson had narrowly won re-election the year before by campaigning under the slogan “he kept us out of the war.”
What causes psychogenic amnesia? By Michael D. Kopelman The media love it. Films and novels fictionalise it. TV and newspapers want to follow a real patient around. They virtually always get it wrong (and the worst thing you can do for such a patient is put him/her on television). Psychogenic amnesia (also known as dissociative or functional amnesia) still intrigues and fascinates. In 1926, Agatha Christie, the acclaimed novelist, disappeared for 11 days.
States of affairs: the prominence of the 50 state governments during the Trump presidency By John Dinan Now that we have passed the 200-day mark of Donald Trump’s presidency and can take stock of elements of change and continuity in US policy-making in the new administration, it is important not to lose sight of the continued importance of state governments.
Mahler our contemporary By James L. Zychowicz With various commemorations of the birthday of Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) in July, the attention to this composer reinforces his continuing significance for modern audiences. Literary scholars have made cases for the ways in which Shakespeare’s works retain their relevance for modern audiences in such different works as Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary (1960) and Marjorie Garber’s Shakespeare and Modern Culture (2009).
Supreme Court of Canada challenges the idea of state sovereignty By Dan Svantesson It has been a busy time for the Supreme Court of Canada. In a judgment on 23 June 2017, it ruled that Facebook Inc’s forum selection clause was unenforceable in a case involving the application of British Columbia’s Privacy Act. The long-term value of that judgment is, however, questionable given that the Court was split 4-3, with one of the judges (Abella J.) deciding against Facebook, doing so on a different basis to the other three who ruled against Facebook.
The life of Martin Luther [timeline] By Heinz Schilling This year marks the 500th anniversary of the Reformation and Martin Luther posting his ninety-five theses on the door of All Saints’ Church and other churches in Wittenberg. Whether he actually did post the theses publicly has long been disputed, however his influence on Christianity hasn’t.
Sandy Denny and Schubert By Alan R. Harvey I have written elsewhere about how music, in a way that spoken language rarely does, can affect arousal, stimulate our emotions and memories, and move our bodies. It can even subtly alter our physiological state, both internally by altering heart rate, levels of hormones and so on, and externally – resulting in goose bumps, chills, tears, etc. This is the universal power of music
Mary Wollstonecraft: Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark: an audio guide By Jon Mee In this Oxford World’s Classics audio guide, listen to Professor Jon Mee of Warwick University, the author of the introduction to this volume–discuss Mary Wollstonecraft’s travels, views on the sublime, and the role of women in eighteenth century society. “If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, […]
The weight of the world: social workers’ experiences of social suffering By Mark Smith Long-standing concerns around the bureaucratic and often unhelpful nature of children and families social work were brought to a head in Prof Eileen Munro’s (2011) review of child protection. With colleagues, I recently completed a project involving social work academics and children and families social workers from neighbouring local authorities to try and facilitate such a shift in child protection cultures.
ESIL Annual Conference: the responses of international law By James A. Green, Rosalyn Higgins, Jean d’Aspremont, Lauri Mälksoo, Gregory S. Gordon, Marten Breuer, Hugh Thirlway, and Jo Wojtkowski In preparation for the European Society of International Law (ESIL) 13th Annual Conference, we asked some of our authors to reflect on this year’s conference theme ‘Global Public Goods, Global Commons and Fundamental Values: The Responses of International Law’. How should international law respond to the fundamental challenge of defining and regulating global public goods, global commons, and fundamental values?
Gunk as you never knew it By Anna Marmodoro ‘Is everything entirely made up of atoms? … Or is everything made up of atomless “gunk”—as Lewis (1991: 20) calls it—that divides forever into smaller and smaller parts?’ (Varzi 2014) The thought that matter is divisible has both intuitive appeal and empirical justification, and is a widespread position amongst ancient and modern philosophers. The thought […]
How well do you know Sir Karl Raimund Popper? [quiz] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This August, the OUP Philosophy team honours Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902–1994) as their Philosopher of the Month. A British (Austrian-born) philosopher, Popper’s considerable reputation comes from his work on the philosophy of science and his political philosophy. Popper is widely regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century. Think you know […]
How private are your prescription records? By Leslie Francis and John Francis Urgent public health crises generate pressures for access to information to protect the public’s health. Identifying patients with contagious conditions and tracing their contacts may seem imperative for serious diseases such as Ebola or SARS. But pressures for information reach far more broadly than the threat of deadly contagion. Such is the situation with the opioid epidemic, at least in Utah,
Uncovering the past, preparing for the future: renovation projects at the library By Katie D. Bennett It would be an understatement to say that the modern world is moving toward a more digital future. We are constantly bombarded with the persistent presence of technology, and for librarians, this change is a daily challenge.
Measuring for change: the road to smoke-free prisons By Sean Semple, Helen Sweeting, and Kate Hunt One large occupational group that has been required to work within smoking-permitted environments in the United Kingdom is prison staff. Almost three-quarters of prisoners are current smokers, levels not seen amongst men in the general population since around 1960. Not surprisingly, many prison staff report experiencing high levels of smoke in some areas, such as when they enter smokers’ cells and adjacent areas
What can the Zombie Apocalypse teach us about ourselves? [Video] By Greg Garrett Like war stories, like disaster films, like any kind of narrative that revolts and scares yet also delights us, the Zombie Apocalypse offers a laboratory for observing human emotion and experience. Its excess opens up a multitude of responses that don’t get explored in the course of our everyday lives, although these same choices lurk underneath the surface of all our lives.
Hitchcock and Shakespeare By Sidney Gottlieb There are two adjectives we commonly use when discussing artists and artistic things that we feel deserve serious attention and appreciation: Shakespearean and Hitchcockian. These two terms actually have quite a bit in common, not only in how and why they are used but also in what they specifically refer to, and closely examining the ways in which Hitchcock is Shakespearean can be very revealing.
9780190626341 Why a deteriorating doctor-patient relationship should worry us By Timothy J. Hoff If there is a single profound thing that has occurred in health care over the past couple of decades, that has neither benefitted patients or the doctors who care for them, nor the health system as a whole, it is the fairly rapid deterioration of the physician-patient relationship as the centerpiece of effective, satisfying, and high quality health care delivery.
10 facts about the waterphone By Abigail Le Marquand-Brown Unless you’re a pioneer for strange methods of sound production or the film director for a horror film, the chances are that you’ve never heard of OUP’s instrument of the month for August; however, that doesn’t mean that you haven’t heard it being played, and in fact, you probably have without realising!
The Paris Peace Conference and postwar politics [extract] By Michael S. Neiberg But the centerpiece of the Paris Peace Conference was always the Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, five years to the day after a teenaged Serbian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, had assassinated Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. The treaty and the conference are thus closely linked but not quite synonymous.
A fake etymology of the word “fake,” with deep thoughts on “Fagin” and other names in Dickens By Anatoly Liberman I do not know the etymology of fake, and no one knows, but, since the phrase fake news is in everybody’s mouth, I am constantly asked where the word fake came from. I’ll now say what I can about this subject, in order to be able to refer to this post in the future and from now on live in peace.
What can baker’s yeast tell us about drug response? By Christina A. Roberts Pharmaceutical drugs are an integral part of healthcare, but a treatment regimen that works for one individual may not produce the same benefit for another. Additionally, a given drug dose may be well-tolerated by some, but produce undesired (and sometimes severe) adverse effects in others. In the United States (with similar statistics in other parts of the world), serious drug adverse reactions account for over 6% of hospitalisations
The steeples of Essex and Tyrone: Irish historians and Brexit By Alvin Jackson One of the glib accusations levelled against Irish history is that it never changes–that its fundamental themes are immutable. Equally, one of the common accusations against Irish historians is that (despite decades of learned endeavour) they have utterly failed to shift popular readings of the island’s past. Yes, the Good Friday Agreement and its St […]
Gottschalk: a ninth-century heretic, dissenter, and religious outlaw By Matthew Bryan Gillis “Just as a dog returns to its own vomit, so a fool reverts to his folly” (Proverbs 26:11). Thus did medieval church officials condemn unrepentant heretics and those who recanted, but later allegedly returned to their crimes. The typical punishment — burning at the stake — purged the offenders’ pollution from the church. This familiar image of burning heretics shapes today’s popular and scholarly perspectives of the European Middle Ages.
Is advocating suicide a crime under the First Amendment? By Susan Stefan Two different cases raising similar issues about advocating suicide may shape US policy for years to come. In Massachusetts, Michelle Carter was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for urging her friend Conrad Roy not to abandon his plan to kill himself by inhaling carbon monoxide: “Get back in that car!” she texted, and he did. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has already ruled that prosecuting her for involuntary manslaughter was permissible
Keeping secrets in sixteenth-century Istanbul By Tobias P. Graf In April 1576, David Ungnad was worried. The Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II had dispatched him to Istanbul in 1573 as his ambassador. Being obedient servants, Ungnad and his colleagues regularly sent detailed dispatches home. At the beginning of April, one such bundle of letters was intercepted and handed to Grand Vizier Sokollu Mehmed Pasha for inspection.
Combatting the spread of anti-vaccination sentiment By Alessandro R Marcon, Blake Murdoch, and Timothy Caulfield Vaccines are one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Credited with saving millions of lives each year from diseases like smallpox, measles, diphtheria, and polio, one would expect vaccines to be enthusiastically celebrated or, at the very least, widely embraced. Why is it, then, that we are witnessing the widespread proliferation of anti-vaccination sentiment?
Andy Warhol’s comfort food for the apocalypse By John J. Curley Birthdays are complicated. They are cause for celebration but also remind us that we are closer to death. Such duality would not have been lost on Andy Warhol (1928-1987), an artist who strove throughout his career to find images that could house such contradictory notions.
Revisiting the My Lai Massacre almost 50 years later By Howard Jones How should we look at My Lai now, nearly fifty years after the events? For most Americans, it was a rude awakening to learn that “one of our own” could commit the kind of atrocities mostly associated with the nation’s enemies in war.
The man who made Big Ben By Caroline Shenton Big Ben, the great hour bell of the Palace of Westminster in London (a building better known as the Houses of Parliament), will controversially fall silent at noon today. Major conservation work to the clock, tower, and bells means that it won’t chime again until 2021.
M. R. James and Collected Ghost Stories [excerpt] By Darryl Jones In the following excerpt from Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James, Darryl Jones discusses how the limitations of James’s personal, social, and intellectual horizons account for the brilliance of his ghost stories. “The potential that ideas have for opening up new worlds of possibility caused James lifelong anxiety. Thus, his research, phenomenal as it […]
Margaret Fuller and the coming democracy By David M. Robinson Since the 30th April, I go almost daily to the hospitals,” Margaret Fuller told her friend Ralph Waldo Emerson in a 10 June 1849 letter. “Though I have suffered,–for I had no idea before how terrible gun-shot wounds and wound-fever are, I have taken pleasure, and great pleasure, in being with the men; there is scarcely one who is not moved by a noble spirit.”
The ultimate quiz on environmental law and climate change By Gabby Vicedomini Climate change is one of the most controversial issues facing society today. The withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change marked a pivotal point for the fight against environmental destruction. Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States, stated, “There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.”
Scientific progress stumbles without a valid case definition By Leonard A. Jason Current estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the number of people in the United States with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) increased from about 20,000 to as many as four million within a ten-year period. If this were true, we would be amidst an epidemic of unprecedented proportions. I believe that these increases in prevalence rates can be explained by unreliable case definitions.
George Berkeley and the power of words By Kenneth L. Pearce According to a picture of language that has enjoyed wide popularity throughout the history of Western philosophy, language is a tool for making our thoughts known to others: the speaker translates private thoughts into public words, and the hearer translates the words back into thoughts. It follows from such a picture that before we can […]
Is there a right to report a disease outbreak? By Sara E. Davies Recently the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Systems and Innovation Cluster released its WHO Guidelines on Ethical Issues in Public Health Surveillance. This report was the first attempt to develop a framework to guide public health surveillance systems on the conduct of surveillance and reporting in public health emergencies. The guidelines are described as a ‘starting point for the searching, sustained discussions that public health surveillance demands’.
Are you a philosophical parent? [quiz] By Jean Kazez Some people are both parents and philosophers, but aren’t philosophical parents. Conversely, some people aren’t philosophers, or at least aren’t academic philosophers, but are nevertheless philosophical parents. So who are the philosophical parents? Are you one? Take the quiz below and find out! (Pretend, for purposes of the quiz, that you’ve experienced every stage of […]
Is memory-decoding technology coming to the courtroom? By Francis X. Shen “What happened?” This is the first question a police officer will ask upon arriving at a crime scene. The answer to this simple question—What happened?—will determine the course of the criminal investigation. This same question will be asked by attorneys to witnesses on the stand if the case goes to trial.
Counting down to OHA2017 By Andrew Shaffer It’s no secret that we here at the Oral History Review are big fans of the OHA Annual Meeting. It’s our annual dose of sanity, a thoroughly enriching experience, a place to make connections, a great opportunity for young scholars, and the origin of some lively online debates.
Eubulides and his paradoxes By Graham Priest Who was the greatest paradoxer in Ancient Western Philosophy? If one were to ask this question of a person who knows something of the history of logic and philosophy, they would probably say Zeno of Elea (c. 490-460 BCE). However, for my money, the answer would be wrong. The greatest paradoxer is not Zeno, but the Megarian philosopher Eubulides of Miletus (fl . 4c BCE).
Is there a place for the arts in health? By Daisy Fancourt In a utopian world of abundant health budgets and minimal health challenges, it is probably fair to say that few would object to including the arts within hospitals or promoting them as a part of healthy lifestyles. Certainly, we have a long history of incorporating the arts into health (stretching back around 40,000 years), so it’s a concept many people are familiar with. But in an era of austerity, the value that the arts can bring comes under much closer scrutiny
The world of Jane Austen [timeline] Jane Austen was a British author whose six novels quietly revolutionized world literature. She is now considered one of the greatest writers of all time (with frequent comparisons to Shakespeare) and hailed as the first woman to earn inclusion in the established canon of English literature. Despite Austen’s current fame, her life is notable for its lack of traditional ‘major’ events. Discover Austen’s world, and its impact on her writing ….
We’re not singing a hillbilly elegy: challenging stereotypes in contemporary Appalachian song By Travis D. Stimeling In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Appalachia took center stage as a potent symbol of the many ways that decades of economic globalization have marginalized the country’s white working-class voters.
On nuts and nerds By Anatoly Liberman For decades the English-speaking world has been wondering where the word nerd came from. The Internet is full of excellent essays: the documentation is complete, and all the known hypotheses have been considered, refuted, or cautiously endorsed. I believe one of the proposed etymologies to be convincing (go on reading!), but first let me say something about nut.
Travelling with Shakespeare By Kim Vollrodt William Shakespeare is celebrated as one of the greatest Englishmen who has ever lived and his presence in modern Britain is immense. His contributions to the English language are extraordinary, helping not only to standardize the language as a whole but also inspiring terms still used today (a prime example being “swag” derived from “swagger” first seen in the plays Henry V and A Midsummer Night’s Dream).
Cosmic ripples By Nicholas Mee Michael Faraday transformed our understanding of the physical world when he realised that electromagnetic forces are carried by a field permeating the whole of space. This idea was formalized by James Clerk-Maxwell who constructed a unified theory of electromagnetism in which beams of light are undulations in the electromagnetic field. Maxwell’s theory implies that visible light is just one part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
10 facts about the Indian economy By Eden Joseph 15 August 2017 marks the 70th year anniversary since the British withdrew their colonial rule over India, leaving it to be one of the first countries to gain independence. Since then it has become the sixth largest economy in the world and is categorised as one of the major G-20 economies. To mark the occasion we have compiled a wide array of facts around the Indian economy pre and post-independence.
Do your job, part 1 By Mark Gibson In TBSH, there is a chapter devoted to expectations, from and of both the ensemble and the conductor, of each other and of themselves. Built around a worksheet entitled “Orchestral Bill of Rights and Responsibilities,” I attempt therein to design a framework for a long overdue discussion to occur, about what our actual jobs are, how we perceive them and how our neighbors in the orchestral community perceive them, divisions of labor, and what we have the “right to expect” from each other.
The power of vision in the age of climate change By María Pía Carazo Helen Keller once said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” The sustainability revolution is unstoppable. Signs are everywhere; policy makers and the private sector are veering towards a decarbonized development model. The adoption of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change on December 2015 marked the political turning point.
Last minute guide to the total solar eclipse By Frank Close The moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, but it’s also 400 times closer to earth, which means that remarkably, the two bodies appear to us as exactly the same size. For 14 days a month, the orbiting moon is on the ‘sunny’ side of the spinning earth, and the sunlight casts a shadow. Almost all the time, that shadow is projected way off into space; but on very particular occasions, the shadow falls onto the earth – the moon is obscuring our view of the sun.
The Iliad and The Trojan War [excerpt] By Anthony Verity and Barbara Graziosi The Iliad tells the story of Achilles’ anger, but also encompasses, within its narrow focus, the whole of the Trojan War. The title promises “a poem about Ilium” (i.e. Troy), and the poem lives up to that description. The first books recapitulate the origins and early stages of the Trojan War.
Barth, the Menardian By Berndt Clavier For the better part of half a century, John Barth was synonymous with what was the last self-conscious attempt at constructing a universal aesthetic movement speaking for all of humanity but recognizing only its bourgeois, white constituent. Much like Virginia Woolf once could claim that “on or about December, 1910, human character changed,” Barth would argue that literary modernism was over.
Ecosystem-based mitigation and adaptation By María Pía Carazo Payments for ecosystem services (PES), also known as payments for environmental services (or benefits), are incentives offered to farmers or landowners in compensation for proper land-management that provides ecological services. Among these benefits we can mention conserving animal and plant species, protecting hydric resources, conserving natural scenery, and storing carbon.
George Romero, Game of Thrones, and the zombie apocalypse By Greg Garrett When George Romero, director of Night of the Living Dead, died on 16 July, the world was gearing up for the season opener of Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones owes its central storyline—the conflict between the Night’s Watch and the White Walkers—and a great measure of its success to Romero, as do other popular and critically-acclaimed versions of the story, whether television, film, fiction, or comics.
DNA testing for immigration and family reunification? By Palmira Granados Moreno and Yann Joly Family reunification is one of the main forms of immigration in many countries. However, in recent times, immigration has become increasingly regulated with many countries encouraging stricter vetting measures. In this climate, countries’ laws and policies applicable to family reunification seek a balance between an individual’s right to a family life and a country’s right to control the influx of immigrants.
It’s education, stupid: how globalisation has made education the new political cleavage in Europe By Anchrit Wille and Mark Bovens Commentators argue that a globalisation cleavage is appearing in western Europe, with the issues of migration and European integration core bones of contention. We argue that at a deeper level it is not just globalisation or the EU that drives this contestation. The new political divide is also rooted in demographic changes, it is a manifestation of the rise of a more structural, educational cleavage.
Richard Susskind on the future of law By Richard Susskind and Rebecca Parker In the latest episode of the Oxford Law Vox podcast Richard Susskind talks to George Miller about the gaining momentum of technology and AI in the law profession. They discuss just how vital it is that lawyers learn to reinvent themselves and work alongside technology. He also address the importance of the opportunity young lawyers have to bring about and be a major part of social change in the legal profession.
Are electrons conscious? By Philip Goff For most of the twentieth century a “brain-first” approach dominated the philosophy of consciousness. The idea was that the brain is the thing we really understand, through neuroscience, and the task of the philosopher is try to understand how that thing “gives rise” to subjective experience: to the inner world of colours, smells and sounds that each of us knows in our own case.
Is science being taken out of environmental protection? By Pamela Hill In 1963, dying of breast cancer and wearing a wig to cover the effects of radiation treatments, Rachel Carson appeared before a congressional committee to defend her indictment of pesticides. She had rattled the chemical industry with Silent Spring, which urged caution at a time when Americans were buying dangerous products that the scientific community had itself made possible.
What makes a good manager? [excerpt] By Samuel A. Culbert Is modern work culture is pushing otherwise good people to adopt poor management styles? From creating “growth opportunities” to taking on mentors, managers often find themselves falling into progressive traps that seem like the right thing to do, but ultimately lead employees astray. In the following excerpt from Good People, Bad Managers, Samuel A. Culbert examines the effectiveness of modern management approaches.
From singer to choir director: A Q&A with Ben Parry By Ben Parry Ben Parry studied at Cambridge University, where he was a member of The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, before he became the musical director of, and singer with, the Swingle Singers. Today, Ben has a busy career as a conductor, arranger, singer and producer in both classical and light music fields. We caught up with Ben to ask him about his conducting experiences, and his advice for directors wishing to set up their own choirs.
“My latest brain child” By Anna Ferruta In his 1954 essay ‘Metapsychological and Clinical Aspects of Regression within the Psycho-Analytical Set’, Donald Winnicott states: “The idea of psycho-analysis as an art must gradually give way to a study of environmental adaptation relative to patients’ regressions. […] I know from experience that some will say: all this leads to a theory of development which ignores the early stages of the development of the individual, which ascribes early development to environmental factors.
Culture, inequalities, and social inclusion across the globe: a ASA 2017 reading list By Emily Kaplan This year, the 2017 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting takes place in Montreal, and our Sociology team is gearing up. The 112th Annual Meeting will take place from 12- 15 August, bringing together over 5,000 sociologists nationwide for four days of lectures, sessions, and networking with some of the top figures in the field. This year’s theme is “Culture, Inequalities, and Social Inclusion across the Globe.”
Introducing Hannah, OUP’s Music Hire Librarian By Hannah Boron We are delighted to introduce Hannah Boron, who joined OUP’s Music Hire Library team in March 2017 and is based in the Oxford offices. We asked her to tell us what her job involves and chatted more generally about fantasy novels and how she would like to be Lara Croft!
In memoriam: Professor Alan Cameron By Stefan Vranka On 31 July, one of the most eminent Classical scholars of our time, the esteemed OUP author Alan Cameron, passed away. My colleagues at the press and I extend our sincere condolences to his wife Carla and his surviving family.
Bodily identity and biotypology in Brazil By Ana Carolina Vimieiro Gomes What does your body shape say about you? When typing this question on any online search engine one will find dozens of examples and images of models of varying bodily classifications as well as the relationship of bodily shape with many different types of physical and mental health and even personality. Rectangle, triangle, round, hourglass, slender, pear, apple, etc, are widespread categories used to label the body
Our shortest words continued: “of,” “both,” and (again) “if” Last week, we looked at the history of the conjunction if, and it turned out that the Dutch for if is of. The fateful question asked “at dawn,” when “Scheherazade” had to stop her tale, was: “Are English if and of related?”
The mysterious painting methods of Vermeer By Jane Jelley Johannes Vermeer’s luminous paintings are loved and admired around the world, yet it is not fully understood exactly what painting methods he used. Experts over the years have been confounded as to how he captured light in such a way. The image below discusses seven of his masterpieces, and reveals the few traces Vermeer has left behind in an intriguing detective story.
10 facts about the Mormon religion By Terryl L. Givens Especially to those outside the faith, the beliefs and practices of the Mormon religion are largely unknown, and this has led to caricatures of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Below are 10 facts about Mormonism taken from Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Church and Praxis by Terryl L. Givens.
The life and work of Angela Carter [timeline] Award-winning author Angela Carter is widely viewed as one of the great modern English writers. Known for her use of magic realism and picaresque prose, Carter’s writing style reflected the world around her, capturing 1960s counterculture and second wave feminism.
Zebulon Pike’s journey across the Louisiana Purchase By Jared Orsi On July 15, 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike departed St. Louis at the head of a military expedition to explore America’s public lands. The recently acquired Louisiana Purchase as yet held no states and almost no private property owners—at least not in the Lockean sense by which the country conferred exclusive individual rights to pieces of land.
Gangsters and genre – Episode 41 – The Oxford Comment Picture The Godfather series in your mind and chances are, you’ll think of it as a “gangster” film. But what is it about this series, and other films like it, that makes it a part of the gangster film genre? Are these movies simply crime and action films that feature organized crime, or do urban settings and immigrant struggles play a larger role?
How Do STEM Strategies Fit into the Elementary Music Classroom? By Kim Milai Twenty-four kindergarteners line up at the edge of the safe line. They are peasants in the “village.” The king or queen stands across the room at the “castle” guarded by two sentries at the drawbridge.
Why the Supreme Court should overrule Quill By Edward A. Zelinsky In ‘Quill Corporation v. North Dakota’, the US Supreme Court held that, under the dormant Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, the states cannot require out-of-state vendors to collect sales taxes because such vendors lack physical presence in the taxing state. As internet commerce has grown, Quill’s physical presence test has severely hampered the states’ ability to enforce their sales taxes since the states cannot obligate out-of-state internet firms to collect the taxes attributable to their respective sales.
What Norway might tell us about Venezuela’s economic crisis By Jonathon W. Moses It is common to blame Venezuela’s current crisis on the price of oil. Despite sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, the Venezuelan economy is in a shambles and the country is gripped by chaos. When the price of oil fell precipitously in 2014, so too did Venezuela’s access to foreign exchange. Without this money, Venezuela has been unable to buoy the country’s national oil company and the social programs and food subsidies that support the sitting government.
Unsilencing the library By Ceri Hunter, Eleanor Lybeck, and Sophie Ratcliffe “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” So wrote Virginia Woolf in her famous 1929 essay on reading and freedom, A Room of One’s Own.
Louis Leakey’s quest to discover human origins By Matthew Goodrum Louis Leakey remains one of the most recognized names in paleoanthropology and of twentieth century science. Leakey was a prolific writer, a popular lecturer, and a skillful organizer who did a great deal to bring the latest discoveries about human evolution to a broader public and whose legacy continues to shape research into the origins of mankind. Louis and Mary’s work garnered wide public attention for several reasons.
Historical narratives and international tribunals By Moshe Hirsch This post focuses on the role of non-criminal international tribunals in the development of collective memories: is it desirable for such tribunals to be involved in the construction of collective memories? International tribunals have not adopted a consistent approach concerning the presentation of the historical narrative in the background of the judgment.
A very British realignment By Joseph Oldham Over the first two years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, several commentators noted fascinating parallels with an iconic fictional account of a Labour leadership. First written as a novel by journalist and future Labour MP Chris Mullin in 1982, A Very British Coup depicts the surprise election of a radical left-wing Labour Party led by staunch socialist Harry Perkins in an imagined near future.
Building a consensus on climate change By Daniel A. Barber As the world shudders in the face of the Trump Administration rejection of the Paris Climate Accords, other forms of expertise and professional engagement are, again, taking on increased relevance. Buildings have long been important mediators in the relationship between energy, politics, and culture. Today the architecture, engineering and construction professions are increasingly compelled to take on energy efficiency.
Secrets of the comma By Edwin L. Battistella When it comes to punctuation, I’m a lumper rather than a splitter. Some nights I lie awake, pondering to secrets of commas, dashes, parentheses, and more, looking for grand patterns.
Which Celtic goddess are you? Although most people have heard of the Celts, very little is known about their customs and beliefs. Unlike the Ancient Greeks and Romans, few records of their stories exist.
Valuing our ecological futures By Derek Gladwin Most people care about their potential futures. But there’s a threat to some of these possible futures. In 2016, globally we experienced the hottest consecutive year on record since 2000, with 2017 looking to break the record again. At the current rate of warming climates, along with other environmental concerns, living on the Earth will become more difficult, if not impossible, by the end of the century.
The political legacy of Andrew Jackson By J.M. Opal Sometime after rising to international fame in 1815, Andrew Jackson lamented that his critics had him all wrong. Whether from ignorance or malice, they spread rumors and lies about his actions and motives. They also smeared his wife, Rachel, with whom he often shared his sense of persecution.
Philosopher of the month: Sir Karl Raimund Popper [timeline] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This August, the OUP Philosophy team honours Sir Karl Raimund Popper (1902–1994) as their Philosopher of the Month. A British (Austrian-born) philosopher, Popper’s considerable reputation comes from his work on the philosophy of science and his political philosophy. Popper is widely regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century.
Diet and age-related memory loss [excerpt] By Andrew E. Budson and Maureen K. O'Connor Age-related memory loss is to be expected. But can it be mitigated? There are many different steps we can take to help maintain and even improve our memories as we age. One of these steps is to make a few simple dietary changes. The following shortened excerpt from The Seven Steps to Managing Your Memory lists dietary basics that can benefit memory.
That someone else: finding a new oral history ancestor By Benji de la Piedra Dan Kerr acknowledges in his article, “Allan Nevins Is Not My Grandfather,” that most historians of oral history tend to dismiss the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) as a mere “prehistory” of the field, because the vast majority of FWP interviews were recorded with pen and paper rather than with machine.
10 facts about fungi By Nicholas P. Money Fungi play an important role for a balanced life of flora, fauna, and humans alike. But are they important for us humans, and how are fungi related to animals? Nicholas P. Money, author of Fungi: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 10 things everyone should know about fungi, and the role they play in the world.
Deep in the red By Dawn Field Yesterday, the second of August, was Earth Overshoot Day for 2017. This date “marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.” As of today, we carry a planetary-sized debt. We are running in the red. This most horrible of days only started in 1971. Before that, humans did not have the population size nor the technological capacity to ‘out-eat’ our larder.
Academy of Management 2017: a conference and city guide By Erin Cavoto The 77th annual meeting of the Academy of Management will take place this year from 4 August through 8 August in Atlanta, Georgia. This year, the Academy of Management will convey the theme of “At the Interface”, inviting attendees to reflect on the ways interfaces both separate and connect people and organizations. We’ve highlighted some of the events that we’re excited about.
A few more of our shortest words: “if,” “of,” and “both” By Anatoly Liberman The post of 21 June 2017 on the “dwarfs of our vocabulary” was received so well that I decided to return to them in the hope that the continuation will not disappoint our readers. Those dwarfs have a long history and have been the object of several tall tales.
The good tax By Richard S. Grossman No one enjoys paying taxes. Remember receiving your first paycheck and discovering how much of your hard-earned money you would be sharing with the government? Most of us recognize that some taxes are necessary. Although economics recognizes the need for taxes to fund the government, it is pretty clear-eyed about the downside of taxes. One example is the tax on cigarettes.
Psychology’s silent crisis By Brian Schiff Rarely do esoteric academic debates, especially those concerning methodology, make their way into the popular press. But, for the past two years, a major controversy on the replication of psychological research has spilled into public view and shows few signs of abating. However, the debate is silent about the far more problematic conceptual crisis that challenges the core principles of scientific psychology.
The origins of the juggernaut By Michael J. Altman People deploy the word juggernaut to describe anyone or anything that seems unstoppable, powerful, dominant. The Golden State Warriors, the recent National Basketball Association champions, are a juggernaut. National Economic Council director Gary Cohn is a “policymaking juggernaut.” Online retailer Amazon is also a juggernaut. Tennis player Roger Federer is a juggernaut at Wimbledon.
A dangerous mission: loyalty and treason during the American Revolution By Virginia DeJohn Anderson The American Revolution was at once a national, a continental, and an imperial phenomenon. It produced a new American republic, rearranged power relations and territorial claims across North America, and altered Europeans’ global empires. It inspired stirring statements about universal rights and liberties even as it exposed disturbing divisions rooted in distinctions of class, ethnicity, race, and gender.
Conquering distance: America in the Pacific War By Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio Following a wave of Japanese attacks, the American, British, Canadian, and Dutch forces entered the Pacific War on 8 December 1941. As American forces moved across the Pacific they encountered a determined and desperate enemy and a harsh inhospitable environment. By early 1944, armed with new fast carriers, the Americans stepped up the pace of operations and launched the campaigns that would bring them to the doorstep of the Japanese homeland. But every step closer to Japan was a step farther from the United States.
Understanding the origin of the wind from black holes By Daniel May and João Steiner Contrary to common belief, black holes don’t swallow everything that comes nearby. In fact, they expel a good part of the gas of the centre of galaxies. This happens when a wind of ionized gas is formed in the vicinity of the black hole. In the case of supermassive black holes that occur at the centre of many galaxies, they produce a wind that can interact with the galaxy itself shaping its evolution through time.
Tips for addressing stage fright By Julie Jaffee Nagel An A B C model to conceptualize anxiety responses was developed by the American psychologist Albert Ellis (1913– 2007) as a self- help and clinical tool to help people identify and understand what Ellis called “irrational” thoughts and feelings. Ellis recommended challenging and replacing negative and irrational thoughts with positive alternatives represented by Letter B in the A B C Model.
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Curing (silent) movies of deafness? By Russell L. Johnson Conventional wisdom holds that many of the favorite silent movie actors who failed to survive the transition to sound films—or talkies—in the late-1920s/early-1930s were done in by voices in some way unsuited to the new medium. Talkies are thought to have ruined the career of John Gilbert, for instance, because his “squeaky” voice did not match his on-screen persona as a leading male sex symbol. Audiences reportedly laughed the first time they heard Gilbert’s voice on screen.
Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor: an audio guide By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst In this Oxford World’s Classics audio guide, listen to Robert Douglas-Fairhurst of Magdalen College, Oxford University–who edited and selected this new edition–introduce Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor.
A research journey from jungles to genomes By Chris D. Jiggins One of the goals of our trip was to search for a butterfly called Heliconius tristero (or Heliconius timareta tristero as it is now more correctly known), which had been described in 1996 from just two specimens collected in this area. Almost anyone who has visited the jungles of tropical America is likely to be familiar with the ‘postman’ or Heliconius butterflies.
What Mubarak’s acquittal means for Egypt By Yoram Meital On 13 March 2017, the legal saga of the trial of Hosni Mubarak ended. The deposed autocrat, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his complicity in the killing of hundreds of demonstrators and embezzlement on a grander scale, was acquitted by Egypt’s Court of Cassation and freed from his detention. “The trial of the century”, as Egyptians have dubbed Mubarak’s prosecution.
Friendship in Shakespeare By Kim Vollrodt In Shakespeare’s England, the term “friend” could be used to express a wide range of interpersonal relations. A friend could be anything from a neighbour, a lover, or fellow countryman, to a family member or the close personal acquaintance we understand as a “friend” today.
What sorts of things are the things we believe, hope, or predict? By Friederike Moltmann It is part of our everyday life that we ascribe beliefs, desires, hopes, claims, predictions and so on to other people and ourselves, and the ascription of such propositional attitudes, as they are called, generally takes a canonical form, of the sort John believes that Macron is president of France, Mary hopes that Macron is president of France, and Joe predicted that Macron would become president of France.
Optimism in economic development By Marcelo M. Giugale There is much discussion about global poverty and the billions of people living with almost nothing. Why is it that governments, development banks, think-tanks, academics, NGOs, and many others can’t just fix the problem? Why is it that seemingly obvious reforms never happen? Why are prosperity and equity so elusive?
Children, obesity, and the future By Emily Henderson Recent research reflects some of this range of aetiological factors that influence childhood obesity. Global perspectives from countries of study including Brazil, Australia, England, South Africa, China, and a review of the international literature cover topics frequently reported by the media, like the food environment, unhealthy food advertising policy, weight management interventions, and associations with gender and sleep.
Breaking the rules of grammar By David Crystal Can grammar be glamorous? Due to its meticulous nature, the study of grammar has been saddled with an undeserved intimidating reputation. Esteemed linguist David explains how grammar is an essential tool for communication. Demystifying the rules behind the English language can allow us to communicate effectively both professionally and casually. In the following excerpt from […]
The Red Cross in Nazi Germany By Gerald Steinacher Built on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was founded to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict and violence and to provide them with assistance. But despite being one of the world’s most revered aid organizations, the ICRC has a complicated and unsettling history.
I Don’t Recommend Parenthood By Jean Kazez Recently a friend of mine expressed an aversion to the screaming kids who were attending a summer camp in classrooms close to her campus office. With a laugh, she said she was happy to have further support for her choice not to have children.
How well do you know film noir? By Todd Berliner In Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, film studies professor Todd Berliner explains how Hollywood delivers aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. The following quiz is based on information found in chapter 8, “Crime Films during the Period of the Production Code Administration.”
The challenge of Twitter in medical research By James Galloway One advantage to the clinician of the technological revolution is the rapid access to medical information. Every morning I spend ten minutes over coffee looking through the latest Twitter feeds from the major medical journals, to skim through what research might be emerging in fields other than my own niche (I still enjoy reading the paper editions of journals to cover my specialist area).
The price of travel: is it worth it? By Jaime Kurtz As I set out to unpack the challenges of happy travel, I first had to confront my assumption that travel truly is a worthwhile investment of time and money. We certainly seem to think it is. When people sit down to construct a bucket list, travel goals shoot right to the top. A quick browse through the website bucketlist.org reveals a deep longing for far-flung adventures
Remembering the life and music of Antonio Vivaldi By Nicholas Lockey For many who at least known his name, Antonio Vivaldi is the composer of a handful of works heard on the radio or a drive-time playlist of 100 Famous Classical Pieces, featured in TV (and internet) commercials, movies and concerts by students, amateurs, and professionals. Pieces such as The Four Seasons (featured prominently in Alan Alda’s 1981 film, The Four Seasons), the Gloria in D RV 589 and the Violin Concerto in A Minor Op. 3 No. 6 (familiar to most students of the Suzuki Violin Method) are staples of the repertoire and frequently rank high on lists of popular classical music.
More than an Amazon: Wonder Woman By Walter Duvall Penrose Jr. This summer’s epic blockbuster, Wonder Woman, is a feast of visual delights, epic battles, and Amazons. The young Diana, “Wonder Woman,” is, we quickly learn, no ordinary Amazon. In fact, though she is raised by the Amazon queen Hippolyta and trained to be a formidable warrior by her aunt Antiope, both of whom are regularly featured Amazons in Greek myth, she turns out to be not an Amazon at all but a god, whom Zeus has given to the Amazons to raise.
Etymology gleanings for July 2017 By Anatoly Liberman First of all, I would like to thank our readers for their good wishes in connection with the 600th issue of The Oxford Etymologist, for their comments, and suggestions. In more than ten years, I must have gone a-gleaning about 120 times.
English: The Journal of the English Association cover Ivanka Trump’s sleeves (too long; didn’t read) By Madhumita Lahiri Like our students, we scholars don’t always finish our reading – but unlike our students, we are professionally cultivated in the crucial tasks of deciding what to read and how to read it. We might better equip our students if we openly discussed TL;DR instead, thereby acknowledging not only the great unread but the existence of a wide variety of reading modes, always working in concert with our cherished close reading.
The misunderstood Irish composer By Majella Boland Composer/pianist John Field’s birthday serves as a reminder of the uncertainty that underpins his reception. On the twenty-sixth of July, we ostensibly celebrate Field’s birthday.
The legacy of Stanley Kubrick and the Kubrick Archives By Robert P. Kolker Stanley Kubrick would be 89 this year. It’s quite possible were he still alive that he would have made more films. At his death in 1999, he left a legacy of just twelve works of extraordinary cinema, as well as a few interesting early short films.
On the value of intellectuals By Brad Kent In times of populism, soundbites, and policy-by-twitter such as we live in today, the first victims to suffer the slings and arrows of the demagogues are intellectuals. These people have been demonised for prioritising the very thing that defines them: the intellect, or finely reasoned and sound argument. As we celebrate the 161st birthday of Bernard Shaw, one of the most gifted, influential, and well-known intellectuals to have lived, we might use the occasion to reassess the value of intellectuals to a healthy society and why those in power see them as such threats.
Picking a fight in an empty room By James Moran This year marks the 137th anniversary of the birth of Seán O’Casey, one of the best-known of all Irish playwrights. His works first enthralled audiences at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre during the 1920s, and in the years since then his dramas have been repeatedly revisited by actors and directors.
The perils of political polarization By Virginia DeJohn Anderson Political polarization in the United States seems to intensify by the day. In June 2016, surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that majorities in both parties held highly unfavorable opinions of their opponents. Many Democrats and Republicans even admitted to fearing the rival party’s political agenda. Such strong feelings have scarcely dissipated—and likely escalated—since those surveys were completed.
Prospection, well-being, and mental health By Andrew MacLeod That we remember the past is obvious. But as well as the ability to recall what has already happened to us, we are also able to imagine what might happen to us in the future. Is this capacity for prospection important? Absolutely. Being able to anticipate what might happen and take relevant steps, prioritise goals, and form plans of action for what we are going to do have been fundamental to our evolutionary success.
Music and human evolution By Abigail Le Marquand-Brown After being closed to the public for the past six months, the Natural History Museum’s Hintze Hall reopened on the 13 July 2017, featuring a grand blue whale skeleton as its central display. This event carried particular importance for OUP’s Gabriel Jackson, who was commissioned to write a piece for the Gala opening ceremony.
Travel medicine health tips By Anna Shannon The world is becoming more globalised, with the number of people traveling each year on the rise. US residents are taking nearly two billion leisure trips and almost 500 million business trips (2016), with UK residents making 70.8 million visits overseas last year (2016), an 8% increase to the previous year (2015). With travel visits increasing year on year on a worldwide scale, it is no wonder travel medicine is an area also growing quickly to match activity and demand.
The paradox of Margery Kempe By Johanna Luthman After a period of chastity, Margery Kempe’s husband described one of those hypothetical scenarios that couples sometimes use to test each other. “Margery, if a man came with a sword and wanted to chop off my head unless I had sexual intercourse with you as I used to before, […] [would you] allow my head to be chopped off, or else allow me to have sex with you as I previously did?”
Let’s fly away: pioneers of aviation The history of aviation spans over two thousand years – from the earliest kites in Ancient China to balloons in eighteenth century France, to military drones and reconnaissance. Early aviation was a dangerous past-time, with many pilots meeting untimely ends as a result of their desire to reach further and higher than ever before. We’ve taken a look at some of these early aviators and their attainments
Brexit: what happens to international litigation? By Trevor Hartley At the present time, a large range of civil proceedings, especially in the commercial area, are governed by an EU measure, the Brussels I Regulation (Recast) of 2012. This applies whenever the defendant is domiciled in another EU country, whenever there is a choice-of-court agreement designating a court in the EU, and whenever an EU Member State has exclusive jurisdiction over a particular matter, for example title to land or registered intellectual-property rights.
The first humans By Francisco J. Ayala and Camilo J. Cela-Conde The discovery in Jebel Irhoud, Morocco of human fossils with modern facial features, similar to ours, has been a wonderful surprise, even outside the world of anthropology. The discoveries have been published in the journal Nature by Jean-Jacques Hublin and collaborators. The fossils are associated with tools from the Middle Stone Age, the technique immediately preceding the Upper Pleistocene.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Hegel [quiz] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) as their Philosopher of the Month. Although Hegel was a hugely successful philosopher in his own right–described as “the most famous modern philosopher” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe–his legacy remains the influence he had on later philosophers.
The traveler’s challenge: overcoming vacation blues By Jaime Kurtz After months of working 40+ hour weeks, running the kids from one activity to the next, and managing a household, the time has arrived: vacation. You’ve carefully planned a week-long getaway at a seaside resort, and can think of nothing better than basking in the sun, reading a novel, and sipping a cocktail. You arrive with eager anticipation. The beach is perfect, the resort restful and luxurious.
Attention, or how to organize the mind By Sebastian Watzl Sometimes our mind is a mess. Thoughts and experiences pile up, and our mind flips from one thing to another: I need to buy milk, I have an important meeting tomorrow, and, no, the bills have still not been paid; it’s my friends birthday, the face of that person reminds me of someone I met in college, and the advertisement blaring from the loudspeakers tells me that a new shampoo will change my life.
How to overcome the forces that glass-ceiling health By Sandro Galea These are divided times. In Washington, a new administration has deepened the polarization of an already gridlocked political process. In the media, our disagreements are expressed, and often amplified, by a host of competing voices. The questions they address include: how should the Constitution be interpreted? Should we embrace free trade or focus on rebuilding our industrial base?
Oral history and the importance of sharing at Pride in Washington D.C. By Holland Hall and Robert Baez Back in March we heard from our friends at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at the University of Florida, who had traveled to the Women’s March on Washington as part of an experiential learning project. Building on the work they did at the Women’s March, they returned to Washington, D.C. in June to document the city’s Pride Weekend, including the Equality March for Unity and Pride, the QT Night of Healing and Resistance, and more.
10 facts about spirituality By Philip Sheldrake What does spirituality really mean? Is spirituality distinct from religion? Why is spirituality becoming increasingly popular and how has the term evolved and used today from its Christian roots? Philip Sheldrake, author of Spirituality: A Very Short Introduction, talks about what he thinks are the top 10 facts everyone should know about spirituality.
Living in a material world By David Segal The singer Madonna had a worldwide hit record in the 1980s (‘Material Girl’) in which she described herself as ‘the material girl living in a material world’. This is a prescient phrase for the world of today some 30 years after the release of this record. Although Madonna may have been referring to wealth and ‘cold hard cash’ in her song, the rapid development of goods for professional and consumer use really do put us at the mercy of all things material.
Bluegrass festivals: a summertime staple By Travis D. Stimeling For more than fifty years, bluegrass musicians and fans from around the world have gathered in shady bowers and open fields to trade songs in parking lot picking sessions; hear top local, regional, and national bluegrass bands as they present onstage performances; and buy instruments, books, recordings, and memorabilia from vendors. These bluegrass festivals serve as vital meeting spaces for members of the bluegrass community, and they play a key role in the music’s ongoing economic vitality.
Two numerals: “six” and “hundred,” part 2: “hundred” By Anatoly Liberman Like the history of some other words denoting numbers, the history of hundred is full of sticks and stones. To begin with, we notice that hundred, like dozen, thousand, million, and billion, is a noun rather than a numeral and requires an article (compare six people versus a hundred people); it also has a regular plural (a numeral, to have the plural form, has to be turned into a noun, or substantivized, as in twos and threes, at sixes and sevens, on all fours, and the like).
Does “buying local” help communities or conflict with basic economics? By Jason Winfree and Philip Watson As summer approaches, picturesque roadside stands, farmer’s markets, and fields growing Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) dot the horizon from the Golden Gate to the Garden State. Consumers go to their local Farmer’s Market to keep spending local and to hopefully create jobs in the community. They “buy local” to reduce environmental impacts. Some believe interacting with neighbors builds trust within the community.
Embedded librarianship: the future of libraries By Ansley Stuart With the rise of the internet and electronic research resources, it is not uncommon for a librarian to hear that libraries are no longer necessary. “You can find anything on the internet” is an often heard phrase. What most of those people do not realize is how integrated librarians (and information scientists) are in organizing and providing information to the public.
Why can mailboxes only be used for U.S. mail? By James W. Cortada Because it is against Federal law to put anything in a mailbox, “on which no postage has been paid,”. If a person is caught doing so, they could be fined up to $5,000 and an organization could be fined up to $10,000. This is called the “Mailbox Restriction Law”, which does not exist in most countries.
BioScience cover Society is ready for a new kind of science—is academia? By Bonnie L. Keeler In her 1998 essay in Science, Jane Lubchenco called for a “Social Contract for Science,” one that would acknowledge the scale of environmental problems and have “scientists devote their energies and talents to the most pressing problems of the day.” We were entering a new millennium, and Lubchenco was worried that the scientific enterprise was unprepared to address challenges related to climate change, pollution, health, and technology.
Jane Austen’s writing – a reading list Jane Austen wrote six novels and thousands of letters in her lifetime, creating a formula of social realism, comedic satire, and romance that is still loved today. Her works were originally published anonymously, bringing this now celebrated author little personal renown – with nineteenth century audiences preferring the Romantic and Victorian tropes of Charles Dickens and George Eliot. Since then, literary tastes and opinions have changed dramatically, and many people have written about, interpreted, and adapted Austen’s writings. But why do we like her stories so much? What can they tell us about her world, and ours?
Planetary astronomy in ancient Greece By James Evans and Iwan Rhys Morus As eclipse 2017 quickly approaches, Americans—from astronomers to photographers to space enthusiasts—are preparing to witness the celestial wonder that is totality. Phenomenon found within planetary science has long driven us to observe and study space. Through a shared desire to dismantle and reconstruct the theories behind our solar system, ancient Greek philosophers and scientists built the foundation of planetary astronomy.
Winter is coming: the zombie apocalypse on TV By Greg Garrett But maybe the greatest horde of zombies these days is on television, from cult shows like iZombie and Santa Clarita Diet to two of the most popular shows on the planet, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. The Walking Dead has recently wrapped its seventh season, but Game of Thrones is getting ready to ramp up for its final two seasons, with the world premiere of its Season Seven coming tonight.
International Affairs As IS territorial dominance diminishes, what challenges lie ahead for Iraq’s Kurds? By Johannes Jüde On the ninth of June, Haider al-Abadi, the Iraqi Prime Minister, arrived in Mosul to congratulate the armed forces for the liberation of the city. Mosul had been conquered by the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014 and served as its Iraqi capital. This significant victory is not yet the end of ISIS in Iraq, however, both in Iraq and in Syria its territorial dominance has strongly diminished—by about 60 % since January 2015.
How well do you know Jane Austen? [quiz] By Kirsty Doole In honour of the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death, we have created a quiz to help you determine how well you know the beloved novelist. Are you an Austen expert? Or do you need to brush up on some of her greatest works? Take the quiz to find out!
Could you survive a snake bite? By Anna Shannon With increased numbers of people travelling to exotic places, there is also an increasing awareness of tropical diseases. However, there are a number of tropical diseases, such as snake bite, which are often overlooked as major issues. Snake bite is an on-going global problem, and is often neglected as an important public health concern. Many are unprepared and uninformed when it comes to snake bites, which can have fatal consequences for humans.
Brinksmanship does little to resolve crisis in Venezuela By Miguel Tinker Salas For over eighty days, the opposition has challenged the government of Nicolás Maduro and sought his ouster through direct street actions. Dramatic images of masked protestors violently clashing with the Venezuelan National Guard or the Bolivarian Police dominate western media reporting on the country. The mainstream US media creates the impression that the entire country is in open revolt and Maduro only holds on to power through the use of sheer repression.
Should we still care about the War of 1812? By Troy Bickham This summer marks 205 years since the United States declared war on the British Empire, a brief, but critical, conflict that became known as the War of 1812. This is a good opportunity to pause and take stock of its historical significance and relevance today.
Obscene intentions and corrupting effects By Simon Stern The Picture of Dorian Gray frequently ridicules the idea that fiction may have corrupting effects. But Wilde’s criticisms of the logic of obscenity law went beyond these statements about the sterility of the work of art.
The United States in World War I podcast series By Heather Smith 2017 marks the centennial of the United States joining World War I. To commemorate this historic occasion, Oxford University Press put together a podcast series discussing various aspects of America’s involvement in the war.
Ethnicity in France: representing diversity Metropolitan France lies at the crossroads of Western Europe. Thanks to its long and rich history of welcoming migrants, it’s one of the most cosmopolitan European nations. Across that continent, it’s also where the largest Jewish and Muslim population reside. So when you watch a French film or TV series, you’d expect to see that […]
Does pregnancy affect how food tastes? By Ezen Choo and Robin Dando Thus, we set out to review the existing studies of human pregnancy and taste to catalog the trends occurring across pregnancy, to see how we may leverage what we are beginning to understand about taste modulation from human and non-human research. This may help to generate hypotheses for future investigations to ultimately question the long held assumption that these changes in taste are solely driven by hormone fluctuations.
Pride 2017: a reading list By Panumas King Happy Pride Month from the OUP Philosophy team! To celebrate the LGBT Pride 2017 happening in cities across the world, including the New York City and London Prides this summer, OUP Philosophy is shining a spotlight on books that explore issues in LGBTQ rights and culture.
Which of the fathers in Shakespeare said these words? [quiz] By Berit Henrickson Everyone knows William Shakespeare, the prolific English playwright and poet of the late 1500’s and early 1600’s. His extensive collection of comedies, tragedies, and romances are still very popular today. In fact, they are frequently referenced, adapted, and studied across the globe due to their reputation and his. In light of TNT’s new television series, Will, which premiered on 10 July we created a quiz to test your knowledge of Shakespeare’s works.
How did the Jews survive? Two unlikely historical explanations By David N. Myers How have the Jews survived over the centuries? This is a question that has intrigued and perplexed many. While powerful world empires have risen and fallen, this miniscule, largely stateless, and often despised group has managed to ward off countless threats to its existence and survive for millennia. In seeking to answer the question, a wide range of theological, political, and sociological explanations have been proffered.
Anniversary of Goodall at Gombe Stream [reading list] Tomorrow, 14 July, is the anniversary of when Jane Goodall first arrived on the shores of Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in western Tanzania in 1960. Jane Goodall is a famous primatologist and ethologist, and has dedicated her life to researching and understanding primate behavior. During her time at Gombe Stream, Goodall observed chimpanzees making and using tools, the first observations of any wild animal to do so.
Racing to the crossroads at NASIG 2017 By Lynsay Williams I was lucky enough to be able to attend the NASIG (formerly the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc.) 32nd Annual Conference in Indianapolis this year as a first time attendee. I’ve only ever heard good things about the annual NASIG conference, so I knew what to expect, and I was not disappointed.
Dogs in ancient Islamic culture By Alan Mikhail Dogs in Islam, as they are in Rabbinic Judaism, are conventionally thought of as ritually impure. This idea taps into a long tradition that considers even the mere sight of a dog during prayer to have the power to nullify a pious Muslim’s supplications. Similar to many other mistakenly viewed aspects of Islamic history, today both most Muslims and non-Muslims think that Islam and dogs don’t mix.
Two numerals: “six” and “hundred,” part 1 By Anatoly Liberman The reason for such a strange topic will become clear right away. The present post is No. 600 in the career of “The Oxford Etymologist.” I wrote my first essay in early March 2006 and since that time have not missed a single Wednesday.
Five reasons police think you should turn on ‘Ghost mode’ in Snapchat By Heather Saunders Snapchat, an app which allows users to share photos and videos which delete themselves after a few seconds, is used by 166 million people worldwide. The latest Snapchat release has seen police issuing hasty warnings to users of the app, with the new ‘Snap Map’ feature raising a range of questions relating to privacy. What five issues might police have with this seemingly fun app update?
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel [timeline] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This July, the OUP Philosophy team honors Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) as their Philosopher of the Month. Although Hegel was a hugely successful philosopher in his own right–described as “the most famous modern philosopher” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe–his legacy remains the influence he had on later philosophers.
What’s in the message? By Keith Robbins Once upon a time, it could be believed that each advance in communications technology brought with it the probability, if not the certainty, of increased global harmony. The more that messages could be sent and received, the more the peoples of the world would understand each other. Innovators have not been slow to advance comprehensive claims for their achievements. Marconi, for example, selected 1912 as a year in which to suggest that radio, in apparently making war ridiculous, made it impossible.
Warfare as the creator and destroyer of nations By John Hutchinson There are at least four ways in which warfare in its changing forms has been formative in the rise and transformation of national collectivities. First, warfare has been central for much nation-state formation. Most nation-states that came into existence before the mid-20th century were created by war or had their boundaries defined by wars or internal violence.
Jane Austen and the Voice of Insurrection By Robert Morrison Mark Twain was notoriously unimpressed. “I often want to criticise Jane Austen,” he fumed with flamboyant but heartfelt irritation. “Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone!”
Wonder Woman and the realities of World War I By Susan R. Grayzel and Tammy M. Proctor Wonder Woman takes place in an alternative universe, yet the new film of the same name is set in a recognizable historical context: the First World War. For historians, this provides a chance to compare myth to reality. Putting aside the obvious and deliberate alterations—Erich von Ludendorff’s depiction in the story—the film touches on several of the themes that scholars still debate today regarding war and gender.
Radio telescopes to detect gravitational waves By Sergey Siparov Sensationally detected for the first time by the LIGO instrument in 2015, gravitational waves are ripples in space-time – the continuum of the universe – that propagate outward from astrophysical systems. The question is: can we find more of these gravitational waves and do it regularly? Some years ago we have devised a method of finding far more of them, and from weaker sources, than is possible with present techniques with the help of radio telescopes and natural astrophysical masers.
Queen’s University Belfast win the OUP and BPP National Mooting Competition 2017 Congratulations to the Queen’s University Belfast team represented by Darren Finnegan and Conor Lockhart, who were crowned champions of the OUP and BPP National Mooting Competition 2016-2017, which took place at BPP Law School, Holborn on 22 June 2017. We send our thanks to all the participants who took part this year, together with the mooting co-ordinators and academics who train and coach their students.
Who needs quantum key distribution? By Keith Martin Chinese scientists have recently announced the use of a satellite to transfer quantum entangled light particles between two ground stations over 1,000 kilometres apart. This has been heralded as the dawn of a new secure internet. Should we be impressed? Yes – scientific breakthroughs are great things. Does this revolutionise the future of cyber security? No – sadly, almost certainly not.
Let your soul escape: send a postcard this summer By Matthew Flinders ‘The politics of postcards’ is not a common topic of conversation or academic study but as the summer approaches, my mind is turning to how I can continue to write about politics from the seaside, campsite, or dreary ‘Bed & Breakfast’ hotel. Could the humble postcard possibly offer a yet under recognized outlet for political expression?
Law Teacher of the Year announced at the Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching conference By Clare Weaver Nick Clapham of the University of Surrey was pronounced Law Teacher of the Year at the Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching conference. Oxford University Press Higher Education law team successfully hosted the conference on 29 June 2017 at the University of Warwick – bringing together nearly 100 law academics under the umbrella of celebrating teaching excellence.
The human microbiome and endangered bacteria By Manuel Ferrer and Andrés Moya Each and every part of us harbours its own microbial ecosystem. This ecosystem carries some 100 billion cells, known as the microbiota. They started inhabiting our bodies 200,000 years ago, and since then we have evolved side by side to configure a balanced system in which microbes can survive in perfect harmony, provided no perturbations occur.
Fighting cyber crime [timeline] By Heather Saunders The Blackstone’s Police team will soon be attending the 10th International Conference on Evidence Based Policing and 2nd Cybercrime Conference in Cambridge. In advance of the event, take a look through the timeline below to learn more about some of the key events in the recent history of cyber crime. Don’t forget to come to the Oxford University Press stand and say hello if you’re attending the conference!
“The lover”– an extract from Love, Madness, and Scandal By Johanna Luthman The high society of Stuart England found Frances Coke Villiers, Viscountess Purbeck (1602-1645) an exasperating woman. She lived at a time when women were expected to be obedient, silent, and chaste, but Frances displayed none of these qualities. The following extract looks Frances’ affair with Sir Robert Howard.
Hearing to heal By Angela Zusman At the 2014 OHA Annual Meeting, the African American Oral History Program at Story For All received the prestigious Vox Populi Award, one of the highest honors in the oral history world.
Why ‘tropical disease’ is a global problem By Philippa C Matthews In 2015, the United Nations agreed upon Sustainable Development Goals which set seventeen ambitious targets for the next two decades focusing on tackling poverty, reducing disease, protecting the environment, and driving forward an international community based on sustained commitments to – and improvements in – education, health, human rights, and equity.
Marc Chagall, religious artist By Maya Balakirsky Katz One hundred thirty years after the birth of Moishe Shagall, as he was known in his small Hasidic neighborhood on the outskirts of Vitebsk, and thirty-two years after the death of Marc Chagall, as he came to be known in the modern art world, we are starting to understand his vision.
How to measure social pain By Rob Boddice Against the grain of much twentieth-century research on the nature and function of pain in humans, which tended to focus on injury and the bodily mechanics of pain signalling, recent neuroscientific research has opened a new front in the study of social and emotional pain.
Embracing tension, space, and the unknown in music therapy research By Noah Potvin and Kimberly Sena Moore Every three years, the international music therapy community gathers at the World Congress of Music Therapy. This meeting of students, clinicians, educators, and scholars offers opportunities to examine culturally embedded assumptions about the nature of “music” and “health”; to learn how the relationship between music and health differs across cultures; and to directly connect with colleagues from across the globe.
Boasting and bragging By Anatoly Liberman No one likes boasters. People are expected to be modest (especially when they have nothing to show). For that reason, the verbs meaning “to boast” are usually “low” or slangy (disparaging) and give etymologists grief and sufficient reason to be modest.
Macronomics En Marche By Richard S. Grossman Emmanuel Macron has completely upended French politics. Just over a year after founding a new centrist political party, En Marche (“On the move”), the former investment banker and Minister of Economy and Finance was elected president of France on 7 May by an overwhelming majority.
Ezra’s executive order By Philip Yoo In one form or another, executive orders have long been issued by the highest office in the land to implement policy or highlight priorities. In theory, an executive order is not new law, yet a controversial aspect is the power of an individual to control the laws of the land with the stroke of a pen and the net effect may be an actual change in law.
A farewell to former OUPblog editor, Dan Parker By Dan Parker I have been fortunate enough to work on the OUPblog every single day I’ve been at Oxford University Press. When I first started in the UK Publicity team nearly six years ago, I was responsible for commissioning, editing, and coding blog posts, and I instantly fell in love with the channel. As my responsibilities for the OUPblog grew, so too did my attachment to it. It was a huge honour to become the Editor of the OUPblog last May.
Systems of law and the European project By Bernard Stirn Since the end of the Second World War, the European project has met with difficulties and even crises. Its momentum has, however, been strong enough to fend off these turbulent undercurrents, and it has developed incrementally in the decades since. Supported by its two pillars, The Council of Europe and the European Union, it is a Europe built on law, and the project is progressively taking on the contours of a new legal system.
My advice to Mr. Bezos: pay some tax By Edward A. Zelinsky Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon, has asked on Twitter for advice about the use of his fortune for philanthropy. My advice is that Mr. Bezos should pay some tax. Contemporary attention to philanthropy is largely attributable to the admirable work of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Jr. The Giving Pledge, Buffett and Gates have commendably encouraged rich individuals in the US and abroad to devote much of their wealth to charity.
Stephen Hawking’s smile By Dawn Field Where can you share space with royalty, science rock stars such as Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Peter Cox, real rock stars like Brian May of Queen, moon walkers and other astronauts and Nobel Laureates? The Starmus Festival. The stream of achievements proved as intense and dense as expected given the star-line-up, and yet certain aspects of the proceedings proved transcendent
Library outreach: a case study from Wakefield Libraries By Dawn Bartram Dawn Bartram is Library Development Area Supervisor, Skills and Learning, at Wakefield Libraries in the UK, and was the winner of our CILIP competition. Here Dawn expands on her winning entry, and talks us through the benefits and approach to setting up a library outreach programme in order to spread the word about the online resources available at your local library.
Landmark climate agreement holds its own By Daniel Bodansky Jutta Brunnée Lavanya Rajamani It is now beyond doubt that climate change is real. It is already happening, and human beings are largely responsible for it. The pending break of a massive iceberg from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf is the latest reminder of this reality, and its potentially dire consequences. As if to drive home the urgency of the climate challenge, the cracking of Larsen C accelerated just as President Trump announced his decision to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.
Large sample of giant radio galaxies discovered By Pratik Dabhade Recently a team of astronomers from India have reported discovery of a large number of extremely rare kind of galaxies called “giant radio galaxies” (GRGs), using a nearly 20 year old radio survey. GRGs are the largest galaxies known in the Universe, which are visible only to radio telescopes. These extremely active form of galaxies harbor a super massive black hole ‘central-engine’ at the nucleus
How to write about theatre performances By Edwin L. Battistella It’s the theatre season in my town of Ashland, Oregon, and I’m keeping up with the play reviews and talking with reviewers about what makes a good review. Reviewing a play is different than reviewing a book or even a film.
Puerto Rico in crisis By Jorge Duany The US territory of Puerto Rico is currently experiencing its most severe and prolonged economic downturn since the Great Depression (1929–33). Between 2006 and 2016, the island’s economy (measured as Gross National Product in constant 1954 prices) shrank by 15.2%, while total employment fell by 28.6%. The elimination of federal tax exemptions under Section 936 of the Internal Revenue Code in 2006 dealt a serious blow to the island’s manufacturing industry.
Unity without objecthood, in art and in natural language By Friederike Moltmann What makes something we see or something we talk about a single thing, or simply a unit that we can identify and that we can distinguish from others and compare to them? For ordinary objects like trees, chairs, mountains, and lakes, the answer seems obvious.
Bastards and Game of Thrones By Sara McDougall Watching Game of Thrones, and devouring the novels, made me a better medievalist. As fans of the show and novels know well, George R. R. Martin’s imaginary world offers a vibrant account of life and death, of royal power and magic, of political infighting, arranged marriages, sex, love, and despair. It is not an accurate depiction of medieval Europe, but why should it be?
June 2017 (104))
Ten facts about the pipa By Berit Henrickson The modern day pipa has gone through many transformations since being introduced during the Han dynasty and Koryo period. The instrument was integrated into three distinct cultures. It can be made of several different materials.
Women’s healthcare and the concept of mind-body interaction By Mira Lal Throughout history, and across many different cultures, the human being has been considered to consist of a mind with body (and sometimes a soul). Despite this, across much of modern medicine there has been a tendency to conceive of these aspects as distinctly separate entities, whether in disease generation or in its management. The problem of such an approach is that it engenders a sort of Cartesian confusion.
Common pitfalls for UKCAT students and how to avoid them By Brian Holmes, Marianna Parker, and Katie Hunt The UK Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT) is a widely-used admissions test which allows UK universities to evaluate the current skills and future potential of prospective medical students. Thoroughly preparing for the five separate sections of the UKCAT can be a daunting task, so the examination experts at Kaplan have pinpointed six common pitfalls that students should avoid.
How well do you know the foods of Ramadan? [quiz] By Steven Filippi Ramadan is the ninth month of the lunar Muslim calendar and a period of 29 or 30 days each year in which practicing Muslims fast during daylight hours. The morning meal, suhur, must be finished before dawn, and iftar, the evening meal that breaks the fast (sawm), cannot occur until after dusk. While the commitment to prayer and hours of fasting build community, so do the extensive preparations for the breaking of the fast with friends and family at iftar each night.
300 years of fraternal history By Andreas Önnerfors Around midsummer 1717 the first masonic Grand lodge is said to have been created in London. Although the event is not documented in any primary sources, freemasons across the globe – and there are between 2 and 3 millions of them – celebrate this tercentenary with a host of special events: concerts, exhibitions and parades. But what role has the fraternity played in history?
Why should I trust you? AMBIT: helps where it’s hard to help By Dickon Bevington Teachers to nurses, youth workers to psychiatrists, psychotherapists to social workers—you name it, we are legion; the “helping professions”. We’ve made progress over the past century, finding effective ways to help many – perhaps most – of the difficulties our clients face, but we shouldn’t be complacent. Even the most “evidence-based” of our interventions are only effective for 50-60% of the cases that they are used with.
Excuse me, but who’s telling this story? By Peter Childs Ian McEwan’s latest novel, Nutshell, published in paperback this June, the month in which its author turns 69. McEwan forged an edgy early reputation by shell-shocking readers, or at least reviewers, with the violent, sexualised or neglected child narrators of his short stories.
The Nixon tapes and Donald Trump By Luke A. Nichter Since President Trump’s inauguration, and even before, there have been countless comparisons between the 37th and 45th presidents of the United States. Some of the comparisons make sense, while others do not. For this reason, when I was called upon to ask a question at the 16 May, 2017 CNN town hall debate between Governor John Kasich and Senator Bernie Sanders, and I chose to ask a question about Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.
The composer who broke the rules By Patricia Howard Imagine if Charles Dickens had left a record of some of his technical decisions—why, for example, he so often used a verbless sentence; or if Joseph Mallord William Turner had explained to his contemporaries why he chose a certain vivid pigment which he knew would fade over time.
10 of the best literary summers With the summer months having firmly arrived, we thought it was a good time to look at some of the most memorable, and most beautiful literary depictions of summer. From Tennyson’s ‘perpetual summer’ to Charlotte Bronte’s balmy summer evenings, and from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist to the oppressive heat of Shakespeare’s ‘fair Verona’, discover literary summers through the ages…
From the life of words, Part 3: the names of some skin diseases By Anatoly Liberman The scourge of the Middle Ages was leprosy. No other disease filled people with equal dread. The words designating this disease vary. Greek lépra is a substantivized feminine adjective (that is, an adjective turned into a noun—a common process: compare Engl. the blind and blinds, with two ways of substantivization).
The history of American burlesque [timeline] Burlesque is an exotic dance style that draws on theatrical and often comedic performance elements. First introduced by a visiting British dance troupe in the 1860s, burlesque took off in America even as its popularity dwindled in England.
Savings banks in Germany: welfare versus politics By Florian Englmaier and Till Stowasser In Germany, it is not uncommon for primary-school children to have their own savings account. A reason for this is that on World Savings Day, savings-bank representatives visit schools all over Germany to educate pupils about the benefits of saving. Besides being clever marketing, this program is rooted in the savings banks’ legal pledge to foster economic welfare: German state law requires savings banks to support the local economy.
Rousseau, self-love, and an increasingly connected world By James Delaney Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century French enlightenment period. Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau made important contributions to philosophy, literature, and even music.
Republics, empires, and civilizations By Peter Gardella Is President Trump our second emperor? Former President Obama resembles the statues that Augustus, the first emperor of ancient Rome, distributed for worship.
The Italian and Gothic literature [video] The Italian is a gripping tale of love and betrayal, abduction and assassination, and incarceration in the dreadful dungeons of the Inquisition. Uncertainty and doubt lie everywhere.
The imaginative power and feminism of Harriet Prescott Spofford By Cindy Murillo “A Flaming Fire Lily Among the Pale Blossoms of New England” poignantly points to the paradoxical nature behind the imaginative power of notable American author Harriet Prescott Spofford.
The long history of political social media By Joel Penney One of the key stories of the last US presidential election was the battle of words and images fought by supporters of the candidates on social media, or what one journalist has called “The Great Meme War” of 2016. From hashtag slogans like #FeelTheBern and #MakeAmericaGreatAgain to jokey internet memes like “Nasty Women”, public participation in political advocacy and promotion has reached a fever pitch in the age of networked digital technologies.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Swami Vivekananda [quiz] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This June, the OUP Philosophy team honors Swami Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta, 1863–1902) as their Philosopher of the Month. Born in Calcutta under colonial rule, Vivekananda became a Hindu religious leader, and one of the most prominent disciples of guru and mystic Sri Ramak???a.
Seeing light element lithium with electron microscopy By Yasukazu Murakami Remember your cell phone, laptop computer, tablet, and other mobile electronic devices? Most of these devices employ “lithium-ion batteries (LIBs)” which allow for the significant size reduction of batteries due to the high energy-density per unit volume – in other words, there is a high density of electric carries that can be used in charging/discharging of batteries.
Twenty years of Pottering By Peter Hunt It’s difficult to imagine a Harry Potter-less world. This is not simply because since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 1997 the numbers attached to the franchise have become increasingly eye-watering, but because, quite unintentionally (perhaps), what began as a modest fantasy for children has helped to turn the literary world upside-down.
If diplomacy did not exist, we would need to invent it By Tom Fletcher We now face a century of change like no other in history. Technology will transform how we meet our needs for peace, dignity and community. This will shatter the global political equilibrium, and shift power away from governments towards individuals. States, ideas and industries will go out of business. Inequality could grow.
Reducing the harm done by substances: key strategies By Peter Anderson and Fleur Braddick The most recent data on life expectancy for the United States show stagnation over the past three years. This stagnation has happened at a time when the most important causes of death, such as cardiovascular diseases or cancers, have decreased. So, what causes of death are responsible for the stagnation in life expectancy?
Pride Month: 1800 to the present [timeline] By Panumas King OUP Philosophy is celebrating Pride Month to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality, and to coincide with NYC Pride and London Pride in June and July.
Corruption: are you an expert? [quiz] By Tom Nichols, Ray Fisman, and Miriam A. Golden Headlines regularly focus on political scandals and corruption. From public officials embezzling government monies, selling public offices, and trading bribes for favors to private companies generate public indignation and calls for reform—corruption, it seems, is inevitable. But what really is corruption, and who is responsible for its continuation?
Divine powers By Anna Marmodoro What do we think of when we think of ‘God’? Any answer to this question will include the idea that the divine is powerful. God creates, God is in charge of the world. If we think that the concept of God doesn’t make sense, that may be partly because the concept of God’s power doesn’t make sense: how can a good God be powerful whilst the world contains this much suffering?
Abstract objects: two ways of introducing them, in the core and the periphery of language By Friederike Moltmann One of the most striking features of natural language is that it comes with a wealth of terms for abstract objects, or so it seems, and to a great extent they can be formed quite systematically and productively. First, we can form nominalizations from expressions that normally serve as predicates, for example adjectives, and the nominalizations can be used, it seems to refer to abstract objects.
History of the United States’ Constitutional Law [timeline] By Gabby Vicedomini and Kate Roche The law of the land is the Constitution of the United States of America. Consisting of 7 articles, drafted by the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia, and 27 amendments, more than 200 years old, this document is the oldest written constitution of a national state in use anywhere in the world today. (The oldest written constitution of any sort in use today is the Massachusetts state constitution of 1780.)
Practising surgery in India By Samiran Nundy and Dirk J. Gouma Being a surgeon in India is very different and probably more interesting than being one anywhere else in the world. Not only are there the usual third world problems to deal with like poor, undernourished patients with advanced diseases who throng the underfunded public hospitals but there is now, in stark contrast, a for-profit and thriving expensive private health sector to which, in spite of its obvious shortcomings, three quarters of the patients go first.
Listening for change By Ariel Beaujot How might we, as oral historians, make the voices of those who have lived and live in our communities available to all? For the past 10 years oral history programs all over the country have been digitizing their collections and putting them online.
The global challenges Brexit won’t fix By Giles Merritt 23 June marks the first anniversary of the UK’s Brexit referendum. One year ago, the European Union was reeling. There were fears that the EU would start to unravel, with other countries being pushed by populism and euroscepticism into following Britain towards the exit door. A year on, that fearful mood has evaporated. But the EU is far from resolving its accumulating problems.
The life and work of Alan Turing Alan Turing was one of England’s most influential scientists of the twentieth century. He is best remembered as having cracked the codes used in the Enigma machines, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis in many important battles, particularly in the Atlantic Ocean. While this achievement which arguably helped to bring the Second World War to a quicker end has been brought to the fore through popular histories
9 facts about hermeneutics By Jens Zimmermann Hermeneutics is the art of understanding and of making oneself understood. But what does ‘hermeneutics’ mean? Where did the term originate and how is it used in day-to-day life? Jens Zimmermann, author of Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 9 things everyone should know about hermeneutics.
How can we save the pollinators? By Louise Lynch and Doug Golick An often-cited estimate is that one-third of the food you eat comes from insect pollinators. Many of the fruits and vegetables that you enjoy develop their fruit and seed primarily through insect pollination services. Other sometimes overlooked benefits of pollinators are the ecological services that they provide. For example, insects pollinate many plants that provide erosion control, keeping our waterways clean.
Latino fathers and parenting: lessons learned from Puerto Rican fathers By Cristina Mogro-Wilson atherhood is a complex and an evolving concept which has gained national attention. Fathers play an important role in the development of their children, which also has an impact on their identity as a father. Minority fathers, particularly Latino fathers, have been under-recognized in this call to better understand fatherhood. However, given that Hispanics are the largest minority group in the US, the experiences of these fathers are of heightened importance.
Katherine Dunham: the artist as activist By Joanna Dee Das In October 1944, the African American choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) stood in front of an audience in Louisville, Kentucky and announced that she and her dance company would not return to Louisville until the city desegregated its theaters. Word of her brave stance ricocheted across the country, finding its way into a newspaper in Indiana, where a fifteen-year-old boy wrote her an admiring letter saying that she was an inspiration in the fight for racial equality.
Introducing Joel Rinsema, US Choral Promotion Manager By Joel Rinsema Joel Rinsema joined OUP in March 2017. We caught up with him to find out what exactly being a ‘Choral Promotion Manager’ involves, how much coffee he drinks, and what his life was like before he joined the Press.
The dwarfs of our vocabulary By Anatoly Liberman I receive all kinds of questions about etymology. Unless they are responses to my posts, they usually concern slang and exotic words. No one seems to care about and, as, at, for, and their likes. Conjunctions and prepositions are taken for granted, even though their origin is sometimes obscure and their history full of meaning.
Visualizing the global income distribution By Arjun Jayadev The evolution of the distribution of income among individuals within countries and across the world has been the subject of considerable academic and popular commentary in the recent past. Works such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century or Joseph Stiglitz’s The Price of Inequality have become unlikely bestsellers, garnering a startling degree of both academic and popular interest.
The biological ironies of transgender debates By Douglas Allchin Transgender issues have made significant headlines in the United States. Not long ago, North Carolina struggled to repeal a 2016 law that required people to use only public restrooms that matched the sex on their birth certificate, not their lived gender identity. Only weeks earlier, the US Supreme Court declined to hear a case from a Virginia student on the same issue.
Can all refugees become economically successful? By Naohiko Omata We are celebrating the 16th United Nations’ World Refugee Day, scheduled on 20 June every year. It is a day to recognize and honour refugees’ resilience, agency and capability. In the area of refugees’ economic lives, there is growing evidence demonstrating that refugees are economic actors who are able to sustain themselves and to make socio-economic contributions to their hosting society.
New bank resolution regime as an engine of EU integration By Matthias Haentjens On 1 June 2017 the European Commission and Italy reached an agreement ‘in principle’ on the recapitalization of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS). A mere week later, the Single Resolution Board (SRB) put Banco Popular Español (BPE) into resolution, and had its shares transferred to Banco Santander. Both cases must be understood in the context of the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD) and both can be considered as examples of how the new European bank resolution regime performs as an engine of European integration.
Shining evolutionary light: Q&A with EMPH EIC Charles Nunn By Charles Nunn Evolutionary biology is a basic science that reaches across many disciplines and as such, may provide numerous applications in the fields of medicine and public health. To further the evolutionary medicine landscape, we’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Charles Nunn of Duke University as the new Editor-in-Chief of Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, the open access journal that aims to connect evolutionary biology with the health sciences
How much do you know about refugees? By Gabby Vicedomini and Ina Christova The United Nations’ (UN) World Refugee Day is observed on 20 June each year. In honour of the UN World Refugee Day, we have compiled the following quiz about the extraordinary achievements of well-known people who have all had to flee their homelands. From artists to sportspeople, writers, and scientists of world renown, take our quiz to raise awareness and celebrate their talent and courage at a time when this has never been more important.
Climate change: are you an expert? [Quiz] By Tom Nichols Climate change is one of the most significant and far-reaching problems of the twenty-first century and it is a frequent topic of discussion everywhere from scientific journals to the Senate floor. Because climate change is often the subject of heated debate, it’s easy to mistake political stands for scientific facts. Inspired by The Death of Expertise, in which Tom Nichols explores the dangers of the public rejection of expertise, we’ve created a series of quizzes to test your knowledge.
How can we measure political leadership? By Ben Worthy and Mark Bennister Understanding and measuring political leadership is a complex business. Though we all have ideals of what makes a ‘good’ leader, they are often complex, contradictory and more than a little partisan. Is it about their skills, their morality or just ‘getting things done’? And how can we know if they succeed or fail (and why?). From Machiavelli onwards we have wrestled with our idea of what a perfect leader should look like.
The representation of fathers in children’s fiction By Maudie Smith There aren’t many areas in literature where men are under-represented, but it’s safe to say that in children’s fiction, men – and fathers in particular – have been largely overlooked. And deliberately so. Adult carers with a sense of responsibility have been ousted from the action because of their exasperating tendency to step in and take control. Children’s authors don’t want competent adults interfering and solving problems.
Why do I wake up every morning feeling so tired? By Gary L. Wenk The alarm rings, you awaken, and you are still drowsy: why? Being sleepy in the morning does not make any sense; after all, you have just been asleep for the past eight hours. Shouldn’t you wake up refreshed, aroused, and attentive? No, and there are a series of ways to explain why. The neurobiological answer: During the previous few hours before waking in the morning, you have spent most of your time in REM sleep, dreaming.
Understanding the Democratic Unionist Party By Jonathan Tonge Theresa May’s desperate search for an ally after a calamitous 2017 General Election saw the Democratic Unionist Party come under scrutiny like never before. The DUP is a party which has moved from its fundamentalist Protestant Paisleyite past – but not at a pace always noticeable to outsiders. The DUP is comfortable in its own skin. So, who are the DUP’s members and what do they think?
Bipolar disorder and addictions By John B. Saunders Bipolar disorder consists of two major types. Bipolar disorder, type I is the classical and well-known disorder, which used to be called manic-depressive illness. Episodes of hypomania and depression tend to alternate, with each phase lasting for days or weeks. Bipolar disorder, type II, is characterized by shorter-lived episodes of abnormal mood (it is sometimes termed “rapid cycling”) and there is a predominance of depressive phases.
Where did Leaves of Grass come from? By Edward Whitley One of the most enduring (if not most entertaining) games that Walt Whitman scholars like to play begins with a single question: Where did Leaves of Grass come from? Before Whitman released the first edition of his now-iconic book of poetry in 1855, he had published only a handful of rather conventional poems in local newspapers, which makes it seem as if the groundbreaking free-verse form in Leaves of Grass appeared virtually out of nowhere.
Did branding predict Brexit? By Robert Jones Branding predicted Brexit. This bald assertion points to a fascinating truth about the art of branding. Because branding feeds on, and feeds into, popular culture, it’s often a leading indicator of bigger, political phenomena. Where branding leads, the rest of us follow. Let me explain. 2016 was the year of populism. Among other things, the phenomenon of Brexit and Trump was a popular backlash against the globalisation.
World Elder Abuse Awareness Day: A reading list on elder mistreatment and neglect By Deborah Carr This abuse and neglect of older adults violates the cultural expectation that society’s elders should be respected. Mistreatment has far-reaching implications for the physical, mental and financial well-being of older adults, and is particularly harmful to those who are already socially isolated. In 2011 the United Nations General Assembly, in its resolution 66/127, designated 15 June as World Elder Abuse Awareness Day.
The tale of Madame d’Aulnoy We may see fairy tales now as something from our youth, a story to get a child to sleep, keep them from boredom, or to teach a moral lesson. However, fairy tales haven’t always just been for kids. In late seventeenth-century France the fairy tale became a ‘legitimate’ genre of literature for the educated (adult) […]
Mid-June etymology gleanings By Anatoly Liberman John Cowan pointed out that queer “quaint, odd” can be and is still used today despite its latest (predominant) sense. Yes, I know. Quite intentionally, I sometimes use the phrase queer smile. It usually arouses a few embarrassed grins. My students assume that a man in the winter of his days is so un-cool that he does not know what this adjective now means.
UKIP: death by overdose of success or a premature obituary? By Joseph Lacey In 2006, the political scientist Lieven De Winter pronounced “overdose of success” as the cause of death of the Belgian autonomist party, the Volksunie (People’s Union). The trajectory of the United Kingdom Independence Party bears some striking resemblances.
“Finding Clarity” [an extract from Martin Luther] By Heinz Schilling The foundation of Protestantism changed the religious landscape of Europe, and subsequently the world, Heinz Schilling traces the life of Martin Luther and shows him not simply as a reformer, but also as an individual. The following extract looks at the consequences following the publication of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.
Kafka’s The Trial [extract] By Mike Mitchell and Ritchie Robertson Last Tuesday, during our first Classics Book Club at Bryant Park of the season, Bruce Bauman (author of Broken Sleep) led a discussion of The Trial by Franz Kafka. Among many other interesting takeaways, Bauman described The Trial as “an affirmation of life, art, and of the necessity to continue against great odds.” He went […]
Famous doctors from the ancient world By J.C. McKeown Drastic advances in science have caused past medical practices to become not only antiquated, but often shocking. Although brilliant medical insights are peppered throughout history, many dated practices are more curious than insightful. From an early take on chemical warfare to human dissections, the following shortened excerpt from A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities includes short facts and quotes on some of the most famous doctors from the Ancient World.
Has war been declining? By Azar Gat Is the world becoming less belligerent and more peaceful? This proposition encounters widespread disbelief, as most people are very surprised by the claim that we live in the most peaceful period in history. Are we not flooded with reports and images in the media of conflicts around the world today?
The life and times of Clement Attlee, the man who created modern Britain [Timeline] By Heather Smith The Labour Party of Great Britain was formed in 1900 and during the early decades of the century struggled as the opposition to Conservative Party, forming minority governments, under Ramsay McDonald, for only brief periods. Clement Attlee, representing London’s East End in Parliament, was there through those early struggles, a witness to Labour’s near annihilation […]
Suspected ‘fake results’ in science By Huw Llewelyn There is a concern that too many scientific studies are failing to be replicated as often as expected. This means that a high proportion is suspected of being invalid. The blame is often put on confusion surrounding the ‘P value’ which is used to assess the effect of chance on scientific observations. A ‘P value’ is calculated by first assuming that the ‘true result’ is disappointing
Paul A. Samuelson and the evolution of modern economics By Roger E. Backhouse For thirty years after the Second World War, the teaching of introductory economics in the US was dominated by a single textbook, initially titled Economics: An Introductory Analysis, later shortened to just Economics. When the first edition appeared in 1948, its author, Paul Samuelson, was only 33 years old. The book provided an account of what had rapidly become the accepted way of thinking about problems of unemployment.
Assessing the historical and imperial turn in International Law By Dr. Juan Pablo Scarfi Unlike international relations, international law has a long-standing tradition of teaching and research that connects history and theory. In recent years, a new wave of innovative scholarship, exploring the historical trajectory of international law and its complicity with colonial and imperial endeavors, has emerged. In fact, this transformation has been often regarded as a “historical turn” and even “imperial turn.”
The news media: are you an expert? [Quiz] By C. W. Anderson and Tom Nichols The news media has long shaped the way that we see the world. But with the rise of social media and citizen journalism, it can be difficult to determine which stories are fake news and which are simply the product of the evolving media. Inspired by The Death of Expertise, in which Tom Nichols explores the dangers of the public rejection of expertise, we’ve created a series of quizzes to test your knowledge.
How does climate change impact global peace and security? Climate change is one of the most pervasive global threats to peace and security in the 21st century. But how many people would list this as a key factor in international relations and domestic welfare? In reality, climate change touches all areas of security, peace building, and development. The impacts of climate change are already adversely affecting vulnerable communities, as well as stretching the capacities of societies and governments.
Loving and before By Allison Varzally This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court Case that ruled prohibitions on interracial marriages unconstitutional. The decision and the brave couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, who challenged the Virginia statute denying their union because he was deemed a white man and she, a black woman, deserve celebration. The couple had grown up […]
What is to be done with Harriet Martineau? By Valerie Sanders “She says nothing that is not obvious,” claimed Alice Meynell of Harriet Martineau (1802-76), “and nothing that is not peevishly and intentionally misunderstood.” (Pall Mall Gazette, 11 October 1895). If this seemed the case in 1895, how does her reputation stand in the twenty-first century, given that so much of her writing and campaigning was […]
Margaret Thatcher, Lego, and the Principle of Least Action By Jennifer Coopersmith Imagine a toy city, seen from afar. Now imagine that some of the buildings have Lego-shaped castellations, others have Lego-shaped holes in the walls, and there are a few loose Lego bricks lying around. All this evidence leads us to guess that the whole toy city is made up of Lego bricks. When we get up close, we see that our guess is correct. By a similar blend of evidence and theorizing, John Dalton, around 1800, came up with the Atomic Theory
What are the best ways to view a solar eclipse? By Fred Espenak and Mark Littmann Millions of people will soon travel to a narrow strip in America to witness a rare event: a total solar eclipse. On 21 August, many will look up to the sky to witness this phenomenon – will you be one of them? In the following shortened excerpt from Totality: The Great American Eclipses of 2017 and 2024, learn what types of eyewear you should be using to watch the Sun disappear
Teaching medicine: how the great ones do it By Molly Harrod and Sanjay Saint Attending physicians, the physicians who train interns and residents on hospital wards, have always borne a heavy responsibility. They are accountable for the level of medical care received by each succeeding generation of American patients. But today, these physician-teachers confront unprecedented obstacles. How well they meet the challenge may have long-term consequences for patients and for the medical profession as a whole.
Getting in on the joke By Julian Simpson Last month we brought you a short interview with Katie Holmes, about her article, Does It Matter If She Cried? Recording Emotion and the Australian Generations Oral History Project, asking how to read and make sense of emotion in oral history.
Are you ready for a summer of choral events? By Elanor Caunt This summer there are so many choral festivals, competitions, and conferences taking place, that there’s no chance of having a quiet summer off. Pack your bags, your scores and your pencils, and get ready for a summer of singing!
10 facts about the animal kingdom By Peter Holland How many species of animals are there? What is the largest animal, and how are we related to rats? Peter Holland, the author of The Animal Kingdom: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 10 things everyone should know about the animal kingdom, and how we humans fit in.
Our oceans, our future [reading list] The eight of June is World Oceans Day. Celebrated globally, this day is a chance to appreciate the ocean and learn about conservation efforts that help protect it. This year’s theme is “Our Oceans, Our Future”. In the spirit of moving towards a healthier future for our marine environment, we’ve put together a reading list of our favorite books about the ocean and marine conservation.
Do you know the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright? [quiz] By Steven Filippi Frank Lloyd Wright, born on 8 June 1867, was one of the most significant architects of the Western world in the first half of the 20th century. At the height of his prolific career, Wright’s works revealed the architect’s keen insight into American and European culture, as well as an appreciation for indigenous art and architecture and the history and styles of Japan.
What’s in your eighteenth-century ornamental toolbox? By Donna Gunn To many musicians, the word “ornament” brings a sense of foreboding dread. The mere thought of deciphering and interpreting the funny little signs and symbols into a line becomes paralyzing. But step back and look at the word: ornament.
The real thing: the thrills of inauthentic literature By Vayos Liapis How much would you be prepared to pay for a library of forged books? In 2011, the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University acquired (at an undisclosed price) the so-called ‘Bibliotheca Fictiva’, one of the largest collections of forged books and documents.
English idioms and The British Apollo By Anatoly Liberman In 1708, London witnessed the appearance of The British Apollo, or Curious Amusements for the INGENIOUS. To which are Added the most Material Occurrences Foreign and Domestick. Perform’d by a Society of GENTLEMEN. VOL. I. Printed for the Authors, by F. Mayo, at the Printing-Press, against Water-Lane in Fleet-Street.
Pound foolish–but not penny wise By Richard S. Grossman The Trump Administration released its $4 trillion budget on 23 May. Like the president himself, the budget promises a lot, delivers very little, and is full of misinformation. The administration promises to eliminate the federal government’s budget deficit within 10 years, while at the same time offering tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. To get a sense of the scale of this task, consider the current fiscal position of the US government.
How well do you know Jane Austen’s novels? [quiz] Jane Austen is one of the best known and most celebrated authors of British literature, inspiring legions of fans across the globe. With this popularity in mind, we thought it was a good time to test your knowledge of Jane Austen’s novels and characters — with a quiz based on the author’s lesser-known quotations. How well do you really know Austen’s writings?
Accommodating religion in the workplace By Isaac Weiner In March, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) generated controversy (and confusion) when it ruled that a workplace ban on wearing the Islamic headscarf did not necessarily constitute direct discrimination. Employers could not single out Muslim employees, the ECJ found, but they could enforce general policies restricting religious dress so long as they applied equally to all.
Dying to prove themselves By Lesley Higgins The Wonder, the latest work of Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue to light up the fiction best sellers’ list (Donoghue’s prize-winning 2010 novel Room was the basis for the 2015 Academy-Award winning film), draws upon a very real, very disturbing Victorian phenomenon: the young women and men—but mostly pubescent females—who starved themselves to death to prove some kind of divine or spiritual presence in their lives.
A better way to model cancer By Gunjan Sinha Later this year, the first US-based clinical trial to test whether an organoid model of prostate cancer can predict drug response will begin recruiting patients. Researchers will grow the organoids—miniorgans coaxed to develop from stem cells—from each patient’s cancer tissues and expose the organoids to the patient’s planned course of therapy. If the organoids mirror patients’ drug responses, the results would support the model’s use as a tool to help guide therapy.
How well do you know the Hollywood musical? [quiz] In Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, film studies professor Todd Berliner explains how Hollywood delivers aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. The following quiz is based on information found in chapter 11, “Bursting into Song in the Hollywood Musical.”
Presidential pensions as broken windows By Edward A. Zelinsky The complex (and often tragic) saga of post-presidential retirements is well-known. Some presidents, such as Herbert Hoover, were independently-wealthy and thus spent their years after the White House in economic security. Other presidents, such as Woodrow Wilson, lived only briefly after their service in the Oval Office. Yet other former presidents experienced great financial difficulties in retirement.
Saving old forests By Yves Bergeron, Alain Leduc, and Frederic Raulier Research shows that boreal forests, like those across much of Northern Europe and Canada, have higher levels of variability in their structure and dynamics when unmanaged, improving their biodiversity and the stability of their ecosystems. These unmanaged forests also have a higher proportion of older trees than those used in industrial forest rotation – around 70-100 years in Canadian boreal forests.
Church and nature: sex and sin By Valerie Minogue The Sin of Abbé Mouret reworks the Genesis story of the Fall of Man, with the abbé, Serge Mouret as Adam, and the young Albine his Eve. Fifth of the twenty novels of Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle, the novel follows on almost directly from The Conquest of Plassans, in which the young Serge Mouret decides to become a priest.
An economist views the UK’s snap general election By Jan Toporowski There is something unusual about the 2017 UK general election. It is the way in which all the manifestos clearly make their promises conditional on the ‘good Brexit deal’ that they claim to be able to secure. They are not the only ones. On 11 May the Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney reassured the markets that the ‘good Brexit deal’ would stabilise our economy after 2019, and the markets were duly sedated.
En Marche: Macron’s France and the European Union By Anthony Pagden On the evening of 7 May, Emmanuel Macron walked, almost marched, slowly across the courtyard of the Louvre to make his first speech as the President elect of the French Fifth Republic. He did so not, as others would have done, to the music of the “Marseillaise” but to the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – the “Ode to Joy”, the anthem of the European Union. It was, wrote Natalie Nougayrède in the Guardian, “the most meaningful, inspiring symbol Macron could choose”.
Using novel gas observations to probe exocomet composition By Quentin Kral Space missions like the Rosetta space probe built by the European Space Agency, that recently reached and studied the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, address the profound question of how life came to Earth by quantifying the composition of comets in the Solar System. Comets are made of the pristine material from which planets were formed. By exploring the composition of comets, we can thus access the pristine composition of the building blocks of planets.
Flying kites: politics, elections, and The One Show By Matthew Flinders Apparently there is a Chinese proverb that says ‘unless there is opposing wind, a kite cannot rise’ but in the context of British politics it appears that only one kite is really rising, and the other is tumbling down. If truth be told the wind of opposition has arguably been so feeble that the Labour Party’s kite appears leaden rather than light.
How to use repetition By Edwin Battistella A couple times a week, I hear someone remark “It is what it is,” accompanied by a weary sigh. I always puzzle over the expression a little bit, thinking What else could it be?
Business as usual in Washington? By Miriam A. Golden and Ray Fisman While these behaviors may be no more troubling to a large swath of the electorate in the United States than revolving door lobbyists or campaign finance run amok, they should be. Some legal scholars contend that cumulatively, Trump’s actions may well violate the emoluments clause of the US Constitution. Taken individually, however, none of his actions seem likely to be illegal or corrupt.
Are Indians charitable? By Pushpa Sundar Are Indians charitable? My answer to this question is yes, as much as any other, contrary to what international surveys may maintain. I believe India comes out poorly on the generosity index because the focus is on aggregated giving and no distinction is being made between philanthropic giving and charitable giving. My contention is that charity is alive and well in India, and Indians are as charitable as any other nation.
Philosopher of the month: Swami Vivekananda [timeline] By Catherine Pugh and John Priest This June, the OUP Philosophy team honors Swami Vivekananda (born Narendranath Datta, 1863–1902) as their Philosopher of the Month. Born in Calcutta under colonial rule, Vivekananda became a Hindu religious leader, and one of the most prominent disciples of guru and mystic Sri Ramak???a.
A glimpse at Eclipse 2017 [excerpt] By Frank Close Anyone who has experienced the diamond ring effect that heralds the start of a total solar eclipse will tell you that it is the most beautiful natural phenomenon that they have ever seen.
A reading list for Euroanaesthesia 2017 in Geneva By Pete Ward This weekend anaesthetists from across the globe are descending upon Geneva for Euroanaesthesia, Europe’s largest annual event focusing on anaesthesia, perioperative medicine, intensive care, emergency medicine, and pain treatment. We’ll be heading out there too, and the interactive bookcase below will give you a sneak peek at what we’ll have available at stand 81a!
Net neutrality and the new information crossroads By James W. Cortada Despite the rapidly expanding collections of information, the nation’s information is at risk. As more of it comes in digitized form and less in printed or verbalized formats, it can be corralled and viewed more easily by groups or institutions concerned with only their interests.
The classics book club at Bryant Park Reading Room By Cassidy Donovan Oxford University Press has once again teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room on their summer literary series. The Bryant Park Reading Room was first established in 1935 by the New York Public Library as a refuge for the thousands of unemployed New Yorkers during the Great Depression.
Gut microbiota and melanoma treatment responses By Caroline Robert and Franck Carbonnel Monoclonal antibodies directed against checkpoint molecules such as CTLA-4 have recently demonstrated success in cancer immunotherapy in patients with melanoma. CTLA-4 (cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4) is a T cell receptor that functions as an immune checkpoint, downregulating immune responses. The monoclonal antibody, ipilimumab, blocks CTLA-4 by inhibiting this negative immune signal and amplifying immune responses.
Of dogs, apes, and humans By Anne Reboul It’s the late afternoon and you are in the kitchen, idly beginning to think about dinner, at the end of a long day at work. Suddenly the peace is shattered by the noisy entrance of your dog and your son. Your dog sits by his empty bowl and looks at you with beseeching eyes. If he thinks that you’re not reacting quickly enough, he may produce a single attention-grabbing bark.
Celebrating LGBT Pride Month: a reading list for older LGBT adults By Deborah Carr The month of June was chosen for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month to commemorate the Stonewall riots, which occurred at the end of June 1969. The riots were a tipping point in LGBT history and captured the long-standing feelings of anger and disenchantment among members of the gay community, who were frequently subjected to discriminatory, hateful, and even violent treatment.
8 groovy facts about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band By Steven Filippi The summer of 1967 was a turbulent time. In the middle of the hippie-filled “Summer of Love,” war broke out in the Middle East and the US escalated its bombing of Vietnam. That June also saw the most famous rock band in the world release their magnum opus and change music history and American pop culture forever.
May 2017 (116))
From the life of words, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman I am picking up where I left off last week. At first sight, nothing could be more straightforward than the adjective still. It has always meant “fixed, not moving.” We sit still, come to a standstill, and enjoy still lifes (that is, pictures of living things in a state of rest).
What is game theory? By Eden Joseph Game theory is considered to be one of the most important theories not simply within the field of economics, but also mathematics, political science, biology, philosophy, and ecology, just to name a few. It has been developed over the many years since the term was first coined to what it is now: a theory used to “understand the strategic behaviour of decision makers who are aware that their decisions affect one another.”
Law and order fundamentalism and the US-Mexico border By C. J. Alvarez Today, the United States is experiencing a surge of law and order fundamentalism in the US-Mexico borderland. As it pertains to the international divide, law and order fundamentalism as a political ideology has a long genealogy that stretches back to the late nineteenth century. It is grounded in anti-Mexicanism as well as the abiding conviction that the border is inherently dangerous and “needs” to be policed.
Fixed Term Parliaments Act By James Morrison Was there ever a more hollow and impotent piece of legislation than the UK’s Fixed Term Parliaments Act? Trumpeted by the Conservative-led coalition as a way of stopping opportunist prime ministers ever again calling snap elections to capitalize on hefty poll leads – by complicating simple confidence votes in ways that prompted Labour to condemn it as a constitutional “stitch-up” – within six short years of receiving Royal Assent it has proved itself wholly incapable of doing any such thing.
Mathematics Masterclasses for young people By Michael Sewell In fact the idea really goes back to Michael Faraday, who gave Christmas lectures about science for young people at The Royal Institution of Great Britain in London in 1826. Sir Christopher Zeeman, following upon Porter’s initiative, gave the first series of six one-hour lectures (Mathematics Masterclasses) to young people at The Royal Institution in 1981, about “The Nature of Mathematics and The Mathematics of Nature”.
Building on the legacy of Andrew Jackson By J.M. Opal This March, President Trump paid a visit to the Hermitage, the Tennessee home of his favorite predecessor, Andrew Jackson. Trump was uncharacteristically modest. He stood at the grave of Old Hickory, saluting for the cameras. Then he sent this beyond-the-grave message: “We thank you for your service. We honor your memory. We build on your legacy and we thank God for the USA!” What legacy does Trump want to build on?
Plant vs predator By Dale Walters Some plants are capable of warding off attack by slugs and snails, but many of our favourite garden flowers and vegetables seemingly cannot get their act together. Should we even attempt to grow Hostas, for example?
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: an audio guide 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. In honor of Austen, listen to Fiona Stafford of Somerville College, Oxford, as she introduces and discusses Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and […]
The International Day of UN Peacekeepers By Daragh Murray The twenty-ninth of May marks the ‘International Day of UN Peacekeepers’. Today, there are approximately 100,000 UN peacekeepers deployed across the globe, and these individuals’ contribution to the restoration and maintenance of international peace and security – often undertaken in exceptionally difficult circumstances – must be acknowledged. However, recent sexual abuse and exploitation scandals involving UN peacekeepers…
Protecting half: a plan to save life on Earth By Carly Vynne and Eric Dinerstein Recently, a number of the world’s leading scientists, indigenous leaders, and advocates have been engaged in something bold: asking exactly what is required to stop the mass extinction of life on Earth and save a living planet. And the answer, after numerous reviews of the evidence for what it would take to achieve comprehensive biodiversity conservation, has become clear: fully protect half the Earth (or more) in an interconnected way.
Brazil’s long-standing global aspirations: what is next? By Ana Margheritis Brazil has had a strong diplomatic tradition of being involved in international affairs, and has recently intensified its efforts to acquire more prominence and leverage in global issues. At the beginning of the 2000s, and under the leadership and popularity of former president ‘Lula’ da Silva, all eyes were on this country. Brazil was portrayed as a promising emerging market and rising power.
Is suicide rationalizable? Evidence from Italian prisons. By Nadia Campaniello After cancer and heart disease, suicide accounts for more years of life lost than any other cause of death, both in the United States and in Europe. In 2013 there were 41,149 suicides (12.6 every 100,000 inhabitants) in the US. To contextualize this number just think that the number of motor vehicle deaths was, in the same year, around 32,719 (10.3 every 100,000 inhabitants).
Coincidences are underrated By Arthur W. Wiggins and Charles M. Wynn Sr. The unreasonable popularity of pseudosciences such as ESP or astrology often stems from personal experience. We’ve all had that “Ralph” phone call or some other happening that seems well beyond the range of normal probability, at least according to what we consider to be common sense. But how accurately does common sense forecast probabilities and how much of it is fuzzy math? As we will see, fuzzy math holds its own.
10 times that Jane Austen was ahead of her time We’ve highlighted 10 examples of Austen’s writing — all demonstrating her truly unique style. From post-truth sensibilities to taking time to slow down in our everyday lives, and from true love to the fight for female education, discover 10 times that Austen was ahead of the times…
The conflicts of Classical translation By Robin Waterfield Any translation is bound to be only partially faithful to the original. Translation is, as the Latin root of the word shows, transference from one language to another. It is not, or should not be, slavish imitation. The Italians have a saying: “Traduttore traditore” – “the translator is a traitor” – and one has to accept from the start that this is bound to be the case.
Remembering veterans By Alex Dracobly, Brent C. Bankus, and Ellen Brooks With Memorial Day in the U.S. right around the corner, we’re bringing you a glimpse into a handful of oral history projects focused on collecting and preserving the memories of military veterans.
Responsibility and attribution: Criminal law and film By Nicola Lacey Many of us have been intrigued this year by two powerful films which explore the difficulty of escaping a troubled past. In Oscar-winning Moonlight, we gradually discover why a small African-American boy is picked on as ‘different’ by his classmates, and follow his path from school-yard harassment and violence through drug dealing, a prison term and a painful achievement of liberation which nonetheless leaves the scars of the past deeply etched on his personality.
Pandemics in the age of Trump By Christian W. McMillen If Donald Trump’s administration maintains its commitments to stoking nationalism, reducing foreign aid, and ignoring or denying science, the United States and the world will be increasingly vulnerable to pandemics. History is not a blueprint for future action—history, after all, never offers perfect analogies. When it comes to pandemic disease focusing on nationalist interests is exactly the wrong approach to take.
Police violence: a risk factor for psychosis By Jordan DeVylder Police victimization of US civilians has moved from the shadows to the spotlight following the widespread adaptation of smartphone technology and rapid availability of video footage through social media. The American Public Health Association recently issued a policy statement outlining the putative health and mental health costs of police violence, and declared the need to increase efforts towards understanding and preventing the effects of such victimization.
Emerson’s canonization and the perils of sainthood By Robert D. Habich Ralph Waldo Emerson — who died 135 years ago in Concord, Massachusetts–was a victim of his own good reputation. Essayist, poet, lecturer, and purported leader of the American transcendental movement, he was known in his lifetime as the “Sage of Concord,” the “wisest American,” or (after one of his most famous early addresses) the “America Scholar.”
Looking forward to Hay Festival 2017 By Kate Farquhar-Thomson This year Hay Festival is celebrating its 30 anniversary – cooked up round the kitchen table all those years ago it is now a global phenomenon. As part of their celebrations this year they have scheduled 30 Reformation speakers, one of whom is Sarah Harper who will be focusing on ‘Ageing’. She will also be recording one of BBC Radio 3’s Essays. The festival is very good at celebrating not only new writers but also young writers who ‘inspire and astonish’ and I am thrilled that they have selected Devi Sridhar.
From the life of words, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman From time to time, various organizations invite me to speak about the history of words. The main question I hear is why words change their meaning. Obviously, I have nothing new to say on this subject, for there is a chapter on semantic change in countless books, both popular and special.
12 Star Wars facts from a galaxy far, far away By Steven Filippi On 25 May 1977, a small budget science fiction movie by a promising director premiered on less than 50 screens across the United States and immediately became a cultural phenomenon. Star Wars, George Lucas’ space opera depicting the galactic struggle between an evil Empire and a scrappy group of rebels, became the highest-grossing movie of the year and changed the course of movie history and American pop culture.
Wilfrid Sellars and the nature of normativity By Michael P. Wolf Wilfrid Sellars would have been 105 this month. He stands out as one of the more ambitiously systematic philosophers of the last century, with contributions to ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of language, alongside incisive historical examinations of Kant, and several others. We can read him as a philosopher in a classical mode, always in conversation with figures from the past.
Asking Gandhi tough questions By Sarah Azaransky Why did Gandhi exclude black South Africans from his movement? Could Gandhi reconcile his service in the Boer War with his later anti-imperialism? Why did Gandhi oppose untouchability, but not caste?
Agricultural policy after Brexit By Dieter Helm A majority of Britain’s farmers voted for Brexit in the referendum. This is perhaps surprising in the context of an industry which receives around £3 billion in subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and yet comprises only about 0.7% GDP. Of all the vested interests, British farmers have more to lose from Brexit than almost any other industry. From the public interest perspective, there is much to gain.
How well do you know early video game history? By Steven Filippi From their genesis in the development of computers after World War II to the ubiquity of mobile phones today, video games have had an extensive rise in a relatively short period of time. What started as the experimental hobbies of MIT students and US government scientists of the 1950s and 60s became a burgeoning industry with the emergence of home consoles and arcades in the 1970s.
Why are world food problems so hard to solve? By Bryan L. McDonald More than 20 million people in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and northeast Nigeria are now facing extreme hunger, with the potential for not just widespread death, but also the deepening of long-term political and military crises in East Africa. United Nations humanitarian coordinator Stephen O’Brien has called this food crisis the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis since 1945.
Why are giant pandas black and white? By Tim Caro Most people in the western world learn that the giant panda has striking black and white colouration at kindergarten; but are never told why! The question is problematic because there are virtually no other mammals with this sort of colouration pattern, making analogies difficult. At UC Davis and CSU Long Beach, we instead decided to break up the external appearance of giant pandas into different regions
Analyzing genre in Star Wars By Todd Berliner Inaugurating the most financially successful franchise in the history of entertainment, the original Star Wars (1977) has become one of the most widely and intensely loved movies of all time. Film scholars, however, lambasted Star Wars for its simplicity.
Challenges for critical human rights institutions in the Americas By Thomas Antkowiak Across the Americas, authoritarian leaders are jailing opponents, firing key investigators, and displacing indigenous communities in efforts to consolidate power.
Julius Evola in the White House By Benjamin R. Teitelbaum Conjecture and supposition tend to dog public figures who avoid the press. But the attention paid to Trump’s embattled Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is uncanny. Bannon’s reluctance to speak with the media—combined with a steady stream of commentary on him from anonymous associates and friends—is fueling speculation about his agenda and ideology.
Aristophanes: Frogs and other plays [extract] By Stephen Halliwell The Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, on the south-east slope of the Akropolis, was the location for the dramatic performances at both the City Dionysia and, almost certainly, the Lenaia too (cf.‘Aristophanes’ Career’, above).
Mental health at all ages By Christopher Marcum This May, Mental Health Awareness Month turns 68. To raise awareness of the fact that mental health issues affect individuals at all stages of the life course, we have put together a brief reading list of articles from The Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences Series B. These articles also explore aspects of mental health that may be under-appreciated in the traditional social psychological literature.
What more can be done to protect the protectors? By Alex Murray So where is the balance between scrutiny and empowerment? Where is the balance between officer protection and police officers representing the community they serve?
A photographer’s guide to solar eclipses By Mark Littmann and Fred Espenak How do you capture the spectacle of a total eclipse with a camera? Photographing an eclipse isn’t difficult. It doesn’t take fancy or expensive equipment. You can take a snapshot of an eclipse with a simple camera (even a smartphone) if you can hold the camera steady or place it on a tripod. The first step in eclipse photography is to decide what kind of pictures you want.
The Walking Dead and the security state By David Watson Did The Walking Dead television series help get President Donald J. Trump elected? During the presidential campaign, pro-Trump ads regularly interrupted episodes of the AMC series. Jared Kushner, who ran the campaign’s data program, explained to Forbes that the campaign’s predictive data analysis suggested it could optimize voter targeting by selectively buying ad-space in shows such as The Walking Dead.
What everyone needs to know about Russian hacking By Peter Warren Singer Hackers working on behalf of the Russian government have attacked a wide variety of American citizens and institutions. They include political targets of both parties, like the Democratic National Committee, and also the Republican National Committee, as well as prominent Democrat and Republican leaders, civil society groups like various American universities and academic research programs.
How well do you know Simone de Beauvoir? [quiz] By John Priest This May, the OUP Philosophy team honors Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) as their Philosopher of the Month. A French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and feminist theoretician, Beauvoir’s essays on ethics and politics engage with questions about freedom and responsibility in human existence.
Catching up with Nicole Piendel, Multimedia Producer By Nicole Piendel Another week, another great staff member to get to know. When you think of the world of publishing, the work of videos, podcasts, photography, and animated GIFs doesn’t immediately come to mind. But here at Oxford University Press we have Nicole Piendel, who joined the Social Media team as a Multimedia Producer at the start of this year.
Looking for Toussaint Louverture By Philippe Girard I have a confession to make: I have a personal obsession with the Haitian revolutionary hero Toussaint Louverture, which has taken me from continent to continent in search of the “real” Toussaint Louverture. My pilgrimage started outside Cap-Haïtien, Haiti’s second-largest town, in the suburb of Haut-du-Cap, where Toussaint Louverture was born a slave in what was then known as French Saint-Domingue.
Analyzing “Expressiveness” in Frankenstein (1931) By Todd Berliner In Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, film studies professor Todd Berliner explains how Hollywood delivers aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Along the way, Professor Berliner offers numerous aesthetic analyses of scenes, clips, and images from both routine Hollywood movies and exceptional ones. His analyses, one of which we excerpt here, illustrate how to study […]
The illegitimate open-mindedness of arithmetic By Roy T Cook We are often told that we should be open-minded. In other words, we should be open to the idea that even our most cherished, most certain, most secure, most well-justified beliefs might be wrong. But this is, in one sense, puzzling.
The Eurovision Song Contest over the years: OUP staff select their favorite hits [a playlist] By Jessica Green It’s that time of year again for the unique, bizarre, extravagant and often politically charged spectacle that is the Eurovision Song Contest. The contest which began in 1956 is popular worldwide, with viewer ratings increasing each year (reaching over 200 million in 2016).
Lactate: the forgotten cancer master regulator By Iñigo San Millán In 1923 Nobel laureate Otto Warburg observed that cancer cells expressed accelerated glycolysis and excessive lactate formation even under fully oxygenated conditions. His discovery, which is expressed in about 80% of cancers, was named the “Warburg Effect” in 1972 by Efraim Racker. The Warburg Effect in cancer and its role in carcinogenesis has been neither understood nor explained for almost a century.
Marcel Duchamp’s most political work of art By David M. Lubin A hundred years ago last month, two of the most influential historical events of the twentieth century occurred within a span of three days. The first of these took place on 6 April 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany and, in doing so, thrust the USA into a leading role on the world stage for the first time in its history.
Lost in time: the El Cortez hotel and casino By Kaitlyn Regehr On a sticky afternoon in June of 2015 I, with friend and photographer, Matilda Temperley, drove through downtown Las Vegas and into the driveway of the El Cortez Hotel and Casino. The midday sun exposed some rust on the hotel’s neon signage as well as a missing light bulb on the giant red, rotating high healed shoe, which framed an advertisement for $10.95 Prime Rib at the hotel’s diner.
Prime numbers and how to find them Prime numbers have now become a crucial part of modern life, but they have been fascinating mathematicians for thousands of years. A prime number is always bigger than 1 and can only be divided by itself and 1 – no other number will divide in to it. So the number 2 is the first prime number, then 3, 5, 7, and so on. Non-prime numbers are defined as composite numbers (they are composed of other smaller numbers).
Did you know these 10 fascinating facts about museums? By Steven Filippi Collections of art, scientific instruments, historical relics, and peculiarities have attracted the curiosity and imaginations of people around the world since ancient times. The museum as an institution developed in antiquity and evolved over the years to encompass and celebrate all aspects of human society, science, art, and history. Museums are vital to the study […]
Adult ADHD: myths and reality By Jan Willer One out of every 5-10 adult psychotherapy clients probably has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Key studies and writings emerged in 1995 supporting the idea of adult ADHD, but it took many years of reading and research to confidently recognize and appropriately treat adult ADHD. It continues to be underrecognized by mental health clinicians, even when clients with ADHD are already in treatment for other mental illnesses, and considerable misinformation is circulated.
David Hume: friendships, feuds, and faith By Amelia Carruthers Who exactly was David Hume? He was a Scottish historian and philosopher (best known today for his radical empiricism), who prided himself on his reputation as a man of the utmost moral character.
What kind of encore do you want? By Phyllis Moen The bonus years of extended life expectancy are not coming at the end of life, adding to years of disability and decline, but rather, in the expanding period of health and vitality around the 60s and 70s, but coming earlier or later for some. The new longevity is advantageous to individuals, but costly to society. It is distinct from both full-time career employment and full-time retirement leisure.
Banning the Beatles: “A Day in the Life” at the BBC By Gordon R. Thompson On Friday, 19 May 1967, British newspapers carried the announcement that the British Broadcasting Corporation had chosen the Beatles to represent the UK in the first global television broadcast.
Does foreign meddling in elections matter? By Dov H. Levin Ever since the exposure of the covert Russian intervention in the 2016 US election, questions have arisen about the effects that foreign meddling of this type may have. Before these events transpired, I had begun studying the wider question, investigating whether partisan electoral interventions by the US and USSR/Russia usually effect the election results.
At bay: where is that bay? By Anatoly Liberman To keep somebody or something at bay means “to keep a dangerous opponent at a distance; to hold off, ward off a disaster, etc.” The very first interpreters of this idiom guessed its origin correctly. They stated that bay here means “to bark” and that at bay refers to hunting.
Is child poverty in rich countries exacerbated by the economic crisis? By Brian Nolan The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. Amid falling wages and increasing unemployment, government capacity to address worsening social conditions was often constrained by mounting deficits, with social protection systems under threat when they were most needed. Children and young people, already at a greater risk of poverty than the population as a whole.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on birds, poetry, and immigration By Christoph Irmscher On 26 February this year, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most popular poet America has ever had, turned 210. The lines from Longfellow everyone remembers, often without knowing who actually wrote them (“into each life a little rain must fall”; “Let us, then, be up and doing”; “Each thing in its place is best”), point to an author who wanted to help us live our lives, not exactly change them.
A decalogue of moments in America’s history with the Ten Commandments By Tyler Simnick Although we are told that Moses received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, their presence has always been particularly strong in America. Regardless of who invokes them and for what purpose, the Ten Commandments have proved to be incredibly versatile and enduring in our cultural idiom.
What the WannaCry attack means for all of us By Ben Buchanan As the aftershocks of last week’s big “WannaCry” cyberattack reverberate, it’s worth taking a moment to think about what it all means. First, ransomware is a growing menace, and this may be the case that gets it global attention. The idea behind ransomware is simple: no one is willing to pay as much as you for your data. Instead of copying critical data and trying to sell it to others, ransomware authors will simply deny their target access until payment is made.
Student debt: not just a millennial problem By Katrina Walsemann When I was interviewed on the Kathleen Dunn Show, I was prepared to talk about the health implications of educational debt for students. That changed when a father called in and shared his story about helping his children pay for college. This father wanted to protect his children from debt and was trying to do the “right” thing by his children, and it almost resulted in the loss of his home.
Learning to read emotions in oral history By Katie Holmes The most recent issue of the OHR featured two stories on understanding emotion in oral history interviews. In one piece, Julian Simpson and Stephanie Snow asked what role humor plays in healthcare, and how to locate it in oral history. In another piece, Katie Holmes asks how to locate historical emotion during an interview and how to interpret these feelings.
Friends with benefits? By Tim Bale Before Theresa May decided to go to the country, the election result many observers of UK politics were most looking forward to was the outcome of ‘super-union’ Unite’s bitter leadership contest between the incumbent, Len McCluskey, and his challenger, Gerard Coyne – a contest which, rightly or wrongly, had been viewed through the prism of its potential impact on the Labour Party.
Edwin Muir and a story of Europe By Margery Palmer McCulloch While reading recently British Library correspondence files relating to the poet Edwin Muir—the 130th anniversary of whose birth will be on 15 May this year—I was struck, as I have often been, by the important part played in his development as man and poet by his contact with the life of Europe—a continent that is currently high on the agenda of many of us with a possible British Brexit in view.
Preparing clinical laboratories for future pandemics By Amy Karger The rapid flourishing of the Ebola outbreak in 2014 caught clinical laboratories in the United States off-guard, and exposed a general lack of preparedness to handle collection and testing of samples in patients with such a highly lethal infectious disease. While the outbreak was largely limited to West Africa, fears in the United States became heightened in September of 2014 with the first reported imported case diagnosed in Texas.
Hamilton: the man and the musical By Lawrence Goldman For the past two years, the hip-hop musical Hamilton has been the toast of New York, winning all the awards—Grammies, Tonis, and even a Pulitzer Prize—and grossing higher receipts than any Broadway show in history. It’s coming to London later this year, November 2017, and judging by the interest and hype is already guaranteed to be a sell-out success for years to come.
The mixed messages teens hear about sex and how they matter By Stefanie Mollborn Although they start having sex at similar ages to teens in many other developed countries, US teens’ rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), pregnancies, abortions, and births are unusually high. Besides high levels of socioeconomic inequality, a major reason is their inconsistent use of contraceptive methods and low uptake of highly effective contraception.
How does international human rights law apply during armed conflict? By Daragh Murray The Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC) is the law (by treaty or custom) that regulates the means and methods used in the conduct of armed hostilities. In this video, Daragh Murray, editor of the Practitioners’ Guide to Human Rights Law in Armed Conflict, talks about international human rights law in armed conflict.
The presence of the past: selective national narratives and international encounters in university classrooms By Ingvild Bode and Seunghoon Emilia Heo The question of how to remember past events such as World War II has long become official business. Governments, intent on sustaining unifying national narratives, therefore choose what and how the past should be remembered and told, for example through teaching history at secondary schools and memorials/museums. For how states choose to remember tells us something important about how they see themselves.
Photographer Helen Muspratt through the eyes of her daughter By Jessica Sutcliffe Helen Muspratt (1905–2001) was a pioneering photographer. Her unique techniques with different forms of exposure made her a driving force in naturalistic portraiture and social documentation. Throughout her illustrious career, Helen photographed the likes of Dorothy Hodgkin, Nobel Prize winning chemist; Roger Fry and Julian Bell of the Bloomsbury Group; painter Paul Nash; journalist Alistair Cooke; and many others.
The role of women in the life of Frederick Douglass By Leigh Fought Although Frederick Douglass captures his journey into freedom and political influence in his autobiographies, he reveals little about his private life. Douglass’s carefully crafted public persona concealed a man whose life was more complicated than he would have liked us to think. Women played key roles in guiding him throughout his turbulent life—from helping him escape slavery to solidifying his role as an abolitionist and suffragist.
The historical roots of Iran: an interview By Michael Axworthy In April 2017 Bridget Kendall, former BBC diplomatic correspondent and now Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, interviewed Michael Axworthy, author of Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know® about the history of Iran, the characterization of Iran as an aggressive expansionist power, and the current challenges and developments in the country today. Below is a transcribed version of part of the interview.
George Washington: the great mind behind early America By Kevin J. Hayes Throughout history, George Washington has been highly regarded for his common sense and military fortitude. When it comes to the Founding Fathers, his intellectual pursuits have been overshadowed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton—who are conventionally considered the great minds of early America. Despite his relative lack of formal education, Washington remained an avid reader throughout his life.
Godzilla of the Galápagos and other speciation stories By Amy MacLeod Yet despite their brutish appearance, marine iguanas are extremely placid herbivores, posing a threat only to the algae upon which they feed. We now know that these creatures represent one of the oldest living lineages of the archipelago and as such, their evolution is deeply intertwined with the history of the islands themselves, a discovery foreshadowed by Darwin‘s observation that “They assuredly well become the land they inhabit”.
Ottonian queenship: powerful women in early medieval Germany By Simon MacLean In 2008, archaeologists working on the cathedral at Magdeburg, in eastern Germany, opened an ancient tomb and rediscovered the bones of an Anglo-Saxon princess called Edith. She had died in the year 946, aged only about 30. Her remains were brought across the North Sea for scientific tests which verified the identification via tests on her tooth enamel, indicating that the bones belonged to someone who had grown up drinking water from the chalky landscapes of southern Britain.
American healthcare: are you an expert? [Quiz] By Lawrence R. Jacobs and Tom Nichols As technology and education become more broadly accessible, people are being exposed to more information than ever before. It’s easier than ever to choose convenience over reliability or accuracy—to search for symptoms on WebMD instead of asking a doctor, or consult Wikipedia for definitive answers to every question. All this newly accessible yet unreliable information has produced a wave of ill-informed and angry citizens.
Punishing Peccadilloes? Illicit sex at the early Stuart courts By Johanna Luthman At the Tudor and early Stuart royal courts, the careers of influential politicians and courtiers often depended on the preferences of the monarchs: being in the king’s good graces often mattered as much or more for advancements than ability and training. The personality and quirks of the rulers affected many aspects of a courtier’s life, including what today might be considered the most private: their sex lives.
The best baby money can buy: are you sure about that? By Philippa Levine Take a look at the back page advertisements in any college newspaper. Dotted among the classified ads, there will invariably be an invitation or two to male undergraduates to sell their sperm. It’s an easy and hardly arduous way to make money, and pretty speedy too. Masturbate, ejaculate, hand over the results and you’re on your way with a little money in your pocket.
What to do with a simple-minded ruler: a medieval solution By Sophie Thérèse Ambler The thirteenth century saw the reigns of several rulers ill-equipped for the task of government, decried not as tyrants but incompetents. Sancho II of Portugal (1223–48), his critics said, let his kingdom fall to ruin on account of his “idleness,” “timidity of spirit,” and “simplicity”. The last term, simplex, could mean straightforward, but here it meant only simple-minded, foolish, stupid.
Which fictional detective are you? By Heather Saunders The classic Golden Age of Detective Fiction in the 1920s and 30s brought us such legendary characters as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and detective stories on page and screen have kept audiences guessing ever since.
Monthly gleanings for April 2017 By Anatoly Liberman The previous post on Nostratic linguistics was also part of the “gleanings,” because the inspiration for it came from a query, but a few more tidbits have to be taken care of before summer sets in.
Exploring travel medicine with the CDC By Phyllis Kozarsky It was a historical moment for the International Society of Travel Medicine who celebrated its 25th anniversary this year at the 15th Conference of the International Society of Travel Medicine (CISTM15) in sunny Barcelona. We asked Phyllis Kozarsky, Professor of medicine and chief medical editor for the CDC Yellow Book 2018, a few questions around the connections between travelers and antimicrobial resistance,
Fame, race, Nella Larsen, and Nella the Princess Knight By Dorothy Stringer Certainly my oddest moment as a scholar of the biracial woman novelist Nella Larsen (1891–1964) was the day I ran across her in the guise of a pink-clad children’s cartoon character, profiled in the New York Times. The unusual name “Nella” drew my eye to Nella the Princess Knight, but as I read further, the character’s similarities to the literary figure multiplied. Like the novelist, Nick Jr’s new heroine has a black father, a white mother, and a baby sister, and she lives in a multiracial community.
The free press in the “Good War” By Steven Casey When the president declares war on the media, dubbing it the “enemy of the people,” the first instinct of its defenders is to take to Twitter to emphasize how many reporters have sacrificed their lives in reporting the news. The second is to hark back to two eye-catching events: the Vietnam War, when uncensored media reporting exposed the lies about how the conflict was being waged; and the Watergate scandal, when the Washington Post helped to uncover the massive attempt to cover-up the Nixon administration’s illegal bugging of the Democrats.
The legacy of William Powell and The Anarchist Cookbook By Ann Larabee In February 1971, Lyle Stuart, known for publishing racy, unconventional books, held a press conference to announce his latest foray into testing the limits of free speech. With him was William Powell, the son of a diplomat and a former English major at Windham College, who had written what would become the most infamous of mayhem manuals: The Anarchist Cookbook.
Reading landscapes of violence By Shail Mayaram The Mewatis sought shelter on the Kala Pahar, the Black Mountain, as the Aravallis are called, but the very next day there was firing from an aircraft sent by the Bharatpur State. Azadi was no freedom but is instead locally called bhaga-bhagi (exodus) and kati (killing) in 1947.
Storm Stella and New York’s double taxation of nonresidents By Edward A. Zelinsky The physical aftermath of Storm Stella is now over. The tax aftermath of Storm Stella, however, has just begun. How can a winter storm cause taxes? Because New York State, under its so-called “convenience of the employer” doctrine, subjects nonresidents to state income taxation on the days such nonresidents work at their out-of-state homes for their New York employers.
How libraries served soldiers and civilians during WWI and WWII By Katie D. Bennett Essentials for war: supplies, soldiers, strategy, and…libraries? For the United States Army during both World War I and World War II, libraries were not only requested and appreciated by soldiers, but also established as a priority during times of war. In the midst of battle and bloodshed, libraries continued to serve American soldiers and citizens in the several different factions of their lives.
The impact of intergenerational conflict at work By Michael J. Urick Recently, several colleagues and I noted that conflict in the workplace can emerge as a result of perceptions of differences related to what members of various generations care about, how they engage in work, and how they define self and others. We also noted several ways in which these conflicts might be resolved including achieving results, managing image in the workplace, and focusing on self in challenging interactions.
Which Jane Austen mother are you? By Robin Wane Jane Austen novels are noted for their emphasis on female relationships. They are often portrayed as multi-dimensional–formative and yet not always so rosy.
On criminal justice reform, keep fighting By Michelle Phelps, Joshua Page, and Philip Goodman In the late 1970s, many people studying and working inside criminal justice institutions in the U.S. felt that they had awoken to a whole new world.
How apostrophes came to confuse us By Edwin L. Battistella A colleague of mine recently retired from teaching. As she began her last semester, she announced to her students that she hoped they would finally be the class where no one confused “its” and “it’s.” Her wish did not come true. The apostrophe rules of English are built to confuse us. Not intentionally. But they have evolved in a way that can confuse even the most observant readers and writers.
Opening the door for the next Ramanujan By Peter Higgins It is still possible to learn mathematics to a high standard at a British university but there is no doubt that the fun and satisfaction the subject affords to those who naturally enjoy it has taken a hit. Students are constantly reminded about the lifelong debts they are incurring and how they need to be thoroughly aware of the demands of their future employers. The fretting over this within universities is relentless.
Edward Gibbon, Enlightenment historian of religion By John Robertson On 8 May 1788, Edward Gibbon celebrated the publication of the final three volumes of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire at a dinner given by his publisher Thomas Cadell. Gibbon (born 27 April 1737) was just 51; he had completed perhaps the greatest work of history ever written by an Englishman, and certainly the greatest history of what his contemporary David Hume called the “historical age,” and we think of as the Enlightenment.
Philosopher of the month: Simone de Beauvoir [timeline] By John Priest This May, the OUP Philosophy team honors Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) as their Philosopher of the Month. A French existentialist philosopher, novelist, and feminist theoretician, Beauvoir’s essays on ethics and politics engage with questions about freedom and responsibility in human existence.
Reflections on Freud, the first “wild analyst” By Todd Dufresne Sigmund Freud was a more radical and speculative thinker than many have been willing to concede. This is apparent in his many discussions of childhood sexuality. For example, few really understand how Freud’s conclusions about childhood sexuality predate by decades the clinical observations of actual children – later done by dutiful analysis, most often by women analysts like Melanie Klein and Freud’s own daughter Anna Freud
Are Americans in danger of losing their Internet? By James W. Cortada It’s hard to imagine life without the Internet: no smart phones, tablets, PCs, Netflix, the kids without their games. Impossible, you say? Not really, because we have the Internet thanks to a series of conditions in the United States that made it possible to create it in the first place and that continue to influence its availability. There is no law that says it must stay, nor any economic reason why it should, if someone cannot make a profit from it.
The less mentioned opioid crisis By Judy Foreman You’ve probably seen the dramatic photo of the Ohio couple slouched, overdosed, and passed out in the front seats of a car, with a little kid sitting in the back seat. Even if you haven’t seen that picture, images and words of America’s opioid overdose epidemic have captured headlines and TV news feeds for the last several years. But there’s a different image seared into my mind, a mental picture of a different little kid and two adults.
Innovation in Aging: A Q&A with editor-in-chief Laura P. Sands By Laura P. Sands At the start of every emerging technology, at the heart of every scientific breakthrough, is an original idea that ignites like a spark. And soon, if we’re lucky, the spark spreads into an all-encompassing flame of ingenuity. This innovation is the key to progress. In the interview below, the inaugural editor-in-chief Laura P. Sands discusses GSA’s newest journal.
Will there be justice for Syria? By James Cockayne The war in Syria has wreaked havoc on the lives of the Syrian people, and affected many others. Since the war begin in March 2011, several hundred thousand people have been killed. Some 13.5 million people require humanitarian assistance, and over 10 million people have fled their homes – with 4 million fleeing Syria altogether.
Slaves to the rhythm By Leon Kreitzman and Russell Foster I met up with Russell Foster in 1996 when I was writing a book on the social impact of the 24 hour society. I wanted to know what effect working nights had on human biology and health. At the time Russell was Reader at Imperial College. Since then he has become professor of circadian neuroscience at Oxford University; a Fellow of the Royal Society; and he has a shelf full of medals from scientific societies around the world.
Johnny had Parkinson’s…and music helped him walk By Kimberly Sena Moore One day we stumbled upon something that would end up helping Johnny on this twice daily haul. Given our shared history as musicians, it’ll come as no surprise that Johnny and I often talked about music. As Johnny was prepping to take the first step, we joked about singing a march so he could march his way down the hall. It was Johnny’s idea to use Sousa’s Stars and Stripes, a march he liked.
Heartthrobs and happy endings By Carol Dyhouse Popular romance is often written to a formula. Our heroine falls for the attractions of the hero. Stuff gets in the way. They get through this and marry. We assume that they are happy thereafter. Most of the books published by Mills and Boon or Harlequin have some variation on this kind of narrative, centring on heartthrobs and happy endings.
The unprecedented difficulty of B(e) By David Crystal A dictionary is in indeed a collection of stories and each word entry has a unique tale to tell. If we choose the verb ‘be’, we encounter a special insight into English, and into the society and thought that has shaped it over the past 1,500 years.
Two posts on “sin”: a sequel By Anatoly Liberman The colleague who wrote me a letter is a specialist in Turkic and a proponent of Nostratic linguistics. He mentioned the Turkic root syn-, which, according to him, can mean “to test, prove; compete; prophesy; observe; body, image, outward appearance,” and wondered whether, within the framework of Nostratic linguistics, this root can be compared with the root of Engl. sin.
Brando, Obama, and The Brando By Krin Gabbard Just days before Marlon Brando’s 93rd birthday on 3 April, Barack Obama announced that he will write his presidential memoirs at an exotic South Pacific hideaway once owned by Brando. Thirty miles north of Tahiti and accessible only by boat or small aircraft, the island of Tetiaroa was transformed into a high-end resort after Brando […]
Britain votes…again: three crucial questions By Richard S. Grossman Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that Britain would hold a general election on 8 June. The election raises three crucial questions. First, why did the Prime Minister call an election now? Under British law, she could have remained in office without facing the voters until 2020 and, in fact, had promised on multiple occasions that she would not call early elections.
Mary Wollstonecraft, our contemporary By Catherine Packham Since the political earthquake of Trump’s election, preceded by the earth tremor of Brexit, the commentariat has been awash with declarations of the end of eras—of globalisation, of neoliberalism, of the post-World War II epoch of political stability and economic prosperity. As though to orientate ourselves in this brave new world, the search has been on for historical analogies, through whose lenses we might understand our present moment.
What are ‘political’ black churches? By Roger Baumann Much attention has been given to white evangelical congregations and parachurch groups in studies of so-called “political churches” and politically active Christians. While studies of such white evangelical congregations have been at the forefront of scholarly attention to religious politics, the historic participation (and debate over the participation) of black churches in the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s…
The critical role of race in John Cassavetes’ first film By James O’Brien Shadows is the first film John Cassavetes directed and, regarding the version he released in 1959, it is the only film he created that distinctly explores themes of Blackness and Black identity in an American urban landscape. Too Late Blues, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Love Streams all depict identity and race in different and attention-worthy ways as well, but none of Cassavetes’ directorial work after 1959 engages with these topics to the same degree or with the same immediacy.
Addressing rare, toxic downside of immunotherapy By Susan Jenks The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network announced in mid-February their intent to issue day-to-day guidelines for physicians managing severe side effects from immune checkpoint inhibitors—a type of immunotherapy that works with a patient’s own immune system to attack cancer. They hope to release a document by the end of the year.
Can green entrepreneurs save our planet? By Geoffrey Jones Less than a year after the governments of the world came together to sign the Paris Agreement on climate change, the United States has inaugurated a new president, Donald Trump, who denounces the whole idea as a Chinese hoax. How did we get here?
Ellington’s A Drum Is a Woman turns 60 By John Wriggle Recent research on African-American jazz icon Duke Ellington (1899-1974) has increasingly focused on the composer-pianist-bandleader’s post-World War II achievements: a torrent of creativity across film, theater, and dance perhaps unrivaled in American music. But the unleashing of Ellington’s “late career” genius was not a foregone conclusion. It would take an ambitious — if not a […]
Who should vote in party primaries? Contested ideas of party membership By Susan Scarrow One of the many controversies that emerged in regards to fair voting in the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign revolved around rules in some states which required voters to choose their party primary far in advance of the actual primary election.
Celebrate Mother Goose Day and tell us your favorite fairy tale! By Berit Henrickson Come celebrate Mother Goose Day with us! On this holiday, which originated in the year 1987, we honor Mother Goose, the fictional author of a number of nursery rhymes and fairy tales. Even though she’s an imaginary character, her societal impact is not. Through her fantastical stories, she’s reminded us of the moral implications of […]
Jane Austen Practising: Teenage Writings [video] By Freya Johnston and Kathryn Sutherland 2017 marks the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s death. In honor of Austen, Oxford University Press has published Teenage Writings. Three notebooks of Jane Austen’s teenage writings survive. The earliest pieces probably date from 1786 or 1787, around the time that Jane, aged 11 or 12, and her older sister and collaborator Cassandra left school. […]
Sean Spicer’s Hitler comments: a warning from the history of speech and atrocity By Gregory Gordon Earlier this month, during a media briefing, Donald Trump’s Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, engaged in what some have referred to as a form of Holocaust denial. Genocide denial is not merely an ugly reminder of a bloody past but should also be treated as a potential harbinger of a violent future. We are not anywhere close to that stage now, but we have been given notice and we ignore the larger context at our own peril.
April 2017 (127))
Revisiting Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die By Will Scheibel The Russian Front, 1944. A group of German soldiers happen upon a corpse encased in snow, apparent only by a frostbitten hand reaching towards them from the ground. “Looks like spring is coming,” one of the soldiers remarks.
Witches and Walpurgis Night By Owen Davies In modern British and American popular culture, Halloween is the night most associated with the nocturnal activities of witches and the souls of the dead. But in much of Europe the 30 April or May Eve, otherwise known as Walpurgis Night, was another moment when spirits and witches were thought to roam abroad. The life and death of Saint Walpurga, who was born in Dorset, England, in the eight century, has nothing to do with witchcraft or magic, though.
Fielding and fake news By Thomas Keymer Fake news is not only a phenomenon of post-truth politics in the Trump era. It’s as old as newspapers themselves—or as old, Robert Darnton suggests, as the scurrilous Anecdota of Procopius in sixth-century Byzantium. In England, the first great age of alternative facts was the later seventeenth century, when they clustered especially around crises of dynastic succession.
From the Bastille to Trump Tower? By Julian Swann Since his inauguration, President Donald J. Trump has courted controversy by issuing a series of tweets or executive orders. His endorsement of the efficacy of waterboarding, an illegal and degrading form of torture, or the decision to close the US frontiers to citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries provoked outrage amongst his many opponents.
Slipping expectations for child outcomes By Darcia Narvaez Certainly we should be happy that kids from “at risk” environments graduate from high school and do not end up in prison for life. But is this enough to aim for? We may not score their life outcome as minus 5 (on a -10 to +10 scale), but Chiron’s life outcome does not warrant much more than a zero. Why? Because his intelligence, unique gifts, and potential were not fostered (which would go on the plus side of zero).
Celebrating 100 years of Urie Bronfenbrenner By Jonathan Tudge n the United States, currently, about 15 million children (almost a quarter of the global child population) live in families whose income falls below the federally established poverty level. The damaging effects on children’s and families’ development were something that was a life-long concern of Urie Bronfenbrenner.
The origins of dance styles There is an amazing variety of types, styles, and genres of dancing – from street to disco, to folk dancing and ballroom. Some are recent inventions, stemming from social and political changes, whilst others have origins as old as civilisation itself. Do you know your Jive from your Jazz, your Salsa from your Samba? Read on to discover the surprisingly controversial origins of the Waltz, and the dark history of the American Tango.
Let’s end the first hundred days By Alasdair Roberts April 30th marks the one hundredth day of the Trump presidency. The media will be deluged with assessments about what Donald Trump accomplished — or didn’t — during his first one hundred days. But this an arbitrary, and even damaging, way to think about presidential performance.
Remembering Charlie Chaplin, citizen of the world By Donna Kornhaber Early in the 1957 film A King in New York, the second-to-last feature that Charlie Chaplin would write and direct and the last in which he would star, an unusual debate erupts between the two principal characters, one an exiled monarch and the other a precocious schoolboy.
FEMS Microbiology Letters 100 years of E. coli strain Nissle 1917 By Ulrich Sonnenborn Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a common bacteria found in the the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals, including humans. Whilst most strains are harmless, some can cause serious gastroenteritis, or food poisoning. However, one special strain, E. coli strain Nissle 1917 (EcN), is specifically used to prevent digestive disruption. Since its discovery 100 years ago, EcN is probably the most intensely investigated bacterial strain today.
What would Margaret Oliphant have said about Trump and Brexit? By Elisabeth Jay What would Margaret Oliphant (1828–1897), one of the most prolific of commentators on nineteenth-century society (98 novels; 50 or more short stories; 25 works of non-fiction, and over 300 essays) have made of the politics and social mores influencing events today? In particular how would she have reacted to the identity politics behind the plea for a hard Brexit, the current referendum stand-off between England and Scotland, and the triumph of Trump in the US presidential election?
Challenges of a hometown oral history performance By Elizabeth M. Melton One of my first oral history performance experiences was watching E. Patrick Johnson perform Pouring Tea: Black Gay Men of the South Tell Their Tales, the readers theater version of his oral history collection, Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South, at Texas A&M University.
Modern life and clinical psychology By Katie Aafjes-van Doorn and Susan Llewelyn It’s a sad but very modern paradox. Despite the many wonderful opportunities and options like education, technologies, internet resources and travel that are open to young people today, young people’s mental health today has never been so fragile. In contrast to the frequently portrayed images of happy, successful, and socially connected millennials in selfies, in fact many millennials seem to feel more empty and lost than ever.
Managing stress: body By Richard Wanlass Stress, anxiety, and tension can be regulated by changing your perspective on forthcoming events or using techniques such as mental imagery or meditation, but they can also be controlled by what you physically do with your body. Techniques such as muscle relaxation, relaxed breathing, and exercise can all be used to decrease the impact of your stress response.
Best librarian characters in fantasy fiction By Emma French Libraries often feel like magical places, the numerous books on every shelf holding the ability to transport their reader to new and wonderful worlds. In the words of Terry Pratchett: “They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books…but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.”
How well do you know John Stuart Mill? [quiz] By John Priest This April, the OUP Philosophy team honors John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) as their Philosopher of the Month. Among the most important philosophers, economists, and intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, today Mill is considered a founding father of liberal thought.
Chinese contradictions and ironies, 1997 to 2017 By Jeffrey Wasserstrom How could Xi claim at Davos to be a champion of globalization, people now want to know, when the Party he heads tightly controls the Internet and voices concern about Western ideas exerting influence on campuses?
Life lessons from Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius William Shakespeare and Marcus Aurelius (the great stoic philosopher and emperor) have more in common than you might think. They share a recorded birth-date, with Shakespeare baptized on 26 April 1564, and Marcus Aurelius born on 26 April 121 (Shakespeare’s actual birth date remains unknown, although he was baptised on 26 April 1564. His birth is traditionally observed and celebrated on 23 April, Saint George’s Day).
Sleeveless errand By Anatoly Liberman The phrase is outdated, rare, even moribund. Those who use it do so to amuse themselves or to parade their antiquarian tastes. However, it is not quite dead, for it sometimes occurs in books published at the end of the nineteenth century.
What we talk about when we talk about capitalism By Simon DeDeo For more than a century, capitalism has been the dominant planetary system for supplying people with, quite literally, their daily bread. It transformed our cultures and knit us together in a global network of buying and selling. But how do we understand it? How do we make sense of it? What do we talk about when we talk about capitalism? Recently we did a study to track talk of capitalism over two hundred years.
So, you think you know Darwin? Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, geologist, and biologist is known the world over for his contributions to the science of evolution, and his theory of natural selection. Described as one of the most influential figures in human history, his ideas have invited as much controversy as they have scientific debate, with religious, social, and cultural ramifications.
Whose Qur’an? By Shadaab Rahemtulla The Qur’an has emerged as a rich resource for liberation. Over the past several decades, Muslims across the world have interpreted the Qur’an to address the pressing problem of oppression. Whereas privileged groups have historically interpreted the Qur’an, it is imperative for marginalized communities to enter the interpretive circle, to partake in the task of producing normative Islamic thought and practice. In terms of gender, Wadud and Barlas have emphasized, time and again, that women need to participate fully
Digging for the truth?: Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland By Paul Michael Garrett In the summer of 2014, reports that a ‘septic tank grave’ containing the skeletal remains of ‘800 babies’ was discovered within the grounds of a former home for ‘unmarried mothers’ in Tuam, County Galway, featured prominently as an international news ‘story.’ Interest in the issue was prompted by the tireless and tenacious work of a local amateur historian, Catherine Corless.
Are the microbes in our gut affecting how fast we age? By Vincent Maffei The collection of microbial life in the gut, known as the microbiota, may be considered an accessory organ of the gastrointestinal tract. It is a self-contained, multi-cellular, biochemically active mass with specialized functions. Some functions are important for life such as vitamin K synthesis, an essential molecule in blood clotting. Others are responsible for training and maintaining a healthy immune system or digesting indigestible food products such as insoluble fiber.
Intercultural communication and considering a different perspective By Cassandra Gill With the ever-increasing rise of globalization, the need to communicate more effectively across cultures becomes all the more important. In a hyper-connected world, we need to learn how to better understand the perspectives of others, and how to make accommodations in conversations that support both parties being on the same page. Simply put, different cultures see things differently.
Ireland in 1922 and Brexit in 2017 By Michael Tugendhat In 1922 most of the people of Ireland left the larger United Kingdom, but the Irish were divided. The UK today is leaving the larger European Union. The comparison gives grounds both for hope and for fear.
Should firms assume responsibility for individuals’ actions? By N. Craig Smith and Eric W. Orts VW may have taken a big step towards resolving its emissions scandal in the United States with its recent guilty plea (at a cost of more than US$4.3 billion), but its troubles in Europe are far from over. Luxembourg has launched criminal proceedings and more countries may follow.
Robert Penn Warren, Democracy and Poetry, and America after 2016 By Joseph Millichap Born in 1905, Robert Penn Warren’s life spanned most of the twentieth century, and his work made him America’s foremost person of letters before his death in 1989. His literary prowess is evidenced by his many awards and honors that include three Pulitzer Prizes, one for fiction and two for poetry, so that Warren remains the only writer to have won them in these two major categories.
Resisting change: understanding obstacles to social progress By Duncan Green The People’s Climate Movement, made up of dozens of organizations working to fight the climate crisis, held their first march in September 2014. On Saturday, 29 April, activists will once again march to demand climate action. As they protest the Trump administration’s drastic approach to climate change, the People’s Climate Movement will aim to “show the world and our leaders that we will resist attacks on our people, our communities and our planet.”
Jane Austen’s Teenage Writings: an audio guide By Freya Johnston and Kathryn Sutherland Three notebooks of Jane Austen’s teenage writings survive. The earliest pieces probably date from 1786 or 1787, around the time that Jane, aged 11 or 12, and her older sister and collaborator Cassandra left school.
Seeing a cat with photons that aren’t there By William J. Mullin Quantum mechanics allows some mind-bending effects. A recent paper shows us how to make an image of the silhouette of a cat using a set of photons that had never interacted with the cat object. The photons that had actually interacted with the cutout, and carried information about it, had even been discarded. The explanation depends on the ideas of quantum superposition and interference; the trick is in transferring quantum information from one set of photons to another.
The separation of church and state in the US By Derek H. Davis While contradictory in many respects, the principles of separation of church and state, cooperation between sacred and secular, religious equality in the treatment of religion, and the integration of religion and politics combine to provide unique but important contributions to American life. In the following excerpt, Derek H. Davis examines the relationship between law and religion in the United States.
Tradesmen and women during the Industrial Revolution By Hannah Barker An eclectic mix of small manufacturers, shopkeepers and service providers dominated the streetscape of towns across north-west England during early industrial revolution. Yet although these tradesmen and women constituted anything from 20–60% of the urban population, our view of the commercial world in this period tends to be dominated by narratives of particularly big and successful businesses, and those involved in new and large-scale modes of production.
Why shouldn’t we compel them to come in? Locke, the Enlightenment, and the debate over religious toleration By Nicholas Jolley Most people in the West today unreflectively accept the need for religious toleration. Of course, if pressed, they will admit that toleration, like freedom of speech, can’t be absolute; there must be some limits. Suppose, for example, that my religion calls for human sacrifice every Sunday; no one will think that such a religion should be tolerated.
Earth Day 2017: reading for environmental & climate literacy Earth Day is celebrated globally on 22 April in support of environmental protection. The theme for 2017’s Earth Day is “Environmental & Climate Literacy” – and we couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate knowledge of the environment and climate than with a reading list. These books, chapters, and articles can add to your understanding of Earth through topics such as climate change, natural phenomena, and what practical steps are being taken to help protect our planet.
Councils and juntas in early modern Madrid By Alistair Malcolm Nowadays it’s not uncommon to think of meetings as a time-consuming chore, and it was no different in the seventeenth century. During the 1660s, the count of Castrillo would complain to his wife about the long hours that he had to spend in committees. He was sometimes too busy even so much as to go to Mass, and when he was finally allowed out of the palace it might not have been until the early hours of the morning.
Why do we love our pets so much? By Amelia Carruthers Since time immemorial, humans have kept animals for companions. Pets are known to provide physical and emotional benefits, not only in terms of companionship, but also in terms of outdoor adventure, exercise, and socializing with other pet owners. As Sigmund Feud once said, “Time spent with cats is never wasted.” Dogs and cats have been particular favourites throughout the ages, with cats commonly thought to have been domesticated in ancient Egypt, and dogs from the time of the hunter-gatherers.
The price of freedom By Avery Kolers This week, as Passover ends and those of us who observe that holiday allow hametz – leavened things – back into our homes and our lives, it is worth reflecting on what all the fuss is over, and whether we should make such a fuss at all. Holidays are carved from daily life for a purpose, and often, the mode of observance dovetails the meaning of the holiday.
Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2017 annual conference wrap-up By John Priest Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies 2017 annual conference. OUP’s Media Studies team had a great time in Chicago, attending conference sessions and meeting with authors and conference goers alike.
Reflecting on the Armenian Genocide By Robert Melson April 2014 marked the centenary of the initiation of mass murders of Armenians in Anatolia—events now known as the Armenian Genocide. As Robert Melson notes in the below introduction to Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ virtual issue on the subject, Turkish governments have consistently denied that the persecutions resulted from a policy of genocide.
John Capgrave and a medieval view of scholarship as service By Karen Winstead John Capgrave is one of the few medieval authors whose birthday we know. As he composed his universal history known as the Abbreviation of Chronicles, he recorded that on 21 April 1393, “the friar who made these annotations was born.” And lest this entry be overlooked amidst the doings of the powerful, he inserted his personal nota bene mark, a trefoil, beside it in the margin.
Debating the right to die By Ben Lobo There are so many reasons why we value and promote choice and autonomy. The country and news media quite rightly protests with outrage when bad things happen to good people as their lives and civil liberties are destroyed by acts of terrorism and grievous crimes. But what about all those many people who are living a life in situations they didn’t want or anticipate?
The mountains are calling and we must act By Eve-Lyn S. Hinckley Muir knew that the wilds surrounding him not only fed his soul but sustain us all. Too many of our current elected officials have forgotten his lesson. They seek to sell off our public lands throughout my western home to view them as little more than sources of oil and gas, and to strip federal oversight that has kept these lands there for all of us, generation after generation.
Helping small amateur choirs to survive and flourish By Simon Ible Many small choral groups struggle with a range of problems such as ageing choruses, dwindling membership and audience, unsuitable repertoire, a recently retired musical director, poor finances, weak administrative infrastructure, and inadequate publicity. Simon Ible reflects on how to revitalize your choir.
Gravitational waves, black holes, and astronomy without light By Timothy Clifton On 25 September 2015 scientists at the LIGO experiment detected something that no human had ever seen before: a gravitational wave. This wave was emitted by two black holes that lived and died more than a billion years ago. Each of the black holes was around thirty times as massive as our own sun, and when they merged they gave out so much energy that they temporarily outshone every star in the observable Universe put together.
Managing stress: mind By Richard Wanlass Techniques such as mental imagery and meditation can be used to decrease your stress response. In mental imagery, relaxation is achieved by a few minutes of deep focus on a peaceful scene, often somewhere in nature. In meditation, relaxation is achieved by a few minutes of mental repetition of a word or phrase, usually in conjunction with relaxed breathing.
Misogyny, cheap sweets, and daydreams By Carol Dyhouse Some of the most startling expressions of misogyny over the last century have been directed at girls and young women enjoying themselves. By the 1900s women were reading novels in large quantities. Heavy, three-volume works of fiction were disappearing in favour of single volumes in light bindings: paper covers were beginning to sport colourful, inviting designs.
Avenues of musical interactions for students with autism spectrum disorder By Sheila Scott Students on the autism spectrum have a natural ability to perceive pitch and to reproduce melodic patterns. These natural inclinations become building blocks to learning in music.
Why banning the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t work for Russia By Emily B. Baran The Supreme Court of Russia has a decision to make this week about whether to label the Jehovah’s Witnesses an extremist organization and liquidate its assets. This act would transform the religious community into a criminal network, and make individual Witnesses vulnerable to arrest simply for speaking about their faith with others.
Still sinning, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Today I am beginning where I left off last week. As we have seen, Old Icelandic sannr meant both “true” and “guilty.” Also, the root of this word can be detected in the word for “being” (Latin sunt, etc.).
The best of all possible worlds By Nicholas Mee Voltaire is known today for Candide, a short novel published in 1779. The young hero Candide travels the world in a tale littered with rape, murder, pestilence, enslavement, and natural catastrophe. Amidst this apocalyptic nightmare, Candide’s tutor Dr Pangloss maintains a philosophical detachment, arguing against all evidence to the contrary that we live in the best of all possible worlds.
Libraries: The unsung heroes in A Series of Unfortunate Events By Gabriel Pureco This January, Lemony Snicket’s first four critically acclaimed novels of the A Series of Unfortunate Events were adapted as a Netflix original series, starring Neil Patrick Harris. Although famously known as a book series built upon three children’s misery and misfortune, the stories do contain one consistent factor on which the kids can always rely: the library.
Raiding religion, the new normal By Rebecca Moore The 19th of April 2017 is the twenty-fourth anniversary of the 1993 Branch Davidian tragedy in Waco, Texas. The disaster began three months earlier, however, with a botched effort by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to serve a search warrant for weapons upon a small religious community. The raid resulted in 15 casualties among federal agents, including four dead, and the deaths of six Branch Davidians.
Heligoland, 18 April 1947; how Britain carried out one of the biggest non-nuclear detonations By Jan Rüger ‘Blow the bloody place up.’ There was nothing ambiguous about the instructions which Commander F. T. Woosnam had been given. Woosnam was the naval engineer in charge of preparing Heligoland for Operation ‘Big Bang’, the destruction of all Germany’s military installations on the small island.
Where did Darwin go on the Beagle? On 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin set off on a round-the-world survey expedition and adventure on the HMS Beagle. Captained by Robert FitzRoy, the trip (the second voyage of HMS Beagle) lasted until 2 October 1836 and saw the crew visit locations as varied as Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, South Africa, New Zealand, and the Azores.
The international protection of diplomatic and consular agents By Sanderijn Duquet and Jan Wouters On Monday 19 December 2016, President Vladimir Putin had made plans to attend Woe from Wit, a satirical comedy on post-Napoleonic Moscow. It was written in 1823, six years before its author – poet and diplomat Alexander Griboyedov – was murdered by a crowd of Islamic religious fanatics, when Ambassador to Persia.
Political intermediation for just sustainabilities By Prakash Kashwan Present understanding of the relationship between environmental conservation and social justice – the two of the greatest challenges of our times – is fraught with multiple confusions, especially in the context of developing countries.
How well do you know the Hollywood Western? [quiz] By Todd Berliner In Hollywood Aesthetic: Pleasure in American Cinema, film studies professor Todd Berliner explains how Hollywood delivers aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. The following quiz is based on information found in chapter 12, “Complexity and Experimentation in the Western.”
Is epigenomics the next breakthrough in precision medicine? By Fabian V. Filipp Epigenomics holds a lot of promise for cancer treatments, but there are still many more questions that we need to answer. How does the epigenome of a healthy person look, and how does the epigenome change as we age? How does the epigenome of a sick person differ? In the future, these important questions will be addressed by personalized epigenomics, which tries to extract information out of a comprehensive picture of a person’s epigenome.
Fake news, circa 70 A.D.: The Jewish War by Josephus By Martin Goodman Concern about fake news is nothing new. Readers have long doubted the truth of Josephus’ contemporary history of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to the Roman general Titus. Many have assumed that any author who could accept a post as a general on the side of the Jewish rebels in the war against Rome but abandon his comrades and end up writing an account of the war from the Roman side as a self-proclaimed friend of the Roman emperor could not be trusted.
Looking beyond “America First”: war, politics, and human community By Louis René Beres The polarity between self-assertive and integrative tendencies is characteristic of all human life on earth, even including the life of separate states in world politics. In this connection, regrettably, President Donald Trump’s conspicuously proud emphasis on “America First” represents an unambiguous preference for the former.
Conor Gearty speaks to the Oxford Law Vox about human rights By Conor Gearty and Daisy Simonis In this episode of the Oxford Law Vox podcast, human rights expert Conor Gearty talks to George Miller about human rights in the UK. To hear the full interview with Conor Gearty, and to listen to a bonus podcast about his career and background, visit the Oxford Law Vox on SoundCloud.
How green became green By Edwin Battistella The original Earth Day Proclamation in 1970 refers to “our beautiful blue planet,” and the first earth day flag consisted of a NASA photo of the Earth on a dark blue background. But the color of fields and forests prevailed, and today when we think of ecology and environmentalism, we think green not blue.
Why are we all so frightened? By Gary L. Wenk Knowing what you should fear, and quickly recognizing the biological changes in your body that indicate fear, can save your life. This critical task is processed by a small almond-shaped structure, the amygdala, which lies deep within the bottom of the brain, not far from your ears. The amygdala receives information from many brain regions, your internal organs, and external sensory systems, such as your eyes and ears.
Better alternatives to President Trump’s foreign policies By Louis Kriesberg President Donald J. Trump has hastily undertaken many misguided foreign policies. They are purported to meet terrible threats; but the threats are misdiagnosed and the crude policies to deal with them are often inconsistent with each other and counter-productive.
On multiple realization By Thomas Polger and Lawrence Shapiro There’s no overestimating the significance of the multiple realization thesis in the past fifty years of theorizing about the mind’s relationship to the brain. The idea behind the thesis is simple enough, and most easily explained in terms of a comparison.
On the origins of “dad bod” By Lee Gettler and Mallika Sarma A few years back the phrase “dad bod” emerged to describe men, especially fathers, who have hints of lean muscle lurking beneath noticeable body fat, perhaps particularly around their bellies. There’s increasing evidence that men in industrialized countries like the United States tend to gain weight after they move in with a partner, marry, or become parents, lending some credence to the “dad” in dad bod.
Peter Ohlin, philosophy editor at OUP USA, interviews philosopher David Benatar By David Benatar Peter Ohlin: The title of the new book is The Human Predicament. How would you describe that predicament, in a nutshell? David Benatar: Life is hard. We have to struggle, often unsuccessfully, to keep unpleasantness at bay.
The power of globalization: Singapore’s economic rise By John Curtis Perry Singapore is a controversial subject, described as “The Big Apple of Asia,” or “Disneyland with Capital Punishment.” On the one hand, there are those who admire its efficient government and material accomplishments; on the other hand, there are those who deplore its antipathy to freedom of expression. We can all ask how much an authoritarian government stifles the creativity necessary to nourishing a productive society.
The modern marvel of medicine By James Shorthouse So, where does the future lie in the specialty of anaesthesia? Equipment and monitoring will become more sophisticated with the ultimate aim to minimise harm to patients. It is likely that robotics will be integrated within the patient’s surgical pathway to reduce human error and optimise efficiency of care. Newer drugs will be synthesized with fewer adverse effects and complications.
Tending the roots: a response to Daniel Kerr By Allison Corbett As a young person, I spent several hours a week learning with a group of immigrants who did maintenance work at a local golf course in Virginia. Supposedly, I was helping them learn English. I did do some of that. A lot of what I did, though, was learn.
The contemporary significance of the dead sea scrolls By Timothy H. Lim Many people have heard of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but few know what they are or the significance they have for people today. This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it gives us an opportunity to ask what are these scrolls and why they should matter to anyone.
Louder isn’t better, it’s just louder: what eighteenth-century performance practice teaches about dynamics By Donna Gunn To the modern player, when dynamic indications are found in the score, the typical reaction is to think in terms of changes in volume. Not entirely true for the eighteenth-century musician – dynamic indications mean much more than loud or soft. Volume shift was only part of the story and was a rather new and […]
Managing stress: perspective By Richard Wanlass Stress and anxiety are often partly a result of your perspective, or how you tend to think about challenging situations you face. You can learn to regulate stress and anxiety by changing the way you think. This is because excess worry and stress often come from overestimating the danger in a situation. This overestimation is referred to by psychologists as “catastrophizing” and can take one of two forms
French hovels, slave cabins, and the limits of Jefferson’s eyes By Maurizio Valsania Thomas Jefferson was a deliberate man and nothing escaped his attention. Jefferson’s eyes were powerful, lively, and penetrating. Testimonies swore that his eyes were nothing short of “the eye of an eagle.” He wore spectacles occasionally, especially for reading, but his eyes stood the test of time despite physiological decline.
French politics at the crossroads By Emiliano Grossman The outcome of France’s upcoming presidential elections may be the most difficult to predict in many years. The name of the anticipated winner has changed several times over the past few months. The conservative party’s primary election ejected several seemingly credible candidates from the race. The far-right populist party Front National has become the leading party in terms of vote share at the regional elections of 2015.
Public attitudes to the police By P.A.J. Waddington What do the public think of their police? This is a rather more complicated question than it appears. When public opinion polling was in its infancy, people were asked how they felt about ‘the police’. Perhaps training could make it look better, but that takes officers off the streets where the public demands to see them. To engage with controversy could, at least, elevate public debate.
The sins of my etymological past and other people’s sins: Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman This blog was launched on 1 March 2006, four or even five editors ago (to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut’s statement about his wives), and is now in the twelfth year of its existence. It has been appearing every Wednesday since that date, and today’s number is 587.
JEEA cover Ignorance as an excuse By Zachary Grossman and Joël J. van der Weele Despite unequivocal scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, many people are skeptical that climate change is man-made, or even real. For instance, lawmakers in North-Carolina passed a bill requiring local planning agencies’ to ignore the latest climate science to predict sea level rise in several coastal counties. They say that ignorance is bliss, but why would we not want to know useful information?
The role of smugglers in the European Migrant Crisis By Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano Media coverage of the European migrant crisis often focuses on the migrants themselves—capturing their stories as millions escape violent conflicts and crushing poverty. In Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior, Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano consider the smugglers involved in transporting migrants throughout Europe. Although many smugglers are viewed as saviors, others give little regard to the human rights issues.
The four college hookup cultures By Jason King I attended to different campus cultures and their supporting institutional structures, attempting to understand how their differences might affect hooking up. When I did, I found not “a” hookup culture but four different ones.
23 treaties of Utrecht that changed European history forever By Linda Frey and Marsha Frey 11 April marks the 304th anniversary of the signing of the Peace of Utrecht by most of the representatives at the congress that convened to negotiate the terms that would end the War of the Spanish Succession. Or perhaps it should be 12 April. A few contemporaries alleged that the documents were backdated so that the ceremony would not fall on 1 April, or Fools’ Day, according to the old calendar.
APA Pacific 2017: a conference guide By John Priest The Oxford Philosophy team is excited to see you in Seattle for the upcoming 2017 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting! We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in Washington, as well as our favorite sessions to attend at the conference.
Could your glasses pay for themselves? By Adam Grossman Could your glasses pay for themselves? In a manner of speaking, the World Surf League (WSL) and Visa would say yes. As part of the credit card company’s new official partnership with WSL’s Quiksilver and Roxy Pro Gold Coast (the first stop on the WSL Championship Tour), Visa is piloting payment-enabled sun glasses that “feature contactless payment capability and (eliminate) the need to carry cash or cards on the beach.”
The end of scholarship? By Wilfrid Prest What exactly is ‘scholarship’? According to a widely-used definition attributed to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), research is ‘creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge’.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History How simple, rural products changed Argentina’s history By Cassandra Gill With globalization and industrialization came both freedom and dependency, as Argentina shed the persistent stereotype that the country was simply a collection of farms and ranches. Rural and urban life blurred into a hybrid culture that thrived on export commodities and domestic consumption. To further illustrate how the urbanization of simple rural products shaped the culture and history of Argentina, we compiled some facts that help demonstrate how globalization had such an impact on Argentina from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th.
Remains of ancient “mini planets” in Mars’s orbit By Apostolos Christou The planet Mars shares its orbit with a few small asteroids called “Trojans”. Recently, an international team of astronomers have found that most of these objects share a common composition and are likely the remains of a mini-planet that was destroyed by a collision long ago. Trojan asteroids move in orbits with the same average distance from the Sun as a planet, trapped within gravitational “safe havens” 60 degrees in front of and behind the planet.
H. G. Wells and science By Darryl Jones The Island of Doctor Moreau is unquestionably a shocking novel. It is also a serious, and highly knowledgeable, philosophical engagement with Wells’ times–with their climate of scientific openness and advancement, but also their anxieties about the ethical nature of scientific discoveries, and their implications for religion.
The face of today’s elder caregiver By Naomi Cahn and Amy Ziettlow A recent AARP billboard reminds us that the duty to care for an aging or ill parent begins with remembering the care provided to us when we were children. How does this caregiving expectation, grounded in reciprocity, apply to the approximately 76 million Baby Boomers in the United States whose aging will dominate the next few decades?
Should international law reflect the values of international community? By Dr. Juan Pablo Scarfi When international law reflects the values of the international community in a wide sense, it can potentially have a trans-formative effect for international relations and contribute to revising situations of hegemony and domination.
The sound of the Steel City: Orwell, Attercliffe, and the afterlife By Matthew Flinders There are some sounds in life that simply cannot be put into words. One of them is the sound I heard this morning as I ran along the canal in that very special part of Sheffield known as Attercliffe. The sound shook me to my soul and reminded me of George Orwell’s visit to the city in 1936 when he had been shocked by the realities of hard industrial life. For me, however, it was a glorious sound – the heartbeat of the Steel City.
In search of a “good” Anthropocene? Physiology can help By Christine Madliger While much of the rhetoric surrounding the Anthropocene has been markedly negative, there has recently been a push by many scientists for a more positive narrative. Specifically, researchers are posing the question: can the Anthropocene be good? A good Anthropocene would balance the preservation of the natural world with realistic societal needs and consumption.
How football fans, political leaders, and religious cues can change minds on LGBT rights By Brian F. Harrison and Melissa R. Michelson Less than 15 years ago, it was impossible for a same-sex couple to get married, and the public was strongly opposed to the idea. But in a remarkably short period of time, public opinion shifted, as did public policy—first in Massachusetts in 2004, and in an increasing number of states over time, until the US Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision in 2015 which legalized same-sex marriage across the country.
Why the best teacher of war is war By Martin van Creveld Although experts often highlight history’s military geniuses, these notable commanders are—by definition—outliers. Despite their successes, the majority of military officers will not join the ranks of Alexander, Caesar, and Frederick the Great. How then can today’s officers become effective leaders? Historian Martin van Creveld reasons that, similarly to playing an instrument, military officers need to practice war in order to understand how to successfully command and strategize in the line of duty.
Philosopher of the month: John Stuart Mill [timeline] By John Priest This April, the OUP Philosophy team honors John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) as their Philosopher of the Month. Among the most important philosophers, economists, and intellectual figures of the nineteenth century, today Mill is considered a founding father of liberal thought.
Let me tell you a story By Peggy Mason Every year, I teach Medical Neurobiology to a new class of medical students. I introduce myself and immediately tell the class, “I am not a physician. I do not have a MD. I have a PhD. But, I am a patient, just as you are, and just like the people you will serve when you are physicians.”
The decline of public intellectuals By Daniel Drezner Although their roles are similar, thought leaders and public intellectuals remain two distinct entities. Public intellectuals’ training gives them the authority to discuss a wide range of issues; thought leaders’ enthusiasm gives them an audience who will listen to their ideas. Public distrust in authority figures has led to a significant rise in “thought leaders”. While this change in the marketplace of ideas has increased diversity in creative thinking, it builds obstacles for the public intellectuals trying to filter out the bad from the good.
How well do you know John Richard Hicks? [quiz] Today, 8 April, is John Hicks’ birthday. Hicks is well known for his publications such as The Theory of Wages and Value and Capital. He is considered to be one of the major figures in the history of British economics. This year marks 28 years since Hicks’ death and 45 years since he won the Nobel Prize for Economics. To mark this momentous day, we have created a quiz to see how well you know about this influential economist.
Urban waste management, and the largest dump site in Kolkata By Dr Dhrubajyoti Ghosh These days, one hears much about the importance of adaptiveness and resilience, faced with the “super wicked” problem of climate change that is growing by the day and is demanding not just policy orientation, but action plans on an urgent basis. Often, opinion is expressed that poorer nations must perforce work towards adaptation and dedicated research must help them in that direction.
A choice of St. John Passions By Daniel R. Melamed This is the time of year at which you are most likely to hear J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion, which tends to be performed in accordance with the Christian liturgical calendar even when it is programmed in a secular concert.
How has Mexico influenced the United States economically? By Roderic Ai Camp While the current US administration is re-examining the North American Free Trade Agreement and finding issues with the trade deficit, it is worth considering the impact of trade between the United States and Mexico and examining the history between these two nations. In the following excerpt from the forthcoming 2nd edition of Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know, Roderic Ai Camp explores how Mexico has contributed to the US economy in recent years.
Preventing misdiagnosis of intracranial pressure disorders on diagnostic imaging By Amit M. Saindane Imaging can build a stronger case for a specific diagnosis when several findings associated with that condition are present, making it important for those interpreting the images to be aware of the full scope of imaging findings in each ICP disorder. Finally, open and constructive communication between radiologists and clinical specialists is key to correct diagnosis, starting with appropriate clinical information
Congregational singing in works written for Holy Week By Rebecca Homer Congregations have historically been limited to singing hymns and worship songs, with supplementary music performed by the choir. In light of this, it is interesting to compare choral works suitable for Holy Week that specifically include music for the congregation.
Marvellous murmurations By Tristram D. Wyatt Shortly before sunset, especially in winter from October to February, flocks of tens of thousands of European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) fly in aerobatic displays called murmurations. The flocks swirl and morph, transforming from, for example, a teardrop shape into a vortex, and then into a long rope. The spontaneous synchronised flock turns as if of one mind.
April 1917: the end of American neutrality in WWI By Michael S. Neiberg Mary Roberts Rinehart’s journey since 1914 perhaps best represents the mood and the moment of April 1917. She had been one of the first Americans to urge a more assertive posture toward the war. Two years earlier, Rinehart had written that although she supported the United States taking a more active pro-Allied stance in the wake of the Lusitania tragedy, she was glad that her sons were then too young to fight if it came to war.
Understanding stress and anxiety By Richard Wanlass Almost everybody experiences some stress and associated anxiety on a regular basis. While not particularly comfortable, these reactions can be valuable in alerting us to pay extra attention when we perform important tasks or find ourselves in high-risk situations. Sometimes, however, the stress response is triggered too easily or too intensely, causing unnecessary discomfort. In these cases, it helps to learn techniques to regulate the stress response.
What if Peter Pan’s arch-enemy was a woman? By Kirsten Stirling J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up has exercised the popular imagination since its first performance in 1904. Yet not everyone is aware of Peter Pan’s stage history or the darker currents that underlie the apparently escapist story of Wendy Darling and her brothers flying away from their nursery to the “Never Land”, a fantasy world of make-believe and adventures with Captain Hook and his pirates.
National Beer Day – who said what? [quiz] National Beer Day is celebrated every year in the United States, on 7 April. It marks the day that the Cullen-Harrison Act came into force, after being signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on 22 March 1933. Take this quiz to see how much you know about beer.
Beating about an etymological bush: the story of the word “carouse” By Anatoly Liberman In a way, this is the continuation of the previous week’s gleanings, because I owe today’s subject to a question from a student of Old English. Although I cannot say anything new about carouse, the story is mildly instructive.
Closer to fiction: a look at the unreliability of autobiographies By Edmund Gordon The way people look, how they speak, the quality and frequency of their laughter – all these things help shape our understanding of them, for if we invent ourselves, we also invent one another. Writer Angela Carter knew this.
The Honourable Members should resign By Richard S. Grossman On 16 March, less than nine months after the public voted to leave the European Union (EU) in a hotly contested referendum, Britain enacted a law authorizing the government to begin the process of negotiating “Brexit,”— Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Although there was much talk of “Bregret” following the referendum, recent polling suggests that British attitudes have not changed much since June.
What to do in New Orleans during the 2017 OAH annual meeting By Heather Smith The Organization of American Historians is just around the corner, and we know you’re excited to attend your panels, debate American history with your fellow historians, and dive into some amazing new books. We also know you’d love to explore the beautiful city of New Orleans when the conference is done for the day. We’re here with a few suggestions on how to spend your leisure time!
The centenary of The Scofield Reference Bible In the history of evangelical Protestant thought in America, few publications have been more influential, or more seminal, than The Scofield Reference Bible (first published in 1909, and thoroughly revised by the original author for publication in 1917).
MPSA 2017: a conference and city guide By Erin Cavoto The Midwest Political Science Association will hold its annual conference from 6 April through 9 April in Chicago, IL at the Palmer House Hilton. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the MPSA conference. With a large variety of panels and events to attend, we’ve selected a few on our list to share, as well as what to check out during your free time in Chicago.
Reflections on the Teflon king, Charlemagne By John France Few historical figures have been as universally acclaimed as Charlemagne. Born on 2 April, probably in 748, he became sole king of the Franks in 771 and Emperor in 800. Charlemagne was always very careful to polish his own image. Official writing, like the Royal Frankish Annals, omits or misrepresents delicate events and glosses over military defeats.
Wearable health trackers: a revolution in cancer care By Jenni Gritters Activity trackers, wearable electronics that collect data passively and can be worn on the body, infiltrated the world’s fitness market in the last decade. Those devices allowed consumers to track steps and heart rate. Next, wearable devices overtook the chronic illness market, giving patients the power to track health behavior and adherence to medication, which could be easily reported back to doctors.
What Orwell and Snowden overlooked By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones In response to the Fake News and Alternative Facts doctrine twittered so incoherently from the Trump White House, people have remembered George Orwell’s Doublethink and Newspeak, and sales of 1984 have boomed in the USA. No doubt we shall soon appreciate anew the Orwellian warning that Big Brother is Watching You. The revelations by Edward Snowden still linger in our consciousness as a reminder of the caution.
Testamentary freedom vs claims by family members By Brian Sloan Should a person be free to dispose of property as she wishes on death, or be forced to leave it to certain family members? This is one of the most fundamental questions in succession law. Some (particularly continental European) jurisdictions allocate compulsory portions to certain family members, irrespective of any will.
Ten facts about children’s literature Most of us have a favourite story, or selection of stories, from our childhood. Perhaps they were read to us as we drifted off to sleep, or they were read aloud to the family in front of an open fire, or maybe we read them ourselves by the light of a torch when we were supposed to be sleeping. No matter where you read them, or who read them to you, the characters (and their stories) often stick with you forever.
Filling Supreme Court vacancies: political credentials vs. judicial philosophy By Edward A. Zelinsky In the current, hyper-partisan environment, relatively few individuals publicly supported the confirmations to the US Supreme Court of both Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Justice Sonia Sotomayor. I know because I am one of these lonely souls. Now, the same considerations which led me to support their confirmations lead me to support the confirmation to the Court of Judge Neil Gorsuch.
Speaking truth to power: poetry of the First World War [extract] By Tim Kendall The well-worn argument that poets underwent a journey from idealism to bitterness as the War progressed is supported by [poet and veteran David] Jones, who remembered a “change” around the start of the Battle of the Somme (July 1916) as the War “hardened into a more relentless, mechanical affair.”
Giving up on (indirect) Discrimination Law By Tarunabh Khaitan Some readers might be surprised if told that one of the most significant cases on discrimination law generally, and race discrimination in particular, is likely to be decided by the Supreme Court before long.
Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and its impact on the Liberal Order By Alan Alexandroff Where will he take the United States? That is Donald J Trump – now 45th President of the United States. And will the Liberal Order, a product of all his predecessors, survive the Age of Trump? For over seventy years US Presidents and foreign policy officials of numerous American administrations have led – for better and for worse – the Liberal Order.
What has happened to environmental protection? By Pamela Hill Fast forward to 2017: with a few possible exceptions, Congress hasn’t addressed any significant environmental problems for over a quarter century and has blocked important environmental legislation; President Trump has promised to gut the EPA; and its new administrator, Scott Pruitt, as Attorney General of Oklahoma, sued the Agency over and over again to kill major environmental regulations.
Diverse books in school libraries By Philippa Peall Diversity continues to be a huge topic in the media. Each year seems to spark new debates about everything from the racial makeup of award nominee lists, to the people who are allowed into different countries. The wave of popularity surrounding this subject impacts upon every sphere of life and culture, including books and libraries.
Arguments about (paradoxical) arguments By Roy T Cook As regular readers know, I understand paradoxes to be a particular type of argument.
The OUPblog team have created literary board-games By Dan Parker and Nicole Piendel Every year, on 1 April, the OUPblog team rack their brains for inspiration. We try to figure out if there is something else we should be doing, other than providing academic insights for the thinking world and daily commentary on nearly every subject under the sun. We should be creating new board-games based on literary figures.
March 2017 (139))
César Chávez would oppose Trump’s border policies By Steven W. Bender Donald Trump ran for the US presidency on the backs of undocumented immigrants, particularly those from Mexico, calling them criminals and promising to build a border wall across the entire length of the United States-Mexico border to keep them out. As Trump issues executive orders and unveils his Congressional proposals for immigration enforcement as an integral part of his initial “100-day action plan,” that timeline intersects with what would have been the 90th birthday of labor rights champion César Chávez on 31 March 2017.
Bugs don’t recognize nationality By Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar Microbes have not yet met an ocean, wall, or national border they could not permeate. Zika once again has demonstrated that large and small countries, relatively wealthy and relatively poorer countries all are dependent on a larger infrastructure for their national health security – even the United States cannot rely solely on itself to fight an outbreak or protect itself and Americans from the next outbreak.
Where we rise: LGBT oral history in the Midwest and beyond By Andrew Shaffer In early March, ABC released a much-anticipated mini-series that followed a group of activists who played important roles in the emergence of LGBTQ political movements. The show, When We Rise, was based in large part on a memoir by veteran activist Cleve Jones.
Getting to know James Grainger By Anna Foy The eighteenth-century Scottish poet James Grainger has enjoyed a resurgence of scholarly attention during the last two decades. He was a fascinatingly globalized, well-rounded, idiosyncratic author: an Edinburgh-trained physician; regular writer for the Monthly Review; the first English translator of the Roman poet Tibullus; author of both a pioneering neoclassical poem on Caribbean agriculture, The Sugar-Cane (1764), and the first English treatise on West-Indian disease.
Global future challenges, twists, and surprises By Jennifer M. Gidley From time immemorial, humans have yearned to know what lies ahead. Setting the context is a three-thousand-year romp through the ‘history of the future’ illustrating how our forebears tried to influence, foretell or predict it. Examples extend from the prophets and sibyls to Plato and Cicero, from the Renaissance to the European Enlightenment.
Self-portraits of the playwright as an aging man [part three] By John S. Bak In the late 1970s, Tennessee Williams frequently visited London, feeling that European stages were more catholic than New York’s and thus open to producing his plays at a time when America was growing less tolerant of his brand of theatre. While in London, Williams would often visit celebrity painter Michael Garady and swap writing for painting lessons.
The unintended effect of calling out “fake news” By Megan Draheim CNN’s Don Lemon recently pushed back when Paris Dennard, a conservative pundit, insisted on calling a story they were covering (the cost to the taxpayer of President Trump’s frequent visits to Florida) “fake news.” As Lemon said, “Fake news is when you put out a story to intentionally deceive someone and you know that it is wrong.” Lemon provided an excellent definition for fake news, but it’s also a great definition for “propaganda”.
The United States of America: a land of speculation [excerpt] By Stuart Banner Is speculation ingrained into American culture? Economists dating back to as early as John McVickar have analyzed the American enthusiasm directed toward speculation. History indicates that the American approach to enterprise has differed from its European counterparts since its inception. In this shortened excerpt from Speculation: A History of the Fine Line between Gambling and Investing, author Stuart Banner discusses the economic risks taken in early American history, and the cultural significance of speculation in the United States today.
In or out of Britain?: the big question for Scotland By Michael Keating The 2014 Independence referendum was an important moment in British constitutional history. With the Scottish Parliament’s decision to ask for a second vote, it also provides useful lessons for the future. The referendum of 2014 divided Scotland into two camps, a division that has now become the principal dividing line in the nation’s politics. Yet it has not created a social or ethnic divide such as we see in Northern Ireland.
Ten facts about the harp By Berit Henrickson The harp is an ancient instrument found in a wide variety of sizes, shapes, and tunings in musical cultures throughout the world. In the West, the harp has been used to accompany singing in religious rituals and court music.
On the physicality of racism By Ta-Nehisi Coates When you talk about how the young boys that I grew up around walked through the world, when you talk about the fact that my brother had made a decision at 13 that he was going to carry a handgun, when you talk about the fact that that wasn’t even unusual, you are talking about the physical safety, the danger, the very health of the body. Conversations about race are filled with words and euphemisms to describe the impact of racism on people and communities.
Self-portraits of the playwright as a middle-aged man [part two] By John S. Bak When Tennessee Williams swapped his pen for a paintbrush, his tendency to use his lived experiences as source material did not alter much. He often painted places he’d seen, people he knew, or compositions he conjured up in the limekiln of his imagination. Although Williams painted more frequently later in life, precisely as a creative outlet when his brand of theatre was no longer in vogue, he had started sketching and painting from a very early age. To follow his career as a painter is, to a large extent, to trace his life’s alterations, physically, of course, but also emotionally.
Etymology gleanings for March 2017 By Anatoly Liberman Many thanks for the comments. One of the questions was about the dialect that could be used for the foundation of a new norm. No spelling can reflect the pronunciation of all English speakers.
State of the union for Social Work Month 2017 By Janet Finn We face a host of intertwined issues of social justice today, most of which are not new but deeply embedded historically. Poverty is ubiquitous, and economic inequality has increased both nationally and globally. Children continue to bear the brunt of poverty, especially children of color. Struggles for women’s rights continue around the world in the face of persistent gender inequality, oppression, and violence.
The significance of the Russian Revolution for the 21st century By Michael Kort The year 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, one of seminal events of the 20th century. The Russian Revolution “shook the world,” as the radical American journalist John Reed so aptly put it, because it led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, the world’s first socialist and totalitarian society.
“The Church’s Enemies” – an extract from Luther’s Jews By Thomas Kaufmann Set against the backdrop of a Europe in turmoil, Thomas Kaufmann illustrates the vexed and sometimes shocking story of Martin Luther’s increasingly venomous attitudes towards the Jews over the course of his lifetime. The following extract looks at Luther’s early position on the Jews in both his writing and lectures.
Self-portraits of the playwright as a young man [part one] By John S. Bak Are today’s selfies simply yesterday’s self-portraits? Is there really that vast of an epistemological chasm between Kim Kardashian’s photos of herself on a bloated Instagram account and the numerous self-portraits of Rembrandt or Van Gogh hanging in art museums and galleries around the world? Aren’t they all really just products of their respective eras’ “Je selfie, donc je suis” culture, with perhaps only technological advances (and, admittedly, talent) separating them?
Supporting and managing global health Around the world, health is among the most important issue facing individuals, communities, governments, and countries as a whole. While there are increases in policy debates and developments in medical research, there are still many actions that can be taken to improve the picture of health at a global level. Following an event at Columbia University, we sat down with Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar, authors of Governing Global Health
Combating gendered violence in the face of right-wing populism By Celeste Montoya In my 2013 book, I noted a troubling trend in the trajectory of European Union policy. The 1990s and early 2000s had been characterized by important victories for a dynamic network of transnational feminists. Advocates from a wide of array of countries utilized the various political opportunities of multilevel governance to push for European legislation framing gendered violence as a widespread problem in Europe.
Abortion: conflict and compromise By Kate Greasley A few years ago, when I told a colleague that I was working primarily on abortion rights, he looked at me quizzically and replied, “But I thought they had sorted all of that out in the seventies”. Needless to say, he was a scientist. Still, while the idea that the ethical questions implicated in abortion were somehow put to bed in the last century is humorous, I knew what he meant.
A hitch-hiker’s guide to post-Brexit trade negotiations By Thomas Sampson The UK has yet to decide what relationship with the EU it will seek following Brexit. But whatever option it pursues, the government’s ability to achieve its goals will depend on the success of its negotiating strategy. To design a successful negotiating strategy, it is first necessary to understand the purpose of trade agreements. When a country sets trade policy unilaterally, it does not account for how its choices affect the rest of the world.
Birds’ eye views – a question of reality By Graham R. Martin A finger on a touch pad can glide us across the globe; we can casually sweep from the view that an albatross apparently gets as it flies to its nest site in South Georgia, to what a vulture apparently sees when looking for carrion in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater. The notion that these really are bird’s eye views is deeply engrained. When we use the term “bird’s eye view”, we actually think that this is how the world looks to a bird.
Orlando: An audio guide By Michael H. Whitworth In honor of Virginia Woolf’s death (March 28, 1941), listen to Dr Michael Whitworth, editor of the Oxford edition of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, introduce the novel, and discuss Woolf’s life and times in this Oxford World’s Classics audio guide. “I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books…I want to kick up my heels and be off.”
Preparing for the American Society of International Law Annual Meeting of 2017 By Jo Wojtkowski As the first buds of cherry blossom start to bloom around the Tidal Basin and throughout East Potomac Park in Washington D.C., the international law community prepares to descend on the nation’s capital for the largest annual event in the PIL calendar.
Is privacy the price of precision medicine? By Jennifer Kulynych New initiatives aim to harness technology and genomics to create bespoke medicine, customizing your healthcare like your Facebook profile. Instead of relying on generic practice guidelines, your doctors may one day use these new analytic tools to find the ideal treatment for you. Big data will make this precision possible: patterns that emerge from the DNA and medical records of millions can predict which treatments work best for which patients.
Falling in love with the national security state By Russ Castronovo On a recent trip to Hong Kong, however, I decided to take a risk by departing from my standard viewing practice to watch Oliver Stone’s Snowden, a political thriller about the whistleblower who pulled back the curtain of the surveillance state by exposing how the NSA threatens the privacy of just about everyone. Would this movie set me on edge, making me fearful and paranoid for the remainder of the flight?
His shadow, her doubt: The feminine versus the queer in Hitchcock By David Greven Alfred Hitchcock’s films foreground a conflict that I call “the feminine versus the queer.” The heterosexual heroine, fighting for love and often for her own survival, finds a surprising rival in a queer character, who simultaneously understands and thwarts her.
J. L. Austin, “Other Minds,” and the goldfinch By Guy Longworth J. L. Austin was born on 26 March 1911. He was twenty-eight when the Second World War began, and served in the British Intelligence Corps. It has been said that, “he more than anybody was responsible for the life-saving accuracy of the D-Day intelligence” (Warnock 1963: 9). He was honoured for his intelligence work with an Order of the British Empire, the French Croix de Guerre, and the U.S. Officer of the Legion of Merit.
For want of a comma By Edwin Battistella The Oxford Comma, so named because it first appeared in the 1905 Oxford University Press Style Guide, is the comma that comes before the word and in a series of three or more listed items. Also known as the serial comma, it’s the often ironic rallying cry of a certain type of language aficionado. And it’s in the news after a federal appeals court mentioned it in a court decision recently.
Encyclopedia of Social Work What is social justice? By Janet L. Finn and Maxine Jacobson Notions of social justice generally embrace values such as the equal worth of all citizens, their equal right to meet their basic needs, the need to spread opportunity and life chances as widely as possible, and finally, the requirement that we reduce and, where possible, eliminate unjustified inequalities. The following excerpt explores the meanings and principles of social justice from a political, philosophical, and social worker perspective.
America’s relationship with alcohol [Timeline] By Heather Smith Alcohol has been present in the United States since before it became a country. In that time, the people’s relationship with the substance has been multifaceted. From local watering holes marking the stirring of resistance against the British Empire, to the rise of speakeasies during Prohibition, to the proliferation of American cocktails abroad, alcohol is as much a part of American history as the stars and stripes. And the relationship has not always been an easy one.
Mitochondrial replacement techniques and Mexico By César Palacios González and María de Jesús Medina Arellano The birth of the the first child after a mitochondrial replacement technique has raised questions about the legality of such procedure. In this post we explore some of the legal issues surrounding this case. Mitochondria are cellular organelles that generate the energy cells need to work properly. Two interesting features of mitochondria are that they are solely inherited via the maternal line and that they possess their own DNA.
To ‘Ave’ or to hold: why certain music is banned from the civil marriage ceremony By James Davey Why isn’t religious music allowed at a civil marriage ceremony, and what advice is there for couples wanting a choir at their Registry Office ceremony where only non-religious music is permitted? Before civil marriage was introduced on 17 August 1836, couples could only marry legally in a Church of England ceremony. The revolutionary new ‘Act for Marriages in England’ meant that a marriage could take place in any licensed venue (religious or not) with no restrictions on the choice of music.
The historian and the longitude By Jim Bennett If a social conversation turns to the history of navigation – a turn that is not so unusual as once it was – the most likely episode to be mentioned is the search for a longitude method in the 18th century and the story of John Harrison. The extraordinary success of the book by Dava Sobel has popularised a view of Harrison as a doughty and virtuous fighter, unfairly disadvantaged by the scientific establishment.
Winnicott on creativity and living creatively By Arne Jemstedt Donald Winnicott (1896–1971) is one the most original and creative thinkers in the history of psychoanalysis after Freud. His theories about the early interaction between the infant and its environment, transitional objects and phenomena, true and false self, the relation between the analysand and the analyst, and many other topics have been of great importance for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, social workers, teachers, and others all over the world.
How new is “fake news”? By James W. Cortada President Donald Trump’s administration is accused of disseminating “fake news” to the shock of the media, tens of millions of Americans, and to many others around the world. So many people think this is a new, ugly turn of events in American politics. What does American history have to say about this? When George Washington announced that he did not want to serve as president for a third term, Thomas Jefferson let it be known that he was interested in the job.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and differences across cultures By Cassandra Gill Geert Hofstede, in his pioneer study looking at differences in culture across modern nations, identified four dimensions of cultural values: individualism-collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, and masculinity-femininity. Working with researcher Michael Bond, Hofstede later added a fifth dimension with called dynamic Confucianism, or long-term orientation. Utilizing these interpretative frameworks leads to a greater understanding of ourselves and others.
Spelling and knowhow: the oddest English spellings, part 23 By Anatoly Liberman We are so used to the horrors of English spelling that experience no inconvenience at reading the word knowhow. Why don’t know and how rhyme if they look so similar? Because such is life.
Facts about sanitation and wastewater management After oxygen, fresh, clean water is the most basic requirement for the majority of life on Earth in order to survive. However, this is a true luxury that isn’t accessible for many millions of people around the world. Today hundreds of thousands of people die every year from these types of waterborne diseases, and even though these numbers are declining there is still work to be done.
A brief history of the European Union [timeline] The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union consisting of 28 states that are located within Europe. With the United Kingdom’s recent decision of leaving the EU, the future of the European Union is timely as ever. Therefore, the OUP Economics team have decided to trace a very concise history of the European Union all the way from the end of World War two to Brexit.
Enlightened nation: a look at the Choctaw education system By Christina Snyder Peter Pitchlynn, or “The Snapping Turtle,” was a Choctaw chief and, in 1845, the appointed delegate to Washington DC from the Choctaw Nation. Pitchlynn worked diligently to improve the lives of the Choctaw people—a Native American people originally from the southeastern United States. He strongly believed in the importance of education, and served as the superintendent of the Choctaw Academy in 1840.
Tropes vs. autism in Religious Studies By Olivia Bustion “Why are autistic people different in just the way they are?” asks Uta Frith, a pioneer of autism research. “I put the blame on an absent Self.” Indeed, the absent self theory is the prevailing account of autism among developmental psychologists. Because autistic people lack conscious self-awareness, so the theory goes, they can’t organize their experiences into a meaningful story.
10 facts about the origins of American deportation policy By Hidetaka Hirota One of the most important political, economic, legal, and ethical questions in the United States today is immigrant deportation policy. Where did the policy come from? When and why was it introduced in the United States? Who was the target of removal law? How were deportation laws enforced? In Expelling the Poor, historian Hidetaka Hirota, visiting assistant professor of history at the City University of New York-City College, answers these questions in revealing the roots of immigration restriction in the United States.
Society of Cinema and Media Studies: the 2017 conference guide By Joy Mizan This March, the Oxford University Press cinema and media studies editorial and marketing team will see you in chilly Chicago for the SCMS annual conference. We’ve listed our favorite sessions below. And, don’t forget to test your film expertise with our film quotes quiz.
S. M. Lipset and the fragility of democracy By Mildred A. Schwartz Seymour Martin Lipset passed away eleven years ago. If he had lived, he would have celebrated his 95th birthday on 18 March. Today, his prolific scholarship remains as timely and influential as when he was an actively engaged author. Google Scholar reports 13,808 citations between 2012 and the beginning of 2017. All of Lipset’s papers have been collected at the Library of Congress and soon will be available to researchers.
A conversation with clarinetist and author Albert Rice By Albert Rice Albert Rice, author of the recently released Notes for Clarinetists sat down with Oxford University Press to answer a few questions about his love for music from an early age, musical influences, and his dedication to research on the history of the clarinet.
The value of making connections at the ACDA Convention 2017 By Ben Selby A group of colleagues from OUP recently attended the American Choral Directors Association Conference in Minneapolis. Ben Selby, Director of Publishing at OUP reflects on the value of the connections made at the event.
Experiencing happiness versus appearing happy Each year, the International Day of Happiness is celebrated on 20 March. First celebrated by the United Nations in 2013, this day is now celebrated by all member states of the United Nations General Assembly to recognize happiness and well-being as a “fundamental human goal.” Celebrations on this day in the past included ceremonies held by Ndaba Mandela and Chelsea Clinton, as well as the creation of the world’s first 24-hour music video with Pharrell Williams.
Cicero’s On Life and Death [extract] By Miriam T. Griffin In 58 BC, Roman politics was paralyzed by the coalition of Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, known as the First Triumvirate. Marcus Tullius Cicero, Rome’s greatest orator, who had successfully climbed the political ranks to reach the level of consul, struggled to maintain his independence while on occasion lending reluctant oratorical support to their projects and associates.
Trump in Wonderland By Robert Lichter Four days after Donald Trump’s inauguration, an unlikely novel reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list. It was not the latest potboiler by John Grisham, Stephen King, or any other likely suspect. Topping the list on 24 January was 1984, George Orwell’s 68-year-old masterpiece about a dystopian society in which the ruling authorities routinely alter the meanings of words and facts to suit their own purposes.
Are you an expert on international organizations? [quiz] By Gabby Vicedomini and Ina Christova With the upcoming publication of Oppenheim’s International Law: United Nations and the highly anticipated launch of Oxford International Organizations (OXIO), international law has never been more relevant. From the United Nations to UNICEF, this quiz will put one’s international law knowledge to the test. Oppenheim’s International Law: United Nations is an authoritative and comprehensive study of the United Nations’ legal practice.
Human evolution: why we’re more than great apes By Robin Dunbar We share with the other great apes a long history, a largely common genetic heritage, a similar physiology, advanced cognitive abilities that permit cultural learning and exchange, and a gathering and hunting way of life. And yet we are not just great apes. There are some radical differences. The least interesting of these, although the ones that almost everyone has focused on, are the anatomical differences, and in particular our upright bipedal stance.
International Affairs The divide – France, Germany, and political NATO By Sten Rynning Europe’s unity is under threat, and if France and Germany cannot muster the will to rescue the European project of integration and cooperation, then all bets are really off. Those who imagine that the EU could falter to no great effect are being naïve. A failed EU would pull down NATO and other vestiges of Western unity, and we would be returning to a 19th century balance of power diplomacy.
Celebrating and learning from Philip Roth’s America By Benjamin Railton n March 19th, Philip Roth will celebrate his 84th birthday. Although Roth retired from publishing new writing as of late 2012 (and retired from all interviews and public appearances in May 2014), the legacy of his more than fifty-year career remains vibrant and vital. And indeed, celebrating Roth’s works and achievements can also remind us of the many lessons his literary vision of America has to offer our 21st century national community and future.
OUP Philosophy How much do you know about Socrates [quiz] By John Priest How much do you know about Socrates? Test your knowledge with our quiz below!
It’s time we talked about transport of the critically ill By Anne Creaton Ever stopped at the scene of an accident on a dark night? Treated a heart attack on a remote island? Coordinated the transfer of a critically ill baby with a heart defect? Were you prepared? Did you have the right toolkit? You need a cool head to perform critical clinical interventions while simultaneously planning the transfer to definitive care. Almost all patients have a transport phase
Throw out the dog: are pets expendable? By Christine Overall Little Tiger, big enthusiastic Buddy, and laidback Smokey are some of the furry individuals who share our living rooms, our kitchens, and sometimes our beds. Most people consider their companion animals—their “pets”—to be friends or members of the family. Despite the depth of many people’s relationships with the cats and dogs who share their lives, many people also assume that these animals are in certain ways expendable.
Today’s Great Crossings: a historian’s view on Trump’s travel ban By Christina Snyder Drawing parallels between Jackson’s era and our own is, according to President Trump, “really appropriate” for “certain obvious reasons.” Indeed, both are eras of rapid change characterized by anxieties over race, immigration, citizenship, and America’s destiny. In the Jacksonian era, the United States, within the span of a few decades, transformed from an East Coast nation into a transcontinental empire.
The life of Saint Patrick [part two] By Philip Freeman Saint Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early 17th century, and continues to be recognized today. It commemorates the death of Saint Patrick, the introduction of Christianity into Irish culture, as well as Irish nationalism. To celebrate, we’ve pulled a two-part excerpt from Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes in which Philip Freeman tells the story of Saint Patrick.
Test your general knowledge about sleep Sleep is defined as “a periodic state of muscular relaxation, reduced metabolic rate, and suspended consciousness in which a person is largely unresponsive to events in the environment”. It comes easily to some, and much harder (sometimes impossible) to others, but we all need it in order to function day-to-day. Not only is it required to stay healthy, it also allows a space for our brains to think out problems whilst we doze.
Down at the crossroads: the intersection of organizing and oral history By Daniel Horowitz Garcia The crossroads, in Southern folklore, represents a place where worlds meet. It is a place where realities collide and deals can be made. Since the 2016 election I have experienced colliding realities on an almost daily basis.
Celebrating Samuel Barber and his Adagio for Strings By Jeffrey Wright Today we celebrate what would have been American composer Samuel Barber’s 107th birthday. Upon the composer’s death in 1981, New York Times music critic Donal Henahan, penned an obituary that asserted “probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim.”
A cross-section of the Earth We now know that the Earth is many billions of years old, and that it has changed an unimaginably number of times over millennia. But before the mid-eighteenth century we believed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old. Then scientists (who we now call geologists) began to explore the Earth’s layers and found fossils, suggesting it was much, much older than they first thought.
Medical Psychotherapy The hygge of psychoanalytic psychotherapy By Jessica Yakeley The Danish concept of ‘hygge’ has captivated the British imagination. Pronounced runner-up word of the year, it seems a fitting counterpoint to the word ‘post-truth’ in first place: an apt response to the seismic political shifts of 2016. Hygge is difficult to translate: it is not a concrete entity, but something akin to a cozy, warm, and homely feeling, a sense of familiarity, a state of mind in which all psychological needs are in balance.
Why we should care about Singapore [excerpt] By John Curtis Perry Contemporary Singapore has transformed into a “global city,” and remains an important player in international affairs. One of the original “Four Asian Tigers,” Singapore’s economy has grown into one of the most competitive and dynamic economies in the world. However, Singapore faced great adversity on its journey towards modern power. In this shortened excerpt from Singapore: Unlikely Power, author John Curtis Perry sheds light on the importance of Singapore as a symbol of courage and strength.
Selected extra-musical benefits of music education for children with autism spectrum disorder By Sheila Scott In advocating for music education for children on the autism spectrum it is imperative that teachers recognize the ways in which learning through music helps these students. An overview of extra-musical benefits for music education is provided in three areas: 1. Social Interaction; 2. Sense of Self, and; 3. Psychomotor Facility.
“Freedom! Freedom!”: 100 years since the fall of the Tsar By Mark D. Steinberg As midnight approached on 15 March 1917 (2 March on the Russian calendar), Tsar Nicholas II signed his manifesto of abdication, ending centuries of autocratic monarchical rule in Russia. Nicholas accepted the situation with his typical mixture of resignation and faith: “The Lord God saw fit to send down upon Russia a new harsh ordeal…During these decisive days for the life of Russia, We considered it a duty of conscience to facilitate Our people’s close unity…In agreement with the State Duma, We consider it to be for the good to abdicate from the Throne of the Russian State… May the Lord God help Russia.”
Why bother? By Anatoly Liberman Yes, there is every reason to bother. Read the following: “One of the most common expressions in everyday life, and one which is generally used by all classes, is the expression ‘Don’t bother me!’ and the origin of the word bother has so frequently bothered me that I have spent some time in tracing its etymology.
The life of Saint Patrick [part one] By Philip Freeman Saint Patrick’s Day is a religious festival held on the traditional death date of Saint Patrick. Largely modernized and often viewed as a cultural celebration, Saint Patrick’s Day is recognized in more countries than any other national festival. To celebrate, we’ve pulled a two-part excerpt from Celtic Mythology: Tales of Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes, in which Philip Freeman tells the story of Saint Patrick. It is a tale of courage, survival, and deep faith. Remember to check back on 17 March for the second part of “The Life of Saint Patrick.”
Encyclopedia of Social Work Why social work is essential By Cassandra Gill March is Social Work Month in the United States. Social workers stand up every day for human rights and social justice to help strengthen our communities. They can be the voice for people who aren’t being heard, and they tackle serious social issues in order to “forge solutions that help people reach their full potential and make our nation a better place to live.” There are over 600,000 social workers in the US alone.
Sui Sin Far’s “The Land of the Free” in the era of Trump By Ying Xu Facing President Trump’s controversial travel ban, hastily issued on 27 January and revised on 6 March, that temporarily halted immigrants from six Muslim majority countries, I was wondering what Sui Sin Far (Edith Eaton), a mixed race Asian North American writer at the turn of the twentieth century, would say about the issue.
Can art save us from fundamentalism? By Philip S. Francis London, rain, and Rothko—each was foreign to the missionary encampment on the Navajo reservation where Jakob grew up, in the 1980s. Back then, he seized every opportunity to share the gospel with his Native American friends, even as they played endless games of cowboys and Indians in the deserts of Arizona:
Women of letters By Amelia Carruthers During the Enlightenment era, the term “man of letters” (deriving from the French term belletrist) was used to distinguish true scholars—independent thinkers who relished debate, conversation and learning. In an age when literacy was a distinct form of cultural capital, it served to identify the literati, often the French members of the “Republic of Letters,” who met in “salons” designed for the elevation, education, and cultural sophistication of the participants.
Reconstructing the nation’s memory of the Civil War By Jim Downs The history of black people during the Civil War and Reconstruction has been the subject of some of the most vicious and inaccurate portrayals of any other group in US History. But that just might be changing. On 12 January, President Obama dedicated the first national park in Beaufort, South Carolina, to Reconstruction, a period that historians have, over the last 150 years, defined as “a failure,” “tragic,” and “an unfinished revolution.”
How to “bee” a smart animal By Dawn Field The public is turning out to be, whether knowingly or not, animal ethnographers. The diversity of pets, farm animals, and wild animals they track with lens is exposing the rarest of behaviors. These behaviors not only make intriguing viewing but serve to widen our thinking about the animal world and perhaps diminish our iron-gripped hold on cleverness. Might we be less willing to destroy creatures whom we believe are ‘smart’?
How brain scans reveal what really goes on in our minds [excerpt] By Barbara J Sahakian and Julia Gottwald Every year in March, Brain Awareness Week champions the global campaign to celebrate and publicise the progress and benefits of brain research. Are you lying? Do you have a racial bias? Is your moral compass intact? To find out what you think or feel, we usually have to take your word for it. But questionnaires and other explicit measures to reveal what’s on your mind are imperfect: you may choose to hide your true beliefs or you may not even be aware of them.
Celebrating the history of traditional Irish music on Saint Patrick’s Day [a playlist] By Jessica Green The celebratory nature of Saint Patrick’s Day marks the coming together of and relishing in the rich history of Ireland, with traditional festivities occurring all over the world – parades, dances, cèilidh (traditional social gatherings) and for many people–lots of drinking and eating!
War, movies and Sam Fuller: A Q&A with Marsha Gordon By Marsha Gordon American screenwriter, author, and director of over 20 films, Sam Fuller influenced the work of filmmakers the likes of Jim Jarmusch, Quentin Tarantino, and Luc Moullet.
Dance of black holes trembles our Universe By Sambaran Banerjee The existence of gravitational waves, or ripples in the space-time, is no more just a speculation but a firm truth, after the recent direct detection of such waves from at least two pairs of merging black holes by the LIGO gravitational-wave detector. In such a binary system, two black holes orbit each other at a close separation, nearly at the speed of light, whirling the spacetime in their neighbourhood.
Six underrated Irish women writers By Erin Meehan To celebrate both Women’s History Month and St. Patrick’s Day, the Oxford World’s Classics team has picked just a few of our favorite—and sometimes underrated in Irish literary history—female writers from our series. Ireland is known for producing many influential writers, but the men typically get a lot of the credit and a lot of the attention.
Why we are failing to end wartime rape By Sara Meger In recent years, the world has become all too aware of the prevalence of rape and other forms of sexual violence perpetrated in war. As a result, gender-based violence has become an increasingly common consideration in foreign policy agendas, with sexual violence becoming the cornerstone of the women, peace, and security agenda of the past decade.
How and when to quote By Edwin Battistella I have a confession to make. I often skip the long blocks of quotes when I am reading academic articles and books. I suspect that I’m not the only one who does this. I don’t skip the quotes because I’m lazy. I skip them because they often pull me away from a writer’s ideas rather than further into them. The writer has put a voice and an idea in my ear only to cede the floor to another voice, that of some quoted authority.
Perfection, positivity, and social media [excerpt] By Donna Freitas Engaging in status competitions is nothing new. It’s common, especially when we’re young (though adults are certainly not exempt). We compare our looks, our hairstyles, our opportunities, our friends, our successes and failures, where we’ve traveled (or haven’t), where we’ve gone to school, where we’re from, our clothes, and all sorts of material objects. The list goes on and on. We seek approval and affirmation all the time.
The polls aren’t skewed, media coverage is By Kathleen Searles, Martha Humphries Ginn, and Jonathan Nickens The perceived failures of election forecasting in 2016 have caused many to suggest the polls are broken. However, scholars are quick to point out that more than polling failure this election has demonstrated that people have a hard time thinking probabilistically about election outcomes. Our research suggests skewed media coverage of polls may also be to blame: News media are likely to cover the most newsworthy polls.
George Eliot and second lives By Philip Davis The later nineteenth century she represents is not an historical period we have simply left behind. What it stands for psychologically, again and again, for sundry lost individuals is the arena of transition from a religious to a modern secular life: an in-between world of seriousness that many people still do not, cannot or will not wholly get over. The Victorian critic John Morley said that reading George Eliot was like inadvertently entering a confessional.
Finding career success through authenticity By Marissa Lynch “Knowledge workers,” or people who think for a living, continue to be major players in the global economy. In today’s competitive job market, creating a successful career in a knowledge work field takes more than a college degree. One of the keys to success is authenticity: understanding yourself so that you can take charge of your own work.
Liar, liar, pants on fire: alternative facts By Charles M. Wynn Sr. and Arthur W. Wiggins Oxford lists several definitions of belief, but here is a paraphrase of their meanings: something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held opinion; a religious conviction; trust, faith, or confidence in something or someone. How do truths believed by individuals or groups compare with scientific truths? On the face of it, scientific observations and experiments are backed by physical evidence, repeated in many settings, by many independent observers around the world.
The foundation of American liberalism [excerpt] By Brad Snyder In 1912, a group of ambitious young men congregated in a 19th Street row house in Washington, DC. Disillusioned by the Taft administration, they shifted from a firm belief in progressivism—the belief that the government should protect its workers and regulate monopolies—into what is now called “liberalism,” or the belief that government can improve citizens’ lives without abridging their civil liberties and, eventually, civil rights.
Aleppo: the key to conflict resolution in the Syrian civil war? By Belgin San-Akca Finally, just a couple months ahead of the sixth year’s end in the conflict, an agreement has been reached in Astana, Kazakhstan on 24 January 2016 by the participation of the major domestic and international state and nonstate actors, who had stake in the conflict. Why is Aleppo significant? Why are there external states supporting various rebel groups? And, why did the conflict in Syria take so long to resolve?
The role of the death-mother in film By David Greven Hitchcock’s famous Psycho (1960) has an enduring legacy in the slasher-horror genre. Its impact on this genre is an enduring one, as suggested by the A&E series Bates Motel, culminating with Rihanna cast in Janet Leigh’s indelible role (Figure 1). Perhaps its most striking contribution, however, is its thematization of a figure I call the death-mother.
To understand the evolution of the economy, track its DNA By Philip E. Auerswald How much would we understand about human evolution if we had never discovered genetics or DNA? How would we track the development of the human species without taking into account the universal code of life? Yes, we could study ancient trash heaps to estimate people’s average caloric intake over time. Or we might seek clues in burial mounds regarding population growth rates and changes in our physical characteristics over time.
Reproductive rights and equality under challenge in the US By Leslie Francis If the Trump administration and the current Congress have their way, however, state restrictions on abortion are likely to flourish and may ultimately prevail. Far less likely, however, is careful ethical consideration of what these changes may mean. Even now, many US women find abortion beyond their reach either economically or geographically. These women and their children face what may be life-limiting challenges.
Fighting for Athens: the Battle of Marathon [excerpt] By Jennifer T. Roberts It was [the democratic state of Athens] that confronted the full wrath of Darius [the king of the Persian Empire] on the plain of Marathon. It was also an Athens filled with the same brand of trained soldiers to be found elsewhere in Greece: the hoplite.
10 things you may not know about the making of the OED (Part 2) By Peter Gilliver In the first part of this article you may have learned various unexpected pieces of information about the history of the Oxford English Dictionary, such as the fact that it came close to being the Cambridge English Dictionary, or that one of the first lexicographers to work on it ended up being sacked for industrial espionage. Read on for more interesting episodes in the extraordinary history of this great project.
Voltaire and the one-liner By Nicholas Cronk As we mark Voltaire’s 323rd birthday – though the date of 20 February is problematic, the subject of another blog – what significance does the great Enlightenment writer have for us now? If I had to be very very short, I’d say that Voltaire lives on as a master of the one-liner. He presents us with a paradox. Voltaire wrote a huge amount – the definitive edition of his Complete works will soon be finished, in around 200 volumes.
How does acupuncture work? The role of S1 remapping By Vitaly Napadow Acupuncture is a medical therapy that originated in China several thousand years ago and is rooted in a complex practice ritual based on a philosophy that predates our current understanding of physiology. Despite its long history, though, the intervention itself, particularly when coupled with electrical stimulation, significantly overlaps with many conventional peripherally-focused neuromodulatory therapies.
10 things you may not know about the making of the OED (Part 1) By Peter Gilliver The Oxford English Dictionary is recognized the world over, but much of its history isn’t so widely known: as with a respected professor or an admired parent, it’s all too easy simply to make use of its wisdom and authority without giving much thought to how it was acquired. Read on for some interesting nuggets of information about the history of this extraordinary project that you may not have encountered elsewhere.
In war, the earth matters By Richard Bardgett Many factors influence the outcome of war. But what has soil got to do with war? I suspect few have given much thought to the influence of soil on war, or, conversely, how war influences the soil. But the role of soil in warfare can be considerable, as can the impact of war on soil, which can often leave it unusable. The most dramatic and emotive examples of the role of soil in war comes from the First World War.
Bob Dylan’s complicated relationship with fame [excerpt] By Andrew McCarron Bob Dylan’s playful and at times antagonistic relationship with the press dates back to his early years on the folk scene in New York. When asked about his identity by straight- laced reporters with buzz cuts and sport coats, he frequently answered sarcastically: “a trapeze artist,” “a song and dance man,” “an ashtray bender,” and “a rabbit catcher.”
Celebrating International Women Day: women in the changing world of peacekeeping By Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley Celebrated for the first time by the UN on 8 March, 1977, the International Women’s Day serves as a way to mark women’s contributions all around the globe. One area where women’s contributions are particularly worthy of celebration is in United Nations peacekeeping missions. Since the deployment of the first peacekeeping mission in 1948 to 1989, the end of the Cold War, only twenty women served in peacekeeping missions.
Tom, Dick, Harry, and other memorable heroes By Anatoly Liberman Why Tom, Dick, and Harry? Generic names? If so, why just those? From Suffolk to Yorkshire people speak about some Laurence and some Lumley, whose fame rests only on the fact that both have alliterating lazy dogs (as lazy as L.’s dog, as laid him down to bark). Other farmers had worse luck.
Accounting, Donald Trump style By Richard S. Grossman Firms and individuals depend on honest accountants. Managers make decisions on the basis of information they provide. Investors decide whether to buy, sell, or hold on the basis of their pronouncements. And the advice of an accountant can make the difference between collecting a fat refund and going to prison for tax fraud. Honest accounting is as important for countries as it is for firms and individuals.
Ernestine Rose and the Women’s March By Bonnie S. Anderson If she were alive today, Ernestine Rose, a 19th century radical, would have participated in the 21 January 2017 Women’s March. The mass protest spawned sister rallies around the globe and drew more than a million participants who brandished signs proclaiming desires for equal rights, not just for women, but for all people. These tenets were integral to Rose’s life, and she fought for them throughout her life.
Social History of Medicine Journal Cover What not to expect when you’re expecting By Paula A. Michaels Writing in 1990 about her experience attending antenatal classes in the 1950s, British mother and childbirth activist Heda Borton recalled her husband squirming as he watched a film of a baby being born in their antenatal education class: “My husband came to the evening under protest, and sat blowing his nose and hiding behind his handkerchief.”
Anglo-Saxon law, social networks, and terrorism By Tom Lambert How would the Anglo-Saxons react to the threat of terrorism if they had access to Facebook? It’s a bizarre question, I admit, but I’ve been immersed in England’s pre-Norman Conquest legal system for over a decade now, and it’s been playing on my mind. The answer makes me uncomfortable. Supposing the brutal persecution of minority groups was impractical (which it actually wasn’t), how would the Anglo-Saxons have reacted if they knew that there were among their number people who secretly rejected their core values and plotted to cause them harm?
Reducing risk of suicide in cancer patients By Kurt Ullman Cancer patients experience substantial psychological effects from facing death, financial issues, emotional problems with friends and family, and adverse medical outcomes from treatment. The psychological effects are so severe that some patients consider suicide. Depression is more common in people with cancer than in the general population, said Kelly Trevino, PhD, from the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York.
International Women’s Day: a reading list By Marissa Lynch To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’ve put together a reading list of biographies that capture the lives of influential women throughout history.
Getting to know Antonina in music marketing By Antonina Javier Our Cary office has welcomed a new assistant. Antonina Javier joined the marketing team in November 2016 after moving to North Carolina from Hawaii. We sat down with her to talk about publishing, books, and the outdoors. She is always ready for an adventure and is eager to share what she has seen.
My life as a police officer: a Q&A By Heather Saunders Ahead of tomorrow’s International Women’s Day, we asked a female police officer about her experience of working in a police force in the UK. She talks about her motivations for joining the police, some of the challenges facing officers today, and shares some advice for aspiring officers.
The right way to amend the Johnson Amendment By Edward A. Zelinsky President Trump, reiterating the position he took during the presidential campaign, has reaffirmed his pledge to “get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment.”The Johnson Amendment is the portion of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code which prohibits tax-exempt institutions from participating in political campaigns.
Eating fruits and vegetables can make you more attractive By Yong Zhi Foo Carotenoids are yellow, orange, and red pigments synthesized by plants and algae. They are responsible for the colours in fruits and vegetables, like the redness in tomatoes. When consumed, these pigments are used by many animals to produce brightly coloured displays. Examples range from the orange patches on guppies, the pink feathers of flamingos, the yellow-orange underside of common lizards, to the orange exterior of ladybird beetles.
Reality check: the dangers of confirmation bias By Tom Nichols “Confirmation bias” is the most common—and easily the most irritating—obstacle to productive conversation, and not just between experts and laypeople. The term refers to the tendency to look for information that only confirms what we believe, to accept facts that only strengthen our preferred explanations, and to dismiss data that challenge what we already accept as truth.
What happens after the Women’s March? Gender and immigrant/refugee rights By Meghana Nayak On the morning of President Trump’s inauguration, women stood back to back, with their hair braided to each other, on the Paso del Norte Bridge, which connects El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. As activist Xochitl R. Nicholson explained, the gesture of braiding, one often performed by women, symbolized women’s solidarity in the face of anti-immigrant discrimination.
Brexit, Shakespeare, and International Law By Gary Watt How to make sense of the Brexit vote and its aftermath? To where can we look if we are to learn more, and to learn more deeply, of the agonistic parts played by principle and pragmatism in human decision-making where self, sovereignty and economic well-being are concerned? King John – Shakespeare’s English history play with the earliest setting of all – casts the longest and, perhaps the strongest, light.
In defense of mathematics [excerpt] By Luke Heaton Once reframed in its historical context, mathematics quickly loses its intimidating status. As a subject innately tied to culture, art, and philosophy, the study of mathematics leads to a clearer understanding of human culture and the world in which we live. In this shortened excerpt from A Brief History of Mathematical Thought, Luke Heaton discusses the reputation of mathematics and its significance to human life.
The culture of nastiness and the paradox of civility By Matthew Flinders Headlines are by their very nature designed to catch the eye, but Teddy Wayne’s ‘The Culture of Nastiness’ (New York Times, 18 February 2017) certainly caught my attention. Why? Because increasing survey evidence and datasets have identified growing social concerns about declining levels of civility. Politics, it would seem, has become raw, rude, direct, divisive… and don’t just think Trump…
Bastards and thrones in Medieval Europe By Sara McDougall Today we use the term “bastard” as an insult, or to describe children born to non-marital unions. Being born to unmarried parents is largely free of the kind of stigma and legal incapacities once attached to it in Western cultures. Nevertheless, it still has associations of shame and sin. This disparagement of children born outside of marriage is widely assumed to be a legacy of Medieval Christian Europe, with its emphasis on compliance with Catholic marriage law.
Philosopher of the Month: Socrates By John Priest This March, the OUP Philosophy team honors Socrates (470-399 BC) as their Philosopher of the Month. As elusive as he is a groundbreaking figure in the history of philosophy, this Athenian thinker is perhaps best known as the mentor of Plato and the developer of the Socratic method.
What is artificial intelligence? By Jerry Kaplan There are many proposed definitions of artificial intelligence (AI), each with its own slant, but most are roughly aligned around the concept of creating computer programs or machines capable of behavior we would regard as intelligent if exhibited by humans. John McCarthy, a founding father of the discipline, described the process in 1955 as “that of making a machine behave in ways that would be called intelligent if a human were so behaving.”
Co-living: Utopia 2.0? By Andy Willimott Eight months on from its opening, in May 2016, the London-based co-living enterprise known as The Collective Old Oak is still going strong. The residential concept, situated between North Acton and Wilesden Junction, now boasts 546 residents. The project has piqued the interest of locals and the media alike.
2017 Oscars represent a shift, but Hollywood is still disproportionately white By Tanya Golash-Boza In 2017, the winners of two of the four Oscars given to actors were African Americans. This represents a remarkable turn in the history of the Oscars. It is not, however, a historical accident. Instead, it is due to social media campaigns and activism. In 2015, an activist named April Reign started the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite in response to the overwhelmingly white Oscar nominees that year.
Learning the language of music: is it child’s play? By Wendell Hanna Careful observation of children’s musical development has shown that it is never too early for musical learning. Musical aptitude may actually begin in the womb.
Paul Feyerabend and the debate over the philosophy of science By John Preston Paul Feyerabend (born 13th January, 1924, died February 11th, 1994) is best-known for his contributions to the philosophy of science, which is somewhat ironic because, I suspect, he wouldn’t have thought of himself as a philosopher of science. I don’t just mean he wouldn’t have thought of himself as just a philosopher of science. No, I mean that he thought of himself as a thinker for whom disciplinary boundaries meant absolutely nothing. In his later years, he even denied being a philosopher.
Michelangelo’s uncelebrated birthday and uncertain death By William E. Wallace We will scarcely acknowledge, much less celebrate, the unremarkable 502nd anniversary of Michelangelo Buonarroti’s birth. Nor would Michelangelo. While the aristocratic artist was alert to the precise time and date of his birth, he paid absolutely no attention to any of his subsequent birthdays.
British Medical Bulletin The critical role of China in global tobacco control By Judith Mackay Many might think that the best way to reduce the global tobacco epidemic is by health education and banning sales to minors – policies well-liked by teachers, parents, and governments. But these are ineffective means of reducing smoking prevalence. Surprisingly, it is a fiscal measure that is the critical and easily the most important means of improving public health, as by raising the price, cigarettes become less affordable, especially to the young.
Oral history and empathy at the Women’s March on Washington By Holland Hall and Alexandra Weis Today we continue our series on oral history and social change by turning to our friends at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at the University of Florida. A group of SPOHP students and staff traveled to the Women’s March on Washington this January as part of an experiential learning project.
Do you need to “unplug” from social media? [quiz] By Marissa Lynch “Unplugging” from social media does not necessarily equate to quitting. As The Happiness Effect author Donna Freitas found out, the decision to temporarily quit social media is a common among university students. Some students quit because they feel “too obsessed” or “addicted,” while others cite online drama as their reason to take a break.
10 things you should know about weather By Storm Dunlop From tornadoes and typhoons to deciding the best day for a picnic, the weather impacts our lives on a daily basis. Despite new techniques and technologies that allow us to forecast the weather with increasing accuracy, most of us do not realise the vast global movements and forces which result in their day-to-day weather. Storm Dunlop tells us ten things we should know about weather in its most dramatic and ordinary forms.
Where your mind goes, you go? (Part 2) By Michelle Maiese Is there some other way to resolve the duplication problem that acknowledges this insight? Remember that according to Parfit, we all agree that if my brain is transplanted into someone else’s brainless body, and the resulting person has my character and apparent memories, then this resulting person is me. But should we agree, or do these intuitions rest on questionable assumptions?
A paradoxical stroll down Harlem’s memory lane By Jaye Austin Williams It has been nearly nine years since I moved to Southern California, after a lifetime in New York City as the adopted daughter and granddaughter of a Harlem-born and raised black family whose “roots” were in Richmond, Virginia (by way of the Middle Passage from, as author Dionne Brand describes it in A Map to the Door of No Return, “the door of no return”). I visit the city a couple of times a year, to check in with loved ones and to do research.
Transformative social work education: the time is now By Loretta Pyles In the first week of March, hundreds of social work educators from across the US will come together in New Orleans to discuss the future of social work education at the Association of Baccalaureate Social Work Program Directors (BPD) conference. It is clear that the stakes for social work education are higher now than ever before. For my students who are working in field placements, there is a growing sense of dissonance.
In praise of teaching with Skype By Pedro de Alcantara For the past six or seven years I’ve been giving music lessons online, using Skype or FaceTime (Apple’s proprietary alternative to Skype). My students include children, college students, adult amateurs, and concert artists. Some of them take occasional lessons, others hew to the traditional once-a-week lesson schedule. I’ve had face-to-face encounters with some of them, but not all of them.
On language and defiance: a Q & A with Ilan Stavans By Ilan Stavans “The Trump Administration has taken down from the White House official website all references to Spanish. This to me is another symptom of its anti-globalist views.” We caught up with Ilan Stavans, Editor in Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Latino Studies, to discuss his recent New York Times editorial, the use of the Spanish language in the United States, and why Spanish isn’t a foreign language in the US.
Gardens and cultural memory By Gordon Campbell Most gardens are in predictable places and are organised in predictable ways. On entering an English suburban garden, for example, one expects to see a lawn bordered by hedges and flowerbeds, a hard surface with a table for eating al fresco on England’s two days of summer, and a water feature quietly burbling in a corner.
Etymology gleanings for February 2017 By Anatoly Liberman From time to time people share with me their versions of Spelling Reform. I rarely respond to such letters, because, unfortunately, I have little to say. The problem, as I see it, is not the ideal version of the reform but the reality of its implementation. The choir is happy, and we keep preaching to it.
It’s time to talk about power, part II By Lisa L. Miller In the first installment, Miller challenged the popular trope that ‘checks and balances’ in American politics serves to limit power, protect liberty, or promote the balance between the interests of political minorities and majorities. The stark example of Donald J. Trump’s election, despite his loss of the majority vote and limited support within his own party, highlight just how out of touch this trope is.
The changing meaning of tax avoidance By Nigar Hashimzade and Gareth Myles There are some economic terms that are fixed and immutable. Marginal cost will always be the addition to cost from an incremental increase in output, and average cost will never be anything other than total cost divided by output. Other terms have greater fluidity and evolve over time with developments in theory and practice. For this reason, compilation of the Dictionary is never finished and definitions are never final.
Can we have more than one friend? According to Montaigne, no By Manuel Bermudez The Essais are the perfect mate to accompany anybody, throughout all stages of life. It is always interesting to explore Michel de Montaigne’s life and his marvellous book: the Essais. Within his lifespan, Montaigne was able to find true friendship for himself and record its effects therein. Here we propose to navigate Montaigne’s approach to friendship.
Ancient legal papyri bring lost world to life By Philip F. Esler Everyone has heard of the ancient Jewish religious scrolls discovered at Qumran by the Dead Sea in the middle of the 20th century. But who is aware that nearly 100 legal papyri have been found in the same region, or that they allow unparalleled access to the ancient social world of Judea and Nabatea in the period 100 BCE to 200 CE?
February 2017 (130))
How well do you know Friedrich Nietzsche? By John Priest This February, the OUP Philosophy team honors Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) as their Philosopher of the Month.
German History journal cover Why queer history? By Jennifer Evans Fifteen years ago, as a junior scholar, I was advised not to publish my first book on the persecution of gay men in Germany. And now, one of the major journals in the field has devoted an entire special issue to the theme of queering German history. We have come a long way in recognising the merits of the history of sexuality–and same-sex sexuality by extension–as integral to the study of family, community, citizenship, and human rights.
A librarian’s journey: from America to Saudi Arabia By Philippa Peall King Abdullah University of Science Technology (KAUST) is based in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, on the east shore of the Red Sea. It was founded by King Abdullah and opened its doors in 2009, with the vision of being a destination for scientific and technological education and research, to inspire discoveries that address global challenges and striving to be a beacon of knowledge that bridges peoples and culture for the betterment of humanity.
Concepts of Epidemiology Why many wrongs make a right in the health sciences By Raj Bhopal Stories that link diseases to their possible causes are popular, and often generate humour, bemusement, and skepticism. Readers assume that today’s health hazards will be tomorrow’s health saviours. Rod Liddle’s headline in the Sunday Times is an example: “Toasties get you laid, fat prevents dementia and I’m a sex god.” Liddle starts with some fun statistics showing that those who ate cheese toasties had more enjoyable sex than those who did not.
Inter-professional practice: conflict and collaboration By Allan Barsky The mission of the Association of Baccalaureate Program Directors is to promote excellence in the education of bachelor of social work students. Between 1 March and 5 March, 2017, over 600 social work educators and 120 students will gather in New Orleans for its annual conference. The theme of this year’s conference is, “BPD for the Future: Social Work Educations, Allied Professionals, and Students.”
Alban Berg on the web and in social media By Dave Headlam The date 9 February 2017 marks 132 years since the Viennese composer Alban Berg’s (1885-1935) birth. Despite this advanced age, Berg nonetheless maintains an active profile in social media.
The Liberation Panther Movement and political activism By Hugo Gorringe Scholars of protest and social movements argue that voicing a vocabulary of resistance, challenging taken-for-granted assumptions and mapping out how things could be different are as important a part of the revolution as building the barricades and engaging in armed struggle. They invest the audience with a sense of the possibilities for change and encourage them to contest age old inequities.
Did Margaret Thatcher say that? By David Cannadine Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was a fearless leader who became of one of the most notable figures of 20th century British politics. She arguably had the greatest enduring influence of any of Britain’s post-war Prime Ministers. She is remembered for her extraordinary political impact, but also for her memorable turns of phrase.
Quantum fields By Art Hobson Some say everything is made of atoms, but this is far from true. Light, radio, and other radiations aren’t made of atoms. Protons, neutrons, and electrons aren’t made of atoms, although atoms are made of them. Most importantly, 95% of the universe’s energy comes in the form of dark matter and dark energy, and these aren’t made of atoms. The central message of our most fundamental physical theory, namely quantum physics, is that everything is made of quantized fields.
Cicero’s Defence Speeches: an audio guide By Dominic Berry In this audio guide to Cicero’s Defence Speeches, Dominic Berry, senior lecturer in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at Edinburgh University and the translator of this volume, introduces Cicero and his world.
Trump versus Guterres; will the new president destroy the United Nations? By Herman T. Salton With the exception of Hillary Clinton, few would have been more dismayed by Donald Trump’s surprise victory in the US presidential election than António Guterres, the former Portuguese prime minister who took over the UN Secretariat in January 2017. While Mr Trump spent his life on corporate jets and in gold-plated towers, Mr Guterres used to take time off to teach in Lisbon’s slums.
From hostage to fortune to prisoner of war By Randall Lesaffer On 10 August 1678, France and the Republic of the United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands signed a peace treaty at Nijmegen [Nimeguen]. The treaty, which was one of several between the members of opposing coalitions, ended the war which had started with the nearly successful surprise attack by the French King Louis XIV (1638–1715) on the Dutch Republic in 1672.
Telling (fairy) tales Fairy tales have been passed down through communities for many hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and have existed in almost all cultures in one form or another. These narratives, often set in the distant past, allow us to escape to a world very unlike our own. They usually follow a hero or heroine who comes up against some sort of obstacle (or obstacles) – from witches and ogres, to dwarves and (as the name suggests) fairies.
Dermatology on the wards By Susan Burge What should you know about skin diseases when you start your medical career as a Foundation Doctor or are trying to keep abreast of the work as a Core Medical Trainee? Does skin matter? Are you likely to need any dermatological knowledge? Skin does indeed matter and you are sure to come across dermatological challenges perhaps as a result of treatment such as adverse drug reactions or opportunistic skin infections
SIPRI Yearbook Online Women in war – what is being done? Women experience conflicts differently to men, as victims of sexual violence, internally displaced persons, refugees, combatants, heads of households and political and peace activists. Their mobility and ability to protect themselves are often limited during and after conflict, while their ability to take part in peace processes is frequently restricted.
Can hypnosis improve the functioning of injured brains? By Jonas Kristoffer Lindeløv Think about a situation in the past few years where your mind was at its very best. A situation where you felt immune to distractions, thinking was easy and non-strenuous, and you did not feel information-overloaded. If you take a moment, you can probably recall one such situation. As you think about it, you may even experience it actively right now and get a sense that you could be in that state again.
“Nevertheless she persisted.” By Edward J. Watts This week we saw a male US senator silence his female colleague on the floor of the United States Senate. In theory, gender has nothing to do with the rules governing the conduct of US senators during a debate. The reality seems rather different.
OUP Philosophy APA Eastern 2017 annual conference wrap-up By John Priest Thanks to everyone who joined us at the annual meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division. We had a great time in Baltimore attending sessions and interacting with customers, authors, and philosophers.
Facebook Cleanup: appearing professional on social media By Donna Freitas Most students feel that they are in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. They worry about whether future employers might find an offending photo or post attached to their names. But many of them also worry about what happens if they have no social media presence at all for their future employers to scrutinize and dissect. If they are completely absent from social media, this might seem suspicious, too
The globalization of the Hollywood war film By Tarak Barkawi For a long time, people in other countries had to watch American war films. Now they are making their own. In recent years, Russia and Germany have produced dueling filmic visions of their great contest on World War II’s Eastern Front. Paid for with about $30 million in state money, Stalingrad, directed by Feder Bondarchuk grossed around $50 million within weeks of hitting Russian screens in October, 2013.
The poverty of American film By Stephen Pimpare Some decades ago, British film scholar Laura Mulvey showed us that movies possessed a male gaze. That is, the viewer was assumed to be a man — a straight, white one — and films were created by men to entertain men like them.We’ve made some progress. Among this year’s Academy Award nominees are eighteen African Americans, five Asian Americans, and one native-born Hispanic American.
A library in letters: the Bodleian By Amelia Carruthers Libraries by their very nature are keepers and extollers of the written word. They contain books, letters, and manuscripts, signifying unending possibilities and limitless stores of knowledge waiting to be explored. But aside from the texts and stories kept within libraries’ walls, they also have a long and fascinating story in their own right.
Conscious unity, split perception By Yair Pinto We take it for granted that our entire brain only produces one conscious agent, despite the fact that the brain actually consists of many different, more or less independent modules. But how is this possible? The classic answer to this riddle is cortical connectivity. Separate brain regions only give rise to one conscious agent because the different parts continuously exchange massive amounts of information.
La La Land and the Hollywood film musical By Steven Cohan Say what you will about the strong fan base of La La Land and its probable domination of the upcoming Oscars after sweeping so many of the guild awards, not to mention the critical backlash against it that I have seen in the press and among scholars on Facebook, but Damien Chazelle certainly knows the history of the Hollywood film musical!
Preparing your choir to sing By Chris Rowbury Chris Rowbury reflects on why time spent on developing the voice, body and mind through fun and imaginative warm-up exercises will result in a relaxed, centred, focused, and engaged choir and a more effective and productive rehearsal.
Accelerated ageing and mental health By Nancy A. Pachana The accelerated ageing of the populations of developed countries is being matched in the developing world. In fact, in 2017, for the first time in history, the number of persons aged 65 and over will outstrip those aged 5 and under. This population trend is not just a temporary blip, not just due to a short-term outcome of the baby boomer generation.
Embodied Selves and Divided Minds Where your mind goes, you go? (Part 1) By Michelle Maiese What does it take for you to persist across time? What sorts of changes could you survive, and what sorts of changes would bring your existence to an end? The dominant approach to personal identity says that a person persists over time by virtue of facts about psychological continuity (e.g. continuity of memory, character, or mental capacities). Various puzzle cases have been presented to support this view.
What chocolate chip cookies can teach us about code [excerpt] By Philip E. Auerswald What is “code”? Although “code” can be applied to a variety of areas—including, but not limited to computer code, genetic code, and ethical code—each distinct type of code has an important similarity. Essentially, all code contains instructions that lead to an intended end. Philip E. Auerswald, author of The Code Economy, argues that code drives human history.
Research interview approaches in International Relations By Julia Gallagher ‘You do realise that they’ll talk differently to you because you’re British?’ I thought about this advice a lot. It came from a Zimbabwean who I met as I began research for my book about Zimbabwe’s International Relations. I planned to interview Zimbabweans to find out how they saw the world, and how they understood themselves in relation to it. There are many ways to conduct research interviews.
Wilson Pickett and the “Ballad of Stackalee” By Tony Fletcher On the night of December 27 1895, at the Bill Curtis Saloon in St. Louis, Missouri, two black men, “Stag” Lee Sheldon and Billy Lyons, got into an argument. They were, supposedly, friends and drinking partners, but politics was about to come fatally between them
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion The civil rights movement, religion, and resistance By Paul Harvey An excerpt exploring how the Civil Rights Movement might not have been successful without the spiritual empowerment that arose from the culture developed over two centuries of black American Christianity. In other words, religious impulses derived from black religious traditions made the movement move.
Bolder than a boulder and other stumps and stones of English orthography By Anatoly Liberman One good thing about English spelling is that, when you look for some oddity in it, you don’t have to search long. So why do we have the letter u in boulder (and of course in Boulder, the name of a town in Colorado)? If my information is reliable, Boulder was called after Boulder Creek.
Economic statecraft and the Donald By Susan Allen How will the Trump administration utilize economic statecraft and how will his approach be distinct from previous presidents? To answer these questions, we look to what we know about Trump’s stances and early actions on trade policy, sanctions, and foreign aid. For much of the early history of the republic, economic statecraft was the primary bargaining tool employed.
Inequality and new forms of slavery By Ilaria Ramelli The issues of social justice, poverty, and all the forms of human trafficking, deployment, and oppression that can be grouped under the umbrella concept of “slavery” are problems that sorely affect the world today and urgently need concrete solutions.
The cultural politics of “othering” By Ben Keppel President Trump’s executive order ending immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries has intensified a vituperative debate in American society, which has been ongoing since long before candidate Trump formally remarked on it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four successful presidential campaigns created a bipartisan consensus that cast the immigrant experience as an extension of a narrative beginning on Plymouth Rock.
The history of global health organizations [timeline] By Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar Established in April 1948, the World Health Organization remains the leading agency concerned with international public health. As a division of the United Nations, the WHO works closely with governments to work towards combating infectious diseases and ensuring preventative care for all nations. The events included in the timeline below, sourced from Governing Global Health: Who Runs the World and Why?, show the development of global health organizations throughout history.
ISA 2017: a city and conference guide By Erin Cavoto The 2017 International Studies Association meeting will be held this year from February 22nd until February 25th in Baltimore, Maryland. The International Studies Association is one of the oldest interdisciplinary associations devoted to studying international, transnational, and global affairs since 1959. The 58th Annual Convention is dedicated to understanding change in world politics.
Why Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel Prize By Andrew McCarron Laudatory op-eds and articles began appearing online and in print shortly after the Nobel Prize announcements on October 13, 2016. Bob Dylan had won the literature prize.
The sound of the police By Heather Saunders With dates for both the NPPF Step Two Legal Examination for police sergeants and National Investigators Examination looming closer, we’ve put together a playlist to help get you through your revision. Stuck trying to get your head round a tricky piece of legislation?
“Don’t cry white boy. You gonna live” By Arthur Knight On 20 February 2017, Sidney Poitier—“Sir Sidney” both in the colloquial and in reality (he was knighted in 1974), and just “Sir” in one of his biggest hits, To Sir, With Love (1967)—will turn ninety years old. Even today, Poitier continues a decades long career of collecting accolades for his pioneering role as Hollywood’s first Black movie star.
Isolation driven by technological progress – does anyone care? By Peter Townsend The hype of technological progress is that it will change the world and make life better for everyone. For young technologists, this may be true, but their blinkered vision does not recognise that, not just the elderly, but many others, cannot cope with electronic communications and the benefits of on-line shopping or banking, etc. In many developed nations 25% of adults are of retirement age.
New Grub Street and the starving artist By Reneysh Vittal Sitting alone in front of a computer screen, a writer sometimes feels like screaming at the machine to make the words appear. When inspiration finally strikes, the result may be far from satisfying—but when your next meal is at stake, it hardly matters.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics A basic income for all: crazy or essential? By Simon Birnbaum Shouldn’t society provide a safety net for all in modern society? The radical idea of ensuring a regular stream of cash payments to all members of society, irrespective of their willingness to work, has attracted increasing attention in recent years. ollowing the mobilization of a citizens’ initiative, the world’s first national referendum on basic income was held in Switzerland in 2016.
New frontiers in international law: The Asian paradox By Simon Chesterman Just over three hundred years ago, William Pitt Amherst arrived in China as Britain’s putative ambassador. The new frontier that China presented remained closed until it was opened by force of arms, solemnized in treaties denounced by China as unequal and marking the beginning of a century of humiliation. In other parts of Asia, international law facilitated and legitimized the colonial enterprise to expand international law and commerce to other frontiers.
Schrödinger’s cat, aka quantum measurement problem By Art Hobson It’s been 116 years since Max Planck introduced the quantum idea, yet experts still disagree about quantum fundamentals. My previous post on the wave-particle duality problem, argued the universe is made of fields, not particles, and that photons, electrons, and other quanta are extended bundles of field energy that often act in particle-like ways.
Brexit: the first many EU-exits to come? By Edward Berenson Having made a remarkable run from the 1950s to the early 2000s, the project of European unification suddenly appears in danger of falling apart. After Brexit, the surprise British vote of June 2016 to leave the European Union, will there be other EU Exits was well? A Grexit nearly took place in the summer of 2015—avoided only after weeks of acrimonious negotiations between Greek and EU leaders.
The many voices of Dickens By Melisa Klimaszewski Charles Dickens’s reputation as a novelist and as the creator of Ebenezer Scrooge, one of the most globally recognized Christmas miser figures, has secured him what looks to be a permanent place in the established literary canon. Students, scholars, and fans of Dickens may be surprised to learn that the voice many Victorians knew as “Dickens,” especially at Christmastime, was also the voice of nearly forty other people.
The real National Treasure: US presidential libraries By Katie D. Bennett I’ve watched the film National Treasure twenty more times than I probably needed to, but I can’t ignore my fascination with the history of the US presidents. In the movie, the directors place a strong emphasis on the importance of historical documents and artifacts, and a working knowledge of the importance and content of these items, to help the main protagonists complete a centuries-long treasure hunt.
Graphs and paradoxes By Roy T Cook A directed graph is a pair where N is any collection or set of objects (the nodes of the graph) and E is a relation on N (the edges). Intuitively speaking, we can think of a directed graph in terms of a dot-and-arrow diagram, where the nodes are represented as dots, and the edges are represented as arrows.
Alan Turing’s lost notebook By Jack Copeland Alan Turing’s personal mathematical notebook went on display a few days ago at Bletchley Park near London, the European headquarters of the Allied codebreaking operation in World War II. Until now, the notebook has been seen by few — not even scholars specializing in Turing’s work. It is on loan from its current owner, who acquired it in 2015 at a New York auction for over one million dollars.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History Reckoning with the addict and the US “War on Drugs” By Aileen Teague In 2015, nearly 1.25 million people in the United States were arrested for the simple possession of drugs. Moreover, America’s “War on Drugs” has led to unprecedented violence and instability in Mexico and other drug-producing nations. Yet in spite of billions of dollars spent and thousands of lives lost, drug abuse has not decreased.
Financing universal healthcare coverage [excerpt] By Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridhar Across countries with UHC, no two versions are alike in their financing, in what they cover, or in how they are structured. Some countries with UHC rely on a public system of coverage while others mandate insurance coverage, requiring individuals to buy health coverage in a regulated private insurance market or from the government, while still others have a mix of the two approaches.
Immunology in perspective By Alfred I. Tauber Among students of science, in contrast to those who do science, the dominant discussion revolves around the degree to which scientific interpretations are subject to extra-curricular influences, specifically, to what extent are facts independent of the larger political context in which science resides.
How historians have shaped military history [excerpt] By Cathal Nolan A widespread belief persisted, not for centuries but for at least two millennia, that when world history turned, it did so on a few days or hours of intense violence, in major battles waged and won by great captains of special courage and genius. The ascent or toppling of dynasties and empires could be explained by a singular clash of arms so complete that the winner dictated the political and cultural direction taken by the loser.
Dr. Chip Schooley on infectious diseases & journal publishing By Robert T. Schooley As infectious diseases around the world continue to evolve, so does the research surrounding the discipline. To find out more about the progress and future challenges in this field, we’ve caught up with Robert T. “Chip” Schooley, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID), who began his term in January after serving as an associate editor for the past decade.
Planting the seeds of resistance By Joshua Burford I have been working on preservation of Southern Queer history for ten years, and I have never felt the urgency that I feel at this moment to make certain it is safe and available. I think many archivists would agree that urgency is an undercurrent of most of the work that we do since so much information is lost when people die or move or leave their work.
The problem with “liberalizing” Islam By Z. Fareen Parvez Since the advent of the War on Terror, and perhaps now more than ever, calls for a liberal Islam and support for moderate Muslims echo loudly from both the left and right. They come from politicians, the public, as well as scholars.
The new rock age By Jan Zalasiewicz of the extraordinary things about our modern world is just how closely we are brought into contact with rock in everyday life. Now this might seem a little counter-intuitive. As I child, I grew up with cartoons such as The Flintstones and, a little later, sat goggle-eyed through films such as One Million Years BC. There the Stone Age protagonists acted out derring-do amid caves, craggy landscapes and erupting volcanoes.
Predation risk and foraging decisions among prey fish By Grant Brown, Chris Elvidge, and Pierre Chuard Prey animals must constantly stay alert and rely on publicly available information to avoid being eaten, find suitable foraging and mating opportunities, and to assess local competition for resources. Reliable information allows prey to make behavioural decisions in order to ensure sufficient foraging and mating gains while reducing predation risks. However, complete information is rarely available to prey.
Was Phillis Wheatley’s husband a crook or a dreamer? By Vincent Carretta Of the many known unknowns about the life of Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784), the first published African American poet, one of the greatest has been her husband’s character. Until very recently, all we’ve had to go on were two very brief nineteenth-century accounts of John Peters (1746?–1801). The first depicts him as a failed grocer with an aspiration to gentility, who married Phillis in April 1778, and who abandoned her as she lay dying in desperate poverty six years later.
Replication in international relations By Nils Petter Gleditsch and Nicole Janz The integrity of science is threatened in many ways – by direct censorship; by commercial, political, or military secrecy; by various forms of publication bias; by exorbitant journal subscription fees that effectively deny access to the general public; by cheating and falsification of results; and by sloppiness in the research process or the editorial process prior to publication.
Ten facts about the accordion By Berit Henrickson Whether you dub accordion music annoying or enticing, you cannot deny the instrument’s persistence. The earliest version of the accordion emerged in the early 1800’s and one can still find it on many street corners today. Certain universities, museums, and soloists have assisted in the accordion’s longevity.
The conflict of laws and international commercial arbitration By Benjamin Hayward It’s a fundamental principle of developed legal systems that justice is blind. This is often represented by the blindfolded Lady Justice. Objectivity is key to the determination of legal disputes, and parties’ rights and obligations. International commercial arbitration plays an important role in the resolution of cross-border commercial disputes.
College Arts Association 2017 Annual Meeting Conference Guide By John Priest The Oxford Art team is excited to see you in our hometown of New York City for the upcoming 2017 College Arts Association’s Annual Conference! With so much to look forward to at this conference, we’ve gathered some suggestions from Oxford attendees.
The eternal Cheshire cat By Anatoly Liberman Unlike Alice, who was advised to begin at the beginning and stop only when she came to an end, I’d rather begin at the end. The English-speaking world is interested in the Cheshire cat only because Lewis Carroll mentioned it. The origin of the proverbial grin has never been explained, so that, if you hope to receive an enlightening answer from this post, you can very well stop here.
Market solutions for improving treatment of farm animals? A review of At the Fork By Edward Peter Stringham How are farm animals treated and should one care? For the record, I am not vegetarian and I follow something similar to a paleo diet high in animal proteins and fats. But whether or not one believes animals have rights, libertarian philosopher Loren Lomasky once gave me the most succinct argument for caring about the welfare, at least some, of animals: “You wouldn’t put your cat in a microwave, would you?”
Iceland’s unruly terrain and hidden inhabitants By Corinne G. Dempsey When people first learn about my travels to Iceland, the response I most often hear goes something like: “Iceland! That’s on my bucket list.” I understand. It’s hard to resist an arctic wonderland littered with flaming volcanoes and thundering waterfalls, where for months on end the sun barely sets on moss-crazed mountains and whale-infested waters. Maybe you’ve already been there.
Oxford Classical Dictionary How much do you know about ancient Greek and Roman marriages? By Cassandra Gill Lacking in love or not, the Greeks’ and Romans’ celebration of marriage was still marked by particular customs. Some of their marital traditions form the roots of modern practices today. For instance, while the Romans might not have gifted diamonds and other “bling” as frequently as suitors do now, an intending husband did solemnize his engagement with a kiss and an iron ring.
Children’s information ecosystems in the United States By James W. Cortada Information ecosystems are normally thought of as consisting of collections of facts that float in and out of one’s life, usually in a structured way. We routinely receive and use at work, the news regularly viewed on our smart phones, and for children, whatever they are taught in school. If we did nothing different in the way we live our lives, a predictable supply of information would enter our world, data that we need in order to not change the way we live.
Flowers and humans – a curious love affair By Florian P Schiestl and Steven D Johnson Humans love flowers! We admire their varied colors and shapes, enjoy the way they smell, and (especially on a day like today) give them to those we love. But why has this affection for flowers evolved in us – given that flowers have certainly not evolved to impress us? In fact, we gain very little benefit (apart from joy) from them. It is true that some flowers are edible, and that flowers may indicate where an edible part of a plant can be found
From Byron to boy bands: A timeline of heartthrobs By Carol Dyhouse From dreams of Prince Charming or dashing doctors in white coats, to the lure of dark strangers and vampire lovers; from rock stars and rebels to soulmates, dependable family types or simply good companions, female fantasies about men tell us as much about the history of women as about masculine icons. The timeline below highlights ten heartthrobs, fictional and real, that set hearts aflutter over the decades.
What makes a love song? OUP staff have their say By Jessica Green The “love song” is undoubtedly timeless, pervading over the centuries–the themes of beauty, time, passion and heartache can be seen very early on in William Shakespeare’s sonnets, (among some of the first expressions of the love song), and with these universal ideas of love remaining ever-significant subject matter of popular music today.
Love and Tinder: hookup culture at universities [excerpt] By Donna Freitas The same dread that college students feel about online dating–the sense that meeting someone with whom you have no prior real life connection is reckless—applies to Tinder as well. Students may indeed want to have sex and hook up, but they do not want to have sex and hook up with anonymous strangers. They want to have sex and hook up with that hot guy from American lit, or that hot girl from chemistry class.
Tearing the heart out of Valentine’s Day? By Jonathan Reynolds Valentine’s Day each year brings with it accusations of shameless appropriatation of sacred rituals by retailers.But of course, there is nothing new in the commercialisation of rituals and traditions. Following enforcement of Confucianism in the Ming and Qing dynasties of China, the nuo exorcism ritual was re-created as an often expensive personal experience performed by nuo Masters for a group of households.
How dangerous is technology? By Peter Townsend Technological advances have provided immense improvements in our lives, but often with a hidden cost. Even the historic skills of bronze and iron working were driven by a desire not only for ploughs and tools, but for better weapons of war. This is still the case for much of modern science. Technical knowledge has helped to combat diseases, improve health, provide more food, offer faster travel, or ease hardship, and this is progress.
Who’s your literary valentine? [quiz] By Lucie Taylor It is a truth universally acknowledged that [pretty much everyone] is in want of a literary valentine. . . Characters from classic literature have a way of capturing our hearts.
It’s time to talk about power, part I By Lisa L. Miller Immediately after the 2016 election, defenders of the Electoral College repeated the standard laudatory claims about its value everywhere. In these arguments, the Electoral College is one of the many features of our Constitution that effectively neutralizes power by balancing the rights of the minority against those of the majority. But this conventional view is simply wrong.
Lord Mansfield, the transvestite Chevalier d’Eon, and privacy By Michael Tugendhat It is elementary that judges must adjudicate fairly between the litigants making and defending a claim. For this judges are helped by the litigants and their advocates. But judges must also be fair to witnesses, and to third parties who may be affected by a trial, even if they are not present. For this judges are on their own. Aggrieved litigants have clear rights of appeal. If witnesses or third parties are aggrieved, it may be much more difficult for judges, first to appreciate that fact in good time, and then, to find a remedy.
How to write dialogue By Edwin Battistella I’m sitting at my computer early in the morning and my wife walks in. “Good morning,” she says. “Is there any more coffee?” I nod. “Do you want some?” I answer. “I’ll get it,” she says. “What are you working on?” “A blog post on dialogue,” I reply sleepily. “Good luck,” she laughs, heading for the kitchen. That’s pretty bad dialogue. It has no apparent purpose and too many words: adverbs like sleepily, redundant dialogue tags like answer, reply, and laughs, and nothing that really advances a plot or develops a character.
The nature of addictive disorders By John B. Saunders What are addictive disorders? Are they indeed disorders? The nature of problematic psychoactive substance use continues to be a matter of controversy among the public and politicians; even among health professionals there is little consensus. Some have a view that repeated use of a substance (or gambling or gaming) represents personal choice (a “free-will decision”) even when problems are occurring.
The impact of cybersecurity on international relations By Hannes Ebert and Tim Maurer The hack of the Democratic National Committee by the Russian government and the subsequent publication of confidential emails during the 2016 US presidential election elevated cyber security in the context of international affairs to an unprecedented level in the public’s consciousness, not only in the United States but around the world.
Spice up your readers’ advisory with “Blind Date with a Book” By Karissa Fast Readers’ advisory librarians are the ultimate literary matchmakers. We listen to our patrons, get to know their interests, set them up with a book, and hope they hit it off. If we do our jobs effectively, our patrons will fall in love with multiple partners. And they’ll keep coming back for more. “Blind Date with a Book” offers librarians the perfect way to showcase our readers’ advisory services.
Ineffable facts, deep ignorance, and the sub-algebra hypothesis: Part 2 By Thomas Hofweber If there are any ineffable facts, then it is striking that they essentially are nowhere to be found. It is natural to think of ineffable facts as rare, radical exceptions, something unusual, maybe something tied to consciousness, or art, or paradoxes.
Deconstructing pseudoscience By Charles M. Wynn Sr. and Arthur W. Wiggins Can magicians (illusionists) really levitate themselves and others or bend spoons using only the power of their mind? No. Emphatically no. But they surely make it seem as if they can. Enjoy being fooled? Then you’ll love watching really good magic shows that allow people the opportunity to suspend their disbelief momentarily. But don’t let this suspension become permanent.
The curious tale of Roman emperors as judges By Kaius Tuori The first dynasty of Roman emperors, collectively known as the Julio-Claudians, knew how to make headlines. From the frequent accounts by contemporary and later writers of their use of torture, rape, and murder to the more recherché ways of humiliation and abuse such as seeking to appoint a horse as consul (as the historian Cassius Dio says of Caligula), there is little to suggest that the administration of justice was very high on their agenda.
Creative destruction and corporate becoming: how important is a CEO? By Robert A. Burgelman While today’s business media (and business schools) are much enamored with Silicon Valley-style start-up entrepreneurship, only those startups able to grow into large, complex enterprises (e.g., Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Netflix) materially impact the evolution of the global industrial system. The average lifespan of such large, complex enterprises, however, is on the decline.
Five tragic love stories across time This time of year is often filled with images of romance, hearts, and cupid’s bows, but not all love stories end in happily ever after. Who among us hasn’t had their heart broken, or felt the sting of rejection once (or twice)? But we all know that life without love (even if it’s painful) isn’t much of a life. As Charles Darwin once said, ‘Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love’.
Challenging assumptions about how music helps By Laurel Young When people asked me what I did for a living, some were curious and wanted to know more, while others looked at me as if I were selling snake oil. Nowadays, these conversations are slightly different. Although it is still not always well understood as a profession, more people are familiar with the term “music therapy” and open to the idea that music and other creative mediums may be used to promote health and well-being.
What is new about Roman law? By Kaius Tuori Aside from the field of history itself, few disciplines routinely reach out to texts dating back several millennia to reassess fundamental issues. Theology is one, for obvious reasons. Another is philosophy, where the texts of Plato or Aristotle, not to mention more obscure writers, routinely warrants attention. In legal scholarship, a similar foundational position is held by Roman law.
Communication in cancer care By Carma Bylund Ask anyone about their experience with their own or a loved one’s cancer, and the response will likely include a story or remark about an oncologist, surgeon, nurse, or other health care provider. These are often positive stories: the oncologist who remembered a child’s birthday, the nurse who stayed after his shift to wait with an elderly patient until her daughter arrived to pick her up, or the surgeon who attended a husband’s funeral.
Uncovering the story of Percy Grainger’s wine glasses By Elanor Caunt It is a curious fact that hidden away in the sheet music archive here in Oxford, we have a set of three wine glasses dating back to the 1930s stored in a dusty old suitcase with luggage tags attached, that rarely sees the light of day. We did some research to uncover the history behind the glasses.
Understanding AIDS By Alan Whiteside AIDS is a fast moving epidemic and some of the data and assertions were immediately out of date. For example, the book failed to foresee the massive expansion in treatment. In 2008, there were 28.9 million people living with HIV, and a mere 770 000 were receiving anti-retroviral drugs. By 2015, there were 36.7 million people infected with HIV, but 17 million were on treatment.
The European Left’s legacy of nationalism By Jakub Beneš Since the end of the Second World War, it’s been difficult to talk about nationalism in Europe as a force of progress. Nationalism, which seemed to reach its logical conclusion in violent fascism, has appeared anathema to liberalism, socialism, and other ideologies rooted in the Enlightenment. It’s been seen as the natural enemy of tolerance, multiculturalism, and internationalism.
After Brexit: the English question surfaces? By Michael Kenny “Will the Prime Minister provide a commitment today that no part of the great repeal bill will be subject to English votes for English laws?” This seemingly technical query – will have reminded Theresa May that, amidst the turmoil and drama of the current political moment, a powerful English question is now salient in British politics. But these questions of parliamentary procedure and tactics are really the tip of the iceberg.
Face to face with brash: part 2 By Anatoly Liberman James Murray showed great caution in his discussion of the Modern English words spelled and pronounced as brash (see Part I of this essay). It remains unclear how many of them are related. One of the homonyms seems to go back to French, but even that word is of Germanic origin.
Is God on Facebook? [excerpt] By Donna Freitas From the moment Jennifer sits down for our interview, I know I’m in for a treat. She’s a bright, bubbly senior at a conservative, southern, Christian university. A pretty redhead with freckles, she talks enthusiastically about all the things she loves about her studies, her experience at college (she’s made two “lifelong friends,” she immediately tells me), and how, during her four years here, she’s been “pushed in the best of ways.”
A desperate gamble By Chad Broughton “It’s a joke as far as I’m concerned.” George Carney paused to sip his beer. It was early in the afternoon on 3 August, 2016, at the Rock Island Boat Club, a little tavern behind a levee on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. The election was still three months away and the displaced factory worker, a two-time Obama voter, was mulling his options. “Hillary is a compulsive liar and Trump thinks this is a game show.”
Was Chaucer really a “writer”? By Christopher Cannon We know more about Geoffrey Chaucer’s life than we do about most medieval writers. Despite this, it’s a truism of Chaucer biography that the records that survive never once describe him as a poet. Less often noticed, however, are the two radically different views of Chaucer as an author we find in roughly contemporaneous portraiture, although the portraits in which we find them are themselves well known.
Measuring belief? By Cole Carnesecca Pop quiz: What do standing in a long line outside a temple on New Year’s Eve, kneeling alone in a giant cathedral, and gathering around with 10-15 friends in an apartment room all have in common? It’s kind of an unfair question but the answer is that each of these would qualify equally as a statistical instance of “having prayed” despite the glaringly different social context and relational ramifications of the action itself.
Christopher Marlowe: the quintessential Renaissance man By David Bevington Christopher Marlowe was born in February of 1564, the same year as Shakespeare. He was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker, and attended the King’s School there. With fellowship support endowed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, young Marlowe matriculated at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge University in 1580 and received the BA degree in 1584.
Man’s best friend: the pig By Dawn Field Cute and heartwarming videos of dogs fill the internet. My favourite is the bacon dog tease, but others catch my attention because they reveal extraordinary animal behaviours. For example, there are many of dogs helping other animals, like opening the back door to let in a friend. Dogs are our best animal friends, but there is a new contender. The pig might not be agile enough for Frisbees, or into making ‘guilty faces’, but like dogs, might save your life in the future.
Crimes without criminals By Vincenzo Ruggiero There are crimes without victims and crimes without criminals. Financial crime belongs to the second type, as responsibilities for crises, crashes, bubbles, misconduct, or even fraud, are difficult to establish. The historical process that led to the disappearance of offenders from the financial sphere is fascinating.
Why the Logan Act should be repealed By Edward A. Zelinsky Congress should repeal the Logan Act. Modern, globalized communications have destroyed any remaining rationale for this outdated law. The Logan Act today potentially criminalizes much routine (and constitutionally-protected) speech of US citizens. During the presidency of John Adams, Dr. George Logan, a private citizen, engaged in freelance diplomacy with the government of revolutionary France.
The enduring legacy of François Truffaut By Alistair Fox On 6 February 2017, François Truffaut (1932-1984) would have been 85 years old. As it was, he died tragically from a brain tumor at the age of 52, thus depriving the world of cinema of one of its brightest stars. His legacy, nevertheless, continues, being particularly evident in his influence on the current generation of filmmakers.
Reconsidering prostate cancer screening By Charlie Schmidt In 2011, the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issued its controversial draft recommendation against measuring prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in blood to screen for prostate cancer, claiming the test didn’t save lives. USPSTF is an independent panel of national experts convened by Congress to make evidence-based recommendations on preventive care.
“Dickens the radical” – from Charles Dickens: An Introduction By Jenny Hartley As Britain and her empire swelled in size and confidence, Dickens’s own belief in it diminished. For him the best of times were becoming the worst of times, Victorian high noon was dusk verging on midnight.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics Party movements in the 2016 US election: A whisper of Weimar? By Mildred A. Schwartz The role of party movements in the 2016 presidential election reflected the electorate’s deep discontent and confirmed the endemic problems faced by both major political parties. The Democrats failed to articulate a unifying and persuasive message; while, the Republicans failed to control the candidate nomination process. Out of those failures, party movements, on the Left and Right found space to operate.
President Trump: shortcuts with executive orders? By Louis Fisher Every President is attracted by the idea of making public policy by unilaterally issuing an executive order — sounds easy and attractive. Get someone to draft it, add your signature, and out it goes. No need to spend time negotiating with lawmakers.
Can you learn while you sleep? By Thomas Andrillon We will all spend about one third of our lifetime asleep, deprived of this precious ability to act and to react. During these long idle hours, little is perceived from the external world and little is remembered. For some, sleep is a refuge. For others, it is just a saddening waste. Yet, all animals, from fruit flies to humans, need to sleep and scientists have proven, time and time again, the variety of benefits that sleep has on the body and most importantly, on the mind.
The magic of politics: the irrationality of rational people By Matthew Flinders The reason the life of ‘the Amazing Randi’ made me stop and think? Because I saw in the interactions between his charlatans and swindlers and the people they duped the same connection that I see between large sections of the public and the populist politicians who are emerging across Europe, offering a combination of nationalism, xenophobia, and snake oil. Their promises make very little sense.
Population will hit eight billion. Here’s why it scares people By Molly Farrell Any day now, global population will hit 7.5 billion. Experts predict that we humans will reach eight billion in number sometime around the year 2024. Does that fact fill you with trepidation? Chances are that it does, even though it’s only a number, after all. “Eight billion” says nothing about innovations in agriculture or renewable energy technologies, and certainly nothing about global social justice.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics Democracy for losers By Jan W. van Deth Democracy is under threat everywhere. Growing numbers of citizens prefer authoritarian ideas, and politicians nurturing those wishes are on the rise in Hungary, Poland, France, Turkey, Germany, and the United States—to mention only the most salient examples. By now pundits everywhere have expressed concern about “populism” and the cementation of “illiberal” or “defected” democracies.
Philosopher of the month: Friedrich Nietzsche By John Priest This February, the OUP Philosophy team honors Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) as their Philosopher of the Month.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Fingering choices for musical gain in eighteenth-century piano performance By Donna Gunn The proper use of fingering to perform accurately is of concern to all instrumentalists. However, there is a dangerous pitfall awaiting keyboard players that does not exist for other instrumentalists. Simply put, for non-keyboardists, wrong fingering usually equals wrong note.
Super Bowl madness By Mara Einstein Every year we worship at the altar of the Super Bowl. It’s the Big Game with the Big Halftime Show and the Big-Name Advertisers. That we do this, explains why Donald Trump is now president. I’ll get to that shortly. But for now, back to the show. From an advertising perspective, the Super Bowl is the most expensive commercial on television. This year, Fox charged upwards of $5 million per 30-second spot according to Sports Illustrated
Why is it legal to bet on the stock market but not the Super Bowl? By Stuart Banner The upcoming Super Bowl will be the most wagered-on event of the year in the United States, just like it is every year. In most of the country, these bets are unenforceable. That is, if the loser doesn’t pay the winner, there’s nothing legal the winner can do about it. Agreements to risk money on the outcome of a sporting event, an election, or most other events are not enforceable contracts.
Oxford Textbook of Oncology How much do you know about cancer? By Pete Ward One of the defining battles of modern medicine has been the ongoing fight against cancer, a disease that has no doubt affected many of you either directly or indirectly. Whilst there have been huge advances in detection and treatment, cancer remains a major global health problem, with 8.2 million people dying from the disease every year. World Cancer Day aims to save millions of preventable deaths each year by raising awareness and education about cancer.
Gender, medicine, and society in colonial India By Sujata Mukherjee The growth of hospital medicine in 19th century India created a space–albeit a very small one–for providing Western-style healthcare to female patients. Many of these changes, including the reform of reproductive healthcare and the spread of women’s medical education, benefitted a privileged minority belonging to urban, higher-caste groups. The reform in women’s healthcare in colonial India constitutes a significant chapter of the country’s social history and laid an irrevocable foundation for medicine in the post-independence period.
Guaranteeing free speech By Andrew Shaffer In a blog post heard ’round the oral history world, Zachary Schrag broke the news that the Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects was finally amended to deregulate oral history.
Physical therapy and rehabilitation research – looking forward By Alan Jette The field of physical therapy encompasses not only rehabilitation after injury and surgery but also a wide range of preventive health services and vital lines of research. Dr. Alan Jette, PT, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Physical Therapy (PTJ), the scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association, shares his vision for PTJ and his take on opportunities and challenges for the physical therapy profession.
An introduction to the life of Frederick Douglass By Marissa Lynch In honor of Black History Month in the US and Canada, we’ve compiled an introduction to Frederick Douglass. Known for his work as an abolitionist and women’s rights supporter, Douglass remains one of American history’s most influential figures. Despite the fact that Douglass was born into slavery, his accomplishments were astounding and beyond admirable.
Brexit and muddled thinking By Anthony Arnull When Sir Ivan Rogers stepped down in January as the UK’s top official in Brussels, he urged his colleagues to ‘continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking’ and not to be afraid ‘to speak the truth to those in power.’ The implication was clear. The government’s Brexit preparations displayed all these failings but the politicians responsible did not like having this pointed out.
Oxford Textbook of Old Age Psychiatry Social democracy: a prescription for dementia? By Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel R. George In present-day Western Europe and North America, the dementia research field is in as much political turmoil as mainstream politics. And the struggling forces at play in both domains are often the same: individual activity or collective solidarity, technological solutions or community development/public health, for-profits versus nonprofits, unbridled capitalism or regulatory constraint.
Rise, read, repeat: Groundhog Day at OUP By Katie D. Bennett Bill Murray fought tirelessly to combat the ennui and frustration that accompanied repeating the same day over and over and over again in the film “Groundhog Day.” For him, repetition was torture, but for several of us at Oxford University Press, it’s not so bad…when it comes to reading!
7 blasphemous books of the 1920s: James Joyce’s birthday list By Steve Pinkerton James Joyce had a thing about birthdays. With some difficulty, he contrived to have Ulysses published on his 40th birthday, and to receive the first copy of Finnegans Wake just in time for his 57th birthday. The day itself was typically crowned by a gala dinner party; at his 50th birthday, he was presented with a big blue cake, decorated as a copy of Ulysses—which moved the author to intone, in the language of the Catholic Mass: Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes: Hoc est enim corpus meum.
Etymology gleanings for January 2017 By Anatoly Liberman One of the queries I received was about the words dimple, dump, dumps, and a few others sounding like them. This is a most confusing group, the main reason being the words’ late attestation (usually Middle and Early Modern English). Where had they been before they came to the surface? Nowhere or just in “oral tradition”? Sometimes an association emerges, but it never goes too far.
The wonderful poetic production of Langston Hughes By Vera M. Kutzinski Langston Hughes, whom Carl Van Vechten memorably called “the Poet Laureate of the Negro race,” was born on 1 February 1902 in Joplin, Missouri; he died in New York City on 22 May 1967. This year, then, we celebrate Hughes’ birthday at the beginning of what is now Black History Month, and we honor the 50th anniversary of his untimely passing. Remembering Hughes will no doubt lead to more books, articles, and conferences, which is as it should be.
On the economics of economists By Richard S. Grossman We economists spend a lot of time writing about the job market. Can the unemployment rate drop any further? Will the number of unemployed people increase when the Fed starts to raise interest rates? And will wages begin to pick up if the unemployment rate does drop?To pursue these questions, economists construct theoretical models of the labor market, gather hiring and wage data from a variety of industries and regions.
Taking liberties with the text: reflections of a translator By Gideon Nisbet If you have ever tried to learn another language you already know that, even for beginners, translation is never simply a matter of looking the “foreign” words up in a dictionary and writing them down. The result is gibberish, because no two languages work in exactly the same way at the level of grammar (what the rules are) and syntax (how the sentence puts them to work).
Agatha Christie at mass By David Grumett In the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Dame Agatha Christie, the renowned writer of detective fiction, added her name to a protest letter to Pope Paul VI. With over fifty other literary, musical, artistic, and political figures, Christie — who’d recently celebrated her eightieth birthday — expressed alarm at the proposed replacement of the old Mass rite, which used Latin and elaborate ritual, with a new rite in English with simpler ceremonial.
January 2017 (111))
Grammar for the ages: a royal intervention By Hedwig Gwosdek The history of English grammar is shrouded in mystery. It’s generally thought to begin in the late sixteenth century, with William Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586)—but where did Bullokar’s inspiration come from? In these times, the structure and rules of English grammar were constructed and contrasted with the Latin.
Is the universe made of fields or particles? By Art Hobson A few ancient Greek philosophers seriously considered this question and concluded that everything is made of tiny particles moving in empty space. The key 17th-century scientist Isaac Newton agreed, but a century later, Thomas Young’s experiments convinced him and others that light, at least, was a wave, and Michael Faraday and James Maxwell showed that light and other radiations such as infrared and radio are waves in a universal “electromagnetic field.”
Mass incarceration and the perfect socio-economic storm By Mary Looman In nature, there are weather conditions, referred to as ‘perfect storms’, arising from a rare combination of adverse meteorological factors creating violent storms that significantly affect the socio-economic conditions of an area. Social scientists refer to similar adverse factors as cultural amplifier effects. Currently, there are approximately 2000 correctional and detention facilities in the US with over 450,000 employees.
The future of US financial regulatory reform in the Trump era By Randall D. Guynn and Margaret E. Tahyar Under the Trump Administration, many changes are in the air. Our prediction is that the post-financial crisis paradigm shift in financial regulation is here to stay. There will be a rebalancing of regulatory and supervisory goals away from a sole focus on financial stability to thinking about jobs and economic growth as well, but we do not expect to see a wholesale dismantling of the Dodd-Frank Act.
How a comet crash on Jupiter may lead us to mine asteroids near Earth By Dagomar Degroot This past December, millions of people around the world gazed in wonder at the rising of the so-called “super moon.” The moon looks super when it turns full on its closest approach to Earth, and variations in its orbit brought it nearer to us than it has been in almost 70 years. Yet even this extra super moon was scarcely bigger than a regular full moon, and few would have noticed the difference without breathless media reports that encouraged them to see it.
The Time Machine: an audio guide By Roger Luckhurst The first book H. G. Wells published, The Time Machine is a scientific romance that helped invent the genre of science fiction and the time travel story. Even before its serialization had finished in the spring of 1895, Wells had been declared “a man of genius,” and the book heralded a fifty year career of a major cultural and political controversialist.
Do school food programs improve child dietary quality? By Travis A. Smith Over the past 70 years, school meal standards have become increasingly focused on raising the quality of school food rather than simply supplying food. But exactly how does the quality of a school meal compare to a brown-bag meal from home? Turns out, the answer isn’t as simple as comparing the average school lunch to the average sack lunch; we must dig deeper, far below and above the average child.
Impact of domestic courts’ decisions on international law By Jo Wojtkowski and Gabby Vicedomini The Distomo cases, the Urgenda Foundation v The Netherlands case, the Alien Tort Statute cases, and the Israeli targeted killings cases are among the most fascinating domestic cases on international law. But why should we care about domestic courts’ interpretation and application of international law?
Studying invasion biology with next-generation sequencing By Steven Bourne and Marc Rius Deciphering the genome (the complete genetic code) of any species can lead to a wealth of knowledge. By analyzing an invasive species’ DNA, an invasion geneticist may untangle, among other things, its origin, its invasion history, and any potential hybridization with native species. These all provide vital tools when informing management efforts tackling biological invasions.
The humanities in Trump’s Gotham City By James Simpson On 8 November 2016 the American political system threw up from its depths a creature wholly unrecognizable to those of us born in the West since 1945. Most of us who teach the humanities at any level have felt, since 8 November, that we have been reduced to the level of bit players in a Batman movie – we are out on the streets of Gotham City, with the leering Joker on the loose.
Ineffable facts, deep ignorance, and the sub-algebra hypothesis: Part 1 By Thomas Hofweber There are many things we do not know, but sometimes our ignorance runs deeper than other times.
A Q&A with Jessica Green, global academic marketing assistant for humanities By Jessica Green We caught up with Jessica Green, who joined Oxford University Press in October 2016 and is currently a Marketing Assistant for Global Academic, working across Humanities subjects including Literature, Music, and Linguistics. She talks to us about her favourite authors, her role, and OUP journey so far. When did you start working at OUP? The end of October 2016 – which already feels like a lifetime ago.
The origins of Trumpism By Terry Lautz The rise of Donald J. Trump may seem unprecedented, but we’ve seen this phenomenon before in the person of Robert H.W. Welch Jr., who founded the John Birch Society in 1958. Like Trump, Welch was a wealthy businessman. As vice president for sales at his brother’s confectionery company—which manufactured Junior Mints, Sugar Babies, and other popular brands—he understood the power of publicity.
Hookup culture on Catholic college campuses: the norm and the marginalized By Jason King Students hook up. They have sexual encounters with no implications for subsequent relationships. Far from being the majority of students however, it is a small minority, somewhere around 20% of students. Moreover, these students share other characteristics: they tend to be white, wealthy, and attend elite schools.
The Amazons ride again By Walter Duvall Penrose Jr. The Amazons of Greek legend have fascinated humans for the past 3,000 years. The Amazon women were faster, smarter, and better than men, or so claimed the Greek author Lysias: [The Amazons] alone of those dwelling around them were armed with iron, they were the first to ride horses, and, on account of the inexperience of their enemies, they overtook by
What is the role of the Environmental Protection Agency? By Pamela Hill During his first official week in office, United States President Donald Trump is moving quickly on his to-do list for his first 100 days in office, proving that he plans on sticking to the promises that he made as a candidate. Earlier this week, the Trump administration ordered a media blackout at the Environmental Protection Agency and has instructed staff to temporarily suspend all new contracts and grant awards.
The music and traditions of Candlemas By Jonathan Cunliffe and Mark Caddick Many of us argue about whether Twelfth Night is the evening of 5 or 6 January, anxious that it is considered unlucky to leave Christmas decorations hanging after this. In fact, a more ancient feast of the Church counts the forty days after Christmas as the whole season of Christmastide, ending with the celebration of Candlemas.
Shakespearean tragedy and modern politics By Stanley Wells On his recent visit to England Barack Obama chose to tour Shakespeare’s Globe, on Bankside; and in the last days of his Presidency, interviewed about his reading habits, he spoke touchingly and revealingly of his admiration for Shakespeare’s tragedies, and of what they had taught him. ‘I took this wonderful Shakespeare class in college’, he said, ‘where I just started to read the tragedies and dig into them.
Winnicott’s banquet of 1966 By Brett Kahr Winnicott’s admiration for Freud developed apace. When Freud emigrated to London in 1938 to escape the Nazi menace, Winnicott paid an unexpected visit to Freud’s home in order to inquire about the well-being of the Viennese refugees and to offer help and support – a gesture deeply appreciated by the family. Throughout his working life, Winnicott remained a devoted Freudian.
How to be a successful special adviser: five tips By Jacqueline Rose Political advice is the topic of the moment. Added to periodic quarrels about the pay and influence of special advisers, a new US President is putting the final touches to his team of advisers while the British Prime Minister faces an array of conflicting recommendations about Brexit. Advice itself seems to have become politicised.
David Lynch’s dream of dark and troubling things By Adam Frese January 20th marks the 71st birthday of American film director David Lynch. At 71 years old, the master of innovative film-making shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. In celebration of his unique and highly influential work in the realm of cinema, this essay takes a look back at some of the director’s best work and discusses what it is that makes his films so memorable and effective.
Music-based activities for children with autism spectrum disorder: experimenting with vocal sounds By Sheila Scott Individuals with autism spectrum disorder respond positively to music. This is due, in part, to their ability to perceive and remember isolated pitches and identify the contour of melodic fragments.
Spiritual surgeries: a radical alternative medicine? By Cristina Rocha Why are so many people in the West, who have access to the best biomedicine, turning to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)? Naturopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine, meditation, reiki, massage, yoga, all have experienced a surge in the twenty-first century.
Face to face with brash: part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Lat week, I discussed the hardships endured by an etymologist who decides to investigate the origin of English br- words, and promised to use that post as an introduction to the story of brash. Today, I’ll try to make good on part of my promise.
Thomas Schelling: An unconventional economist By Robert Hahn and Alistair Ulph Thomas Schelling was one of the best, and most unconventional, economists of his generation. Using simple arithmetic and more common sense than most economists are born with, he could turn problems upside down and inside out, and come up with novel solutions. Thomas liked to tell a story, over a nice glass of wine, about how he would find a friend in Washington DC if they were separated.
Mrs. T and I By David Cannadine The full accounting of how my political work affected the lives of others is something we will only know on Judgment Day,” stated Margaret Thatcher in the year 1995. The “Iron Lady” indeed affected the lives of millions, among them historian David Cannadine, whose thoughts turn to two Mrs.Ts: one was “the dominant British public figure of her generation”;
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion How much do you know about the prophets in the Old Testament? By Cassandra Gill The ancient prophets were said “to possess an intimate association with God” and spoke on behalf of God as divine messengers. Revealing his divine will as “mouthpieces,” the prophets did not claim to possess special powers in predicting the future, but rather simply relayed a message from the omnipotent, omniscient Being. Test your knowledge to see how much you know about the ancient prophets with this quiz.
The private life of Robert Burns It’s almost that time of year again, when families, friends and acquaintances get together to host a Burns supper, and celebrate the life and poetry of Robert Burns. Variously known as Rabbie Burns, the Bard of Ayrshire or the Ploughman Poet, Burns is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and indeed celebrated worldwide.
Fighting Trump’s populism with pluralist populism By Peter Levine Leaders and influential movements in countries such as the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, France, Spain, Britain, Venezuela, and the United States are being called “populists.” Sometimes that word (or its equivalent in other languages) is critical. It means that the leader has promised voters impossible or unjustifiable benefits in order to win election. No one calls himself a “populist” in this sense; it’s an epithet.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot: Robert Burns in quotations By Susan Ratcliffe Only a few years after the death of Robert Burns in 1796, local enthusiasts began to hold celebrations on or about his birthday, on 25 January, called Burn’s Night. These have continued ever since, spreading from Scotland across the world. From the earliest occasions, a focal point of the Burns supper was, of course, the haggis.
Frida Kahlo’s life of chronic pain By Carol A Courtney Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, is arguably one of the most well-known painters of the 20th century. Her intimate and personal self-portraits are evocative, generating a deep, almost visceral response. Through her paintings, Frida opens a door and invites the viewer to witness something that is both frightening and profound: her lifelong experience with chronic pain.
Trump’s Twitter coliseum of torture By John Schiemann President-elect Donald Trump promised on multiple occasions during the campaign to bring back torture in order to “fight fire with fire.” As with some of his other campaign promises (draining the swamp of lobbyists, getting rid of Obamacare in its entirety), Trump may pivot away from torture as well. If Trump does what he says, however, we are entering a new chapter in the history of torture.
President Trump and American constitutionalism By Mark A. Graber Citizens of the United States may be witnessing a constitutional crisis, a normal constitutional revolution or normal constitutional politics. Prominent commentators bemoan Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election as the consequence of a breakdown of vital constitutional norms that augurs the destruction of constitutional governance in the United States.
The best medical advice from ancient Greece and Rome By J.C. McKeown As a highly revered and extensively-studied field, medicine today has certainly evolved from its origins in ancient times. However, to fully appreciate how far we’ve come since then, we’ve compiled some of the best medical advice the ancient Greeks and Romans had to offer back in the day. Disclaimer: We at Oxford University Press do not condone or encourage heeding the advice below.
A new globalization; borders and the role of the state By Sir Steve Smith When people started talking about globalization in the seventies, there was a kind of messianic view that it would change everything; that globalization would sweep the state away, making it no longer the main actor on the global stage. When I taught international relations thirty years ago, and discussion of globalization was taking off, people were predicting the end of the state.
Direct democracy and the 2016 election cycle By Shaun Bowler and Todd Donovan In US general elections a great deal of attention, and much of the money, focuses on events at the national level. But a very great deal of electoral activity also occurs at the sub-national level, with elections for statehouses, governorships, and also initiatives and referendums. In the November 2016 election voters in 35 states were given the opportunity to vote on 154 statewide ballot measures.
Really big numbers By Roy T Cook What is the biggest whole number that you can write down or describe uniquely? Well, there isn’t one, if we allow ourselves to idealize a bit. Just write down “1”, then “2”, then… you’ll never find a last one.
What happens if we ignore climate change? By Alistair Woodward What are the arguments for ignoring climate change? The simplest is to deny such a thing exists. President Trump’s tweets on the topic, for instance, mostly run along the lines of “It’s record cold all over the country and world – where the hell is global warming, we need some fast!” But this is plainly at odds with the evidence, given what we know now about rising temperatures and accumulation of heat in the oceans.
Remembering Kevin Starr By Susan Ferber The only thing that gave me some comfort learning about Kevin Starr’s sudden passing is knowing that he has left behind something as lively and monumental as the man himself: his Americans and the California Dream series. I had the weighty task of editing the last of the books in this series, Golden Dreams, which Kevin felt to be his favorite and most personal because it was about the 1950s, when he met his wife Sheila.
The year Bob Dylan was born again: a timeline By Andrew McCarron On November 17, 1978, while playing a gig in San Diego, an audience member apparently threw a small silver cross onto the stage, and [Bob] Dylan felt impelled to pick it up and put it into his pocket. The following night, in Tucson, Arizona, he was feeling even worse and reached into his pocket, pulled out the cross, and put it on.
What kind of cheese are you? The discovery of cheese predates recorded history. Although the earliest evidence of cheesemaking can be traced back to 5,500 BCE, historians theorize that cheese was originally discovered accidentally: it’s probable that cheesemaking first occurred inside animals organs used for storing milk.
The centennial of mambo king Pérez Prado By Raúl Fernandez In the late 1940s and early 1950s a new, fast, and instantly appealing music and dance style swept across the globe: the mambo. The man behind the new sensation was the Cuban pianist, composer, bandleader, and showman Dámaso Pérez Prado.
Consumers, Corporations, and Public Health What does Trump healthcare mean for consumer choice? By John A. Quelch and Emily C. Boudreau During his campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly called for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). With the specifics of his replacement plan unknown, it’s clear that the ambiguity is making many in the healthcare industry very nervous. Ted Shaw, president and CEO of Texas Hospital Association, stated, “Any replacement [of the ACA] needs to ensure that patients can get the care they need and providers are fairly paid for services provided.”
Learning from disaster By Abigail Perkiss As part of our 50th anniversary issue of the OHR, Abigail Perkiss explored the impact of oral history in the aftermath of a Hurricane Sandy in her article Staring Out to Sea and the Transformative Power of Oral History for Undergraduate Interviewers.
Unite to abolish ‘might makes right’ By Leif Wenar After 20 January, 2017, Donald Trump will command America’s enormous power. His order will launch a devastating attack on any country. Sanctions will descend at his pen stroke. Alliances will be his to offer. Yet one kind of foreign power will defeat Trump—as it has defeated presidents for 40 years. This is the power that comes from the world’s consumers, who buy billions of dollars of oil a year from violent and repressive foreigners
What’s in a name? By Storm Dunlop In September 2015, the UK Met Office and Met Éireann (the Irish meteorological service) announced a project to give names to potentially damaging storms. The basis for naming any particular storm was the expectation that there would be major impacts on conditions over the British Isles and, in particular, of very high winds. The first storm, Abigail, brought high winds to northern Scotland and the Outer Hebrides.
Collective Emotions Emotional dynamics of right-wing political populism By Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve Donald Trump’s election to the 45th President of the United States is the biggest victory of contemporary right-wing political populism to date. The Brexit referendum had already shattered Europe and the UK “remain”-voters alike, but Trump’s win is of worldwide significance. The outcomes of both elections took the media, pollsters, and political analysts in the relevant countries and elsewhere by surprise.
Shakespearean Classics: Titus Andronicus, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and a new papyrus of Sophocles By Patrick Finglass In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, Titus’s daughter Lavinia is brutally raped by Demetrius and Chiron. They prevent her from denouncing them by cutting out her tongue, and cutting off her hands. But as we see in the passage below, Lavinia nevertheless communicates their crime by pointing to a passage of Ovid’s Metamorphoses describing Tereus’s rape of Philomela.
American Christians and the Trump vote: what’s law got to do with it? By Jenna Reinbold The 2016 US election is over, and now begins the elaborate work of attempting to understand why Americans voted the way they did last year. Amid soul-searching about media bias, liberal smugness, and misleading data, many commentators have begun to set themselves to the task of making sense of the surprising proportion of American Christians who ultimately cast their ballots for a candidate such as Donald Trump.
The legacy of Wilson “Wicked” Pickett [excerpt] By Tony Fletcher Today marks eleven years since the death of Wilson “Wicked” Pickett. Known for such hits as “In the Midnight Hour,” “Land of 1,000 Dances,” and “Mustang Sally,” Pickett claimed his place as one of history’s most influential R&B figures when he was
Trump should build on Obama’s legacy in Myanmar By Nehginpao Kipgen President-elect Donald Trump has not made any public statement on what his administration’s policy toward Myanmar would be. But it can be guessed or speculated from his election campaign that Trump is unlikely to take a strong personal interest on Myanmar like his predecessor. However, as the leading advocate of human rights and democracy around the world, the US needs to continue its unfinished objectives in Myanmar, especially in areas such as the consolidation of democracy.
Approaching “brash” By Anatoly Liberman Two weeks ago, I promised to deal with the word brash, but, before doing so, I would like to make it clear that we are approaching a minefield. Few people, except for professional etymologists, think of words in terms of phonetic or semantic groups.
Can we end poverty by 2030? By Linda Yueh Is it possible to end extreme poverty? And by 2030? That’s the aim of the first of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These were adopted by all nations and have begun to drive conversations at global gatherings, including those that I have contributed to in recent weeks. This ambitious goal builds on the dramatic fall in worldwide poverty since 1990.
The Millennials’ God By Nicolette Manglos-Weber The Millennial Generation— consisting of those individuals born between 1980 and 2000—is an oddity when it comes to religion. On the one hand, its members are leaving organized religion in unprecedented numbers. On the other hand, they are not exactly unbelievers.
Benjamin Franklin and the sea By David E. Curtis Everyone knows about Benjamin Franklin. His revolutionary electrical experiments made him famous, and the image of the kite-flying inventor spouting aphorisms has kept him so for more than two centuries. His Autobiography could be considered a founding document of the idea of America, the story of a poor but bright young indentured servant who eventually became so famous he appeared before kings and on our money.
The Mental Capacity Act 2005: an opportune time to reflect By Amel Alghrani More than a decade has passed since the Mental Capacity Act (‘MCA’) received royal assent. Described as a ‘visionary piece of legislation’, the MCA was a significant landmark on the legal landscape. It represented a triumph of autonomy by recognising that, as far as possible, people should play an active role in decisions about their welfare.
The economic efficiency of fake news By Jeffrey M. Berry Fake news has always had a presence American politics. No less an august figure than Benjamin Franklin partook of the practice. In 1782 Franklin generated a fake version of a real Boston newspaper, featuring his own inspired but false story about American troops uncovering bags of scalps to be sent to the King of England. As the story was spun, the scalps were intended to win the King’s friendship toward Native Americans.
What ails India’s health sector? By K. Sujatha Rao Most discourse on the health sector in India ends with a lament about underfunding and not without reason. India is one of 15 countries in the world that has a public spending record of about 1% of its GDP on health. Such low spending cannot be expected to deliver much. After all, health is expensive. We need to understand what ails the health sector and what we need to do. For every problem has its solution embedded within it. Understanding what ails us provides us with the opportunity to go forward.
What members of congress can learn from nurses By Mark Lazenby Once again, the American public have rated nurses as the most trusted professionals, as they have for the past 15 years. Members of Congress were at the bottom of the list, as they have been for the past five years. What’s the difference between nurses and members of Congress when it comes to trust?
The life and work of J.B.S. Haldane By Krishna Dronamraju John Burdon Sanderson (JBS) Haldane (1892-1964) was a leading science popularizer of the twentieth century. Sir Arthur C. Clarke described him as the most brilliant scientific popularizer of his generation. Haldane was a great scientist and polymath who contributed significantly to several sciences although he did not possess an academic degree in any branch of science.
The making of Wells: from Bertie to H. G. By Roger Luckhurst Youthful Bertie Wells was understandably depressed in the depths of winter in early 1888. He had escaped the drudgery of being a draper’s apprentice with a scholarship, only to flunk his second-year university exams and lose his funding to the Normal School of Science in Kensington.
Human Trafficking Prevention Month: There are no “teen prostitutes” By Susan C. Mapp January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, declared each year since 2010 by presidential decree. However, there is still confusion as to what exactly human trafficking is. Despite seven years of raising awareness , on 21st November, the Washington Post published a story with the headline “Two teen prostitutes escaped through a bathroom window, and a sex ring began to unravel.”
How President Reagan’s six assurances continue to shape US-Taiwan relations By Lung-chu Chen When asked to describe the foundations of, many experts dutifully point to the three Joint Communiques of 1972, 1978, and 1982 and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 (TRA). Often overlooked are President Reagan’s Six Assurances to Taiwan, which were issued to the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan shortly after the Third Communique with China became public in 1982.
Bugs in space! Using microgravity to understand how bacteria can cause disease By Ellen Higginson Space may be the final frontier, but it’s not beyond the reach of today’s biologists. Scientists in all areas of biology, from tissue engineering to infectious diseases, have been using the extreme environment of space to investigate phenomena not seen on Earth. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has conducted research in the life sciences for almost 50 years.
Has India seen a foreign policy reset under Narendra Modi? By Manjari Chatterjee Miller and Kate Sullivan de Estrada In late 2016 and early 2017, as policymakers and analysts have scrambled to predict the great unknown of Donald Trump’s foreign policy pathway for the United States, it is worth remembering that some 20 months ago, India too confronted a seismic shift in leadership, and faced a future of significant foreign policy uncertainty. Narendra Modi rose to the Indian premiership in May 2014.
International scientific collaboration in an ever-changing world By Marcio L. Rodrigues It is a widely held perception that the United States and United Kingdom, leading nations in the field of science, synergistically combine scientific excellence with ready entry into international networks of scientific collaboration. However, both nations experienced important changes in 2016: the United Kingdom voted to separate from the European Union and the United States elected a controversial president.
India: a work in progress By TN Ninan Every country that is on the ascendant feels the need for a “coming out” party. In the last half century, that need has been met most often by hosting the Olympic Games. Japan did it in 1964, South Korea followed in 1988, and China in 2008. The Olympic itch seems to come in the wake of economic growth that takes per capita income to the vicinity of $6,000
Rethinking innovation and career in the new year By Michael B. Arthur, Svetlana N. Khapova, and Julia Richardson January is a time for resolutions and change. In the excerpt below, the authors of An Intelligent Career: Taking Ownership of Your Work and Your Life explore the role of change in how we start projects, finish projects, and do work. Thirty years ago, Jean-Luc Brès took an entry-level advertising position in Polydor records (now part […]
Labeling right in the age of Trump By Benjamin Teitelbaum Steve Bannon is a white nationalist. That was the first media characterization I heard of the former Breitbart executive after his appointment as chief strategist and senior counselor to President-elect Donald Trump on November 13, 2016. During the month that followed, center-left commentators also described Bannon as a “racist,” a “white supremacist,” a “white separatist,” a “neo-Nazi,” a “fascist.”
Curing brain aneurysms by reconstructing arteries By Matthew B. Potts While it is believed that about one in 50 Americans harbor a brain aneurysm, most will never know it, and their aneurysm will never cause a problem. But rarely, the arterial wall of an aneurysm can become so thin that it bursts, spilling blood over the brain’s surface. This is the most feared outcome of a brain aneurysm and is what drives the urgency in treating many brain aneurysms, even if found accidentally.
Caring about the past in the embattled present By Maxwell L. Anderson Growing up in Manhattan meant that I didn’t live among ancient ruins – just subway stations, high-rise apartments, and Central Park’s relatively recent architectural confections. It took living for a year in Europe as a six-year old and for another year as a ten-year old to develop awareness about our collective heritage stretching back millennia. Visiting the vacant site of Stonehenge on a blustery fall day in the early 1960s
What to keep in mind for the inauguration By Donald A. Ritchie Given our constitutional separation of powers, it seems odd that a presidential inauguration takes place on the Capitol steps. Like so much else in American history, the story begins with George Washington. In 1789, the First Congress met in New York City, where it proceeded to count the electoral ballots, an easy task since the vote had been unanimous.
How the Mind Comes into Being How the mind comes into being By Martin V. Butz When we interact with our world – regardless if by means of a simple grasp, a smile, or the utterance of a sentence – we are typically quite confident that it was us, who intended to and thus executed the interaction. But what is this “us”? Is it something physical or something mental? Is it merely a deterministic program or is there more to it? And how does it develop, that is, how does the mind come into being?
Marital love and mourning in John Winthrop’s Puritan society By Francis J. Bremer Puritans did not observe birthdays as we do, but the occasion–John Winthrop’s twenty-ninth birthday–in January 1617 may well have been a time for greater reflection than normal. Winthrop was in mourning for his wife, Thomasine Clopton Winthrop, who had died on 8 December. Four hundred years later, it is appropriate to reflect on what Winthrop’s experience and his Thomasine’s protracted death tells us about love and
The distinctiveness of German Indology – and its expression in German philosophy By Aakash Singh Rathore and Rimina Mohapatra German Indological scholarship was something of an anomaly given the link between colonial power and colonial knowledge. The German fascination surrounding “ancient Indian wisdom” unfolded in parallel with the rising interest in Germany’s pre-Christian past. What German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel is most known for today—with respect to his appraisal of Indian art, religion, and philosophy—is not how much time and energy he devoted to studying and writing about them, but instead his harsh critiques, unkind representations, his rudeness transgressing into outright racism.
From good wine to ivy By Anatoly Liberman Last week’s post was about the proverb: “Good wine needs no bush,” and something was said about ivy as an antidote to good and bad wine. So now it may not be entirely out of place to discuss the origin of the word ivy, even though I have an entry on it my dictionary.
Aldo Leopold at 130 By Curt Meine The eleventh of January marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of conservationist, ecologist, and writer Aldo Leopold. As one of Leopold’s biographers, I have become accustomed over the years to marking these milepost dates. They tend to bring forth a strong pulse of articles, commentaries, and editorials. Some are celebratory, perhaps built around a choice bit of Leopold prose
Evaluating the long-view forecasting models of the 2016 election By Charles Tien and Michael S. Lewis-Beck In an earlier paper this year, we argued that election forecasting models can be characterized by two ideal types, called short-view models and long-view models. Short-view forecasting models are predominantly based on polls, and are continually updated until election day itself. The polls themselves are often interviewing respondents right up until a couple of days before the election.
African military culture and defiance of British conquest in the 1870s By John Laband The Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 is undoubtedly the most widely familiar of the Victorian campaigns of colonial conquest, those so-called “small wars” in which British regulars were pitted against foes inferior in armaments, operational sophistication and logistics. It is also by far the most written about, some would say to the point of exhaustion.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Salafism and the religious significance of physical appearances By Joas Wagemakers Because of a combination of these reasons, several European countries have adopted laws to partially ban facial veils in public. However, very little has been said about what the niqab or other forms of physical appearances among Salafis actually mean and what their religious origins are. Despite the fact that most Salafis not only refrain from engaging in such acts themselves but also actively condemn them, politicians from various Western countries have called for banning Salafi organisations or even Salafism altogether.
How has map reading changed since the 1600s? By James W. Cortada Literacy in the United States was never always just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. Remember in the 1980s and 1990s the angst about children becoming “computer literate”? The history of literacy is largely about various types of skills one had to learn depending on the era in which they lived.
On not taking Trump literally By Thomas Holtgraves Donald Trump has always had a rocky relationship with the truth. The fact that his pronouncements often fail to align with reality has now simply become an accepted fact. In earlier times candidates who spoke this way would have quickly fallen off the map. Why not Trump? One interesting take on this is the claim that his statements should not be taken literally. What exactly does it mean to not take something literally?
Brexit and the Anglo-German relationship By Jan Rüger As Britain embarks on its journey towards the exit from the European Union, the Anglo-German relationship is bound to play a central role. No other country is likely to matter more for the outcome of the negotiations than Germany, one of the UK’s most reliable partners in recent years. So how should we now think of this relationship which has defined modern Europe?
Rethinking if not resetting By Ronald Grigor Suny A quiet but intense debate has been going on among the dwindling group of Russian experts in the United States and Europe, who are increasingly disturbed by the hyperbolic rhetoric about Russian leader Vladimir Putin during and since the American presidential campaign, in the media, and from public intellectuals. Putin has been described as Hitler, Stalin, without a soul, and even crazy.
Three myths about the Electoral College By Edward A. Zelinsky Since the election, we Americans have engaged in a healthy debate about the Electoral College. My instincts in this debate are those of an institutional conservative: Writing our Constitution from scratch today, we would not have designed the Electoral College as it has evolved. However, institutions become embedded in societies. To further this debate, consider these three contentions often heard today about the Electoral College.
Heavy-metal subdwarf By Simon Jeffery An international team of astronomers led by Professor Simon Jeffery at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland has discovered a small, very blue helium-rich, and hot star called UVO 0825+15, which has a surface extremely rich in lead and other heavy metals and varies in brightness by up to 1% every eleven hours. Only the fourth “heavy-metal subdwarf” discovered, and the second to be variable, the new star raises major questions about how these stars form and work.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics The blinders of partisanship and the 2016 US election By Russell J. Dalton America has just experienced what some claim is the most unusual presidential election in our modern history. The Democrats picked the first woman to run as a major-party candidate, while the Republicans selected an alt-right populist who is the first modern candidate never to have held an elected office. With battles in 140-character bursts, the tenor of the campaign was unusual to say the least.
A lost opportunity: President Trump and the treaty supremacy rule By David L. Sloss Several commentators have noted that the election of Donald Trump poses a significant threat to the established international legal order. Similarly, the Trump election constitutes a missed opportunity to repair a broken feature of the constitutional system that governs the US relationship with the international order: the Constitution’s treaty supremacy rule.
The language of chess By Edwin Battistella The dust has barely settled on last year’s world chess championship match in New York: Norway’s Magnus Carlson defended his title again the tough challenger Sergei Karjakin, in a close match. The event got me thinking about the language of chess strategy and tactics and the curious history and multicultural origins of chess terminology.
A. R. Wallace on progress and its discontents By Martin Fichman Celebrated for his co-discovery of the principle of natural selection and other major contributions to evolutionary biology, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) also wrote widely on the social, political, and environmental aspects of scientific and technological advance. These latter, if far less familiar, ideas constitute an astute critique of the Victorian concept of progress.
Welcome to the year of living dangerously – 2017 By Matthew Flinders I am not usually a worried man but today – New Year’s Day 2017 – I am a worried man. Gripped by an existential fear, my mind is restless, alert, and tired. The problem? A sense of foreboding that the impact of the political events of 2016 will shortly come home to roost on a world that is already short on collective good will or trust. There is also a sense that games are being played by a new uber-elite of political non-politicians.
Reimagining equity in public schools By Stuart Greene Fifteen years ago bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind (NCLB) served as a watershed moment in federal support for public education in the United States. The law emphasized standardized testing and consequences for states and schools that performed poorly. The law was particularly important because NCLB’s focus on accountability also meant that states and local school districts were required to report on the achievement of different groups of students by race, socio-economic background, and disability.
Learning from each other By Andrew Shaffer and Troy Reeves Fate intervened this summer, giving me the opportunity to teach a History 201 class this fall at UW-Madison. Over the course of fifteen weeks I instructed 15 first-year undergraduates about oral history.
Zika virus: a New Year update By Luisa Barzon The arrival and dramatic spread of the Zika virus in Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries alarmed public health authorities and the scientific community. This prompted the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare ZIKV a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 1 February 2016. In response to this emergency, research on ZIKV was intensified, and within a few months, large amounts of data and outstanding results have been produced.
Community Voiceworks Do you have what it takes to lead a community choir? By Peter Hunt Singing is one of the quickest routes to social bonding and a feeling of shared endeavour, which is why community groups are immensely popular. Leading such a group is exciting and rewarding says Peter Hunt, an experienced choral trainer and conductor. Why not try it yourself?
How much capital? By John Goddard and John O.S. Wilson Almost a decade after the global financial crisis, most regulators and commentators would agree that the banking industry is far more strongly capitalized than it was in the run-up to the crisis. Looking forward, there is less consensus as to how much capital banks should hold. Neel Kashkari, head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, attracted attention recently by calling for huge increases in minimum capital requirements for banks.
Comprehensive affordable solutions to a major health problem By Leonard A. Jason, John Light, and Ed Stevens Alcohol and drug abuse costs Americans approximately $428 billion annually. Despite this enormous cost—which, we must remember, is just the economic face of a community, family, and individually life-shattering problem—the vast majority of those with an alcohol or substance use problem do not receive treatment, and even fewer are likely to achieve long-term sobriety.
American History From Willie Horton to Donald Trump By Doug Rossinow He is stupid and lazy. He has the attention span of a child. He caters to racism and he does not respect women. His patriotism is juvenile and belligerent. He claims to have the common touch, but he truly cares only for the rich. Is this the standard bill of indictment against Donald J. Trump, circa 2016—or against Ronald Reagan, circa 1980? Of course, these charges were made by liberal opponents of each.
ASSA 2017: a city and conference guide By Erin Cavoto The 2017 Allied Social Sciences Association meeting kicks off the new year, taking place January 6-8 in Chicago, IL. The American Economic Association, in conjunction with 56 associations, will hold the three-day meeting to present and discuss general economics topics in wide array of disciplines. ASSA has plenty going on throughout the weekend. These are some particular events we’re looking forward to.
OUP Philosophy The APA Eastern 2017: a conference guide By John Priest The Oxford Philosophy team is excited to see you in Baltimore for the upcoming 2017 American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting!
In one’s cups, or: good wine needs no bush By Anatoly Liberman A Happy New Year! It has arrived, in full accordance with The Oxford Etymologist’s bold promise. Once upon a time, the ability to see into the future was called second sight (clairvoyance is too bookish).
The continued relevance of sport diplomacy By Anne M. Blaschke As Heather Dichter pointed out in her 2014 H-Diplo essay, a conundrum of sport diplomacy, perhaps its signal paradox, is the extent to which nations have used sport as a proving ground on the world stage. But these “mega-events” that nations require to prove their superiority also necessitate international cooperation.
Globalization’s prospects, 2017 By Richard S. Grossman 2016 was a rough year for globalization. And 2017 may get even rougher. By globalization, I mean the growing interconnectedness between economies through cross-border flows of goods and services, money, and people. The world has undergone two “eras of globalization” during the past century and a half. The first occurred during the 40 years or so before World War I.
Awaiting the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention By Berit Henrickson The MLA convention is swiftly approaching and our OUP staff members, eagerly waiting, dream of magic gardens, colonial architecture, cheesesteaks, and, of course, lots and lots of books! To share our excitement for the Modern Language Association conference, we’ve asked three OUP attendees-our philosophy veteran, UK counterpart, and newcomer.
The role of family values in the 2016 presidential election By Susan B. Ridgely I have recently returned from the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion where much was made of the effectiveness of Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” and, in particular, its skillful invocation of an imagined 1950s America. A time when many Americans believe that White (Christian) men modeled effective leadership qualities to build an “exceptional” nation founded in the Christian doctrine of “A City on a Hill”.
Artificial turf and cancer risk By Daniel Luzer Amy Griffin, associate head coach of women’s soccer at the University of Washington in Seattle, first began to wonder about artificial turf and cancer in 2009. “We had two goalies from the neighborhood, and they had grown up and gone to college,” Griffin said. “And then they both came down with lymphoma. “And we were all sitting there chatting—both of them were bald—and they were like, ‘Why us?’
The Psychology of Meditation New Year’s resolution: compassion in the face of fear By Michael West Over the course of the last year, we have witnessed expressions of anger, fear, pitilessness and even hatred both predictably and unexpectedly. The British vote to leave the EU and US voters’ preference for a Trump presidency were prompted in part by feelings of anger towards leaders or ‘the system’ and fear about immigration and identity. The world has watched the war in Syria as thousands die and millions are misplaced with both horror and helplessness.
Reading War and Peace By Brian E. Denton and Lucie Taylor Maybe you’ve read War and Peace; maybe you haven’t. Maybe you got part of the way through its 1,392 pages and lost the will to continue. (It happens to the best of us!) If you’re in one of the latter two camps, Brian E. Denton is here to change your mind. A freelance writer based in Queens, New York, Brian has read War and Peace seven times already and has no plans to stop there. I talked to Brian to find out what makes War and Peace so special
Preparing for AALS 2017 By Ina Christova As a brand new year stretches out before us, promising just as much excitement and interest as the last, we look forward to the latest exciting Association of American Law Schools (AALS) annual meeting in 2017. This year’s meeting will have the theme of “Why Law Matters” and will provide fresh and novel insights into today’s most important issues in law and legal education.
The visual poetry of documentarian Frederick Wiseman By Barry Keith Grant Wiseman’s films are often, yet mistakenly, grouped with his contemporaries Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker, and Albert and David Maysles as part of the American direct cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s. These filmmakers, like Wiseman, were using recently developed lightweight, portable 16mm cameras with synchronized sound recording equipment to capture events spontaneously, but there the similarity to Wiseman ends.
New Year’s Day through the ages How are you spending New Year’s Day this year? If your mind has turned to resolutions and plans for the coming months, or even if you’ve got a touch of the January blues, then you’re in good company. To mark the start of 2017, we’ve taken a snapshot of poems, novels, and letters from famed historical and literary figures, all composed on January 1st.
December 2016 (116))
Dragons, chimney sweeps, and grapes: New Year’s traditions around the globe By Estefania Ospina The advent of new technology and endless sources of instant transcontinental news and information has allowed our race, the human race, to be intricately connected, now more than ever. We asked OUP staff to describe their New Year’s traditions, celebrating their culture, background, and ancestry.
Quoting the New Year and lessons from the past By Estefania Ospina “Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us,” once said American author Hal Borland. New Year’s for him was a continuation, an extension of the previous year and what it had brought would be useful in the coming ones.
On duty with the disease detectives By Samuel Ghebrehewet The recent confirmation that Zika virus is spreading in the southern states of the United States has been met with considerable public anxiety. Infectious diseases strike a particular primal fear in populations, not least because they are perceived to be unfamiliar, strike suddenly and unpredictably, and have strong cultural associations with filth, contagion, or nuisance vectors such as mosquitoes.
Why is home so important to us? By Michael Allen Fox “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.” “Home is where the heart is.” These well-known expressions indicate that home is somewhere that is both desirable and that exists in the mind’s eye as much as in a particular physical location. Across cultures and over the centuries people of varied means have made homes for themselves and those they care about.
Dilemmas of a broken substance abuse system By Leonard A. Jason and Ed Stevens With rising health care expenses, we are all trying to solve the paradoxical dilemma of finding ways to develop better, more comprehensive health care systems at an affordable cost. To be successful, we need to tackle one of the most expensive health problems we face, alcohol and drug abuse, which costs us approximately $428 billion annually. Comparatively, the expenses of health care services, medications, and lost productivity for heart disease costs $316 billion per year.
Nine literary New Year’s resolutions Do you need some inspiration for your New Year’s resolutions? If you’re in a resolution rut and feeling some of that winter gloom, then you’re not alone. To help you on your way to an exciting start to 2017, we’ve enlisted the help of some of history’s greatest literary and philosophical figures–on their own resolutions, and inspiring thoughts for the New Year.
Understanding the populist backlash By Cas Mudde and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser Although populism is making headlines across the globe, there is a lot of confusion about what this concept really means and how we can study this phenomenon. Part of the problem lies in the usage of the term as a battle cry. Both academics and pundits often employ the term populism to denote all the political actors and behaviors they dislike.
Gandhi in Bombay: towards swaraj By Usha Thakkar and Sandhya Mehta The symbiotic relationship between Mahatma Gandhi and Bombay spanned many decades and only strengthened over time. Their shared story is both unique and informative. In the history of India’s freedom struggle towards Swaraj or self-governance under Gandhi’s leadership, Bombay deserves special mention. A contemporary re-examination of this relationship is both illuminating and enriching as it reveals the journey of this extraordinary leader and this wonderful city to independence through non-violent means.
Looming, looming, looming: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman The New Year is looming! I can write a most edifying post about 2017, or rather about what happened a hundred years ago, in 1917, but this is an etymological blog, so I, a hard-working cobbler, will stick to my last.
A tragic necessity? The Reformation approaches 500 By Thomas Albert Howard Pope Francis recently visited Lund, Sweden to acknowledge with Lutherans the religious significance of the coming year leading up to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation on 31 October 2017. This is the customary date given when Martin Luther placed his 95 Theses on the Castle Church door of Wittenberg, Saxony. A plethora of events across the globe are in the works to commemorate the epochal event.
5 things to do in Denver during the 2017 AHA conference By Heather Smith The 2017 American Historical Association conference is coming up fast, and we know you’re excited to attend your panels, debate ideas with some of the most respected historians in the world, and, yes, buy fantastic books. We also know you’d love to do some exploring when the day’s events are done.
workar cover Who could thrive in late career? Answers for both employees and employers By Stanimira Taneva The alarming statistics about the fast rates of population aging in the last 30 years and the possible negative economic and societal consequences of this process, have prompted many employers to consider their aging workforce more seriously. Yet, workers aged 55 years and over are not always utilized or valued as much as they could be in the workplace.
The end of the Cold War and the End of History? By Steven Filippi Twenty-five years ago today, the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics collapsed, effectively ending the Cold War that had defined the latter half of the twentieth century and had spanned the globe. The previous day, 25 December 1991, General Secretary of the Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned, transferring the Soviet nuclear codes to Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
A disconnect between physicians and laboratory professionals By Julie R. Taylor Many clinical decisions are based on laboratory test results. The rapidly expanding number and complexity of these tests present physicians with many challenges in accurately and efficiently ordering and interpreting diagnostic tests. Diagnostic errors affect 5% of US adults who seek outpatient care each year, and contribute to approximately 10% of patient deaths and 6 to 17% of hospital adverse events.
Top ten developments in international law in 2016 By Merel Alstein This year seems to have packed in more news events and shocking developments than any other in recent memory. As 2016 draws to an end, many are fearful of how the political trends that surfaced this year will play out and what their long-term effect will be on the international legal order. At the same time, the year has seen a number of successes in international law, most notably in judicial decisions that championed the rule of law against the interests of powerful states and corporations. This post highlights and discusses ten international law victories and failures in 2016.
Curious Christmas celebrations around the world By Gerry Bowler Celebrated as both a sacred religious holiday, as well as a commercial phenomenon, Christmas has been observed, denounced, and defended for two thousand years by people all around the world. The long history of battles fought in the war on Christmas
Understanding insults By Edwin Battistella When I was growing up in New Jersey, trading insults was part of making your way through the middle school: “If they put your brain on the edge of a razor blade, it would look like a BB rolling down a four-lane highway.” “His parents used to put a pork chop around his neck to get the dog to play with him.” “If you could teach him to stand still, you could use him for a doorstop.”
Donald, we need to talk about Russia By Mark Lawrence Schrad Congratulations on a hard-fought campaign, Mr. President-Elect. As a reward, you now get the onerous task of governing the United States, and establishing its foreign-policy priorities! The campaign was crazy, with speculation about your personal and business links to Russia and your coziness toward Russian President Vladimir Putin giving way to evidence of a coordinated Kremlin attack on American sovereignty.
A few (more) of our favorite things By Andrew Shaffer As is becoming tradition, we want to use this, our last blog post of the year, to look back over last 12 months and remember all the fun we’ve had together. We have been drawn in by the “seductive intimacy” of oral history, and inspired by the power of audio to move “oral history out of the archives and back into communities.”
Mean racist, kind racist, non-racist: which are you? By Carlos Hoyt “Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity.” I imagine that perhaps with a tweak or two, most people would be OK with this declaration. Many people are aware that the concept of race has no biological validity; that it’s a social construct, like gender or money, real only in that we treat them as real.
John Glenn was a hero; was he a pioneer? By Fred Taylor John Herschel Glenn passed away recently at age 95. He was the first American to orbit the Earth, on board Friendship 7 in February 1962, and before that, a much decorated war veteran, serving as a fighter pilot in both World War II and in Korea, finally retiring as a colonel in 1965. As if that wasn’t enough, after leaving NASA, he won a US Senate seat, representing his home state of Ohio, and served for 25 years.
Christmas on the radio By Christopher Deacy Back in 1944 the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, wrote in the Radio Times that “the wireless and the English tongue are means by which God’s message of love and peace can spread through the world”. We may find it difficult these days to construe the BBC’s output over Christmas as taking on such a missiological flavour, but certainly in its early days Lord Reith, saw religion as one of the four principal pillars.
Top ten OUPblog posts of 2016 by the numbers By Dan Parker The 2016 posts that attracted the most pageviews ranged in subject from philosophy to literature, and from mathematics to law. As you might expect, people were also interested in learning more about Shakespeare and politics in 2016. Please find the top ten performing blog posts on the OUPblog in 2016.
What does myth have to do with the Christmas story? By Robert Segal There are two contrary ways of characterizing myth. By far the more common way is negative: a myth is a false or delusory belief or story. Here the aim is to expose the myth and be done with it. To take an innocuous example, the story that young George Washington was so honest that he could not deny to his father that he, the son, had chopped down the cherry tree is a myth because it never occurred.
Where next for dementia research? By Kathleen Taylor Modern medicine has done well in helping Western citizens live longer. So have other changes like improved diets, better public hygiene, and less smoking. Dementia, which is primarily though not entirely age-related, has come to prominence in part as other lethal diseases have diminished. It recently surpassed heart disease as the number one killer in England and Wales (overall and in women, according to the UK Office for National Statistics).
Looking at the stars By Geoff Cottrell The ancient Greek philosophers believed that the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars were mathematically perfect orbs, made from unearthly materials. These bodies were believed to move on perfectly symmetric celestial spheres, through which a backdrop of fixed stars could be seen, rotating majestically every 24 hours. At the centre was the motionless Earth. For the Greeks, the power of reason was more important than observation.
The American Colonization Society’s plans for abolishing slavery By Nicholas Guyatt This month marks two hundred years since the founding of an organization that most people have never heard of: the American Colonization Society (ACS). The obscurity into which it has fallen would surprise Americans living in the decades before the Civil War. From its founding in 1816 until the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, the Society rallied some of the most influential people in the United States behind its principal objective.
The fruit of the loom and other looming revelations: Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman When we deal with old languages, Jacob Grimm’s rule works rather well. He suggested that homonyms are usually related words whose meanings had diverged too far for us to recognize their original unity.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion 9 fascinating facts about festivals in ancient Greece and Rome By Cassandra Gill The ways in which the ancient people chose to express themselves on these special calendar days is fascinating. In examining both its contrasts and similarities to today, studying ancient culture can be seen as the study of our own humanity. To demonstrate some of the unique aspects of culture in ancient Greece and Rome, we compiled a list of these 9 facts about some festivals in ancient Greece and Rome.
Networks of desire: how technology increases our passion to consume By Robert Kozinets, Anthony Patterson, and Rachel Ashman When we walk into a restaurant, we are often confronted by the sight of people taking pictures of their food with their smartphones. Online, our Facebook feeds seem dominated by pictures of people’s hamburgers and desserts. What is going on with food porn? How is consumer desire itself transformed by contemporary technology?
Passenger lists: the example of Anglo-American marriages By Doug Hart On 27 April 1885, Alice Brereton (née Fairchild) returned to America with her family. The Aurania’s passenger list includes her British—born husband and their three children. From information contained in the list—name, age, citizenship, and occupation—we can reconstruct aspects of the family’s history revealed in other public documents.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Religion and the Second Redemption By Paul Harvey A tense, volatile electoral season. Accusations of “voter fraud,” and real instances of thuggery on the campaign trail. Documented instances of real voter suppression due to newly instituted state policies attempting to restrict voting disproportionately by race. Real or implicit threats of violence against minority voters. Surging anti-immigrant and exclusionist sentiment, particularly against relative newcomers who practiced seemingly strange religions. Some might describe the recent electoral campaign that way, but I have in mind the election campaign of 1876.
The Affordable Care Act and cancer screening in Medicare By Gregory S. Cooper Universal screening for breast and colorectal cancers are currently recommended as methods to reduce the mortality associated with these diseases. Mammography is capable of detecting cancer before it has the opportunity to invade into lymph nodes or other organs, and colonoscopy is able to not only detect early stage cancers, but by removing precancerous polyps, prevent cancer from developing.
What is the future of behavioral economics? By Sanjit Dhami “The development of behavioral economics is simply in the nature of scientific progress in economics.” Behavioral economics is a fast growing field within economics. We caught up with Sanjit Dhami to discover how he came to specialise in behavioral economics, how it has developed, and what he thinks is in store for the field in the future.
British and Irish family names [infographic] As the population of Britain and Ireland grows, some surnames are becoming even more common and widespread, alongside a steady continuation of uncommon surnames; but how many of us know anything about our family names’ origins – where it comes from, what it means today, and exactly how long it has actually been around for? Names derive from the diverse language and cultural movement of people who have settled in Britain and Ireland over history
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication The Internet never forgets, unless the law forces it to By Edward L. Carter The ultimate fate of the right to be forgotten remains to be seen. Although Europe has temporarily resolved this question in favor of the right by adopting its General Data Protection Regulation, many questions surrounding the issue still must be answered. It’s unclear whether other parts of the world will follow Europe’s lead. Internationally, writers are exploring some of these matters.
Human rights and business: is international law relevant? By Robert McCorquodale Corporations are now widely seen as having responsibilities in regard to human rights abuses. This was thrown starkly onto the front pages recently when a number of high profile UK companies, including M&S and Asos, were caught up in allegations of child refugees from Syria working in very poor conditions for clothing suppliers based in Turkey.
Finding the imposter: understanding a rare delusional disorder using brain connectivity By Ryan Darby His syndrome was a variant of Capgras syndrome, where a patient develops the delusion that a family member has been replaced by an identical imposter. Knowing what to look for, I began finding more and more cases: a man with Alzheimer’s who believed his daughter was an imposter, a woman with a right frontal lobe stroke who believed her house was a replica of her real house.
Nationalism and Brexit By John Breuilly Was the vote for “Brexit” an expression of nationalism? It depends what we mean by nationalism and what kind of nationalism is involved. I define nationalism as the belief that national identity provides the focus of political loyalty and is best expressed and secured through independence, usually a sovereign nation-state. . Nationalism consists of ideas, politics (movements, parties), or sentiments (beliefs, attitudes).
Sugar plums and mince pies By Jon Stobart The Worcester joiner, John Read, appears to have been a regular customer of Thomas Dickenson, but two purchases stand out: on 25 December 1740 and again on 26 December 1741 he bought sugar plums and spices to the value of 5 shillings and 2 pence. Perhaps these were a special treat for his family, marking the festive season with small luxuries to relieve what was probably an otherwise rather unremarkable diet.
A thousand and one translations By Lucie Taylor What do Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, and Hanan Al-Shaykh have in common?
The logic of unreliable narrators By Roy T Cook In fiction, an unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is in doubt – in other words, a proper reading of a narrative with an unreliable narrator requires that the audience question the accuracy of the narrator’s representation of the story, and take seriously the idea that what actually happens in the story – what is fictionally true in the narrative – is different from what is being said or shown to them.
Dystopian times: that sinking feeling By Gregory Claeys Notwithstanding a few near misses (the Austrian presidential election), many more liberally-minded readers will probably reflect back on 2016 as a year of loss and anxiety. Two significant shocks—Brexit and the election as US President of a reality TV star billionaire with neither political experience or knowledge—have severely dented our sense of the logical progression of our times.
The best of Illuminating Shakespeare To mark the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, we brought you a new theme every month throughout 2016. From Women to Race and from Money to the Supernatural, we delved into complex subjects surrounding his life and works, exploring their relevance for a modern audience. With specially commissioned videos, articles, and interactive content from a host of Shakespearean experts, Illuminating Shakespeare presented the very best Shakespeare resources from across Oxford University Press. Take a look at some of our favourites from this anniversary year…
OUP Philosophy Philosophy in 2016: a year in review [timeline] By John Priest 2016 was an important year in the fields of philosophy. As the year draws to a close, the OUP Philosophy team takes a moment to reflect.
Did the United States invent teenagers? By James W. Cortada The United States did invent teenagers. That is a historic fact, just as Americans invented the telegraph, telephone, PC, and atomic bomb. While much progress has been made over time with many inventions, less so with teenagers.
Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties What is it really like being a doctor? By Andrew Baldwin, Nina Hjelde, and Charlotte Goumalatsou So what is it like being a doctor? What are the hardest decisions doctors have faced in the field? Andrew Baldwin, Nina Hjelde, and Charlotte Goumalatsou share their experience and insight, answering questions on making difficult decisions, time constraints, juggling learning the latest medical knowledge and workload, as well as what being a doctor really means to them.
(Un)balancing power: What happens when states can pursue or shed military strength? By Scott Wolford War is the ultimate “or else” in international relations. Beliefs about what will happen if states fight to the finish shapes the agreements reached in its shadow, their ability to avoid war, as well as its duration and terms of settlement. Yet in many discussions of the link between military power and war, the agents in our theories rarely make decisions over just how powerful to be.
From Miss Havisham to Ebenezer Scrooge: playlists for Dickens’ characters By Hannah Paget Charles Dickens is one of the most famous novelists of all time. The energy which surges through his writing brings the Victorian world to life, and his lively ensemble of characters has seeped from his pages, deep into popular culture. There are roughly two thousand named characters in his novels, and many more unnamed. In the playlists below, we imagine what some of his most famous characters would listen to if they had access to our modern musical offerings.
Feeling me and you: social problems in autism touch-related? By Eliane Deschrijver, Roeljan Wiersema, and Marcel Brass Individuals with ASD experience tremendous social difficulties. They often fail to take turns in conversations and have a hard time maintaining and understanding age-appropriate relationships such as being in love, or having a friend. On top of that, many individuals with ASD are over- and/or under-sensitive to sensory information. Some feel overwhelmed by busy environments such as supermarkets; others dislike being touched, or are less sensitive to pain.
Quote the quote: how well do you know your Victorian novels? By Lauri Lu When the description “Victorian” is brought up, the image of corseted and bustled women in flouncing petticoats comes to mind. Familiarized through film culture and popular imagination, many representations of the era are preserved through the literature of that period. Countless remakes and references to Victorian novels have been made throughout the centuries, making their authors household names.
An ax(e) to grind By Anatoly Liberman That words travel from land to land is no secret. I do not only mean the trivial borrowings of the type known so well from the history of English. For instance, more than a thousand years ago, the Vikings settled in most of Britain, and therefore English is full of Scandinavian words.
Aging Cheddar: a timeline of the world-famous cheese By Marissa Lynch In the cheesemaking world, “Cheddar” is a generic term for cheeses that fall into a wide range of flavor, color, and texture. According to the US Code of Federal Regulations, any cheese with a moisture content of up to 39% and at least 50% fat in dry matter is legally considered a form of Cheddar. […]
Academy schools and the transformation of the English education system By Andrew Eyles and Stephen Machin Increasing the quality and quantity of an individual’s education is seen by many as a panacea to many social ills: stagnating wages, increases in inequality, and declines in technological progress might be countered by policies aimed at increasing the skills of those who are in danger of falling behind in the modern labour market.
Nat Turner’s legacy By Alfred Brophy and Kelley Deetz Nate Parker’s movie The Birth of a Nation, which opens in Europe this month, tells the semi-fictionalized story of Nat Turner, an enslaved man who led a short-lived rebellion in rural southeast Virginia in August 1831. The movie focuses on Turner’s life before the rebellion; demonstrating one man’s breaking point sparked by the witnessing of extraordinary brutality.
Preventing the next flight from Bethlehem By Paul S. Rowe A part of the Christmas story tells how the Holy Family fled Bethlehem, warned in a dream of the vengeful plans of a mad monarch. In recent years, Christians have once again found cause to flee the town of his birth. The case study of Palestinian Christians is emblematic of the larger problems faced by Christian populations in the Middle East.
The Cuban Revolution and resistance to the United States By Louis A. Pérez Jr. The Cuban revolution came out of the very history that it was determined to redress, a history profoundly shaped by the United States and into which the Americans had deeply inscribed themselves with pretensions to preponderant power. For vast numbers of Cubans, the revolution was about a people determined to reintegrate themselves into their history as subjects and enact historical narratives as protagonists,
Spectacular science in the shadows of New York By István Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai New York is a world center of commerce and finance, media and transportation, and many other facets of modern life. It is also a great hub of science, but this seldom transpires when New York is mentioned. Yet science, especially when including technology, inventions
Quotes of the year 2016 [quiz] 2016 has truly been a year to remember — from the amazing competition of the Rio Olympic Games to shock Brexit from Europe, and from environmental woes to the American presidential race. Famous faces have had no shortage of opinions on current events, with celebrities, athletes and politicians not being shy to express their views.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2016 is… Aleppo The Twitter poll has closed and the results are in: our Place of the Year for 2016 is Aleppo. Aleppo lead the polls for longlist and shortlist consistently, and news from the city has dominated coverage of the Syrian Civil War in 2016.
Why is forensic bitemark identification likely to be abolished as a form of trial evidence? By Michael J. Saks The public holds exaggerated views of the quality of the scientific foundations of a surprising number of forensics sciences, as well as of the courts’ scrutiny of that evidence. The most significant of the weaknesses were made plain in a report by the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences (NAS), which concluded: “The bottom line is simple: In a number of forensic science disciplines, forensic science professionals have yet to establish either the validity of their approach or the accuracy of their conclusions.”
Dark matter, black holes, and dwarf spheroidal galaxies By Manuel Arca Sedda Our current understanding of the Universe suggests that it is composed of an invisible component called “dark matter”. This mysterious type of matter represents more than 25% of the entire matter and energy of which the Universe is made. The matter that we are used to “seeing” in our everyday life and that represents the building blocks for both our bodies and stars that shine in the sky, represents only 5% of the Universe.
Christmas with the Little Women By Louisa May Alcott With Christmas in less than two weeks, there is no better way to get in the holiday spirit than by revisiting one of our favorite Christmas scenes from classic literature.
W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Award winners – part 2 By Elena Jones Following the announcement that this year’s W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Award winner was A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less, we are celebrating the achievement of Christopher Hood and Ruth Wilson, and taking the opportunity to revisit the work of our existing winners. Part 1 looked at the recent winners from the past 10 years; now we will look back to our winners from 1988 to 2004.
Pipelines and persistent objection: Indigenous rights in Justin Trudeau’s Canada By James A. Green In recent weeks, relations between indigenous groups and the Canadian government have soured further over the Trans Mountain Extension Project–the controversial proposal for extending oil pipelines in British Colombia and Alberta. This proposal, and other similar pipeline proposals, has led to a notable unification of indigenous groups in opposition. The ‘pipelines dispute’ between the government and a large section of its indigenous population has been rumbling on throughout the first year of Justin Trudeau’s leadership, but it intensified significantly at the start of November.
Sixteen symbolic acres: the rebuilding of Ground Zero By Lynn B. Sagalyn On September 21, 2006, Governor George E. Pataki of New York and Governor Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey with New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg gathered at Ground Zero for a hastily-called celebratory news conference to announce that the Board of Directors of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had approved a series of agreements expected to “expedite the redevelopment process.” “The time has come to build this,” said the Port Authority’s chairman, Anthony R. Coscia.
SIPRI Yearbook Online World nuclear forces: who has what? Since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear weapons have been detonated on over two thousand occasions for the purposes of testing and demonstration. With world events more uncertain than ever before, an in-depth look at nations’ nuclear capabilities (and intentions) is crucial to security services and diplomats all over the world.
The Mediterranean Sea and the migrant crisis [infographic] By Lucie Taylor With the Oxford Place of the Year competition drawing to a close, we’ve put together an infographic to explain why the Mediterranean Sea, geographic epicenter of the migrant crisis, earned a place on the shortlist alongside Aleppo, the U.K., and Tristan da Cunha.
Social Work International Human Rights Day resources By Cassandra Gill December 10 is International Human Rights Day, as recognized by the United Nations. Human dignity, freedom from discrimination, civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights for all should go without question. Whether it be from “the Hindu Vedas; the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi; the Bible; the Quran (Koran); the Analects of Confucius; the codes of conduct of the Inca,
“I am rushing”…a mantra of love and memory By Wendy L. Miller Rushing seems to be about speed. But is it? There is the juxtaposition of what we see on the outside and what is going on in the inside, the movement over time of our understanding of another person’s experience, the various ways in which we grow into our own existential understanding, the ways in which we learn how we age into illness or into health, the ways in which we come to see how we move.
Somewhere in an attic: the Emily Dickinson publishing dilemma By Katie D. Bennett She’s been called “the myth of Amherst,” “the woman in white,” and a “recluse,” but the truth about Emily Dickinson and her writings is still being revealed, 130 years after her death. It’s an intriguing story of love, betrayal, and unlikely collaborations, and one that provokes several questions about the role that special collections and archives play in revealing important literary
Does globalizing capitalism violate human rights? By Tony Evans In the present day , the human rights regime reflects individualism, the free market, private property, minimum government, and deregulation: the central characteristics of globalizing capitalism. Civil and political rights provide the foundational values for sustaining these characteristics. While the global human rights regime does include economic, social, and cultural rights, this set of rights are relegated to the status of aspirations.
Human rights under siege By Basak Çali International human rights law has come to face compound challenges in the recent two decades. Long gone the optimism that followed the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of 1993 which confirmed that the major changes in the international political scene at the time, and the aspirations of all the peoples around the world were finally moving in the same direction. Since then, political support for human rights globally has suffered a significant decline.
The Who’s Who of diplomacy and human rights By Ariana Milligan Today is Human Rights Day. This holiday commemorates when the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In 1950, the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V), which invited all States and interested organizations to observe 10 December of each year as Human Rights Day.
Ten tips on how to succeed as a woman: lessons from the past By Rosie Wyles An unexpected figure lurks in the pages of Wonder Woman (no. 48) from 1951 — the 17th-century French Classicist Anne Dacier. She’s there as part of the ‘Wonder Women of History’ feature which promoted historical figures as positive role models for its readership. Her inspirational story tells of her success in overcoming gender prejudice to become a respected translator of Classical texts.
Current Surgical Guidelines Helping surgeons save lives and limbs By Abdullah Jibawi Surgeons have been facing an ever increasing crisis in finding a suitable material that can replace failing organs and blocked vessels safely and effectively. The worldwide shortage of organs causes almost 30% of patients who need replacement organs to die on the waiting list. Certain procedures such as bypass surgery and certain types of large incisional hernia repairs have a high success rate when performed using natural material such as the patient’s own veins.
Oral History Annual Meeting: an enriching experience By Mark T. Garcia This past October the Oral History Association conducted the Fiftieth Annual Meeting in Long Beach, California. The theme of the annual meeting was OHA@50: Traditions, Transitions and Technologies from the Field.
Marking Cassavetes’ birthday with a discussion on male discourse in his films By James O’Brien On the cusp of what would have been John Cassavetes’ eighty-seventh birthday, it is not only possible to pause and imagine the work the man could have made throughout his sixties and seventies — think, for a moment, on Cassavetes as being alive and well, writing and directing films in a post-9/11 America — but also we can turn to his works for a lens onto a version of the world that, given the recent state of affairs on this planet, we could sorely use.
Can Calvinism make you happy? By Jon Balserak “Calvinism is a bleak, oppressive form of Christianity.” The sentiment is a common one. Finding quotations like this one from John Calvin’s letter to the Catholic Cardinal Sadoleto may seem to confirm it. “Whenever I descended into myself or turned my eyes to you, extreme terror seized me, which no expiations or satisfactions could cure.” Here, we surmise, is the rotten heart of Calvinism.
Conversation starters in music therapy research By Kimberly Sena Moore and Noah Potvin Conversation starters are questions and prompts intended to get people talking. Although often thought of in the context of a dinner party or professional meeting as a way to initiate dialogue with a stranger, conversation starters can also be thought of as ideas that stimulate discussions or impact you in a way that helps you grow both personally and professionally.
Cuba’s intervention in Africa during the Cold War By Piero Gleijeses When Nelson Mandela visited Havana in 1991, he declared: “We come here with a sense of the great debt that is owed the people of Cuba. What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?” In all the reflections upon the death of Fidel Castro, his contribution to Africa has been neglected
Celebrity and politics before Trump By Brian Cowan Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 US Presidential election demonstrated that celebrity is now a political force to be reckoned with. It would seem that this mix of celebrity culture and politics is a relatively new phenomenon, and indeed celebrity itself is often thought to be something distinctly modern. But there were celebrities long before that particular word identified them as such.
2016’s most popular baby names and their meanings Every year, there is much speculation as to which names are rising or falling in popularity. Figures published by the BBC for the most popular baby names of 2015 had Oliver and Amelia as the two favourites. So far, 2016 has thrown up some surprise results with Isla currently top for girls (up four places from last year), and Alfie (a new entry) making it to the boys’ top spot.
The people of the mist By Anatoly Liberman The true people of the mist are not the tribesman of Haggard’s celebrated novel but students of etymology. They spend their whole lives in the mist (or in the fog) and have little hope to see the sun.
Copyedits, caffeine, and cephalopods [Q&A] By Matthew Marusak “I am responsible for coordinating the production process—from copyediting to printing—on fifteen very different journals with very different needs.” From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. We sat down with Production Editor Matthew Marusak to talk us through the book production process, his favourite word, and what a day in the life is like for an OUP employee in Cary, North Carolina.
What to expect from Trumponomics By Richard S. Grossman Candidate Donald Trump’s policy proposals ranged from the bizarre to the truly frightening. Remember his “secret plan” to defeat ISIS? Turns out it consists of working with our Middle Eastern allies and tightening border security. Now that the election is over, a number of pundits predict that Candidate Trump’s extremism will give way to a more moderate, pragmatic President Trump. We can only hope.
WWI propaganda in America By Marissa Lynch By 1917, Americans increasingly became more concerned about the possible implications that would come with a German victory. With at-home values in mind, the United States presented propaganda to use as a call to action. The following slideshow portrays images of WWI propaganda used in the United States.
Democratization of religion in the Middle East By Geneive Abdo If you were to ask many Americans who keep close track of world affairs the reasons for the wars in Syria and Iraq, they would probably say that Arabs do not like their leaders or their governments. While that might be true —and certainly more true after the Arab uprisings—there is another reason that is often overlooked.
When is a revolution not a revolution? Edmund Burke and the new America By P. J. Marshall Edmund Burke (1729-1797) was an Irish statesman, author and orator, chiefly remembered for his championing of various causes such as Catholic emancipation, reform of the government of India and preserving the balance of the British constitution. It is commonly assumed that Edmund Burke took up incongruous positions on the American and French Revolutions…
Animals and transmissible cancers By Abigail Sindzinski How often is cancer transmitted between animals? In the past few years researchers have discovered more transmissible cancers in nature. Initially thought to be contained within a respective host species, new research shows that sometimes even cross-species cancer transmission can occur. With transmissible cancer, instead of remaining in the singular organism or host, the cancer transfers between animals.
The history behind selected family names in Britain and Ireland [map] We all have a surname, but how many of us know anything about its roots – origin, history, and what it means today? Family names are evidence of the diverse language and cultural movement of people who have settled in Britain and Ireland over history. Surnames can be varied, but not uncommon – for example there a large amount of occupational names like Smith and Baker.
Chomsky at 88 By Terje Lohndal Few probably anticipated that the boy who was born on this day in 1928 would become one of the founding fathers of modern linguistics and one of the world’s foremost intellectuals. Noam Avram Chomsky’s foundational work has influenced, inspired, and divided scholars working on language for more than 60 years.
The three fallacies of the popular vote By Edward A. Zelinsky In light of Secretary Clinton’s victory in the popular vote, prominent voices call for replacing the Electoral College with a direct, nationwide vote for President. Among the distinguished individuals now urging abolition of the Electoral College are former Attorney General Eric Holder and outgoing Senator Barbara Boxer. Would Secretary Clinton or President-elect Trump have won in 2016 in a direct, nationwide election?
The difference between “Truth” and “truth” By Dawn Field Politically, 2016 has been a wildly, tumultuous year. We go into 2017 on a completely new footing. One that has many of us fearing we face a treacherous fall. Now is the time, more than ever, to reposition our global footing and keep climbing. It’s impossible to wrap up a year of writing a science column without talking politics. Deep and divisive political change is overshadowing science.
Announcing the Place of the Year 2016 shortlist The year is winding down and we are nearing the end of our search for the Place of the Year. Thank you to everyone who voted for their pick in the longlist.
W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Award winners – part 1 By Elena Jones We are delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s W. J. M. Mackenzie Book Award is A Government that Worked Better and Cost Less by Christopher Hood and Ruth Dixon. The award recognises the achievements of academics, politicians, journalists and other contributors to the study of politics. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate this year’s winners.
International Law in Domestic Courts [map] By Merel Alstein and Daisy Simonis This year marks the tenth anniversary of OUP’s International Law in Domestic Courts (ILDC). Created to be an innovative and valuable resource for research on the interpretation and application of international law, it shows how international law matters in practice. Digital innovation in the past decade has allowed ILDC to provide scholars with data in the form of case law and analysis on which to base further scholarship from jurisdictions around the world.
A plea to the president-elect Trump By Philip M. Rosoff Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”) millions of Americans were able to buy commercial health insurance and millions more who were fortunate to live in states that elected to expand Medicaid were enrolled – sometimes for the first time in their lives – and gained access to subsidized healthcare. To be sure, the ACA was far from perfect: its haphazard implementation, the failure of the tax penalties to enforce mandated insurance purchasing amongst the young and healthy leading to skewed and potentially collapsing insurance markets, and the Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the requirement to increase the Medicaid rolls, all led to not enough people being covered and the return of inexorably rising healthcare costs.
The paradoxical intellectualism of Gershom Scholem By David Biale Gershom Scholem (1897-1982) is widely known as the founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism or Kabbalah. In the nearly thirty-five years since his death, Scholem’s star has continue to shine brightly in the intellectual firmament and perhaps even more brightly now than in his lifetime.
OUP Philosophy Philosophers of the year: Aristotle, Kant, and Plato [quiz] By John Priest This December, the OUP Philosophy team marks the end of a great year by honoring three of 2016’s most popular Philosophers of the Month!
A Q & A with Georgie Leighton, assistant commissioning editor for classics By Georgie Leighton We caught up with Georgie Leighton, who joined Oxford University Press in November 2012 and is now Assistant Commissioning Editor for Classics and Ancient History. She talks to us about her proudest moments, advice for first-time authors, and her OUP journey so far. What is your typical day like at OUP? There’s a lot of variation, as I tend to start each day by looking through my emails and making a plan based on what’s in those and what’s already on my to-do list.
Scots Wa Who? Forgotten poems of Scotland Scotland has inspired much celebrated poetry over the ages, from the stirring verses of Robert Burns, to the imaginative tales of Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott. These poets are now household names, but how many outside of Scotland have heard of William Dunbar or James Hogg?
Social Work The simple definitive guide to meditation and mindfulness By Cassandra Gill Life in the modern era is total chaos. From the constant outbursts of sound, to the ubiquitous bombardment of advertisements, to the racing taxi cabs, cars, and buses, to the sheer swarms of people, even a simple stroll in the city can be massively taxing on your sensory system.
“An infernal journey” – an extract from Homer By Barbara Graziosi Homer, despite being the author of the hugely influential The Odyssey and The Iliad, remains a bit of a mystery. We know very little about his life, but what we can see is the huge legacy that he has left behind in art, music, philosophy, literature, and more. By examining both of his epic poems, we can begin to understand more about this mythical figure. In the extract below Barbara Grazosi takes a closer look at Odysseus’ journey to the Underworld.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Get to the point with “The Viennese Sigh” By Donna Gunn Whether speaking in simple conversation, acting dramatically on stage, singing in the shower, or performing on a musical instrument in a recital hall, the common goal is to “get to the point” in some way or another. In Classical Era music, a tool that facilitates getting to the point is the use of small gestures that are designated with a slur.
An Interview with Jörg Matthias Determann By Matthias Determann When I first started researching historiography in Saudi Arabia, I came across many publications by government organizations, as they were the most readily available. At first glance, many of these history books told the same story: a narrative that focused on the royal family and its creation of a first Saudi state during the eighteenth century, a second Saudi state during the nineteenth century, and finally the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during the twentieth century.
Oxford Textbook of Creative Arts, Health, and Wellbeing Can dancing help with mental illness? By Carly Annable-Coop and Lauren Gavaghan In 2015 the Alchemy Project delivered a pioneering ‘treatment’ for mental illness. It was modelled on contemporary dance training and was a different way of engaging with people and supporting their recovery. It was based on the work of Dance United and its proven, award-winning methodology. The premise was ambitious: that in just four weeks, participants would go from a place of no experience to a high-end artistic professional dance performance.
The language of Christmas [quiz] By Marissa Lynch Christmas carols–a celebratory tradition spanning language and culture–were originally derived from the songs sung during the Winter Solstice. Christian lyrics were set to the tune of popular pagan carols, giving way to the festive music still played today.
To be a refugee in one’s own country By Ankur Datta If there is a figure that has truly come to define the Human condition over the last few years, it is the refugee. From the battlefields of Syria, to the water crossings from North Africa to Europe and the boats of Rohingyas escaping the Myanmarese state, to camps in Calais or Nauru, the refugee is not far from our sight. In popular and legal imaginations, the refugee is someone who has crossed an international border.
Italy and the UK decision to expand Heathrow By Anna Cento Bull As Graham Ruddick put it in the Guardian on 26 October, ‘One by one, Theresa May’s government is giving the go-ahead to major infrastructure projects that will cost taxpayers billions of pounds’. By doing so, she signalled her determination to promote growth and the creation of new jobs, as well as to offset the oft predicted economic downturn following Brexit.
Fighting the stigma of HIV and AIDS By Quique Bassat, Martin Hirsch, Landon Myer, Peter Piot, and David Wilson To mark World AIDS Day 2016 we asked people working and researching in the field how they think views on HIV and AIDS have change over the past ten years, focusing in particular on outdated stereotypes, challenging myths, and the developing positivity towards finding a cure. In addition, we have provided a series of articles from a selection of journals on the topic of HIV – freely available to read until 1 March 2017.
Winnicott: the ‘good-enough mother’ radio broadcasts By Robert Adès Our appetite for books on baby care seems unquenchable. The combination of the natural curiosity and uncertainty of the expectant mother, the unknowable mind of the infant, and the expectations of society creates a void filled with all kinds of manuals and confessionals offering advice, theory, reassurance, anecdotes, schedules… and inevitably, inconsistency, disagreement, and further anxiety.
Lessons from the global response to HIV/AIDS By Markus Haacker Since 2001, the response to HIV/AIDS has evolved into an unprecedented global health effort, extending access to treatment to 17 million people living with HIV across the developing world, some considerable successes in HIV prevention (especially regarding mother-to-child transmission), and becoming a very significant aspect of global development assistance.
Social Work Elimination of violence against women reading list By Cassandra Gill The World Health Organization estimates that “about 1 in 3 (35%) women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.” Few data exists and measurements can vary substantially across cultures, but evidence suggests that even more women face psychological violence
What Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ tells us about modern day mood disorders By Jennifer Radden Coming to us through the great illustrative tradition, as well as medical and literary works, Melancholy is a perennially alluring idea.
Calcutta roads By Sumanta Banerjee Arterial roads in cities have peculiar ways of acquiring distinct identities. The character of each main road, the lifestyle of its residents, their occupations, their social habits, the architecture of their houses and shops, their cultural tastes (even their mannerisms and ways of speaking) – all these shape every road in different ways.
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Etymology gleanings for November 2016 By Anatoly Liberman I keep receiving this question with some regularity (once a year or so), and, since I have answered it several times, I’ll confine myself to a few very general remarks. Etymology is a branch of historical linguistics dealing with the origin of words. It looks at the sound shape and meaning of words and at the cultural milieu in which words were coined. Quite often a word has related forms in several languages, and all of them have to be compared.
Which “little woman” are you? [quiz] By Marissa Lynch The twenty-ninth of November 2016, marked the 184th birthday of American author Louisa May Alcott, best known for her literary classic Little Women. Taking place in New England during the Civil War, Little Women follows Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy–four strong-minded sisters, each determined to discover and fulfill her destiny. Adapted for film six times, Little Women is a coming-of-age story that […]
Moving crisis management from the ‘war room’ to the board room By Tony Jaques Organisations that suffer a major crisis have more than a one in four chance of going out of business. Yet despite this level of risk, many companies continue to leave crisis management in the hands of operational middle managers or inexperienced technicians. Corporate crisis management traditionally has a strong emphasis on tactical elements such as crisis manuals cross-functional teams, and table-top simulations.
Can medieval apocalypse commentaries help us feel better about the US election? By Frances Courtney Kneupper In 1453, medieval Europeans were reeling. The great Christian city of Constantinople, which had stood as the capital of the Eastern half of the Roman Empire for over a thousand years, was conquered by the Muslim Ottoman Turks. The militarily superior Turks had been expanding into the Christian territories for more than a century. It was almost inevitable that they would take Constantinople. But few in the West expected this blow.
Woman as protagonist in BBC’s re-adaption of Conrad’s The Secret Agent By Marie Coffey With the recent surge of interest in Conrad’s text following the programme airing in July, one needs to question the contribution that BCC’s adaption offers to the oeuvre of Conrad’s criticism. Tony Marchant’s adaption is acutely aware of global relevance of this text, noting that the “contemporaneity just hit[s]” you “in the face”. Yet, his production precisely fails in this presentation of terrorism.
Conversations and collaborations: lessons from the Charleston Conference By Molly Hansen As a first-time attendee of the Charleston Library Conference earlier this month, I knew I was headed for a few idea-charged days, but was overwhelmed by the amount of things I learned from the conference. The conference, according to its website, “is designed to be a collegial gathering of individuals from different areas who discuss the same issues in a non-threatening, friendly, and highly informal environment.”
How Facebook’s Aquila initiative provides an impetus to rethink the boundaries in competition law By Julian Nowag Aquila is the Latin word for eagle, but it is also an ambitious Facebook project to provide internet access by solar-powered drones. In India, the project was supposed to provide internet access to the rural and most impoverished areas. Yet, the project was prohibited by the telecoms regulator for several reasons, one being net neutrality. The project would have offered free access to Facebook and some associated web pages and access to the rest of the internet for a fee.
Place of the Year spotlight: Tristan da Cunha, the most interesting place you’ve (n)ever heard of By Lucie Taylor I confess that when I saw Tristan da Cunha among the nominations for Place of the Year, I had no idea where it was, but once I got out my atlas, I was intrigued. Colloquially known as Tristan, the eight-mile-wide island is the most remote inhabited place in the world: it lies 1,200 miles east of the nearest inhabited island, Saint Helena, and a full 1,500 miles east of the nearest continental land, South Africa.
Ten surprising facts about humanitarian intervention By Alex J. Bellamy After the end of the Cold War, humanitarian intervention – the use of military force to protect populations from humanitarian emergencies without the consent of the host state – emerged as one of the hottest topics of international relations. As is usually the case in world politics, the actual practice of humanitarian intervention is more complex, than we might think.
Jacob Tonson the elder, international spy and businessman By Stephen Bernard Few have heard of him today, but Jacob Tonson the Elder (1656?-1736) was undoubtedly one of the most important booksellers in the history of English literature. He numbered Addison, Behn, Congreve, Dryden, Echard, Oldmixon, Prior, Steele, and Vanbrugh among those canonical authors whom he published. His reputation was international, and the quality and range of his classical editions remained a benchmark throughout the eighteenth century.
Are we responsible for our lifestyle diseases? By Martin Marchman Andersen and Morten Ebbe Juul Nielsen Within the last couple of decades more and more research has shown a number of diseases, such as type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, to be associated with particular lifestyle characteristics such as smoking, lack of exercise, and over-eating. Confronted with such research, it is timely to raise questions about individual responsibility for getting those diseases (or the increased risk thereof), and to think closer about issues such as blame, stigma, and economic burdens.
How did Shakespeare originally sound? We all know the classic Shakespearean lines – “To be or not to be,” “O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” or “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” — but how would these famous lines have sounded to Elizabethan audiences? Are we currently misinterpreting the Bard? This question has been on the mind of Shakespeare scholars, directors, actors, and audiences for a long time, and has proved a tricky problem.
Helping students excel with integrity By Leah Holroyd On 19 October 2016 the International Center for Academic Integrity called for education institutions to join an International Day of Action Against Contract Cheating. Using the hashtags #defeatthecheat and #excelwithintegrity, students and staff were invited to share their declarations of why ‘contract cheating’ (that is, paying someone to do your academic work) is wrong. The idea was to raise awareness – not just within institutions but in the public and legislative domains too.
The origin of Black Friday and other black days By Rebecca Hotchen Across the United States, those who are not too replete with their Thanksgiving feast will be braving the crowds in order to secure themselves one of the bargains associated with Black Friday, the day following Thanksgiving which is often regarded as the first day of Christmas shopping in the United States. Even on the […]
Oxford Textbook of Medicine: Cardiovascular Disorders Can more be said about statins? By John Firth Statins are drugs that are very effective in reducing the level of cholesterol in the blood. They have been shown in many trials to reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes. They are taken by very many people, but some argue that even more would benefit from doing so, although not everyone agrees. I am waiting to be reported to the General Medical Council.
A note of thanks, a dose of sanity By Troy Reeves 2016 has had far more than its share of horribleness. Many of us are ready to leave this year far behind, even as we’re terrified of what the coming years may bring. At a time when many people are being told that their voices and lives don’t matter, we think oral historians have a vital role to play in amplifying silenced voices and helping us all imagine a better future.
Reflections on ‘chatbot’ By Nicholas Agar A chatbot, or chatterbot, is computer program designed to engage in conversation through written or spoken text. It was one of the words on the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 shortlist. The idea of a chatbot originates with Alan Turing’s mid twentieth century aspiration to build a thinking computer. Turing proposed a test to determine what might count as success in this venture.
The year of hating immigrants By Madeline Y. Hsu 2016 has been a year of bitter political debates fueled in large part by drastic divides regarding how immigrants affect national well-being. The US presidential race, the British Brexit vote and other challenges within the European Union, and growing competition against the otherwise durable German Chancellor Angela Merkel all display deeply rooted fears of inadequately controlled immigration.
Black Friday: the dark side of scarcity promotions By Andrea C. Morales, Brent McFerran, Darren W. Dahl, and Kirk Kristofferson Does simply encountering a scarcity promotion, such as a newspaper or television advertisement or online pop-up ad, cultivate seeds of aggressive behavior in consumers and predispose them to act in a violent manner? Is marketplace aggression not merely the outcome of crowds during shopping holidays, but activated beforehand at ad exposure?
Computational Theories and their Implementation in the Brain How does the brain work? By Richard E. Passingham The media is full of stories about how this or that area of the brain has been shown to be active when people are scanned while doing some task. The images are alluring and it is tempting to use them to support this or that just-so story. However, they are limited in that the majority of the studies simply tell us where in the brain things are happening. But the aim of neuroscience is to discover how the brain works.
The many ‘sides’ of Thanksgiving…and the English language By John Kelly We may talk a lot of turkey during the holiday, but US Thanksgiving is really all about the sides. Yes, we pile our plates with mashed potatoes and green beans, but we also feast on the many other great sides the English language has to offer.
Encyclopedia of Social Work Donate smarter this Thanksgiving and holiday season By Cassandra Gill You probably know about how important it is to donate food to your local soup kitchen during the holiday season (and the rest of the year, as well!), but do you ever give much thought to what you’re donating? Do you ever give food you wouldn’t necessarily want to feed to your kids in large quantities?
(All) my eye and Betty Martin! By Anatoly Liberman The strange exclamation in the title means “Fiddlesticks! Humbug! Nonsense!” Many people will recognize the phrase (for, among others, Dickens and Agatha Christie used it), but today hardly anyone requires Betty Martin’s help for giving vent to indignant amazement. However, the Internet is abuzz with questions about the origin of the idiom, guarded explanations, and readers’ comments.
5 facts about Black Friday By Kelly Crupi From an economics standpoint, Black Friday is one of the most important days of the year, as it marks the unofficial start of the busy holiday shopping season. The origin of the term “Black Friday,” however, is not entirely straightforward. We’ve compiled a list of some of the most common explanations for how this infamously chaotic day got its name.
The life and times of Samuel Pepys By Amelia Carruthers Samuel Pepys penned his famous diaries between January 1660, and May of 1669. During the course of this nine year period, England witnessed some of the most important events in its political and social history. The diaries are over a million words long and recount in minute and often incredibly personal detail, events such as the restoration of the monarchy, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Great Fire, and Great Plague of London.
How the Bible influenced the Founding Fathers By Daniel L. Dreisbach In the midst of political campaigns, including the last election season, one often hears appeals to the American founding principles and the political visions of the founding fathers. Which political traditions and thinkers shaped the ideas and aspirations of the American founding?
American History The impact of the press on the American Revolution By Robert G. Parkinson Issues of the press seem increasingly relevant in light of the recent U.S. presidential election. At its best, the press can play a critical role in informing, educating, and shaping the public’s thoughts—just as it did at the time of the nation’s founding. In fact, the press was so crucial in those early days that David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, wrote that: “In establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.”
British Medical Bulletin The future of the NHS – let’s not lose sight of what is important By Lucy Frith There is general agreement that the NHS is currently facing unprecedented challenges. Many of these challenges face all health services: increasing demand for healthcare arising from technological developments, demographic changes, rising expectations, and the increase in chronic diseases that require long-term coordinated care. In terms of public spending, the United Kingdom has entered a period of austerity.
A Q & A with Amelia Carruthers, marketing executive for online products By Amelia Carruthers We caught up with Amelia Carruthers, who joined Oxford University Press in June 2015 and is now currently Marketing Executive for the Global Online Products team. She talks to us about working on online products, her own publishing, and her OUP journey so far. You can find out more about Amelia below.
Fostering friendly relations between Hitler’s Germany and Franco’s Spain through music By Eva Moreda Rodriguez As the Wehrmacht launched its offensive on the USSR in summer 1941, a contingent of Spanish musicians and critics travelled to Bad Elster, on the border between Bavaria and Bohemia. In the spa town, they took part in the first of three Hispanic-German music festivals held during the Second World War aimed at fostering cultural and political understanding between both countries.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Brexit, Marmite, and brand loyalty in the Roman World By Claire Holleran One of the early and somewhat unexpected effects of Brexit in the UK was the threatened ‘Marmageddon’, the shortage and subsequent price rise of the much-loved – and much-hated – Marmite. Brands were, however, also a part of much earlier economies. In ancient Rome, for instance, consumers placed their trust in a number of brand markers, which signified reputation and quality, and very often carried a certain prestige. This was particularly the case with food and drink, especially wine.
Voltaire’s love letters By Amelia Carruthers Voltaire had numerous passionate affairs, and engaged in an enormous amount of private correspondence with his lovers, much of which has been kept for posterity. Providing a fascinating insight into Voltaire’s inner-most emotions, his letters give a glimpse of his friendships, sorrows, joys, and passionate desires…
A literary Thanksgiving Thanksgiving has many historical roots in American culture. While it is typically a day spent surrounded by family and showing appreciation for what we are thankful for, we would all be lying if we did not admit that our favorite part is consuming an abundance of delicious food until we slip into a food coma.
Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and new research: Q & A with Diana Walsh Pasulka and Jacques Vallee By Diana Walsh Pasulka Unidentified aerial phenomena, commonly referred to as UFOs, has been the focus of research by sociologists, scholars of religion, anthropologists, philosophers, and astronomers. The information age now offers new and innovative ways to study the phenomena, and author Diana Walsh Pasulka sat down with astronomer and computer scientist Jacques Vallee to discuss how “big data” and information processing will influence the field of study.
Adulting comes of age By Edwin Battistella The child in me was excited to see ‘adulting’ as one of the shortlisted words for the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016. Adulting is on the minds–and tongues–of many of my millennial-generation college students. They explain that it is about assuming adult responsibilities like managing money, showing up at a job, buying food and paying rent, getting health care, and more.
The politics of caring: what this election can teach us By Mark Lazenby We awoke ?the morning after the presidential election to a festering wound made raw by the long campaign and, for some, split open by the results of the election. It is a wound of fear — not just any fear, but fear of people on the other side of the political divide. Some supporters of Mrs. Clinton, for example, fear Republicans putting in a conservative Supreme Court justice.
An alternative to the Electoral College By Ian J. Drake Over the last few days, as anyone interested in the American presidential election can tell you – and it seems everyone is –, the 2016 election is one of the few in history with two different winners: one candidate appears to have won the popular vote and the other has won the Electoral College vote. As of this writing, according to the latest tally the popular vote leader is Hillary Clinton by over 337,000 votes.
War stories of WWII By Daniel Todman Historian Daniel Todman coalesces various aspects of military history and the personal narratives from those who were in battle. Linking the strategic, political, and cultural sides of war, Todman aims to capture the true consequences of WWII. The excerpt below, from Britain’s War: Into Battle, 1937-1941, illustrates the fluidity of history by telling the stories of the author’s two grandfathers, both veterans with their own respective views on the war.
Behind the scenes: Installing John Singer Sargent’s ‘Gassed’ at PAFA [slideshow] By John Priest Running from November 2016–April 2017, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts hosts the exhibition World War I and American Art. With over 150 works by American artists, this carefully curated exhibit is the first major exhibit to explore how American artists reacted to WWI.
Hillary Clinton and the “women’s vote” By Anne Boylan One hundred years ago, in 1916, Montana elected the first woman to serve in Congress: Jeannette Rankin. On Tuesday, the US did not elect its first woman president. Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, Donald Trump won the Electoral College. The expectation of a Clinton victory led many to reflect on the long history of women’s quest for the right to vote.
10 tips for librarians: embedding social media good practice in your everyday work By Claire Pickering Social media is one of the best ways to reach a wide audience in this digital day and age. There are plenty of examples of fantastic feeds being run by librarians, but how can you replicate their success? We asked Claire Pickering, Library Officer at Wakefield Council to share her ten top tips.
Writing for an academic audience By Natalie Ames Completing multitudinous years of education presumably encourages people to juxtapose one esoteric word after another in order to fabricate convoluted paragraphs formulated of impressively, extensively elongated and erudite sentences. To put it another way: completing many years of education encourages people to write complex paragraphs full of long sentences composed of long words.
Should we act on our beliefs? The vexing nature of responsibility By Rik Peels Some people think that voting for Donald Trump was a detestable thing to do, whereas others are convinced that we had an obligation to vote for him in order to get rid of the political elite. Of course, in explaining why they voted the way they did, people will appeal to their beliefs.
Word of the Year 2016: a ‘post-truth’, ‘alt-right’, ‘Brexiteer’ing’ explanation of political chaos By Matthew Flinders The lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries have been at it again with their choice of Word of the Year 2016 – ‘post-truth’. Now call me a pedant but I’d have thought ‘post-truth’ is two words, or at the very least a phrase, (‘Pedant!’ I hear you all shout) but I’m assured that the insertion of a hyphen creates a compound word that is not to be sniffed at. How then do words such as ‘post-truth’, ‘alt-right’, and ‘Brexiteer’ combine to explain the current situation of global political chaos?
The life of Guglielmo Marconi [infographic] By Heather Smith Guglielmo Marconi was the man who networked the world. He was the first global figure in modern communications, popularizing as well as patenting the use of radio waves. Decorated by the Czar of Russia, named an Italian Senator, knighted by King George V, and awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, Marconi accomplished more before the age of forty than many people do in a lifetime.
9780198725862 Disease prevention: helping health professionals By John Frank A new controversy about “how to stay well” hits the media at least once a week. Recent examples include: disease prevention claims made for various “healthy foods;” proposed policies to tackle the obesity pandemic, such as sugar or soda taxes; the benefits versus risks of long-term statins in healthy persons; the value of prostate cancer screening; and the accuracy of new genetic tests to predict future disease.
What are the unexpected consequences of shorter work hours? By Arne L. Kalleberg Leah Ruppanner and David J. Maume For many, work is increasingly interfering with their home life. Because of this, some countries are proposing shorter work weeks. But does this mean more productivity? Do shorter work weeks result in less work done? Social Forces Editor Arne L. Kalleberg caught up with Leah Ruppanner and David J. Maume to examine and discuss current debates arguing for shorter work hours.
Combatting antibiotic resistance By Jessica Jackson Antibiotic resistance continues to pose a major threat to public health. Wrong or incorrect use of antibiotics may cause bacteria to become resistant to future antibiotic treatments, leading to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance in European hospitals and communities. European Antibiotic Awareness Day is held on the 18 November each year
Trump: An (im)probable victory By L. Sandy Maisel As Americans adjust to the idea of President Donald Trump, many are looking at the electoral process to ask how this result came about. The 2016 American presidential election has been characterized as like none other in the nation’s history. In some senses the election was unique; for instance, Donald Trump will be the first President to assume office without ever having held a public office or having served in the military.
Brain network of psychopathic criminals functions differently By Dirk Geurts and Robbert-Jan Verkes Many criminal offenders display psychopathic traits, such as antisocial and impulsive behaviour. And yet some individuals with psychopathic traits do not commit offences for which they are convicted. As with any other form of behaviour, psychopathic behaviour has a neurobiological basis. To find out whether the way a psychopath’s brain is functionally, visibly different from that of non-criminal controls with and without psychopathic traits, we talked to Dirk Geurts and Robbert-Jan Verkes
What does research say about electronic cigarettes? By Marcus Munafò To mark the Great American Smokeout, a day where smokers across the country – with support from family and friends – take steps to quit the habit, we got in touch with the Editor-in-Chief of Nicotine & Tobacco Research, published on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco, to learn more about the potential pros and cons of electronic cigarettes.
When white men rule the world By Paul Kirby If Hillary Rodham Clinton had triumphed in Tuesday’s presidential election, it would have been a milestone for women’s political representation: a shattering of the hardest glass ceiling, as her supporters liked to say. Clinton’s defeat in the electoral college (but not the popular vote) is also the failure of a certain feminist stratagem. But the victory of Donald Trump tells us just as much about the global politics of gender, and how it is being remade.
Introducing Elanor from the sheet music marketing team By Elanor Caunt We are delighted to introduce Elanor Caunt who joined OUP’s sheet music marketing department in September 2016 and is based in the Oxford offices. We sat down to talk to her about what a typical day marketing sheet music looks like, what life on a desert island should involve, and the ‘interesting’ wildlife of Oxford.
OUP Philosophy How many famous philosophy quotes do you know? [quiz] By John Priest This November, the OUP Philosophy team celebrates UNESCO’s World Philosophy Day! We’ve highlighted a selection of some of our most popular philosophy research across various disciplines, and created a quiz to test your knowledge of some of the world’s best known thinkers.
2016 US presidential election reading list By Erin Cavoto Following the 2016 US Presidential election, we have curated a series of reading lists with resources that provide insight into electoral politics, key themes that stimulated some of the major debates from the election season, and important topics of discussion relating to the potential outcomes of the election. We have selected books and resources that detail American politics and investigate issues that influenced the recent presidential campaigns,
Coming out of the fog By Anatoly Liberman This is a postscript to last week’s post on fog. To get my point across, as they say, let me begin with a few short remarks on word origins, according to the picture emerging from our best dictionaries.
What is a good job? By gordon betcherman and martin rama Most people would say a good job is one that comes with a nice paycheck, reasonable hours, a healthy and safe work environment, and benefits such as social insurance. While this profile makes a lot of sense from an individual perspective, it does not necessarily tell policy-makers what the priorities should be for their national jobs strategies. Those priorities should be jobs that add the most social value.
Word of the Year 2016 is… post-truth Word of the Year 2016 is… post-truth. After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
10 representations of Psalm 137 throughout history [slideshow] By David Stowe Psalm 137 is the only one out of the 150 biblical psalms set in a particular time and place. The vivid tableau sketched by the opening lines has lent itself to visual representations over the millennia. Each interpretation brings something different to the story and shows the cultures which this psalm has touched.
Were farmers America’s first high tech information workers? By James W. Cortada Settlers in North America during the 1600s and 1700s grew and raised all their own food, with tiny exceptions, such as importing tea. In the nineteenth century, well over 80 percent of the American public either lived at one time on a farm or made their living farming. Today, just over 1 percent does that in the United States, even though there is a surge going on in small organic family farming.
Pathogen contamination in a clinical laundry facility: a Q&A with Karen E. Michael By Karen E. Michael To learn more about how bacterial pathogens are kept in check and the effectiveness of clinical laundry services in removing these bacteria, we asked Karen E. Michael, PhD and an author of FEMS Microbiology Letters article “Clostridium difficile Environmental Contamination within a Clinical Laundry Facility in the USA”, to answer some pressing queries.
ISIS is only a symptom– underneath lies a much deeper threat By Louis René Beres Focusing too much on ISIS could undermine our counter-terrorist regime allies in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, who are presently engaged in combat operations against Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and also strengthen assorted Muslim Brotherhood forces, including Palestinian Hamas – the Islamic Resistance Movement – which is effectively the “Son of Muslim Brotherhood.” Always, it is this underlying ideology that we must “defeat.”
Vermeer and violins: science and art—strange bedfellows or partners in crime? By Quincy Whitney When Einstein claimed his theory of relativity came from a musical insight, no one blinked twice. Of course music could inspire scientific insight. But the reverse idea is often fraught with baggage. Artistic circles often feel that science is more threat than ally.
Uber drivers found to be ‘workers’ not employees By Astra Emir There has been much in the press recently about the employment tribunal ruling finding that two Uber drivers were not self-employed, but rather workers, and were therefore entitled to some employment rights. In some reports it has erroneously been suggested that these drivers were found to be employees. This is not what happened.
A literary tour of Ireland By Molly Grote Ireland is home to many great writers, from Bram Stoker and Jonathan Swift to Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. In this slideshow, Molly Grote, OUP publicist with a degree in British and Irish literature, takes us on a literary tour of Dublin.
Can marital quality affect your risk of getting diabetes? By Hui Liu and Shannon Shen Diabetes remains one of the top ten causes of death in the US, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that over 9% of the population has diabetes. The risk of getting diabetes can be largely reduced through factors such as proper diet and regular physical activity. Many of the resources on diabetes focus on how lifestyle changes can lower the risk of diabetes and prevent harmful complications.
CETA and Wallonia’s Trojan Horse By Billy Melo Araujo It’s not often that Wallonia makes the news, but for the past week Belgium’s French-speaking region has been at the heart of the latest in a long series of EU crises. The reason for this is the Wallonian government’s refusal to sign off on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA).
How to write a good sentence By Edwin Battistella Some years ago, I sent off a manuscript to an editor. After the usual period of review, the editor sent back a note saying that he liked the work, but suggested that I should make it “less academic.” I reworked a number of things and sent back a revised version with more examples and a lighter tone. A week later, I got a short email back saying “No really, make it less academic.”
World Diabetes Day 2016 November 14 is World Diabetes Day, an observance day led by the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) and recognized by the World Health Organization and the United Nations. The day aims to raise awareness of the condition globally. The theme of the 2016 campaign is “Eyes on diabetes” and focuses around screening, diagnosis, and treatment to reduce the complications of type 2 diabetes.
American History Why were the Salem Witch Trials so significant? By Cassandra Gill Religious fanaticism, power-hungry individuals, local disputes, misogyny, anxiety, political turmoil, psychological distress, and mass hysteria all contributed to the atmosphere surrounding the infamous Salem witch trials. These factors converged in 1692 to “produce what was by far the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in American history
Lying, tells, and paradox By Roy T Cook The idea that many, if not most, people exhibit physical signs – tells – when they lie is an old idea – one that has been extensively studied by psychologists, and is of obvious practical interest to fields as otherwise disparate as gambling and law enforcement. Some of the tells that indicate someone is lying include:
From Harlem to Wakanda: on Luke Cage and Black Panther By Tochi Onyebuchi While watching the first episode of Luke Cage, I noticed something of a minor miracle. Starting from the amazing opening credits sequence, you could actually count the minutes before a single non-black face graced the screen. Every character of consequence, heroic or villainous, was black. Not only that, they were characters well-versed in blackness, however stereotypical.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Brazil’s favelas and the growth of an urban challenge By Riordan Roett With the abolition of slavery in 1888 and the collapse of the empire in 1889, Brazil’s population of color was basically abandoned. Many left the plantations that had been their only home and began to move south to the developing urban areas of Brazil.
On Hokusai’s woodblock prints By Friederike Moltmann and Massimiliano Carrara Sometimes when looking at some piece of reality, puzzling choices have to be made when describing it as ‘one’, as ‘many’ or perhaps as neither ‘one’ nor ‘many’. Three woodblock prints of the artist Hokusai can illustrate the issue.
Home-coming By Terrion L. Williamson At the intersection of State and Washington Streets in the Warehouse District of downtown Peoria, a city of about 116,000 that sits halfway between Chicago and St. Louis, stands a nine-foot-tall bronze likeness of the city’s most infamous native son. If you were a visitor, in town to hang out along the up-and-coming riverfront or to visit Caterpillar, the only Fortune 500 company headquartered in the city, you would be forgiven
9780199678723 Ending violence against children By Catherine L. Ward, Lillian Artz, and Patrick Burton Earlier this year, the first-ever nationally representative study of child maltreatment in South Africa revealed that over 40% of young people interviewed reported having experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, or neglect. This figure is high, but it is not unusual: similar studies on violence against children have been conducted across 12 other countries, with many revealing equally high rates.
Translating Hobson City By Margaret Holloway Crossing the train track from the predominantly white Anniston into the historically black Hobson City, Alabama, I immediately noticed the significant changes in environment and people. It was not until I exited my car and physically inserted myself into the Hobson City community that I learned that there was much more to this small town than what initially met my eyes.
Why didn’t more women vote for Hillary Clinton? By Jad Adams Hillary Clinton was confidently predicted to ‘crack the country’s highest glass ceiling once and for all.’ In Rochester, New York women queued up to put tokens on the grave of Susan B Anthony the nineteenth century suffragist and architect of the 19th amendment to the US constitution which gave federal voting rights to woman in 1920 (they had been voting in territories and states since 1869).
Three centuries of the American presidency By Charles O. Jones The United States and its Constitution are now in their third century. The passage from each century to the next has been eventful. This review suggests an important lesson in considering the presidency in the twenty-first century: Events, the issues they generate, and the people who serve are normally more important than reforms in explaining change. Neustadt again: “The presidency nowadays [has] a different look.”
The evolution of human memory By Elisabeth A. Murray, Steven P. Wise, and Kim S. Graham Like all biological traits, human memory reflects a long evolutionary history, most of it shared with other animals. Yet, with rare exceptions, evolution has either been overlooked in discussions of memory or treated in an outdated way. As a result, a simple idea about the cerebral cortex has reigned for more than a century: that its various areas specialize in functions characterized as memory, perception, the control of movement, or executive control (mainly decision-making).
The complex world of climate change governance: new actors; new arrangements By Alan Alexandroff Climate change governance dramatically challenges traditional International Relations (IR) notions of decision-making. The greatest challenge involves understanding the many ‘actors and the arrangements’ that describe this critical global governance issue. The field is made up of much more than the traditional intergovernmental and international organizations and their actions in a critical global issue.
The economic effect of “Trumpism” By Linda Yueh On winning the US Presidential election, Trump’s victory speech confirmed that he would put America first in his policies. That pursuit of America’s interests will permeate US economic and other policies in the years to come. US President Donald Trump’s effect on the economy is hard to discern due to a lack of policy detail.
“Fog” and a story of unexpected encounters By Anatoly Liberman “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river,… Fog down the river….” This is Dickens (1852). But in 1889 Oscar Wilde insisted that the fogs had appeared in London only when the Impressionists discovered them, that is, they may have been around for centuries, but only thanks to the Impressionists, London experienced a dramatic change in its climate.
Prosperity for all: how to prevent financial crises By Roger E.A. Farmer Following the Great Depression, macroeconomics was dominated by Keynesian ideas. But in the 1960s and 1970s, western economies experienced stagflation; a period of high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. Stagflation was deeply subversive of Keynesian economics because according to the textbook interpretation of Keynes’ ideas, an economy can experience high inflation or high unemployment; but not both.
AAR/SBL Annual Meeting survival guide By Alyssa Russell The American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting is quickly approaching, and we couldn’t be more excited. This year, we thought we’d provide a survival guide of sorts, the “do”s and “don’t”s, from our perspective, for a successful AAR/SBL. Have anything to add? Let us know in the comments.
Where to eat in San Diego during SfN 2016 By Craig Panner In just a few days, the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting will be kicking off in San Diego, California. I’ve had a number of homes in my 48 years; the most recent being the New York/New Jersey area for the last ten years as part of Oxford University Press. But the longest home, and the one I keep coming back to, is San Diego. The weather is perfect, the multi-cultural facets are inspiring, the local universities top-notch, and the food scene is divine.
What did Shakespeare write? By Gabriel Egan We have always known already that Shakespeare was a collaborator; he was a man of the theatre which is an inherently very collaborative, social art. The news is that he also collaborated as a writer much more than we used to think he did. We can now say with a high degree of certainty that upward of third of his plays were co-written in some sense or other. In most film portrayals, Shakespeare seems to produce his plays in isolation.
The problem of Gilbert and Sullivan performance materials By Colin Jagger Most people would assume that, since Gilbert and Sullivan have been so widely renowned for so many years, the availability of satisfactory performance materials for their works would be a given. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Warren Buffett’s taxes: the more complicated narrative By Edward A. Zelinsky In the second presidential debate, Donald Trump indicated that Warren Buffett had deducted, for federal income tax purposes, net operating losses in a manner similar to Trump’s deduction of his net operating losses. In response, Buffett, an outspoken supporter of Hillary Clinton, released a summary of Buffett’s 2015 federal tax return. Buffett’s intended message was clear: Trump didn’t pay federal income taxes; I did.
Hillary and history: how powerful women have been maligned through the ages By Walter Duvall Penrose Jr. The 2016 United States presidential election has been perhaps the most contentious contest in recent history. Some of the gendered stereotypes deployed in it, however, are nothing new. Powerful and outspoken women have been maligned for thousands of years. Ancient authors considered the political arena to be the domain of men, and chastised women who came to power.
Lessons from the Song of Roland By Simon Gaunt and Karen Pratt What constitutes a person’s identity: family, country, religion? How do we resolve conflict: military action, strategy, negotiation? What turns a good man into a traitor?
The good and bad of ghostwriting By Dawn Field I just found out that a scientist whom I greatly admire is writing his first book. Only he’s not. He’s hired a writer to do the heavy lifting. The hired writer’s name won’t appear on the cover. He’s signed on the dotted line in the invisible ink. Ghostwriters don’t write about ghosts, but waft around in the background like them. Unlike real ghosts, such behind-the-scenes authors deal in reality, turning the ideas of ‘living’ authors into words for them to take credit for.
BHS is back By Alan Treadgold wrote recently of the demise of department store retailer BHS as a high street presence in the UK. It is a moot point whether some of the pains that ultimately led to the demise of the business were self-inflicted. But what cannot be doubted is that the disappearance of BHS from high streets and shopping centres is a very salutary example f the huge structural shifts which are reshaping the retail industry today.
Taking back control from Brussels – but where to? By Colin T. Reid Legal commitments will continue, regardless of membership of the EU, and will be a constraint on the UK’s ability to develop its own environmental policies; new trade agreements with the EU and other nations may further affect environmental standards.
The news media and the election By C. W. Anderson, Leonard Downie Jr., and Michael Schudson How does an avowedly nonpartisan news organization like the New York Times cover an outrageous but media-savvy and factuality-challenged candidate like Donald Trump? In a recent interview, Times’ executive editor Dean Baquet explained that the press was at first flustered by Trump, that “everybody went in a little bit shell-shocked in the beginning, about how you cover a guy who makes news constantly.
The nothingness of hyper-normalisation By Matthew Flinders In recent years my academic work has revolved around the analysis of two main concepts: ‘hyper-democracy’ and ‘normality.’ The former in relation to the outburst of forms and tools of democratic engagement in a historical period defined by anti-political sentiment; the latter relating to the common cry of those disaffected democrats – ‘why can’t politicians just be normal?
Make demagogues great again By Robert Morstein-Marx This year’s eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping American electoral campaign has evoked in some observers the memory of the ancient Roman Republic, especially as it neared its bloody end. Commentators have drawn parallels between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Julius Caesar. That would be an insult – to Caesar.
The World Bank: India’s development partner By Nagesh Prabhu Donald John Trump, the Republican Party candidate for the 2016 US presidential election, vowed a largely Indian origin gathering at glitzy event in Edison, New Jersey, by declaring, “I am a big fan of Hindus and a big fan of India. If elected, the Indian and Hindu community would have a true friend at the White House… I look forward to working with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” That was an endorsement that India matters in world politics.
On the cliché trail By Orin Hargraves The election campaign season licenses two cohorts—politicians and journalists—to take up an even greater share of public discourse than is normally allotted to them. Both of these groups have a demonstrable and statistically verifiable tendency towards cliché, and so it is to be expected that in what’s left of the run-up to the US elections, the public forum will be awash in clichés. And so it is!
Washington, Gates, and a battle for power in the young United States By Dean Snow Conspiracies are seldom what they are cracked up to be. It is in their nature for people to gossip and complain. Through it all they sometimes agree with each other, or pretend to for other reasons. Thus eavesdroppers looking for conspiracy can imagine plenty of it in almost any gathering, particularly if alcohol is lubricating and amplifying the discussions. So it was that in the winter of 1777-78 that some commonplace military griping got elevated to the level of conspiracy, at the center of which were a few hapless men later referred to as the “Conway Cabal.”
Hillary Clinton, feminism, and political language By Sabrina Martin Language is, of course, how we communicate political ideas to each other. But what is not often realized is that the language we use can itself be political. Often on the face of it, the way in which our language is structured — the words themselves or their denotations — are seen to betray no political significance. Many feminists criticize the traditional idea that language is a neutral vessel that merely depicts reality.
Who were Shakespeare’s collaborators? By Gary Taylor When we read Shakespeare’s Complete Works we are primarily, of course, reading Shakespeare. But as a bonus we also get, in the same volume, an excellent anthology of most of the important playwrights who were his collaborators. Shakespeare collaborated for the same reason that most people do: different members of the team are especially good at different tasks.
What are we asking when we ask why? By Bradford Skow “Why? WHY?” If, like me, you have small children, you spend all day trying to answer this question. It’s not easy: sometimes there is no answer (a recent exchange: “Sharing is when you let someone else use your things.” “Why?”); sometimes you don’t know the answer; even when you do, your child isn’t satisfied, he just goes on to ask “why?” about the answer.
“True” stories of the obesity epidemic By Helene A. Shugart “Eat right and exercise”: amid the cacophony of diet fads and aids, conflicting reports regarding what causes obesity, and debate about whether and what kind of fat might be good for us after all, this seems like pretty sound and refreshingly simple advice. On the surface, it is: it’s hard to argue against good nutrition or circulation. But dig a bit deeper and it’s a veritable political and cultural minefield.
The founding of the Electoral College By Michael J Klarman Every four years, the debate over the United States’ continued use of its Electoral College reemerges. The following excerpt from Michael Klarman’s The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution discusses the political interests that shaped the Electoral College and American presidential politics as a whole.
9780198737780 Unleashing the power of bioscience for human health By Richard Barker The 21st century is said to be the century of bioscience, with the promise of revolutionising human health. Every week we hear of dramatic discoveries in research labs, new genome links to disease, novel potential treatments for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s, nanotechnology applications to create miniature machines for inside the human body, and digital health tools to track the state of our health as we go about our lives.
Contrary to recent reports, coups are not a catalyst for democracy By Oisín Tansey In recent years, a new and surprising idea has emerged suggesting that coups d’état may actually be a force for democracy. The argument is surprising because coups have historically been associated with the rise of long-lasting and often brutal dictatorial regimes. During the Cold War, coups brought Suharto to power in Indonesia, military rule to Egypt, Pinochet to power in Chile, and allowed Hafez al-Assad to consolidate rule in Syria.
Marlowe, not Shakespeare—so what? By Rory Loughnane The recent media furore surrounding the publication of new findings about the authorship of Shakespeare’s works reassures us of one thing: people care about Shakespeare. Or, perhaps better stated, people care about caring about Shakespeare. A momentary venture into the ‘comments’ section to any of these news stories (a risky move at the best of times) reveals at least three camps of commentators.
The blessing of Babel By Matthew Reynolds I am in Palermo, sitting on the floor of the puppet museum with a circle of teenagers. Around us hang gaudy, dormant marionettes of characters from the Orlando Furioso: the valiant Orlando and his horse Brigliadoro, his rival Rinaldo, his beloved the beautiful Angelica. Their stories are amazing, the stuff of epic and romance; but in fact the teenagers around me, all boys, have been through adventures no less extraordinary, though harsh and real.
Place of the Year spotlight: test your knowledge of The White House The 2016 battle for the White House has been contentious and historical. Someone new will be occupying the White House come January, and who exactly it will be is still up in the air.
Evolution of the Cerebellar Sense of Self Getting to know your cerebellar self By John Montgomery and David Bodznick The cerebellum is an intriguing part of our brain. Its name is the diminutive form of cerebrum, so literally means ‘little brain’. It is true that, in humans, it occupies just 10% of the brain volume, yet recent research shows it accounts for approximately 80% of the nerve cells; a complex network of approximately 69 billion neurons! Why does the ‘little brain’ contain such a disproportionate number of neurons?
Betty Tompkins – Episode 40 – The Oxford Comment Betty Tompkins came of age as a painter in the 1960s and 1970s. Though she has been a working artist for over 40 years, Tompkins has inspired renewed interest since the early 2000s, with a new generation of viewers responding to her unique voice and technical skill. As a woman and a feminist artist, Betty Tompkins is no stranger to the barriers against female voices, both in the art world, and in culture at large.
Africa’s ethnic politics: demands for new administrative areas By Ryan Saylor About twenty-five years ago, politics changed in Africa. For years, rulers had manipulated the economy by doing things like creating artificial shortages and restricting import licenses. These tactics were useful to rulers, because they could dole out prized business licenses to reward supporters and consolidate power. But around 1990, many rulers were forced to relinquish these tools.
Thoughts on Dylan’s Nobel By Steven Rings Of all the responses to Bob Dylan’s Nobel, my favorite comes from Leonard Cohen, who likened it to “pinning a medal on Mount Everest.” It’s a brilliant line, pure Cohen—all dignity and poise, yet with an acid barb. Not only is Everest in no need of a medal, the attempt to fix one to its impassive torso (imagine the puny pin bending back on first contact) is metaphorically all too apt for the Nobel committee’s current quandary.
Tracing viking travellers By Eleanor Barraclough The medieval Norse were far travellers: not only raiders but also traders, explorers, colonisers, pilgrims, and crusaders (to name a few). Traces of their adventures survive across the world, including ruined buildings and burials, runic graffiti, contemporary accounts written by Christian chroniclers and Arab diplomats, and later sagas recorded in Iceland.
Blessing and cursing, part 3: curse (conclusion) By Anatoly Liberman The verb curse, as already noted, occurred in Old English, but it has no cognates in other Germanic languages and lacks an obvious etymon. The same, of course, holds for the noun curse. The OED keeps saying that the origin of curse is unknown.
A new philosophy of science? Surely that’s been outlawed By Eric Scerri The main thing that drew me to the history and philosophy of science was the simple desire to understand the nature of science. I was introduced to the exciting ideas of Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, but it soon became clear that there were serious problems with each of these views and that those heydays were long gone. Professionals in the field would no longer presume to generalize as boldly as the famous quartet had done.
The rise of passive-aggressive investing By Richard S. Grossman Some good ideas take a long time to gain acceptance. When Adam Smith argued forcefully against tariffs in his 1776 classic The Wealth of Nations, he was very much in the minority among thinkers and policy-makers. Today, the vast majority of economists agree with Smith and most countries officially support free trade. Index investing, sometimes called “passive investing,” has taken somewhat less time to gain acceptance.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Archaic and postmodern, today’s pagans challenge ideas about ‘religion’ By Chas S. Clifton Several people chuckled when they walked past Room 513B during 2009 annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion, held in Montréal. The title of the session within was simply “Idolatry,” held by the AAR’s Contemporary Pagan Studies Group Papers such as “Materiality and Spirituality Aren’t Opposites (Necessarily): Paganism and Objects” were presented. The nervous laughter at the session’s title shows that even among scholars of religion, topics of polytheism and idolatry seem quaint, antique, and even trivial.
The essence of presidential leadership By George C. Edwards III The challenges of governing have rarely been greater. The distance between the parties in Congress and between identifiers with the parties among the public is the greatest in a century. The public accords Congress the lowest approval ratings in modern history, but activists allow its members little leeway to compromise. The inability of Congress and the president to resolve critical problems results in constant crises in financing the government, endless debate over immigration, health care, environmental protection, and other crucial issues, and a failure to plan effectively for the future.
Does skin cancer screening work? By Kurt Ullman According to the US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), only limited evidence exists that skin cancer screening for adults is effective, particularly for melanoma mortality. Finding melanoma at early stages improves outcomes. That has led to research on the subject and suggestions from professional groups, such as the American Academy of Dermatology and the Skin Cancer Foundation, for yearly visits with a dermatologist.
Health inequalities call for advocacy and public engagement By Katherine E. Smith What role, then, might evidence play in policy development around health inequalities? Perhaps it’s time to move beyond the idea of evidence-based policy to start focusing on how different kinds of actors employ evidence in policy debates. This includes understanding how interests that can run counter to public health, such as unhealthy commodity producers like the tobacco industry, engage with policy debates about health inequalities.
The Universities UK taskforce: one year on By Nicole Westmarland It is now a year since it was announced that Universities UK would be establishing a taskforce on the problem of sexual violence in higher education. At its first meeting it widened its remit to also include the (much) broader issue of hate crime affecting students, but promised to maintain a particular focus on violence against women and sexual harassment. The taskforce intended to consider the current evidence, any ongoing work, and what more needs to be done.
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Specters in the stacks: haunted libraries in the United States By Katie D. Bennett and Molly Hansen Some people love libraries so much, they never leave. Though no living human being knows exactly what happens—or doesn’t happen—after death, certain library patrons have reported unnatural, paranormal events occurring within the walls of these four supposedly haunted libraries. Could they be ghosts attempting to check out a new Sci-Fi novel or mischievously disrupting the organized stacks?
Oxford Classical Dictionary How much do you know about ancient ghosts, witches, and monsters? By Zackery Cuevas and Ben Leonard From tales of Medusa’s wretched gaze turning men to stone to the cunning Sphinx torturing the city of Thebes, supernatural creatures and beings have long been a part of poems and children’s stories for centuries. The Greeks’ and Romans’ fears and superstitions informed their culture, and have long fascinated scholars intrigued by the extant corpus of mentions of witches, ghosts, and monsters in Greek and Roman literature.
Arthur Conan Doyle: spirits in the material world By Darryl Jones Sherlock Holmes is literature’s greatest rationalist; his faith in material reality is absolute. In his certainty, he resembles his creator; but not in his materialism. From the beginning of his writing career, Doyle was fascinated by the spirit world. One of his favourite literary modes, the Gothic, allowed him to explore the world of spirits and the supernatural, of vengeful mummies and predatory vampires, of ghosts and necromancers.
Why the UK must welcome the young people from Calais By Marie-Bénédicte Dembour The UK government has wanted to leave to their dramatic fate children, teenagers, refugees and migrants who find themselves in Calais and elsewhere in Europe. To much fanfare, a dozen children (legally meaning a person under 18) were finally allowed to cross the Channel on Monday 17 October to be reunited with members of their families. As the same paltry number of children arrived the next day, an uproar was started by the likes of David Davies MP and Nigel Farage.
It’s beginning to look a lot like October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month & policymaking By Patricia Strach October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and pink is everywhere. Corporate-connected activists have branded breast cancer as pink—feminine, hopeful, and uncontroversial. They worked with businesses to sponsor walks and runs and to create cause-marketing products (like the bagels) to raise awareness of and money for breast cancer. These messages have changed the way Americans think about breast cancer.
Vampire awareness in October 2016 By Dale Townshend When Best Buy, the American multinational consumer electronics corporation, declared 30 October 2008 “National Vampire Awareness Day,” they were cannily exploiting a metaphor that, within Western culture at least, was over 200 years old. Here, though, the vampires to be arrested, staked, and vanquished were not the suave, velvet-cloaked aristocrats of Old-World Europe, but the electronics and electrical appliances…
Brexit wrecks it? Prospects for post-EU retailing By Alan Treadgold The UK’s retail sector is going to be a particularly sensitive indicator of the effects of the Brexit referendum decision. Retailers, whether they are store-based, online or both, are intermediaries at the end of the value chain – and as such are very close to both consumers and suppliers – so they’ll be at the receiving end of Brexit effects in other sectors ranging from agriculture to car production to financial services.
Philosophy of Science/History of Science Biennial Meeting 2016: a conference guide By Joy Mizan The Oxford Philosophy and History teams are excited to see you in Atlanta for the upcoming 2016 History of Science/Philosophy of Science Biennial Meeting. We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in Georgia as well as our favorite sessions for the conference.
The Reformation: a conversation about death After studying the Reformation for over four decades, I’ve found myself alongside many other historians in pulling down one great Protestant myth: all you needed to do was put a little finger on the structure of the medieval Western Church, and it would fall over and collapse. Not so: the old religion satisfied most people and satisfied consumer demand.
Cities lead pushback against Big Soda By Larry Cohen Hacked corporate emails that expose Coca-Cola’s efforts to quash local health initiatives, a long-awaited statement from the World Health Organization expressing strong support for taxes on sugary drinks, and upcoming votes on four local soda tax proposals are keeping the grassroots movement to protect health over beverage industry profits front and center this fall.
World Internet Day: A reading list on older adults’ internet use By Deborah Carr The internet is arguably the most important invention in recent history. To recognize its importance, World Internet Day is celebrated each year on October 29, the date on which the first electronic message was transferred from one computer to another in 1969. At that time, a UCLA student programmer named Charley Kline was working under the supervision of his professor Leonard Klinerock, and transferred a message from a computer housed at UCLA to one at Stanford.
Halloween’s killer cereals By Dan Robinson For many of us, the prospect of Halloween is scary enough without the presence of roaming spirits. Those with children must weigh the risks of letting them trick-or-treat unsupervised—the familiar danger of “sugar overload”. Those with teenagers must consider the damage their brood are capable of doing, whether with eggs, toilet paper, or worse. Horror film goers will struggle with the walk home through darkened streets after back-to-back screenings.
Why we love horror (and Halloween) By Mathias Clasen It’s dark and warm and chaotic. The people in my group are screaming and scrambling to get away from the maniac who’s lumbering toward us with a roaring, smoke-belching chainsaw.
Aurality and the opening of oral archives By Anisa Puri The most recent issue of the OHR includes an article about the Australian Generations Oral History Project and the importance of “aurality” to oral history
Learning about lexicography: A Q&A with Peter Gilliver (Part 2) By Peter Gilliver Peter Gilliver has been an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1987, and is now one of the Dictionary’s most experienced lexicographers; he has also contributed to several other dictionaries published by Oxford University Press. In addition to his lexicographical work, he has been writing and speaking about the history of the OED for over fifteen years. In this two part Q&A, we learn more about how his passion for lexicography inspired him to write a book on the development of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Military justice: will the arc continue to bend in a progressive direction? By Eugene R. Fidell Rarely has there been a time in which military justice has loomed so large, or in such diverse ways. Certainly at any given time there are likely to be one or two high profile cases around the world, but lately it has seemed that the subject is never long out of the public eye. Consider the following kinds of issues: A Russian soldier stationed in Armenia murders a local family. Who should prosecute him for the murder, Russia or Armenia?
11 things about women in Ancient Israel you probably didn’t know By Cassandra Gill In a book that is mostly written by men and about men, what is the role of women? Over 90% of the names in the Hebrew bible are men. Most of the main actors of the text are men, and the books were originally written by and for men. Finding out about women’s experiences is not easy, but scholars have been able to figure out a lot by carefully combing through the text.
Homer’s The Odyssey: challenges for the 21st century translator By Anthony Verity Homeric word-order is unusually accommodating towards its English equivalent. Verbs usually come where you expect them, adjectives sit near their nouns. Compared to, say, the complex structures of a Pindaric ode, or the elliptical one-line exchanges of dramatic dialogue, Homer’s largely paratactic progression of ‘…and…but…when…then…’ presents his translator with few immediate problems.
Place of the Year 2016: behind the longlist We continue our reflection on 2016 with a more in depth look at the nominees for Place of the Year. Previously, we introduced our readers to the nominees simply as a list. Now, we’d like to go a bit more in-depth with each of the nominees.
Open in Action By Lucy Oates Over a decade has passed since the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access. A bystander could be forgiven for thinking that the level of discussion and the apparent differences in position across higher education institutions, publishing houses, laboratories, conference halls, funder headquarters, and government buildings must mean that progress has been limited.
Etymology gleanings for October 2016 By Anatoly Liberman Mr. Madhukar Gogate, a retired engineer from India, has written me several times, and I want to comment on some of his observations. He notes that there is no interest in the reform in Great Britain and the United States. I have to agree.
Which Founding Father are you? [quiz] By Marissa Lynch The interests of the Founding Fathers heavily influenced the framing of the Constitution. Much like representatives today, each came to the convention prepared to defend their right to conflicting benefits. Not only did each of their personalities differ greatly, but their opposing ideas also largely came from what they envisioned for the United States, their ideals, experiences and […]
What exactly is ‘contract theory’? By Amelia Carruthers At first glance, it may seem a dizzyingly impenetrable subject matter, but Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström’s contributions to ‘contract theory’ have revolutionized the study of economics. They have recently been awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, with the presentation committee noting how their pioneering analysis laid the “intellectual foundation for designing policies and institutions in many areas, from bankruptcy legislation to political constitutions.”
Why is the Bible so much like a horror movie? By Rhiannon Graybill What does the Hebrew Bible have in common with horror movies? This question is not as strange as it might seem. It only takes a few minutes with the biblical texts to begin to realize that the Bible is filled with all kinds of horror. There are strange figures dripping blood (Isa. 63) and mysterious objects that kill upon touch (2 Sam. 6:7).
A question of public influence: the case of Einstein By Richard Crockatt Einstein’s scientific achievements are well known even if not widely understood by non-scientists. He bestrode the twentieth century like a colossus and physicists are still working through his legacy. Besides, the theory of relativity penetrated far beyond science into many areas of literature and the arts. If hard to measure, evidence of his cultural influence is unmistakable.
Pinpointing the beginnings of audiology By Maryanne Maltby There is little agreement on when the particular branch of science known as ‘audiology’ really begins. Much depends upon one’s view of what constitutes audiology. Definitions vary slightly but basically all agree that audiology is the science, study, measurement, or treatment of hearing, hearing loss, and associated disorders. Although the word ‘audiology’ itself seems not to have come into use until after World War II,
“The Brazilian Cat” – an extract from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Gothic Tales By Arthur Conan Doyle We’re eagerly preparing for Halloween this month by reading all of our creepy classics and spine-chilling tales. Below is an extract from “The Brazilian Cat”, one of many short stories from master of the gothic form Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle drew on his own medical background, his travels, and his increasing interest in spiritualism and the occult for his Gothic Tales. Read on if you dare…
Nine most thought-provoking moments in Radiohead By Brad Osborn Radiohead is clearly a thinking-person’s music, but which of their songs are the most thought-provoking, and why? How do we make sense of their often surprising, even shocking music? If you’ve ever found yourself pondering Radiohead way too much, here are some clues, a few answers, and even more questions…
Lovecraft resurgent By Roger Luckhurst Not many, however, noted that Stranger Things, with its murderous, tentacled creature unleashed through a trans-dimensional portal into a small town by the experiments of a mad professor, owed virtually everything to the imagination of H. P. Lovecraft. He composed these scenarios over eighty years ago in classic stories like ‘The Dunwich Horror’ and ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’.
Treatment of depression in autism spectrum disorder By Christopher J. McDougle Mood disorders, including major depressive disorder, appear to be more common in those with developmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than in the general population. However, diagnosing depression in ASD represents a challenge that dates back to Leo Kanner’s original description of “infantile autism” in 1943. Kanner described a disturbance of “affective contact” in those with autism.
The ultimate reading list, created by librarians By Sally Bittiner At this year’s UKSG conference we asked our librarian delegates to help us build the perfect library by answering one simple question: which one book couldn’t you live without? Whilst the instructions were straightforward – write your chosen title on one of our book stickers and stick it on our bookshelf – the question itself proved challenging for the majority of our exceptionally well-read participants.
Discussing Open Access in action The 24 October marks the beginning of International Open Access Week 2016. This year, the theme is “Open in Action” which attempts to encourage all stakeholders to take further steps to make their work more openly available and encourages others to do the same. In celebration of this event, we asked some of our Journal Editors to discuss their commitments to Open Access (OA).
What is the future of human rights in the UK following Brexit? By Conor Gearty Imminent departure from the European Union has delayed but not dimmed the British government’s determination to have done with domestic human rights law. Enacted in the early years of the Blair administration, the Human Rights Act 1998 has long irritated the Conservative Party and its influential friends. It is the recent attack on immigration launched by the Home Secretary Amber Rudd at the most recent Tory conference that makes the Act particularly vulnerable in the context of the move to Brexit.
Nuclear arms control in a globalized world By John Baylis We live in a dangerous and uncertain world. While terrorism is the most immediate contemporary threat, the dangers of nuclear weapons remain an ever present concern. During the Cold War a series of nuclear arms control agreements helped to mitigate the worst excesses of the arms race and contributed to the easing of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, and their respective alliances.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion Are God and chance compatible? By David Bartholomew It has long been the unquestioned assumption of many religious believers that the God who created the world also acts in it. Until recent scientific discoveries, few challenged the idea of how exactly God interacts with the world. With the introduction of Newtonian science and quantum theory, we now know much more about how the world works, and the mode of God’s action has become a serious question for believers.
Accessible and inaccessible disciplines: why philosophy and science are similar but are treated differently By Paul Humphreys Amongst my books is a late nineteenth century edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Purchased from a used bookshop many years ago, it contains the previous owner’s signature on the flyleaf together with a commentary: “Started Boston 1883. Began again in Salt Lake City February 1891.
Is there a war on Christmas? [excerpt] By Gerry Bowler Is there a war on Christmas? Historian Gerry Bowler argues yes—and that it’s been going on for over 2000 years. The following excerpt from Christmas in the Crosshairs discusses recent incidences of Christmas-time political correctness in America, while highlighting examples of “Merry Christmas legislation.”
Developing the virtues By Darcia Narvaez Helicopter parenting is denounced by onlookers (e.g., David Brooks) as babying children who should be self-reliant, a highly valued characteristic in the USA. Children should not need parents but should use their own capacities to get through the day.
The Cuban missile crisis By Jonathan Colman The Cuban Missile Crisis was a six-day public confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union over the presence of Soviet strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba. It ended when the Soviets agreed to remove the weapons in return for a US agreement not to invade Cuba and a secret assurance that American missiles in Turkey would be withdrawn. The confrontation stemmed from the ideological rivalries of the Cold War.
What if they are innocent? Justice for people accused of sexual and child abuse By Ros Burnett Many people watching UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it.
The irony of gunpowder By Alex Roland Few inventions have shaped history as powerfully as gunpowder. It significantly altered the human narrative in at least nine significant ways. The most important and enduring of those changes is the triumph of civilization over the “barbarians.” That last term rings discordant in the modern ear, but I use it in the original Greek sense to mean “not Greek” or “not civilized.” The irony, however, is not that gunpowder reduced violence.
Learning about lexicography: A Q&A with Peter Gilliver (Part 1) By Peter Gilliver Peter Gilliver has been an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary since 1987, and is now one of the Dictionary’s most experienced lexicographers; he has also contributed to several other dictionaries published by OUP. In addition to his lexicographical work, he has been writing and speaking about the history of the OED for over fifteen years. In this two part Q&A, we learn more about how his passion for lexicography inspired him.
In conversation with cellist Evangeline Benedetti By Celine Aenlle-Rocha What was it like as one of the few female performers in the New York Philharmonic in the 1960s? We sat down with cellist and author Evangeline Benedetti to hear the answer to this and other questions about performance and teaching careers, favorite composers, and life behind the doors of Lincoln Center.
10 myths about the vikings By Eleanor Barraclough The viking image has changed dramatically over the centuries, romanticized in the 18th and 19 century, they are now alternatively portrayed as savage and violent heathens or adventurous explorers. Stereotypes and clichés are rampant in popular culture and vikings and their influence appear to various extents, from Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the comic Hägar the Horrible, and J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to Marvel’s Thor. But what is actually true? Eleanor Barraclough lifts the lid on ten common viking myths.
Place of the Year 2016 longlist: vote for your pick Quite a lot has happened in 2016. The year has flew by with history making events such as the Brexit, the Presidential election in the United States, and the blockade of Aleppo to name a few.
Blessing and cursing, part 2: curse By Anatoly Liberman Curse is a much more complicated concept than blessing, because there are numerous ways to wish someone bad luck. Oral tradition (“folklore”) has retained countless examples of imprecations. Someone might want a neighbor’s cow to stop giving milk or another neighbor’s wife to become barren.
Australia in three words, part 3 — “Public servant” By William Coleman ‘Public Servant’ — in the sense of ‘government employee’ — is a term that originated in the earliest days of the European settlement of Australia. This coinage is surely emblematic of how large bureaucracy looms in Australia. Bureaucracy, it has been well said, is Australia’s great ‘talent,’ and “the gift is exercised on a massive scale” (Australian Democracy, A.F. Davies 1958). This may surprise you. It surprises visitors, and excruciates them.
American History The French Victory at Yorktown: 19 October 1781 By Stephen Conway The surrender of Lord Cornwallis’s British army at Yorktown, Virginia, on 19 October 1781 marked the effective end of the War of American Independence, at least in North America. The victory is usually assumed to have been Washington’s; he led the army that besieged Cornwallis, marching a powerful force of 16,000 troops down from near New York City to oppose the British. Charles O’Hara, The presence of the young Alexander Hamilton, one of Washington’s aides-de-camp, who led a light infantry unit in the final stages of the siege, adds to the sense of its being a great American triumph.
Holy crap: toilet found in an Iron Age shrine in Lachish By Stephen C. Russell In September, the Israel Antiquities Authority made a stunning announcement: at the ancient Judean city of Lachish, second only to Jerusalem in importance, archaeologists have uncovered a shrine in the city’s gate complex with two vandalized altars and a stone toilet in its holiest section. “Holy crap!” I said to a friend when I first read the news.
Federalists and Anti-Federalists: the founders of America [infographic] By Marissa Lynch Between October 1787 and August 1788, a collection of 85 articles and essays were distributed by the Federalist movement. Authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers highlighted the political divisions of their time.
Why is the world changing so fast? By Christopher Riches Over the past 30 years, I have worked on many reference books, and so am no stranger to recording change. However, the pace of change seems to have become more frantic in the second decade of this century. Why might this be? One reason, of course, is that, with 24-hour news and the internet, information is transmitted at great speed. Nearly every country has online news sites which give an indication of the issues of political importance.
You have to read Henry Green By Nick Shepley Henry Green is renowned for being a “writer’s-writer’s writer” and a “neglected” author. The two, it would seem, go hand in hand, but neither are quite true. This list of reasons to read Henry Green sets out to loosen the inscrutability of the man and his work.
How university students infantilise themselves By Jonathan Zimmerman Like their forebears in the 1960s, today’s students blasted university leaders as slick mouthpieces who cared more about their reputations than about the people in their charge. But unlike their predecessors, these protesters demand more administrative control over university affairs, not less. That’s a childlike position. It’s time for them to take control of their future, instead of waiting for administrators to shape it.
Big data in the nineteenth century By Cóilín Parsons Initially, they had envisaged dozens of them: slim booklets that would handily summarize all of the important aspects of every parish in Ireland. It was the 1830s, and such a fantasy of comprehensive knowledge seemed within the grasp of the employees of the Ordnance Survey in Ireland.
The transition of China into an innovation nation By Yu Zhou The writing is on the wall: China is the world second largest economy and the growth rate has slowed sharply. The wages are rising, so that the fabled army of Chinese cheap labor is now among the most costly in Asian emerging economies. China, in the last thirty years has brought hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, but this miracle would stall unless China can undertake another transformation of becoming an innovation nation.
Brexit: environmental accountability and EU governance By Maria Lee Civil society will be preoccupied in the years to come with ensuring the maintenance of environmental standards formerly set by EU environmental law. This blog provides some thoughts on the less visible aspects of EU environmental governance, aspects that must be held up to scrutiny as we develop an accountability framework ‘independent’ of the rules and institutions of the European Union.
Nutrition for Developing Countries - Third Edition The first 1000 days By Ann Burgess and Jennifer N. Nielsen Nowadays we use the term ‘first ‘1000 days’ to mean the time between conception and a child’s second birthday. We know that providing good nutrients and care during this period are key to child development and giving a baby the optimum start in life. Mina and Apollo are gazing at their newborn baby, Tunu, with bitter sweet smiles. They are thrilled with the safe arrival of a healthy baby but they remember the child they have lost.
Engendering debate and collaboration in African universities By Peace A. Medie A quick scan of issues of the most highly-ranked African studies journals published within the past year will reveal only a handful of articles published by Africa-based authors. The results would not be any better in other fields of study. This under representation of scholars from the continent has led to calls for changes in African universities, with a focus on capacity building. The barriers to research and publication in most public universities in Africa are many.
The University: past, present, … and future? By Zachary Purvis By nearly all accounts, higher education has in recent years been lurching towards a period of creative destruction. Presumed job prospects and state budgetary battles pit the STEM disciplines against the humanities in much of our popular and political discourse. On many fronts, the future of the university, at least in its recognizable form as a veritable institution of knowledge, has been cast into doubt.
OUP Philosophy How much do you know about al-Kindi? [quiz] By John Priest This October, the OUP Philosophy team honors al-Kindi (c. 800-870) as their Philosopher of the Month. Known as the “first philosopher of the Arabs,” al-Kindi was one of the most important mathematicians, physicians, astronomers and philosophers of his time.
The library—100 years from now By Katie D. Bennett I want to live to be 100 years old. Yes, that is a bold statement, and I’ll admit this goal may be a bit unrealistic and potentially impossible, but my curiosity pushes me to beat the laws of nature. As a 22-year-old avid reader working for a publishing company, I can’t help but wonder: what will be the future of the printed book? Since the creation of the world wide web by Tim Burners-Lee in 1989 and it’s continual expansion since then, this question has haunted the publishing industry, raising profound questions about the state of the industry and the printed book.
A person-less variant of the Bernadete paradox By Roy T Cook Before looking at the person-less variant of the Bernedete paradox, lets review the original: Imagine that Alice is walking towards a point – call it A – and will continue walking past A unless something prevents her from progressing further.
The nail that sticks out gets hammered down, or does it? By Florian Coulmas Do you have a tattoo to care for? If not, shouldn’t you ask yourself, why not? Butterflies on calves, angel wings on shoulders, Celtic crosses across chests of law-abiding citizens have superseded anchors and arrow-pierced hearts on biceps of the demimonde. The size of your body surface area is the limit, because, “YAS, this gives you life!”
Brexit: the UK’s different options By Léo Wilkinson The UK’s vote to leave the EU has resulted in a tremendous amount of uncertainty regarding the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Yet, predicting what type of new relationship the UK will have with the EU and its 27 other Member States post-‘Brexit’ is very difficult, mainly because it is the first time an EU member state prepares to leave. We can expect either one, or a mixture, of the following options.
Shakespeare’s contemporaries and collaborators [infographic] While it is obvious that Shakespeare drew a tremendous amount of inspiration from Christopher Marlowe (note the effect of The Jew of Malta, Hero and Leander, and Tamburlaine on The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Shakespeare’s history plays, respectively), this kind of borrowing and […]
OUP Philosophy Art in the age of digital production By Bernard Hay Between 1986 and 1988, the jazz musician and experimental music pioneer George Lewis created the first version of Voyager. After spending some time making work that involved compositional programmes in Paris, Lewis returned to the US and began work on Voyager. His aspiration was not simply to use computers as a tool or raw material, but to create software that could take an equal improvisational role to the other (human) musicians in the performance.
Beyond business and the book fair: exploring Frankfurt By Anne Ziebart The world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it’s the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown. Sadly, the most common thing I hear is that there is little that they know beyond Frankfurt airport and the exhibition centre.
Dosing distraction in the world of augmented-reality By Jano Boghossian, David G. Armstrong, and Bellal Joseph We have reached an age where the trajectories of the advancement of technology including mobile applications, artificial intelligence, and virtual and augmented reality may rapidly spike at any given moment, potentiating an increased incidence of unforeseen consequences in the form of distraction-related morbidity. In the not-too-distant past, logging onto the internet meant sitting in front of a computer.
Making Connections at #OHA2016 By Andrew Shaffer In the words of our very own Troy Reeves, the OHA Annual Meeting offers a “yearly dose of sanity.” Whether you’re reading this while waiting for one of the panels to start, sitting this one out, or reflecting back on the excitement of the meeting later, we want to bring you a little taste of the fun. Below you can hear from a handful of oral historians on why they love the OHA Annual Meeting, as well as a look at social media activity during the conference.
Will print die?: When the inevitable isn’t By Naomi S. Baron Mark Twain is reputed to have quipped, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” Such hyperbole aptly applies to predictions that digital reading will soon triumph over print. In late 2012, Ben Horowitz (co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz Venture Capital) declared, “Babies born today will probably never read anything in print.” Now four years on, the plausibility of his forecast has already faded.
How much choice is there in addiction? By Nick Heather and Gabriel Segal There is much that we agree about in our understanding of addiction and what can be done about the harm it causes. However, unusually perhaps for collaborators, we disagree about some important implications of suggesting a rethink of the relationship between addiction and choice. First, what do we agree on? We agree that the relationship between addiction and choice needs rethinking.
Presidential birthday cakes: the Ike Day recipe By David Haven Blake On this day, sixty years ago, Republicans celebrated President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s upcoming birthday with a star-studded televised tribute on CBS. As part of his re-election campaign, Ike Day was a nationwide celebration of Ike: communities held dinners and parades, there were special halftime shows at college football games, and volunteers collected thousands of signatures from citizens pledging to vote.
A Q&A with Kate Farquhar-Thomson, Head of publicity By Kate Farquhar-Thomson From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. Kate Farquhar-Thomson came to Oxford University Press in 1999 in search of a country life – and found it! Today finds her heading up an almost (apart from the Americas) global PR team for the Oxford University Press’s academic division. We sat down with Kate to talk about her publishing career and what it’s like to work for OUP.
What do the classics do for you? This week, Oxford University Press (OUP) and The Reader announced an exciting new partnership, working together to build a core classics library and to get great literature into the hands of people who need it most, with the Oxford World’s Classics series becoming The Reader’s “house brand” for use in their pioneering Shared Reading initiatives.
Blessing and cursing, part 1: bless By Anatoly Liberman Strangely, both bless and curse are rather hard etymological riddles, though bless seems to pose less trouble, which makes sense: words live up to their meaning and history, and bless, as everybody will agree, has more pleasant connotations than curse.
The power of volunteering: you make me happy and I make you happy By Yu Aoki Millions of people across the world work for voluntary organisations and invest their abundant energies into helping their communities. Historically, establishments of voluntary organisations date back to at least the nineteenth century, when some of the world’s largest voluntary organisations, such as the Red Cross, were established to help people in need for free. To date, volunteer work remains a popular activity among the public worldwide.
Sex, Pope Francis, and empire By Peter Gardella Pope Francis recently said in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia, and on several occasions over the last year, that Western nations are exporting an idea that gender is a choice. Pope Francis asserts that this “gender ideology” is the enemy of the family. Here the pope disappoints many in America and Europe, who hoped that he might free Catholics from the heritage of homophobia and repression of women that has been protected and promoted for millennia by the Roman Catholic Church.
Virginia Woolf: author, publisher, feminist By Emily Tobin As a young woman, Virginia Woolf toured London’s National Portrait Gallery and grieved to find that almost all the portraits in the collection were of men. Woolf was so resentful that she later refused to sit for a drawing commissioned by the gallery, seemingly renouncing an opportunity to add her own portrait to its walls.
10 things Birth of a Nation got right about Nat Turner By Patrick H. Breen On Sixty Minutes, when filmmaker Nate Parker was asked if Birth of a Nation was historically accurate, he noted, “There’s never been a film that was 100 percent historically accurate. That’s why they say based on a true story and doesn’t say, ‘A true story.’” Hollywood may not be the best place to learn one’s history, but here are ten things that the new movie Birth of a Nation got right about Nat Turner’s revolt:
High-fructose honey and the diet of urban bees By Clint Penick The story of New York’s red honey struck a chord with those already concerned about honey bee health. Bees have been hit hard by a host of challenges ranging from parasitic mites to neonicotenoid pesticides—but could red honey be another sign of bee decline? Could artificial flavors and chemicals in human foods be toxic to bees? Could we be at risk if we eat “local honey”?
5 things you always wanted to know about interest groups By Andreas Dür Virtually no government policy gets enacted without some organized societal interests trying to shape the outcome. In fact, interest groups – a term that encompasses such diverse actors as business associations, labour unions, professional associations, and citizen groups that defend broad interests such as environmental protection or development aid – are active at each stage of the policy cycle.
Ten fun facts about the theremin By Ariana Milligan Have you ever wanted to control sound waves? Or spook your friends with an eerie melody? If you answered yes, check out OUP’s instrument of the month, the theremin.
Social Work Homelessness: issues by the numbers and how you can help By Cassandra Gill Today, 10 October, is World Homeless Day. This day is dedicated to increasing awareness of the global issues surrounding homelessness, as well as getting people involved in their community to help meet the needs of homeless people locally. The increased publicity and solidarity of the global platform helps to strengthen grassroots campaigns at the most local level. The problems regarding homelessness are multifaceted.
Alternate realities: Brexit and Pokémon By Duncan French I may not have understood the allure of capturing Pokémon (…) but I hope I am not so trenchant as to run around in the hope of spotting something even rarer; UK membership of the EU as it existed prior to 23 June 2016. That truly is becoming an alternate reality.
Is elementary school mathematics “real” mathematics? By Andreas J. Stylianides When people think of elementary school mathematics, they usually bring to mind number facts, calculations, and algorithms. This isn’t surprising, as these topics tend to dominate classroom work in many elementary schools internationally. There is little doubt that elementary students should know the multiplication tables, be able to do simple calculations mentally, develop fluency in using algorithms to carry out more complex calculations
How well do you know your world leaders? [quiz] In today’s globalised and instantly shareable social-media world, heads of state have to watch what they say, just as much – and perhaps even more so – than what they actually do. The rise of ‘Twiplomacy’ and the recent war of sound bites between Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton speak to this ever-increasing trend. With these witty refrains in mind, test your knowledge of world leaders and their retorts – do you know who said what?
American History Twitter and the Enlightenment in early America By John M. Dixon A New Yorker once declared that “Twitter” had “struck Terror into a whole Hierarchy.” He had no computer, no cellphone, and no online social media following. He was not a presidential candidate, but he would go on to sign the Constitution of the United States. So who was he? And what did he mean by “Twitter”?
How to write a grant proposal By Edwin Battistella Whatever its scale or ambition, a grant proposal aims to do two things: to show that a particular project needs to be supported by a funder and to show why some individual, group or organization is the right one—the best one—to carry out the project. Showing the “need” is largely an exercise in argumentative writing. It’s argumentative not in the hostile, red-faced, fist-shaking sense but in the classical sense of establishing a claim
Darwinism as religion: what literature tells us about evolution By Michael Ruse From the publication of the Origin, Darwin enthusiasts have been building a kind of secular religion based on its ideas, particularly on the dark world without ultimate meaning implied by the central mechanism of natural selection.
Space travel to improve health on earth By Lisa Brown World Space Week has been celebrated for the last 17 years, with events taking place all over the world, making it one of the biggest public events in the world. Highlighting the research conducted and achievements reached, milestones are celebrated in this week. The focus isn’t solely on finding the ‘Final Frontier’ but also on how the research conducted can be used to help humans living on Earth.
How would the ancient Stoics have dealt with hate speech? By William Irvine Insults have lately been making headline news. Last year, the world witnessed an attack on the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
American History The transformation of food in America in the 19th century By Cassandra Gill At the start of the 1800s, American cities had only a few public dining options such as taverns or hotels; by the end of the century, restaurants had become “a central part of the fabric of cities.” In the 19th century, the landscape of food consumption in America greatly changed. The modern concepts of retail food shops, restaurants, industrial food systems, and diverse food options emerged.
How safe are office-based surgical facilities? By James C. Grotting Like many plastic surgeons, and as my aesthetic practice has grown, I prefer to perform most surgeries in my accredited, office-based operating room. By operating in my office, I have access to my own highly qualified team members who are accustomed to working together. In this way, we can create an experience for the patient that is more private, safe, efficient, cost-effective, and highly likely to produce optimal results.
Fiddle parts and sound posts: how objects tell stories By Quincy Whitney Biography chooses us when there is alchemy between biographer and subject—a perfect fit of interlocking puzzle pieces. In my case, a lifelong fascination with objects and the craftsmen who make them led me to the story of a pioneering violinmaker—American Luthier: Carleen Hutchins—the Art and Science of the Violin.
Social Work Solution building for student success By Johnny Kim and Michael Kelly Teachers, administrators, and school social workers also prepare for a fresh start with new students and ideas to engage in another year of educational and developmental learning. Unfortunately, as the school year progresses, the new beginning and excitement can give way to complacency, frustration, and sometimes hopelessness. The reality for students who are disengaged from school, as well as those who experience significant academic and behavioral issues, is a season of uncertainty, diminished expectations, and possibly serious life outcomes that are just beginning.
Measuring up By David J. Hand My first degree was in mathematics, where I specialised in mathematical physics. That meant studying notions of mass, weight, length, time, and so on. After that, I took a master’s and a PhD in statistics. Those eventually led to me spending 11 years working at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, where the central disciplines were medicine and psychology. Like physics, both medicine and psychology are based on measurements.
Becoming better strategic thinkers By Arnaud Chevallier A manager at a hotel receives an alarming number of complaints from her guests that they have to wait too long for elevators. So she requests quotes for installing an additional elevator. Turned down by the price tag of that solution, the manager seeks an alternative and decides to give her guests something to do while they wait for the elevator, by installing mirrors or televisions or providing magazines.
Rihanna and representations of black women – Episode 39 – The Oxford Comment “Come and put your name on it,” is the first line in Rihanna’s song “Birthday Cake.” She is referring to her female anatomy as she dances in a hip-centered motion, reminiscent of Caribbean movement. Across the globe, reactions to the song’s connotation and the provocative dancing varied greatly, each individual interpreting the sequence of events based on their own experiences, culture, race and gender.
Brexit and Article 50 negotiations: why the smart money might be on no deal By Matthew Watson David Cameron famously got precious little from his pre-referendum attempts to negotiate a special position for the UK in relation to existing EU treaty obligations. This was despite almost certainly having held many more cards back then than UK negotiators will do when Article 50 is eventually invoked. In particular, he was still able to threaten that he would lead the Out campaign if he did not get what he wanted, whereas now that the vote to leave has happened that argument has been entirely neutralised.
Skype meetings, coffee, and collaboration: a Q&A with Ariana Milligan By Ariana Milligan Ariana Milligan recently started working with Oxford University Press’s Global Digital Products Marketing team in New York. She tells us about how working on products such as Grove Art Online and Oxford Music Online creates an inspiring day-to-day life.
The different faces of Taliban jihad in Pakistan By Dr. Mona Kanwal Sheikh All simplistic hypothesis about “what drives terrorists” falter when there is suddenly in front of you human faces and complex life stories. The tragedy of contemporary policies designed to handle or rather crush movements who employ terrorist tactics, are prone to embrace a singular explanation of the terrorist motivation, disregarding the fact that people can be in the very same movement for various reasons.
Etymology gleanings for September 2016 By Anatoly Liberman As usual, let me offer my non-formulaic, sincere thanks for the comments, additions, questions, and corrections. I have a theory that misspellings are the product of sorcery, as happened in my post on the idiom catch a crab (in rowing). According to the routine of many years, I proofread my texts with utmost care.
One concerned economist By Richard S. Grossman A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail inviting me to sign a statement drafted by a group calling itself “Economists Concerned by Hillary Clinton’s Economic Agenda.” The statement, a vaguely worded five paragraph denunciation of Democratic policies (and proposed policies) is unremarkable — as are the authors, a collection of reliably conservative policy makers and commentators whose support for Donald Trump appear with some regularity in the media.
Witches, werewolves, and Christmas By Gerry Bowler In Hamlet, Marcellus, referring to the royal ghost, says: “It faded on the crowing of the cock. Some say that ever gainst that season comes wherein our Saviour’s birth is celebrated, this bird of dawning singeth all night long, and then, they say, no spirit dare walk abroad, The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike, No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, so hallowed and so gracious is that time.”
6 common misconceptions about Salafi Muslims in the West By Anabel Inge Salafism, often referred to as ‘Wahhabism’, is widely regarded as a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that fuels Jihadism and subjugates women. Some even lump ISIS and Salafism together—casting suspicion upon the thousands of Muslims who identify as Salafi in the West. After gaining unprecedented access to Salafi women’s groups in London, I discovered the realities behind the myths.
How Americans found information before the Internet By James W. Cortada How was information used before the age of Google? Cookbooks showed people how to make new dishes; instructions packed with disassembled toys carried the terror-filled message “some assembly required” and ensured hours of labor on Christmas Eve for millions of parents. Today, people “Google”, but this kind of information gathering has occurred since the seventeenth century.
The early promise of “liquid” cancer tests By Susan Jenks A powerful technology that continues to evolve, researchers say, has rekindled interest in liquid biopsies as a way to disrupt tumor progression. The technology, genetic sequencing, is allowing researchers a closer look at the genetic trail tumors leave in the blood as cancer develops. That capability, as these new “liquid” blood tests work their way into clinics, may further a deeper understanding of how tumors alter their molecular masks to defy treatment.
Counter-terrorism and mental health issues By Louis René Beres Throughout the world, many people suffer from profound afflictions of mental illness. Of these, a plainly substantial number are inclined to various forms of violent behavior. And when opportunities arise to dignify their more-or-less irrepressible violent behaviors under the purifying rubric of some “higher cause” — e.g., revolution, rebellion, or jihad — some will gratefully seize upon those “exculpatory” opportunities.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano The eighteenth-century rhythm riddle: what is the quarter note quandary? By Donna Gunn If you were to ask a modern musician what the quarter note means in Common Time the answer would be simple: “It lasts for one full beat, to be released at the beginning of the succeeding beat.” Ah, but eighteenth-century rhythm reading is not a simple “one-size-fits-all” affair. Just as spoken language has evolved over time, so has music notational language. The notation has remained much the same; it is how the notation is read that has changed.
Churches and politics: why the Johnson Amendment should be modified and not repealed By Edward A. Zelinsky Speaking before the Family Research Council, the Republican nominee for president, Donald Trump, called for a repeal of the “Johnson Amendment.” The Johnson Amendment is part of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and prohibits tax-exempt organizations such as schools, hospitals, and churches from participating in political campaigns. The Republican Party’s 2016 platform echoes Mr. Trump.
Hey, language-learning platforms! By Dawn Field Even when speakers are proficient in English, Scientific English can still present challenges. Some bill it as ‘a foreign language’ even for native English speakers. Anyone who has learned how to use it might first laugh at that comparison and then grit their teeth on the grain of truth. Learning conversational English is a big enough task. Getting good enough to build a career in science fluently using Scientific English is a Herculean task.
Barriers to sexual freedom in assisted living By Elisabeth O. Burgess, Alexis A. Bender, and Christina Barmon The baby boom generation came of age at a time that pushed boundaries of sexual freedom. Changes in attitudes and behaviors about sexuality were framed by the sexual revolution, women’s rights, gay rights, and the birth control pill. Decades later, the first wave of this generation is now turning 65. While most boomers still have a decade or more before they consider moving into assisted living facilities, a study suggests that sexual freedom is difficult to come by for those who currently reside in a structured environment such as assisted living.
Air quality law in the United Kingdom at a crossroads By Eloise Scotford UK air quality law now finds itself at a crossroads. Air quality law is a well-established area of environmental law, having been at the vanguard of much of it. It is a well-established area across multiple levels of governance, with local and national regulation in the UK operating against a backdrop of binding EU standards and an international law framework for transboundary air pollution
Tightrope walking: The future of political science By Matthew Flinders Imagine standing at the edge of a precipice. A combination of forces are pushing at your back, biting at your heels and generally forcing you to step into an unknown space. A long thin tightrope without any apparent ending stretches out in front of you and appears to offer your only lifeline. Doing nothing and standing still is not an option. You lift up your left foot and gingerly step out….
Seeing in the dark: Catholic theology and Søren Kierkegaard By Joshua Furnal In a candid interview with Stephen Colbert, Vice President Joe Biden gave a moving testimony about his faith amid the pain of recently losing his son to brain cancer. In the past, both Colbert and Biden have been open about their Catholic faith, but in this moment both men found themselves reflecting upon how they have struggled with their faith after losing loved ones very close to them.
Cartesian plasticity: The curious case of Henricus Regius By Tad M. Schmaltz Regius was a professor of medicine at the University of Utrecht. He was much taken with the views he had read in the scientific essays accompanying Descartes’s Discours de la méthode (1637), and was one of the first to introduce Descartes’s new mechanistic account of the material world into the Dutch academy.
Country house visiting: past, present, and future By Mark Rothery From every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendour, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings
Human-animal chimeras and dehumanization By John H. Evans The US government recently announced that it was lifting its moratorium on funding certain experiments that use human stem cells to create animals that are partly human. At present scientists are only interested in creating entities with some human qualities, but which remain “mostly” animals. For example, some scientists want to create a chimeric pig with a human-enough heart to transplant into a human. Distinguishing between humans and other animals is common in most cultures.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: al-Kindi By John Priest Known as the “first philosopher of the Arabs,” al-Kindi was one of the most important mathematicians, physicians, astronomers and philosophers of his time. He composed hundreds of treatises, using many of the tools of Greek philosophy to address themes in Islamic thought.
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History in the courtroom: 70 years since the Nuremberg Trials By Kim Christian Priemel Seventy years ago, on 30 September 1946, Lord Justice Lawrence, the presiding judge of the International Military Tribunal, began reading out the judgement in the trial of the so-called major German war criminals at Nuremberg. For nearly a year the remnants of the Third Reich’s top brass, led by Hermann Goering, had stood trial for crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and a conspiracy to commit the aforesaid crimes.
Nutrition Reviews Whole grains for cancer prevention? Take the evidence with a grain… By Niyati Parekh and Nour Makarem An emerging field in the area of nutrition and cancer is the role of whole grains in cancer prevention. In a world where carbohydrates, particularly refined sources, are increasingly viewed as the culprit for obesity and associated chronic disease, are whole grains the safest carbohydrate to recommend for cancer prevention? Currently, consuming a plant-based diet containing whole grain foods is part of the American Cancer Society
Racing towards OHA2016 in Long Beach, the “International City” By Mark T. Garcia As has become OHR tradition, we have enlisted the help of a local to serve as a guide to the upcoming OHA Annual meeting in beautiful Long Beach, California. Below, Mark Garcia shares some of the city’s fascinating history, as well as his personal recommendations for oral historians who want to venture out and see some of what the city has to offer.
A Q&A with Lauren Jackson: Morrissey, MMA, and Megan Abbott By Lauren Jackson We sat down with Lauren Jackson, an Assistant Marketing Manager based in our New York office, to quiz her on her favourite words, her favourite books, and her favourite UFC fighter. We are delighted to welcome Lauren to the marketing team and are jealous of what she keeps in her desk drawer… You can find out more about Lauren below.
Very short facts about the Very Short Introductions By Andrea Keegan and Jenny Nugee This week we are celebrating the 500th title in the Very Short Introductions series, Measurement: A Very Short Introduction, which will publish on 6th October. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make often challenging topics highly readable. To mark its publication editors Andrea Keegan and Jenny Nugee have put together a list of Very Short Facts about the series.
Is happiness in our genes? By Michael Pluess It is easy to observe that some people are happier than others. But trying to explain why people differ in their happiness is quite a different story. Is our happiness the result of how well things are going for us or does it simply reflect our personality? Of course, the discussion on the exact roles of nature (gene) versus nurture (experience) is not new at all. When it comes to how we feel, however, most of us may think that our happiness
Rebuilding and restoring the Houses of Parliament [timeline] By Caroline Shenton The Houses of Parliament in London is one of the most famous buildings in the world. A masterpiece of Victorian Gothic architecture which incorporates survivals from the medieval Palace of Westminster, it was made a World Heritage Site by UNESCO along with Westminster Abbey, and St Margaret’s Church, in 1987. With its restoration and renewal in the news, find out more about the background in this interactive timeline.
Secrets and trivia from the Broadway stage By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Why do some great Broadway shows fail, and mediocre ones thrive? How does the cast onstage manage to keep tabs on the audience without missing a beat or a line? Ken Bloom, author of Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Audiences, delves into the inner workings of the Broadway stage and the culture surrounding Broadway hips and flops.
Into the unknown: professional development for future educators By Leah Holroyd One of the greatest challenges faced by schools and universities today is preparing students for an unknown future. Our graduates will likely have multiple careers, work in new and emerging industries, grapple with technologies we can’t even imagine yet. And so we’re asking our staff to equip students with the skills they need to thrive in a potentially very different world to the one we live in now.
The origin of the word “slang” is known! By Anatoly Liberman Caution is a virtue, but, like every other virtue, it can be practiced with excessive zeal and become a vice (like parsimony turning into stinginess). The negative extreme of caution is cowardice.
New York City’s housing crisis By Jason M. Barr New York City is the midst of a housing affordability crisis. Over the last decade, average rents have climbed 15% while the income of renters has increased only 2%. The city’s renaissance since the 1990’s has drawn thousands of new residents; today, the population of 8.5 million people is the highest it has ever been. But New Yorkers are finding that the benefits of city living are not without its costs. The demand for housing has outstripped the real estate community’s ability to supply it; as a result, prices have been rising.
Profiling schoolmasters in early modern England By Emily Hansen In 2015 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography introduced an annual research bursary scheme for scholars in the humanities. As the first year of the scheme comes to a close, we ask the second of the 2015-16 recipients—the early modern historian, Dr Emily Hansen—about her research project, and how it’s developed through her association with the Oxford DNB.
Human Reproduction Open How fertility patients can make informed decisions on treatment By Kate Brian Media coverage of health news can seem to consist of a steady diet of research-based stories, but making sense of what may be relevant or important and what is not can be a tall order for most patients. Headlines may shout about dramatic breakthroughs, exciting new advances, revolutions, and even cures but there may be scant details of the evidence base of the research.
Encyclopedia of Social Work The impact of addictions and means of prevention, treatment, & recovery By Cassandra Gill September is National Recovery Month in the US. Recovery Month is a time dedicated to increasing awareness and understanding of substance use and mental disorders. It’s also a time to celebrate those who are in recovery and those who do recover. The goal of the observance month is to educate others that addiction treatment and mental health services are effective, and that people can recover. With respect for this time, we compiled some statistics on addiction disorders to support awareness of these issues and show that individuals are not alone.
So not a form: Structure evolves from dramatic ideas By Bruce Adolphe The sonata concept served some of the greatest imaginations in the history of music, but seriously it is, as I like to say to students, “so not a form”. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms were not in need of a standardized template, and in essence what has come to be called sonata form is more like courtroom procedure: a process that allows for an infinite variety of stories to be unfold, from a fender bender to vandalism to murder.
The earnest faith of a storyteller By Kin-Yan Szeto Ang Lee, the two-time Academy Award-winning director, has noted that we should never underestimate the power of storytelling. Indeed, as a storyteller, Lee has shown through his films the potential of stories to connect people, to heal wounds, to drive change, and to reveal more about ourselves and the world. In particular, Lee has harnessed new technology for storytelling in movies such as Life of Pi (2012) and his upcoming feature film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (to be released on 11 November, 2016).
Putin and beyond: a Q&A on Russian politics By Andrew Monaghan Russian politics has always been a fascinating subject around the globe. Exactly how politics works there, along with Putin’s vision for the country and the world at large is the source of constant debate.
Five questions for Oxford World’s Classics cover designer Alex Walker Judging a book by its cover has turned out to be a necessity in life. We’ve all perused book shops and been seduced by a particularly intriguing cover–perhaps we have even been convinced to buy a book because of its cover. And, truly, there is no shame in that. It takes skill and artistry to craft a successful book cover, and that should be acknowledged.
Genome editing’s brave new world By John Parrington “O, wonder!/How many goodly creatures are there here!/How beauteous mankind is!/O brave new world,/That has such people in’t!” Shakespeare’s lines in The Tempest famously inspired Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World, first published in 1932. Huxley’s vision of the future has become a byword for the idea that attempts at genetic (and social) engineering are bound to go wrong. With its crude partitioning of society, by stunting human development before birth, and with its use of a drug – soma – to induce a false sense of happiness and suppress dissent, this was the opposite of a ‘beauteous’ world.
A former child soldier prosecuted at the International Criminal Court By Mark A. Drumbl It’s easy to assume that only ‘evil’ people commit atrocity. And it’s equally easy to imagine the victims as ‘good’ or ‘innocent’. But the reality is far more complex. Many perpetrators are tragic. They may begin as victims. Victims, too, may victimize others. These victims are imperfect. Some victims survive – and some even thrive – because of harm they inflict.
Brexit and Article 50 negotiations: what it would take to strike a deal By Matthew Watson In the end, the decision for the UK to formally withdraw its membership of the European Union passed with a reasonably comfortable majority in excess of 1¼ million votes. Every one of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave would have had their own reason for wanting to break with the status quo. However, not one of them had any idea as to what they were voting for next. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of an all-or-nothing referendum.
American History The development of urban nightlife, 1940s hipsters, & the rise of dating Cities in the early days of the United States were mostly quiet at night. People who did leave the comfort of their own homes at night could often be found walking into puddles, tripping over uneven terrain, or colliding into posts because virtually no street lighting existed.With the advent of gas lighting, culture transformed in fascinating ways. Here are 12 interesting facts about urban nightlife, which show how times have greatly changed and, remarkably, how some things have remained the same.
OUP Philosophy Back to philosophy: A reading list Are you taking any philosophy courses as part of your degree this year? Or are you continuing with a second degree in philosophy? Then look no further for the best in philosophy research. We’ve brought together some of our most popular textbooks to help you prepare for the new academic year. From Plato to Descartes, ancient wisdom to modern philosophical issues, this list provides a great first stop for under-graduate and post-graduate students alike.
The quest for order in modern society By Volker Prott Opening the morning paper or browsing the web, routine actions for us all, rarely if ever shake our fundamental beliefs about the world. If we assume a naïve, reflective state of mind, however, reading newspapers and surfing the web offer us quite a different experience: they provide us with a glimpse into the kaleidoscopic nature of the modern era that can be quite irritating.
Shakespeare and performance: the 16th century to today [infographic] In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, Shakespeare’s plays were performed at professional playhouses such as the Globe and the Rose, as well as at the Inns of Court, the houses of noblemen, and at the Queen’s palace. In fact, the playing company The Queen’s Men was formed at the express command of Elizabeth I to […]
The strange case of the missing non-existent objects By Graham Priest Alexius Meinong (1853-1920) was an Austrian psychologist and systematic philosopher working in Graz around the turn of the 20th century. Part of his work was to put forward a sophisticated analysis of the content of thought. A notable aspect of this was as follows. If you are thinking of the Taj Mahal, you are thinking of something, and that something exists.
What inspires the people who save lives? By Ellie Gregory The ability to improve the health of another person or to save their life requires great skill, knowledge, and dedication. The impact that this work has goes above and beyond your average career, extending to the families and friends of patients. We were interested to discover what motivates the people who play a vital role in the health and quality of life of hundreds of people every year.
Why peer review is so important As part of Peer Review Week, running from 19-25 September 2016, we are celebrating the essential role that peer review plays in maintaining scientific quality. We asked some of our journal’s editorial teams to tell us why peer review is so important to them and their journals.
Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam Hussein: The history of the myth of Babylon By Trevor Bryce ‘Babylon’ is a name which throughout the centuries has evoked an image of power and wealth and splendour – and decadence. Indeed, in the biblical Book of Revelation, Rome is damned as the ‘Whore of Babylon’ – and thus identified with a city whose image of lust and debauchery persisted and flourished long after the city itself had crumbled into dust. Powerful visual images in later ages, l perpetuate the negative image Babylon acquired in biblical tradition.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History Where is Mexico going? The obstacles in its rocky road to democracy By Roderic Ai Camp In a recently released poll this month, 22% of Mexicans approved of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s performance in office. Data released in the same survey revealed that 55%, more than twice the percentage of those who viewed the president in a positive light, strongly disapproved of his performance. No president since Vicente Fox, who was elected in 2000 and moved Mexico significantly along the path to electoral democracy, has ever received such weak support.
Social Work Group work with school-aged children [infographic] By Cassandra Gill From student presentations, to lectures, to reading assignments, and so much more, teachers today have a wide variety of methods at their disposal to facilitate learning in the classroom. For elementary school children, group work has been shown to be one strategy that is particularly effective. The peer-to-peer intervention supports children in developing cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socially. Group work encourages children to expand their perspectives on the world.
The targeted killing of American citizens By H. Jefferson Powell On August 5, the Obama administration released a redacted version of its so-called “playbook” for making decisions about the capture or targeted killing of terrorists. Translated out of the bureaucratese: at least off the battlefield the President makes the final decision, personally, about the targeted killing of American citizens and permanent residents. Many people find this fact about the administration’s decisional process momentous. But is it?
In defence of moral experts By David Edmonds I’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career. In fact, he wasn’t alone. Other Brexit leaders also sneered at the pretensions of experts, the majority of whom warned about the risks – political, economic, social – of a Britain outside the EU.
Sticking my oar in, or catching and letting go of the crab By Anatoly Liberman Last week some space was devoted to the crawling, scratching crab, so that perhaps enlarging on the topic “Crab in Idioms” may not be quite out of place. The plural in the previous sentence is an overstatement, for I have only one idiom in view. The rest is not worthy of mention: no certain meaning and no explanation. But my database is omnivorous and absorbs a lot of rubbish. Bibliographers cannot be choosers.
Why the science of happiness can trump GDP as a guide for policy By Richard A. Easterlin For centuries, happiness was exclusively a concern of the humanities; a matter for philosophers, novelists and artists. In the past five decades, however, it has moved into the domain of science and given us a substantial body of research. This wellspring of knowledge now offers us an enticing opportunity: to consider happiness as the leading measure of well-being, supplanting the current favourite, real gross domestic product per capita, or GDP.
Encyclopedia of Social Work International Peace Day reading list By Cassandra Gill Today, September 21st, is the International Day of Peace. Established in 1981 by a unanimous United Nations resolution, International Peace Day “provides a globally shared date for all humanity to commit to Peace above all differences and to contribute to building a Culture of Peace.” To commemorate Peace Day and to encourage you to think more deeply about these issues, we’ve compiled a reading list of articles from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, the Oxford Encyclopedia of American History, and the Encyclopedia of Social Work that explore peace movements, policies, strategies, and global issues.
Financial networks and the South Sea Bubble By Helen Paul In 2015 the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography introduced an annual research bursary scheme for scholars in the humanities. As the first year of the scheme comes to a close, we ask the first of the 2015-16 recipients—the economic historian, Dr Helen Paul of Southampton University—about her research project, and how it’s developed through her association with the Oxford DNB.
100 years of the X-ray powder diffraction method By Andre Authier X-ray diffraction by crystalline powders is one of the most powerful and most widely used methods for analyzing matter. It was discovered just one hundred years ago, independently, by Paul Scherrer and Peter Debye in Göttingen, Germany, and by Albert Hull at the General Electric Laboratories, Schenectady, USA.
What should “misundertrusted” Hillary do? By Barbara A. Perry Using his now famous malaprop, the 2000 GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush declared that his opponents had “misunderestimated” him. All politicians suffer from real or perceived weaknesses. For Bush, his propensity to mangle the English language caused some to question his intellectual qualifications to hold the nation’s highest office. Yet his unpretentiousness and authenticity made him the candidate Americans said they would like to have a beer with.
Hourly rates becoming more and more mainstream in German arbitration By Markus S. Rieder What has long been standard market practice in many jurisdictions is becoming more and more mainstream in Germany, too: compensating counsel in arbitration cases on an hourly basis, and being entitled to have the defeated party pay for it.
Oxford Classical Dictionary 11 facts you may not have known about Roman gladiators By Zackery Cuevas and Cassandra Gill Gladiator fights were the phenomenon of their day – a celebration of courage, endurance, bravery, and violence against a backdrop of fame, fortune, and social scrutiny. Today, over 6 million people flock every year to admire the Colosseum, but what took place within those ancient walls has long been a matter of both scholarly debate and general interest.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Aristotle? [quiz] By John Priest Among the world’s most widely studied thinkers, Aristotle established systematic logic and helped to progress scientific investigation in fields as diverse as biology and political theory. But how much do you really know about this ancient philosopher?
Social Work The UN Summit for refugees and migrants: A global response includes empowering one refugee at a time By Miriam Potocky Refugees have become so pervasive in human consciousness that the Oxford Dictionaries for Children identified “refugee” as the 2016 Oxford Children’s Word of the Year, based on findings from the “500 Words” global children’s writing competition sponsored by BBC Radio 2. According to the BBC, “refugee” was selected “due to a significant increase in usage by entrants writing in this year’s competition combined with the sophisticated context that children were using it in and the rise in emotive and descriptive language around it.”
Beyond the binary: Brexit, environmental law, and an interconnected world By Liz Fisher and James Harrison What are the narratives we can tell about the future of UK environmental law in light of the result of the UK EU referendum? Any answer is not just important for the UK, but will also directly shape our understanding of what nationhood means in an era of globalisation. That sounds a rather grandiose statement to make, but let us explain.
The Catholic Church and the visions of Fátima By Chris Maunder Outbursts of popular interest in apparitions and miracles often lead to new devotional movements which can be uncomfortable for the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, contrary to the belief that they encourage them. Visionaries represent alternative sources of authority within the Catholic community; they claim to have encountered supernatural figures and understood divine imperatives in a way that is commonly thought to transcend the theological expertise of the Church magisterium.
Scaling the UN Refugee Summit: A reading list By Khalid Koser The United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants will be held on 19 September 2016 at the UNHQ in New York. The high-level meeting to address large movements of refugees and migrants is expected to endorse an Outcome Document that commits states to negotiating a ‘Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework’ and separately a ‘Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,’ for adoption in 2018.
The old age of the world By Ben Hutchinson At the home of the world’s most authoritative dictionary, perhaps it is not inappropriate to play a word association game. If I say the word ‘modern’, what comes into your mind? The chances are, it will be some variation of ‘new’, ‘recent’, or ‘contemporary’.
Periphrastic puzzles By Roy T Cook Let us say that a sentence is periphrastic if and only if there is a single word in that sentence such that we can remove the word and the result (i) is grammatical, and (ii) has the same truth value as the original sentence.
Protests, pigskin, and patriotism: Colin Kaepernick and America’s civil religions By Arthur Remillard When civil religion meets football, you get… Colin Kaepernick. Just in case the rock you live under doesn’t have Wi-Fi, Kaepernick is a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers who has drawn widespread attention for his decision to kneel in protest during the national anthem.
Britain, Ireland, and their Union: 1800-1921 By K. Theodore Hoppen Historians of both Britain and Ireland have too often adopted a blinkered approach in which their countries have been envisaged as somehow divorced from the continent in which they are geographically placed. If America and the Empire get an occasional mention, Europe as a whole has largely been ignored. Of course the British-Irish relationship had (and has) its peculiarities.
America’s nuclear strategy: core obligations for our next president By Louis René Beres Plainly, whoever is elected president in November, his or her most urgent obligations will center on American national security. In turn, this will mean an utterly primary emphasis on nuclear strategy. Moreover, concerning such specific primacy, there can be no plausible or compelling counter-arguments. In world politics, some truths are clearly unassailable. For one, nuclear strategy is a “game” that pertinent world leaders must play, whether they like it, or not.
FEMS Microbiology Letters Publish and be cited! Impact Factors, Open Access, and the plight of peer review By Catherine Cotton Can Peer Review ever be as important as publication? This year’s Peer Review Week focuses on the recognition of reviewers. Peer Review Week 2016 is an international initiative that celebrates the essential and often undervalued activity of academic peer review.
Moral responsibilities when waging war By Cécile Fabre In his long-awaited report on the circumstances surrounding the United Kingdom’s decision to join forces with the United States and invade Iraq in 2003, Sir John Chilcot lists a number of failings on the part of the then-British leadership.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History A reading list of Mexican history and culture By Cassandra Gill On 16 September 1810, a priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla delivered a proclamation in the small town of Dolores that urged the Mexican people to challenge Spanish imperial rule, marking the start of the Mexican War of Independence. To commemorate Mexican Independence Day and the “Grito de Dolores,” we’ve compiled a reading list of articles from the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History that explores the rich history, culture, and traditions of the Mexican people.
Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties Medical specialties rotations – an illustrated guide By Andrew Baldwin, Nina Hjelde, Charlotte Goumalatsou, and Gil Myers Starting clinical rotations in hospital can be a daunting prospect, and with each new specialty you are asked to master new skills, knowledge, and ways of working. To help guide you through your rotations we have illustrated some of the different medical specialties, with brief introductions on how to not just survive, but also thrive in each.
In the oral history toolbox By Steven Sielaff Throughout 2016 we’ve featured oral history #OriginStories – tales of how people from all walks of life found their way into the world of oral history and what keeps them going. Most recently, Steven Sielaff explained how oral history has enabled him to connect his love of technology and his desire to create history.
The transformative era in Sikh history By Karamjit K. Malhotra The ideology of ‘Raj Karega Khalsa’ was enunciated in the time of Guru Gobind Singh. It provided the background for political struggle and conquests of the Sikhs after him. The roots of doctrinal developments and institutional practices of the eighteenth-century Sikhs can be traced to the earlier Sikh tradition. The basic Sikh beliefs like the unity of God and the ten Gurus and the doctrines of Guru Panth and Guru Granth continued to figure as the foremost tenets.
What has functional brain imaging discovered? By Richard Passingham Functional magnetic brain imaging (fMRI) is a method that allows us to study the workings of the human brain while people perceive, reason and make decisions. The principle on which it is based is that, when nerve cells or neurons in a particular region become active, there is an increase in the blood supply to that brain area. This can be visualized because the scanner can be sensitized to the changes in the blood oxygen level that occur when the nerve cells become active.
Influencing social policy in the public interest By Kenneth I. Maton How can psychologists and other social scientists interested in making a difference become more fully and effectively engaged in the policy world? To address this question, in-depth interviews were conducted with 79 psychologists who were asked to describe their policy experiences over the course of their careers, with particular focus on a major policy success.
Coetzee’s Dialogues: Who says who we are? By Denis Sampson Throughout his career, J. M Coetzee has been centrally preoccupied with how to tell the truth of an individual life, most of all, how to find the appropriate narrator and fictional genre. Many of his fifteen novels disclose first person narrators in a confessional mode, and so it is not altogether surprising that his latest book is a dialogue with a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, in which they explore together notions of selfhood, repression, disclosure and the nature of communication.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion Wounded religious sentiments and the law in India By Brian Pennington We live in world suffused with offended religious sentiments: depictions of Muhammad in newspaper cartoons and hackneyed films spark violent global protests; courthouse officials in the US South refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses in defiance of the Supreme Court; and in India, authors threatened by thugs on the Hindu Right “die” publicly in order to avoid a less metaphorical demise.
Effective hallmarks for teaching the Kodály Concept in the 21st century: part 2 By Mícheál Houlahan and Philip Tacka The Kodály Concept of music education is based on the philosophical writings of Zoltán Kodály (1882–1967) and incorporates principles of teaching music developed by his colleagues and students. His writings on music education provided the impetus of developing a new pedagogy for teaching music. On August 30th, we discussed five essential lessons from the Kodály Concept. Below are five additional hallmarks of his work.
Law, gender equality, and social justice in India By Sudhir Chandra My research interests have for more than five decades been directly or obliquely related to the making and administration of laws, especially with regard to women, in colonial and independent India. Indeed, my first series of articles, which appeared in the early 1960s, was on social reform and legislation in 19th century India. A little later, while researching for my doctoral dissertation on early Indian nationalism, I got interested in the Maharaja Libel Case.
John Locke on politics, civility, and parenting By Sarah Russo In times of political change and upheaval, as we’ve seen around the world through the last five years, I take great comfort in reading the works of political writers of various ages.
Down to earth, or moving slowly, with the body close to the ground: “creep” and “crawl” By Anatoly Liberman My travel through the English kr-words began with the verb creep, for I have for a long time tried to solve its mystery. On the face of it, there is no mystery. The verb has existed in Germanic from time immemorial, with cognates all over the place.
The poverty paradox By Andy Sumner Amartya Sen’s famous study of famines found that people died not because of a lack of food availability in a country, but because some people lacked entitlements to food. Can the same now be applied to the causes of global poverty?
American History Building Central Park By David Schulyer The site chosen for Central Park was distant from the built area of the city: the cost of Manhattan real estate precluded buying land for a large park in the densely built lower part of the island, and this would be true in other cities as they acquired land for parks throughout the remainder of the century. Still, the process of assembling land for park purposes was a visionary accomplishment, removing 9,792 standard 25 × 100 foot Manhattan building lots and reserving them for public use.
A cautionary tale from the history of NGOs By Thomas Davies The contemporary world features more than twenty thousand international NGOs in almost every field of human activity, including humanitarian assistance, environmental protection, human rights promotion, and technical standardization, amongst numerous other issues
How well do you know your Broadway trivia? [quiz] By Ken Bloom September marks the new Broadway musical season and the opening of fledgling shows like Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 and familiar revivals like Cats.
Ten facts about the Paralympic Games The Rio Summer Paralympics Games begin on 7 September, 2016. These games offer audiences a chance to be awed by the athletic elitism of international athletes with disabilities and are renowned for their spirit of accessibility and inclusion. Below are ten interesting facts about the Paralympics so that you can impress your friends and family with your knowledge.
Strategies for reflective practices in dance training By Nancy Romita and Allegra Romita Reflective practice has the capability to facilitate deeper experiential understanding to enhance performance. It can release the dancer from the traditional ‘watch and repeat’ mode of dance training. Reflective practice and experiential learning is the crux of the process utilized in the Functional Awareness®: Anatomy in Action approach to somatic movement training.
Science, sincerity, and transformation of near-death experiences By Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin One of the first great philosophical books, Plato’s Republic, concludes with the recounting of a near-death experience. Socrates relates the myth of Er, a soldier who died in battle but came back to tell what he saw in the other world. Like other myths in Plato’s works, this is meant to supplement Socrates’ philosophical arguments and to help instill noble beliefs. It’s a last ditch effort at making the case for living a just life.
Small donor democracy? Don’t count on it By Robert E. Mutch Hillary Clinton says she wants to get big money out of elections, and one of the ways she wants to do it is to curb the influence of big donors by mobilizing lots of small ones. This reform idea has become very popular recently, thanks to the concern about super PACs and billionaires that has been growing since Citizens United. But the idea is an old one. The first serious small-donor programs began more than 100 years ago, and they have been working more or less continually ever since.
A democratic defence of the European Court of Human Rights By Alice Donald and Philip Leach ‘Vote leave, take control’ was the slogan of almost fiendish simplicity that helped win the Brexit referendum, masking the mendacity and absence of vision that underlay it. The impulses it captures—wresting sovereignty back from remote elites to Westminster, with its proud democratic tradition—echo those that have for years underpinned the opprobrium directed at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in British public debate.
Ryan Lochte’s “over-exaggerating” By Edwin Battistella If there were an Olympics for making an apology, swimmer Ryan Lochte wouldn’t qualify. After being outed for his fake claim that he was robbed by men identifying themselves as Brazilian police officers, he took to social media for damage control. His Instragram apology on August 19 went this way
Quantum mechanics – a new lease of life By Andrew Whitaker “It’s not quantum mechanics” may often be heard, a remark informing the listener that whatever they are concerned about is nowhere near as difficult, as abstruse, as complicated as quantum mechanics. Indeed to non-physicists or non-mathematicians quantum mechanics must seem virtually impossible to appreciate – pages of incomprehensible algebra buttressed by obscure or frankly paradoxical “explanations”.
Saying “Black lives matter” By Jack Donnelly As the political season in the United States heats up, it has become controversial in certain circles to say “Black Lives Matter.” A few (perhaps even many) object because they don’t believe that black lives matter equally. Most, however, it seems to me, are responding out of fundamental misunderstandings of what “Black Lives Matter” means in the USA in 2016. (I will set aside crude partisanship as an explanation that, to the extent that it is true, does not require further comment.)
Just because all philosophers are on Twitter… By Neil Sinclair Just because everyone is on Twitter doesn’t mean they’ve all got interesting things to say. I vaguely recall reading that late 19th-century curmudgeons expressed similar scepticism about the then much-hyped technology of the telephone.
Remembering H.D. on her 130th birth anniversary By Lara Vetter American-born, British citizen by an ill-fated marriage, the modernist writer Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) was wary of nationalism, which she viewed as leading inevitably to either war or imperialism. Admittedly, she felt—as she wrote of one of her characters—“torn between anglo-philia and anglo-phobia,” and like all prominent modernists of her day, her views were probably not as enlightened as ours.
Social Work Social work and suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention By Myfanwy Maple and Rebecca L. Sanford Social workers regularly come into contact with those who are at risk of or exposed to suicide, through direct practice, as well as in family, group, and community roles. However, social work authors have been notably missing in the scholarly literature on suicide .
The impact of suicide: World Suicide Prevention Day and why suicide awareness matters By Julie Cerel and Rebecca L. Sanford Each year over one million people worldwide die by suicide. In the United States, approximately 42,000 people die by suicide each year, with a suicide occurring every 12.3 minutes. It is the 10th leading cause of death overall, and the 2nd leading cause of death for youth under the age of 24. For World Suicide Prevention Day, we’d like to tell you why this matters to us and why it should matter to you.
Is Shakespeare racist? By Gary Taylor Just as there were no real women on Shakespeare’s stage, there were no Jews, Africans, Muslims, or Hispanics either. Even Harold Bloom, who praises Shakespeare as ‘the greatest Western poet’ in The Western Canon, and who rages against academic political correctness, regards The Merchant of Venice as antisemitic. In 2014 the satirist Jon Stewart responded to Shakespeare’s ‘stereotypically, grotesquely greedy Jewish money lender’ more bluntly.
Is the mind just an accident of the universe? By Godehard Brüntrup and Ludwig Jaskolla The traditional view puts forward the idea that the vast majority of what there is in the universe is mindless. Panpsychism however claims that mental features are ubiquitous in the cosmos. In a recent opinion piece for Scientific American entitled “Is Consciousness Universal?” (2014), neuroscientist Christof Koch explains how his support of panpsychism is greeted by incredulous stares–in particular when asserting that panpsychism might be the perfect match for neurobiology
What do we talk about when we talk about ‘religion’? By Arie L. Molendijk Let us start at the Vatican in Rome. St. Peter’s Basilica has a strict dress code: no skirts above the knee, no shorts, no bare shoulders, and you must wear shoes. At the entrance there are signs picturing these instructions. To some visitors this comes somewhat as a surprise. Becky Haskin, age 44, from Fort Worth, Texas, said: “The information we got was that the dress code only applied when the pope was there.”
Fifteen years after 9/11 By Harriet F. Senie Fifteen years after the devastation in lower Manhattan that is routinely referred to as 9/11, the site that was once Ground Zero is unrecognizable. The Twin Towers have been replaced by Michael Arad’s memorial Reflecting Absence, anchored by two voids in part of the space once filled by Minoru Yamasaki’s skyscrapers.
Africa-based scholars in academic publishing: Q&A with Celia Nyamweru By Celia Nyamweru In an effort to address current discussions regarding Africa-based scholars in academic publishing, the editors of African Affairs reached out to Celia Nyamweru for input from her personal experiences. Celia Nyamweru spent 18 years teaching at Kenyatta University (KU) and another 18 years teaching at a US university with a strong undergraduate focus on Africa.
Leibniz and Europe By Maria Rosa Antognazza At the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, national states were on the rise. Versailles was constructed as a stage on which the Sun King, Louis XIV, acted out the pageant of absolute sovereignty while his armies annexed neighbouring territories for the greater glory of France. At the death of Charles II of Spain in November 1700, the Spanish throne and its extensive possessions in Italy, the Low Countries and the New World passed to his grandson, Philip, Duke of Anjou.
Rebuilding the Houses of Parliament: Victorian lessons learned By Caroline Shenton “What a chance for an architect!” Charles Barry exclaimed as he watched the old Palace of Westminster burning down in 1834. When he then went on to win the competition to design the new Houses of Parliament he thought it was the chance of a lifetime. Instead it turned into the most nightmarish building project of the nineteenth century. What ‘lessons learned’ might the brilliant classical architect draw up today based on his experiences?
10 facts about the recorder By Louise Gallagher You might associate the recorder with memories of a second grade classroom and sounds vaguely resembling the tune of “Three Blind Mice” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” While the recorder has become a popular instrument in music education, it also has an extensive and interesting history.
Rethinking human-elephant relations in South Asia By Piers Locke and Jane Buckingham Throughout history and across cultures elephants have amazed and perplexed us, acquiring a plethora of meanings and purposes as our interactions have developed. They have been feared and hunted as wild animals, attacked and killed as dangerous pests, while also laboring for humans as vehicles, engineering devices, and weapons of war. Elephants have also been exploited for the luxury commodity of ivory.
Our habitat: booth By Anatoly Liberman This post has been written in response to a query from our correspondent. An answer would have taken up the entire space of my next “gleanings,” and I decided not to wait a whole month.
The Battle of Britain and the Blitz By Richard Overy On 7 September 1940, German bombers raided the east London docks area in two waves of devastating attacks. The date has always been taken as the start of the so-called ‘Blitz’ (from the German ‘Blitzkrieg’ or lightning war) when for nine months German bombers raided Britain’s major cities. But the 7 September attack also came at the height of the Battle of Britain.
Hamilton’s descendants By Richard Grossman Inspired by the 11 Tony awards won by the smash Broadway hit Hamilton, last month I wrote about Alexander Hamilton as the father of the US national debt and discussed the huge benefit the United States derives from having paid its debts promptly for more than two hundred years. Despite that post, no complementary tickets to Hamilton have arrived in my mailbox. And so this month, I will discuss Hamilton’s role as the founding father of American central banking.
Christmas in Nazi Germany By Gerry Bowler Christmas is the most widely celebrated festival in the world but in few countries is it valued as deeply as in Germany. The country has given the world a number of important elements of the season, including the Christmas tree, the Advent calendar and wreath, gingerbread cookies, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, “Es ist ein Ros` entsprungen,” or “Vom Himmel Hoch.”
Shakespeare’s clowns and fools [infographic] Fools, or jesters, would have been known by many of those in Shakespeare’s contemporary audience, as they were often kept by the royal court, and some rich households, to act as entertainers. They were male, as were the actors, and would wear flamboyant clothing and carry a ‘bauble’ or carved stick, to use in their jokes.
Why are Americans addicted to polls? By James W. Cortada Before going into battle, Roman generals would donate a goat to their favorite god and ask their neighborhood temple priest to interpret a pile of pigeon poop to predict if they would take down the Greeks over on the next island. Americans in the nineteenth century had fortune tellers read their hands read and phrenologists check out the bumps on their heads. Statistics came along by the late 1800s, then “scientific polls” which did something similar.
Misinterpretation and misuse of P values By Beatrice Grabowski In 2011, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Matrixx Initiatives Inc. v. Siracusano that investors could sue a drug company for failing to report adverse drug effects—even though they were not statistically significant. Describing the case in the Wall Street Journal, Carl Bialik wrote, “A group of mathematicians has been trying for years to have a core statistical concept debunked.
Why does the Democratic Party want the Cadillac tax abolished? By Edward A. Zelinsky Democratic Party platform for 2016 repudiates a major provision of Obamacare – but no one has said this out loud. In particular, the Democratic Party has now officially called for abolition of the “Cadillac tax,” the Obamacare levy designed to control health care costs by taxing expensive employer health plans. Tucked away on page 35 of the Democratic platform is this enigmatic sentence: We will repeal the excise tax on high-cost health insurance and find revenue to offset it because we need to contain the long-term growth of health care costs.”
Oxford Classical Dictionary How much do you know about ancient Greek education? By Cassandra Gill It’s back-to-school time again – time for getting back into the swing of things and adapting to busy schedules. Summer vacation is over, and it’s back to structured days of homework and exam prep. These rigid fall schedules have probably been the norm for you ever since you were in kindergarten.
Israel and the offensive military use of cyber-space By Matthew S. Cohen When discussions arise about the utility of cyber-attacks in supporting conventional military operations, the conversation often moves quickly to the use of cyber-attacks during Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, the US decision not to use cyber-attacks in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, or Russia’s behavior in cyber-space surrounding the conflict with Ukraine that began in 2014. These, however, may not really be the most useful cases to examine.
How does international law work in times of crisis? By Cedric Ryngaert, Dr. Cameron Jefferies, William A. Schabas, Basak Çali, and Mark Kersten In preparation for the European Society of International Law (ESIL) 12th Annual Conference, we asked some of our authors to reflect on this year’s conference theme ‘How International Law Works in Times of Crisis’. What are the major challenges facing the field, and is international law effective in addressing these issues? What role do international lawyers play in confronting crises, both old and new?
Identity, foreign policy, and the post-Arab uprising struggle for power in the Middle East By Raymond Hinnebusch In recent years, there has been a greater emphasis put on understanding the international relations of the post-Arab uprising in the Middle East. An unprecedented combination of widespread state failure, competitive interference, and instrumentalization of sectarianism by three rival would-be regional hegemons (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran) in failing states has produced a spiral of sectarianism at the grassroots level.
The body politic: art, pain, and Putin By Matthew Flinders The phrase ‘scrotum artist’ was never going to be easy to ignore when it appeared in a newspaper headline. It is also a phrase that has made me reflect upon the nature of politics, the issue of public expectations, and even the role of a university professor of politics. In a previous blog I reflected on the experience of running a citizens’ assembly and how the emotional demands and rewards of the experience had been quite unexpected.
A look at historical multiracial families through the House of Medici By Catherine Fletcher The Medici, rulers of Renaissance Florence, are not the most obvious example of a multiracial family. They’ve always been part of the historical canon of “western civilization,” the world of dead white men. Perhaps we should think again. A tradition dating back to the sixteenth century suggests that Alessandro de’ Medici, an illegitimate child of the Florentine banking family who in 1532 became duke of Florence, was the son of an Afro-European woman.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Aristotle By John Priest Among the world’s most widely studied thinkers, Aristotle established systematic logic and helped to progress scientific investigation in fields as diverse as biology and political theory. His thought became dominant during the medieval period in both the Islamic and the Christian worlds, and has continued to play an important role in fields such as philosophical psychology, aesthetics, and rhetoric.
When to talk and when to walk By Kristina Spohr and David Reynolds In the spring of 2014, after Russia annexed the Crimea, the German chancellor Angela Merkel took to the air. She jetted some 20,000 kms around the globe, visiting nine cities in seven days – from Washington to Moscow, from Paris to Kiev – holding one meeting after another with key world leaders in the hope of brokering a peace-deal. Haunted by the centenary of 1914, Merkel saw summitry as the only way to stop Europe from ‘sleepwalking’ into another great war.
Two Williams go to trial: judges, juries, and liberty of conscience By Andrew R. Murphy On this date in 1670: a trial gets underway. The two defendants had been arrested several weeks earlier while preaching to a crowd in the street, and charged with unlawful assembly and creating a riot. Their trial, slated to begin on 1 September, had been pushed back to 3 September after preliminary wrangling between the judge and the defendants. And so on this date – 246 years ago today – the defendants were called before the bench.
What academia owes Jane Addams By Wendy Haight Jane Addams is perhaps best known as Hull House activist, recipient of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, and forbearer of modern social work, as well as being a founding member of both the NAACP and the ACLU. Underappreciated, however, is her central role in the development of American Pragmatism and contemporary social inquiry methodology. Until the 1990s, feminist philosophers and historians began working to recover her role in the development of pragmatist thought.
Esperanto, chocolate, and biplanes in Braille: the interests of Arthur Maling By Peter Gilliver The Oxford English Dictionary is the work of people: many thousands of them. In my work on the history of the Dictionary I have found the stories of many of those people endlessly fascinating. Very often an individual will enter the story who cries out to be made the subject of a biography in his or her own right; others, while not quite fascinating enough for that, are still sufficiently interesting that they could be a dangerous distraction to me when I was trying to concentrate on the main task of telling the story of the project itself.
The NHS and the Church of England By Douglas J. Davies Politicians are more than anxious over negative public opinion on the National Health Service, falling over backwards to say that the NHS is “safe in our hands.” Meanwhile, the Church of England is concerned about losing “market-share,” especially over conducting funerals. One way of linking these two extremely large British institutions is in terms of life-style choices.
Hypnosis and the conscious awareness of intentions By Peter Lush and Zoltan Dienes A hypnotist tells a subject that their outstretched arm will begin to rise upward as though tied to an invisible balloon. To their astonishment, the subject’s arm rises just as suggested, and seemingly without their intention. While it may appear as though the subject is being controlled by the hypnotist, it is well established that nobody can be hypnotised against their will. Hypnosis therefore seems to present a paradox
OHR Virtual Issue: from roots to the digital turn By Andrew Shaffer We spend a lot of time in this space pointing to particular people or projects that we think are doing interesting things with oral history. In June we talked to Josh Burford, who is using oral history to start important conversations in North Carolina. In April, we heard from Shanna Farrell, who discussed Berkeley’s Oral History Summer Institute.
Conditioning in the classroom: 8 tips for teaching and learning By Mark Haselgrove You are probably familiar with animal learning and conditioning. You probably know that certain behaviours in your pet can be encouraged by reward, for example. You may also know something of the science behind animal conditioning: you may have heard about Pavlov’s drooling dogs, Skinner’s peckish pigeons or Thorndike’s cunning cats. However, what you may not know is that the scientific study of animal conditioning has provided psychologists with an armoury of principles about how training can be most effective.
Exotic – Episode 38 – The Oxford Comment The word “exotic” can take on various different meanings and connotations, depending on how it is used. It can serve as an adjective or a noun, to describe a commodity, a person, or even a human activity. No matter its usage, however, the underlying theme is that the word is used to describe something foreign or unknown, a function which can vary greatly, from enriching the luxury status of commodities, to fully sexualizing and ultimately ostracizing a literary work of psychology and anthropology, known as the Kamasutra.
Executive remuneration By Christine Mallin For many years executive remuneration has been one of the ‘hot topics’ in corporate governance. Each year there is a furore around executive remuneration with the remuneration of CEOs often being a particular area of contention. This year we have seen the spotlight focussed on the remuneration of CEOs at high profile companies such as BP and WPP resulting in much shareholder comment and media attention.
August 2016 (115))
“Clown”: The KL-series pauses for a while By Anatoly Liberman Those who have followed this series will remember that English kl-words form a loose fraternity of clinging, clinking, and clotted-cluttered things. Clover, cloth, clod, cloud, and clout have figured prominently in the story.
Poverty: a reading list By Alex Guyver Poverty can be defined by ‘the condition of having little or no wealth or few material possessions; indigence, destitution’ and is a growing area within development studies. In time for The Development Studies Association annual conference taking place in Oxford this year in September, we have put together this reading list of key books on poverty, including a variety of online and journal resources on topics ranging from poverty reduction and inequality, to economic development and policy.
The last -ism? By Matthew Mullins There has lately been something like an arms race in literary studies to name whatever comes after postmodernism. Post-postmodernism, cosmodernism, digimodernism, automodernism, altermodernism, and metamodernism rank among the more popular prospects.
Is undercover policing worth the risk? By P.A.J. Waddington The recently published ‘guidelines’ on police undercover operations prove to be just ‘business as usual’. The guidelines consist of 80 pages in which a new ‘alphabet soup’ of abbreviations describes each of a set of roles to be fulfilled by officers of given ranks.
The not-so glamorous origins of American celebrity politics By David Haven Blake “In America,” the filmmaker Francois Truffaut once wrote, “politics always overlaps show business, as show business overlaps advertising.” Indeed, as the Republicans and Democrats head into the fall campaign, the spectacle of celebrity politics will be on full display.
Alcohol and tailgating at football games By Matthew D. Krasowski Tailgating is a very popular activity associated with American college football games. Tailgating typically involves food and alcoholic beverages served from the backs of parked vehicles or associated equipment at or near athletic events. At large universities with Division I football programs, the football stadiums may hold upwards of 100,000 fans, sometimes with thousands of additional fans
Effective hallmarks for teaching the Kodály Concept in the 21st century: part 1 By Mícheál Houlahan and Philip Tacka To teach music effectively, we must know our subject—music. We must embody and exemplify musicianship.” (Elliott, Music Matters, 1995, p. 271). But how are we to communicate our musicianship to students in meaningful ways?
Employment law: Post-Brexit By Charles Wynn-Evans The Leave vote in the EU referendum presents several potential challenges for employers which are of far more immediate and practical importance than speculation about the future direction of employment law in a post-EU environment.
A new (musical) direction for healthcare? By Kimberly Sena Moore Most would agree with the idea that music can have a powerful hold over us—our thoughts, feelings, and movements. Given this, how might music help measure thoughts, feelings, and movements in a way that allows professionals in healthcare improve client treatment? The music therapy profession seems to be experiencing a surge in developing data-measuring tools that incorporate music in the client assessment.
The OWC Podcast: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen By Fiona Stafford Pride encounters prejudice, upward-mobility confronts social disdain, and quick-wittedness challenges sagacity, as misconceptions and hasty judgments lead to heartache and scandal, but eventually to true understanding, self-knowledge, and love. In this supremely satisfying story, Jane Austen balances comedy with seriousness, and witty observation with profound insight. If Elizabeth Bennet returns again and again to her letter from Mr Darcy, readers of the novel are drawn even more irresistibly by its captivating wisdom.
UK food retailing and the challenge of the ‘new retail’ By Alan Treadgold And yet on exactly the same day that ASDA was confirming just how bad its sales position is, Amazon announced that it would open in early 2017 another fulfilment centre – its thirteenth – in the UK. Part—but only part—of the reason why Amazon needs more capacity is due to the initial success of its Amazon Fresh food delivery business which launched in the UK in July 2016.
American History 11 facts about the modern peace movement By Cassandra Gill On this day on 28 August 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech left an indelible mark on American history and the world. His universal cry for a more humane and united world became a source of inspiration for all.His speech and the Civil Rights Movement were an important part of the broader peace movement.
Scenario analysis and political science By Naazneen H. Barma Scenarios are often mistaken for forecasts, expert predictions, or simulations. They are none of these. Instead, scenarios depict possible future states of the world by combining theory and story-telling in rigorous and resonant ways to facilitate creative thinking. The Geneva experience is not important because the financial crisis scenario happened to be prescient. Rather, it serves to illustrate how hemmed in our thinking about the future can be.
The origins of political order By Benjamin Straumann What importance do the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean have for us? This question has been answered in different ways over the centuries, but for a long time the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome have been attractive as a baseline and a model, be it in economic, aesthetic, cultural, military, or political terms.
Against narrowness in philosophy By Mark Couch and Jessica Pfeifer If you asked many people today, they would say that one of the limitations of analytic philosophy is its narrowness. Whereas in previous centuries philosophers took on projects of broad scope, today’s philosophers typically deal with smaller issues.
A Flame as a Moth: How I began chronicling the life of Harrison G. Dyar, Jr., Part 2 By Marc E. Epstein I joined the staff in the Smithsonian’s Department of Entomology, National Museum of Natural History in 1992, at the time Pam Henson and I published “Digging for Dyar: The Man Behind the Myth”. Having stayed in Washington, DC long enough to complete the article, my job at the Museum would give me roughly a dozen years to accumulate information on Dyar, while performing other duties.
Olympic swimmers meet Latin America’s vast gray area of private security By Robert Brenneman During the closing week of the Rio games, the biggest story was not about the pool, the mat, or the track but rather about the after-game party . . . and the after-party mess. As of Friday morning, the next-to-last day of the games, the home page of the New York Times was carrying headlines for five separate articles concerning the event. Clearly, the events that unfolded when the swimmers arrived at the gas station as well as the interviews given by American medalist Ryan Lochte…
Ten underappreciated philosophers of the Islamic World [timeline] By Peter Adamson In this timeline, Peter Adamson, author of the History of Philosophy series, highlights ten underappreciated figures of the Islamic world, during and well beyond the medieval era.
American History 10 facts worth knowing about the US women’s rights movement By Cassandra Gill Today, August 26th, is Women’s Equality Day which commemorates the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, granting women the right to vote. This day reflects the culmination of a movement which had begun in the 1830s when rising middle-class American women, with an increasing educational background, began to critique the oppressive systems of the early 19th century.
Fascinating facts about man’s best friend Dogs have historically performed many roles for humans, such as herding, protection, assisting police, companionship, and aiding the handicapped. The tale of “man’s best friend” is a lengthy and intimate history that has lasted for thousands of years, and transcends modern cultural boundaries. Canines appear as poignant characters with symbolic meaning in mythological stories, famous works of art, and religious texts.
10 interesting facts about criminal justice By Julian V. Roberts And what is the best way to ensure an easy transition for offenders that are about to be released? Julian Roberts, author of Criminal Justice: A Very Short Introduction, tells us the top 10 things everyone should know about criminal justice, and what the chances and limitations of the Western system are.
Remembering John Muir on the centennial of the National Park Service By Mark Stoll This year, Americans celebrate the centennial of the National Park Service. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Park Service Organic Act. The bill culminated decades of effort by a remarkable generation of dedicated men and women who fought to protect the nation’s natural wonders for the democratic enjoyment of the people.
Building community: lessons from swimming By David Blumenkratz What would be the impact if our current policy to insure safety and prevent drowning were to pay people to swim with each swimmer? No one could go swimming unless they had a paid professional, or paraprofessional, swim with them. Our present policy in human services and mental health is kind of like paying people to insure the safety and well-being of others.
Protecting our children from profanity By Michael Adams We adults are careful about swearing around our kids. We don’t want bad language to confuse or corrupt or otherwise harm them. As Steven Pinker says in passing while talking about profanity in The Stuff of Thought (2007), “if some people would rather not explain to their young children what a blow job is, there should be television channels that don’t force them to,” and there are. We have every right to be protective of our children even if we don’t have a reason.
10 interesting facts about the cello Every summer since 1895, the Henry Wood Promenade Concert (commonly known as the BBC Proms) presents an eight-week orchestral classical music festival at the Royal Albert Hall in central London. This year’s Proms put a special focus on cellos.
The Arms Trade Treaty and exports to Saudi Arabia: “Now is the summer of our discontent?” By Stuart Casey-Maslen For some campaigners, the acid test of the effectiveness of a putative global arms trade treaty was whether it would prohibit or somehow legitimize the selling of arms to Saudi Arabia. Of course, those who expected a total prohibition on arms trading were always going to be deeply disappointed, but many of us felt it similarly unlikely that an international instrument would ever make it impossible for internally repressive regimes to procure weapons on the open market.
Etymology gleanings for August 2016 By Anatoly Liberman There was a desperate attempt to find a valid Greek cognate for cloth, but such a word did not turn up. One way out of the difficulty was to discover a Greek noun or verb beginning with sk- and refer its s to what is known as s-mobile (“movable s”). Movable s is all over the place. For instance, the English cognate of German kratzen is scratch (the same meaning).
A flame as a moth: how I began chronicling the life of Harrison G. Dyar, Jr., Part 1 By Marc E. Epstein I first became acquainted with Dyar’s work on the moth family Limacodidae, my chosen entomology dissertation topic, in 1983 at the University of Minnesota. It was in the Hodson Hall library on the St. Paul campus where I noted how Dyar’s authorship dominated the Journal of the New York Entomological Society in the middle to late 1890s. Particularly notable was his running series from 1895-1899
Australia in three words, part 2 – “Kangaroo court” By William Coleman A ‘kangaroo court’ is no more Australian than a Californian kangaroo rat. The term originated in the California of 1849, as a legacy of the summary and dubious efforts at informal justice on lawless gold fields. By contrast, the Australian gold fields of that period felt heavily the overbearing hand of the law. This contrast epitomes a larger paradox. Australians are seen as ‘disrespectful of authority’; the truth is they have, from their beginnings, been highly law-prone.
Dodgy dossiers in the Middle Ages By Richard Sowerby Government advisers don’t regularly admit to handling doctored evidence. The extent to which the actions of recent governments may have depended on documents which had been ‘sexed up’ have—quite rightly—become matters for close scrutiny in recent decades. But the modern world has no monopoly over the spurious, the doubtful, and the falsified.
Cover of Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World by Marc Raboy 15 surprising facts about Guglielmo Marconi, the man behind radio communication By Marc Raboy Guglielmo Marconi is popularly known as “the inventor of radio,” a mischaracterization that critics and supporters of his many rivals are quick to seize upon. Marconi was actually the first person to use radio waves to communicate. His first patent was for “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus Therefor,” and he considered what he was doing to be a form of wireless telegraphy.
Jim Crow redux: Donald Trump and the racial fear factor By Carol V.R. George Donald Trump’s mantra, to “make America great again,” plays on the word “again,” and is presumably meant to evoke among his supporters a return to an earlier, more bountiful, time. To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it all depends on what the word “again” means. According
The importance of smell By Paolo Pelosi The captivating scent of cakes and the compelling aroma of freshly brewed coffee attract you to a bakery in the morning. A male moth is flittering around, frenetically following the scent plume released by her female. What do these two phenomena have in common? Much more than we suspect, when we look at the molecular level. Imagine if we had a very powerful microscope enabling us to detect details
Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go players By Heather Saunders Record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories. What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?
Obstacles in transgender healthcare By Matthew D. Krasowski and Katie L. Imborek The last several years have seen increased visibility of transgender individuals in the media in United States. While this has served to increase attention on some issues related to the transgender population, what often gets overlooked is that the transgender population remains one of the most underserved groups in the country.
Can we encourage healthier choices by the way we display food options? By Marisabel Romero Dipayan Biswas The results of our recent experiments show that displaying healthy food to the left of an unhealthy option can influence the selection and consumption volume of the healthier choice. Since managers typically have considerable flexibility in terms of how they display food items in retail outlets and restaurant menus, they can use the findings of our research to design optimal menu formats to suit their sales objectives.
Top ten essential books for aspiring lawyers By Martin Partington Legal knowledge doesn’t just come from textbooks and lectures. Last year, we asked Martin Partington, author of Introduction to the English Legal System, for his top ten film recommendations for law students and aspiring lawyers. This year he turns his attention to inspiring books that will get you thinking about our legal system, our society, and the role of lawyers – what would you add to his list?
An egalitarian and organic history of the periodic table By Eric Scerri Our story has to begin somewhere and why not with the Manchester schoolteacher John Dalton who revived the atomic theory of the ancient Greek philosophers? In addition to supposing that the ultimate components of all matter were atoms, Dalton set about putting this idea on a quantitative foundation. He published the first list in which he compared the weights of the atoms of all the elements that were known at the time.
The rapidly growing senior population [infographic] By Cassandra Gill Today is National Senior Citizen’s Day. It’s a time to celebrate the older, wiser individuals of our society who have achieved so much over the last several decades of their lives, and still have more of an impact to make.
Measuring athletic greatness By David Potter As Michael Phelps pulled away from the field in the 200 IM to win his thirteenth individual Olympic Gold Medal, he set the standard by which athletic greatness will be measured. The greatest athletes are not just good at one thing—the measurement of true greatness, established from antiquity to the present, is the ability to dominate different events, and the ability to do so more than once.
Around the world in 15 travel health tips By Silvia Dell'Amore It’s time for holidays! Your suitcase is packed, you’re ready to leave, and cannot wait to get a proper tan to show on social media. Mark Twain used to say that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”, but unfortunately the health problems we may come across while travelling are far less poetic. Danger is always lurking, especially in far-flung and unexplored destinations.
Oxford Classical Dictionary How much do you know about the origins of the Olympics? [quiz] By Cassandra Gill Since the very beginning of the games at Olympia, the event has served to strengthen unity, bring peace, and celebrate individuals for achieving greatness after endless hours of hard work. The Olympics have always been a source of inspiration and a connection to our own humanity.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Ben-Hur: tracing the iconic novel and films through history By Cassandra Gill The latest film adaptation of the story of fictional Jewish noble Judah Ben-Hur is premiering in theaters today. You’ve probably seen the 1959 film version starring Charlton Heston, but do you know about the story’s rich history and impact over the last 136 years?
Years of education may protect against dementia By Francisca S. Then Attaining a higher level of education is considered to be important in order to keep up good cognitive functioning in old age. Moreover, higher education also seems to decrease the risk to develop dementia. This is of high relevance in so far that dementia is a terminal disease characterized by a long degenerative progression with severe impairments in daily functioning. Despite a great amount of research emphasizing the relevance of education…
Video didn’t kill the radio star – she’s hosting a podcast By Siobhán McHugh Podcasters P.J. Vogt, host of Reply All, and Starlee Kine, host of Mystery Show, addressed sold-out sessions at the Sydney Writers’ Festival last month, riding the wave of popularity engendered by Serial, the 2014 US true crime podcast series whose 100 million downloads galvanised the audio storytelling world.
A Copernican eye-opener By Owen Gingerich Approximately 500 years ago a Polish lawyer, medical doctor, and churchman got a radical idea: that the earth was not fixed solidly in the middle of all space, but was spinning at a thousand miles per hour at its equator and was speeding around the sun at a dizzying rate. Unbelievable, critics said. If that were true, at the equator people would be spun off into space. And it would be much harder to walk west than east.
Is College Radio Relevant? By Leanne Minkoff You take out the scratched up Beatles’ Abbey Road LP from its musty slipcover, cue it onto the turntable, and broadcast it to the small, rural area surrounding your college campus. It’s 5:00 AM, you’re the only one in the booth, and you ask yourself: is anyone listening? Does what I’m doing matter? Little do you know, as you speak into the microphone introducing “Here Comes the Sun” (as the sun is literally rising), you are part of a long history of college radio. But how is college radio relevant today?
Designer nature: mosquitoes first and then what? By Jeffrey A. Lockwood We’re told that we can insert a gene to confer sterility and this trait would race like wildfire through Aedes aegypti. Why this species? Because it’s the vector of the Zika virus—along with the dengue and yellow fever viruses. The problem is that A. aegypti isn’t the only culprit. It’s just one of a dozen or more bloodsuckers that will also have to be wiped out. After we’ve driven these species to extinction, we’ll presumably move on to the Anopheles species that transmit malaria.
As black as what? By Anatoly Liberman All words, especially kl-words, and no play will make anyone dull. The origin of popular sayings is an amusing area of linguistics, but, unlike the origin of words, it presupposes no technical knowledge. No grammar, no phonetics, no nothin’: just sit back and relax, as they say to those who fly overseas first class. So here is another timeout.
2016: the year of Zika By Abelardo Q. C. Araujo, Marcus Tulius T. Silva, and Alexandra P. Q. C. Araujo Zika virus (ZIKV), an arbovirus transmitted by mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, was first isolated in 1947 in the Zika forest of Uganda from a sentinel monkey. It has always been considered a minor pathogen. From its discovery until 2007 only 14 sporadic cases – all from Africa and Southeast Asia – had been detected. In 2007, however, a major outbreak occurred in Yap Island, Micronesia, with 73% of residents being infected.
10 things you didn’t know about Brazil’s economy By the end of the twentieth century, Brazil had ranked as one of the the ten largest economies in the world, but also being that with the fifth largest population, it is facing many obstacles in economic growth. With the 2016 Rio Olympics now upon us, we’ve collated 10 interesting facts about Brazil’s economy from colonial times to the modern day.
Why Christmas should matter to us whether we are ‘religious’ or not By Christopher Deacy There are many aspects of Christmas that, on reflection, make little sense. We are supposed to be secular-minded, rational and grown up in the way we apprehend the world around us. Richard Dawkins speaks for many when he draws a distinction between the ‘truth’ of scientific discourse and the ‘falsehoods’ perpetuated by religion which, as he tells us in The God Delusion, “teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding” (Dawkins 2006).
Blackstone’s Statutes 2016-2017: key legislation By Nigel Foster, Robert G. Lee, Meryl Thomas, and Matthew Dyson There are two sets of EU legislation which have had and might continue to have a very positive impact of the lives and rights of UK citizens who travel abroad. I’m not talking about those UK citizens who have taken advantage of the rights of free movement to live and work in another part of the EU, but those who travel temporarily be it on holiday, visiting family or on business.
Journal of Social History A curve in the road to a “Drug-Free America” By Joe Moreau Virtually every American over 35 who had access to a television set in the waning years of the Reagan Administration is familiar with the PDFA’s handiwork. The frying pan with a sizzling egg stand-in for “your brain on drugs.” The stern, middle-aged father confronting his son over the boy’s pot stash, only to be told, “I learned it by watching you!”
R.J.P. Williams and the advantages of thinking like a chemist By Ben McFarland Powell’s City of Books occupies 1.6 acres of retail floor space in downtown Portland, Oregon and is one of my favorite places in the world. My first time there, I searched out the chemistry shelves–and was slightly disappointed. I counted two cases of chemistry books sandwiched between biology and physics, which had eight cases each.
Bloody Olympics: Rio, 2016, and the history of illegal blood doping By Chris Cooper Sport has long had a fascination with blood. The blood of the Roman gladiators, mopped by a sponge from the arena, fed a profitable business; perhaps the athlete’s ultimate commitment to promoting their brand? Today blood is even more relevant to sport.
Breath: the gateway to expressivity in movement By Nancy Romita and Allegra Romita In many forms of dance the breath support for movement is not an integral part of training. It is not perceived to be important in the same manner that stretching, strengthening, and balance warrant focus. Little coaching and training time addresses breath support in most Western dance forms. We propose breath support is at the heart of expressivity and artistry in movement phrasing.
Why did the Oxford University Press staff member cross the road? By Dan Parker In order to celebrate National Tell a Joke Day, I asked fellow Oxford University Press staff members to tell me their favourite joke(s). Some of these jokes will make you guffaw and some will make you groan but hopefully all of them will make you smile. The jokes below range from the strange to the downright silly.
What a difference a decade makes in Brazil By Riordan Roett Ten years ago Brazil was beginning to enjoy the financial boom from China’s growing appetite for commodities and raw materials. The two countries were a natural fit. Brazil had what Beijing needed – iron ore, beef, soybeans, etc. and China had what Brasilia desperately wanted – foreign exchange to address budget deficits and cost overruns on major infrastructure projects. It was a marriage made in heaven – for four or five years.
Brexit and the quest for identity By Liav Orgad From Britain to the United States, France to Australia, Western states are struggling with an identity crisis: how to cultivate a common cultural ‘core’, a social ‘bond’, which goes beyond the global economy and political liberalism. It is too early to predict whether Brexit is the last gasp of the old structure of national identity, or its revival.
What makes a good campaign slogan? By Edwin Battistella Slogan-wise, this year’s presidential campaign gives us Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Hillary Clinton’s “Stronger Together” and “I’m with Her.” Trump’s slogan is a call to bring something back from the past. Clinton’s are statements of solidarity.
Olympian pressure By Alan Currie Recent years have brought recognition that sportsmen and women may have mental health needs that are just as important as their ‘physical’ health – and that may need to be addressed. Athletes are people too, subject to many of the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us. In addition to our everyday anxieties, the sports world contains a whole host of different stressors.
Paradoxes logical and literary By Roy T Cook For many months now this column has been examining logical/mathematical paradoxes. Strictly speaking, a paradox is a kind of argument. In literary theory, some sentences are also called paradoxes, but the meaning of the term is significantly different.
Journal of Public Health cover Mental health inequalities among gay and bisexual men By Ford Hickson Depression, substance abuse, and suicide have long been associated with homosexuality. In the decades preceding the gay liberation movement, the most common explanation for this association was that homosexuality itself is a mental illness. Much of the work of gay liberation consisted of dismantling the pathological understanding of homosexuality among mental health professionals.
The life and work of H.G. Wells: a timeline By Lauri Lu August 13th marks the 150th birth and the 70th death anniversary of legendary science fiction writer H.G. Wells. A prophet of modern progress, he accurately predicted several historical advancements, from the World War II, nuclear weapons, to Wikipedia.
Setting Shakespeare to music Shakespeare has inspired countless and varied performances, works of art and pieces of writing. He has also inspired music. In this 400th year since Shakespeare’s death we asked five composers ‘how did you approach setting the Shakespeare text you chose for your recent work?’
OUP Philosophy How much do you know about René Descartes? [quiz] By John Priest This August, the OUP Philosophy team honors René Descartes (1596–1650) as their Philosopher of the Month. Called “The Father of Modern Philosophy” by Hegel, Descartes led the seventeenth-century European intellectual revolution which laid down the philosophical foundations for the modern scientific age.
A collection of Victorian profanities [infographic] Euphemisms, per their definition, are used to soften offensive language. Topics such as death, sex, and bodily functions are often discussed delicately, giving way to statements like, “he passed away,” “we’re hooking up,” or “it’s that time of the month.”
5 Edinburgh attractions for booklovers [slideshow] By Rachel Brook The Edinburgh Fringe is in full swing with over 3,000 arts events coming to the vibrant Scottish capital over the next few weeks. With the International Book Festival kicking off on the 13th, we’ve compiled our favourite bookish spots around the city for you to squeeze into your schedule.
A commemoration and a counter-revolution in the making By R. V. Vaidyanatha Ayyar Two factors contributed to the quantum leap that the idea of district planning made. First was the Total Literacy Campaign which caught the nation’s attention; the success of quite a few districts in becoming ‘totally literate’ imparted a new thrust to UPE because it was realised that that success would be ephemeral if an inadequate schooling system spawned year after year a new brood of illiterates.
Facing the Führer: Jesse Owens and the history of the modern Olympic games By Mike Cronin Enjoying Rio 2016? This extract from Sport: A Very Short Introduction by Mike Cronin gives a history of the modern Olympic games; from its inspiration in the British Public school system, to the role it played in promoting Nazi propaganda. The modern Olympic Games, and their governing body, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), came into being in 1894 and were the brainchild of Pierre de Coubertin. A Frenchman with a passionate interest in education, de Coubertin had visited England.
Some very short reflections on social psychology By Richard J. Crisp What emerged from these studies was a whole area of psychology that revealed the motives and processes that drive peoples’ prejudices. Discovering that it was a basic tendency to categorize that lies at the heart of prejudice had huge implications. It meant that to tackle prejudice we have to not only address the social, the economic and the political: we also need to tackle the psychological.
Remembering Montrell Jackson’s ethic of mutuality By Gregory Laski In a poignant post to his Facebook page on 8 July, police officer Montrell Jackson offered a “hug” and “prayer” to those he met as he patrolled the streets of his native Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For those looking to fit life to the patterns of literature, the events of the past weeks have had the unsettling feel of a revenge tragedy.
The Devil’s best tunes By Ruben van Luijk It’s been said that the Devil has all the best tunes. If this is true, he likes to keep a conspicuously low profile. While songs of praise for Jesus, God, Krishna, Buddha, the Virgin Mary, and a host of other deities, saints, and semi-deities abound, Satan is seldom properly hymned.
Sartor resartus, or some thoughts on the origin of the word “cloth” and the history of clothes By Anatoly Liberman I keep clawing at the bars of the cage I built for myself. But first a digression. Walter W. Skeat wrote numerous notes on English etymology, some of which he eventually put together and published in book form. Much to my regret, not too many kl-words attracted his attention. But I was amused to discover that the verb clop means not only the sound made by shoes or hoofs but also “to cling, adhere to.”
Let’s tank tanking By Robert L. Simon “Tanking,” or deliberately trying to lose an athletic contest to gain a future competitive advantage, such as earning higher draft pick of prospective players, became the talk of the town or at least of many fans, in many US cities saddled with losing teams in such sports as hockey, basketball, and baseball. If actually practiced, however, tanking would exploit spectator, players, and coaches alike.
Is globalization the problem? By Eric Sheppard Populist angst and anger is running through the United States presidential campaign, but also through the Brexit debates, directed at the political establishment, and also at globalization (with the European Union standing in for the latter in the UK context). This anger has taken policy elites by surprise, throwing wrenches into the works of carefully planned political campaigns by mainstream Republican, Democratic, Conservative, and Labour parties on either side of the Atlantic.
Revisiting the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial By Eduardo Obregón Pagán If you were accused of a crime that you did not commit, how confident are you that you would be found innocent? And what injuries and injustices could you endure before your innocence was finally proven?
Child labour in India: an uncertain future? By Gurchathen S. Sanghera India is known to have the largest number of child labourers in the world. Consequently, it has come under intense media and political scrutiny both within India and from afar. Traditional understandings of the causes of child labour have focused on the economic, social-cultural, and historical milieus specific to India, such as caste, class, corruption, gender, illiteracy, lack of law enforcement, political apathy, poverty, religion, etc.
How can history inform public policy today? By Amanda B. Moniz As a historian of philanthropy, I have wrestled with how to bring historical perspectives to my my own gifts of time and money. I study philanthropists in North America, the British Isles, and the Caribbean in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The distant past, you might think, and of little concern to our philanthropic practices today.
Why cooperate? By Judith L. Bronstein Birds do it. Bees do it. Microbes do it, and people do it. Throughout nature, organisms cooperate. Humans are undeniably attracted by the idea of cooperation. For thousands of years, we have been seeking explanations for its occurrence in other organisms, often imposing our own motivations and ethics in an effort to explain what we see.
Brexit, business, and the role of migration for an ageing UK By Sarah Harper John Shropshire used to farm celery just in Poland. Why? Because celery production is labour intensive and Poland had abundant available labour. However, he now also farms in the Fens, Cambridgeshire. Why? Because the EU Single Market gives him access to the labour he needs. Not cheap labour – John pays the living wage to his workers – but available seasonal migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe – 2500 of them.
10 facts about the trombone By Aviva LeShaw Tuba, trumpet, trombone…which one should you pick up this fall? Read below to learn what makes the trombone the right choice, and to find out a little more about this bass instrument’s long history.
A possible cause of the Big Bang and current acceleration of the Universe By Alexander Vasilkov and Nick Gorkavyi The Big Bang theory predicts that there was a powerful repulsive force at the beginning of the expanding of the Universe. A common hypothesis of the cause of the Big Bang is a short-term repulsive field, the so-called “inflanton”. Observations of supernovas have shown that the Universe is still expanding with acceleration.
Making the English country house By Jon Stobart In February 1764, Samuel Butler, the steward at Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire, wrote to the London upholsterer, Thomas Burnett, that he should wait in sending furniture because ‘our house is now in greater confusion than ever … as we are making great alterations in the middle part of the house’. These changes were being made as a result of the recent coming of age of Edward, fifth Lord Leigh.
12 little-known facts about cats By Lauri Lu Cats are among some of the most popular pets in the world, and they’ve been so for thousands of years. In fact, there are more than two million cat videos on YouTube. In appreciation of our feline friends for World Cat Day on 8 August, we’ve put together a list of 12 little-known cat facts.
Aldo Leopold’s legacy on our national parks By Marybeth Lorbiecki As my family gazed down on the stratified color bands of geological history in the Grand Canyon, snow and ice lined each ridge, and made each step on the path going down a dangerous adventure, highlighting the glorious drama of the miles-deep gorge. It was dizzying and frightening and awe-inspiring.
A talent for politics? Academics, failure, and emotion By Matthew Flinders Sometimes a fragment of a book manages to lodge itself in the back of your mind. An idea, a description, a phrase…just something, and often completely unrelated to the core story, attaches itself to your mind like an intellectual itch you can’t quite scratch.
Mole and Rat: A chancing friendship By Peter Hunt National Friendship Day was originally founded by Hallmark as a promotional campaign to encourage people to send cards, but is now celebrated in countries across the world on the first Sunday in August. This post celebrates the friendship of two of our favorite characters from classic literature, Rat and Mole from The Wind in the Willows.
Should we watch the Olympics? By Arthur L. Caplan Brendan Parent We used to have to take time off from work –or at least leave work early– to watch the Olympics on TV. Now we can thank the engineering marvels of DVR and web replay for protecting our love affair with the Games from our evil work schedules. We are, rightly, mesmerized by the combination of talent, discipline, skill, and genetics embodied by the world’s greatest athletes.
Hey everybody! Meet Estefania! By Estefania Ospina Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Estefania Ospina, who joined the gang in June 2016, just two weeks ago, as an OUPblog Deputy Editor and Social Media Co-Ordinator! You can learn more about Estefania below. When did you start working at OUP? 6 June 2016. What was your first job in publishing? Oxford University Press is my first publishing job;
Gender and location in African politics scholarship: Q&A with Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers By Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers In an effort to address misconceptions about gender and location in relation to academic publishing in Africa, the editors of African Affairs reached out to Ryan C. Briggs and Scott Weathers to discuss the findings from their recent research in more detail.
Shakespeare and the natural world [infographic] It is probable that Shakespeare observed, or at least heard about, many natural phenomena that occurred during his time, which may have influenced the many references to nature and science that he makes in his work. Although he was very young at the time, he may have witnessed the blazing Stella Nova in 1572.
How fast can you think? By Barbara Gail Montero A call comes through to the triage desk of a large hospital in the New York City metropolitan area: a pregnant woman with multiple abdominal gunshot wounds is due to arrive in three minutes. Activating a trauma alert, the head nurse on duty, Denise, requests intubation, scans, anesthesia, surgery, and, due to the special circumstances, sonography and labor and delivery. How is it possible to think about so much so quickly?
A technophile embraces oral history in the digital age By Steven Sielaff Since this is an oral historian origin story, I feel I need to begin this post with a bit of a confession. Even though I earned a bachelor’s degree in History from Baylor University, it was not until the summer of 2011, the term before I was to begin my graduate work at Baylor in the Museum Studies program
How much of an Olympics fan are you? [quiz] By Lauri Lu On August 5, Rio de Janeiro will welcome the 2016 Summer Olympics, becoming the first South American city to ever host the Games. Before you attend that Olympics viewing party, why not brush up on your trivia game with our quiz below?
Rio 2016: evidence of greatness or a bid for recognition? By Andrew F. Cooper The eve of the opening ceremonies of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics is a good time to reflect not only on Brazil’s role as the organizer the games, but whether the experience of the host country tells us anything about the status of the BRICS–one of the most important economic groupings in the world, and one which you may never have heard of. As nations much showcased since 2001 as big, dynamic, rising countries, much of their global projection has focused as much on spectacle as on substantive achievements.
Experiments in Art and Technology – Episode 37 – The Oxford Comment Founded in 1966 by Billy Klüver, Fred Waldhauer, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman, Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) was a non-profit group that fostered collaboration between artists and engineers. Active between the 1960s and 1980s, E.A.T. recruited scientists and engineers to work with artists looking to incorporate new technologies into artworks, performances, and installations.
Musical literacy in Shakespeare’s England By Joe Ortiz It is a commonplace to say that, in Renaissance England, music was everywhere. Yet, however true the statement is, it obscures the fact that music existed in many different forms, with very different functions and very different meanings.
Japanese elections: constitutional revision and the anxiety of free speech By Noriko Manabe While the high drama of the Brexit vote and the US presidential election has grabbed international headlines, Japan has also completed an election that may have far-reaching implications. In the elections for the Upper House of the Diet (Japan’s parliament) on July 10, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partners won 162 seats.
How A. K. Ramanujan mirrored Aldous Huxley By Guillermo Rodríguez In the 1950s and 60s a cross-section of psychologists, writers and artists in America, partly inspired by Aldous Huxley’s essay The Doors of Perception published in 1954, experimented with hallucinogenics like LSD, mescaline, mushrooms, and hashish to venture into new realms of experience, seeking the “hidden” reality of the self and the world and probing into the meaning of art to locate their inner vision.
The unadulterated truth about the history of the word “clean” By Anatoly Liberman Perhaps the story would not have been worth telling if German and Dutch klein, the closest cognates of Engl. clean, did not mean “small.” Long ago, on 4 July 2007, I devoted half of my post to the adjective mad.
What does being a doctor mean to you? By Lara Coppel Following on from this year’s Clinical Placement Competition, asking medical students “What does being a doctor mean to you?” – we are hoping to broaden our understanding of the medical profession, and appreciate exactly what being a doctor means in practice. What stories of highlights, difficulties, and uncensored advice can current doctors pass on, and how can we help those starting out?
Alexander Hamilton and the public debt By Richard S. Grossman have not yet seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway show Hamilton. I feel badly about this for three reasons. First, Miranda is a 2002 Wesleyan graduate, a loyal and generous alumnus who gave a great commencement speech in 2015 and remains solidly committed to the university. Second, the music and lyrics are, quite simply, amazing. Third, as an economic historian, it is heartening to see one of America’s economic heroes make it to Broadway.
An interview with music marketer and bass guitarist Helena Palmer By Helena Palmer In the midst of celebrating the bass guitar all throughout the month of July, we sat down with music marketer for Oxford University Press Helena Palmer. Are four strings really easier than six? What is the most difficult aspect of learning to play the bass guitar?
A Dictionary of Sports Studies Ten interesting facts about a selection of Olympic sports Every four years, when the Olympics come around, everyone suddenly becomes an expert in one, many, or all of the sports on show. Whilst you watch you know exactly when an athlete goes wrong with their run-up, or when a horse steps out of line in the Dressage, or how a tennis player could better their serve.
In the Information Age, why do Americans ignore facts during elections? By James W. Cortada We are constantly told that we live in the Information Age. “Everyone has a smart phone.” “Over twenty-five percent of Americans have college degrees.” “Over one-third of the African American community now lives in the Middle Class, with a high school or better
Solutions to reduce racial mistrust in medicine By Mike Fillon Black women in the United States have about a 41% higher chance of dying from breast cancer than white women. Some of that disparity can be linked to genetics, but the environment, lingering mistrust toward the health care system, and suspicion over prescribed breast cancer treatment also play roles, according to a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
George R. Terry Book Award winners – past and present We are proud to announce that the winner of this year’s George R. Terry Book Award is Trust in a Complex World, by Charles Heckscher. The George R. Terry Book Award is awarded to the book that has made the most outstanding contribution to the global advancement of management knowledge. What’s more, a further two Oxford University Press titles were named as finalists this year.
Music for adolescent voices and the nightmare problem of ‘cool’ By Martin Ashley Oxford University Press has taken the risk of providing for the UK what the Cambiata Press has for many years been providing in the US – “quality music for adolescent choirs containing changing voices.” I use the word “risk” because cambiata music is a small market and the music teachers and choir conductors who understand what it is and why it’s needed are a small proportion of the minority who might even consider that choral work with adolescent boys is important.
Elie Wiesel: the Hillel of our time By Edward A. Zelinsky I first met Elie Wiesel in the summer of 1965. Wiesel’s book Night had been translated into English five years earlier. Night was just beginning to be recognized in English-speaking countries. Wiesel was not yet then the impressive speaker he was soon to become. As he addressed the audience that summer about the horrors of the Holocaust, Wiesel was diffident to the point of shyness.
Emergency Departments as front line for opiate epidemic By Katherine Maloy There is no question that opioid use disorders are a serious problem in the United States. Increasing recognition of the scope of the problem has led to political and policy attention. While evidence-based treatments for opioid dependence are available, they remain difficult to access. Treatments that involve opiate replacement such as methadone are particularly stigmatized.
Best beach classics: the books you should be reading this summer In a recent article for The Huffington Post, journalist Erin Schumaker advises students not to let their brains waste away over the summer: “you might be better off skipping the beach read this summer in favor of something a little more substantive.” Yet some of us might find the idea of settling down on a sun lounger with War and Peace less than appealing. To help you out, we asked staff at Oxford University Press for a list of summer classics that will help you relax without letting your brain get lazy!
Changing tropical forest landscapes: A view from a small plane By Jaboury Ghazoul We emerge from the thick tropical clouds that perpetually hang over Kota Kinabalu at this time of year. I crane my neck to get a good view through the plane window of the surreal profile of Mount Kinabalu, its multi-pronged rocky top standing well aloof of the surrounding clouds and forest. It seems as if the mountain, aware of its own splendour, has shaken off all vegetation from its peaks to better show off their plutonic immensity.
Culture change for women in Afghanistan By Lan Cao When Laura Bush said in April 2016 that she wanted the President of the United States to care about Afghan women, one could reasonably infer that she would rather see Hillary Clinton elected President than Donald Trump. Hillary has proclaimed that women’s rights are human rights, meaning that to the extent that human rights have become a part of mainstream political discourse, so should women’s rights.
July 2016 (110))
How the Iraq Inquiry failed to follow the money By David Whyte In 2007, I published an article that sought to show in detail how the Iraqi economy had been opened up to allow the transformation of the economy and the routine corruption that enabled a range of private profit-making companies to exploit the post-invasion economy. The article argued that the illegal war of aggression waged by a ‘coalition’ headed by George Bush and Tony Blair was tied to a series of subsequent crimes of pillage and occupation.
How much do you know about Milton Friedman? [quiz] Milton Friedman is regarded as one of the most prominent economists of the twentieth century, contributing to both economic theory and policy. 31st July is his birthday, and this year marks 10 years since his death, and 40 years since he won the Nobel Prize for Economics for his contributions to consumption analysis and to monetary theory and history.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: René Descartes By John Priest This August, the OUP Philosophy team honors René Descartes (1596–1650) as their Philosopher of the Month. Called “The Father of Modern Philosophy” by Hegel, Descartes led the seventeenth-century European intellectual revolution which laid down the philosophical foundations for the modern scientific age. His philosophical masterpiece, the Meditations on First Philosophy, appeared in Latin in 1641, and his Principles of Philosophy, a comprehensive statement of his philosophical and scientific theories, also in Latin, in 1644.
Teaching teamwork By Ben Shneiderman The capacity to work in teams is a vital skill that undergraduate and graduate students need to learn in order to succeed in their professional careers and personal lives. While teamwork is often part of the curriculum in elementary and secondary schools, undergraduate and graduate education is often directed at individual effort and testing that emphasizes solitary performance.
What would Shakespeare drive? By Todd Andrew Borlik Like many Elizabethan gentlemen who had business in London but family in the provinces, Shakespeare would have spent a considerable amount of time on horseback. Few of his contemporaries, however, had Shakespeare’s talent for turning the vexations of travel into deathless verse. Sonnet 50 recounts a trip on horseback in which the poet’s reluctance to leave his beloved makes him keenly conscious of his body as a burden that increases the animal’s suffering: “The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, / Plods dully on to bear that weight in me”. According to Galenic medicine, black bile, or melancholy, was considered the heaviest of the four bodily humors.
How do performance-enhancing drugs affect athletes? By Manupriya Sharma Performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) are drugs that improve active performance in humans, known colloquially in sports as ‘doping’. Perhaps the most famous abuser of PEDs to date is Lance Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion, who in 2013 confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career, and was stripped of the seven Tour de France titles he won from 1999 to 2005.
Oral history for youth in the age of #BlackLivesMatter By Andrew Viñales As students in Columbia University’s OHMA program we are often urged to consider Oral History projects that not only serve to archive interviews for future use, but that “do something.”
Violent sports: the “most perfect of contests”? By Thomas F. Scanlon Violent sports like American football, ice hockey, rugby, boxing and mixed martial arts are perennially among the most popular. Their status is a frightening indication of the flowering of violence in sports in the 21st century, booming to a level unknown since ancient Greece and Rome. In the ancient Mediterranean, the audiences both in the Greek East and in the Roman West mutually enjoyed Greek athletic contests and Roman spectacles.
This year’s other elections By Donald A. Ritchie The primaries, the conventions, and the media have focused so much attention on the presidential candidates that it’s sometime easy to forget all the other federal elections being held this year, for 34 seats in the Senate and 435 in the House (plus five nonvoting delegates). The next president’s chances of success will depend largely on the congressional majorities this election will produce.
Scientific method and back pain By Dawn Field Do you have back pain? Statistics show you likely do. Or you have had it in the past or will in the future. Back pain can be a million different things, and you can get it an equal number of ways. Until you’ve suffered it, you don’t realise how disruptive it can be. Trying to fix back pain is a superb way to make people understand the power of scientific method and how to use it.
Was Anton LaVey serenading Satan in his cover of “Answer Me”? By Ruben van Luijk Anton Szandor LaVey was the most outspoken and most notorious apostle of Satan in the twentieth century. On his life before founding the Church of Satan in 1966, LaVey liked to spun wild tales, but he did actually work as a professional and semi-professional musician in the carnival circuit. The High Priest of Satan was fond of bombastic classic music in the Wagnerian mould and popular tunes from the thirties, forties, and fifties, the period in which he himself had been young.
A summer reading list The sound of paddling pools, ice-cream vans, and sizzling barbecues means but one thing: summer is finally here. We caught up with four of Oxford University Press’ most seasoned travelers to see which books they recommend for trips to Thailand, Cambodia, Germany, India, and France.
How India can motivate Pakistan to prevent cross-border terrorism By George Perkovich and Toby Dalton As the new year dawned on 1 January 2016, six heavily-armed men crossed through a marshy section of the Punjab border from Pakistan into India. Disguised in Indian Army fatigues, they commandeered first a taxi, then a small SUV, eventually covering the approximately 35km to reach the Air Force base at Pathankot.
Etymology gleanings for July 2016 By Anatoly Liberman As I have observed in the past, the best way for me to make sure that I have an audience is to say something deemed prejudicial or wrong. Then one or more readers will break their silence, and I’ll get the recognition I deserve (that is, my comeuppance).
From the archives: the top 5 movie scenes set in libraries By Rachel Brook Paul Feig’s Ghostbuster’s remake has made waves on both sides of the Atlantic. As the original 1984 film set some significant action in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, we couldn’t help but indulge in a rifle through the archives of cinematic tributes to libraries.
From ‘conforming stores’ to digital first: the changing world of retail By Alan Treadgold I was in a taxi in Hong Kong several years ago, stuck in traffic in the pouring rain. I said to my Hong Kong-based colleague how notable it seemed that all the apartment buildings looked exactly the same. “Cheaper that way isn’t it?” was his response, “Just design one then put up 50. Obvious really.”
Around the world in spices and herbs On supermarket shelves, we are given a mind-numbing array of choices to select from. Shall we have some peppercorns on our macaroni, some cinnamon for baking, or a bit of rosemary with roast pork? Five hundred years ago, however, cooking with herbs and spices was a much simpler choice.
National marketing in a global market By Charles Doyle Marketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic – but also the political, social and personal.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Top 10 tips to tackling and transforming piano technique By Donna Gunn We have all attended concerts where a performer dazzled us with technique that seemed hardly humanly possible – a phenomenon that has been a part of musical performances throughout history. In a 1783 anecdotal memory by Johann Matthias Gesner, the ability of J. S. Bach’s playing was described to “effect what not many Orpheuses, nor […]
Post-award remedies before the arbitral tribunal: a neglected means of streamlining arbitration By Reinmar Wolff One of the reasons why parties choose arbitration is its time-efficiency. This is mainly due to the fact that the arbitral award decides the dispute in a final and binding manner and is subject to no appeal. Although time-efficiency belongs to the traditional advantages of arbitration, the users of arbitration have over the last years significantly increased the pressure to control time (and cost) in arbitration.
The lifelong importance of nutrition in pregnancy for brain development By Susanne de Rooij The importance of a healthy diet for proper functioning of the brain is increasingly being recognized. Week in, week out studies appear recommending a high intake of certain foods in order to achieve optimal brain function and prevent brain diseases. Although it is definitely no punishment for the most of us to increase our chocolate consumption to boost brain function, the most important period during which nutrition affects our brain may already be behind us.
The perpetual Oxford tourist: what to see and do in the city of dreaming spires By Patricia Hudson This week, the International Association of Law Libraries is holding its 35th Annual Course in Oxford, United Kingdom. Oxford University Press is delighted to host the conference’s opening reception in our own offices on Great Clarendon Street.
Chinese Journal of International Law French language in International Law By Peter Laverack French is the language of diplomacy, German the language of science, and English the language of trade. Whereas German has been displaced by English in science, French continues to occupy a privileged position in international diplomacy. Its use is protected by its designation as one of the two working languages of the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and ad hoc UN-backed tribunals.
Announcing the winner of the 2016 Clinical Placement Competition By Iona Maxwell This May, our 2016 Clinical Placement Competition came to a close. In partnership with Projects Abroad, we offered one lucky medical student the chance to practice their clinical skills, with £2,000 towards a clinical placement in a country of their choice. We asked entrants to send a photograph with a caption, explaining “What does being a doctor mean to you?”
Brexit and the border: problems of the past haunt Ireland’s uncertain future By Peter Leary On 23 June 2016 a majority of people in England and Wales voted to Leave the European Union. A majority of Scottish voters opted to Remain and, so too, did a clear majority of voters in Northern Ireland. These results have produced uncertainty about the future direction of relationships across these islands.
Preparing for ISME Glasgow By Celine Aenlle-Rocha This weekend, the 32nd International Society for Music Education World Conference will be hosted in Glasgow, Scotland. Researchers, practitioners, and performers will gather to present concerts, talks and discussions. We asked a few attendees for their pre-ISME thoughts and plans. What are you looking forward to at the conference?
Beyond Brexit panic: an American perspective By Ben Shneiderman By now, the early Brexit panic based on assumptions of catastrophe, disaster, and apocalypse, is giving way to more positive attitudes in the science fields. Yes, there are changes coming, sometimes painful, but there are also opportunities for new partnerships, fresh collaborations, and bolder directions. I was on a month-long visit to the United Kingdom when the Brexit vote took place
How long was my century? By Jeffrey Wasserstrom In 2002 I faced a dilemma relating to an editorial project that perhaps only another historian can appreciate. Scrambling to complete the Introduction to Twentieth-Century China: New Approaches, I had to figure out how long to say the eponymous period had lasted.
Is it possible to experience time passing? By Simon Prosser Suppose you had to explain to someone, who did not already know, what it means to say that time passes. What might you say? Perhaps you would explain that different times are arranged in an ordered series with a direction: Monday precedes Tuesday, Tuesday precedes Wednesday, and so on.
Transforming libraries in Myanmar: The e-Library Myanmar Project By Myat Sann Nyein I have been a lifelong librarian in Myanmar since 1985. It is a great pleasure and honor to share the challenges and success of the e-Library Myanmar Project implemented by EIFL.
Not just dots on a map: life histories alleviate spatial amnesia in San Francisco By Audrey Augenbraum For Manissa Maharawal, the struggle for housing justice is personal. When her own father got displaced from his apartment in Prospect Heights—his home since moving from India to the States some thirty years before, in which he raised his family—she was struck by his unstoppable urge to tell the story over and over again.
Matters of the past mattering today By Nam C. Kim The past can be very important for those living in the present. My research experiences as an archaeologist have made this very apparent to me. Echoes from the distant past can reverberate and affect the lives of contemporary communities, and interpretations of the past can have important ramifications.
Zika, sex, and mosquitoes: Olympic mix By Mary E. Wilson Zika continues its romp around the world. In its wake, controversy erupted over the Olympic Games in Brazil, with some calling to move or postpone the Games – but is that really justified? Zika has already moved outside of Brazil in a big way. To be clear, the Zika epidemic is dramatic and awful. Mosquito-borne transmission of this previously obscure and seemingly wimpy virus is ongoing in 60 countries
What music would Shakespeare’s characters listen to? By Hannah Paget Shakespeare’s characters can often appear far-removed from our modern day world of YouTube, Beyoncé and grime. Yet they were certainly no less interested in music than we are now, with music considered to be at the heart of Shakespeare’s artistic vision. Of course our offerings have come a long way since Shakespeare’s day, but we think it is a shame that they never had a chance to hear the musical delights of Katy Perry or Slipknot.
A Q&A with Katie Stileman, Publicist for the VSI series By Katie Stileman Katie Stileman works as the UK Publicist for Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introductions series (VSIs). She tells us a bit about what working for OUP looks like. If she wasn’t working on publicity at OUP, she would be doing publicity for Taylor Swift.
Suicide and the First Amendment By Susan Stefan What does suicide have to do with the first amendment right to free speech? As it turns out, the question comes up in many contexts: Can a state university student be disciplined for sending a text threatening suicide to another student? Can a young woman be criminally prosecuted for repeatedly texting her boyfriend to insist that he fulfill his intention to commit suicide?
OUP Philosophy How much do you know about Hypatia? [quiz] By John Priest An astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, and active public figure, Hypatia played a leading role in Alexandrian civic affairs. Her public lectures were popular, and her technical contributions to geometry, astronomy, number theory, and philosophy made Hypatia a highly regarded teacher and scholar.
Culloden, tourism, and British memory By Murray Pittock As the beginnings of large-scale travel and tourism through Scotland began within fifteen or twenty years of the battle of Culloden, it might have been expected that the conflict would become an early site of memory.
A voice in the background: remembering Margo Quantrell By Gordon Thompson The documentary Twenty Feet from Stardom (2013) gave us a glimpse of how backing singers—performers who provide vocal harmonies and responses for featured artists—have contributed to twentieth-century American popular music.
As clean as what? By Anatoly Liberman In anticipation of the post on clean, I decided to say something about the idioms in which clean figures prominently, but chose only those which have the structure as clean as.
Australia in three words, part 1-“Mateship” By William Coleman “Mateship” is an Australianism – my American spell-checker doesn’t recognise it – and it’s one that captures something widely held to be distinctive about Australia. Like many Australianisms, the word existed well before there were any Australians in the ordinary sense.
Colombia: the embattled road to peace By Estefania Ospina Is absolute peace throughout a nation ever truly attainable and sustainable? Can a country ever unite as one entity in the face of extreme opposing views and ideals throughout the land, its people unable to achieve the plurality of a single bilateral, collective human interest legislative mandate?
Explaining citizenship, racism, and patriotism to the young By Greg Carter “Daddy,” my daughter started as we ate breakfast three weeks ago, “What’s Independence Day?” “July Fourth, the anniversary of when the United States, our country, was founded.” “The parade where they throw candy?”
Ten facts about the bass guitar By Scott Gleason The bass guitar is often thought to be a poor musician’s double bass or a poor musician’s guitar. Nonetheless, luthiers and performers have explored its expressive possibilities within a wide range of musical styles and performance traditions, some of which we chart below.
Brexit and UK company law By Lee Roach Most discussion relating to the referendum result has focussed on the effect that Brexit will have upon our constitutional arrangements or workers’ rights. This blog post will focus on the effect that Brexit will have upon the UK system of company law. Unfortunately, the current uncertainty regarding the terms on which the UK will leave the EU (if indeed it does) means that a definitive answer cannot be provided.
How to choose a medical school By Harveer Dev, David Metcalfe, and Stephan Sanders Feeling confused? You’re not alone… Applying to medical school is like asking someone to marry you. This might seem like an exaggeration, however over your lifetime you will spend more hours working than you will spend awake with your life partner. Like marriage, being a doctor will change who you are, influence where you live, and affect what you can do.
Blowin’ in the wind By Carlos Hoyt I am, I suppose, part of the “cognoscenti” in the area of social identity, social bias, and social justice. I’m a tenure-track assistant professor of social work, I’m a diversity, equity, and inclusion consultant, and I recently wrote a book on how to understand and overcome challenges associated with race.
Jewish identity – the Israeli paradoxes By Daniel Friedmann Is Judaism a religion and a culture or is it also a nationality? To this question the Zionist movement, which led to the establishment of the State of Israel, gave a clear positive answer. This approach has been adopted by Israel.
Measuring sun exposure in outdoor workers By Cheryl Peters Sun exposure is a key feature of summer for many people, especially in countries like Canada where pleasant weather can seem so fleeting. Unfortunately, sun exposure (in particular ultraviolet radiation) is the primary cause of skin cancer, the most common cancer in Canada. Skin cancer is also one of few cancers where diagnoses are increasing.
The evolution of international criminal justice By Annie R. Bird In commemoration of International Criminal Justice Day, it is worth pausing to reflect on the evolution and impact of the field in just two decades. Of course the history goes back much further, and it remains painstakingly challenging to realize in many contexts, but it is without question that accountability is now a key feature of the global response to atrocity.
Ethical change in the Catholic Church By Joseph A. Selling In just a little more than three years as the Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis appears to have disrupted what many thought was a straight and unchangeable course of moral teaching in the Catholic Church. Some of the more conservative members of the church are worried that the fundamentals of that teaching are being ignored, or worse, thrown overboard. Francis’s call for a ‘poorer’ church and a world that cares about the environment displays a significant turn in Catholic politics.
Transitions in transitional justice: reflections on International Criminal Justice Day By Zachary D. Kaufman Today we commemorate International Criminal Justice Day to honor the 1998 adoption of the Rome Statute, the treaty that created the International Criminal Court (ICC), the world’s first permanent international war crimes tribunal. This year we should take the opportunity to reflect on various transitions in transitional justice. With the recent closure, creation, and consideration of several ad hoc war crimes tribunals.
The obscure objects of mass production By Simon Evnine The objects of mass production – screws, nails, cell phones, cars – are everywhere. They are, for the most part, humdrum and insignificant and beneath the notice of philosophers. But in fact, I shall suggest, they are deeply mysterious from an ontological point of view.
Westminster professor takes home law teaching prize Professor Lisa Webley of the University of Westminster has been named Law Teacher of the Year 2016, fending off strong competition from lecturers from Bangor, Leicester, Nottingham Trent, Oxford, and Sheffield Hallam. The prestigious national award, which is sponsored by Oxford University Press, was presented at the end of the inaugural Celebrating Excellence in Law Teaching conference held in Oxford on Friday 1 July 2016.
The Enlightenment and visual impairment By Jack Orchard Blindness is a recurrent image in Enlightenment rhetoric. It is used in a political context to indicate a lack of awareness, seen in a letter from Edmund Burke to the chevalier de La Bintinnaye, in poetic rhetoric, with the stories of the blind poets Milton, Homer, and Ossian circulating among the intelligentsia of the time, or simply as a physical irritation, when writers with long lives and extensive correspondences frequently complained of their eyesight deteriorating.
Oral history and social justice By Sarah K. Loose The #OHMATakeover of the OHR blog continues as Sara Loose explains her origins in oral history and how the skills and perspectives she gained at Columbia have influenced her career so far.
Masculinity, misogyny, and presidential image-making in the US and Russia By Valerie Sperling Masculinity is a characteristic that many people associate with political legitimacy; we expect politicians to be “strong” and to “protect” the country’s citizens and national interests. Politicians (male and female) thus make an effort to demonstrate their strength and toughness on various issues.
British Medical Bulletin Predicting exceptional performance at the Olympics in Rio: science or chance? By Giuseppe Lippi As every four years, we are now quickly approaching to the Games of the XXXI Olympiad, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. The Olympics are the biggest sports event in the world, followed by the FIFA World Cup in football and the Tour de France of cycling, with as many as two billion people tuning in at some point during the event.
Who are the middle class in India? By Surinder S. Jodhka and Aseem Prakash The idea of the middle class is also invoked, positively, to describe the emerging Indian, who, through education and hard work, is trying to move upwards, with his/her own resources, and in turn, is transforming the country into a modern and developed nation.
Welfare states and the great unraveling By David Garland We appear to be on the verge of a great unraveling – a period in which the established arrangements of political and economic life are rapidly coming undone. And at heart of these events is the question of the welfare state and the security of working people in contemporary capitalism.
Musical Prodigies Is musical success written in the stars? By Solange Glasser When we look at the so-called “miraculous gifts” of musical prodigies, it is easy to get caught up in the nature vs. nurture debate: are these prodigies born or made? But we won’t be entering here into the discussion as to whether genetics or education plays the greater role. Instead, there may be a secondary element to this debate that is often overlooked, an element that intrinsically ties together these two conflicting sides.
Talking peace in Burundi, once more at the cost of impunity? By Stef Vandeginste On 10 June 2016, former Tanzanian president Benjamin Mkapa travelled to Brussels to meet the leadership of Burundi’s opposition coalition CNARED (National Coalition for the Restoration of the Arusha Agreement and the Rule of Law).
A tale of two referendums By Tom Mullen Post-referendum events, particularly, the SNP’s near clean sweep of Scottish seats in the 2015 general election, suggested that the question of Scotland’s future in or outside the union had not been resolved. The even narrower margin of victory for ‘Brexit’ in the EU referendum has brought the Scottish question back to centre stage.
The heterogeneous “kl”-clan again: “clay,” “clove,” and all, all, all By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I mentioned Francis A. Wood’s rhyme words and rhyme ideas and cited his example cloud and crowd. In my life, such a pair is gleaning and cleaning.
Continuing to smoke after breast cancer diagnosis lowers survival rate By Mike Fillon After being told they have breast cancer, many female smokers say “what the heck?” and continue to smoke, figuring they have nothing more to lose. A new study finds that’s not true—that quitting is advantageous even after such a dire diagnosis. The study included more than 20,600 women with breast cancer. Those who quit had a 33% lower mortality rate from breast cancer than those who kept smoking.
How workers can get a better deal out of Uber By Nicholas Agar Platform businesses are the current darlings of digital disruption. Uber, Airbnb, Taskrabbit, and their ilk dodge the overheads of traditional businesses. Their services are provided by private contractors and not by employees with all of their expensive entitlements.
When Shakespeare’s plays call for music, what kind of sound should we imagine? By Ross Duffin Music at that time was special— magical even— and its effect would have been diminished by constant presence even if that were possible for the musicians, which it was not. David Lindley, indeed, points out that, in contrast to the modern use of filmic underscoring, music in Shakespearean theatre was ‘always part of the world of the play itself, heard and responded to by the characters on- stage’.
Are Americans information junkies? By James W. Cortada It would seem so obvious that they are information junkies. With 70 plus percent of the population over the age of 10 walking around with their smart phones—more computer than telephone—they often hold them in their hands so they can instantly keep up. E-books are popular, while the sale of hardcopy books continues to rise. The New York Times boasted in 2016 that it now had over a million online subscribers. A number close to that reads the Harvard Business Review.
Turning waste into resource: a win-win situation that should not be missed By Irene Sánchez-Andrea and Jan Weijma Soon after the Flinstones’ cartoon period, formally called the Stone Age, humans started to use metals for constructing tools, weapons, or ornaments which tremendously boosted human development. Since then, metal utilization has been evolving and nowadays, metals are a central pillar for all kind of routine and technological uses. You can find aluminium in most of your pots and pans
Ready to explore the unknown By Pauline Gagnon The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has already delivered more high energy data this year than it had in 2015. If any new particle were found, it would open the doors to bright new horizons in particle physics.
The new jazz films (and their old models) By Björn Heile Recent months have seen the release of two movies about great jazz trumpeters from the 1950s and 60s: Miles Ahead (Don Cheadle, 2015) focusing on Miles Davis, and Born to Be Blue (Robert Budreau, 2015) focusing on Chet Baker (although Miles plays an important role in the latter too: his second cinematic revival in one year). The similarities don’t end there: both films are semi-fictional, homing in on a moment of crisis in their respective protagonists’ real lives and spinning a mostly fictional story around it.
Strategic narratives and war reading list By Beatrice de Graaf and George Dimitriu One area of research in Foreign Policy Analysis is the study of war. In contemporary wars strategic narratives provide a grid for interpreting the why, what and how of the conflict in persuading story lines to win over various audiences – both in the area of operations and at home. The point of departure for scholars utilizing the concept of strategic narrative is that people make sense of war by means of stories through which shared sense is achieved.
Drones, the Mullah, and legal uncertainty: the law governing State defensive action By Kenneth Watkin The 21 May 2016 drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour riding in a taxi in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, raises questions about the law governing State defensive action. Fourteen years after the first US counterterrorist drone strike in Yemen, legal consensus remains elusive.
“All grammars leak”: How modern use and misuse are changing the English language By Edwin Battistella Anthropologist Edward Sapir once wrote, “Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.” Sapir was talking about the irregularities of language. For me, this leakiness is especially evident in what I think of as doppelgrammar words.
Republican’s five stages of grief By Justin Gest Sixteen established Republican party candidates have slowly ended or suspended their presidential candidacies and party leaders are trying to divine whether Donald Trump’s unthinkable ascent actually spells the end of their party as we have known it since the late 1960s.
The enduring evolution of logic By Thomas Ferguson and Graham Priest Logic is a deep subject, at the core of much work in philosophy, mathematics, and computer science. In very general terms, it is the study of what (conclusions) follows from what (premises)—logical consequence. The Early Modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant, held that Aristotle invented logic, and at his hands it was complete. There was nothing left to be done. He was notoriously wrong.
University of Manchester crowned champions of the OUP and BPP Mooting Competition 2016 At this year’s OUP and BB National Mooting Competition, one of the UK’s most prestigious mooting competitions, the team of the University of Manchester was victorious. The original moot problem, written by barrister Ros Earis for the final, focused on whether or not a landlord was liable for an injury caused to his tenant by a broken paving stone close to the front door of the property, despite not being informed of the defect.
Shakespearian opera in the shadow of war By Michael Graham Over the past few years, Britain has commemorated Shakespeare’s life, works, and death in parallel with an extensive remembrance of the First World War and those who served in it. The elision of Shakespeare’s work with this particular conflict is not a new trend: 100 years ago, similar celebrations of Shakespeare were occurring in the midst of wartime, and both Britain and Germany were employing his image and plays for propaganda and recruitment purposes.
Does death rob our lives of meaning? By Richard Pettigrew I fear death, you might think, because the fact that I will die robs the things I do in my life of their meaning or their value or their worth. This, if it were true, would justify the feeling of vertigo and emptiness that comes when we reflect that we will die.
Oral history as a political response By Eylem Delikanli Moustafa Bayoumi presented his book This Muslim American Life as part of the Oral History Workshops at the Columbia University Oral History MA Program.
Recognizing Robert Whitman By Julie Martin Born in 1935, Robert Whitman was a member of an influential, innovative group of visual artists– Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenburg– who presented theater pieces on the lower east side in Manhattan in the early 1960s. Whitman has presented more than 40 theater pieces in the United States and abroad, including The American Moon, Flower, Mouth, and most recently Passport (2011) and Swim (2015).
How to stay both active and safe this summer By Jeffrey S. Kutcher and Joanne C. Gerstner It’s no secret that summer is one of the most universally enjoyed parts of childhood. Waiting out the seemingly eternal last days of school – some have even been known to have a countdown starting in April – is a true act of patience. Then school finally ends. And it is time to ride bikes, play on sports teams and in tournaments, swim, hike, and possibly attend sports camps.
What will happen to global economics in the next 34 years By Harinder S. Kohli Before looking forward to 2050, we must first look back at the key economic and social developments during the past half a century, and perhaps look even further back than that. The rapid rise of emerging economies during the last 50 years is truly astounding in the long-term historical context. Developing economies now account for over half of the global output (55%, in PPP terms).
10 things you need to know about taxation By Stephen Smith Stephen Smith, author of Taxation: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 10 things we need to know about taxation, and gives us an insight into why we need taxes, how economic processes determine taxes, and how they can make political change.
Philip K. Dick’s spiritual epiphany By Kyle Arnold In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick’s life changed. While he was recovering from dental surgery, he claims, he had a spiritual epiphany. It started with a delivery from the local pharmacy. Three days after Dick’s surgery, an order of medications arrived in the hands of a stunning delivery woman.
Robert Whitman – Episode 36 – The Oxford Comment Robert Whitman is a pioneering American artist who, in the company of other groundbreaking figures including Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine, and Allan Kaprow, performed experimental performance art pieces in New York in the 1960s. In 1966, Whitman would become a founding member of the collective Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), along with Bell Labs engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhaur and artist Robert Rauschenberg.
Which mammal are you? [quiz] Mammals are defined as warm-blooded vertebrates that are distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, of which the females secrete milk for the nourishment of their young, and typically birth live young (except five known species, including the duck-billed platypus). Can we match up your personality traits to those of our mammalian friends? Find out which mammal you most closely resemble!
Astronomy’s next big thing: the Square Kilometre Array By Francis Graham-Smith When I started research in radio astronomy in 1947, the only known sources of cosmic radio waves were the Sun and the Milky Way. Observing techniques were simple: receivers were insensitive, there was no expectation that other radio sources could be located or even existed. A few years later, a whole vast radio sky was revealed, populated with supernova remnants, galaxies, and quasars.
Clouds with and without a silver lining By Anatoly Liberman Engl. cloud belongs so obviously with clod and its kin that there might not even be a question of its origin (just one more lump), but for the first recorded sense of clud in Old English, which was “rock, cliff.”
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Hypatia By John Priest An astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, and active public figure, Hypatia played a leading role in Alexandrian civic affairs. Her public lectures were popular, and her technical contributions to geometry, astronomy, number theory, and philosophy made Hypatia a highly regarded teacher and scholar.
The Corn Laws and Donald Trump By Richard S. Grossman One of the issues that distinguishes Donald Trump from mainstream Republicans — aside from his bigotry towards Mexicans, women, and Muslims—is his opposition to free trade, which has been a staple of Republican ideology since shortly after World War II.
The influence of premodern theories about sex and gender By Adrian Thatcher Have you ever wondered why women are having such a hard time achieving equality with men in the church and the world? Or why intersex and transgender people are having such a hard time to be accepted as they are? Or why same-gender attraction still evokes visceral reactions among millions of straight people?
Twelve interesting facts about chocolate Did you know that 7th July is International Chocolate Day? This is, of course, a day to eat that extra piece of chocolate or bake (and then eat) a cake just for fun! But while you savor each bite of chocolaty goodness, keep in mind that behind the sweet flavor is a long and dynamic history that has traveled across oceans and transcended cultural boundaries.
The effects of patient suicide on general practitioners By Pooja Saini Suicide is a major health problem. In England, around 5,000 people end their own lives annually – that is one death every two hours and at least ten times that number of attempts, according to the Office for National Statistics. Suicide is a tragedy that is life altering for those bereaved and can be an upsetting event for the community and local services involved. Our previous research demonstrated the:
Shakespeare’s dramatic music By Simon Smith Whenever a public event requires a speech from Shakespeare to articulate the profundity of human experience, or to illustrate the cultural achievements of humankind (or perhaps Britain), there is a very good chance that someone will turn to Caliban.
What should be done with Justice Scalia’s Supreme Court seat? By Edward A. Zelinsky Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly stated that the US Supreme Court does not function well with eight members. I disagree. Under present circumstances, it would be best for the country and the Court to abolish the vacant Supreme Court seat held by Justice Scalia and to proceed permanently with an eight member court.
The challenge of adult language learning By Ingrid Piller Adult migrants often struggle to learn the language of their new country. In receiving societies, this is widely seen as evidence that migrants are lazy, lack the required will power or, worse, actively resist learning the new language as an act of defiance towards their new community. Unfortunately, most of those who point the finger at migrant language shirkers vastly underestimate the effort involved in language learning.
Slavery and the limits of international criminal justice By Dr James Cockayne and Nick Grono By the best available estimates, between one in 162 and one in 400 people currently alive is trapped in a situation of slavery or forced labour. Mauritanians are born into hereditary or ‘chattel’ slavery. Indian families suffer in debt bondage in brick kilns. Migrants from Myanmar are forced to work on Thai fishing boats.
Post-truth, post-political, post-democracy: the tragedy of the UK’s referendum on the European Union By Matthew Flinders I used to cringe at the title of John Keane’s magisterial book The Life and Death of Democracy because of my belief in the innate flexibility and responsiveness of democratic politics – there could be no death of democracy. Now I’m not so sure.
Does my death harm me? By Richard Pettigrew Some people fear flying; some fear buttons; and many, many people fear their own death. We might try to argue a friend out of their fear of flying or their fear of buttons by showing them that the fear is irrational.
OUP Philosophy Getting to know Aviva LeShaw, Marketing Intern By Aviva LeShaw From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Aviva LeShaw, a Marketing Intern in the Humanities Department of our New York office. What’s the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning? Before I speak to anyone or do anything, I have a big cup of coffee. Strong. With half & half.
Cycling: a sport, a mode of transport, and a marketing phenomenon By Isabelle Szmigin Cycling has always been a global activity, and in the 21st century a marketing phenomenon. At its simplest, the bicycle is a functional form of transport that was invented sometime in the early 19th century, although attribution to a single inventor is not possible as there appear to have been a number of prototypes developed throughout Europe.
Supernatural Shakespeare By Diane Purkiss How do you make fairytales into realism? Everyone agrees that doing this work means supplying them with material forms. This is not, however, a novelist’s novelty. Shakespeare’s fairies are small plant flowers and seeds, and his monster knows how to dig pignuts.
Making the big decisions By Richard Pettigrew This post is about how we make major life decisions, such as whether or not to start a family, whether to leave your home country and start a life elsewhere, or whether to join a revolution and fight for a cause.
The complexity of biography By Liz Strong I came across Oral History and Childhood Memories by Evan Faulkenbury on the Oral History Review’s blog. His emphasis on narrators’ earliest memories caught my eye.
Pushing limits: disability as an unexpected gift By Catherine Kudlick This year a San Francisco Bay Area radio station, KPFA’ will offer a scholarly book as a gift in its July 2016 pledge drive. Sure, these pleas for listener contributions often give away books, along with the iconic tote bags and baseball caps. But this particular book is not the usual token of appreciation.
Dental caries – what is it, and why is it important? By Edwina Kidd and Ole Fejerskov Dental Caries, more widely known as tooth decay or cavities, is the most prevalent disease in man. It is currently the main reason for tooth loss. Essentially, it involves the breakdown of teeth due to bacterial activity (from simple sugars that we eat in our food), and if not controlled – will continue to develop and progress for a patient’s entire life. Despite this, dental caries is easily preventable.
The case of BHS and change on the UK High Street By Alan Treadgold BHS is, or perhaps that should read was, a familiar presence to shoppers across the UK, with over 160 stores in high streets and shopping centres. The general merchandise retailer combining clothing and home products had traded for nearly 90 years before it was placed into administration in April 2016.
Urbanization, climate change, and peri-urban water security By Vishal Narain and Anjal Prakash Urbanization processes in South Asia have resulted in the growth of peri-urban spaces. These are intermediary zones between rural areas and urban centres that reveal some features of both; mixed and changing land use, social and economic heterogeneity, and a wide diversity of occupational activities and interests. Land and water use patterns undergo a transformation as land uses change from agricultural to industrial and urban.
From Ebola to Zika By Ben Bolker and Marta Wayne When we were finalizing our book for publication, the West African Ebola epidemic was emerging (we hadn’t picked Ebola as one of our case studies), and our publishers asked if we could include some information about it in the book.
June 2016 (110))
What does assisted suicide have to do with gay marriage? By Susan Stefan When Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, finding a constitutional right to gay marriage, advocates of physician-assisted suicide had almost as much reason to celebrate as gay citizens who had been longing to marry. Physician-assisted suicide, or aid in dying, is the option currently available in five states for competent terminally ill people with less than six months to live
“An idea whose time had come”: The National Organization for Women at its half-century mark By Katherine Turk Fifty years ago this month, twenty-eight women came together to create what they described as “a civil rights movement to speak for women.” Within a few months NOW had three hundred members; by the end of the decade, three thousand.
Sampling reptiles in the Anthropocene By C. Kenneth Dodd Jr. According to the Reptile Database, more than 10,200 non-avian reptile species have been described (6,175 lizards and amphisbaenians; 3,496 snakes; 341 turtles; 25 crocodilians; 1 tuatara), with new taxa being recognized nearly every day.
The Paradoxical Muhammad Ali By Michael Ezra Muhammad Ali’s funeral and memorial service brought together a seemingly incongruous cast of characters, once again spotlighting the many contradictions that have made it so difficult for commentators and biographers to extract a realistic assessment of his life. Even with a staggering amount written about him, Ali leaves behind a contested image largely characterized by misinterpretation.
Brexit wrecks it for science By Dawn Field We are all reeling from the vote for Brexit. No one in my scientific circle was for exit. Now all are heavily lamenting it. Even cursing it on Facebook. Scientists voted to stay. Seems the entire science sector was pro-Europe and for many good reasons. Many of the best UK science labs are filled with brilliant researchers from across the EU.
A story of how a cluttered mind can find itself in clover By Anatoly Liberman Once again, no gleanings: the comments have been too few, and there have been no questions. Perhaps when the time for a real rich harvest comes, I’ll start gleaning like a house on fire. When last week I attacked the verb clutter, I planned on continuing with the kl-series; my next candidates were cloud and cloth.
What makes Mr. Darcy desirable? By Talia Schaffer Here’s my simple question: when did we come to believe that Darcy was sexy? The popular image of Jane Austen’s Fitzwilliam Darcy today is Colin Firth, with his wet clinging shirt, later immortalized by a giant statue. In 1940 we had Laurence Olivier, with his dapper coat, gleaming eyes, and smoldering charm.
The Brexit trade-off By Linda Yueh Amidst the uncertainty around what will happen after Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, there is some clarity about the next steps. Boris Johnson, the prominent Leave campaigner and PM contender, has set out his views in a newspaper article in which he says that Britons will have the right to live and work in the EU.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Bertrand Russell? [quiz] By John Priest This June, the OUP Philosophy team honors Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872 – February 2, 1970) as their Philosopher of the Month. Considered among the most distinguished philosophers of the 20th century, Russell’s style, wit, and contributions to a wide range of philosophical fields made him an influential figure in both academic and popular philosophy.
Research skills, transferable skills, and the new academic imperative By Sarah Andrus The challenges afflicting higher education in the US are many and multifaceted, and much has been written about the transformation (or full-blown identity crisis) of the academic institution and its place in society. Much of the controversy has to do with the institution’s responsibilities toward its students, its employees, and the community, with some claiming that “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” is no longer a sufficient offering.
Benjamin Franklin Says “WE ARE ONE” By Carla J. Mulford A year before signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote to Jonathan Shipley, one of his closest English friends, about American congressional affairs. He told of his day-long meetings (he worked from 9 AM often until 9 PM) in Congress. Despite his physical exhaustion, Franklin was impressed with his colleagues. Members of Congress, he wrote, attend “closely” to congressional affairs, “without being bribed to it, by either Salary, Place or Pension, or the hopes of any.”
10 things you didn’t know about sharks There are more than 400 known species of sharks inhabiting our planet’s marine ecosystems but detailed knowledge about most sharks is considerably lacking. Biologists often encounter barriers to studying sharks in captivity and in the wild due to factors such as their large size, relatively low demand in commercial markets, fast speeds, and wide habitat ranges.
How the Brexit vision of UK freedom risks turning sour By Giles Merritt “All changed, changed utterly,” wrote the celebrated Irish poet W.B. Yeats of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, adding “a terrible beauty is born!” A century later, he might well have been writing about the result of Britain’s referendum on EU membership.
Books are for everyone at this outdoor reading room By Lucie Taylor The first thing you need to know about the Bryant Park Reading Room is that it isn’t a room. Located behind the New York Public Library in Manhattan, this open-air Reading Room sits under a leafy canopy of plane trees at the 42nd Street entrance to Bryant Park.
Do lifestyle factors have an impact on sperm morphology? By Allan Pacey The assessment of sperm morphology, determined by the cells’ shape and size, is an important part of male fertility testing. Previous research has suggested that only sperm with good sperm morphology are able to make their way to the egg in the woman’s body and fertilise it. Our knowledge of factors that influence sperm size and shape is very limited
Songs of exile: a playlist for Psalm 137 By David W. Stowe Psalm 137 begins with one of the more lyrical lines in the Hebrew Bible: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” It ends eight lines later with one of the thorniest: “Happy shall he be, who taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Partly because it deals with music—another famous verse asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”—the psalm has been like poetic catnip, a siren song luring musicians and composers.
Europe’s real refugee crisis: unaccompanied minors By Khalid Koser The surge in asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Europe over the last two years is regularly described as a crisis. Certainly the numbers are significant: in 2015 there were about 1.2 million asylum applications in Europe, double the number in 2014 which was already a record year. The human suffering should also not be underestimated; almost 4,000 people are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe in 2015.
Single particle analysis taking biological research to the next level By Yoshinori Fujiyoshi Recent advances in technology have led to great developments in many fields – especially the field of medicine. In particular, better image detection has vastly improved electron microscopes, allowing for closer study of macromolecular complexes. The ability to visualize macromolecules in more detail, however, has raised even more questions to explore in the field of microscopy.
The top 10 most common research mistakes (and how to avoid them) By Richard Coico As the saying goes, we learn by our mistakes. And so it goes for virtually all research scientists, with most mistakes occurring during their formative years when they are still being mentored. While missteps in the research process are not usually catastrophic, the risks of allowing them to occur unchecked are many: personal safety is at stake, as are the careers and reputations of individuals, departments, and entire institutions.
History, philosophy, and political hope By Richard Eldridge Politics in general is all about how to develop, sustain, and revise institutions, practices, and policies that bind individuals together productively and that point toward more fulfilling individual and joint futures for them. Debates about how best to do this are natural. Should the US become yet more aggressively libertarian-individualist, or should a substantial social compact that enforces terms of fair cooperation via significant redistributions be instituted?
Human Reproduction Open Harnessing the power of scientific discovery in reproductive medicine By Siladitya Bhattacharya Reproductive medicine is a rapidly progressing field which generates a wealth of original and innovative research. As the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) gets ready to welcome a new open access journal to its prestigious family, we meet the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya, to find out how he sees the field developing in the future
Uber in Europe: back to the future By David Ellwood Where will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up.
Making queer history visible in North Carolina By Josh Burford This year, we have focused on people and institutions using oral history in innovative ways, discussing the challenges they face and their motivations for using oral history to make positive changes in the world.
British Medical Bulletin Buyers beware: the digital dangers of purchasing medicines online By Timothy Ken Mackey Recently, INTERPOL announced it had coordinated the shutdown of close to 5,000 websites illegally selling medicines online. Dubbed “Operation Pangea IX”, this ninth annual international week of action against illicit online pharmacies boasted the participation of over 103 countries from a multi-stakeholder coalition, led to 393 arrests, and resulted in the seizure of $53 million dollars worth of potentially dangerous medicines.
Fighting the new misogyny: a social work approach By Gail Ukockis Rape threats against female bloggers. A major presidential candidate calling women “pigs” and even worse. Women being deprived of basic health care from Planned Parenthood because of anti-abortion politics.
What is combinatorics? By Robin Wilson The subject of combinatorial analysis or combinatorics (pronounced com-bin-a-TOR-ics) is concerned with such questions. We may loosely describe it as the branch of mathematics concerned with selecting, arranging, constructing, classifying, and counting or listing things.
Managing the time warp of loss: why do they want to marry the widow off By Wendy L. Miller How does a widow see her future? What can a widow see in the present? My late husband Gene D. Cohen is considered a founding father of Geriatric Psychiatry and the grandpappy of the field of Creativity and Aging. With his son and our daughter, I went to Chicago to receive his Hall of Fame Award, only four months after his passing. With his son and our daughter, I went to Chicago to receive his Hall of Fame Award
LGBT Pride Month: A reading list on LGBT older adults By Deborah Carr Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month is celebrated annually in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall riots. The Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village was one of the city’s few gay bars or nightclubs at that time.
The Broadway song that nominated a president By David Haven Blake The astounding success of Hamilton, its capacity to engage audiences from third graders to the president and first lady, reminds us that Broadway musicals have a healthy tradition of mining political history. From 1776 to Evita, songwriters have been fascinated by political power. What drives people to become leaders? How do they rally supporters around them? What reservations do they have about their failures and successes?
God and clod By Anatoly Liberman In an old post, I once referred to Jack London’s Martin Eden, a book almost forgotten in this country and probably in the rest of the English-speaking world. Martin is not Jack London’s self-portrait; yet the novel is to a great extent autobiographical.
The profanity of disease By Melissa Mohr Over spring break, I spent a day in Tombstone, Arizona. This is the town where, if you don’t know the story, Wyatt Earp and his brothers, accompanied by their friend Doc Holliday, had a shootout with a group of cattle rustlers at the OK Corral. Though the Earp brothers wore the badges, when the tale is told the hero is usually Doc Holliday—noted gambler, crack shot, prodigious drinker
Global footprints of Indian multinational corporations By Mohan Thite Indian multinationals have been quick learners in internationalization both in scale and speed. One of the core strengths of Indian firms is to extract maximum value from even ailing businesses by applying innovative and cost effective methods that they have developed over the years in an extremely resource constrained and uncertain domestic environment.
17 US foreign relations must-reads By Alex Fulton The annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) begins this week in San Diego. Are you caught up on your reading? If not, have no fear! We’ve put together a list of your SHAFR “must-reads,” including Diplomatic History’s most popular articles from the past year and a selection of recent books and blog posts on US foreign relations.
The Brandeis confirmation a century later By Paul Finkelman and Lance J. Sussman June 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of the confirmation of Louis D. Brandeis to the U.S. Supreme Court. The first Jew to serve on the court and one of the most respected and revered justices in our history, his opinions on free speech, due process, and fundamental liberty are still widely quoted and cited. Before going […]
10 facts about the maracas By Louise Gallagher The simple design and intuitive process of the maracas have made it a familiar favorite around the world, but may often lead to an underestimation of its value in creating variety of rhythmic expression.
ALER “Soft” affirmative action in the National Football League By Cynthia DuBois Current statistics show a startling lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms. In February 2014, Fortune reported that just over 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs were minorities, a classification including African Americans, Asians, and Latin Americans. This is particularly disturbing given that these classifications of minorities comprised 36% of the United States population, and that many top business schools boast that ethnic or racial minorities comprise 25% or more of their student bodies.
The value of humanism By Richard Gaskin World Humanist Day is celebrated on 21 June, providing an opportunity for humanists and humanist organizations to promote the positive principles of Humanism. Celebration of the day began in the 1980s and support for it has grown ever since. This post explores some of the values of Humanism, specifically truth and realism.
Blessings of Business 7 things you may not know about conservative Christian businesses By Darren E. Grem Corporations became places for evangelical activity and expression and businessmen—sometimes working individually, sometimes collaboratively—shaped what we think of today as conservative “Christian” culture and politics. Here are 7 facts you may not know about the culture and history of Christian business.
Salafis, face veils, and ‘Ramadan resolutions’ By Anabel Inge I’ve often heard Muslims describe the holy month of Ramadan as an ‘iman [i.e. faith] boost’ – as though it were some kind of spiritual energy drink. A whole month, in other words, to recharge one’s spiritual batteries.
Why we need the European Union By Stephen Weatherill The slogan ‘Take back control’ has played a vivid part in the debate about the UK’s future: it suggests an enfeebled Britain that should break free of ‘Brussels’. It is a pernicious misrepresentation of the role of the EU.
US government’s premiere test program finds cancer risk from cell phone radiation: a game-changing global wake-up call By Devra Davis Have you heard that cell phones cause cancer, then they don’t, then they do? Confused enough yet? Let me break it down for you. Contrary to some claims, the new US government study by the National Toxicology Program (NTP) is hardly a shot in the dark or a one-off event. With this largest best-conducted animal study, we now have three different studies within the past six years
Portraying Krishna in X-Men: Apocalypse By William Elison Another summer, another season of superhero movies. Big budgets, big muscles, big explosions: Each release only strengthens the genre’s domination of Hollywood—and the sense that comic-book franchises make up a contemporary mythology, and superheroes are its gods. Among this year’s offerings is X-Men: Apocalypse, which opened the last week of May.
The EU referendum: a reading list By Alex Guyver On 23rd June 2016, a referendum will be held in order to decide whether Britain should leave or remain in the European Union. In light of this, we have put together this reading list.
Worker protection – does it come from the UK or the EU? By Astra Emir There have been a number of contradictory claims made by politicians and in the media as to where our employment laws and worker protection come from, and whether they are European or home grown. Which is correct?
Making the case for quality: research quality assurance in academic training programs By Rebecca Davies Successful scientific research requires an enormous investment of resources, education and effective mentoring. Scientists must be innovative, organized, flexible and patient as they conduct their research. Those entrusted to contribute to the research body of knowledge also rely on a support structure that recognizes and accepts the role of setbacks in the discovery process. In scientific research, three steps forward may rapidly result in two steps back.
What Jane heard By Jeanice Brooks Music is everywhere and nowhere in Jane Austen’s fiction. Everywhere, in that pivotal scenes in every novel unfurl to the sound of music; nowhere, in that she almost never specifies exactly what music is being performed. For film adaptations this absence of detail can be a source of welcome freedoms, since the imaginative gap can be variously filled by choosing more or less appropriate historical repertoire
Molecular Human Reproduction Preimplantation genetic screening: after 25 years and a complete make-over, the truth is still out there By Karen Sermon and Joep Geraedts More than 25 years ago, it was found that human embryos of about three days old cultured in the lab, showed chromosomal abnormalities in more than half of them. Many of these abnormalities were not coming from the sperm or the egg, but occurred after the embryo has cleaved two times, obtaining four cells, or three times, reaching the eight-cell stage.
Queering oral history In their substantial essay from OHR 43.1 on the peculiarities of queer oral history, authors Kevin Murphy, Jennifer Pierce, and Jason Ruiz suggest some of the ways that queer methodologies are useful and important for oral history projects.
What is college for? By Joseph Clair 1 May was National College Decision Day in the U.S. – the deposit deadline for admission into many U.S. colleges and universities. Early indications suggest that we’re poised for a fifth straight year of declining enrollments. In the Atlantic earlier this year, Alia Wong pointed out that this trend continues the widening gap between high school graduation and college enrollment in this country.
From “O Fortuna” to “Anaconda”: A playlist of musical profanity By Melissa Mohr Almost everyone swears, or worries about not swearing, from the two-year-old who has just discovered the power of potty mouth to the grandma who wonders why every other word she hears is obscene. Whether they express anger or exhilaration, are meant to insult or to commend, swear words perform a crucial role in language. But swearing is also a uniquely well-suited lens through which to look at history
Historical lessons for modern medicine By Edward Scarth When looking at the use of drugs in modern medicine, specifically anaesthesia and intensive care – it is important to realise that this is nothing new at all. The first attempts at general anaesthesia were most likely herbal remedies and opiates, evidence of which has been found as early as the third millennium BCE. Antiseptics, from the Greek words anti (against) and sepsis (decay) were also used in ancient times
Lord Byron’s Passion By Robert Morrison Two hundred years ago today Lord Byron wrote a brief, untitled Gothic fragment that is now known as ‘Augustus Darvell’, the name of its central character. The most famous author in the world at the time, Byron produced the tale when he was living at the Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, and in the daily company of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (the future Mary Shelley), and John Polidori, Byron’s personal physician.
Inequality of what? By Matthew D. Adler Has inequality increased over the last several generations? The answer depends upon the “currency” for inequality assessment. An item has been distributed among the population of interest, and we are using a number to summarize that distribution. But which item is it?
Bleak skies at night: the year without a summer and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein By Bill McGuire Two hundred years ago this month, Mary Shelley had the terrifying ‘waking dream’ that she subsequently molded into the greatest Gothic novel of all time; Frankenstein. As all who have read the book or seen one of the many film adaptations will know, the ‘monster’ cobbled together out of human odds and ends by rogue scientist, Victor Frankenstein, is galvanised into existence by the power of electricity.
Dublin on Bloomsday: James Joyce and the OED By John Simpson The sixteenth of June is the day on which James Joyce fans traditionally email each other their Bloomsday greetings. And nowadays it has become the focus for a global celebration of Joyce’s work, marked by readings and performances, and many other acts of Joycean homage.
“A dream, which was not all a dream”: dark reflections from June 1816 By Nicholas Halmi Two hundred years ago, on 16 June 1816, one of the most remarkable gatherings in English literary history occurred in a villa just outside Geneva. Present at the occasion were Lord Byron, who had left England in April to escape (unsuccessfully, in the event) the scandal surrounding his separation from Lady Byron; John Polidori, whom Byron had engaged as his personal physician.
On deep learning, artificial neural networks, artificial life, and good old-fashioned AI By Maggie Boden At a theoretical level, the concept of artificial intelligence has fueled and sharpened the philosophical debates on the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. Insights from the field have proved invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language.
A timeout: the methods of etymology By Anatoly Liberman I expected that my series on dogs would inspire a torrent of angry comments. After all, dog is one of the most enigmatic words in English etymology, but the responses were very few. I am, naturally, grateful to those who found it possible to say something about the subject I was discussing for five weeks, especially to those who liked the essays.
Researchers use drones and satellite photos to document illegal logging in monarch butterfly reserve By Richard Levine The monarch butterfly has been called “the Bambi of the insect world.” These fascinating insects are famous for their bright colors and their incredible fall migratory route, which can be as long as 2,500 miles. Starting from as far north as Canada, millions of monarchs take a two-month journey to a mountain range that straddles the border of two Mexican states, Michoacán and México, where they spend the winter.
Where is China going? The history and future prospects of China’s economic reforms By Zhou Guoping In recent years, numerous phenomena in Chinese society have worried the informed elites and have angered the common citizens. On the one hand, government power has been expanding, the monopolies of state-owned enterprises, especially central enterprises, have grown, and consumption of public funds and official corruption have become rampant.
The perks and perils of trespassing By Lars Öhrström Some eight years ago I sat down to draw out a blueprint for a book that should tell stories about how the chemistry of individual elements of the periodic table had changed, for better or for worse, the courses of ordinary peoples’ lives. Several things motivated me; I was sitting on a number of stories where literature and history intersected with chemistry that I would love to tell to a bigger audience
Why study English? Literature, politics, and the university, 1932-1965 By Alexander Hutton What is the purpose of studying English? How does language underpin politics? What role, if any, should the subject play within democratic society? Attempts to understand attitudes towards these questions in the early-to-mid-twentieth century have previously emphasized two hostile schools of thought. Firstly, an approach towards criticism influenced by the Cambridge critic F.R. Leavis, who emphasized both the moral seriousness of literature.
James Madison and Tiberius Gracchus on representative government By Benjamin Straumann In Federalist 63, Madison pointed out that the principle of representation was not exclusive to modern republics. In the Roman Republic, Madison thought, the Tribunes of the plebs were “annually elected by the whole body of the people, and considered the representatives of the people, almost in their plenipotentiary capacity.” Representation was not unknown to the ancients.
Horace’s pulp fiction? Rediscovering the Epodes By Claire Stocks and Philippa Bather When it comes to Roman poets, most have heard of Horace (Horatius Quintus Flaccus). Horace is the freedman’s son who, against all odds secured the patronage of Maecenas, Augustus’ right hand man.
Music parents’ tips for summertime music-making By Amy Nathan The lazy days of summer pose a special challenge for music parents. With school and regular music lessons on hiatus until the fall, it can be hard to persuade youngsters to continue to practice their instruments without the prod of needing to prepare for a lesson or a school ensemble rehearsal. If there isn’t a certain amount of vacation practicing, however, some of the musical gains children made during the school year may begin to melt away.
Banks, politics, and the financial crisis: a demand for culture change (Part 2) By Richard Samuel The retail side of banks’ business culture is of particular political significance; public disapproval of wholesale and shadow banking behaviour flow less readily into voter intentions. It is through the prism of experience of retail banking that politicians and the public believe themselves to be afforded insight into banks’ failure in these more remote areas
A look into clinical pathology and medical publishing By Michael Wilson Clinical pathology covers a broad range of responsibilities and functions in medicine. As a discipline, it includes clinical (bio)chemistry, medical microbiology, hematology, coagulation, clinical immunology, and increasingly molecular diagnostics. We recently sat down with the Editor of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology, Dr. Michael L. Wilson, to learn the vital importance of this field.
The quest for professional management By Georges Romme When you book an airline ticket, you trust that the pilot assigned to this flight is sufficiently knowledgeable and competent to fly the aircraft. In fact, you expect the pilot to be a professional that has gone through many hours of flight training and theoretical study.
Valuing sadness, past and present By Erin Sullivan In September 2013, the American comedian Louis C.K. talked to chat-show host Conan O’Brien about the value of sadness. His comments grew out of a discussion about mobile phones, and the way they may distract us from the reality of our emotions.
What does Brexit have to do with human rights? By Tobias Lock The economy and sovereignty are the two main themes dominating the political campaign preceding the EU Referendum that is taking place on 23 June. The sovereignty argument revolves around the notion of “taking back control from Brussels” and human rights are amongst the examples of control lost to the EU cited by leave campaigners.
How to write a thank you note By Edwin Battistella I write a lot of thank you notes. I thank donors of organizations that I support, gift givers after the holidays and birthdays, friends who have invited me over for dinner, guest speakers who come to my classes, community partners who work with my students, colleagues who help me solve problems, and editors and publishers (you know who you are).
6 reasons why the Hogwarts library is the true hero of the Harry Potter books By Sally Bittiner It’s undeniable: all Harry Potter fans secretly expect to receive their very own Hogwarts acceptance letter. Ready to be the next magical prodigy, we assume that we’ll hop onto the Hogwarts Express, promptly be sorted into Gryffindor, achieve straight O’s in our O.W.L.s, and inevitably end up as Minister for Magic.
The feminist as the story teller By Sachidananda Mohanty Sarala Devi was a prolific Odia writer whose work encompasses many genres including prose, poetry, short stories, essays, literary criticism, novels, and plays. She was a versatile genius who occupies an important place in the domain of women’s history. She was a Gandhian feminist and a critical modernist who eschewed exclusive binaries between the home and the public place, the sacred and the secular.
The television paradox By Roy T Cook Imagine that we have a black and white monitor, a black and white camera, and a computer. We hook up the camera and monitor to the computer, and we write a program where, for some medium-ish shade of grey G.
Shakespeare: living in a world of witches By Owen Davies Since he was born a year after the Witchcraft and Conjuration Act of 1563 brought about the era of the witch trials in England, it is hardly a surprise that witches and witchcraft would come to feature in Shakespeare’s work.
Understanding the Middle East chaos at its core: a struggle for belonging and immortality By Louis René Beres Taken by itself, the election of the next American president, Democrat or Republican, will have little or no discernible impact on Middle Eastern chaos. To make any meaningful difference to this still-expanding problem, American decision-makers would first need to look behind the news.
Professional skills and problem solving: the undergraduate research movement By Julio Rivera I was recently asked to comment on “who benefits from research with students, and particularly how do undergraduates who do research benefit?” Like many of us, I have a set of answers in my pocket that I often use when I speak to colleges and universities about engaging undergraduate students in research. However, the audience for this question was not the group of like-minded peers who already believe in research as a fundamentally important thing in higher education.
Prejudice you aren’t aware of (what to do about it) By Richard Pettigrew Employment, education, healthcare, justice, housing. These are some of the central services in society because they help people live the best life they can. But it will come as no surprise to most people that access to these services and treatment at their hands differs greatly depending on whether you are a man or a woman, the way you are racialized, your sexuality, whether or not you have a disability, and so on.
Hamilton and the theatrical legacy of Leonard Bernstein By Carol J. Oja Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical is a runaway success on Broadway—enough so that just about everyone reading this post, regardless of personal demographics or geographic location, will likely have heard about it. They might also be listening obsessively to the original-cast CD. Perhaps they’ve even memorized it. Hamilton has already won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and it earned a record 16 Tony Award nominations, with high expectations for a sweep at the awards ceremony on Sunday, June 12th.
The Mediterranean-style diet on heart disease and stroke By Ralph Stewart Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in many countries, but its prevalence has changed significantly during the last 50 years. Death rates from heart disease have fallen dramatically in western countries, but increased in many ‘developing’ countries. These large population-wide changes suggest environmental factors, including diet, are a major determinant of the risk of heart disease.
Prodigy or savant: two sides of the same coin? By Solange Glasser As adults, we remain fascinated with images of young children performing extraordinary feats, with platforms such as YouTube offering us an unending wealth of mini Mozarts and baby Einsteins for us to feast our eyes and ears on, and providing the perfect fodder for our daily Facebook feeds. We are filled with awe at the sight of such small individuals undertaking tasks that most adults only dream of undertaking.
Mapping the moral high ground on fossil fuels By Rob Ellam The so-called Suess effect in radiocarbon (14C) has been known for decades. Geological sources of carbon like coal and oil, that formed many millions of years ago, long since lost their radiocarbon through radioactive decay – they contain 14C-free “dead” carbon. From the mid-19th century the radiocarbon activity of the atmosphere declined as dead carbon from fossil fuels was dug out of the ground and burnt producing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.
Is there a human right to the city? Rethinking the politics of rights By Joe Hoover What gives you the right? We are familiar with rights claiming, it comes easily to our lips when we believe we are entitled to something—to respect, to our fair share. Rights are fighting words. We invoke them when we have been wronged, when a situation has become intolerable.
On the Singularity, emotions, and computer consciousness By Maggie Boden The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined as long ago as 1956 to describe ‘the science and engineering of making intelligent machines’. The work that has happened in the subject since then has had enormous impact. Margaret Boden is Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex, and one of the best known figures in the field of Artificial Intelligence. We put four common questions to her about this exciting area of research.
Leaving the kennel, or a farewell to dogs By Anatoly Liberman My series on the etymology of dog and other nouns with canine roots has come to an end, but, before turning to another subject, I would like to say a few moderately famous last words. For some reason, it is, as already mentioned, just the names of the dog that are particularly obscure in many languages (the same holds for bitch and others).
The classics and the Constitution: The smokescreen of republicanism and the creation of the Republic By Benjamin Straumann What role did the Greek and Roman classics play in the making of the American Constitution? Existing scholarship has put the main emphasis on the political theory of republicanism.
Revealing lives of women in science and technology: the case of Sarah Guppy By Rebekah Higgitt Guppy, as a patent-holding female inventor, is a rare type for the early 19th century but one that we are clearly eager to hear about today. It is the kind of life that (mostly women) historians have been researching since the 1970s and, more recently, has been transformed into popular role model: the archetypical example is Ada Lovelace, whose name has been adopted for a day celebrating and encouraging women in science and technology.
Oncolytic virus approved to treat melanoma By Charlie Schmidt Cancer cells have a unique vulnerability: the same mechanisms that shield them from the immune system also make them prone to viral infections.
Filling the void: the Brexit effect on employment law By David Cabrelli Having been cast as unnecessary “red tape”, a burden on business, inflexible, uncompetitive and inefficient, it is widely assumed that a sizeable number of domestic employment laws derived from European Law will be in the firing line in the event of a Brexit.
Why Congress should pass the Multi-State Worker Tax Fairness Act By Edward A. Zelinsky On 17th May, a massive fire caused Metro-North Railroad to reduce its commuter train service to and from Grand Central terminal. In light of this service disruption, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates Metro-North, “encouraged” commuters “to consider working from home.”
Islands: Are some of the most unique biological study systems about to disappear? By Christoph Kueffer Islands urgently require major additional conservation efforts. Many species face extinction, natural areas are small and fragmented and alien species dominate most ecosystems.
Observing Ramadan at the Qatar National Library By Kummam Al-Maadeed Every year, we welcome June with dreams of beaches, warm sunshine and a well-deserved vacation. This year, for over 1 billion Muslims across the globe, June represents something more spiritual as it marks the holy month of Ramadan.
Why Sykes-Picot is (still) important By Umut Özsu The centenary of the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement has been marked by what can only be described as a deluge of writing. Opinions have been numerous, sometimes tiresomely so, and have ranged exceedingly widely.
Ten under-appreciated ancient thinkers [timeline] By Peter Adamson The influence and wisdom from ancient philosophers like Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato is undeniable. But how well do you know the life and works of Macrina, Philo of Alexandria, or Gorgias? Although known for his work in botany, did you know Theophrastus was a pupil of Plato?
Living with multiple stressors in the marine environment By Martin Solan and Nia Whiteley When asked to think about the ocean, most people imagine a pristine habitat in the tropics with golden sands and clear blue waters, or the diversity of fish associated with coral reef communities.
Ecological development and adapting to change By Sonia E. Sultan World Environment Day is celebrated on 5 June to encourage positive environmental action. Instituted by the United Nations in 1974, it provides a global platform for public outreach in promoting the importance of the protection of our environment.
The forgotten history of piracy in the Indian Ocean By Lakshmi Subramanian Strangely enough, in this contest between sovereignty and piracy, law played a minor role. European sovereigns periodically made ritual invocations of the natural law that held pirates as enemies of all mankind, but in reality, the seas remained an unbounded realm. Thus, in the context of India’s western seaboard, piracy happened more in the littoral than on the high seas.
Philosopher of the month: Bertrand Russell By John Priest Considered among the most distinguished philosophers of the 20th century, Russell’s style, wit, and contributions to a wide range of philosophical fields made him an influential figure in both academic and popular philosophy. Among his best known philosophical works, the History of Western Philosophy demonstrates the scope of Russell’s curiosity and understanding, and highlights the interrelation of seemingly disparate areas of philosophy.
Lady Susan: “the most accomplished Coquette in England” By Jane Austen I congratulate you and Mr. Vernon on being about to receive into your family, the most accomplished Coquette in England. As a very distinguished Flirt, I have been always taught to consider her; but it has lately fallen in my way to hear some particulars of her conduct at Langford, which prove that she does not confine herself to that sort of honest flirtation which satisfies most people, but aspires to the more delicious gratification of making a whole family miserable.
Bath salts in the emergency department By Katherine Maloy Psychosis, agitation, disorientation, or bizarre behavior due to drug ingestion is a common presentation to the emergency department (ED), and frequently psychiatry is consulted to assess for an underlying psychiatric illness. A working knowledge of how different substances are expected to affect patients is an important part of keeping up-to-date as a psychiatric emergency clinician.
Losing Touch: A man without his body Movement without touch: the life of Ian Waterman By Jonathan Cole When I first met Ian Waterman in the mid-1980s I could scarcely believe him. He claimed to have lost touch, and movement and position sense (termed proprioception) below the neck, though he could still feel pain and temperature, and his movement nerves were unaffected. Not only was I not aware of any such condition in medicine, but he had walked to the clinic and was sitting calmly as we chatted.
Bird talk By Jonathon Green For all its supposed isolation out there beyond the pale of acceptable discourse — marginal words in the mouths of marginal people — we know a good deal about slang. We know its lexis, and keep chasing down the new arrivals; we know its lexicographers, some very well; we know its speakers, and note that far from monosyllabic illiterates, they coin some of the most inventive usages currently on offer.
Artificial Intelligence – Episode 35 – The Oxford Comment Imagine a world where the majority of our workforce was composed of robots as capable and as psychologically similar to human beings. The robots are constantly working and are faster and more efficient than humans—leaving humans to be pushed towards early retirement to enjoy a life of leisure and wealth due to a large growth in investments on this artificial intelligence (AI).
Left behind? The future of progressive politics By Matthew Flinders Centre-left social democratic parties appear to have been left behind in the last decade. ‘‘Early in this century you could drive from Inverness in Scotland to Vilnius in Lithuania without crossing a country governed by the right’’ The Economist highlighted just weeks ago.
Intuitive bedrock and the philosophical enterprise By Dale Dorsey Imagine a person who spends their entire life sitting on the couch watching and rewatching Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. He does nothing else, gains no education, no relationships with other people, no family, no friends.
And the Nobel Prize goes to… By Dawn Field In science, perhaps the most famous recent award is for the prediction of the existence of the Higgs Boson particle, discovered at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Overall, the most famous recipient ever is likely Marie Curie. She went down in history as the first person to win two. She took Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911 for getting radium and polonium out of pitchblende, with her own elbow power.
I double dog dare you to reject my etymology, or the dog’s chances increase (even if ever so slightly) By Anatoly Liberman The origin of Engl. dog will not look like a uniquely formidable problem if we realize that the names of our best quadruped friend are, from an etymological point of view, impenetrable almost all over the world. The literature on dog is huge, and the conjectures are many.
Much unseen: scandals, cultural stereotypes, and Nabil Ayouch’s Much Loved By Suzanne Gauch Scandal hit just before Moroccan director Nabil Ayouch debuted his most recent film, Much Loved/Zine li fik, at the Director’s Fortnight at Cannes in May of 2015. Footage of the film about the lives of three prostitutes in Marrakech was leaked online, touching off a furor in Morocco.
Sanders’ contradiction on trade and immigration By Richard S. Grossman It is hard to imagine two politicians that are further apart ideologically than Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Nonetheless, these two presidential candidates have a lot in common: their outsider status, their unrealistic fiscal plans, and a desire to punish foreigners for America’s economic problems.
The mysterious search for the Cardinal’s girlfriend By Lesley Higgins From the goosebump-producing thrills of Wilkie Collins’s fiction and the melodramas on offer at the Royal Princess’ Theatre to the headlines blaring in the Illustrated Police News, the Victorians savoured the sensational. The attention-seeking title above is patently untrue, yet, for more than five decades, John Henry Newman (the Cardinal) was emotionally, spiritually, and textually connected with Maria Rosina Giberne, a wholly intriguing figure.
May 2016 (103))
Reading list for World Oceans Day By Barney Cox When the Earth is viewed from space, it’s mostly blue. In fact, the ocean covers over 70% of our planet. Life began in the world’s oceans, and today – billions of years later – we’re no less dependent on it. From the diverse organisms which call it home, to the complex ways it helps keep global climates in check, our own survival is undeniably linked to that of the ocean.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Conjuring 18th-century affekt with Alberti bass on the modern piano By Donna Gunn Affekt (the ability of music to stir emotions) is the foundational pillar for eighteenth-century style. It was achieved through attention to detail and proper execution. And done in good taste, which implies a deep understanding of proper practices of the time. Nearly every notational and performance decision was based on affekt—everything from formal structure to note values, dynamics to articulation, and accompaniment patterns such as Alberti bass.
Banks, politics, and the financial crisis: a demand for culture change (Part 1) By Richard Samuel After the fall of the Berlin wall and before the collapse of Lehman, the political mood was such that banks were able to persuade the world that high levels of profit and remuneration were justified: the banks told the world that their industry had a key role in wealth-creation.
To dream or not to dream: what are the effects of immigration status and parental influence on Latino children’s access to education? By Elzbieta M. Gozdziak Much has been written about the potential of immigration reform to level the playing field for unauthorized children and youth in the United States. Research shows that in addition to, or perhaps ahead of, advocacy for immigration reform, including passage of the DREAM Act legislation in every state of the Union, there is a real need to work with Latino immigrant families on realizing the relationship between levels of formal schooling of immigrant children and parents.
Joan of Arc’s heresy By Philip A. Mackowiak A month before Joan of Arc’s heresy was cleansed by fire on this day in 1431 CE, a spokesman for her Burgundian accusers railed against her: “O Royal House of France! You have never known a monster until now! But now behold yourself dishonored in placing your trust in this woman, this magician, heretical and superstitious.”
Protecting prisoners’ rights: the case of Anders Breivik By Susan Easton and Christine Piper In April 2016, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, successfully challenged the conditions of his confinement on human rights grounds. In 2011 Breivik killed eight people with a car bomb in the centre of Oslo and then shot sixty nine political activists at a summer camp on the island of Utoya. He was sentenced to twenty one years imprisonment.
Believing the unlikely By Martin Smith We often want to know how likely something is. There seems to be close link between likelihood and belief – if something is likely, you would be justified in believing it, and if something is unlikely, you would not be justified in believing it. That might seem obvious, and the second part might seem especially obvious – surely you can’t be justified in believing something that’s unlikely to be true? I will suggest here that, sometimes, you can.
Fairies, demons, and ghosts: Shakespeare’s fascination with the supernatural [infographic] Although there was hostility towards witchcraft and sorcery well before the 16th century, it is in this time period where we see religious and legal punishment juxtaposed with the increasing use and enjoyment of special effects in plays to convey magic and the supernatural.
“Never say ‘I like books’ in a job interview,” and other advice for librarians By Alison Bates It’s Australian Library and Information Week, so we asked Alison Bates, Library Resources and Access Manager at RMIT University in Melbourne, to fill us in on what motivated her to become a librarian in the first place, keeping her work/life balance, and how realising the impact you can have in your role is the key to job satisfaction.
Listening where it matters By Jessica Taylor We all have that one teacher who inspired us, guided us to our calling in our formative years, whose lectures and project assignments become a piece of our professional identities. So, here it comes: one of my history teachers was singularly, as my teenage self might put it, the pits.
Embodied Mind This Space: The psychology of our embodied senses By Chris Eccleston and Helen Todd We’re all quite familiar with having five senses: sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. These senses help us understand the world outside our body. The idea of five senses is so ingrained that having a ‘sixth sense’ is a clue that something isn’t right. But what about other physical sensations?
A brief history of crystallography By A. M. Glazer So, what is crystallography? Put simply, it is the study of crystals. Now, let’s be careful here. I am not talking about all those silly websites advertising ways in which crystals act as magical healing agents, with their chakras, auras and energy levels. No, this is a serious scientific subject, with around 26 or so Nobel prizes to its credit. And yet, despite this, it remains a largely hidden subject, at least in the public mind.
Dead body politics: what counting corpses tells us about security By Jessica Auchter What happens when dead bodies crop up where they are not supposed to be? How can this allow us to reflect on how we understand security and insecurity? For example, mass graves can be indicators of crimes against humanity. Recent satellite evidence of mass graves analyzed by Amnesty International outside of Bujumbura has led to a focus on the political violence there, a result of turmoil after Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to seek a third term.
“Aery nothings and painted devils”, an extract from Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds By Marina Warner Human beings are subject to a continual process of bodily transformation, but shape-shifting also belongs in the landscape of magic, witchcraft, and wonder. Marina Warner, in her award-winning essays Fantastic Metamorphoses, Other Worlds: Ways of Telling the Self, explores this idea ranging from Ovid to Lewis Carroll. In the extract below she looks at Shakespeare’s use of magic and demons
How well do you know Thomas Hobbes? [quiz] By John Priest This May, the OUP Philosophy team honors Thomas Hobbes (April 5, 1588 – December 4, 1679) as their Philosopher of the Month. Hobbes is remembered as the author of one of the greatest of books on political philosophy ever written, Leviathan, in which he argued with a precision reached by few other thinkers.
Caring about human rights: the case of ISIS and Yazidi women By Diana Tietjens Meyers Mass sexual violence against women and girls is a constant in human history. One of these atrocities erupted in August 2014 in ISIS-occupied territory and persists to this day. Mainly targeting women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority, ISIS officially reinstituted sexual slavery.
By hook or by crook By Anatoly Liberman Here is a phrase whose origin seems to be known, but, as this does not mean that everybody knows it, a short discussion may not be out of place. I have such a huge database of idioms that once in six weeks or so I am seized with a desire to share my treasures with the public.
A tradition of classical architecture in California By Peter J. Holliday Today, most people associate Southern California with images of palm trees, beaches, swimming pools, and the entertainment industry. If pressed to imagine an earlier era they might come up with “old” Hollywood, the Gold Rush, or even the mission era. But how much of the Golden State can be attributed to the ancient Greeks and Romans?
An elusive quest for a recipe for success in economic development By Martin Andersson and Tobias Axelsson For some decades before the turn of the Millennium, the growth prospects for most of the developing world looked extremely bleak. Income growth was negligible and poverty rates were high and seemed stubbornly persistent. Some even suggested that the barriers against development were almost insurmountable as progress in the already rich world was argued to come about at the expense of the poor.
On the finiteness of the atmosphere By Michael E. Mackay I guess the funniest thing I ever saw was a person driving down the highway in a Toyota Prius smoking a cigarette with the windows closed. It was like they were telling me, “I respect your atmosphere but not mine.” That got me thinking, does human generated, gaseous, atmospheric pollution actually make up a significant part of the total atmosphere, and can it possibly affect it?
Spiritual awakening in Alcoholics Anonymous By Marc Galanter Alcoholics Anonymous has provided millions of people with a chance at recovery from addiction. There is one aspect of membership for some members that most people, even addiction specialists, are not aware of, namely, the remarkable transformation that many AA members call a spiritual awakening. It’s a remarkable phenomenon for anyone interested in social science on the addictions.
A tap dance quiz for National Tap Dance Day By Constance Valis Hill 25 May is National Tap Dance Day, commemorating tap dance, our earliest American vernacular dance form and a national treasure. But how how many notable tap dancers can you name?
World Turtle Day: a reading list By Franca Driessen World Turtle Day is celebrated on 23 May every year since its inception in 2000. In honour of these grandiose creatures, we have compiled a reading list of biology titles and articles that have helped to further research into the conservation biology of all chelonians.
Veepstakes 2016: A Reality Check By Christopher J. Devine and Kyle C. Kopko Who will Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump–the Democratic and Republican Party’s likely nominees for president, respectively–pick as their vice presidential running mates? Let’s start here: It probably won’t matter much. Or, we should say, it probably won’t matter in terms of deciding the election. It could matter a great deal, however, in terms of what comes after the election. Allow us to explain.
CJCL Cover The “Silk Road Spirit” in a time of globalization By Wenhua Shan In September 2013, during a visit to Central and Southeast Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Consequently, the Collaborative Innovation Centre of Silk Road Economic Belt Studies has been established in Xi’an, China, which was the eastern starting point of the ancient road.
Christian theology, literary theory, and sexuality in the ‘Song of Songs’ By Karl Shuve hy were Christian theologians in the ancient and medieval worlds so fascinated by a text whose main theme was erotic love? The very fact that the ‘Song of Songs’, a biblical love poem that makes no reference to God or to Israelite religion, played an important role in pre-modern Christian discourse may seem surprising to those of us in the modern world.
Tick tock goes the Shakespeare Death Clock [infographic] Along with the many creative ways that Shakespeare killed off his characters, there are even more ways to represent those deaths in the form of fun illustrations. Not a stranger to death himself, Shakespeare was living and working in a time where rampant disease and social violence were daily norms.
World travel: What are the dangers where you’re heading? By Chris Johnson When travelling the globe, most intrepid adventurers and holiday-makers will encounter only minor health problems. But knowing and understanding possible hazards is fundamental to preventing them. When planning an adventure, people often seek novel experiences – and contemporary travel is able to take us (within just a few hours) from a relatively benign environment to a potentially life-threatening setting.
The future of libraries and the cultural history of Prague Inforum, one of the largest librarian conferences in Eastern Europe, rolls into the Czech capital next week. Once again taking place at the University of Economics in Prague, Inforum 2016 promises to be a lively and thought-provoking look at some of the issues facing librarians in the Czech Republic and beyond.
Joey Alexander: call me a ‘musician’, not a ‘prodigy’ By Solange Glasser If you tuned in to this year’s Grammy awards, you would not have failed to witness the extraordinary performance of 12-year-old jazz pianist Joey Alexander. The short solo performance, which earned him a standing ovation, was without doubt the cherry on the cake of this young musician’s short but remarkable career thus far.
10 things everyone should know about environmental economics By Stephen Smith Stephen Smith, author of Environmental Economics: A Very Short Introduction, gives us an insight into what environmental economists do, what environmental economics is about, and how it measures and influences our impact on the environment. He also explores the steps we need to take to protect it at an international level.
“We could build a future where people are free”: reflections on the Eurovision Song Contest By Philip V. Bohlman Spectacle at its grandest has long been crucial to the Eurovision Song Contest’s projection of its own importance for Europe and, increasingly in the past two decades, a unified Europe’s position in the world. Each year’s competition outstrips that of the year before, as song styles multiply and nations are added to the spectacle of nation competing against nation with the hope of representing Europe musically to the world.
When governments take counterterrorism policy into other policy areas, we should be worried By Katharine Gelber The last few years have seen enormous public debate over the collection of metadata through mass surveillance. We now know that intelligence authorities globally have been casting a wide dragnet to capture communications metadata, which they then retain and mine for information.
Realism of social and cultural origins By Aitor Anduaga How can realism in science be defined? Philosophers, historians, and the general public, have always related it to a philosophical doctrine or a technological effect. However, there is a type of realism — very widespread in science — that has gone unnoticed among scholars: the realist attitude of social and cultural origins. Behind this attitude lie commercial and engineering interests.
How to be good By John Harris Recently philosophers and scientists have tried to identify how to make the world better by making people more likely to do good rather than evil. This same problem has also faced those interested in artificial intelligence. As Giuseppe di Lampedusa had Tancredi say in The Leopard, “If we want things to stay as they are things will have to change”… and that goes for people also!
The Hamilton musical and historical unknowns By Andrew Porwancher With a record-breaking sixteen Tony Award nominations for his hit musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda will soon have to clear some space on his trophy shelf next to his Grammy and Pulitzer. But there is something remarkable about the play that all the critical acclaim has missed entirely. Reviewers have rightfully celebrated Miranda for telling the life story of one of America’s greatest Founders using energetic numbers, a multiethnic cast, and a strong emphasis on hip-hop.
Not a dog’s chance, or one more impenetrable etymology By Anatoly Liberman By this time, the thrust of the posts united by the title “Not a dog’s chance” must be clear. While dealing with some animal names, we plod through a swamp (or a bog, or a quagmire) and run into numerous monosyllabic words of varying structure (both vowels and consonants alternate in them), lacking a clear etymology, and designating several creatures, sometimes having nothing to do with one another (for instance, “doe” and “grasshopper,” though this is an extreme case).
Can nineteenth-century literature explain the rise of Donald Trump? By J. Gerald Kennedy Historians and political scientists have quite the task ahead in making sense of the bizarre 2016 presidential race. Fissures in both major parties betray pervasive hostilities. The rise of Donald Trump from investment mogul to television personality to presidential candidate—a process that once horrified GOP insiders—has produced one kind of theater: the spectacle of anger and resentment.
Globalization in India By Ipsita Chatterjee For many others, globalization has dangerous repercussions in terms of entry of foreign direct investment, and foreign corporations into national markets, thus eroding and eradicating indigenous business—for example, think of the street protest among small traders of Delhi against the entry of retail giant WalMart in India. My frustration with globalization is that the narratives I discovered were too fragmented.
Your brain on the scientific method By Sara E. Gorman and Jack M. Gorman Broccoli prevents cancer. Broccoli causes cancer. We are all familiar with the sense that we are constantly being pulled in a million different directions by scientific studies that seem to contradict each other every single day. We are all familiar with the sense that we are constantly being pulled in a million different directions by scientific studies that seem to contradict each other every single day.
Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (XL, 2016): reflecting, looking forward By Brad Osborn With the exception of Kid A/Amnesiac, Radiohead has reinvented itself sonically on every album since OK Computer. Saying that a new release represents a departure from their previous style is therefore paradoxical—the only possible departure would be non-departure.
Backward tracing By Paul Davies and Graham Virgo Some of the controversies in contemporary Equity are of both theoretical and practical significance. This is particularly true of the controversy concerning so-called “backward tracing”. If a defendant misappropriates trust money in order to buy a car, then the beneficiary can trace the value of his equitable proprietary interest in the money into the car.
Why there can be no increase in all brain cancers tied with cell phone use By Devra Davis, Anthony B. Miller, and L. Lloyd Morgan Several widely circulated opinion pieces assert that because there is no detectable increase in all brain cancers in Australia in the past three decades, cell phones do not have any impact on the disease. There are three basic reasons why this conclusion is wrong.
Father and son, inspired: Joshua and Paul Laurence Dunbar By Gene Andrew Jarrett Despite the biographical clues that historical fact and fiction may afford in excavating Joshua’s life, the investigation itself rests on a set of assumptions that implicate literary studies of slavery and, in particular, the social and intellectual historiography by which we delineate the agency of slaves themselves. The attractive notion that we can access the life of Joshua by way of the literature of Paul betrays the complexity of that actual investigation.
The emergence of lawfare [infographic] By Orde F. Kittrie The security of individual nations and the wider world is protected through many means, force or diplomacy, culture or environment. Law is increasingly deployed as an alternative to military force, although its use dates back as far as international law itself. Even private sector and other non-governmental attorneys play a leading role in lawfare.
Hilary Putnam and the mind of Aristotle By William Jaworski Aristotle’s ideas had been dismissed in many quarters of the philosophical world as expressions of a bygone pre-scientific age. But Putnam saw through the dismissive haze to the empirically- and philosophically-respectable core of Aristotle’s philosophy: hylomorphism.
Death in Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays [quiz] Mortality is not a theme that Shakespeare shies away from in his works, and in many cases death serves an integral part of a play’s plot. Occasionally his deaths are tragic, others are gruesome and violent, and others are just creative (we’re looking at you, Antigonus), but they play move the play along or resolve its final conflict.
5 reasons why a library is the best place to hide during a Zombie Apocalypse By Sally Bittiner May is known as International Zombie Awareness Month. After witnessing many poor comrades lose their lives in Hollywood zombie uprisings, we’ve decided that we need to prepare for any eventuality. Suppose the living dead do come calling, where is the best place to hide, and, as Simon Pegg hopes, “wait for the whole thing to blow over”? There is but one option, a library. Here’s five reasons why.
Charles Darwin’s observations on migratory birds By Clifford B. Frith Charles Darwin’s five year voyage aboard H. M. S. Beagle and subsequent life work are as widely known as any events in the history of the biological sciences. His wide ranging bird work has been overshadowed by drab small birds he discovered in the Galapagos Islands–the Galapagos, or Darwin’s, finches.
Listening to the Queer Archive — a conversation with Marion Wasserbauer By Marion Wasserbauer The current issue of the OHR invites diverse authors to share their experiences listening to and learning from LGBTQ lives. This week, we bring you a short interview with one of the contributors, Marion Wasserbauer, whose article “‘That’s What Music Is About—It Strikes a Chord’: Proposing a Queer Method of Listening to the Lives and Music of LGBTQs” suggests that music is an integral tool for listening to a narrator’s voice.
Understanding dementia By Stefanie De Lucia Dementia, from the Latin demens, is a persistent disorder of the mental processes marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning. It affects 47.5 million people worldwide, and there are 7.7 million new cases annually. This year’s Dementia Awareness Week (15-21 May 2016) aims to bring recognition and awareness to this neurological illness.
Mental health in older age [infographic] By Nancy A. Pachana, Ken Laidlaw, and Helen Todd All over the world, populations are changing. People are living longer, and older people are forming a larger percentage of the global population. Baby boomers are retiring and improved health care has extended life expectancy. At the same time, as globalisation and urbanisation break apart familiar social and family structures, more older adults are living alone or without social support.
Labour and the legacy of antisemitism By Steven Beller We are currently living through a period when “antisemitism” seems to be on the rise in Europe, and is now a hot topic of debate in Britain, because of a few clumsy statements by some prominent Labour politicians (along with a very few statements that do appear to have an actual antisemitic animus).
Desire & sexuality in the work of Émile Zola By Brian Nelson The second series of the BBC Radio 4 dramatization of the novels of Émile Zola (Blood, Sex and Money) is just coming to a close. The central theme of the present series is Sex. Sex is all-pervasive in Zola. It encapsulates the themes of desire, pleasure, and perversion; and it is inseparable from Zola’s social themes.
A brief history of corpuscular discoveries [timeline] By J.D. Trout Philosophers of science are in the business of explaining the special features of science, like the unifying power of scientific explanation and the wonderful sense of understanding it produces. We try to explain the amazing success of modern scientific theories, the structure of inductive inference in the science, and extract systematic positions – like realism, constructivism, and empiricism – from the evidence of theoretical success.
Come Together: communities and divisions at Eurovision 2016 By Jonathyne Briggs This week, the 61st Eurovision Song Contest, more affectionately Eurovision, will be broadcast to a global audience (including for the first-time a live telecast in the United States) with 42 countries competing in a series of semi-finals before the final, live show on 14 May. Established in 1956 as part of the then-fledgling European Broadcast Union, the contest has continued to grow in popularity and some would argue in cultural significance.
What makes your breakthrough useful? By Deborah Dougherty News of amazing breakthroughs that can – maybe – help solve pressing societal problems in healthcare, energy, economic development, and other areas arrives daily. Yet problems persist, because breakthroughs become useful only if they are integrated with other aspects of the situation.
Not a dog’s chance, or one more impenetrable etymology By Anatoly Liberman Unlike tyke, bitch can boast of respectable ancestors, because its Old English form (bicce) has been recorded. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology notes that bicce is obscurely related to Old Icelandic bikkja (the same meaning). The OED online never uses the phrase obscurely related, and this is a good thing, for this verbal formula, which so often occurred in the past, is itself obscure.
The wellbeing of the nursing workforce By Mary Jo Kreitzer and Mary Koithan In an op-ed published in the New York Times titled “Why You Hate Work”, Schwartz and Porath highlighted Gallup data that revealed that only 30% of employees in the US and 13% across 142 countries feel engaged at work. Noting the high rate of burnout, they declared that for most of us, work is a depleting, dispiriting experience that is getting worse.
Why the EU would benefit from Brexit By Paul De Grauwe The discussions about Brexit have centered around the question of whether it is in the national interest of the United Kingdom to remain in the EU or to leave it. It appears today that the British public is split about this question, so that the outcome of the referendum remains highly uncertain. The question of whether it is in the interest of the EU that the UK remains a member of the union has been discussed much less intensely.
Mindful exercise and meditation for the aging By Helen Lavretsky Global population is aging rapidly. Over the next four decades the number of individuals aged 60 years and older will nearly triple to more than 2 billion in 2050 (UN, 2013). Mindful physical exercise has become an increasingly utilized approach for improving psychological well-being and is defined as “physical exercise executed with a profound inwardly directed contemplative focus.”
Your new OUPblog editor By Dan Parker The OUPblog celebrated its tenth anniversary last summer and – over the course of the last decade – has gone from strength to strength. In order to help the blog continue to flourish, our focus will be on expanding our community and growing our discipline specific content. Most of all, we will endeavor to inform and entertain you, the regular reader, as you are what makes the OUPblog so special.
Elderly addiction By Maria Sullivan and Frances R. Levin Addiction is not a condition that springs to mind when we think of afflictions of the elderly, and yet it probably should be. Until now, alcohol or substance abuse among older patients has received relatively little attention, either as a clinical focus or as a research initiative. But we can no longer afford to neglect this growing cohort of affected individuals.
Ten things you didn’t know about Argentine tango music By Kacey Link and Kristin Wendland Tango is a multidimensional art form including music, dance and poetry. It grew out of the confluence of cultures in the Río de la Plata region in South America and has since had over a century-long history. Here are ten things that you might not know about Argentine tango music.
Freedom of information lives on By John MacDonald QC The Freedom of Information Act is here to stay. At any rate for the time being. That is the good news implicit in the statement on 1st March 2016 by Matt Hancock, the Cabinet Office Minister, that “this government is committed to making government more transparent”.
Émile Zola and the Rougon-Macquart By Amy Jelf Listen to, and read a transcript of an interview from Nicola Barringer with Valerie Minogue, translator of Money by Émile Zola, part of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. In the interview, she introduces the Rougon-Macquart, Zola’s epic cycle of twenty novels.
Sykes-Picot: the treaty that carved up the Middle East By Umut Özsu The 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement has long been regarded as a watershed – a pivotal episode in the history of the Middle East with far-reaching implications for international law and politics. A product of intense diplomacy between Britain and France at the height of the First World War, this secret agreement was intended to pave the way for the final dissolution of Ottoman power in the region.
State responses to cross-border displacement in South Asia By Abhijit Dasgupta European countries are now experiencing an unprecedented influx of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and Libya. Europeans are trying to find out the causes of population displacement and measures to deal with the crises. Much can be learnt from the South Asian experience in dealing with the refugees. Over the last six decades cross-border displacement in this region has involved a dazzling array of different groups.
Apology round-up: 2016 presidential race (so far) By Edwin Battistella It’s an election year and that means we get to think about the language of politicians—their vocabularies, vocal timbre, gestures, accents, metaphors, style, mistakes, and recoveries. I’m always on the lookout for interesting apologies, and the 2016 election has not been a disappointment.
Evangelicals, politics, and theocracy: a lesson from the English revolution By Crawford Gribben The current cycle of primary elections has re-ignited old debates about the place of religion in American political life. Those candidates identified as evangelicals, such as Ted Cruz, are often represented as proposing a top-down reconstruction of American society, encouraging a “moral minority” to take power in order to impose its expectations upon the culture at large.
Should old-age social insurance be means-tested? By Anton Braun, Karen A. Kopecky, and Tatyana Koreshkova Almost everyone faces some risk of ending up old, sick, alone, and poor. The lengths of our lives are uncertain. Aging comes with increased chances of needing costly medical care. The loss of a spouse, often preceded by large medical bills, may leave one alone late in life. Absent a spouse or other family member to provide informal care, an expensive protracted stay in a nursing home may be needed due to dementia or disability
Tolstoy in art and on film By Rosamund Bartlett The portrait of Tolstoy currently on view at London’s National Portrait Gallery as part of the ‘Russia and the Arts: The Age of Tolstoy and Tchaikovsky’ exhibition shows the writer sitting at his desk, pen in hand, head bowed. Only six years after Anna Karenina was first published as a complete novel, Tolstoy had already cast aside his career as a professional writer in favour of proselytizing his ethics-based brand of Christianity.
Disguises and ‘bed-tricks’: Shakespeare’s love of deception [quiz] Although Shakespeare employed disguises in many of his plays for the sake of comedic effect — take Sir Falstaff dressed as the obese aunt of Mistress Ford’s maid, for example — many more of his characters are entangled in other serious, deceptive plots. The majority of disguises are assumed with the sole purpose of concealing the individual’s true identity, many times for the assurance of his or her safety.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Thomas Hobbes By John Priest Hobbes is remembered as the author of one of the greatest of books on political philosophy ever written, Leviathan, in which he argued with a precision reached by few other thinkers. He was famously a cynic, holding that human action was motivated entirely by selfish concerns, notably fear of death.
So long and thanks for all the tweets By Alice Northover Today is my last day editing the OUPblog. Back in January 2012, I took over as blog editor without so much as a handover (an early maternity leave prevented one). I promptly screwed up multiple things in the first few weeks, causing great annoyance to my colleagues. Then I gradually began steering the blog on a different course.
Skin cancer: What are the risks? By Stefanie De Lucia With bursts of sunshine starting to break through the relentless spring showers, the world is gearing up for summer. For a lot of us, that means getting away for a few weeks, and enjoying the glorious sunshine that the warmer weather brings. Unfortunately, basking in the summer sunshine isn’t without its risks.
How the euro divides the union: economic adjustment and support for democracy in Europe By Klaus Armingeon, Kai Guthmann, and David Weisstanner When the heads of European governments signed the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, they laid the ground for Europe’s economic and monetary union (EMU) and, eventually, the introduction of the euro. Far from being merely an economic project, the common currency, so they hoped, would help pave the way towards a shared European identity. Today—almost a quarter century after Maastricht—that goal remains a distant prospect. On the contrary, during the economic crisis, European citizens in many respects seemed to have drifted apart.
It takes a whole child to raise a village By David Blumenkrantz “When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong,” David Korten wrote in Change the Story, Change the Future. If children are indeed our future, then the stories we use to educate and help them come of age are the most important stories to get right.
What exactly is ‘agriculture’? By Paul Brassley and Richard Soffe In February, when the local ewes were heavy with their lambs, the newspapers carried an article about a Japanese company called Spread, based in Kyoto. In a fully-automated operation covering just over an acre the company plans to be producing 30,000 heads of lettuce per day by 2017, and more than ten times that number within five years. The company’s website calls it a ‘vegetable factory’.
Counterterrorism – Episode 34 – The Oxford Comment What is counterterrorism? Although many studies have focused on terrorism and its causes, research on counterterrorism is less prevalent. This may be because the definition of terrorism itself has been heavily disputed, thus blurring the lines of what and who the targets of counterterrorism efforts should be.
Achieving the $1 trillion partnership: what does TPP mean for the US-India relationship? By Nish Acharya Although India is not a signatory of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement of 2015 (TPP), it should look at the document as a blueprint for the future of US-India relations. It includes all of the components that will drive the relationship – greater imports and exports, innovation, technology and more common regulations and policies.
Reflecting on notable female historians, in celebration of Mother’s Day By Lori Clune, Kristin Celello, Janet M. Davis, Theresa Kaminski, George Cotkin, Wayne A. Wiegand, Kyle G. Volk, Cassandra A. Good, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, E.M. Rose, and Robert Schmuhl A 2010 report by the American Historical Association showed that women comprised 35% of all history faculty, mirroring similar trends in gender disparity across academia. While the academic history field has traditionally been male-dominated, Mother’s Day serves as a day to celebrate significant women in our lives. In tribute to this year’s Mother’s Day, we wish to acknowledge and celebrate the many contributions by women to the field.
Yeats, Kipling, and ‘fin-de-siècle malaise’ By Alex Bubb ‘I don’t like disparagement of the Nineties,’ W.B. Yeats told the Oxford classicist Maurice Bowra towards the end of his life. ‘People have built up an impression of a decadent period by remembering only, when they speak of the Nineties, a few writers who had tragic careers. They do this because those writers were confined within the period’. But, as Yeats explained, those who survived the decade and ‘lived to maturity’ were the principal authors today. ‘The Nineties was in reality a period of very great vigour,’ he concluded, ‘thought and passion were breaking free from tradition.’
Ten facts about the sousaphone By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Any American can recognize the opening notes of “Stars and Stripes Forever” and that most essential instrument of the American marching band — the sousaphone. How did this 30 pound beauty come to be? Despite its relative youth, the sousaphone has an extensive (and sometimes controversial) history.
The hardest question for scientists By Dawn Field But this question of conscience goes beyond science. There is one clear axis along which we are all asked to act in life – in favour of ‘self’ or ‘society’. Do we always do what is best when it comes to deciding the balance? In all pursuits there is an innate tension between the interests of self and society. This tension has existed as long as we’ve had human society of any complexity.
Not a dog’s chance, or one more impenetrable etymology By Anatoly Liberman The word dog is the bête noire of English etymology. Without obvious cognates anywhere (the languages that have dog are said to have borrowed it from English), it had a shadowy life in Old English but managed to hound from its respectable position the ancient name of man’s best friend, the name it has retained in the rest of Germanic.
War and Peace on screen By Amy Mandelker I’m 15 years old and I have just thrown up in the lavatory at the movie theater. Shaking too hard to reach the paper towels, I need to hide out there for the entire intermission of the third installment of Sergei Bondarchuk’s epic 1967 film adaptation of War and Peace.
The overwhelming case against Brexit By Richard Grossman On 23 June, British voters will go to the polls to decide whether the UK should remain in the European Union (EU) or leave it in a maneuver the press has termed “Brexit.” As of late April, public opinion polls showed the “remain” and “exit” sides running neck– and — neck, with a large share of the electorate still undecided. The economic arguments for remaining in the EU are overwhelming. The fact that the polls are so close suggests that a substantial portion of the British electorate is being guided not by economic arguments, but by blind commitment to ideology.
Which planet are you? [quiz] Whilst learning about the planets in our Solar System, and then hearing all that has befallen them in the news over the past decade, have you ever wondered which one you might best get on with? Or which planet you would be? We certainly have, which is why we’ve created the quiz below, to help you find out.
Unraveling how obesity fuels cancer By Anna Azvolinsky “We are getting more and more precise about the different risk factors for the various subtypes of cancer,” said Stephen Hursting, PhD, MPH, professor in the department of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. One established factor is obesity, now well linked to at least ten cancers, including pancreatic, colorectal, endometrial, and hormone receptor–positive, postmenopausal breast cancer.
Jane Jacobs, even better at 100 By Sharon Zukin The fourth of May marks the centenary of the birth of Jane Jacobs, patron saint of contemporary urbanism, at least for most urban planners, architects and local political officials in the US and for many of us who live in cities as well. Both by her writing and her activism, Jacobs promoted livable cities—walkable, enjoyable, sociable places where communities provide distinctive experiences and locals have a say in determining what goes on.
FEMS Microbiology Letters The Friendly Viruses, and how they can help with the looming antimicrobial resistance crisis By Peter Speck and Anthony Smithyman In these days of Zika, Chikungunya, Dengue, and Ebola pandemics, and with the devastating smallpox, influenza, and polio epidemics of the 20th century still fresh in our collective memories, it seems counterintuitive to consider the possibility that viruses will ever be regarded other than with fear and loathing. However, if trials currently underway in Europe, Australia, and the US prove successful, then we may eventually reach a point where certain viruses are viewed with approval and even a degree of affection.
“Wood Street”: On the sound and Psalm 137 references of the Sacred Harp song By David W. Stowe On every Saturday or Sunday of the year, if you know where to go, you will find people in the United States, Canada, even Europe singing from an oblong red-brown book called The Sacred Harp.
JLEO Why whine about wining and dining? By Benjamin E. Hermalin Annual US expenditures on business entertainment likely exceed $40 billion. Such “wining and dining” is often viewed with suspicion, as a way for one entity to influence another’s decision makers improperly. Indeed, such concerns often lead governments and other organizations to limit what kinds of meals and other gifts employees can receive.
The Thatcherism of state-sponsored private sector retirement programs By Edward A. Zelinsky With surprising speed, state-sponsored private sector retirement programs have assumed an important place in the nation’s public policy agenda. California, a pioneer in many trends, was a pioneer in this area also. The California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Trust Act, adopted in 2012, was the first law authorizing a state-sponsored retirement program for private sector […]
Justice delayed, deferred, denied: Injustice at the Hague in the Karadžic and Šešelj verdicts By John Cox At the end of March–more than two decades after their crimes–the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) found Radovan Karadžic, chief political leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists during the wars and genocide of 1992-1995, guilty of war crimes and sentenced him to 40 years. It could be said that justice was delayed and deferred, if not outright denied.
Between research and activism: The role of ‘organic intellectuals’ By Huma Saeed Once an activist, always an activist. This maxim seems to prevail even when one enters the world of research and academia, marked by its ostensible “objectivity” and “neutrality”. I started as an activist and ended up – for now at least – in academia.
Bookselling and the feminist past By Lucy Delap The ‘disappearance’ of booksellers from Hong Kong in recent months reminds us that the free circulation of print can be very directly challenging to the powerful. Within social movements ranging across civil rights, disability, anti-apartheid, socialism, and anti-colonial nationalisms, books, print presses, and bookshops have been central to the movements’ intellectual development and comradeship. The women’s movement has had a similarly close relationship to print; bookshops, periodicals, and presses were a thriving presence within Edwardian women’s suffrage circles.
Brexit and the World Trade Organization By Gregory Messenger As the debates regarding the UK’s referendum on membership of the European Union heat up, attention has turned to the possible consequences of Brexit. There are even consequences from a World Trade Organization (WTO) perspective, flagging up implications for UK sovereignty. The point made here is simple: contrary to the prevailing view, remaining in the WTO post-Brexit could entail a greater threat to UK sovereignty than is currently the case.
The Dismal Debate: would a “Brexit” mean more power for the UK? By Matthew Flinders “Money, money money. Must be funny. In a rich man’s world.” As an academic I’m highly unlikely to ever have either “money, money, money” or live in a “rich man’s world.” But as a long-time student of politics I’ve been struck by how the debate in the UK about the forthcoming referendum on membership of the European Union has been framed around just two issues – money and power.
Book of the century: The Subjection of Women By Jad Adams In a dynamic demonstration of the motivating power of the written word, a ladies’ literary discussion group read The Subjection of Women in 1883. As soon as they had closed the book, they set up the Finnish Women’s Association to campaign for women in public life. It is not coincidental that in 1906 Finland became the first European country where women had the vote. J.S.Mill’s book is, with Marx’s Capital, one of the two most important political books written in Britain in the nineteenth century.
Mourning, memory, and performance By Laurie Maguire There is a wonderful Christopher Rush novel, Will (2007), in which Shakespeare says that what he does best is death: “I do deaths you see. And I can do the deaths of children. Their lips were four red roses on a stalk… – that sort of thing.” From the death of young Rutland in 2 Henry VI to the unexpected death of Mamillius in The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s plays are full of loss.
What is really behind Descartes’ famous doubt? By C.P. Ragland Insofar as Descartes’ philosophical project is an attempt to overcome self-doubt, it doesn’t seem successful. His original reason for self-doubt was a clash between theology and experience. It is hard to see why, if this clash gave him good reason to doubt himself, the clash between providence and freedom would not do so as well. He seems to disagree with himself about the ultimate lessons to learn from disagreement!
April 2016 (132))
How brothers became buddies and bros By Katherine Connor Martin The Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) latest update includes more than 1,800 fully revised entries, including the entry for brother and many words relating to it. During the revision process, entries undergo new research, and evidence is analyzed to determine whether additional meanings and formations are needed.
Nelson Rockefeller enters presidential race By Michael A. Cohen On 30 April 1968 Nelson Rockefeller, the moderate Republican governor of New York, stepped before a podium in the state capitol of Albany and announced that he was throwing his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential nomination. The announcement, however, came a mere six weeks after Rockefeller had announced in midtown Manhattan, after a “realistic appraisal” of his standing within the Republican Party, that he would not be running for president in 1968.
Is word-of-mouth more powerful in China? By Jenni Romaniuk The sheer size and increasing wealth of the Chinese population makes China an attractive target market. There is no doubt that Chinese culture and history differs from the western world, but how do these differences translate into differences in Chinese buyer behaviour? And are there differences that should affect a brand’s growth strategy?
A dozen ways to die in Shakespeare’s tragedies [infographic] In early modern England, social violence and recurring diseases ensured death was a constant presence, so it is only natural to find such a prominent theme in Shakespeare’s plays, especially his tragedies. His characters died at the hands of one another more often than from natural causes, whether stabbing, poisoning, or beheading (or a combination of the three!).
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Immanuel Kant? [quiz] By John Priest This April, the OUP Philosophy team honours Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 – February 12, 1804) as their Philosopher of the Month. A teacher and professor of logic and metaphysics, this Enlightenment philosopher is today considered one of the most significant thinkers of all time. But how much do you really know about this Enlightenment thinker? Test your knowledge of Kant with our quiz below.
Queer history happens everywhere By Nichole Barnes and Scott Seyforth With the summer issue of the Oral History Review just around the corner, we are bringing you a sneak peak of what’s to come. Issue 43.1 is our LGBTQ special issue, featuring oral history projects and stories from around the country.
Happiness can break your heart too By Anna Sarcon and Jelena Ghadri You may have heard of people suffering from a broken heart, but Takotsubo syndrome (TTS) or “Broken heart syndrome” is a very real condition. However, new research shows that happiness can break your heart too. TTS is characterised by a sudden temporary weakening of the heart muscles that cause the left ventricle of the heart to balloon out at the bottom while the neck remains narrow
Family of Innovators: The Rays’ quest for modernity By Chandak Sengoopta Virtually everybody has heard of the filmmaker, writer, graphic artist, and composer Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) but except for Bengalis, few know much about the exploits of his formidable ancestors and their kinsfolk. And yet, over years of versatile creative engagements, Upendrakishore Ray (1863-1915), his father-in-law Dwarakanath Ganguli (1844-1898), his brother-in-law Hemendramohan Bose (1864-1916), his son Sukumar (1887-1923), and daughter-in-law Suprabha (the parents of Satyajit) charted new paths in literature, art, religious reform, nationalism, business, advertising, and printing technology.
Defining resilience By Hilit Kletter Consider the following scenario: Two women both lost a son in a war. One returns to work immediately and starts volunteering at an organization helping families of fallen soldiers. The other is unable to leave home, spends most of her days crying and sitting in front of her son’s belongings that were left untouched. Who is more resilient? The answer largely depends on how one defines resilience.
Sikhs and mistaken identity By Eleanor Nesbitt American basketball star, Darsh Singh, a turbaned, bearded Sikh, featured this April in a Guardian Weekend piece on cyberbullying. He recalled how his online picture had been circulated with Islamophobic captions. Long before that he’d had to get used to people yelling things like “towelhead”. Since 9/11, Sikhs haven’t just been verbally insulted but have suffered ‘reprisal attacks’.
A timeline of the dinosaurs [infographic] Dinosaurs, literally meaning ‘terrible lizards’, were first recognized by science, and named by Sir Richard Owen (who preferred the translation ‘fearfully great’), in the 1840’s. In the intervening 170 years our knowledge of dinosaurs, including whether they all really died out 65 million years ago, has changed dramatically. Take a crash course on the history of the dinosaurs with our infographic.
Etymology gleanings for April 2016 By Anatoly Liberman Responses to my plea for suggestions concerning spelling reform were very few. I think we can expect a flood of letters of support and protest only if at least part of the much-hoped-for change reaches the stage of implementation. I received one letter telling me to stop bothering about nonsense and to begin doing something sensible.
Bioinformatics: Breaking the bottleneck for cancer research By Nicholas McGranahan In recent years, biological sciences have witnessed a surge in the generation of data. This trend is set to continue, heralding an increased need for bioinformatics research. By 2018, sequencing of patient genomes will likely produce one quintillion bytes of data annually – that is a million times a million times a million bytes of data. Much of this data will derive from studies of patients with cancer.
The Poetic Edda, Game of Thrones, and Ragnarök By Carolyne Larrington Season Six of Game of Thrones is about to air. One of the great pleasures of watching the show is the way in which George R. R. Martin, the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and the show-producers, David Benioff and Dan Weiss, build their imagined world from the real and imagined structures of medieval history and literature.
Austerity and the slow recovery of European city-regions By Riccardo Crescenzi, Davide Luca, and Simona Milio The 2008 global economic crisis has been the most severe recession since the Great Depression. Notwithstanding its dramatic effects, cross-country analyses on its heterogeneous impacts and its potential causes are still scarce. By analysing the geography of the 2008 crisis, policy-relevant lessons can be learned on how cities and regions react to economic shocks in order to design adequate responses.
A prickly pair: Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter By Kristina Spohr Helmut Schmidt and Jimmy Carter never got on. Theirs was, in fact, one of the most explosive relationships in postwar, transatlantic history and it strained to the limit the bond between West Germany and America. The problems all started before Carter became president, when the German chancellor unwisely chose to meddle in American electoral politics.
Why hasn’t the rise of new media transformed refugee status determination? By Rosemary Byrne Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world.
FEMS Microbiology Letters MOOCs and higher education: evolution or revolution? By John Daniel Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) burst into the public consciousness in 2012 after feverish press reports about elite US universities offering free courses, through the Internet, to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) course on Circuits and Electronics that had attracted 155,000 registrations was a typical example. Pundits proclaimed a revolution in higher education and numerous universities, fearful of being left behind, joined a rush to offer MOOCs.
A new European Regulation on insolvency proceedings By Renato Mangano In June 2015, EU Regulation 2015/848 of 20 May 2015 on insolvency proceedings entered into force. This Regulation reformed – or, to be more precise, recast – EC Regulation 1346/2000, in order to tackle in a much more modern way cross-border insolvency cases involving at least one Member State of the EU (except Denmark).
Prince and “the other Eighties” By Michael D. Dwyer Prince died Thursday, and I am sad. I’ve been asked to write about his death, but staring at the empty expanse beyond the flashing cursor, all I really know how to say is in the line above. Plenty of writers, more ably than I could, have written and spoken movingly about Prince since his death.
The quest for a malaria vaccine continues By James Beeson The 2016 World Malaria Report estimates that there were approximately 215 million cases of malaria and 438,000 deaths in 2015. The majority of deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and among young children, and malaria remains endemic in around 100 countries with over three billion people at risk. Over the past 15 years there have been major gains in reducing the global burden of malaria
A tale of two cities: Anzac Day and the Easter Rising By Jenny Macleod On 25 April 1916, 2,000 Australian and New Zealand troops marched through London towards a service at Westminster Abbey attended by the King and Queen. One of the soldiers later recalled the celebratory atmosphere of the day. This was the first Anzac Day. A year earlier, Australian soldiers had been the first to land on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of an attempt by the combined forces of the British and French empires to invade the Ottoman Empire.
Human rights and the (in)humanity at EU’s borders By Katja Franko and Helene O.I. Gundhus The precarious humanitarian situation at Europe’s borders is creating what seems to be an irresolvable tension between the interests of European states to seal off their borders and the respect for fundamental human rights. Frontex, EU’s External Border Control Agency, in particular has been since its inception in 2004 embroiled in a fair amount of public controversy.
How well do you know your quotes from Down Under? “What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before.” Mark Twain put his finger on one of the minor problems for a relatively new nation: making an impact in the world of famous quotations. All the good lines seem to have already been used somewhere else, by somebody else.
Anzac Legend By Jean Bou Ever since news of the landing at Gallipoli first reached Australia via the reporting of the British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the achievements of the AIF have become embedded in Australian national consciousness. By the end of the war the AIF had come to be regarded as one of the premier Allied fighting forces, and [General Sir John] Monash as one of their most successful generals.
World Malaria Day 2016 By Johanna Daily Over the past few years, the momentum of research and efforts on malaria has tremendously decreased malaria transmission and the number of deaths from this disease. However, in many poor tropical and subtropical countries of the world, malaria continues to be one of the leading causes of illness and death.
Who is “victorious?”: transformed American meanings of war and power By Louis René Beres We lost the Vietnam War. There is little reasonable ambiguity about this judgment, nor can there be any apparent consolation. Losing, after all, is assuredly worse than winning. And victory is always better than defeat.
Remembering Easter 1916 in 2016 By Fearghal McGarry Remembering the Easter Rising has never been a straightforward business. The first anniversary of the insurrection, commemorated at the ruins of the General Post Office on Easter Monday, 1917, descended into a riot. This year its centenary has been marked by dignified ceremonies, the largest public history and cultural event ever staged in Ireland and, in Northern Ireland, political discord, and menacing shows of paramilitary strength. Over the past century, the Rising’s divisiveness has remained its most salient feature.
Twenty-first-century Shakespeare By Michael Dobson Forever demanding new performers to interpret them for new audiences under new circumstances, and continuing to elicit a rich worldwide profusion of editions, translations, commentaries, adaptations and spin-offs, Shakespeare’s works have never behaved like unchanging monuments about which nothing new remains to be said.
Is Buddhism paradoxical? By Mark Siderits Buddhist literature is full of statements that sound paradoxical. This has led to the widespread idea that Buddhism, like some other religions, wants to point us in the direction of a reality transcending all intellectual understanding.
The shambolic life of ‘shambles’ By John Kelly You just lost your job. Your partner broke up with you. You’re late on rent. Then, you dropped your iPhone in the toilet. “My life’s in shambles!” you shout. Had you so exclaimed, say, in an Anglo-Saxon village over 1,000 years ago, your fellow Old English speakers may have given you a puzzled look. “Your life’s in footstools?” they’d ask. “And what’s an iPhone?”
Cervantes’s pen silenced today By William P. Childers His words still shape our consciousness, even if we fail to read him. This is not due to some hackneyed idealism (“tilting at windmills”), but rather to his pervasive impact on the genre that taught us to think like moderns: the novel. He pioneered the representation of individual subjectivity and aspiration, which today undergirds the construction of agency in any narrative, whether in novels, films, television, or the daily self-fashioning by millions of users of social media.
The impeachment of Dilma Rousseff By Riordan Roett On Sunday, 17 April 2016, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved a motion to forward a petition to the Senate to impeach President Dilma Rousseff. What led Brazil to this moment? Looking back, the re-election of Dilma Rousseff to a second term as President of Brazil in October 2014 was viewed by her supporters in the Workers Party (PT) as confirmation of the rise of the working class to power in Brazil.
Shakespeare’s Not-So Sceptered Isle By Marisa R. Cull In 2012, when the world tuned in for the opening ceremony of London’s Olympic Games, they were witness in part to a performance of one of Shakespeare’s most famed speeches, delivered by one of today’s most revered Shakespearean actors. Kenneth Branagh, dressed as English engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, offered lines from The Tempest in the spirit of the ceremony’s larger theme, “The Isles of Wonder”.
What we talk about when we talk about being disoriented By Ami Harbin Disorientations—major life experiences that make it difficult for individuals to know how to go on—are deeply familiar, in part because they are common. It is rare to have never experienced some form of disorientation in one’s own life, perhaps in response to grief, illness, or other significant events.
Sepsis: What we need to know now By Daniele Bryden and Gary H. Mills The man doing a spot of gardening cleaning out his fishpond in Europe, the woman who becomes unwell after giving birth in rural India, the child with pneumonia in Rwanda, and the senior citizen who develops diverticulitis in Singapore – the triggers are different but they all die from the same disease process: sepsis.
Getting to know Mark Carnes, previous Co-General Editor of the American National Biography By Victoria Davis In April 2016, the American National Biography updated with 50 new lives. In honor of the occasion, we asked Dr. Mark Carnes to answer a few questions about his experience with the ANB. Dr. Carnes served as Co-General Editor of the ANB alongside Dr. John Garraty since its inception, until current General Editor Dr. Susan Ware came on board in 2012.
No “mere servant”: The evolving role of the company secretary By Lee Roach Discussion on company law and corporate governance tends to focus on the role of the board of directors, the shareholders, the creditors, and the auditor, but surprisingly little attention is paid to company secretaries. Indeed, outside of the corporate sector, it is likely that many people would never have heard of the office of company secretary.
Why the future of social change belongs to community research By Gina Cardazone and Leonard A. Jason People don’t exist as isolated entities, and social programs, movements, or data analytic methods that assume they do are not aligned with reality—and may be doomed to fail. We all know that providing therapy or tutoring to a child may be less effective than hoped if the child’s parents, peers, school, and neighborhood are not also operating in a way that’s conducive to the child’s growth and well-being.
100 years after the Easter Rising By Senia Paseta This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising, a violent attempt by Irish republicans to end British rule in Ireland. Though a momentous event in itself, the Rising should be understood in the context of a decade of revolutionary activity during which Irish political culture was profoundly radicalised and partition came to look inevitable. It must also be understood in the context of the First World War.
International criminal law and Daesh By Robert Cryer On 20 April 2016, after hearing harrowing testimony coming from victims, the UK House of Commons unanimously adopted a resolution declaring “That this House believes that Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria are suffering genocide at the hands of Daesh; and calls on the Government to make an immediate referral to the UN Security Council [SC] with a view to conferring jurisdiction upon the International Criminal Court [ICC] so that perpetrators can be brought to justice” (HC Hansard 20 April 2016 columns 957-1000).
The ingenious gentleman from Don Quixote By E. C. Riley and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra To celebrate the life of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, who died four hundred years ago today, here is an extract taken from Don Quixote de la Mancha.
Shifting commemorations, the 1916 Easter Rising By Eugenio Biagini This Easter, Dublin experienced the culmination of the commemorative activities planned for the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising. There was the traditional reading of the Proclamation in front of the General Post Office (GPO), the military parade, and a series of talks and seminars, held at various locations of historical and national significance.
Protecting the Earth for future generations By Katy Roberts Earth Day is an annual celebration, championed by the Earth Day Network, which focuses on promoting environmental protection around the world. The Earth Day Network’s mission is to build a healthy, sustainable environment, address climate change, and protect the Earth for future generations. The theme for Earth Day 2016 is Trees for the Earth, raising awareness around protecting the Earth’s forests.
Bosom, breast, chest, thorax… Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman To reconstruct an ancient root with a measure of verisimilitude is not too hard. However, it should be borne in mind that the roots are not the seeds from which words sprout, for we compare such words as are possibly related and deduce, or abstract their common part. Later we call this part “root,” tend to put the etymological cart before the horse, and get the false impression that that common part generates or produces words.
Science informed by affection and ethics By Marybeth Lorbiecki “We may, without knowing it, be writing a new definition of what science is for,” said Aldo Leopold to the Wildlife Society in 1940. A moderate but still crisp April breeze was playing in my hair as the sun worked to melt the last bits of frost in the silt. Shoots of prairie grasses were popping up through the mud, past shell skeletons of river mussels and clams.
Long-term causes of the Eurozone crisis By Andreas Nölke The European Union is undergoing multiple crises. The UK may vote in favour of leaving the Union in June. European Union member states are in deep disagreement on various crucial issues, not only on how to handle the stream of refugees from the Near East, but also on how to combat terrorism, and how to deal with Russia. And, in each election, Eurosceptic parties garner an increasing share of the vote.
Whatever happened to the same-sex marriage crisis in the US? By Kristin Celello Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the US Supreme Court handed down the Obergefell decision, enjoyed a certain degree of celebrity in 2015. The press eagerly documented Davis’s crusade in her jurisdiction as well as her audience with the Pope. Other headlines, however, soon drew attention to Davis’s own complicated familial past.
The evolution of evolution By Ronald Edwards How did it come to this? How was evolution transformed from a scientific principle of human-as-animal to a contentious policy battle concerning children’s education? From the mid-19th century to today, evolution has been in a huge tug-of-war as to what it meant and who, politically speaking, got to claim it.
10 facts about the “king of instruments” By Victoria Davis The organ is a complex, powerful instrument. Its history is involved and wide-ranging, and throughout the years it has commanded respect as it leaves its listeners in awe. To celebrate the organ, we compiled a list of 10 facts you may or may not know about this magnificent instrument.
The UK Competition Regime and the CMA By Ros Kellaway On 5 February 2015, the National Audit Office (NAO) published a report entitled “The UK Competition Regime”. The report assesses the performance of the UK competition regulators, focussing on the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). It concludes that the CMA has inherited certain strengths, including a positive legacy of merger and market investigation work.
Oral health and well-being among older adults By Patrick Rouxel When we think about well-being among older adults, how often do we think about their oral health as being an important component? In reviews of risk factors for low well-being among older adults, oral health is never explicitly mentioned, although other health conditions and disease states are often discussed.
Implicit bias in the age of Trump By Jennifer Saul and Michael Brownstein By any common definition, Trump’s statements and policies are racist. Yet we are researchers on implicit bias—largely unconscious, mostly automatic social biases that can affect people’s behavior even when they intend to treat others fairly regardless of their social group identity.
Show me the bodies: A monumental public policy failure By Devra Davis In the 21st century, “show-me-the-bodies” seems a cruel and outdated foundation for public policy. Yet history is littered with examples—like tobacco and asbestos—where only after the death toll mounts is the price of inaction finally understood to exceed that of action.
The conservation of biodiversity: thinking afresh By Colin T. Reid In many walks of life there is much talk about “disruptive” developments which bring change that shatters the established way of doing things. In relation to the conservation of biodiversity, we can see two very different developments which might have such an effect on the conventional legal approaches.
Aesthetic surgery and Alzheimer’s risk By Foad Nahai A growing body of scientific support for the notion that an individual’s attitudes toward aging and personal appearance could have profound effects upon physical and mental well-being. As a result, I began to wonder whether it’s possible that such attitudes may, in measurable ways, impact the development of specific diseases.
How much of a threat does the “Brexit” referendum pose for the European Union? By Michelle Cini and Nieves Pérez-Solórzano Following the announcement of the so-called “Brexit” referendum on 20 February 2016 journalists and bloggers have discussed the “ins” and “outs” of EU membership, focusing on the arguments for and against, on interpreting the polls, and on reflecting on the success of the Leave and Remain camps during the first weeks of the pre-campaign period.
“What’s in a name?”: Was William Shakespeare popular during his lifetime? By Chris Laoutaris It’s 1608. You are passing by the bookstall of the publisher Thomas Pavier on Cornhill, a stone’s throw from the elegant colonnades of London’s Royal Exchange, when something catches your eye: a sensational play dramatising a series of real-life gruesome domestic murders. A Yorkshire Tragedy has that enticing whiff of scandal about it, but what persuades you to part with your hard-earned cash is seeing the dramatist’s name proudly emblazoned on the title-page: “Written by W. Shak[e]speare”.
Temporal liars By Roy T Cook One of the most famous, and most widely discussed, paradoxes is the Liar paradox. The Liar sentence is true if and only if it is false, and thus can be neither (unless it can be both). The variants of the Liar that I want to consider in this instalment arise by taking the implicit temporal aspect of the word “is” in the Liar paradox seriously.
Beyond words: How language-like is emoji? By Vyvyan Evans The decision by Oxford Dictionaries to select an emoji as the 2015 Word of the Year has led to incredulity in some quarters. Hannah Jane Parkinson, writing in The Guardian, and doubtless speaking for many, brands the decision ‘ridiculous’ — after all, an emoji is, self-evidently, not a word; so the wagging fingers seem to say.
MPSA’s 74th annual conference re-cap By OUP Social Sciences Marketing Team This month, our Oxford University Press staff toured Chicago, Illinois for the Midwest Political Science Association’s 74th Annual Conference.?
Five random facts about Shakespeare today Certain facts surrounding Shakespeare, his work, and Elizabethan England have been easy to establish. But there is a wealth of Shakespeare knowledge only gained centuries after his time, across the globe, and far beyond the Anglophone realm.
Lost in the museum By Bence Nanay You go to the museum. Stand in line for half an hour. Pay 20 bucks. And then, you’re there, looking at the exhibited artworks, but you get nothing out of it. You try hard. You read the little annoying labels next to the artworks. Even get the audio-guide. Still nothing. What do you do? Maybe you’re just not into this specific artist. Or maybe you’re not that into paintings in general. Or art.
Summer school for oral historians By Shanna Farrell When I joined UC Berkeley’s Oral History Center (OHC) in late 2013, I quickly began work designing, planning, and running the Advanced Oral History Summer Institute (SI), which is organized around the life cycle of the interview. Because leading the SI is one of my most important roles at the OHC, it’s hard for me to be objective about its value (I think our week is a robust resource and provides excellent formal training).
Randomized controlled trials: Read the “fine print”! By David Y. Hwang and David M. Greer Most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can appear deceptively simple. Study subjects are randomized to experimental therapy or placebo—simple as that. However, this apparent simplicity can mask how important subtle aspects of study design—from patient selection to selected outcomes to trial execution—can sometimes dramatically affect conclusions.
Rising to the challenge: innovations in child protective services By Susan Wells Protecting children from maltreatment is one of the most challenging responsibilities in social and health services. Most CPS investigations and resulting service delivery are helpful to children and families and occur without incident.
The invention of the information revolution By Alex Sayf Cummings The idea that the United States economy runs on information is so self-evident and commonly accepted today that it barely merits comment. There was an information revolution. America “stopped making stuff.” Computers changed everything. Everyone knows these things, because of an incessant stream of reinforcement from liberal intellectuals, corporate advertisers, and policymakers who take for granted that the US economy shifted toward an “knowledge-based” economy in the late twentieth century.
Looking for information: How to focus on quality, not quantity By Arnaud Chevallier Solving complex problems requires, among other things, gathering information, interpreting it, and drawing conclusions. Doing so, it is easy to tend to operate on the assumption that the more information, the better. However, we would be better advised to favor quality over quantity, leaving out peripheral information to focus on the critical one.
Britain and the EU: going nowhere fast By Simon Usherwood A couple of years ago, I wrote about the consequences of David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech, where he set out his plans for a referendum on British membership of the EU. I was rather dubious about such a vote even happening, and even more so about the quality of the debate that would ensue. As much as I was wrong about the former, the latter has been more than borne out by events so far.
The legacy of ancient Greek politics, from Antigone to Xenophon By Barbara Goff and Miriam Leonard What do the pamphlets of the English Civil War, imperial theorists of the eighteenth century, Nazi schoolteachers, and a left-wing American artist have in common? Correct! They all see themselves as in dialogue with classical antiquity, drawing on the political thought of ancient Greek writers. Nor are they alone in this; the idea that Western thought is a series of ‘footnotes to Plato’, as Alfred Whitehead suggested in 1929, is a memorable formulation of the extensive role of ancient Greece within modernity.
Ancient Greek and Egyptian interactions By Ian Rutherford “You Greeks are children”. That’s what an Egyptian priest is supposed to have said to a visiting Greek in the 6th century BC. And in a sense he was right. We think of Ancient Greece as, well, “ancient”, and it is now known to go back to Mycenaean culture of the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. But Egyptian civilisation is much earlier than that: in the mid 2nd millennium BC it was at its height (the “New Kingdom”), but its origins go right into the 3rd millennium BC or even earlier.
Revitalising Cambodian traditional performing arts for social change By Catherine Grant I am recently returned home (Australia) from six months on a music research project in Cambodia. There were, of course, the practical challenges of the type I quite expected. In the monsoonal downpours, getting around in central Phnom Penh meant wading through knee-deep, dead-rat kind of drain-water. In the thatched huts of the provinces, malarial critters droned their way under my net by night. Gastro and heat exhaustion laid me flat.
What is the most important word in historical scholarship today? By Alana Podolsky In addition to catching up with authors and discovering new research, the annual Organization of American Historians conference is a productive and inspiring time to check-in on the state of the field. This OAH in Providence, we had one burning question on our mind: What is one important word that all historians should have on their minds?
Bosom, breast, chest, thorax… Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman In the recent post on bosom, I wrote that one day I would perhaps also deal with breast. There is nothing new I can say about it, but perhaps not all of our readers know the details of the word’s history and the controversy about its origin.
Unwholly bound: Mother Teresa’s battles with depression By George Graham A psychiatrist’s couch is no place to debate the existence of God. Yet spiritual health is an inseparable part of mental or psychological health. Something no psychiatrist should regard with clinical indifference. But what does spiritual or religious health involve? This can’t just include normalized versions of monistic theism – but the entire set of human dispositions that may be thought of in spiritual terms.
Technology, project management, and coffee yogurt: a day in the life of a librarian There is one week each year when it is completely acceptable to fawn over libraries and librarians and all that they do for communities, institutions, and the world in general. Of course, you may find yourself doing that every week of the year, anyway, but we have great news for library fans — it’s National Library Week in the US.
The wrong stuff: Why we don’t trust economic policy By Richard S. Grossman In the 1983 movie The Right Stuff, during a test of wills between the Mercury Seven astronauts and the German scientists who designed the spacecraft, the actor playing astronaut Gordon Cooper asks: “Do you boys know what makes this bird fly?” Before the hapless engineer can reply with a long-winded scientific explanation, Cooper answers: “Funding!” If an economist were asked, “Do you know what makes this economy fly?” the answer, in one word, would be “trust.”
Oxford Classical Dictionary Homer: inspiration and controversy [Infographic] By Ben Leonard and Samantha Zimbler Although a man named “Homer” was accepted in antiquity as the author of the poems, there is no evidence supporting the existence of such an author. By the late 1700s, careful dissection of the Iliad and Odyssey raised doubts about their composition by a single poet. Explore more about the “Homeric question” and the influence of these epics in the infographic below.
AJLH How legal history shapes the present By Alfred. L Brophy The field of “legal history” studies the relationship that “law” and legal institutions have to the society that surrounds them. “Law” means everything from local regulations and rules promulgated by administrative agencies, to statutes and court decisions. Legal history is interested in how “law” and legal institutions operate, and how they change over time in reaction to changing economic, social, and political conditions.
Why everyone loves I Love Dick By Anna Poletti If, like most people these days, you take as much notice (perhaps more) of the books you don’t have time to read as the ones you are reading, you’ve probably heard of Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick. The book, a slow-burning cult classic since its first publication in 1997, has recently been the focus of renewed attention. In 2015, the novel was republished in a hardback edition, and had its first release in the UK.
Does climate change spell the end of fine wine? By Orley Ashenfelter and Karl Storchmann Fine wine is an agricultural product with characteristics that make it especially sensitive to a changing climate. The quality and quantity of wine, and thus prices and revenues, are extremely sensitive to the weather where the grapes were grown. Depending on weather conditions, the prices for wines produced by the same winemaker from fruit grown on the same plot of land can vary by a factor of 20 or more from year to year.
Bittersweet melodies of Agustín Lara in Güeros By Andrew Grant Wood The story of four teenagers on a quest to locate their ailing musical idol requires a mix of nostalgia, myth, apathy and disillusionment. Played out across the vast urban expanse that is the City of Mexico, Güeros is conceived in the alternative deadpan style of Jim Jarmusch’s early films or, perhaps, Wim Wenders’ mid-1970s road movie triology.
Brexit and employment law: a bonfire of red tape? By David Cabrelli If you’ve been following the Brexit debate in the media, you no doubt will have noticed how European employment laws are frequently bandied around as the sort of laws that Britain could do without, thank you very much. As welcome as a giant cheesecake at the Weight Watchers Annual Convention, the European Working Time Directive is never far away from the lips of Brexiters.
Lift the congressional ban on CDC firearm-related deaths and injuries research By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Imagine that there is a disease that claims more than 30,000 lives in the United States each year. Imagine that countless more people survive this disease, and that many of them have long-lasting effects. Imagine that there are various methods for preventing the disease, but there are social, political, and other barriers to implementing these preventive measures.
Addressing Japanese atrocities By Zachary D. Kaufman After decades of tension over Japan’s failure to address atrocities that it perpetrated before and during World War II, the island nation’s relations with its regional neighbors, China and South Korea, are improving. Six weeks ago, for the first time in years, representatives of Japan’s Upper House resumed exchanges with Chinese parliamentarians.
Shakespeare’s linguistic legacy By Edwin Battistella William Shakespeare died four hundred years ago this month and my local library is celebrating the anniversary. It sounds a bit macabre when you put it that way, of course, so they are billing it as a celebration of Shakespeare’s legacy. I took this celebratory occasion to talk with my students about Shakespeare’s linguistic legacy.
Chills, thrills and surprises: ten years of freedom of information in the UK By Benjamin Worthy The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act has been in the news again, when the controversial Independent Commission, much to the surprise of many, concluded the Act was ‘generally working well’, had ‘enhanced openness and transparency… there is no evidence that the Act needs to be radically altered’.
China’s smoldering volcano By Terry Lautz The United States is far from perfect. But China still lacks an independent legal system, adequate protection of human and labor rights, genuine freedom of expression, and predictable means to address grievances. Until such reforms can be accepted in Beijing, resentment will continue to rise and China’s smoldering volcano may eventually erupt.
Could a tax on animal-based foods improve diet sustainability? By France Caillavet, Adélaïde Fadhuile, and Véronique Nichèle The global food system is estimated to contribute 30% of total Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this context, the EU has committed to reducing GHG emissions by 40% relative to 1990 levels by 2030 and by 80% by 2050. Apart from the necessary policies of citizen information and production regulation, could a consumer tax on the most Greenhouse gas-emitting foods be a relevant tool to improve diet sustainability? Could it combine greener and healthier diets with a limited social cost?
What would Shakespeare do? By Emma Smith We’ve heard a lot lately about what Shakespeare would do. He’d be kind to migrants, for instance, because of this passage from the unpublished collaborative play ‘Sir Thomas More’ often attributed to him: ‘Imagine that you see the wretched stranger / Their babies at their backs, with their poor luggage / Plodding to th’ports and coasts for transportation (Scene 6: 84-6).
Note to Pope Francis: sex is more than just sex By Bruce Foltz Pope Francis is boldly liberalizing Catholic teaching on sexual matters. Or so it is commonly believed. In earlier ages of the Christian Church, both East and West, its canons and its teachings always understood human sexuality as having a very powerful effect upon the human soul.
OED timeline challenge: Can you guess when these words entered the English language? Do you know when laugh entered the English language? What about cricket or fair-weather friend? Take the OED Timeline Challenge and find out if you are a lexical brainiac (1975). To play, simply drag the word to the date at which you think it entered the English language.
The Trade Union Bill 2016 and its likely effect on strike action By Astra Emir Making its way through parliament at present is the Trade Union Bill 2016, which at the time of writing is at the report stage of the House of Lords. The Bill has been the subject of much debate, both in parliament and the press. This article will consider the likely impact of its main strike provisions, should they come into force.
The ‘Panama Papers’ and corporate transparency: The UK perspective By Lee Roach In early 2015, confidential documents were leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper. The documents leaked came from the internal database of Mossack Fonseca, a Panamanian law firm. Working with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and media organizations from around the world, the documents (which became known as the ‘Panama Papers’) were analysed and, on the 3 April 2016, media organizations around the world published their findings.
Copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio around the world [map] By Emma Smith The first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays printed in 1623 – known as the First Folio – has a rich history. It is estimated that around 700 or 750 copies were printed, and today we know the whereabouts of over 230. They exist in some form or another, often incomplete or a combination of different copies melded together, in libraries and personal collections all over the world.
The life and work of Buckminster Fuller: a timeline By John Priest A self-professed “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” the inventor Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was undoubtedly a visionary. Fuller’s creations often bordered on the realm of science fiction, ranging from the freestanding geodesic dome to the three-wheel Dymaxion car.
Hate crime and anti-immigrant “talk” By Jeannine Bell Republican Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have called for the mass deportation of undocumented workers, the majority of whom hail from Mexico. To many liberals, the anti-immigrant rhetoric of these Republican candidates seems oddly anachronistic—a terrible throwback to an earlier America when we were less in touch with our melting pot roots.
Who was Bill Philips? By Alan Bollard Austerity, uncertainty, instability … all problems we associate with Europe today as it cycles from pre-GFC exuberance to today’s austerity. But to put things in perspective, these are minor problems compared what our grandparents endured after World War Two. In Britain many people did not have enough to eat, the government had secret plans for national catastrophe, the Cold War was raging, the colonies erupting, and Sterling was in crisis. In those days there were few policy economists, and macroeconomics was caught in a battle between non-interventionist classical economics and the Keynesian revolution of demand management.
From domestic violence to coercive control By Evan Stark When a major obstacle is removed to our progress, idealist intellectuals like myself rejoice. I was introduced to one such obstacle in the early l970s, when a woman hiding from her abusive husband in our home told us “violence wasn’t the worst part.” Like the millions of other victimized women we have served in the ensuing years, she understood that the prevailing equation of partner abuse with domestic violence has little relation to her lived experience of oppression.
Theatre and race in Lorraine Hansberry’s Les Blancs By Kirsten Shepherd-Barr Many playwrights have explored race relations, particularly in America. The growth of the Civil Rights Movement gave rise to a range of plays protesting racism and exploring the African-American experience. Lorraine Hansberry made history as the first black woman to have a play on Broadway: A Raisin in the Sun, also the first play on Broadway to be directed by a black director.
The Easter Rising – Episode 33 – The Oxford Comment This past Easter marked the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, an armed uprising by Irish rebels against British rule in 1916. An insurrection that lasted almost a week, the Easter Rising began as a small rebellion on Easter Sunday and turned into a full uprising by Easter Monday, 24 April 1916.
The history behind Ukraine’s 2016 Eurovision song By James Harris Most entries to the Eurovision song contest are frothy pop tunes, but this year’s contribution from Ukraine addresses Stalin’s deportation of the entire Tatar population of Crimea in May 1944. It may seem an odd choice, but is actually very timely if we dig a little into the history of mass repression and inter-ethnic tensions in the region. Almost a quarter of a million Tatars, an ethnically Turkic people indigenous to the Crimea, were moved en masse to Soviet Central Asia as a collective punishment for perceived collaboration with the Nazis.
Composer Richard Causton in 10 questions Richard Causton’s studies took him from the University of York via the Royal College of Music and the Scuola Civica in Milan, to King’s College, Cambridge where he is Lecturer in Composition. In addition to composition, Causton writes and lectures on Italian contemporary music and regularly broadcasts for Italian radio. In our occasional series, in which we ask Oxford composers questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, and challenges, we spoke with Richard Causton about his writing, new music, and his desert island playlist.
“It takes nine tailors to make a man” and other wonders on Cloud Nine By Anatoly Liberman The proverb in the title of this post rarely, if ever, occurs in modern literature and may even have been forgotten but for the title of Dorothy Sayers’ novel. However, at one time it was well-known, and extensive literature is devoted to it. The publications appeared not only in the indispensable Notes and Queries, American Notes and Queries, and Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine but also in such great newspapers and periodicals as The British Apollo and Churchman’s Shilling Magazine, to say nothing of Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature of the United Kingdom.
Unnatural disasters and environmental injustice By Christine A. Klein and Sandra B. Zellmer The recent tragedy involving toxic, lead-laced tap water in Flint, Michigan highlights the growing gulf between rich and poor, and majority and minority communities. In an ill-fated measure to save costs for the struggling city of Flint, officials stopped using Detroit’s water supply system and switched to the Flint River.
International Studies Association’s 57th annual convention re-cap Last month, we were thrilled to see so many of you at ISA’s 57th Annual Convention in Atlanta, Georgia. Being able to communicate with so many International Studies Association members from all different fields and backgrounds is an opportunity our OUP Staff looks forward to every year.
Beyond “methodological nationalism” in global security studies By Fiona B. Adamson Last week’s news of terrorist attacks in Lahore and Brussels followed only days after similar news from Istanbul. And before that Ankara, Jakarta, and Paris. The list goes on. Attacks on cities around the world are part of the new reality of global insecurity that transcends state and national borders. In addition to the terrible human devastation and fear caused by each incident, they are also examples of how traditional models of “national” security are not sufficient for understanding contemporary patterns of political violence.
Possible genetic pathway to melanoma By Kurt Ullman Genetic mutations that result in melanoma have been cataloged over the years. The missing piece has been an understanding of the order of their occurrence and how they move from a benign lesion to one that is cancerous. An article by Boris C. Bastian, MD, PhD; Hunter Shane, PhD; and others hopes to help answer some of those questions.
Study Bible sampler By Steve Wiggins Study Bibles have been around almost as long as Bibles have been printed in English. While Christianity has long been considered a “religion of the book” (a phrase that not everybody likes), the Bible isn’t easy to understand. It’s so complex that the first universities (which emerged from monastic and cathedral schools) regularly taught Bible classes.
Prostitution: The world’s oldest public policy issue By Bruce Elmslie Ever since the first arrangements were made for the exchange of some form of money for some form of sex, buying (or selling) sex has raised thorny issues for society’s rulers and governments. The Israelites condemned it, believing it would encourage men to seek sex outside marriage (Proverbs 23:27–28). Throughout much of European history, the profession was legal and often a source of tax revenue.
Florence Foster Jenkins: a user’s guide to aging the female voice By Jennifer Fleeger In a brief scene in the 1931 Warner Bros. horror film, Svengali, an aging heiress takes voice lessons, falls in love with her teacher, and upon finding her love unrequited and her voice uninspired, throws herself in the river. That the film hastily banishes her for these infractions isn’t much of a surprise, for we don’t tend to remember bad voices, nor do we dwell on older women who would dare possess them. In fact, were it up to Hollywood, we’d hardly dwell on older women at all.
An absence of fairness: the Trade Union Bill By Michael Ford and Tonia Novitz According to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), the Trade Union Bill currently before Parliament is ‘not a ban on strike action. This is about ensuring that our rules are modern and right and fit for today’s workplace’. As the Bill progresses through the House of Lords, Mr Javid’s rosy view has been challenged by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Zubik v. Burwell: The HSA/HRA alternative By Edward A. Zelinsky Last Tuesday, the US Supreme Court issued an unusual order in Zubik v. Burwell. In Zubik, religious employers including the Little Sisters of the Poor, East Texas Baptist University and Southern Nazarene University object to the federal regulations governing birth control coverage for their employees. These regulations permit these religious employers to elect against providing such coverage.
President William Henry Harrison’s fatal “pneumonia” By Philip A. Mackowiak William Henry Harrison was 68 years old when he became the ninth president of the United States and the oldest US president until Ronald Reagan was elected nearly a century and a half later. He was sworn into office on 4 March 1841. Exactly one month later, he was dead.
Reflections on religion and the Civil Rights Movement By Carolyn Dupont Americans, black and white, love to commemorate the civil rights struggle. School programs, public events, popular culture, and historic markers all recount the heroic battle black Americans waged for their full humanity. Yet, racial inequality continues to plague the United States, and most popular civil rights history mythologizes it in ways that hinder the full realization of the movement’s goals.
3 things you might not know about Nones By Elizabeth Drescher Religious Nones are a name for people who answer “none” when asked with what religious group they most identify or to which they belong. Nones are a growing segment of the U.S. religious landscape but there are some misconceptions about how they practice what might count as “spirituality” or “religion.” Here are three challenges to typical misconceptions about Nones.
Teaching human rights in schools: ‘Who am I to say that democracy is the right way?’ By Alison Struthers “What could very easily happen with teaching about human rights is indoctrination…so let’s say someone says that racism isn’t wrong. Okay, so what would happen is that ‘racism is wrong. You have to learn it’. That’s the way it would be taught … “
Trump that: the failure and farce of American politics By Matthew Flinders There is something very odd and bizarrely impressive about Donald Trump’s approach to democratic politics: it is quite obviously undemocratic. Indeed, if anything, his campaign is fuelled by anti-political sentiment and populist slogans. It’s strong stuff. So strong that it deserves to be recognized in the form of a new political ideology: ‘Trump-ism’. Eponymous…and yet also synonymous with the failure and farce of American politics.
Commemorating Shakespeare in 1916 By Gordon McMullan Easter was late in 1916, falling on 23 April, St George’s Day. This coincidence of faith and patriotism was inevitably both heightened and tempered by the ongoing struggles of the First World War. April 1916 came amidst the protracted fighting of the Battle of Verdun, a long and bloody conflict yet one which was only a foretaste of the horrors to come at the Somme the summer following. It also happened to mark the Tercentenary of the death of William Shakespeare.
Philosopher of the month: Immanuel Kant By John Priest A teacher and professor of logic and metaphysics, Kant is today considered one of the most significant thinkers of all time. His influence is so great, European philosophy is generally divided into pre-Kantian and post-Kantian schools of thought.
LBJ drops out of 1968 presidential race By Michael A. Cohen By late March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson’s presidency lay in tatters. Anger over the war in Vietnam and Johnson’s growing credibility gap had created a full-scale insurgency at home, within the Democratic Party. Things soon went from bad to worse.
Francisco Goya’s deafness By Philip A. Mackowiak By the time Francisco Goya died on this day in 1828, he had established himself as one of the greatest portraitists of modern times. During his 74 years, he featured both nobles and kings and humble workers and farmers in over 1,800 works. It is said that he painted at a pace so furious, he completed his wife’s portrait, now hanging in the Prado, in an hour.
Today’s Forecast: Cloudy with a chance of seizures By Benjamin Brinkmann and Gregory Worrell For people suffering from recurrent epileptic seizures, one of the most burdensome aspects of their condition is the unpredictability of their seizures. While medications, surgery, and novel neurostimulation methods can eliminate seizures seizures in some cases, many people with epilepsy face the possibility of a seizure at any time, even when they occur only rarely.
Food economics: a reading list By Alex Guyver Agriculture is a means of living for a large percentage of the world’s population. Agricultural economics looks at the utilization and distribution of farming resources and aims to apply the principles of economic theory to farming and the production and allocation of food in order to optimize such processes. This month the annual conference of the Agricultural Economics Society is taking place.
From reconstruction to globalization: Shakespeare as he is today How do we understand Shakespeare today versus one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years ago? Through efforts like archaeological digs and excavations, studies of word spelling and linguistic patterns, researchers and experts can reconstruct an early modern theatre experience: plays performed in original pronunciation inside facsimile Elizabethan theatres.
Is Christian selflessness oppressive? By Julia Meszaros It is not uncommon to hear contemporary theologians (and others) opine that the Christian ethic of selflessness is a long-standing cause of female oppression. Even anorexia, that increasingly wide-spread disorder, has been traced back to Christian understandings of love as selfless or self-denying. The notion of selfless love has consequently acquired an air of the psychologically dangerous and patriarchal.
Hey everybody! Meet the new team! Every spring, an extraordinarily talented group comes to Oxford University Press to live, learn, and grow. We’re thrilled to announce that this April, some members will joining the social media team for the first time. We sat down with J.G. Mallard, J.K. Fowling, William Ducksworth, Philip K. Duck, and Alexander to discover what they love about Oxford, what gets them excited about social media, and what they hope to accomplish.
Launching into oral history By Adrienne Cain I was introduced to oral history while completing my Master’s in Library Science at the University of North Texas. I needed to fulfill my practicum requirement, and I took a chance on an advertisement to intern at NASA-Johnson Space Center. (I grew up wanting to be an astronaut, but in high school I met AP Calculus and that dream was indefinitely deferred.)
Doing it with sensitivity By Aidan O'Donnell I’m sure you’ve had this experience. You want to get somewhere, say a concert, or a public building, and all the people are stopped by security officials, who ask to search your bag. They open it, maybe take out one or two items, then glance around inside the rest, before giving it back to you and letting you go.
The future of climate change in Africa By Carl Death In December 2015 the international community gathered in Paris for the twenty-first yearly Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The first universal agreement was signed that ‘all parties’ (not just the developed countries or historic emitters) would take action to achieve the global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions, and pursue measures which would hold global temperature rises to 1.5°C.
Announcing the winners of this year’s Grove Music Spoof Article Contest By Anna-Lise Santella In honor of April Fools’ Day, we are pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 Grove Music Spoof Article Contest.
10 surprising facts about Ancient Egyptian art and architecture By Christina Riggs Ancient Egyptian art dates all the way back to 3000BC and provides us with an understanding of ancient Egyptian socioeconomic structures and belief systems. The Ancient Egyptians also developed an array of diverse architectural structures and monuments, from temples to the pyramids that are still a major tourist attraction today. But how much do you know about Ancient Egyptian art and architecture?
March 2016 (141))
A reimagined Wonderland, Middle-earth, and material world Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies. The most obvious example for Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland are the many adaptations in […]
And the lot fell on… sortition in Ancient Greek democratic theory & practice By Paul Cartledge Some four decades ago the late Sir Moses Finley, then Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, published a powerful series of lectures entitled Democracy Ancient and Modern (1973, republished in an augmented second edition, 1985). He himself had personally suffered the atrocious deficit of democracy that afflicted his native United States in the 1950s, forcing him into permanent exile, but my chief reason for citing his book here, apart from out of continuing intellectual respect, is that its title could equally well have been Democracy Ancient Versus Modern.
Defining biodiversity genomics By Dawn Field Many say now is the century of biology, the study of life. Genomics is therefore “front-and-centre”, as DNA, is the software of life. From staring at stars, we are now staring at DNA. We can’t use our eyes, like we do in star gazing, but just as telescopes show us the far reaches of the Universe, DNA sequencing machines are reading out our genomes at an astonishing pace.
Etymology gleanings for March 2016 By Anatoly Liberman Preparation for the Spelling Congress is underway. The more people will send in their proposals, the better. On the other hand (or so it seems to me), the fewer people participate in this event and the less it costs in terms of labor/labour and money, the more successful it will turn out to be. The fate of English spelling has been discussed in passionate terms since at least the 1840s.
Is it all in the brain? An inclusive approach to mental health By Michelle Maiese For many years, the prevailing view among both cognitive scientists and philosophers has been that the brain is sufficient for cognition, and that once we discover its secrets, we will be able to unravel the mysteries of the mind. Recently however, a growing number of thinkers have begun to challenge this prevailing view that mentality is a purely neural phenomenon.
The IMF and global exchange rates: dissensus in Washington By Tod S. Van Gunten In many scholarly and activist circles, the International Monetary Fund (IMF, or ‘the Fund’) has a reputation as a global bully. The phrase ‘Washington consensus’ has come to invoke a rigid orthodoxy of austerity and liberalization which the Fund, along with its cousins the World Bank and the US Treasury, imposes on developing countries. As an organization, the IMF is seemingly monolithic, drawing comparison to the Vatican even amongst its own staff.
Interviews with historians: An OAH video series By Alana Podolsky At the 2015 Organization of American Historians conference in St. Louis, we interviewed OUP authors and journal editors to understand their views on the history discipline. Gathering at the OUP booth, scholars – working in fields ranging from women’s history to racial history, cultural history to immigration history – discussed topics both professional and personal.
Hamilton the musical: America then told by America now By R. B. Bernstein It was only after I finished writing The Founding Fathers: A Very Short Introduction that I got to see the off-Broadway version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton: An American Musical” at New York City’s Public Theater. I was lucky enough to see the Broadway version (revised and expanded) last month.
Climate and the inequality of nations By Thomas Barnebeck Andersen, Carl-Johan Dalgaard, and Pablo Selaya Countries grow richer as one moves away from the equator, and the same is generally true if one looks at differences among regions within countries. However, this was not always the case: research has shown that in 1500 C.E., for example, there was no such positive link between latitude and prosperity. Can these irregularities be explained? It seems likely an answer can be found in factors strongly associated with latitude.
An eventful weekend at the 2016 Society for American Music conference By Eden Piacitelli The 2016 Society for American Music (SAM) conference was held in Boston, where scholars and institutions from around the globe gathered together in a supportive and uplifting five-day meeting that consisted of panels, presentations, discussions, field trips, musical performances, receptions, and the celebration of books and authors.
Brexit in the city: what would be the impact of the UK becoming a third country state? By Simon Morris Currently a UK-authorized bank, insurer or securities firm has the right to carry on business in another EEA state without further authorization. This passporting right allows UK firms to access European markets and over 2000 UK investment firms benefit from a passport under MiFID. UK firms will lose this right if it exits the EU without mutual recognition.
Preparing for the 110th ASIL Annual Meeting By Erica Albanese and Jo Wojtkowski This year’s ASIL Annual Meeting will take place from March 30 to April 2, at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. The conference theme will focus on ‘Charting New Frontiers in International Law’, and evaluate the shifts that are creating new frontiers in the physical and conceptual structure of our international order.
The American Philosophical Association Pacific 2016: a conference guide By John Priest The Oxford Philosophy team is excited to see you in San Francisco for the upcoming 2016 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting. We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in California as well as our favorite sessions for the conference. We recommend visiting the following sights and attractions while in San Francisco.
The quest for human rights By Lung-chu Chen Planet Earth is becoming ever more interconnected and complicated. In this context, the quest for common interests is imperative in dealing with problems in international law and global affairs. International cooperation at every level is essential in achieving minimum and optimum world order—and with it human dignity and human security.
Addressing new frontiers in international law International criminal tribunals are in trouble. Lines are blurring between international legal systems. It’s increasingly difficult to balance the benefits of open trade with the negative impact of its volatility. Rhetoric around border and migration control is vociferous. At the American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (30 March – 2 April 2016), academics and practitioners will address the theme ‘Charting New Frontiers in International Law’.
Why Rajapakse smells an opportunity By Mohan K. Tikku ‘Yahapalana’ is a term that has been much in use in Sri Lanka’s political discourse ever since the present government came to power early last year. ‘Yahapalana’ is a Sinhala word, and means ‘good governance’. The Sirisena government was voted into office in the January 2015 election on a promise of ‘good governance’.
Why people enjoy hearing Shakespeare in Original Pronunciation By David Crystal Since the groundbreaking Original Pronunciation productions at Shakespeare’s Globe in London in 2004-05, OP has captured the imagination of performers, directors, and the play-going public. Going back to the pronunciation of the late 16th and early 17th centuries reveals nuances, puns, and rhymes that otherwise lie completely hidden, and gives fresh dynamism to productions.
The God-man resurrected: a philosophical problem for the Incarnation By Timothy Pawl Today is Easter Sunday for the majority of the world’s 2.4 billion Christians (most Orthodox Christians will wait until May 1st to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus). After the long penitential season of Lent, Christians are greeting each other with joyful exclamations of “He is risen,” and hearing in glad response, “He is risen indeed, hallelujah!”
Word in the news: Mastermind By Charlotte Buxton In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”
How well do you know 21st-century Shakespeare? [quiz] You may know Christopher Marlowe and Richard Burbage, The Globe Theatre and The Swan, perhaps even The Lord Chamberlain’s Men and The Admirals’ Men. But what do you know of modern Shakespeare: new productions, new performances, and ongoing research in the late 20th and 21st centuries? Shakespeare has, in many ways, remained the same, but actors, directors, designers, and other artists have adapted his work to suit the needs of the world and audiences today.
How well do you know David Hume? [quiz] By John Priest This January, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen David Hume as their Philosopher of the Month. Born in Edinburgh, Hume is considered a founding figure of empiricism and the most significant philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. With its strong critique of contemporary metaphysics, Hume’s ‘Treatise of Human Nature’ (1739–40) cleared the way for a genuinely empirical account of human understanding.
What is cancer drug resistance? Q&A with Dr Maurizio D’Incalci By Maurizio D'Incalci One of the biggest obstacles in treating cancer is drug resistance. There are still many unanswered questions about the genomic features of this resistance, including different patient responses to therapy, the role drug resistance plays in the relapse of tumours, and how cancer treatments in the future will combat drug resistance.
When’s Easter? By Steve Wiggins The phrase “moveable feast,” while popularized by Ernest Hemingway’s memoir, refers primarily to the holidays surrounding Passover and Easter. Although “Easter” is not a biblical word, Passover is a major holiday in the Jewish calendar. The origins of the festival, while disputed among scholars, are narrated in the biblical texts in Exodus 12–13
Three Cuts By Kiranmayi Indraganti Songs leave unique imprints on people and places. In India, especially, songs from films offer a multitude of trajectories for anyone who is more than deferentially familiar with them, contained in or limited by larger prospective areas of film study material. Film songs form a major portion of its popular culture hence, are etched into individual and collective memories weaving unique tapestries of such imprints.
The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology Music and what it means to be human Music is a human construct. What is acknowledged as ‘music’ varies between cultures, groups, and individuals. The Igbo of Nigeria have no specific term for music: the term nkwa denotes ‘singing, playing instruments and dancing’.
10 facts you should know about moons By David A. Rothery Proving to be both varied and fascinating, moons are far more common than planets in our Solar System. Our own Moon has had a profound influence on Earth, not only through tidal effects, but even on the behaviour of some marine animals. But how much do we really know about moons?
A Trollopian reviews the Doctor Thorne TV adaptation By Lucia Costanzo Like all true Trollopians I carry in my mind a vivid picture of Barsetshire and its people. For me it is a landscape of rolling countryside with ancient churches and great houses, with Barchester a compact cathedral city of great elegance, as if Peterborough cathedral had been miraculously transported ten miles into Stamford.
Is name studies a discipline in its own right? By Carole Hough Name studies have been around for a long time. In Ancient Greece, philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle saw names as central to the understanding of language, providing key insights into human communication and thought. Still, to the present day, questions such as Are names nouns? and Do names have meaning? are still hotly debated by scholars within both linguistics and name studies.
Cambiata choirs explained At the beginning of May 2015, I spent some time at the Cornwall International Male Voice Choral Festival, a massive affair with 70 choirs at 60 events in 50 venues all over Cornwall, packed into a long Bank Holiday Weekend. The mastermind behind this well-organised event was Festival Director Peter Davies, director of the Huntingdon Male Voice Choir.
Art of the Ice Age [slideshow] By Paul Bahn In 2003 Paul Bahn led the team that discovered the first Ice Age cave art at Creswell Crags in Britain. In recent years, many more discoveries have been made including the expanding phenomenon of ‘open-air Ice Age art’. In the slideshow below, you can see some of the earliest examples of art on the planet, and take a tour of prehistoric art throughout the world.
‘Vulpes vulpes,’ or foxes have holes. Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I discussed the role of taboo in naming animals, a phenomenon that often makes a search for origins difficult or even impossible. Still another factor of the same type is the presence of migratory words. The people of one locality may have feared, hunted, or coexisted in peace with a certain animal for centuries. They, naturally, call it something.
Sleepy Hollow’s Apocalypse By Steve Wiggins “The answers are in Washington’s Bible!” Katrina shouts as Moloch stirs the dark, swirling clouds that will seal her once again in Purgatory. Her husband, Ichabod Crane, stands watching, unable to help as his wife is swallowed up in a world that he can only reach in dreams and visions. Ichabod has been resurrected from the dead in the twenty-first century and faces Death himself in the form of the headless horseman of Sleepy Hollow.
Taking race out of human genetics and memetics: We can’t achieve one without achieving the other By Carlos Hoyt Acknowledging that they are certainly not the first to do so, four scientists, Michael Yudell, Dorothy Roberts, Rob Desalle, and Sarah Tishkoff recently called for the phasing out of the use of the concept/term “race” in biological science.
Why e-cigarettes have an image problem By Jacob Hasselbalch E-cigarettes have an image problem. I mean this in two different ways. They are still seen as controversial products, often featuring in dramatic stories about battery explosions or toxic substances. Most of these stories play on public fears, exaggerate their claims, and are unhelpful for fostering a constructive public debate. But more generally, e-cigarettes have an image problem in that no one agrees on what they represent.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Classics in the digital age By Adina Popescu Berk One might think of classicists as the most tradition-bound of humanist scholars, but in fact they were the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of computing and digital technology in the humanities. Today even classicists who do not work on digital projects use digital projects as tools every day. One reason for this is the large, but defined corpus of classical texts at the field’s core.
Passion and compassion: The people who created the words and numbers of environmental science By Ellen Wohl These are the images I carry in memory that form my understanding of passion and compassion in science: Rachel Carson waking at midnight to return to the sea the microscopic marine organisms she has been studying, when the tidal cycle is favorable to their survival; John Muir clinging to the upper branches of a tall pine during a violent storm, reveling in the power of natural forces.
Local opera houses through the ages By Ann Satterthwaite Nineteenth and twentieth Century opera houses are finding new lives today. Opera houses were once the center of art, culture, and entertainment for rural American towns–when there was much less competition for our collective attention.
The evolution of flute sound and style By Celine Aenlle-Rocha and Meera Gudipati This March, we’ve been focusing on the flute and its history and importance in the music scene. Resident OUP history editor Nancy Toff is also active in the flute world, as a performer, researcher and instructor. In order to delve into Nancy’s wealth of knowledge about the flute, we asked Meera Gudipati, currently attending the Yale School of Music as a Master of Music, to interview her about flute performance, music history, and other favorite flutists.
Transplanting India’s patent laws By Feroz Ali and Radhika Agarwal Recently, patent reforms in different parts of the world have shown an emerging trend towards the emulation of Indian patent law. Countries like China, South Africa, Botswana and Brazil are now trying to amend their domestic patent laws based on India’s model. The Philippines was among the first countries to emulate India’s patent regime.
Uterus transplants: challenges and potential By John A. Robertson The birth of a healthy child in Sweden in October, 2014 after a uterus transplant from a living donor marked the advent of a new technique to help women with absent or non-functional uteruses to bear genetic offspring. The Cleveland Clinic has now led American doctors into this space, performing the first US uterine transplant in February, 2016
Can design thinking challenge the scientific method? By Ben Shneiderman The scientific method has long reigned as the trusted way to test hypotheses so as to produce new knowledge. Shaped by the likes of Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, and Ronald A. Fisher, the idea of replicable controlled experiments with at least two treatments has dominated scientific research as a way of producing accepted truths about the world around us. However, there is growing interest in design thinking, a research method which encourages practitioners to reformulate goals, question requirements, empathize with users, consider divergent solutions.
The principle of distinction in complex military operations By Rachel E. VanLandingham While exciting topics such as autonomous weapons and cyberwarfare may at first blush seem like the most “important new frontiers” in international humanitarian law, there is another more immediate and complex challenge confronting those engaged in current and looming wars, a challenge with a human face. Today and unfortunately tomorrow, professional militaries find, and will continue to find, it increasingly difficult to determine who is friend or foe in the modern battle-space.
Passion season / Bach season By Daniel R. Melamed The arrival of Lent and the anticipation of Holy Week on the Christian liturgical calendar bring with them what professional musicians call “passion season.” In a close parallel to “Messiah season” in December, singers and players hope to find work performing musical settings of the crucifixion narrative, to help audiences and congregations listen and worship and to help get themselves through the next few months’ rent.
Exam preparation: More than just studying? By Caroline Whymark Do you know of a colleague who is extremely good at their job, yet cannot pass the professional exams required to ascend the career ladder? Or an exceptionally bright friend – who seems to fall apart during exam periods? Or do you yourself struggle when it comes to final assessments? I’m sure most of us are familiar with situations like this, as they are a very common occurrence.
The questionable logic of international economic sanctions By Lee Jones Whatever the international crisis – whether inter-state war (Russia-Ukraine), civil strife (Syria), nuclear proliferation (North Korea), gross violations of human rights (Israel), or violent non-state actors on the rampage (ISIS, al-Qaeda) – governments, pundits and NGOs always seem to formulate the same response: impose economic sanctions. In the mid-20th century, only five countries were targeted by sanctions; by 2000, 50 were.
“The economics of happiness” – an extract from Happiness Explained By Paul Anand What is happiness and how can we promote it? These questions are central to human existence and human flourishing now plays a central role in the assessment of national and global progress. Paul Anand shows why the traditional national income approach is limited as a measure of human wellbeing and demonstrates how the contributors to happiness, wellbeing, and quality of life can be measured and understood across the human life course. The following extract looks at the connection between income and wellbeing.
Original pronunciation: the state of the art in 2016 By David Crystal In 2004, Shakespeare’s Globe in London began a daring experiment. They decided to mount a production of a Shakespeare play in ‘original pronunciation’ (OP) – a reconstruction of the accents that would have been used on the London stage around the year 1600, part of a period known as Early Modern English. They chose Romeo and Juliet as their first production, but – uncertain about how the unfamiliar accent would be received by the audience – performances in OP took place for only one weekend.
Imagining zombies By Alex Carruth Understanding the relationship between the mind and the body remains one of the most vexed problems in philosophy, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Physicalism has not reigned unchallenged, however. A number of arguments have been raised which promote dualism in its place — the view that fundamentally, the mind and body are separate.
Potential dangers of glyphosate weed killers By Devra Davis What do Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Brazil, and India have in common? They have banned the use of Roundup—the most heavily applied herbicide in the United States. Why have these nations acted against what is the most heavily used herbicide in the world today? This is because of growing reports of serious illness to farmworkers and their families.
The Great Pottery Throw Down and language By Maurice Waite The newest knockout competition on British television is The Great Pottery Throw Down (GPTD), in which an initial ten potters produce a variety of ceramic work each week, the most successful being declared Top Potter, and the least successful being ‘asked to leave’. The last four then compete in a final […]
Translating Shakespeare By Alexa Huang Translation of Shakespeare’s works is almost as old as Shakespeare himself; the first German adaptations date from the early 17th century. And within Shakespeare’s plays, moments of translation create comic relief and heighten the awareness that communication is not a given. Translation also served as a metaphor for physical transformation or transportation.
The power of imagination By Amy Kind Sure, imagination is powerful. But can it really change the world? Indeed, it is tempting to answer “no” here — to disagree with Glaude about the transformative power of imagination. After all, imagination is the stuff of fancy, of fiction, of escape. We daydream to get away from the disappointing monotony of daily life.
Putting oral history on the map By Andrew Shaffer Oral history has always been concerned with preserving the voices of the voiceless, and new technologies are enabling oral historians to preserve and present these memories in new and exciting ways. Audio projects can now turn to mapping software to connect oral histories with physical locations, bringing together voices and places.
11 films all aspiring medics need to see By Arpan K. Banerjee Think the life of a doctor is dull? Think again! In a previous post, I recommended ten books by medical men which all doctors should read. Today, it’s the turn of medical movies. By focusing on the extremes of human life – birth, death, suffering, illness, and health – such films provide insight into the human condition and the part that we as doctors play in this never-ending theatre.
Special category states of India By Govind Bhattacharjee There are eleven diverse hill states in India which comprise the group of “Special Category States.” They all suffer from the disadvantages that result from remoteness and geographical isolation, as well as historical and demographic circumstances. In addition to pathetic infrastructures, scant resources, unrealized human potential, and stymied economic growth, these states also represented various groups of marginalized minorities.
The consequences of neglect By Rebecca Compton More than 70 years ago, psychologist Rene Spitz first described the detrimental effects of emotional neglect on children raised in institutions, and yet, today, over 7 million children are estimated to live in orphanages around the world. In many countries, particularly in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the rate of institutionalization of poor, orphaned, and neglected children has actually increased in recent years, according to UNICEF.
The trick of the lock: Dorothy L. Sayers and the invention of the voice print By Mike Goldsmith Pre-eminent among writers of mystery stories is, in my opinion, Dorothy L. Sayers. She is ingenious, witty, original – and scientific too, including themes like the fourth dimension, electroplating, and the acoustics of bells in some of her best stories. She is also the inventor of the voice-activated lock, which her hero Lord Wimsey deploys in the 1928 short story ‘The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba’.
Washington D.C. civil rights slideshow By Joan Quigley Brown v. Board of Education is one of the most identifiable civil rights cases in our nation’s history. While most scholarship begins with this case, Just Another Southern Town by Joan Quigley recounts the battle for civil rights beginning with the case of District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co. In this slideshow, Joan Quigley weaves together the success of this case with other landmark civil rights moments in Washington, DC, creating a timeline of the struggle for racial justice in our nation’s capital.
Meeting Helmut Schmidt: the man behind the statesman By Kristina Spohr 15 October 2015. Another cold, grey afternoon in Hamburg-Langenhorn. My last research visit to Helmut Schmidt’s private archive next to his home, a simple bungalow in the northern suburbs of the city. I was there to check some final references before sending my book off to press. But unexpectedly there was a chance to say hello to the former Chancellor, now ailing and housebound, before I took a taxi to the airport.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano Affekt: the foundational pillar in eighteenth-century music By Donna Gunn How does one capture the Classical style sound aesthetic when approaching performance of eighteenth-century repertoire on the modern piano? Although it is important to know of the period instruments and their associated physical sound qualities, knowing how period musicians approached their art emotionally and intellectually will provide even deeper insight into discovering how to recreate the sound aesthetic.
Five years after: The legacy of the Japanese anti-nuclear movement By Noriko Manabe This month marks the fifth anniversary of 3.11–the moniker for the earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster that struck northeastern Japan on 11 March 2011, killing nearly 20,000 and displacing as many as 170,000 people. In addition to mourning for lost souls, the anniversary was marked by loud anti-nuclear protests all over Japan.
“Vulpes vulpes,” or foxes have holes. Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman The idea of today’s post was inspired by a question from a correspondent. She is the author of a book on foxes and wanted more information on the etymology of fox. I answered her but thought that our readers might also profit by a short exploration of this theme. Some time later I may even risk an essay on the fully opaque dog. But before coming to the point, I will follow my hero’s habits and spend some time beating about the bush and covering my tracks.
Why golf balls side slip just like aircrafts By Peter Dewhurst Golf balls curve in flight for one principal reason: Namely that the golf club face is not square to the path being followed by the club head as it impacts the ball. This is illustrated in the figure where the club face is “open” to the club path by about four degrees. This is sufficient to produce a significant slice to the right.
African studies: a reading list By Alex Guyver frican Studies focuses on the rich culture, history and society of the continent, however the growing economies of African countries have become an increasingly significant topic in Economic literature. This month, The Centre for the Study of African Economies annual conference is taking place in Oxford. To raise further awareness of the growing importance of the study of African economics, we have created this reading list of books, journals and online resources that explore the varied areas of Africa and its economy.
Our lost faith in the American murder trial By Andrew Porwancher We live in an age when Americans are both captivated and disturbed by murder trials. The Netflix smash hit Making a Murderer went viral in late December as it chronicled the seemingly wrongful convictions of a Wisconsin man and his teenage nephew for the gruesome killing of a young photographer. The success of this documentary was hardly surprising in the wake of 2014’s Serial, the most popular podcast in history and winner of a Peabody Award.
How does chemistry shape evolution? By Julie Fergus When people think of evolution, many reflect on the concept as an operation filled with endless random possibilities–a process that arrives at advantageous traits by chance. But is the course of evolution actually random? In A World from Dust: How the Periodic Table Shaped Life, Ben McFarland argues that an understanding of chemistry can both explain and predict the course of evolution.
Questions, questions, questions… By Tom McLeish Einstein has had a good month, all things considered. His century-old prediction, that the very fabric of space and time can support waves travelling at light-speed, was confirmed by the LIGO collaboration. More, the bizarre and horrifying consequences of his theory of gravity, the singularly-collapsed stars that came to be called ‘black holes’, have been directly detected for the first time.
Digging into the origins of 20th-century American tap dance By Constance Valis Hill To be a tap historian is to be a sleuth. It is to revel, after days of painstaking research, in newly-found bits of information as if they were nuggets of gold. At the New York State Library in Albany, New York, I found the premiere date for Darktown Follies of 1914 (3 November 1913, Lafayette Theater), a date that had eluded tap historians for many years.
Paradox of Energy By Chaturvedi Badrinath That life is energy, is evident. What is equally evident is the truth that life-energy, or prana, flows in many channels: the energy of dance, of music, of thought, and of literature; and also the energy at the stock exchange. It assumes many forms: the energy in earth and in water, and the energy of the human mind and of the human heart.
Adding a new dimension to the early chemistry of the solar system By Francesco C. Pignatale What was our solar system composed of right after its formation? Using sophisticated computer simulations, researchers from France and Australia have obtained new insights into the chemical composition of the dust grains that formed in the early solar system which went on to form the building blocks of the terrestrial planets.
A guide to Southern California for classical art enthusiasts [interactive map] By Peter J. Holliday Every year, millions of people visit California in search of beaches, hiking, celebrity sightings, and more. In the map below, Peter J. Holliday shows us his version of California, focusing on the rich history of classically inspired art and architecture in Southern California. Enjoy the stories of grand landmarks such as Hearst Castle, Pasadena City Hall, and the Getty Villa.
Underground in the city By Richard Bardgett Most people living in large towns and cities probably give little thought to soil. Why should they? At a first glance, much of the ground in towns and cities is sealed with concrete, asphalt and bricks, and most city-dwellers have little reason to have contact with soil. To most, soil in cities is simply dirt. But soil is actually in abundance in cities: it lays beneath the many small gardens, flower beds, road and railway verges, parks, sports grounds, school playing fields, and allotments of the city, where it plays many under appreciated roles.
Exposures from the dark side By Tom Sorell Julian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he has been “arbitrarily detained” while avoiding extradition to Sweden for alleged rape for almost six years (British and Swedish prosecutors still seek to detain him).
10 surprising facts about spiders Arachnophobia, an irrational fear of spiders, affects millions of people around the world. This is not helped by popular culture portraying them as scary, deadly creatures who could creep up on you, and bite you, when you least expect it. They also do look pretty creepy… We’ve found the following ten facts about these misunderstood creatures.
How to polish your résumé By Edwin Battistella I’ve read a lot of résumés over the years. I’ve read 35-page résumés from senior academics documenting every Rotary talk, guest lecture, and letter to the editor. I’ve read not-quite-one-page résumés from high school students giving their neighbors as references. In the process, I’ve come to think of résumé reading as an acquired literary taste, like flarf or fanfiction. And I’ve come to think of résumé writing as a unique genre with its own rhetorical nuances and conventions.
What black hole collisions reveal about the universe By Pankaj S. Joshi The remarkable detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO collaboration recently has drawn much attention to the fundamental and intriguing workings of gravity in our universe. Finding these gravitational waves, inferred to be produced by merger of two stellar mass black holes, has been like listening to the very distant sound of the universe.
Shaping Israel’s military nuclear doctrine By Louis René Beres Notwithstanding the July 2015 P5+1 Vienna diplomatic agreement with Iran, Israel will soon need to forge a more comprehensive and conspicuous strategic nuclear doctrine, one wherein rapt attention is directed toward all still-plausible nuclear enemies.
Shakespeare and India By Poonam Trivedi The most striking aspect of Shakespeare in India today is that it seems to have at last got over its colonial hangover. It is well known that Shakespeare was first introduced to Indians under the aegis of colonialism: first as an entertainer for the expatriates, then soon incorporated into the civilizing mission of the empire. This resulted in Indians being awed by Shakespeare, taking him too respectfully, especially in academia.
The consistency of inconsistency claims By Roy T Cook A theory is inconsistent if we can prove a contradiction using basic logic and the principles of that theory. Consistency is a much weaker condition that truth: if a theory T is true, then T consistent, since a true theory only allows us to prove true claims, and contradictions are not true. There are, however, infinitely many different consistent theories that we can construct.
A conversation with a widow’s nervous system By Wendy L. Miller My late husband Gene Cohen is known as one of the founders of both geriatric psychiatry and the creative aging movement. He was always talking, writing, and educating about brain plasticity and the changes that took place as we age into our wisdom and creative potential.
Eugene McCarthy and the 1968 US presidential election By Michael A. Cohen Eugene McCarthy made first stop in New Hampshire on January 25, 1968, only six weeks before the state’s March 12 primary. When he did arrive, his presence sparked little excitement. He cancelled dawn appearances at factory gates to meet voters because, as he told staffers, he wasn’t really a “morning person.” A photographer hired to take pictures of the candidate quit after five days because the only people in the shots were out-of-state volunteers.
Who was John David Main Smith? By Eric Scerri This blog post concerns a virtually unknown chemist, John David Main Smith, who contributed a significant piece of research in atomic physics in the early 1920s at the time when knowledge of the field was undergoing very rapid changes. Main Smith is so little known that I had to search far and wide for a photograph of him before finally obtaining one from his son who is still living in the south of England.
Nineteen things you never knew about nineteenth century American letters By Judie Newman Nowadays letter-writing appeals to our more romantic sensibilities. It is quaint, old-fashioned, and decidedly slower than sending off a winking emoji with barely half a thought. But it wasn’t even that long ago that letter-writing dominated and served as a practical means of communication.
Legend of love: the life of Alla Osipenko in images At age eighty-three, ex-prima ballerina Alla Osipenko is more renowned than ever. Video and youtube allow us to sample a talent that the West would experience live only infrequently during the existence of the Soviet Union. Blunt, courageous, uncompromising Osipenko’s brushes with Communistic and artistic authorities ultimately kept her largely quarantined in Russia.
Shakespeare around the world [infographic] As Shakespeare’s work grew in popularity, it began to spread outside of England and eventually extended far beyond the Anglophone world. As it was introduced to Africa, Asia, Central and South America, his plays were translated and performed in new and unique ways that reflected the surrounding culture.
New frontiers in evolutionary linguistics By Sean Roberts Our mother tongues seem to us like the natural way to communicate, but it is perhaps a universal human experience to be confronted and confused by a very different language. We can’t help but wonder how and why other languages sound so strange to us, and can be so difficult to learn as adults. This is an even bigger surprise when we consider that all languages come from a common source.
Immunogenic mutations: Cancer’s Achilles heel By Spencer Martin In the 1890s, a surgical oncologist named William Coley first attempted to harness the immune system to fight cancer. He injected a mixture of bacterial strains into patient tumors, and occasionally, the tumors disappeared. The treatment was termed “Coley’s Toxins,” and although treatments only rarely resolved cancer cases, it launched a long investigation into anti-tumor immunity.
What about polygamy? By David P. Barash In today’s world where the majority of developed countries tend to favor monogamous relationships, what should we think about polygamy? David P. Barash, author of Out of Eden: The Surprising Consequences of Polygamy, reveals a few facts about polygamy that’ll give you some food for thought.
Long-term effects of slave exporting in West Africa By Nonso Obikili History matters. Historical events can sometimes have consequences that last long after the events have finished. An important part of Africa’s past is its history of slave exporting. Although Africa is not unique to the trading of slaves, the magnitude of slave exporting rose to levels not previously experienced anywhere else in the world.
Brain waves, impulse control, and free will By Emilie A. Caspar and Axel Cleeremans In a delightful passage of his book Elbow Room, the philosopher Dan Dennett writes “The first day I was ever in London, I found myself looking for the nearest Underground station. I noticed a stairway in the sidewalk labeled ‘SUBWAY’, which in Boston is our word for the Underground, so I confidently descended the stairs and marched forth looking for the trains.”
Galileo’s legacy: Catholicism, Copernicanism, and conflict resolution By Thomas Dixon In Rome on 22 June 1633 an elderly man was found guilty by the Catholic Inquisition of rendering himself “vehemently suspected of heresy, namely, of having held and believed a doctrine which is false and contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture”. The doctrine in question was that “the sun is the centre of the world and does not move from east to west, that the earth moves and is not the centre of the world.
Early detection of intentional harm in the human amygdala Being able to detect if someone is about to physically harm us or those around us can be critical for survival, and our brains can make this assessment in tenths of a second. But what happens in the brain while we make these assessments, and how does it occur so fast?
Growing criticism by atheists of the New Atheism movement By James W. Jones We seem to be witnessing a broad reaction against the New Atheism movement by atheists as well as religious believers, whether undermining the idea of a long-standing conflict between science and religion, or taking a critical view of their political agenda. James Ryerson recently examined three new books (including my own) in the New York Times Book Review – a small sample of a growing body of work.
Building library collections – change and review By Roxanne Missingham Libraries have been primarily identified by their collections – by those accessing the resources collected by individual libraries and for those not directly engaging imagining access. When Borges wrote “Paradise is a library, not a garden” he captured the concept of the library as a palace for the mind, connecting readers to the generations of works – from maps, manuscripts and incunabula to the new online resources of today.
Q&A with social worker Anderson Al Wazni By Caroline Ariail March is National Social Work Month. This year’s theme is Forging Solutions Out of Challenges. One social worker who is forging ahead is Anderson Al Wazni of Raleigh, NC. Anderson’s research and passion explores Muslim women’s feminist identity and empowerment in her community and beyond. We sat down with Anderson to discuss her role as a social worker and future plans.
Deception and the eye of the beholder By Martin Stevens Deception is rife in nature, from spiders that mimic ants for protection through to carnivorous plants that lure insects with attractive smells. As highly visual animals ourselves it’s only natural that we humans often judge the appearance of other species through our own senses.
In memoriam: Sir George Martin, CBE, 1926-2016 By Gordon R. Thompson George Martin’s contributions to the way we hear music today are incalculable. Many describe him as the “fifth Beatle,” and his work with those musicians certainly warrants recognition, but his contributions to recorded sound in the twentieth century go far beyond that epithet. In an era when record company marketing lauded hyperbolic praise on stars and some producers presented themselves as supreme geniuses, George Martin maintained a relatively discreet presence.
Bosom friends, bosom serpents, and breast pockets By Anatoly Liberman Last week I mentioned my “strong suspicion” that bosom has the same root (“to inflate”) as the verb boast. As a matter of fact, it was a conviction, not a suspicion, but I did not want to show my cards too early. Before plunging into matters etymological, perhaps something should be said about the word’s bizarre spelling.
How to teach quantum mechanics to kids By Jeffrey Bub Does this even make sense? Doesn’t quantum mechanics involve advanced esoteric mathematics? Didn’t Richard Feynman say that nobody understands quantum mechanics, and Niels Bohr remark that those who aren’t shocked by quantum mechanics can’t possibly have understood it?
Jacob Zuma’s endgame and the state of South African politics By Alexander Beresford It is possible that events in recent months may have signalled the beginning of the end for South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. True, Zuma has proved to be a resilient politician in the face of relentless criticism, ridicule and scandal, which began long before he came to power and premature predictions of his demise abound.
Location, location, location: Why the HSBC headquarters stayed in London By Richard S. Grossman Last month HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, decided not to move its headquarters from London to Hong Kong.The revelation that a company is staying put is usually not earth-shattering news. Nonetheless, HSBC’s decision made headlines in Asia, Europe, and the US for three reasons. First, HSBC is the world’s fifth largest commercial bank: it holds more than $2.5 trillion in assets and is exceeded in size only by four state-owned Chinese banks.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Do you know which classic inspired it? [quiz] By Samantha Zimbler Do you know how many novelists, film directors, and board-game creators have been inspired to create art based on classical mythology and other classical works? Maybe not, but perhaps you know some of the more popular examples. Greek and Roman mythology has had a big impact on modern literature, film, and even the games we play. We owe more than we think to authors like Homer.
American History 99 years after the Jones Act: Austerity without representation By Lorrin Thomas Ninety-nine years ago this week, Puerto Ricans became citizens of the United States. What does this anniversary signify? That depends a lot on who you ask (and be careful who you ask, since most Americans have no idea how or why Puerto Ricans became US citizens, or if they’re even citizens at all).
Celebrating women in Economics and beyond [interactive map] In 2016, women around the world are still fighting for their right to equality, even in the countries we think of as the most developed. Although in many areas, the gap has narrowed in recent years, gender inequality is still common in the labour market and in politics.
Sculptural transformations: destruction and reuse in Roman London By Penny Coombe Despite much build-up to the new Star Wars film, one of the lesser-known news stories of 2015 described the transformation of a statue of Lenin, standing in a square in Odessa, into one of Darth Vadar. This metamorphosis was necessary to comply with a law passed by the Ukrainian Parliament in April 2015 that banned communist propaganda. Streets were renamed and monuments removed, though even before the law was passed some statues of Lenin had been torn down or mutilated, possibly in protest against Russian influence at a time of heightened political tension.
La traviata at the Royal Opera House: a period masterpiece By René Weis The current La traviata at the Royal Opera House premiered in 1994 and almost immediately established itself as a modern classic. It succeeded a highly successful production by Luchino Visconti and John Copley, which had run for 27 years and had featured legendary sopranos, including Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland, Montserrat Caballé, and Kiri Te Kanawa. To follow Visconti was a hard act, but the 1994 Royal Opera House La traviata did just that and with considerable panache.
Oxford Journal of Legal Studies To blame or to forgive? By Nicola Lacey and Hanna Pickard What do you do when faced with wrongdoing – do you blame or do you forgive? Especially when confronted with offences that lie on the more severe end of the spectrum and cause terrible psychological or physical trauma or death, nothing can feel more natural than to blame.
Why we need female brains in CTE research By Jeffrey Kutcher and Joanne C. Gerstner US soccer player Brandi Chastain became a household name through her outstanding play in the 1999 Women’s World Cup. She scored the championship-winning goal in the unforgettable final shoot-out in front of the world and 90,000 fans at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
Who should be Scalia’s new successor? By Edward A. Zelinsky Article III of the Constitution gives the President the right to “nominate…Judges of the supreme Court.” Article III also gives the Senate the right to grant its “Advice and Consent” to such nominations—or not. Both President Obama and Senate Republicans are settling into a protracted political struggle over the appointment of Justice Scalia’s successor.
How filling the Supreme Court vacancy will affect public health By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Who is selected to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court will profoundly affect key public health issues, including gun control, access to reproductive health services, and climate change. In recent years, the Court has ruled, usually by 5-to-4 decisions, on these issues and will likely continue to do so by narrow margins.
Risen the Movie: a scholarly review and comparison By Greg Carey The film Risen retells the story of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension through the fictional Roman tribune Clavius, who supervises both Jesus’ crucifixion and the investigation into what happened to his missing body.
Leap day, giant viruses, and gene-editing By Dawn Field 2016 is a leap year. A leap year, or intercalary year, is a year with an extra day inserted to keep pace with the seasons. In the Gregorian calendar this falls every four years on Feb 29th. On Leap Day this year a wonderful piece of science was published about an equally rare part of nature – giant viruses.
Latin: the Renaissance’s world language By Sarah Knight and Stefan Tilg Latin, then, was a ubiquitous and commonplace language in the Renaissance, widely spoken, read, and written across Europe and beyond. If the defining characteristics of what has variously been called a “world language” and a “universal language” are its number of non-native speakers and its international circulation, by the time Erasmus was writing his Colloquies and Shakespeare his comedies Latin had been a paradigmatic world language for well over a millennium.
The business of politics By Adam Sheingate Political races in the United States rely heavily on highly paid political consultants who carefully curate the images of politicians, advise candidates on polling and analytics, and shape voters’ perceptions through marketing and advertising techniques. More than half of the $6 billion spent in the 2012 election went to consultants who controlled virtually every aspect of the campaigns
Shake your chains: politics, poetry, and protest By Matthew Flinders This year, 21 March marks not just the beginning of the Political Studies Association’s 2016 Annual Conference in Brighton but also World Poetry Day. Formally ratified by UNESCO in 1999 but with antecedents that date back to the middle of the twentieth century, World Poetry Day’s aim is to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world and, as the UNESCO session declaring the day says, to ‘give fresh recognition and impetus to national, regional and international poetry movements.
Militias and citizenship: the eighteenth century and today By Matthew McCormack Citizenship is central to our political discourse in Britain today. From John Major’s ‘Citizen’s Charter’ to New Labour’s introduction of citizenship classes for schoolchildren – and citizenship tests for immigrants – it is a preoccupation that spans the political spectrum. Citizenship suggests membership of the national community, membership that comes with both rights and responsibilities.
Early modern drama and the New World By Gavin Hollis The so-called golden age of Shakespeare coincided with the so-called golden age of exploration. Yet despite the far-reaching impact of the expanding globe, no play is set in the Americas, few plays treat colonization as central to the plot, and only a handful features Native American characters (most of whom are Europeans in disguise).
Philosopher of the month: David Hume By John Priest Born in Edinburgh, Hume is considered a founding figure of empiricism and the most significant philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment. With its strong critique of contemporary metaphysics, Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40) cleared the way for a genuinely empirical account of human understanding.
The ethics of war By George Lucas People often do not associate war and ethics with one another, given the death, conflict, and senselessness that typically arises. However, in this sampling from Military Ethics: What Everyone Needs to Know®, author George Lucas argues that ethics are paramount in military service and typically more complex than “good versus evil.”
Why are evangelical voters so ambivalent about Ted Cruz? By Neil J. Young When Ted Cruz announced last March he was running for the Republican nomination for president, he did so at Liberty University. The nation’s largest evangelical university, Liberty was an unsurprising spot for Cruz to begin his campaign. More than any other Republican in the race, Cruz has based his entire campaign on winning evangelical voters as the pathway to his party’s nomination.
Shakespeare across the globe [map] On 23 April 2014, the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth, a production of Hamlet set off from the Globe Theatre in London. In a span of two years, the 16-person acting group is touring every country in the world, visiting seven continents in 732 days.
British Journal of Aesthetics Art in the streets By Sondra Bacharach Street artists are placing their bets on a new artistic practice, a new medium for art-making – one that ignores the institutional structures of the artworld, and rejects their role as arbiters of artistic excellence. Taking art to the streets allows artists to redefine the criteria by which to be assessed.
Challenges in exhibiting oral history By Sarah Zenaida Gould I am a curator at a mid-sized museum in Texas. My job includes overseeing the oral history program, which was founded in 1970, two years after the museum opened. Today, the collection is home to over 1,000 oral histories on topics ranging from the ethnic groups of Texas, Texas military history, local history, traditional folk arts, immigration, and farming and ranching.
Saladin’s Islamic State By Philip A. Mackowiak Aleppo, Mosul, Tikrit, Acre… Until just a few years ago, these names meant little to the average American. Now they are all too familiar, as are the atrocities being committed there in the name of religion. Eight hundred years ago the situation in that region was much the same, except then, Christians were committing acts of cruelty no less numerous or shocking than Muslims.
Africa’s intellectual influence By Célestin Monga A few years ago when the Greek economic and financial crisis was rocketing markets around the globe and seemed to justify the bashing of that “poor country of tax cheaters” to the point of threatening the majestic European Union project and dishonouring an entire continent, French philologist Jacqueline de Romilly reminded the world of some of things owed to Greece: the invention of democracy, philosophy, and tragedy.
Will more (or less) high-stakes testing improve education? By Jaekyung Lee Let’s take a pop quiz on the ongoing debate over high-stakes testing, an issue that is nothing less emotional than the way our schools teach our children. First questions, then answers: Does high-stakes testing improve education? Does it lead to better teaching and learning? Do countries with high-performing schools rely on it? Does it help narrow the achievement gaps among different racial and socioeconomic groups of students?
Women mycologists By Nicholas P. Money Some individuals loom larger in mycological history than they deserve, but, to be fair, this mild indictment applies both to those with, and those without, a Y chromosome. The science of mycology blossomed in Darwin’s time, when German botanist Anton de Bary (1831-1888) began to decode the life cycles of fungi and penned the first textbook on fungi.
Climate change and COP21 – Episode 32 – The Oxford Comment The Paris Agreement, held from 30 November to 12 December 2015, has been hailed as a “historic turning point” in the battle against global climate change. Consequently, dialogue surrounding greenhouse gas emissions, particularly around political and economic compliance.
Pandas and people: understanding their complex relationships for successful conservation By Jianguo Liu Amid failures in saving numerous wildlife species worldwide, there is an encouraging success—decades of panda habitat degradation have been transformed into a remarkable recovery. The success is taking place in Wolong Nature Reserve of China—home to endangered giant pandas and more than 5,000 residents who share a 200,000-ha mountainous area. It is also occurring in many of the other 66 nature reserves and non-reserve areas across southwestern China.
FEMS Microbiology Letters Towards a global approach to combat antibiotic resistance By Corrado Nai The eradication of infectious diseases in the 20th century is arguably one of the most important achievements in modern medicine. The treatment of such illnesses as tuberculosis, leprosy, syphilis, cholera, pertussis, or diphtheria with antibiotics have reduced suffering, increased hygiene, enormously improved lifestyle, and skyrocketed life expectancy around the globe – particularly in developed countries.
Secularism and sausages By Robert D. Priest In France today, pork has become political. A series of conservative mayors have in recent months deliberately withdrawn the pork-free option from school lunch menus. Advocates of the policy claim to be the true defenders of laïcité, the French secular principle that demands neutrality towards religion in public space.
Ten things you didn’t know about strippers By Jessica Berson One way or another, strippers and other adult entertainers often turn up in the news cycle. Ted Cruz’s campaign pulls an ad because one of the actors turned out to have performed in porn films; corporate accounts are revealed to have funded lap dances for executives; cities and towns seek to clean up their images by banishing strip clubs outside the city limits. You’ve seen strippers in movies and television shows—usually degraded, down on their luck, in an abusive relationship, and possibly possessing a heart of gold.
To boast, perchance to boost; aye, there’s the rub By Anatoly Liberman Not too long ago I discussed the origin of the verb brag, and already then knew that the turn of boast would soon come round. The etymology of boast is not transparent, but, in my opinion, it is not beyond recovery. Rather than following the immortal royal advice (“begin at the beginning, go on to the end and then stop”), I’ll reverse my route and begin at the end.
The true meaning of cell life and death By Ronald Edwards Two hundred years ago, William Lawrence blew the roof off the Hunter Lecture Series at the Royal College of Surgeons by adding the word “biology” to the English language to discuss living physiology, behavior, and diversity as a matter of gunky chemistry and physics, sans super-added forces.
Understanding producers’ motives for adopting sustainable practices By Andres Trujillo-Barrera, Joost M.E. Pennings, and Dianne Hofenk Why would agricultural producers engage in practices such as conservation, animal welfare, waste management, or organic farming? The literature hints that economic, social, and personal motivations are drivers of adoption. Sustainable practices are welcomed by farmers if there is a potential increase in profitability through more efficient processes, or as a source of differentiation (i.e. labelling).
Oxford Classical Dictionary Early Greek incantations from Selinous By Roy Kotansky The so-called “Getty Hexameters” represent an unusual set of early Greek ‘magical’ incantations (epoidai) found engraved on a small, fragmentary tablet of folded lead. The rare verses provide an exciting new window into the early practice and use of written magic and incantatory spells in the Greek polis of the 5th century BCE.
W.E.B. Du Bois and the literature of upheaval By Robert Repino There is a moment in the George Miller film Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (1985) that has stuck with me over the two decades since I first saw it. A bedraggled Max (Mel Gibson) is escorted through the crumbling desert outpost of Bartertown.
E-cigarettes may lead to youth tobacco use By Mike Fillon This past summer, the Atlanta suburb of Roswell, Georgia, banned use of e-cigarettes and vapor pens in public parks. Officials enacted the restriction not because of rampant use of the devices in the city but, as mayor Jere Wood said, to “get ahead of the curve. Smokeless device use is soaring. To fulfill demand, vapor shops are popping up all over.
Mary Somerville: the new face on Royal Bank of Scotland’s ten-pound note is worthy of international recognition By Robyn Arianrhod From 2017, ten-pound notes issued by the Royal Bank of Scotland will feature a new face: that of the great nineteenth-century science communicator Mary Somerville. Her book on mathematical astronomy, Mechanism of the Heavens — published in 1831, when she was fifty years old — was used as an advanced textbook at Cambridge for a hundred years. This is a phenomenal achievement for a woman who taught herself science and mathematics.
10 reasons to love the flute By Celine Aenlle-Rocha This month’s spotlight instrument is particularly important to me; I played the flute for ten years as an adolescent and continue to have a soft spot for it. From long practices at high school band camp to dressy solo performances at the Colburn School where I studied on weekends, the flute was a dear and constant companion. Here are a few reasons I’ll always prefer it.
Scholarly misconduct and the integrity crisis By Ian Freckelton Retractions in scholarly journals have reached record levels. Doctorates have been removed from politicians and others for plagiarism, there has been tasteless denigration of academic colleagues under cover of academic freedom, researchers have been jailed for fraud, and conflicts of interest involving private industry’s role at universities have generated notoriety.
February 2016 (121))
Cancer is no moonshot By Devra Davis A tired old elephant hunched in the room as President Obama announced the launch of a new moonshot against cancer during his State of the Union address a month ago. We’ve heard that promise before. On 23 December 1971, when President Nixon first declared a national war on cancer, he also based his conviction on the successfully completed moonwalk.
Preventing financial exploitation of older adults By Peter A. Lichtenberg Financial entitlement is one domain of financial exploitation. In 2010 Conrad and colleagues defined financial entitlement as: a belief held primarily by adult children that they can take their older parent(s)’ money to spend on themselves without permission. Although some adult children argue that the money is their inheritance and thus already earmarked for them, using an older person’s money without permission is exploitation.
Victims and victimhood in Afghanistan By Huma Saeed As a researcher of transitional justice since 2008, focusing on Afghanistan, I have remained engaged with victims at close proximity. The concept of victimhood is particularly complex in Afghanistan, considering that, over decades, one brutal and repressive regime has led to another, afflicting millions of lives. Many have been victimized under all regimes; some have been perpetrators under one and victims under another.
Enslaved ants and cuckoo bees By Martin Stevens Many of us know that some birds trick other host parents from a different species into rearing their young. Best known is the common cuckoo in the UK and much of mainland Europe, However, this type of deception is not only the forte of birds – many insects ‘brood parasites’ too, especially ants, wasps, and bees.
#OscarsSoWhite: new branding for an old problem By Monica White Ndounou In 1996, decades before the trending hashtag, Reverend Jesse Jackson led a boycott protesting the lack of diversity at the Oscars. Having encouraged attendees to wear a rainbow ribbon in support of the issue, he was ridiculed for his efforts.
Earth’s climate: a complex system with mysteries abound By Christopher K R T Jones We are living with a climate system undergoing significant changes. Scientists have established a critical mass of facts and have quantified them to a degree sufficient to support international action to mitigate against drastic change and adapt to committed climate shifts. The primary example being the relation between increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and the extent of warming in the future.
Shakespeare and Asia By Michael Dobson When a weary Egeon laments in the first scene of The Comedy of Errors that in quest of his lost son he has spent five years “Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,” Shakespeare is characteristically using the word only in its classical sense, to indicate the Roman province of Asia Minor, a territory roughly equivalent to that of modern Turkey. Shakespeare’s sense of the geography of the rather larger area we now call Asia, like that of many fellow-Elizabethans, is more vague.
Why we do what we do By Carolina Sartorio You walked out the door this morning. Why did you do it? Perhaps because you wanted to stretch your legs. Perhaps because you wanted to feel the fresh air on your face and the wind blowing through your hair. Is that it? Not quite. I bet you also walked out the door this morning because the phone didn’t ring a second earlier.
Political profanity and crude creativity on the campaign trail By Lorna Shaddick In the United States, thoughts are turning to the start of the primary season, when votes are cast to choose each party’s presidential nominee. It’s a complicated and sometimes very long process, beginning in Iowa and winding all the way to the conventions in the summer, and every time it gets going, there are certain buzzwords that seem to find their way into the American popular consciousness.
How much do you know about Shakespeare’s world? [quiz] Whether in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond — or in various unknown, lost, or mythological places — Early Modern actors tread stage boards that could be familiar or unfamiliar ground. Shakespeare made some creative choices in the settings of his plays, often reaching across vast distances, time, and history.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Plato? [quiz] By John Priest The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429–c. 347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. After his death in 347 BC, educators at the Academy continued teaching Plato’s works into the Roman era. Today he is perhaps the most widely studied philosopher of all time.
Constructing race in world history By Omar H. Ali Racism is alive and kicking. We see it in the news; we see it in our lives. And yet our modern concept (and practice) that involves notions of “race”—on which racism rests—is a recent invention. While people and their societies have long distinguished among themselves—Romans distinguished between “citizens” and “barbarians.”
The perils of salt By Neil Turner The Amazonian Yanomami Indians famously manage on only 50 mg (1 mmol) of sodium chloride per day, while in more developed societies, we struggle to keep our average intake below 100 times that level.
On writing fantasy fiction By Deborah Chester Why does the world need yet another book on how to write fantasy fiction? Because the public continues to show a nearly insatiable desire for more stories in this genre, and increasing numbers of aspiring authors gravitate toward writing it. As our real lives become more hectic, over-scheduled, insignificant, socially disconnected, and technologically laden, there seems to be a need among readers to reach for a place where the individual matters.
Keep your friends close… Really? By Laura Müller-Pinzler, Lena Rademacher, Frieder M. Paulus, and Sören Krach Who has never been embarrassed by a close other? Imagine you and your best friend dress up for the opera, both of you very excited about this spectacular event taking place in your home town. It is the premiere with the mayor and significant others attending. You have a perfect view on the stage and it seems a wonderful night.
John Marshall, the lame-duck appointment to Chief Justice By R. B. Bernstein Those who argue that lame-duck presidents should not nominate justices to the Supreme Court have forgotten or ignored the most consequential appointment in the Court’s — and the nation’s — history: President John Adams’s 1801 appointment of John Marshall as the nation’s fourth Chief Justice.
A “quiet revolution” in policing By Peter Neyroud This month, we are celebrating the tenth anniversary of Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice. Apart from being an occasion for celebration too good to pass up, it is also a good opportunity to take stock of the last ten years and look to what the next ten might hold.
The missing scholarship of American tap dance By Constance Valis Hill Tap dance, our first American vernacular dance form, and the most-cutting edge on the national and international stage, has suffered a paucity of critical, analytical, historical documentation. While there have been star-centered biographies of such tap dancers as Bill Robinson, Fred Astaire, and Savion Glover, there remains but a handful of histories exploring all aspects of the intricate musical exchange of Afro-Irish percussive step dances that produced the rhythmic complexities of jazz tap dancing.
Who owns culture? By Tiffany Jenkins The quiet corridors of great public museums have witnessed revolutionary breakthroughs in the understanding of the past, such as when scholars at the British Museum cracked the Rosetta Stone and no longer had to rely on classical writers to find out about ancient Egyptian civilisation. But museums’ quest for knowledge is today under strain, amid angry debates over who owns culture.
Etymology gleanings for February 2016 By Anatoly Liberman It is the origin of idioms that holds out the greatest attraction to those who care about etymology. I have read with interest the comments on all the phrases but cannot add anything of substance to what I wrote in the posts. My purpose was to inspire an exchange of opinions rather than offer a solution. While researching by Jingo, I thought of the word jinn/ jinnee but left the evil spirit in the bottle.
Concentrate! The challenges of reading onscreen By Naomi Baron Our lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading? I have been studying how people read with printed text versus on digital devices.
Business and society: new words for new worlds By Gareth Williams Neologisms (from Greek néo-, meaning ‘new’ and logos, meaning ‘speech, utterance’) – can do all sorts of jobs. But most straightforwardly new words describe new things. As such they indicate areas of change, perhaps of innovation. They present us with a map, one that can redefine what we know as well as revealing newly explored areas; new words for new worlds.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Ancient Rome vs. North Korea: spectacular ‘executions’ then and now By Stephen Harrison Reports over recent months from South Korea’s Yonhap news agency have suggested that two prominent North Korean politicians have been executed this year on the orders of Kim Jong-un. These reports evoke some interesting parallels from the darker side of the history of ancient Rome, or at least from the more colourful stories told about it by Roman historians.
Should primary schools be responsible for childhood obesity prevention? By Joanne Clarke In most developed (and many developing) countries, childhood obesity has become much more common over the last few decades, and it is now regarded as one of the most serious global public health challenges of the 21st century. In England, one in five 4-5-year-olds are now overweight or obese, rising to one in three 10-11-year-olds.
Disparity in the restaurant industry [infographic] If someone were to tell you that the restaurant industry is one of the lowest paying sectors in the US economy, the types of jobs that might come to mind include those in the fast food segment. Not surprisingly, workers from all parts of the restaurant industry—tipped and non-tipped—live in poverty.
Can re-wilding the uplands help to prevent flooding in the lowlands? By Lindsey Gillson The recent flooding in the north of England has prompted calls for better flood defences and river dredging. But these measures are unlikely to work by themselves, especially with the increased likelihood of extreme weather events in the coming years. A new approach is needed that considers whole catchment management – starting with the source of rivers in upland areas.
Getting to know Lauralee, Eden, and Andrew in music editorial By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Publishing music books would be much harder without our stellar editorial team. We sat down with three editorial assistants from the New York office – Lauralee, Eden, and Andrew – to talk about Oxford University Press, their music lives inside and out of the office, and current literary addictions.
A history of Supreme Court nominations in election years By Paul Finkelman It was an election year. A Supreme Court justice appointed by the most conservative Republican president in history had just died. The President, the most progressive Democrat to ever hold that office, now had a chance to begin to reshape the Supreme Court. But the president was up for reelection, with no guarantee he would be reelected.
A short history of the mosquito that transmits Zika virus By Richard Levine Question: What do Napoléon Bonaparte, Walter Reed, the Panama Canal, and the Zika virus all have in common? Answer: The Aedes aegypti mosquito. Although its official common name, according to the Entomological Society of America (ESA), is the “yellowfever mosquito,” Aedes aegypti is also the primary vector of dengue, chikungunya, and the Zika virus.
When black holes collide By Katherine M. Blundell and Stephen J. Blundell The discovery of gravitational waves, announced on 11 February 2016 by scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), has made headline news around the world. One UK broadsheet devoted its entire front page to a image of a simulation of two orbiting black holes on which they superimposed the headline “The theory of relativity proved”.
Demarcating sovereignty: a history of Dutch-Belgian land swaps By Randall Lesaffer In early November 2015, the Belgian and Dutch press announced that a small land swap was in the making between Belgium and the Netherlands. Agreement has been reached at the local level that Belgium would cede a small peninsula in the river Maas [Meuse] of about 14 hectares – the size of 28 soccer fields – to the Netherlands. In return, Belgium would get a smaller piece of Dutch territory where it had already built a water lock.
What does your mother language mean to you? In 1999, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) created International Mother Language Day, which is celebrated each year on 21 February. Of course, we couldn’t let this date go by without marking the occasion on our Northern Sotho and isiZulu Living Dictionaries. This year, we asked people from a variety of mother tongues to let us know what their native language means to them, and this is what they had to say.
Why we need “mystery shoppers” directly observing health care By Alan Schwartz and Saul J. Weiner Considering the well documented problems of medical error, it’s remarkable that it’s rarely observed. Of course there is much scrutiny of the data that is generated during the health care encounter, but that is not the same thing. For instance, while quality measures track data on how well blood pressure is managed, there are not measures of whether blood pressure is actually measured accurately.
Brexit and the fear of immigrants Brexit—the prospect of Britain exiting the European Union—has garnered a great deal of attention in the past year as Britons debate the pros and cons of remaining a member of the EU. So-called Eurosceptics oppose integration with Europe for a variety of reasons, among them the constraints it places on the UK’s ability to negotiate more advantageous trade agreements, and the regulations and bureaucratic excesses the EU imposes on Britain in economic, financial, and judicial matters.
Let the people speak: history with voices By Philip Carter For 135 years the Dictionary of National Biography has been the national record of noteworthy men and women who’ve shaped the British past. Today’s Dictionary retains many attributes of its Victorian predecessor, not least a focus on concise and balanced accounts of individuals from all walks of national history. But there have also been changes in how these life stories are encapsulated and conveyed.
Sexuality in Shakespeare’s plays and poems By David Bevington In Shakespeare’s comedies, sex is not only connected to marriage, but postdates it. Prospero in The Tempest insists to his prospective son-in-law that he not break the “virgin-knot” of his intended bride, Miranda, “before / All sanctimonious ceremonies may / With full and holy rite be ministered,” lest “barren hate, / Sour-eyed disdain, and discord . . . bestrew / The union of your bed with weeds so loathly / That you shall hate it both” (4.1.15-22).
Four (mostly) forgotten figures from eighteenth-century France By David A. Bell While the French revolutionary era is a period of the past, it remains one of the most defining moments in the country’s legacy and history. The major victors and vices are well known in these moments of violence and change—but what about the forgotten? From radical cleric Henri Grégoire to military leader Armand-Louis de Gontaut, here are but four overlooked figures of the French Revolution.
Sex in older age: Can the brain benefit? By Hayley Wright We’ve all heard the phrase “use it or lose it,” and there are many other examples in the media of how we can keep our brains sharp as we age. Research has shown that what is good for your heart is good for your brain, in the biological sense – but what about in a romantic sense?
What is our moral obligation to the stranger? By Bridget Anderson For centuries this question has haunted European thought, and as new fences are erected and bodies wash up on the shores of the Mediterranean its implications reassert themselves with renewed urgency. For over twenty years the outsourcing of migration controls has meant that European publics have been protected from the practical reality of forced displacement and the economic desperation that is now showing up on holiday beaches.
What is information, and should it be free? By Norman Biggs When we pay our bills using a plastic card, we are simply authorizing alterations to the information stored in some computers. This is one aspect of the symbiotic relationship that now exists between money and information. The modern financial world is byzantine in its complexity, and mathematics is involved in many ways, not all of them transparently clear. Fortunately there are some bright spots, such as the fact that it is now possible to measure information.
Shakespeare and sex in the 16th century [infographic] Sex was far from simple in 16th century England. Shakespeare himself wed a woman eight years his senior, a departure from the typical ages of both partners. While some of his characters follow the common conventions of Elizabethan culture (male courtship and the “transfer” of a woman from the care of her father to her husband), others show marked indifference toward appropriate gender roles and sexuality.
Slavery contracts By Danny Frederick Guy and Doll have agreed that Guy will act as Doll directs, and that Doll is entitled to use force or punishment to get Guy to do as she directs if he ever demurs or falls short. Guy has contracted to be Doll’s slave. Such contracts are familiar from fiction and from history; and some people may have familiarity with them in contemporary life. It is common for philosophers to argue that such contracts are impossible.
Confessions of an audiophile By Dana Gerber-Margie With Valentine’s Day barely a week behind us, we want to celebrate our love of oral history. To help us out, we asked Dana Gerber-Margie to tell us how she ended up in the audio world and why she loves oral history.
Future predictions for stem cell research By Shaun R. McCann We took some time to interview Shaun McCann, a man responsible for carrying out the first ever bone marrow transplant in Ireland, in 1984. Getting to know Shaun, we discussed his formative years, the risks involved in the early days of stem cell transplants, and the trials he has faced in over four decades of medicine.
Why the Agartala Doctrine: offensive defense, not domination By Subir Bhaumik Unlike the Monroe or the Gujral doctrine, this is a doctrine not named after a person espousing it. It is named after tiny Tripura’s capital town, Agartala , which former Bangladesh foreign minister Dipu Moni describes as the “war capital of the Bangalee nation in 1971.”
Who’s really shaping the digital future? By Neil Pollock and Robin Williams The words digital economy conjure images of young, tech-savvy entrepreneurs breaking moulds in a world where technology is disruptive. But could the reality be much more mundane and mercantile? When Facebook released “Facebook at work” earlier this year, the social networking goliath laid a huge challenge at the feat of LinkedIn, a powerful incumbent that had until then dominated its corner of the market.
Barbie evokes suffering in girls, scorn in teens and finally gets reshaped By Karen E. Dill-Shackleford Scholars have long documented the significance in young people’s lives of popular culture ideals. These ideals can come in many forms including fashion models, singers and actresses, video game characters and toys. In the case of dolls, research has revealed that girls form a relationship with favorite dolls in which they develop ideal selves in line with the characteristics of the doll. The dolls are a socializing agent, bringing in the ideals of the larger society to the girl’s private life.
Announcing the VSI Roadshow 2016 This year, 2016, is a very special year for the Very Short Introductions (VSI) series. Not only is our 21st birthday but we are also publishing our 500th VSI title in the autumn. Since our launch in 1995, Very Short Introductions have been filling in the gaps of our knowledge with a VSI to almost everything.
Race: Jesse Owens and the African American tradition By Herbert G. Ruffin II Patterned on other sports dramas about race and the freedom rights struggle, such as Remember the Titans, Glory Road, We Are Marshall, The Express, and 42, Race tells the story of Jesse Owens’ preparation and stunning performance at the 1936 Summer Olympics at Berlin, Germany. However, while Owens follows a long tradition of unsung African American heroes, many remain unfamiliar with the details surrounding his rise to prominence.
Celebrating 40 years of the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy By Peter Donnelly “The knowledge of the capabilities of antibiotics is still essential to control infections which nowadays are more complex and often occur in patients whose defences are compromised by other forms of medical and surgical treatment” wrote Professor J. D. Williams in his first Editorial in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (JAC) in 1975.
Why Robert Mugabe continues to plod on By Miles Tendi Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe returned home from the Far East, where he had been for a month, on 22 January 2016. Mugabe was chipper and appeared physically fit, as he shook hands and exchanged greetings with a long queue of government officials, service chiefs and other ruling party dignitaries who converged on the Harare International Airport to welcome him home.
Platonic reception: that obscure object of desire By Paul Allen Miller Of all the things we could possibly care about, why should we care about the reception of Plato? Wars rage round the world. The planet is in the process of environmental meltdown. Many remain mired in poverty, oppression, and disease. Surely this is a most obscure, not to say obscurantist, pursuit. But perhaps we are too hasty.
Nadia Boulanger, teaching Stravinsky to David Conte By Kimberly A. Francis Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) remains one of the most influential music teachers to have ever assigned counterpoint exercises. She was largely responsible for the training that made composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, and Elliott Carter sound the way they do—each inherently unique, each an easily identifiable Boulanger pupil. And of those living composers championed by Boulanger, Igor Stravinsky held pride of place.
The surprising history of Britain’s elephants By Caroline Grigson England’s first and most surprising elephant was given to Henry III in 1235 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, probably to mark his betrothal to Henry’s sister Isabella. Frederick had elephants to spare – he took several on his journeys round Europe along with lions, leopards, dromedaries, camels, falcons and bearded owls. This was an African elephant (recognized by its big ears).
More on idioms: “kick the bucket” By Anatoly Liberman Last week, in discussing the antiquated idiom hang out the broom, I mentioned kick the bucket and will now return to it. In the entry bucket2, the OED, usually reticent about the origin of such phrases, mentioned what Murray considered might be the most plausible idea. I am writing this essay for two reasons.
The trade-off between economic growth and climate change: Can it be avoided? By Jan Fagerberg Europe’s economy has barely grown since the financial crisis broke in 2007. And unemployment, especially among the young, has soared in most countries. Eastern and Southern Europe, the least affluent regions, have suffered the most. Today, in the most affected countries, around one in two young adults seeking a job is not able to find one. If there is one recipe for social and political trouble in the years ahead, this is surely it.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Innovations from the ancient world By Burke Gerstenschlager Beginning over two thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks and Romans innovated a surprising array of concepts that we take for granted today. It’s hard to imagine where we’d be without the Greek alphabet, Euclid’s geometric concepts, Roman concrete, and more.
How well do you know Black History? First established in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson with the support of the Association for the Study for Negro Life, Negro History Week took place on the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, two men whose actions greatly influenced the black population in America.
Lead poisoning of Flint, Michigan—penny wise, pound foolish, and criminal By Devra Davis and Robert D. Morris The tragedy of children poisoned by lead-contaminated water in Flint, Michigan is not an isolated incident. More than 11 counties in New Jersey have children with higher lead levels than those of Flint. Since 2008, drastic cuts in funding for public health programs across the board have slashed programs to educate parents and pediatricians to test young kids for lead poisoning or test water for its residues.
You smell dangerous: communicating aggression through sense of smell and body odor By Smiljana Mutic During the search for scents of anger and aggression in human beings, several English idioms come to mind relating aggression to odors: ‘To be incensed’ describes somebody feeling angry with the related meaning of the word incense, a substance that produces a strong smell when burned.
Music reference: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future By Callum Watts How does one grapple with music research in the digital age? What are the changes and challenges therein? On 23 June 2015, a group of distinguished academics and editors came together for a panel discussion on “Referencing music in the twenty-first century: Encyclopedias of the past, present, and future” at a conference organized by the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centers (IAML) and the International Musicological Society (IMS).
A history of the International Space Station [infographic] The International Space Station was originally conceived as our base camp to the stars – the first step in a long journey of human civilisation exploring new planets, asteroids, and galaxies, and perhaps even helping us to meet other forms of life in the universe along the way. The International Space Station is an incredible feat in human engineering, politics, and bravery.
Teaching the Hebrew Bible in the context of campus sexual violence By Rhiannon Graybill It is a disconcerting experience to watch Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s documentary The Hunting Ground or to read Jon Krakauer’s Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town and then walk into a classroom filled with college students. Both The Hunting Ground and Missoula take up the problem of sexual violence on college campuses.
Fences, fortresses, and fortifications: What (not) to do about contemporary refugee flows? By Andreas Schloenhardt In 2015, more people fled from persecution, war, human rights violations, discrimination, and other hardship than at any other time since World War II. UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, estimates that worldwide more than 60 million people, or one in every 122, have been forced to flee their homes.
It’s fine to start sentences with “and” By Edwin Battistella I always see some shocked faces when I tell a classroom of college students that there is nothing wrong with beginning a sentence with the word and (or for that matter, the words but, because, or however). I encourage them to not to take my word for it but to look it up, so I refer them to Ernest Gowers’ 1965 revision of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
What can political philosophy contribute to policy debates? By Daniel Engster Political philosophy explores questions relating to the best organization of our collective political and economic institutions and policies. As such, one might expect that detailed discussion of policy issues would be commonplace in political philosophy. Just the opposite, however, is usually the case.
Which literary couple are you and your beau? [quiz] Love and literature are perfect companions. Love has been, and continues to be, an inspiration for famous and celebrated authors around the world, who have written great literary masterpieces on romantic infatuations and passions. The characters they depict make a lasting impression on us, the readers – after all, who hasn’t dreamed of the Juliet to their Romeo, or the Ron to their Hermoine?
Shakespeare and sex By Joe Moshenska Shakespeare made many gifts to the English language, but his most memorable gift in the particularly rich and rarefied area of euphemisms for sexual intercourse comes in the opening scene of Othello, when Iago strives to provoke Desdemona’s father Brabantio to outrage with the news that ‘your daughter and the Moor are now making the beast with two backs.’
Fences and paradox By Roy T Cook Imagine that you are an extremely talented, and extremely ambitious, shepherd, and an equally talented and equally ambitious carpenter. You decide that you want to explore what enclosures, or fences, you can build, and which groups of objects, or flocks, you can shepherd around so that they are collected together inside one of these fences.
The many deaths of David Bowie By David E. James On 8 January 2016, on his 69th birthday and two days before he died, David Bowie released Blackstar, an album replete with images of death, but also hints of the possibility of transcendence of it. “Lazarus,” the third track sung from heaven where he was as free as a bluebird, appeared to announce his rebirth into yet another of the series of personae he inhabited throughout his career.
The shame of marriage in Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure By Melissa E. Sanchez When the Supreme Court concluded the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges hearings with a 5–4 vote to legalize same–sex marriage, the majority and dissent disagreed as on the place of marriage in constitutional law, a question related to divergent views of the institution’s historical purpose. The majority insisted that marriage has always been about love and companionship, the dissent that it has always been procreation.
Divine Command Theory and moral obligation By John E. Hare ‘Divine Command Theory’ is the theory that what makes something morally right is that God commands it, and what makes something morally wrong is that God forbids it. Of the many objections to this theory, the four main ones are that it makes morality arbitrary, that it cannot work in a pluralistic society, that it makes morality infantile, and that it is viciously circular.
Diplomatic History Queering America and the world By Julio Capó Jr., Shanon Fitzpatrick, Melani McAlister, and David Minto “We had him down as a rent boy,” remarked a bartender in Brussels about Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspected jihadists in the recent Paris attacks. Several reports noted that Abdeslam frequented gay bars and flirted with other men. These revelations were difficult to slot into existing media narratives and stood in uneasy relation to his posited allegiance with the group best known in the United States as ISIS. After all, there have been numerous credible reports of ISIS’s violent condemnation and abuse of queer people. In many instances, the penalty for homosexuality has been death.
Why ‘ageism’ is bad for your health By Sanja Thompson and Sir John Grimley Evans According to research conducted by Levy, Slade, Kunkel, and Kasl in 2002, the average lifespan of those with high levels of negative beliefs about old age is 7.5 years shorter than those with more positive beliefs. In other words, ‘ageism’ may have a cumulative harmful effect on personal health. But what is ageism – and what is its impact, both for society and healthcare?
The importance of long-term marriage for health and happiness By Deborah Carr Each year around Valentine’s Day, a new crop of romantic comedies hit the silver screen. Viewers wait in anticipation for the on-screen couple’s first kiss, or the enviably lavish wedding. But what happens to that couple, many decades after the first kiss or exchange of rings? Recent research shows that long-married couples exchange love and emotional support, but also regularly engage in spats or minor conflicts which affect older adults’ health in both expected and surprising ways.
The romance of chocolate By Gary L. Wenk Is chocolate an aphrodisiac? Gifts of chocolate are given usually with that intent at this time of the year. Does it work? Well, maybe; gastronomy is known as the sister art of love. Women often crave chocolate. In 1648, according to the diary of English Jesuit Thomas Gage, the women of Chiapas Real arranged for the murder of a certain bishop who forbade them to drink chocolate during mass.
Beyond the noise barrier By Mike Goldsmith Noise barriers are not regarded with a great deal of affection. In fact, they’re not much regarded at all; perhaps not surprising, given that the goal of their installers is to ensure that those who benefit notice neither the barrier nor the noise sources it hides. The majority are basic workmanlike structures, built according to tried and trusted principles.
Celebrating African American inventors It’s been over 195 years since Thomas Jennings received a patent for a dry cleaning process, and black inventors have continued to change, innovate and enhance day-to-day life. This Black History Month, the team behind the Oxford African American Studies Center is excited to explore some of the many inventions, dreamed up, brought to life, and patented by black inventors.
Whose chat-up line is it anyway? By Rebecca Forty Along with death and trees, love is probably the most commonly explored theme in literature. So many of our favorite maxims and aphorisms about love are drawn from classical fiction. But how well do we really know these quotes or the novels and poems from which they derive?
The evolution of humans [infographic] Where did we come from? How did we become human? What’s the origin of our species? It is hard to imagine our understanding of humanity without, of course, Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Our own family tree testifies to this age-old pattern of extinction, adaption, and evolution.
Ten facts about the cornet By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Sometimes mistaken for the trumpet, a near relation, the cornet has had a fascinating and diverse history. Popular from military and jazz bands to the 19th century European stage, the cornet has had a home in the American music scene for generations of musicians and music styles.
Illusions for survival and reproduction By Martin Stevens Much of what we think we see is not real – it’s an illusion. A favourite pastime for many visual psychologists and artists is to baffle and confuse our perception by making things appear that are not really there, or manipulating the way that we might see patterns or colours. The origin of many illusions lies in the fact that the brain often receives incomplete or conflicting information.
Between language and folklore: “To hang out the broom” By Anatoly Liberman We know even less about the origin of idioms than about the origin of individual words. This is natural: words have tangible components: roots, suffixes, consonants, vowels, and so forth, while idioms spring from customs, rites, and general experience. Yet both are apt to travel from land to land and be borrowed. Who was the first to suggest that beating (or flogging) a willing horse is a silly occupation, and who countered it with the idea that beating a dead horse is equally stupid?
Why is addiction treatment so slow to change? By Markus Heilig The US taxpayers fund the overwhelming majority of addiction research in the world. Every year, Congress channels about $1 billion to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). An additional almost $0.5 billion is separately given to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), my own workplace for the past decade.
Marriage equality in Australia: will 2016 bring a change in the law? By Alison Plumb Hopes for change on the issue in Australia were raised and quickly dashed following September’s leadership spill in the centre-right Liberal Party, in which Malcom Turnbull defeated Prime Minister Tony Abbott, 54 votes to 44. Once seen by advocates of law reform as a champion of marriage equality, the new Prime Minister stated his intention to maintain the coalition’s position on the issue.
“The experience of chocolate craving”- an extract from The Economics of Chocolate By Johan Swinnen and Mara P. Squicciarini It is indisputable that chocolate consumption gives instant pleasure and comfort, especially during episodes of ‘emotional eating’, which involves searching for food (generally in large amounts) even if not physiologically hungry in order to get relief from a negative mood or bad feelings (e.g. stressful life situations, anxiety, depression). The pleasure experienced in eating chocolate can be, first of all, due to neurophysiological components.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Which mythological creature are you? [quiz] By Samantha Zimbler Today, we’re looking at the less fashionable side of this partnership and focussing our attention on the creatures that mortals feared and heroes vanquished. Does your gaze turn others to stone? Do you prefer ignorance or vengeance? Have any wings? Take this short quiz to find out which mythological creature or being you would have been in the ancient world.
Mary Church Terrell: a capital crusader By Joan Quigley When Mary Church Terrell died on 24 July 1954, at the age of 90, her place in civil rights history seemed secure. She had served as the first president of the National Association of Colored Women. She had been a charter member of the NAACP.
Blue planet blues By Fred Taylor The Earth we live on was formed from a cloud of dust and ice, heated by a massive ball of compressed hydrogen that was the early Sun. Somewhere along the four billion year journey to where we are today, our planet acquired life, and some of that became us. Our modern brains ask how it all came together and progressed, and what shaped the pathways it followed.
Adolescents and adolescence: the glass really is half-full By Bridget Sweet Recently I was invited to be the guest clinician for a school district’s new young men’s choral festival. The original composition of the festival changed over the course of planning and, long story short, I ended up with a group of 79 fourth- through ninth-grade male singers.
The CISG: a fair balance of interests around the globe By Ingeborg Schwenzer The CISG may be called a true story of worldwide success which is not only proven by the ever increasing number of member states around the world but also by the fact that during the last 20 years the CISG has served as a decisive blueprint for law-making in the area of contract law on the international as well as on the domestic level.
Another unpleasant infection: Zika virus By David I. Grove Over two years ago I wrote that “new viruses are constantly being discovered… Then something comes out of the woodwork like SARS which causes widespread panic.” Zika virus infection bids fair to repeat the torment. On 28 January 2016 the BBC reported that the World Health Organization had set up a Zika “emergency team” as a result of the current explosive pandemic.
Bang, bang — democracy’s dead: Obama and the politics of gun control By Matthew Flinders It would seem that President Obama has a new prey in his sites. It is, however, a target that he has hunted for some time but never really managed to wound, let alone kill. The focus of Obama’s attention is gun violence and the aim is really to make American communities safer places to live.
How can we hold the UN accountable for sexual violence? By Rosa Freedman Cometh the new year, cometh the fresh round of allegations that United Nations peacekeepers raped or abused some of the most vulnerable people in the world. 2016 has just begun and already reports are surfacing of UN peacekeepers paying to have sex with girls as young as 13 at a displaced persons camp in the Central African Republic.
A history of the poetry of history By Patrick Finglass History and poetry hardly seem obvious bed-fellows – a historian is tasked with discovering the truth about the past, whereas, as Aristotle said, ‘a poet’s job is to describe not what has happened, but the kind of thing that might’. But for the Romans, the connections between them were deep: historia . . . proxima poetis (‘history is closest to the poets’), as Quintilian remarked in the first century AD. What did he mean by that?
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Plato By John Priest The OUP Philosophy team have selected Plato (c. 429–c.347 BC) as their February Philosopher of the Month. The best known and most widely studied of all the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato laid the groundwork for Western philosophy and Christian theology. Plato was most likely born in Athens, to Ariston and Perictione, a noble, politically active family.
Regretoric: the rise of the “nonapology” apology and the “apology tour” By Edwin L. Battistella OxfordDictionaries.com is adding the nouns apology tour and nonapology. These additions represent two related steps in the evolution of the noun apology, which first entered English in the sixteenth century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Its earliest example is a book title: the 1533 Apologie of Syr Thomas More.
Seven reasons why your medications are not working properly By Anita Gupta and Matthew Dukewich What happens when medication doesn’t bring your condition under control? Usually, it’s not just one single issue but various factors that contribute to the problem. Your doctor will work to figure out why–and from there, create a new plan of attack. Finding the right combination of medications may require some trial and error.
Sex, love, and Shakespeare [slideshow] Whether he fills his scenes with raunchy innuendos, or boldly writes erotic poetry, or frequently reverses the gender norms of the time period, Shakespeare addresses the multifaceted ways in which sex, love, marriage, relationships, gender, and sexuality play an integral part of human life.
Are you really free? Yes: a new argument for freedom By Robert Hanna How is human freedom really possible in the natural world as correctly described by modern physics, chemistry, biology, and cognitive neuroscience? Or, given the truth of modern science, are you really free? By ‘real freedom,’ I mean ‘real free will and real rational agency’.
Contextual cartography: an email exchange with Henry Greenspan and Tim Cole, Part 2 By Andrew Shaffer Two weeks ago, we published the first part of an exchange between Henry Greenspan and Tim Cole. Below, they wrap up their conversation, turning to the intellectual difficulties of taking context into consideration. The issues they raise should be of interest to all oral historians, so we want to hear from you!
Nils Alwall: The quiet, unassuming Swede By David Goldsmith During the night, between 3rd and 4th September 1946, things were stirring in the basement of the internal medicine department, at the university hospital of Lund, Southern Sweden. A 47-year-old man had been admitted for treatment. His main problem was uraemia (urea in the blood), but he was also suffering from silicosis (a lung disorder), complicated by pneumonia.
Mind this space: couple therapy By David Hewison and Kate Thompson What happens in our relationships? This is the question that draws people into the profession of couple therapy. Therapists stand outside the couple in order to understand how their relationship systems and unconscious dynamics work. What is it that the couple have created between them? How can you restore the balance within that relationship?
Epicureanism: eat, drink, and be merry? By Catherine Wilson Most people have a good idea what it is to have a Stoical attitude to life, but what it means to have an Epicurean attitude is not so obvious. When attempting to decipher the true nature of Epicureanism it is first necessary to dispel the impression that fine dining is its central theme.
The resource curse – Episode 31 – The Oxford Comment By Sonia Tsuruoka Global inequality, particularly as it exists today, is more “process” than natural phenomenon. An era of unprecedented interconnection means that individual practices, just as much as large-scale social, political, and economic actions, shape, sustain, and reinforce power dynamics.
Watts Riots: Black Families Matter By Donna L. Franklin and Angela D. James On 11 August 1965, the Watts Riots exploded in Los Angeles taking the nation by surprise. Sparked by an arrest that escalated into a skirmish between local residents and police, the riots lasted six days. They laid bare the seething discontent that lay just beneath the surface in many black communities.
The truth behind the restaurant industry [quiz] While the common image of a “restaurant employee” is the server, there are others in the restaurant industry who also face the hardships of working in the restaurant industry: discrimination, low wages, and lack of benefits. All these contribute to a dark side of the restaurant industry, and some restaurants are fighting to change the status quo. Do you know the truth behind the restaurant industry?
Cornetist memories: A Q&A with Hannah McGuffie Our instrument of the month for February is the popular and melodic cornet. We sat down with Hannah McGuffie, Senior Marketing Manager for History and Science and lifelong cornetist, to talk about the joys and challenges of the instrument.
How English became English – and not Latin By Simon Horobin English grammar has been closely bound up with that of Latin since the 16th century, when English first began to be taught in schools. Given that grammatical instruction prior to this had focused on Latin, it’s not surprising that teachers based their grammars of English on Latin. The title of John Hewes’ work of 1624 neatly encapsulates its desire to make English grammar conform to that of Latin.
Shebang, by Jingo! By Anatoly Liberman The lines above look (and sound) like identical oaths, but that happens only because of the ambiguity inherent in the preposition by. No one swears by my name, while Mr. Jingo has not written or published anything. Nowadays, jingoism “extreme and aggressive patriotism” and jingoist do not seem to be used too often, though most English speakers still understand them, but in Victorian England, in the late nineteen-seventies and some time later, the words were on everybody’s lips.
World Cancer Day – a reading list By Amelia Carruthers Every year, World Cancer Day aims to save millions of preventable deaths, by raising awareness and education about the disease. Whether you are a health professional, a carer, patient, policy-maker, or simply looking to get involved – we can all to our bit to help reduce the global burden of cancer.
Happy new year, China: Recent economic booms and busts By Richard S. Grossman The Chinese New Year begins on 8 February, ushering out the year of the sheep (or goat, or ram) and bringing in the year of the monkey. People in China will enjoy a week-long vacation and will celebrate with dragon dances and fireworks. Given the financial fireworks emanating from China, this is a good time to briefly review some of the major economic news coming out of the Middle Kingdom.
Geography in the ancient world By Duane W. Roller Imagine how the world appeared to the ancient Greeks and Romans: there were no aerial photographs (or photographs of any sort), maps were limited and inaccurate, and travel was only by foot, beast of burden, or ship. Traveling more than a few miles from home meant entering an unfamiliar and perhaps dangerous world.
Metastatic cells colonize implantable scaffold in mice By Charlie Schmidt Cancer treatment’s biggest failings occur in the metastatic setting, when metastatic cells escaping from the primary tumor colonize and attack critical organs. Much about how cells colonize distant tissues as opposed to remaining in the primary tumor or in circulation without settling in one place remains unknown. But a new bioengineered device could offer insights.
Solidarity: an art worth learning By Gervase Rosser Can solidarity exist? Or is it just a fantasy, a pious dream of the soft of heart and weak of brain? Gross inequality, greed and prejudice: these manifestations of selfishness which stalk our world may seem to invite our condemnation and to call for an alternative – but what if they are part of the natural order?
Music therapy and Arts Based Research Arts Based Research offers a new and diverse method for inquiring about the world around us. Whether examining social sciences or healthcare, this field offers a different approach and establishes an innovative framework for inquiry. We spoke with Professor Jane Edwards, the guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Music Therapy, about her perspective on this emerging field.
The Cancer Moonshot By Dawn Field Announced on January 13th by President Obama in his eighth and final State of the Union Address, the multi-billion dollar project will be led by US Vice President, Joe Biden, who has a vested interest in seeing new cures for cancer. Using genomics to cure cancer is being held on par with JFK’s desire in 1961 to land men on the moon.
Deferring the Cadillac tax kills it By Edward A. Zelinsky Sometimes it is gratifying to have predicted the future. Sometimes it is not. The recent postponement of the so-called “Cadillac tax” until 2020 falls into the latter category. I predicted this kind of outcome when the Cadillac tax was first enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as “Obamacare.” I am unhappy that events have now proven this prediction correct.
Sectarian tensions at home By Raihan Ismail The execution of the popular Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr by Saudi authorities at the beginning of this year has further intensified Sunni-Shia sectarian tensions not just in Saudi Arabia but the Middle East generally. The carrying out of the sentence, following convictions for a range of amorphous political charges, immediately provoked anti-Saudi demonstrations among Shia communities throughout the Middle East.
The mercy of the Enlightenment By Ulrich L. Lehner Pope Francis recently announced a “Year of Mercy.” He called on all Catholics to once again realize that God is love and that this includes infinite mercy. Yet, the message of mercy, also with its practical consequences, has been constant on the agenda of the Catholic Church, even in the eighteenth century—a time which is allegedly known for its rigid, sectarian close-mindedness. Here are four ways that the Catholic Church has emphasized “mercy” over time.
Ten facts about snack foods from around the world Did you know that in the United States, February is National Snack Food month? In 1989 a need was seen to increase the sales of snack food in the usually slow month of February, and so National Snack Food month was born. To celebrate we’ve collected together 10 surprising facts about snack foods from around the world, all taken from The Oxford Companion to Food.
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Wrapping up the AALS Annual Meeting 2016 By Erica Albanese and Jo Wojtkowski The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) is a nonprofit association of 179 law schools. The association serves as the learned society for over 9,000 law faculty at its member schools, and provides them with extensive professional development opportunities, including the AALS Annual Meeting which draws thousands of professors, deans and administrators each year.
When probability is not enough By Martin Smith While out driving one afternoon, I notice a bus speeding down the road towards me. As it approaches, the bus drifts into my lane, forcing me to swerve and strike a parked car. The bus doesn’t stop and, while I glimpse some corporate logo on the side, I’m shaken and I don’t manage to make it out.
The Zika virus: a “virgin soil” epidemic By Peter C. Doherty First isolated in Uganda in 1947, this normally mild, non-fatal mosquito-born flavivirus infection is characterized by transient fever, joint pain and malaise. The current explosive Zika virus epidemic in the Americas is, however, causing great concern because of what looks to be a sudden, dramatic increase in the incidence of microcephaly (small brain/head size) in newborns.
5 facts about marriage, love, and sex in Shakespeare’s England Considering the many love affairs, sexual liaisons, and marriages that occur in Shakespeare’s plays, how many of them accurately represent their real-life counterparts? Genuine romantic entanglements certainly don’t work out as cleanly as the ending of Twelfth Night, where Sebastian and Olivia, Duke Orsino and Viola, and Toby and Maria all wind up as married couples.
The evolution of breathing tests By William Kinnear If a person is experiencing difficulty breathing comfortably, the chances are that the difficulty stays with them no matter what they’re doing, be it sitting, standing, or walking. So it’s not surprising that conventional scans or breathing tests, carried out with the patient lying on a couch or sitting in a chair, don’t always tell us what the problem is.
The tradition of political debate in India India has a long history and tradition of upholding the power of debate. Bhiku Parekh explains in this interview that perhaps more than any other civilization, India has deeply valued debate, and would partake in them for days at a time.
Why soil matters more than we realise By Richard Bardgett The soils surrounding the village where I live in the north west of England have abundant fertility. They mostly formed in well-drained, clay-rich debris left behind by glaciers that retreated from the area some ten thousand years ago, and they now support lush, productive pasture, semi-natural grassland and woodland. Although the pastures are managed more intensively than they were in the past, most of them are well drained, and receive regular dressings of manure along with moderate fertiliser, and are regularly limed, which keeps the land productive and the soil in good health.
Can American schools close the achievement gaps? By Jaekyung Lee Currently, the United States is at war and the nation’s future can be at risk. It’s the war on student achievement gaps, one that has waged for decades and proven extremely difficult to fight and complex to understand. Is American education system losing its war on achievement gaps?
Bodies of breath, bodies of knowledge, and bodies of culture By Chris Shilling Towards the end of his lecture on ‘techniques of the body’, delivered to a meeting of the Société Française de Psychologie in 1934, the sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss discussed the methods of breathing practiced by Daoist priests and Yogic mystics. Far from being instinctive, these techniques require a lengthy apprenticeship.
Fighting for one fair wage at the launch of Forked Prominent figures in the restaurant industry came together this past Tuesday, 26 January, at the Ford Foundation in New York City to open discussions on what we can do to improve worker conditions in the restaurant industry.
Does the ‘Chinese room’ argument preclude a robot uprising? By Olle Häggström There has been much recent talk about a possible robot apocalypse. One person who is highly skeptical about this possibility is philosopher John Searle. In a 2014 essay, he argues that “the prospect of superintelligent computers rising up and killing us, all by themselves, is not a real danger”.
Discoveries from the Fortepiano The fortepiano: capturing the sound aesthetic for modern playing By Donna Gunn Grappling with performing the music of early Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn on the modern piano can be a daunting experience. The modern piano is not the instrument for which their music was composed. Beethoven, Mozart, and Haydn all preferred Viennese pianos (today called the fortepiano) and the traits from the inside out are distinctly different than those of the modern piano.
Etymology gleanings for January 2016 By Anatoly Liberman Some of the most enjoyable comments and questions are those that combine scholarship and play. One of our correspondents pointed out that Engl. strawberry, if pronounced as a Slavic word, means (literally) “from grass take.” Indeed it does! In the Russian s travy beri, only one ending does not quite match Engl. s-traw-berry.
Humanity in the digital age How does one preserve the ephemera of the digital world? In a movement as large as the Arab Spring, with a huge digital imprint that chronicled everything from a government overthrow to the quiet boredom of waiting between events, archivists are faced with the question of how to preserve history. The Internet may seem to provide us with the curse of perfect recall, but the truth is it’s far from perfect — and perhaps there’s value in forgetting.
Oxford Classical Dictionary Ten things you may not have known about Greek gods and goddesses By Samantha Zimbler Greek gods and goddesses have been a part of cultural history since ancient times, but how much do you really know about them? You can learn more about these figures from Greek mythology by reading the lesser known facts below and by visiting the newly launched Oxford Classical Dictionary online.
Shadows of the digital age By Chris Fletcher The Bodleian recently launched a festival celebrating drawing. As part of this, the artist Tamarin Norwood retreated to our Printing Workshop, turned off her devices and learned how to set type. She proceeded, in her inky and delightful way, to compose a series of Print Tweets.
New Year’s Resolutions for the music classroom By Celine Aenlle-Rocha It’s a bright new year and time to shed off the old, but that doesn’t mean we can’t partake in some favored traditions – especially making New Year’s resolutions. If you’re a teacher or professor, the New Year usually means a new semester, and the opportunity to start fresh by teaching a new class, or bring rejuvenation to your students post-holiday.
European Union Design Law Should design rights protect things you can’t see? By David Stone Although many EU IP lawyers are currently concentrating on the trade mark reforms, the Commission is quietly getting on with its study of the design protection system in Europe. The remit of the study is wide-ranging, but perhaps the most surprising issue that has arisen is whether design law in the EU should protect things that you can’t see.
‘Mate’ in Australian English By Bruce Moore Mate is one of those words that is used widely in Englishes other than Australian English, and yet has a special resonance in Australia. Although it had a very detailed entry in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (the letter M was completed 1904–8), the Australian National Dictionary (AND) included mate in its first edition of 1988, thus marking it as an Australianism.
Time to follow through on India and Japan’s promises By Anthony Yazaki and Rohan Mukherjee It is no secret that India-Japan relations have been on a strong positive trajectory over the past 18 months. Soon after taking office in 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made Japan his first foreign destination outside of India’s immediate neighborhood and while in Tokyo, he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe upgraded the India-Japan relationship
The truth about “Auld Lang Syne” By Robert P. Irvine Over the years since it was written, many millions must have sung ‘Auld Lang Syne’ (roughly translated as ‘days long past’) while sharing Mr. Micawber’s ignorance of what of its words actually mean. Most of us go through the year without singing a single song by Robert Burns, and then, within the space of 25 days, sing this one twice on January 1st and 25th
Time and perception By George Jaroszkiewicz The human brain is a most wonderful organ: it is our window on time. Our brains have specialized structures that work together to give us our human sense of time. The temporal lobe helps form long term memories, without which we would not be aware of the past, whilst the frontal lobe allows us to plan for the future.
The transcendent influence of law in military operations By Chris Jenks and Geoffrey S. Corn From the perspective of military legal advisors, law serves as an enabler in achieving logical military outcomes. Rather than simply focusing on a restatement of law, it is important to offer insight into how Judge Advocates (military lawyers) think about the relationship between law and effective military operations.
A tale of two militias: finding the right label for the Oregon protests By Charlotte Buxton When an armed group occupied a federal building in Oregon to protest against the US government’s land management, the media quickly seized on the word ‘militia’ to describe them. The Guardian reported the incident with the headline ‘Oregon militia threatens showdown with US agents at wildlife refuge.
The Guru’s warrior scripture By Kamalroop Singh and Gurinder Singh Mann The scripture known as the Dasam Granth Sahib or the ‘Scripture of the Tenth King,’ has traditionally been attributed to Guru Gobind Singh. It was composed in a volatile period to inspire the Sikh warriors in the battle against the Moghuls, and many of the compositions were written for the rituals related to the preparation for war (Shastra puja) and for the battlefield.
Immigration and the demise of political trust By Lauren McLaren An average of 30% of the British public have identified immigration as one of their most important concerns since 2003; in recent months, 50% or more have named this as one of the most important issues facing the UK.
Shakespeare and conscience By William M. Hamlin At the outset of an undergraduate Shakespeare course I often ask my students to make a list of ten things that may not, or do not, exist. I say “things” because I want to be as vague as possible. Most students submit lists featuring zombies and mermaids, love charms and time travel. Hogwarts is a popular place name, as are Westeros and Middle Earth. But few students venture into religious territory.
Test your knowledge of G.E.M. Anscombe By Joy Mizan This January, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (G.E.M.) Anscombe as their Philosopher of the Month. G.E.M. Anscombe (1919 – 2001) was a British analytical philosopher best known for her contributions in the fields of philosophy of the mind, action, language, logic, and ethics. Test your knowledge of this famous female philosopher.
Conversations in computing: Q&A with Editor-in-Chief, Professor Steve Furber By Justin Richards and Steve Furber Oxford University Press is excited to be welcoming Professor Steve Furber as the new Editor-in-Chief of The Computer Journal. In an interview between Justin Richards of BCS, The Chartered Institute of IT and Steve, we get to know more about the SpiNNaker project, ethical issues around Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the future of the IT industry.
What was Shakespeare’s religion? By Gillian Woods What was Shakespeare’s religion? It’s possible to answer this seemingly simple question in lots of different ways. Like other English subjects who lived through the ongoing Reformation, Shakespeare was legally obliged to attend Church of England services. Officially, at least, he was a Protestant. But a number of scholars have argued that there is evidence that Shakespeare had connections through his family and school teachers with Roman Catholicism, a religion which, through the banning of its priests, had effectively become illegal in England.
Movement and memory: an email exchange with Henry Greenspan and Tim Cole, Part 1 By Andrew Shaffer Regular readers of this blog will be more than familiar with the work of both Tim Cole and Henry Greenspan. Their work offers new and powerful ways of understanding the role of space and time in oral history process and production.
Landmarks in the study of rheumatology By Amelia Carruthers From experiments with steroids, to placebos, and genome-wide studies, we take a look back at over two centuries of rheumatology studies. Rheumatology involves the study of any disorders of the joints, muscles, and ligaments – including such debilitating conditions as rheumatism and arthritis.
Roe v. Wade and the remaking of the pro-life movement By Daniel K. Williams On 11 January 1973, members of the North Dakota Right to Life Association braved the frigid temperatures in Bismarck to convene their first annual convention. Having won a sweeping victory at the ballot box only two months earlier, they were optimistic about the future and were ready to move on to the second phase of pro-life activism.
Can a robot be conscious? By Olle Häggström Can a robot be conscious? I will try to discuss this without getting bogged down in the rather thorny issue of what consciousness –– really is. Instead, let me first address whether robot consciousness is an important topic to think about. At first sight, it may seem unimportant. Robots will affect us only through their outward behavior, which may be more or less along the lines of what we tend to think of as coming along with consciousness, but given this behavior, its consequences to us are not affected by whether or not it really is accompanied by consciousness.
Mentalization and borderline personality disorder (part two) By Joe Hitchcock Sigmund Karterud is a pioneer of group therapy for borderline personality disorders. He focuses on mentalization: our ability to understand ourselves and other people in terms of mental phenomena – beliefs, feelings, wishes, and hopes.
Name that plague! [quiz] By Benjamin Bolker and Marta Wayne Though caused by microscopic agents, infectious diseases have played an outsized role in human history. They have shaped societies, lent us words and metaphors, and turned the tide of wars. Humans have eliminated some diseases, but others continue to plague us. In this quiz, find out if confusion is contagious or if you’re immune to the challenge.
David Bowie: Everything has changed, he changed everything By Tiffany Naiman Though David Robert Jones, the boy from Brixton, is no longer with us, David Bowie, the artist, through his music, films, plays, paintings, and explorations of gender, sexuality, religion, love, fear, and death, remains.
How did hiring begin? By Anatoly Liberman Those who read word columns in newspapers and popular journals know that columnists usually try to remain on the proverbial cutting edge of politics and be “topical.” For instance, I can discuss any word I like, and in the course of more than ten years I have written essays about words as different as dude and god (though my most popular stories deal with smut; I have no idea why).
Challenges of cardio-thoracic surgery today By Matthias Siepe Oxford University Press is pleased to welcome Matthias Siepe as the new Editor-in-Chief of Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS). We got to know Matthais during an interview and discovered how he came to specialise in cardiovascular surgery, how he sees this field in the future, and what he has in store for ICVTS.
Why the junior doctors’ strike matters to everyone By Hugo Farne Doctors in the UK are striking for the first time in over 40 years. This comes after months of failed talks between the government and the British Medical Association (BMA) regarding the controversial new junior doctor contract. We do so with a heavy heart, as it goes against the very ethos of our vocation. Yet the fact that more than 98% of us voted to do so, speaks volumes about the current impasse.
Miley Cyrus and the culture of excess in American history By George Cotkin Miley Cyrus has shocked the world anew with a recent CANDY Magazine photo shoot by over-the-top fashion photographer Terry Richardson. Cyrus sticks her tongue out with enthusiasm—and does much more. In one image, she is “dressed” in a police officer’s uniform, except that she is not wearing a shirt and a pair of handcuffs is displayed prominently.
No time to think By Paul Froese On leaving school, my advisor reminded me to always take time to think. That seemed like a reasonable suggestion, as I trudged off to teach, write, and, of course, think. But the modern academy doesn’t share this value; faculty are increasingly prodded to “produce” more articles, more presentations, more grant applications, and more PhD students.
What religion is Barack Obama? By Edward J. Blum On 7 January, 2016, I asked Google, “what religion is Barack Obama”? After considering the problem for .42 seconds, Google offered more than 34 million “results.” The most obvious answer was at the top, accentuated by a rectangular border, with the large word “Muslim.” Beneath that one word read the line, “Though Obama is a practicing Christian and he was chiefly raised by his mother and her Christian parents…” Thank you, Google.
Grove Music announces its third Spoof Article Contest By Anna-Lise Santella It’s that time of year again! We invite you to submit your entry for Grove Music’s Spoof Article Contest, and as usual the winning entry will be announced on April Fool’s Day. Spoof articles have been part of Grove’s history for several decades; it seems that our authors have always had an inclination toward humor.
International Commercial Arbitration Oxford Law Vox: Loukas Mistelis on international arbitration By Loukas Mistelis and Fiona Parker International arbitration expert Loukas Mistelis talks to George Miller about current arbitration issues. Together they discuss how the international arbitration landscape has developed, how arbitration theory has attempted to catch up with practice, and ask whether the golden age of arbitration is now passed.
Does providing care for a grandchild impact volunteerism? By Jennifer Roebuck Bulanda and Margaret Platt Jendrek Grandparents provide a significant amount of care for grandchildren in the United States. Some grandparents provide occasional care, others provide daycare while the grandchild’s parents are at work, and others are fully raising their grandchildren.
The scales of justice and the establishment By P.A.J. Waddington Reports that luminaries of the ‘establishment,’ including Archbishop Carey, were queuing up to write letters directly to the Director of Public Prosecutions in support of Bishop Peter Ball, who was eventually convicted of numerous sex offences, is hardly a revelation. Bishops of the Church of England move in the rarefied circles of the establishment, such as the London clubs.
The migration crisis: what can trade unions do? By Ronaldo Munck and Carl-Ulrik Schierup 2015 will probably go down as the ‘year of migration’, certainly in Europe. All the contradictions of globalisation were coming to a head. All the ‘blowback’ from Western interventions in the Maghreb and in the Levant were coming home.
Legal hurdles to the Affordable Care Act By Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol Lawrence Jacobs and Theda Skocpol, authors of the newly-published third edition of Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, provide insight into the legal challenges that the Affordable Care Act faced, including the Supreme Court ruling in 2015.
How will new technology affect the future of cardio-thoracic surgery? By René Prêtre Oxford University Press is pleased to welcome René Prêtre as one of the the new Editors-in-Chief of Multimedia Manual of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (MMCTS). We got to know Dr. Prêtre during an interview and discovered how he came to specialise in cardio-thoracic surgery, how he sees this field in the future, and what he has in store for the Manual.
The exception should become the rule in the World Health Organization By Tine Hanrieder After the West African Ebola epidemic of 2014, hardly anyone contests that the World Health Organization (WHO) made fatal mistakes during the crisis. It reacted too late and did too little to contain the outbreak before it got out of control. And it once again exposed its deeply entrenched dysfunctions that make it so difficult for the organization to live up to its role as the central standard setter, coordinator and crisis manager in global health
Finding proportionality in surveillance laws By Andrew Murray The United Kingdom Parliament is currently in the pre-legislative scrutiny phase of a new Investigatory Powers Bill, which aims to “consolidate existing legislation and ensure the powers in the Bill are fit for the digital age.” It is fair to say this Bill is controversial with strong views being expressed by both critics and supporters of the Bill. Against this backdrop it is important to cut through the rhetoric and get to the heart of the Bill and to examine what it will do and what it will mean in terms of the legal framework for British citizens, and indeed for those overseas.
Sources for Shakespeare’s biography By Robert Bearman When opening a work of Shakespearean biography, it’s not unusual to find some sort of lament about a lack of data – albeit that it quickly becomes clear that this has not stood in the way of producing a substantial volume. However, rather than dwell on how this can still be done, perhaps we should re-examine what we mean when we say there is little to go on.
Lying, belief, and paradox By Roy T Cook The Liar paradox is often informally described in terms of someone uttering the sentence: I am lying right now. If we equate lying with merely uttering a falsehood, then this is (roughly speaking) equivalent to a somewhat more formal, more precise version of the paradox that arises by considering a sentence like: “This sentence is false”.
Supernatural punishment: the common denominator By Dominic Johnson So here’s the question: Is religion evolutionarily advantageous? We can’t ever know for sure what life was like for our prehistoric ancestors, but I hypothesise that supernatural punishment was a very important promoter of cooperation and a way to reduce self-interest, which was vital to the evolution of human societies.
Religion is not primitive science By James W. Jones When I first heard the suggestion that religion is primitive science, I put it down to ignorance on the part of people who had not studied these things. Having not studied religion, they did not understand what our ancestors’ religious statements were really doing.
Shakespeare and religion in 16th and 17th century England The politics and religious turmoil of 16th century England provided Shakespeare with the fascinating characters and intriguing plots. From the publication of Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, which some historians argue ignited the Protestant cause, to the publication of the Geneva Bible in 1560, English religious history has dramatically influenced Shakespeare’s work.
Religious belief, fundamentalism, and intolerance By Desmond M. Clarke Religious belief has been allied, for centuries, with fundamentalism and intolerance. It’s possible to have one without the other, but it requires a degree of self-criticism that is not easily acquired. When Calvin endorsed the execution of Michael Servetus in 1553, he justified his decision by appeal to the certainty of his own religious faith.
The art of persuasion By Ian Freckelton Although expert evidence in criminal jury trials is often heavily relied upon, the secrecy of the jury room has long prevented concrete analysis of the process. We spoke to Ian Freckelton QC about the undertaking of this unparalleled study of expert evidence and criminal jury trials
Dialysis and hepatitis By Neil Turner From about 1964, there was increasing excitement that dialysis might become a major life-saving treatment for chronic renal failure, not just for acute renal failure. Transplantation was also in its infancy, but despite some promise, overall success rates at this time were very poor.
Let us not run blindfolded into the minefield of future technologies By Olle Häggström There is a widely held conception that progress in science and technology is our salvation, and the more of it, the better. This is the default assumption not only among the general public, but also in the research community including university administration and research funding agencies, all the way up to government ministries. I believe the assumption to be wrong, and very dangerous.
Mentalization and borderline personality disorder (part one) By Joe Hitchcock Sigmund Karterud is a pioneer of group therapy for borderline personality disorders. He focuses on mentalization: our ability to understand ourselves and other people in terms of mental phenomena – beliefs, feelings, wishes, and hopes. Marketing assistant Joe Hitchcock sat down with the Norwegian psychiatrist from Ulleval University Hospital to explore the concepts, history, and effectiveness of the treatment.
10 surprising facts about atheism By Julian Baggini Atheism is the absence of belief that God, and other deities, exist. How much do you know about this belief system? Julian Baggini, author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, tells us the ten things we never knew about atheism.
A sneak peek at College Arts Association 2016 By Joy Mizan The Oxford Art Team is excited that the 2016 College Art Association Meeting will be in Washington D.C.! This year, we’re happy to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of The Dictionary of Art. We’re also offering discounted individual subscriptions for Grove Art Online. We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in Washington as well as our favorite sessions for the conference.
What is the future of cardio-thoracic surgery? By Roberto Lorusso Oxford University Press is pleased to welcome Roberto Lorusso as one of the new Editor-in-Chief of Multimedia Manual of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (MMCTS). We got to know Dr. Lorusso during an interview and discovered how he came to specialise in cardio-thoracic surgery, how he sees this field in the future, and what he has in store for the Manual.
Getting (active) welfare to work in Australia and around the world By Jenny M. Lewis, Mark Considine, and Siobhan O'Sullivan In the 1990s Australia began reforming its employment assistance system. Referred to as welfare-to-work, at the close of last century Australia had a publicly owned, publically delivered system. By 2003, that system had been fully privatised and all jobseekers received their assistance via a private agency, working under government contract. To this day, Australia is the only country with a fully privatise quasi-market in employment services.
Lulu at the Met (November 2015): A good thing becomes too much By David Ostwald Alban Berg’s Lulu is generally acknowledged as one of the master pieces of twentieth century opera. However, because of its many musical and theatrical challenges, it is seldom performed. The last time Lulu was seen at the Metropolitan opera was in 1980.
…whether the wether will weather the weather By Anatoly Liberman It so happens that I have already touched on the first and the last member of the triad whether–wether—weather in the past. By a strange coincidence, the interval between the posts dealing with them was exactly four years: they appeared on 19 April 2006 (weather) and 21 April 2010 (whether) respectively.
A memorial for Gallows Hill By Emerson W. Baker We now know the precise location where 19 innocent victims were hanged for witchcraft in Salem in 1692. I am honored to be a member of the Gallows Hill Project team who has worked with the City of Salem to confirm the location on a lower section of Gallows Hill known as Proctor’s Ledge. And I am pleased too that the city has already begun planning to properly memorialize the site.
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense turns 240 years old By Thomas Paine Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first a patron, the last a punisher.
What are the hidden effects of tax credits? By Paul Fisher UK tax-credits are benefits first introduced in 1999 to help low-paid families through topping up their wages with the aims of ‘making work pay’ and reducing poverty, although they also cover non-working families with children.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe By Joy Mizan The OUP Philosophy team have selected Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe as their January Philosopher of the Month. Anscombe was born in Limerick, Ireland, and spent much of her education at the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge. An analytical philosopher, Anscombe is best known for her works in the philosophy of mind, action, language, logic, and ethics.
Cultural foreign policy from the Cold War to today By Greg Barnhisel When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its nominees for the 2015 Academy Awards, the James Franco/Seth Rogen comedy The Interview wasn’t on the list. That Oscar spurned this “bromance” surprised nobody. Most critics hated the film and even Rogen’s fans found it one of his lesser works. Those audiences almost didn’t have a chance to see the film.
Infiltrating the Dark Web By Andrew Staniforth Law enforcement agencies are challenged on many fronts in their efforts to protect online users from all manner of cyber-related threats. Through constant innovation, cybercriminals across the world are developing increasingly sophisticated malware, rogue mobile apps and more resilient botnets. With little or no technical knowledge, criminals now occupy parts of the Internet to carry out their illegal activities within the notorious Dark Web.
In memoriam: Pierre Boulez By Jonathan Cross I’ve been very struck over the past couple of days listening to the testimony of so many musicians who worked with Pierre Boulez. They all seem to say the same thing. He had a phenomenal understanding of the music (his own and that of others), he had an extraordinary ear, and he was a joy to work with because he gave so much.
An efficient way to find monsters with two faces By Luis J. Goicoechea Quasars are distant galactic nuclei generating spectacular amounts of energy by matter accretion onto their central supermassive black holes. The precise geometry and origin of this huge activity are still largely unknown, and direct spatial resolution of the emitting regions from such distant monsters is not currently possible.
Conflict in the Sangin district of Afghanistan By Mike Martin The news seems to have gone quiet about Sangin district in Helmand. Before Christmas there was an intense media storm that the district was about to fall to the ‘Taliban’. There were reports of the SAS being deployed, and the day after, the story of multiple Taliban commanders being killed in a night raid. As I have written before, it is impossible to separate every one with guns in Helmand into two groups: the ‘government’ and the ‘Taliban’, so it is difficult to see who the SAS were targeting, and who they were supporting.
Addressing anxiety in the teaching room: techniques to enhance mathematics and statistics education By Meena Kotecha In June 2015, I co-chaired the organising committee of the first international mathematics education conference of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) titled ‘Barriers and Enablers to Learning Maths’ with the University of Glasgow, who also hosted it. The two and a half day conference explored approaches to teaching and learning mathematics and was structured around ten parallel sessions that delegates could choose from, including ‘Addressing mathematics & statistics anxiety’ and ‘Enhancing engagement with mathematics & statistics.’
Top ten developments in international law in 2015 By Merel Alstein From the adoption of blockbuster treaties to the myriad of legal questions raised by the fight against ISIS, international law was front and centre in many of 2015’s top news stories. These events are likely to change the shape and scope of the international legal order for years to come.
How do you pronounce “Pulitzer?” By Edwin Battistella This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Pulitzer Prize, the annual prize in journalism and letters established by the estate of Joseph Pulitzer in 1916 and run by the Columbia School of Journalism (also established by Pulitzer’s estate). The first Pulitzer Prizes in reporting were given in 1917 to Herbert Bayard Swope of New York World for a series of articles titled “Inside the German Empire” and to the New York Tribune for its editorial on the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.
Ukraine (finally) recognizes the hidden genocide of the Crimean Tatars By Brian Glyn Williams On 12 November 2015 the Ukrainian Parliament took the bold step of recognizing the destruction of the Crimean Tatar nation by the Soviet Army in 1944 as a genocide. The surviving Crimean Tatars hope that this long overdue action will shine an expository light on a genocide that has been kept hidden for decades and is still not recognized by Russia.
The exceptional English? By George Molyneaux There is nothing new about the notion that the English, and their history, are exceptional. This idea has, however, recently attracted renewed attention, since certain EU-sceptics have tried to advance their cause by asserting the United Kingdom’s historic distinctiveness from the Continent.
Money, money, money By David Crystal In All’s Well that Ends Well (3.7), Helena devises a plan to ignite the affections of her husband, for which she needs the help of her new acquaintances, a widow and her daughter. The widow is naturally suspicious, but Helena persuades her by offering to pay for her daughter’s marriage.
Exploring spiral-host radio galaxies By Veeresh Singh A galaxy is a gigantic system possessing billions of stars, vast amounts of gas, dust and dark matter held together by gravitational attraction. Typical size of galaxies can be anywhere from a few tens-of-thousands to a few hundreds-of-thousands of light-years.
The paradox of jobless innovation By Charles Weiss and William B. Bonvillian The United States faces a paradox: being on the cutting edge of technology seems to have in recent years only a marginal effect on job creation. The history books and our traditional economic theories seem to have failed us – whereas before, technological revolutions usually led to tremendous growth in both GNP and employment, now, on the eve of some of the most impressive innovations we’ve ever seen, the economy and employment are recovering since the 2008 “Great Recession” at the slowest rate since the Depression.
10 crisp facts about money during Shakespeare’s time Would you like to pay a halfpenny for a small beer, 1 shilling for a liter of wine, or less than 2 pounds for a horse? If you lived in 17th century England you could buy all of these and even afford Shakespeare’s First Folio, which was only £1 when it was published.
Generations of asylum seekers By Jonathan Wolff With this family history behind me, questions of immigration are never far from my mind. I owe my existence to the generosity of the UK in taking in generations of refugees, as well as the kindness shown by one wealthy unmarried Christian woman – who agreed to foster my father for a few months until his parents arrived, but as that never happened, becoming his guardian until adulthood.
Words of 2015 round-up By Alice Northover Word of the Year season has closed with the selections of the American Dialect Society this past weekend, so it’s time to reflect on the different words of the 2015. The refugee crisis and gender politics have featured prominently in selections around the globe as well as the influence of technology.
Q&A with audio transcriptionist Teresa Bergen By Andrew Shaffer As you may have heard, Wisconsinites love the people who can quickly turn our spoken words into written text. Transcriptionists are the unsung heroes of the oral history world, helping to make sure the incredible audio information stored in archives across the globe is accessible to the largest audience possible.
The traumatising language of risk in mental health nursing By Patrick Callaghan Despite progress in the care and treatment of mental health problems, violence directed at self or others remains high in many parts of the world. Subsequently, there is increasing attention to risk assessment in mental health. But it this doing more harm than good?
Separating investment facts from flukes By Campbell R. Harvey, Yan Liu, and Heqing Zhu There are hundreds of investment products in the market that claim to outperform. The idea is that certain information is identified that allow us to pick stocks that will do better than average and those that will do worse than average. When you buy the stocks that will do better and short sell the ones that you think will do worse, you have potentially identified a strategy that will ‘beat the market.’
Is an engineering mind-set linked to violent terrorism? By David Blockley In a British Council report Martin Rose argues that the way STEM subjects are taught reinforces the development of a mind-set receptive to violent extremism. Well taught social sciences, on the other hand, are a potentially powerful intellectual defence against it. Whilst his primary focus was MENA (Middle East and North Africa) he draws implications for education in the West.
Learning from music education – Episode 30 – The Oxford Comment More than ever before, educators around the world are employing innovative methods to nurture growth, creativity, and intelligence in the classroom. Even so, finding groundbreaking ways to get through to students can be an uphill battle, particularly for students with special needs.
Those four new elements By Eric Scerri The recent announcement of the official ratification of four super-heavy elements, with atomic numbers 113, 115, 117 and 118, has taken the world of science news by storm. It seems like there is an insatiable appetite for new information about the elements and the periodic table within the scientific world and among the general public.
An interview with oboist Heather Calow By Helena Palmer This month we’re spotlighting the unique and beautiful oboe. We asked Heather Calow, lifelong oboe player and now an oboe teacher based in Leicester, UK, what first drew her to the instrument.
We should all eat more DNA By Dawn Field 2016 is here. The New Year is a time for renewal and resolution. It is also a time for dieting. Peak enrolment and attendance times at gyms occur after sumptuous holiday indulgences in December and again when beach wear is cracked out of cold storage in summer. As the obesity epidemic reaches across the globe we need new solutions. We need better ways to live healthy lifestyles.
If “ifs” and “ands” were pots and pans…. By Anatoly Liberman If things happened as they are suggested in the title above, I would not have been able to write this post, and, considering that 2016 has just begun, it would have been a minor catastrophe. People of all ages and, as they used to say, from all walks of life want to know something about word origins, but they prefer to ask questions about “colorful” words (slang).
Gender politics of the generic “he” By Dennis Baron There’s been a lot of talk lately about what pronouns to use for persons whose gender is unknown, complicated, or irrelevant. Options include singular they and invented, common-gender pronouns. Each has its defenders and its critics.
How do people read mathematics? By Lara Alcock At first glance this might seem like a non-question. How do people read anything? All suitably educated people read at least somewhat fluently in their first language – why would reading mathematics be different?
Economic trends of 2015 By Richard S. Grossman Economists are better at history than forecasting. This explains why financial journalists sound remarkably intelligent explaining yesterday’s stock market activity and, well, less so when predicting tomorrow’s market movements. And why I concentrate on economic and financial history. Since 2015 is now in the history books, this is a good time to summarize a few main economic trends of the preceding year.
In memoriam: Sidney Mintz By Max Sinsheimer Professor Sidney Mintz passed away on 26 December 2015, at the age of 93. “Sid” as he was affectionately called by his acquaintances, taught for two decades at Yale University and went on to found the Anthropology Department at Johns Hopkins. His best-known work, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History, was published in 1985.
National Cancer Institute’s new tool puts cancer risk in context By Caroline McNeil Type “cancer risk assessment” into Google, and you’ll come up with a list of assessment tools for particular cancers, most with a strong focus on personal risk factors related to lifestyle, exposures, and medical and family history. Would it help also to get a broader view of cancer risk? The National Cancer Institute thinks so.
The Irish Trollope By John McCourt There are times when it feels like Anthony Trollope’s Irish novels might just as well have fallen overboard on the journey across the Irish Sea. Their disappearance would, for the better part of a century, have largely gone unnoticed and unlamented by readers and critics alike. Although interest has grown in recent times, the reality is that his Irish novels have never achieved more than qualified success, and occupy only a marginal place in his overall oeuvre.
The music parenting tightrope By Amy Nathan Walking the music parenting tightrope isn’t easy for music moms and dads. Figuring out how to be helpful without turning into an overbearing nag can be tricky, especially during a youngster’s early adolescent years. Those often-turbulent years can upend many aspects of a child’s life, including music.
The Department of Labor awakens By Edward A. Zelinsky At President Obama’s urging, the US Department of Labor (DOL) has proposed a new regulation condoning state-sponsored private sector retirement programs. The proposed DOL regulation extends to such state-run programs principles already applicable to private employers’ payroll deduction IRA arrangements. If properly structured, payroll deduction IRA arrangements avoid coverage under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and the employers implementing such arrangements dodge status as ERISA sponsors and fiduciaries.
The art of conversation By Tabish Khair On 28 November 2015, I had a reading and panel discussion at Médiathèque André Malraux, a library and media centre in Strasbourg, the main city of the Alsace region of France, adjoining Germany, traditionally one of the Christmas capitals of the continent, and currently the site of the European Parliament.
The world’s most (in)famous exoplanet vanishes By Vinesh Rajpaul In 2012, a team of astrophysicists led by Xavier Dumusque caused a sensation when they announced the discovery of Alpha Centauri Bb: an Earth-sized planet in the Alpha Centauri star system, the star system closest to the Sun. If verified, Alpha Centauri Bb would be the closest known exoplanet to our own Solar System, and possibly also the lowest mass planet ever discovered around a star similar to the Sun.
Repentance and the Bible: A Q&A with David Lambert By David Lambert and Luke Drake Many people assume that repentance is and always has been a substantial part of the Bible, but that was not always the case. In the following interview between Luke Drake, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and David Lambert, an assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of How Repentance Became Biblical: Judaism, Christianity, and the Interpretation of Scripture, the two discuss how repentance came to be seen as a part of the Bible and the early history of repentance as a concept.
The problems with democracy – continuing the conversation into a new year By Matthew Flinders An invitation from the British Library to give the first in a new public lecture series called ‘Enduring Ideas’ was never a request I was going to decline. But what ‘enduring idea’ might I focus on and what exactly would I want to say that had not already been said about an important idea that warranted such reflection? The selected concept was ‘democracy’ and the argument sought to set out and unravel a set of problems that could – either collectively or individually – be taken to explain the apparent rise in democratic disaffection.
The rich and the poor in Shakespeare By Gabriel Egan George Bernard Shaw considered himself a socialist, but was apt to make surprising remarks about the poor. “Hamlet’s experiences simply could not have happened to a plumber,” he wrote in the preface to his play The Dark Lady of the Sonnets in 1910, and “A poor man is useful on the stage only as a blind man is: to excite sympathy.”
A world with persons but without states By Robert Hanna Kantian ethical anarchism is ethical anti-statism. It says that there is no adequate rational justification for political authority, the state, or any other state-like institution, and that we should reject and exit the state and other state-like institutions, in order to create and belong to a real-world, worldwide ethical community, aka humanity, in a world without any states or state-like institutions.
A glimpse into the world of Shakespeare and money in the 16th and 17th centuries What would it be like to live in Elizabethan England? One might be lucky enough to dress in embroidered clothing and commission portraits, or one might be forced to beg for alms or peddle trinkets in order to survive.
Simulation technology – a new frontier for healthcare? By Richard H. Riley While myriad forces are changing the face of contemporary healthcare, one could argue that nothing will change the way medicine is practiced, more than current advances in technology. Indeed, technology is changing the entire world at a remarkable rate – with mobile phones, music players, emails, databases, laptop computers, and tablets transforming the way we work, play, and relax.
Very Short Resolutions: filling the gaps in our knowledge in 2016 Why make New Year’s Resolutions you don’t want to keep? This year the Very Short Introductions team have decided to fill the gaps in their knowledge by picking a VSI to read in 2016. Which VSIs will you be reading in 2016? Let us know in the comment section below or via the Very Short Introductions Facebook page.
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Top ten OUPblog posts of 2015 by the numbers By Alice Northover On Tuesday, we shared our editors’ selections of the best of OUPblog publishing this year, and now it’s time to examine another measure: popularity, or in our case, pageviews. Our most read blog posts of 2015 are… not published in 2015. Once again, Galileo, Cleopatra, antibiotics, and quantum theory (all published in previous years) have dominated our traffic.
Traveling to provide humanitarian aid: lessons from Nepal By Ronnie Henry and Megan O’Sullivan Just before noon on 25 April 2015, a violent 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Nepal, killing almost 9,000 people and injuring more than 23,000. Hundreds of aftershocks followed. Entire villages were razed, destroying communities and leaving hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
Terrorist tactics, terrorist strategy By Robert Appelbaum Terrorism in the early modern world was rather different from terrorism today. In the first place, there wasn’t any dynamite or automatic weaponry. It was harder to kill. In the second place, the idea of killing people indiscriminately, without regard to their identity, didn’t seem to occur to anyone yet. But still, there was lots of violence using terrorist tactics.
Etymology gleanings for December 2015 By Anatoly Liberman I often refer to the English etymological dictionary by Hensleigh Wedgwood, and one of our correspondents became seriously interested in this work. He wonders why the third edition is not available online. I don’t know, but I doubt that it is protected by copyright. It is even harder for me to answer the question about the changes between the second and the third edition.
Can one hear the corners of a drum? By Julie Rowlett and Zhiqin Lu Why is the head of a drum usually shaped like a circle? How would it sound if it were shaped like a square instead? Or a triangle? If you closed your eyes and listened, could you tell the difference? The mathematics used to prove that “one can hear the corners of a drum” are founded on the study of two everyday phenomena: vibrations and heat conduction.
New Year’s Eve fireworks cause a mass exodus of birds By Judy Shamoun-Baranes As the days get shorter, the Netherlands, a low lying waterlogged country, becomes a safe haven for approximately five million waders, gulls, ducks, and geese, which spend the winter here resting and foraging in fresh water lakes, wetlands, and along rivers. Many of these birds travel to the Netherlands from their breeding ranges in the Arctic.
Atoning for the Wounded Knee Massacre: General Nelson A. Miles and the Lakota survivors’ pursuit of justice By David W. Grua Today, 29 December 2015 marks the 125th anniversary of the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, when the US Seventh Cavalry killed the Lakota Chief Big Foot and more than two hundred of his followers in South Dakota, ostensibly for their adherence to the Ghost Dance religion.
Complicating Rosie the Riveter By Theresa Kaminski American women’s roles during World War II were much more complicated than the iconic Rosie the Riveter image suggests. The popular poster does, however, serve as an intriguing starting point for discussing a more complex history, one which reveals ongoing attempts by those in authority to rein in disruptive and unruly women.
Beyond the rhetoric: Bombing Daesh (ISIS) Last week, I wrote about the presidential campaign rhetoric pledging to “carpet bomb” Daesh (ISIS), focusing on what it really means and why it is now generally irrelevant to the problems at hand. Today, I want to return to the present problems in more detail: What can be bombed? To what lasting end? And how has Daesh responded to our bombing thus far?
“Our fathers lied”: Rudyard Kipling as a war poet By Daniel Karlin The privileged poets of the Great War are those who fought in it—Rosenberg, Owen, Sassoon. This is natural and human, but it is not fair. Kipling is one of the finest poets of the War, but he writes as a parent, a civilian, a survivor—all three of them compromised positions.
Top OUPblog posts of 2015: Editor’s Picks By Alice Northover The publishing volume of the OUPblog has finally led to the inevitable — I can no longer read every article we publish. Fortunately, I have an amazing team of deputy editors who review articles, catch (most) errors, and discover the best of our publishing over the course of the year.
Highlights from Oxford Music in 2015 By Victoria Davis It’s hard to believe, but another busy year at Oxford University Press has gone by. Join our music team as we take a look back at the year that was 2015, from new scholarship to new faces, with a combination of computers, cake, and chicken.
Over a century of great judicial writing [infographic] By Ross Guberman Over the last century, many judges have paved the way for great judicial writing. In Point Taken: How to Write Like the World’s Best Judges, author Ross Guberman examines the cases and opinions of 34 acclaimed judges, focusing on their use of figurative language, vivid examples, grammar, and other writing techniques.
The continuing conundrum of shared sanitation in slums By Marieke Heijnen In an ideal world, each household would have their own toilet for privacy, practicality, and a sense of ownership—you’re much more likely to clean and maintain the facility if the toilet is yours. A toilet, latrine, or sanitation facility—these are several words to describe the same thing, namely the safe disposal of human waste, whilst providing privacy, dignity, and easy accessibility to all that need it (including young children or less abled individuals).
International law at Oxford in 2015 It’s been another exciting year for international law at Oxford University Press. We have put together some highlights from 2015 to reflect on the developments that have taken place, from scholarly commentary on current events to technology updates and conference discussions.
Why have we normalized Islamophobia? By John L. Esposito The horrific attacks in Paris and San Bernardino have captured headlines and triggered responses from journalists, politicians, and religious leaders. Some Western heads of government have once again threatened a global war against terrorism, while some political commentators have even invoked World War III.
Interpreting “screen time” By Jill H. Casid The screen is so unremarkable in its ubiquity that it might seem to take going out to the very limits to make us aware of the extent to which image projection has become our very condition. Take the migration of the phrase “screen time” from its place in film analysis as the descriptor for the edited duration of an action on screen.
A history of modern scholarship on Ancient Greek religion By Michael D. Konaris The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are a key period in the history of modern scholarship on ancient Greek religion. It was in nineteenth-century Germany that the foundations for the modern academic study of Greek religion were laid and the theories formulated by German scholars as well as by their British colleagues in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century exercised a profound influence on the field which would resonate until much later times.
Shakespeare and Islam By Matthew Dimmock Without Islam there would be no Shakespeare. This may seem surprising or even controversial to those who imagine a “national bard” insulated from the wider world. Such an approach is typified in the words of the celebrated historian A.L. Rowse, who wrote that when it came to creatively connecting with that world, Shakespeare, the “quiet countryman,” was “the least engaged writer there ever was.”
Mythology redux: The Force Awakens once again By John C. Lyden For some time now, I have been among those who have argued that the fandom associated with the Star Wars franchise is akin to a religion. There are those who will quarrel with the word choice, but it is hard to gainsay the dedication of fans to the original films
Fog everywhere: an extract from Charles Dickens’ Bleak House By Charles Dickens London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
Gods and religion in Shakespeare’s work [infographic] Shortly after her coronation in 1558 Queen Elizabeth I reasserted and maintained royal supremacy within the English church, thus confirming her power as a Protestant leader. Shakespeare’s writing flourished under her reign, when Catholic and Protestant doctrines developed distinct methods of worship, mediation, and, perhaps most significantly, power and authority.
OUP Philosophy Test your knowledge of Baruch Spinoza [quiz] By Joy Mizan This December, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen Baruch Spinoza as their Philosopher of the Month. The seventeenth century philosopher was seen as a controversial figure due to his views on God and religion, leading to excommunication from the Amsterdam Jewish community and his books being banned by the Church.
A few of our favorite things By Andrew Shaffer In the spirit of Christmas (and in honor of our all-time-favorite daytime talk show host), our present to you is a list of some of our favorite things from 2015. We hope you enjoy reading our list as much as we did writing it.
Christmas in New York: the restaurants and shops that help us celebrate By Bridget Stokes Looking for a place to get the essentials for a Christmas Eve feast? Or perhaps you’re leaving the cooking to the professionals and you’re looking for a place to make a reservation? With the holiday season in full swing, what better way to celebrate than enjoying some of New York City’s top eats.
Plagiarism or text recycling? It depends on the context. By Cary Moskovitz If you went to college, your school likely had an official statement about plagiarism similar to this one from Oxford University: Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition.
When gods become shelterless: rituals and reconstructing temples in post-earthquake Nepal By Axel Michaels With the devastating earthquake in Nepal on 25 April 2015, not only humans but also gods became shelterless. The famous Car Narayan or Fourfold Vishnu Temple in Patan is one of the many temples that completely collapsed. It was constructed in the classical Newar “pagoda” style with two pyramidal roofs and an inner ambulatory by a local ruler, Purandara Simha, in 1565.
Top five holiday-related crimes By Joe Couling The holiday season is a time for sharing, spreading peace, and promoting goodwill… but it’s also a time went tempers fray, people over-indulge and the outright criminal elements of society take advantage of spirit of the season to wreak havoc. Here are five of the most appalling holiday crimes, from opening presents early, right through to Santacide (not really).
Handbells: a festive instrument By Sarah Iker Handbells aren’t just ringing for the Salvation Army this holiday season. If you’ve ever tuned in to a holiday music special, you’ve probably seen a handbell choir playing the Christmas standards. Handbells have been a part of the holiday landscape for hundreds of years.
Reflecting on international human rights law By A. Mark Weisburd The 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10th this year prompted some reflections and grounds for concern about international human rights law.
It’s not a crime, it’s a blunder By Anatoly Liberman The author of the pronouncement in the title above is a matter of dispute, and we’ll leave his name in limbo, where I believe it belongs. The Internet will supply those interested in the attribution with all the information they need. The paradoxical dictum (although the original is in French, even Murray’s OED gave its English version in the entry blunder) is ostensibly brilliant but rather silly.
Climate change poses risks to your health By Barry S. Levy and Jonathan A. Patz When heads of state and other leaders of 195 nations reached a landmark accord at the recent United Nations COP21 conference on climate change in Paris, they focused primarily on sea level rise, droughts, loss of biodiversity, and ways to decrease greenhouse gas emissions in order to reduce these consequences. But arguably the most serious and widespread impacts of climate change are those that are hazardous to the health of people.
How the stories got their name: Kipling and the origins of the ‘Just-So’ stories By Daniel Karlin The storyteller has always been a figure of magic, and the circle a magic figure. This is Rudyard Kipling, casting his spell around 1902, the year the Just So Stories for Little Children were published. He is on a liner sailing from Southampton to Cape Town in South Africa, where the Kipling family had taken to spending the winter.
Can history help us manage humanitarian crises? By Richard Breitman People frequently ask whether the study of history can help in managing humanitarian crises. This question is particularly timely given the massive outflow of refugees from Syria and the problems of admitting large numbers of refugees to other countries, including the United States.
Journal of Design History Aesthetics and the Victorian Christmas card By Patricia Zakreski When we think of Christmas cards, we usually picture images of holly, robins, angels and candles, or snow-covered cottages with sledging children, Nativity scenes with visiting Wise Men, or benevolent Santas with sacks full of presents. Very rarely, I imagine, do we picture a summer woodland scene features lounging female figures in classical dress and a lyre-playing cherub.
A history of black actors in the Star Wars universe By Fikriyyah George Nowhere is media’s influence on social attitudes more evident than among the millions of fans following Star Wars. Decades after the franchise’s creator, George Lucas, made his first iteration of the fictional galaxy filled with aliens, Stormtroopers, and the Force, his vision has captivated fans with countless iconic moments.
The Big Picture and The Big Short: How Virtue helps us explain something as complex as the Financial Crisis By Jennifer A. Baker and Mark D. White The star-studded new film The Big Short is based on Michael Lewis’s best-selling expose of the 2008 financial crisis. Reviewers are calling it the “ultimate feel-furious movie about Wall Street.” It emphasizes the oddball and maverick character of four mid-level hedge fund managers in order to explain what it would take to ignore the rating agencies’ evaluations and bet against the subprime industry—that is, their own industry.
The politics of “carpet-bombing,” the ignorance of history, and the usefulness of modern air power Seemingly all the US presidential candidates, in both parties, agree that “something more” should be done about Daesh or ISIS. Most of them, especially the Republican candidates, seem to think that doing more involves more unrestrained bombing (it is unclear if any of them recognize the similarity to demands for unrestrained bombing of Vietnam).
Did comedy kill Socrates? By Stephen Halliwell This year, 2015, has seen a special landmark in cultural history: the 2500th anniversary of the official ‘birth’ of comedy. It was in the spring of 486 BC that Athens first included plays called comedies (literally, ‘revel-songs’) in the programme of its Great Dionysia festival.
Carol: a “touching” love story both literally and musically By Ivan Raykoff Todd Haynes’ new film Carol is an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s semi-autobiographical novel The Price of Salt, first published in 1952 under the pseudonym Claire Morgan. Daring for its time, the novel depicts a passionate lesbian romance between Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a well-off middle-aged New Jersey housewife divorcing her husband, and nineteen-year-old Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), who works as a department store salesclerk.
Oxford Law Vox: deposit protection and bank resolution By Nikoletta Kleftouri and Fiona Parker In this episode of the Oxford Law Vox podcast, banking law expert Nikoletta Kleftouri talks to George Miller about banking law issues today. Together they discuss some of the major legal and policy issues that arose from the financial crisis in 2008, including assessing systemic risk and whether the notion of “too big to fail” is on the road to extinction.
Dickens, Dickens-Style: How the BBC are making use of the ‘streaky bacon’ effect By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst ‘What connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the house in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabouts of Jo the outlaw with the broom,’ asks Dickens’s narrator in Bleak House. As the novel develops, it offers various possible answers, including disease, family, money, and friendship.
Oxford Medicine Online Christmas calamities By Ellie Gregory It’s that time of year again: chestnuts are roasting on an open fire, halls are decked with boughs of holly, and everyone’s rockin’ around the Christmas tree…. As idyllic as this sounds, sometimes the holiday season just doesn’t live up to its expectations of joy, peace, and goodwill.
Finding a new perspective on psychedelics By Matt Turney Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took an acid trip in late 1950s that reportedly allowed him to revisit the mental and spiritual condition that had inspired him to swear off booze in the first place. Although AA has no religious affiliation, the numerous references to God throughout the twelve steps make its emphasis on interior discovery and redemption an indispensable part of the program.
The business of inequality By Christian Olaf Christiansen Recently, debates about inequality have risen to the forefront in academic and public debates. The publication of the French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century in 2013 did not, to say the least, go by unnoticed. And many other prominent economists have partaken in the debate about global inequality: Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Angus Madison, just to name a few.
Journal of Conflict and Security Law The ISIS emergence: Enemy of the international community By Themistoklis Tzimas Labeling ISIS simply a terrorist organization or an apocalyptic sect of fanatics does very little in terms both of explaining and of confronting the phenomenon. What – among other things – lies at the basis of its emergence, behind and through its acts of brutality, is a different vision of international community, one hostile to that which the vast majority of states and international organizations share.
How much do you know about wine? [quiz] By Richard Hemming The world of wine is developing rapidly, so much so that the updated fourth edition of The Oxford Companion to Wine has added 300 new entries, including wine apps, aromatics, minerality, social media, and tasting notes language. The wine map as a whole has changed with countries like Hong Kong and many in Northern Europe developing as substantial wine producers.
What does the Paris Agreement really mean for climate change? By Paul F. Steinberg The Paris Agreement will be significant only to the extent that it can motivate domestic policy change, cross-national technical assistance, and social pressure to reduce nations’ dependence on fossil fuels.
SIPRI Yearbook 2015 Not quite there: 15 years of women, peace, and security By Emma Bjertén-Günther and Katherine Sullivan The 15th anniversary of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 has prompted considerable analysis on the achievements of the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. To date, 52 countries have adopted a National Action Plan (NAP) for the implementation of Resolution 1325 and, within the United Nations, the number of women in senior leadership positions has increased.
Old Nick on the ‘net: on Satanic politics By Asbjorn Dyrendal, James R. Lewis, and Jesper A. Petersen On 19 October 2015, the tech culture website Geek published another installment of procrastination-inducing click-bait lists, namely a rundown of “The 11 best Satanists.” Here, writer Aubrey Sitterson introduced 11 people associated with Satanism, from Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey to music icons Marilyn Manson and King Diamond.
Seditious Shakespeare: beyond hierarchy By Kiernan Ryan Given that Shakespeare’s company enjoyed royal patronage, performed regularly at Court, and became known as the King’s Men upon the accession of James I in 1603, you’d be forgiven for assuming that his plays were bent on buttressing rather than subverting the status quo. That assumption certainly seems to be backed up in Troilus and Cressida by Ulysses’ apocalyptic vision of the anarchy that’s bound to ensue when “degree, priority and place” are not strictly observed: “Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows.”
Debating the brain drain: an excerpt on emigration By Gillian Brock and Michael Blake While there has been considerable normative theorizing on the topic of immigration, most analyses have focused on the relation between the migrant or prospective migrant and the society she will join—issues of admission, accommodation, integration, and so forth.
Ringing in the new year with Who’s Who As 2015 draws to a close, Who’s Who is already ushering in the new year with its latest cohort of changemakers from the United Kingdom. From government and media, to business and the arts, over 1,000 new entries provide a glimpse into the lives of the world’s most influential leaders.
OUP’s NYC office hosts a spelling bee By Taylor Coe This past summer, several employees at the New York City office of Oxford University Press took part in a rite that most of haven’t experienced since elementary school: a spelling bee. In the age of autocorrect and spellchecker, the skill of spelling has undoubtedly lost some of its luster.
Police killings and the Supreme Court By Vicki Lens In 2010, Israel Leija was killed by a police officer during a high speed chase, which ended when Mullenix, a police officer, stationed on an overpass, shot several bullets into Leija’s car. The chase began when the police tried to arrest Leija at a drive-in restaurant for violating parole on a misdemeanor charge. When the officer approach Leija in his car, Leija drove off, with the police giving chase, while several other officers set up tire spikes along the road to stop him.
Systemic: Why the world has become a more dangerous place By Mauro F. Guillén Is the world a more perilous place than ever before? Why are there so many crises? What can we do about it? Newspaper headlines routinely reflect the fact that terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and economic and financial meltdowns are becoming more frequent and more far-reaching in their effects.
How much do you know about money during the Elizabethan Era? [quiz] If you were living in Elizabethan England you would find that common goods, such as spices and books, would cost you no more than a pound or two. However, you would probably be earning about the same amount depending on your trade or craft.
Predictive brains, sentient robots, and the embodied self By Andy Clark Is the human brain just a rag-bag of different tricks and stratagems, slowly accumulated over evolutionary time? For many years, I thought the answer to this question was most probably ‘yes’. The most tantalizing (but least developed) aspect of the emerging framework concerns the origins of conscious experience itself.
Migrant, refugee, or human? The unsettled issue of human rights in Europe By Cathryn Costello Europe has an apparent human rights surfeit. The European Convention on Human Rights and its dedicated Court of Human Rights establishes a pan-European human rights minimum. The EU has its Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Court of Justice, widely regarded as the most powerful supranational court in the world.
Talk is cheap: diverse dignities at the centre of mental disorder By Werdie van Staden It may be fairly easy to say that the dignity of a person in the domain of psychiatry should be respected. Justification is easy to find. For example, the South African Constitution proclaims ‘everyone has inherent dignity and the right to have their dignity respected and protected.’
The fate of foreign refugees, past and present By Caroline Shaw In 1812 Benjamin West completed his portrait of John Eardley Wilmot. The portrait was two paintings in one: it depicted its subject, Wilmot, lawyer and former Chief Justice of Common Pleas, at the foreground; in the background was a painting within a painting, a scene of American loyalists, including Native Americans, African slaves, women, and children.
Getting rid of Schrödinger’s immigrant By Alan Gamlen, Chris Kutarna, and Ashby Monk One of the best jokes circulating on social media today is a bogus announcement that Donald Trump is warning Americans about ‘Schrödinger’s immigrant’: a foreigner who lazes around on benefits while simultaneously stealing your job. A UK version of the gag circulated during the recent general election, also playing on the famous quantum physics paradox, in which a single particle that exists simultaneously in two opposite states theoretically causes a cat in a sealed box to be both dead and alive at the same time.
Focus on concussions: why now? By Rosemarie Scolaro Moser Lately, not a day goes by when we don’t hear about which professional athlete has been sidelined or benched due to a concussion. Formerly the province of boxers, concussions, once called “the invisible injury,” are no longer invisible, as network TV and the movie industry have unveiled their presence across sports, whether football, ice hockey, soccer, rugby, NASCAR, and beyond.
Winter, as told in seven very short facts By Connie Ngo Though the winter season in the northern hemisphere doesn’t officially begin until Monday, 21 December, many of us anticipate the joyful holidays and the not-so-joyful cold weather with bated breath. To get you prepped with some trivia arsenal for holiday parties, we’ve pulled some interesting facts about winter from our Very Short Introductions Online resource.
Place of the Year nominee spotlight: Dwarf planet Pluto By Robert Massey This July, a NASA space probe completed our set of images of the planets, at least as I knew them growing up. New Horizons, a probe that launched back in 2006, arrived at Pluto and its moons, and over a very brief encounter, started to send back thousands of images of this hitherto barely known place.
Will we ever know for certain what killed Simón Bolívar? By Philip A. Mackowiak When Simón Bolívar died on this day 185 years ago, tuberculosis was thought to have been the disease that killed him. An autopsy showing tubercles of different sizes in his lungs seemed to confirm the diagnosis, though neither microscopic examination nor bacterial cultures of his tissues were performed.
The reality of DUI prevention laws [infographic] By Lorne Tepperman and Nicole Meredith Do DUI prevention laws actually deter driving under the influence? Authors Lorne Tepperman and Nicole Meredith argue that punishments like fines, imprisonment, and license suspension are not as effective as we like to think. They have found that people are more likely to be changed by constructive influences (e.g., alcohol counseling) and social taboos than they are by threats of punishment.
Cyber terrorism and piracy By Alfred Rolington As the analysis reaches deeper behind the recent Paris attacks, it has become clear that terrorism today is a widening series of global alliances often assisted and connected via cyber social media, and electronic propaganda.
Top 10 Christmas carols countdown Christmas is the busiest time of year by far for the Oxford Music Hire Library. Oxford University Press publishes most of the carols the world knows and loves – the one that has just popped into your head is probably one of ours – with newly-composed Christmas titles added every year. Carol orders come in as early as August and keep rolling in until worryingly close to the big day itself.
Which fairy tale character are you? [quiz] The magic of fairy tales doesn’t just lie in their romantic landscapes and timeless themes of good against evil. The best fairy tales are always populated with compelling and memorable characters – like the rags-to-riches princess, the gallant prince on horseback set to save the day, or the jealous and lonely evil king or queen. Which famous fairy tale character do you think you’re most like?
Blunted purpose: The origin of blunt, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman In their search for the origin of blunt, etymologists roamed long and ineffectually among similar-sounding words and occasionally came close to the sought-for source, though more often look-alikes led them astray. One of such decoys was Old Engl. blinn. Blinn and blinnan meant “cessation” and “to cease” respectively, but how can “cease” and “devoid of sharpness; obtuse” be related?
Birthday letters from Jane Austen By Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade Happy 240th birthday, Jane Austen! Jane Austen was born 16 December 1775 in Hampshire, England. Birthdays were important events in Jane Austen’s life – those of others perhaps more so than her own.
Let’s refocus on cancer prevention By Ian Olver There are so many reports of agents that may cause cancer, that there is a temptation to dismiss them all. Tabloid newspapers have listed everything from babies, belts, biscuits, and bras, to skiing, shaving, soup, and space travel. It is also tempting to be drawn into debates about more esoteric candidates for causative agents like hair dyes, underarm deodorants, or pesticides.
How is snow formed? [infographic] Every winter the child inside us hopes for snow. It brings with it the potential for days off work and school, the chance to make snowmen, create snow angels, and have snowball fights with anyone that might happen to walk past. But as the snow falls have you ever wondered how it is formed? What goes on in the clouds high above our heads to make these snowflakes come to life?
Suffragette and the cost of winning the vote for women By J.D. Zahniser People often find their interest in a cause awakened by a dramatization on stage, screen, between the pages of a book or, these days, on YouTube. This fall, Americans are learning about the highly dramatic battle in Britain to win the vote for women.
Emma in Macedonia By Kathryn Sutherland Like Mansfield Park, the novel that precedes it, Emma is a closely defended study of English life. Begun, according to Cassandra Austen’s chronology of her sister’s compositions, 21 January 1814, before the Fall of Paris and Napoleon’s exile to Elba, it was completed on 29 March 1815, just months before the battle of Waterloo (June 1815) and Napoleon’s second and final abdication.
Building a culture of human rights By Jonathan Todres This year, many in government and civil society will be focused on the Syrian refugee crisis and other urgent human rights situations. The seemingly-endless stream of human rights emergencies demands immediate action.
Gilbert & Sullivan’s D’Oyly Carte memorabilia “sails” to the British Library By Curt Olds One of classical music’s greatest guilty pleasures—the music of Gilbert & Sullivan—celebrated an historic event in late October when the famed D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, the 144 year-old company founded by the team’s original producer, Richard D’Oyly Carte, sold some of their last remaining original Gilbert & Sullivan treasures to the British Library.
When humanitarian law meets human rights By Gabor Rona, Steven Haines, Marco Sassòli, Noëlle Quénivet, and Aurel Sari As we reflect on Human Rights Month and the implications of conflict throughout 2015, we have asked some of the humanitarian law scholars who contributed to the new Geneva Conventions Commentary to explore the interplay between these two important legal disciplines, and how we should approach them in the future.
The enigma of Herculaneum and the promise of modern technology By Dee L. Clayman When the ancient resort city of Herculaneum disappeared under more than 65 feet of hot ash and stone in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, a large library of important philosophical texts was buried with it. Like the city and everything in it, the library’s large collection of papyrus scrolls was burned to a crisp, and the efforts to recover, conserve and read these texts has a long, intriguing history.
Reaganism and the rise of the carceral state By Doug Rossinow Today’s carceral state has its roots in the “war on crime” that took hold in America in the 1980s. That “war” was led by the political forces that I associate with Reaganism, a conservative political formation that generally favored a rollback of state power. A notable exception to this rule was policing and imprisonment. Both Reaganism and the “war on crime” had a racial politics embedded in them, so that these three phenomena—Reaganism as a movement, the “war on crime,” and the resulting carceral state, and the racial politics of the 1980s—strengthened and reinforced the others.
Intentional infliction of harm in tort law By Christian Witting The tort of intentional infliction of harm would seem to encapsulate a basic moral principle – that if you injure someone intentionally and without just cause or excuse, then you should be liable for the commission of a tort – in addition to any crime that you commit. Occasionally, judges have held that there is such a principle, which is of general application: eg, Bowen LJ in Mogul Steamship v McGregor Gow & Co (1889).
“Both a Democracy and a Republic” – an extract from Debating India By Bhikhu Parekh Public debates have long been a tradition in India and have played a major role in shaping the country’s politics. This especially held true following India’s struggle for independence as national leaders considered the kind of country India should aspire to be.
Fragile democracy, volatile politics and the quest for a free media By Jan Zielonka A free media system independent of political interference is vital for democracy, and yet politicians in different parts of the world try to control information flows. Silvio Berlusconi has been a symbol of these practices for many years, but recently the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has been in the spotlight. The latter case shows that young and emerging democracies are particularly vulnerable to media capture by political and corporate interests because of their fragile institutions, polarised civil society and transnational economic pressures.
Holograms and contemporary culture By Sean F. Johnston Holograms are an ironic technology. They encompass a suite of techniques capable of astonishingly realistic imagery (in the right circumstances), but they’re associated with contrasting visions: on the one hand, ambitious technological dreams and, on the other, mundane and scarcely noticed hologram products.
Wealth, status, and currency in Shakespeare’s world [infographic] In 1623, one kilogram of tobacco was roughly five times more expensive than Shakespeare’s newly published First Folio. The entire collection, which cost only £1, contained thirty-six of his works, many of which incorporate 16th- and 17th-century notions of status, wealth, and money. Most of his characters are garbed in colors and fabrics befitting their social standing, and he frequently presents foreign currencies alongside English coins.
The paradoxes of Christmas By Roy T Cook While most of you probably don’t believe in Santa Claus (and some of you of course never did!), you might not be aware that Santa Claus isn’t just imaginary, he is impossible! In order to show that the very concept of Santa Claus is riddled with incoherence, we first need to consult the canonical sources to determine what properties and powers this mystical man in red is supposed to have.
Manspreading: how New York City’s MTA popularized a word without saying it By Katherine Connor Martin New York City, home of Oxford Dictionaries’ New York offices, has made numerous contributions to the English lexicon through the years, as disparate as knickerbocker and hip hop.
Migrants and medicine in modern Britain By Roberta Bivins In the late 1960s, an ugly little rhyme circulated in Britain’s declining industrial towns. At the time, seemingly unstoppable mass migration from Britain’s former colonies had triggered a succession of new laws aimed at restricting entry to Britain, followed by a new political emphasis on ‘race relations’ intended to quell international dismay and reduce internal racial tensions.
Portraits of religion in Shakespeare’s time Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries was marked by years of political and religious turmoil and change. From papal authority to royal supremacy, Reformation to Counter Reformation, and an endless series of persecutions followed by executions, England and its citizens endured division, freedom, and everything in between.
Does moral obligation derive from God’s command? By John E. Hare ‘Divine command theory’ is the theory that what makes something morally right is that God commands it, and what makes something morally wrong is that God forbids it. There are many objections to this theory. The four main ones are that it makes morality arbitrary, that it cannot work in a pluralistic society, that it makes morality infantile, and that it is viciously circular.
Saying goodbye to a great listener: a tribute to Cliff Kuhn, OHA Executive Director Last month, the oral history world suffered a major loss with the passing of Oral History Association Executive Director Cliff Kuhn. His work touched all of us, and many people have written far more eloquently about his life and his passion than we ever could.
Public Health Ethics Most powerful lesson from Ebola: We do not learn our lessons By Maxwell J. Smith and Ross E.G. Upshur ‘Ebola is a wake-up call.’ This is a common sentiment expressed by those who have reflected on the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. It is a reaction to the nearly 30,000 cases and over 11,000 deaths that have occurred since the first cases of the outbreak were reported in March 2014.
AAR/SBL 2015 annual meeting wrap-up By Alyssa Bender Russell From 21-24 November, our religion and Bibles team was in Atlanta attending the joint American Academy of Religion / Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting. We had a great time interacting with customers and meeting authors. Here’s a slide show of some of the authors who stopped by the booth with their new books.
The freewheeling Percy Shelley By Henry Stead In the week I first read the Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things — the long lost poem of Percy Bysshe Shelley — the tune on loop in my head was that of a less distant protest song, Masters of War. In 1963, unable to bear the escalating loss of American youth in Vietnam, the 22-year-old Bob Dylan sang out against those faceless profiteers of war.
Hip Hop therapy: the primacy of reflexivity and cultural dialogue By Michael Viega There are many rewards that can be garnered through sharing our cultural reflexivity, honoring the voices of the people we serve, involving ourselves in honest and open cultural dialogue, and delving into uncomfortable topics involving race, class, power, and privilege.
Do mountains matter? By Martin Price Do mountains matter? Today, 11 December, is International Mountain Day, celebrated worldwide since 2003. The fact that the UN General Assembly has designated such a day would suggest a simple answer. Yes – and particularly for the 915 million people who live in the mountain areas that cover 22 percent of the land area of our planet.
‘Your fame will be sung all round the world’: Martial on the convenience of libraries By Gideon Nisbet “Your library of a gracious country villa, from where the reader can see the city close by: might you squeeze in my naughty Muse, between your more respectable poems?” Martial’s avid fans will find themselves on familiar ground here, at the suburban ranch of the poet’s aspirational namesake, Julius Martial (4.64).
Cautious optimism on “No Exceptions” with important caveats By Elspeth Cameron Ritchie and Anne L. Naclerio As pleased and excited as I am, by Ash Carter’s announcement, that women will be allowed in all military occupational specialties, I am also concerned that we do it right. Otherwise we may have public failures that cause people to question the decision.
Welcome to Sital Niwas, Madame President By Anne T. Mocko Nepal has had an extraordinarily eventful 2015. It has been rocked by catastrophic earthquakes and burdened by a blockade from India, but it has also (finally) passed a new constitution and elected its first female head of state, Bidya Devi Bhandari, who took office in October.
How well do you know Ezra Pound? [quiz] By A. David Moody Ezra Pound was a major figure in the early modernist movement. During his lifetime he developed close interactions with leading writers and artists, such as Yeats, Ford, Joyce, Lewis, and Eliot. Yet his life was marked by controversy and tragedy, especially during his later years.
100 years of Frank Sinatra [infographic] By Callum Watts To celebrate what would have been Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday this December, we’ve put together an infographic of just a few of his accomplishments.
What are human rights? By Patrick Macklem On this anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is worth reflecting on the nature of human rights and what functions they perform in moral, political and legal discourse and practice. For moral theorists, the dominant approach to the normative foundations of international human rights conceives of human rights as moral entitlements that all human beings possess by virtue of our common humanity.
To whet your almost blunted purpose… Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Yes, you understood the title and identified its source correctly: this pseudo-Shakespearean post is meant to keep you interested in the blog “The Oxford Etymologist” and to offer some new ideas on the origin of the highlighted adjective.
Something of myself: the early life of Rudyard Kipling By Daniel Karlin ‘My first impression is of daybreak, light and colour and golden and purple fruits at the level of my shoulder.’ With this beautiful sentence, so characteristic in its fusion of poetry and physical, bodily detail, Rudyard Kipling evokes the fruit-market in Bombay, the city (now Mumbai) where he was born in 1865.
Birdwatching at the Federal Reserve By Richard S. Grossman Seven years ago this month the federal funds rate—a key short-term interest rate set by the Federal Reserve—was lowered below 0.25%. It has remained there ever since.Lowering the fed funds rate to rock-bottom levels did not come as a surprise. The sub-prime mortgage crisis led to a severe economic contraction, the Great Recession, and Federal Reserve policy makers used low interest rates—among other tools—in an effort to revive the economy.
Human rights and security in US history By Kevin Govern This Human Rights Day, commemorating the 10 December 1948 proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we embark on a year-long observance of the 50th anniversary of the two International Covenants on Human Rights: the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 16 December 1966.
Ready for the winter holidays? [quiz] By Samantha Zimbler With the most widely-celebrated winter holidays quickly approaching, test your knowledge of the cultural history and traditions that started these festivities. For example, what does Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have to do with Father Christmas? What are the key principles honored by lighting Kwanzaa candles?
The politics of science funding By Arne L. Kalleberg and Gordon Gauchat Government funding of science has become an increasingly prominent issue in the United States. Examining the current debate and its consequences, Social Problems editor Arne L. Kalleberg interviews Gordon Gauchat about his recent article “The Political Context of Science in the United States: Public Acceptance of Evidence-Based Policy and Science Funding.”
Hope from Paris: rebuilding trust By Charles Heckscher It has begun again: the age-old cycle of hate and counter-hate, self-justification and counter-justification, the grim celebrations of righteousness and revenge. In the US, conservative politicians play on it as demagogues always have, projecting strength and patriotism by refusing to take refugees from the lands terrorized by ISIS; my own governor, Chris Christie, tries to outdo his competition by arguing that even five-year-old orphans from Syria should be stopped and sent back, as if they are tainted by being from the same part of the world as the murderers.
Chag Urim Sameach! A Hanukkah music playlist By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Music has a long tradition of being associated with winter holidays, something we’re mindful of in the music departments of Oxford University Press. As Hanukkah is already in full swing, we asked members of our editorial, marketing, and publicity departments, for their favorite Hanukkah songs.
The Uber dilemma: are “crowd-work” platforms employers? By Jeremias Prassl The law has long struggled to adapt to new forms of employment – who should be responsible for the protection of workers’ rights, from minimum wage and working time to discrimination law, in today’s fragmented economy? These fundamental questions are now returning to public discussion as a result of the meteoric rise of so-called “crowd-work”.
The Little Sisters, the Supreme Court and the HSA/HRA alternative By Edward A. Zelinsky The Little Sisters of the Poor, an international congregation of Roman Catholic women, are unlikely litigants in the US Supreme Court. Consistent with their strong adherence to traditional Catholic doctrines, the Little Sisters oppose birth control. They are now in the Supreme Court because of that opposition.
Rethinking the “accidents will happen” mentality By Lorne Tepperman and Nicole Meredith Canadians have a vast lexicon of phrases they use to diminish accidents and their negative consequences. We acknowledge that “accidents will happen,” and remind ourselves that there’s “no use crying over spilled milk.” In fact, we’ve become so good at minimizing these seemingly random, unpredictable incidents that they now seem commonplace: we tend to view accidents as normal, everyday occurrences that everyone will inevitably experience at some point.
Judgments on Genocide from the European Court of Human Rights By William A. Schabas In the space of less than a week, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights issued two lengthy judgments relating to the crime of genocide. The 17-judge Grand Chamber is the most authoritative formation of the European Court, and in recent years the Court has found itself compelled to address a range of issues relating to the prevention and punishment of international crimes.
Renaissance of the ancient world By Adam Montefiore The Eastern Mediterranean, comprising Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Lebanon and Turkey, is politically one of the most divisive regions in the world. Greece and Turkey have had their historical differences; the tiny island of Cyprus is still divided and Israel and Lebanon’s last altercation happened all too recently disrupting the harvest in the Galilee and Bekaa Valley respectively.
How to write a letter of recommendation By Edwin Battistella It’s that time of the year again. Seniors are thinking ahead about their impending futures (a job, grad school, the Peace Corps). Former students are advancing in their careers. Colleagues and co-workers are engaging in year-end reflection and considering new positions.
Fire and ashes: success and failure in politics By Matthew Flinders Politics is a worldly art. It is a profession that is founded on the ability to instil hope, convince doubters and unite the disunited – to find simple and pain free solutions to what are in fact complex and painful social challenges.
Holograms and the technological sublime By Sean F. Johnston The hologram is a spectacular invention of the modern era: an innocuous artefact that can miraculously generate three-dimensional imagery. Yet this modern experience has deep roots. Holograms are part of a long lineage: the ability to generate visual “shock and awe” has, in fact, been an important feature of new optical technologies over the past century and a half.
Shakespeare and Religion By David Scott Kastan We want to know what Shakespeare believed. It seems to us important to know. He is our most important writer, and we want to know him from the inside. People regularly tell us that they do know what he believed, though mainly by showing what his father believed, or his contemporaries believed or, more accurately, what they said they believed—by demonstrating, that is, what was possible to believe.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the Month: Baruch Spinoza By Joy Mizan The OUP Philosophy team has selected Baruch Spinoza as their December Philosopher of the Month. Born in Amsterdam, Spinoza has been called the “Prince of Philosophy” due to his revelatory work in ethics, epistemology, and other fields of philosophy. His works include ‘The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy’, ‘Theologico-Political Treatise’, and his magnum opus, ‘Ethics’.
Seven important facts to know about climate change By Joseph Romm Climate expert Joseph Romm gives the facts about climate change and global warming, and what it means for us and the future of humanity.
The Hunger Games are playing on loop— And I am tired of watching By Brianna Burke Say you wanted to take over the world—how would you do it? Let’s agree it looks much like the world we live in today, where some countries hold inordinate power over the lives of people in others; where global systematic racism, the shameful legacy of colonization and imperialism, has contrived to keep many humans poor and struggling.
Could you be a Crime Scene Investigator? [quiz] By Sophie Butchers From Law and Order to True Detective, the role of the Crime Scene Investigator—at least, as portrayed on the screen—has captivated audiences around the world.
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel In 1933 in the midst of Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his first inaugural address, wisely stated, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That wisdom has as much relevance today as it did during the Depression.
Shakespeare and Holinshed’s Chronicles By Paulina Kewes Where did Shakespeare obtain material for his English history plays? The obvious answer would be to say that he drew on the second edition of Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (1587), a massive work numbering no fewer than 3,500,000 words that gave rise to more Renaissance plays than any other book, ancient or modern.
APA Eastern 2016: a conference guide By Joy Mizan The Oxford Philosophy Team will be starting off the New Year in Washington D.C.! We’re excited to see you at the upcoming 2016 American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Meeting. We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in Washington as well as our favorite sessions for the conference.
Lessons for Volkswagen on organizational resilience By D. Christopher Kayes Volkswagen shocked the world. The world’s largest automaker admitted to creating software that would deliberately generate false exhaust emission information on many of its popular cars. Making matters worse, Volkswagen’s top leadership seemed unsure about how to respond to the crisis as it threatened the company’s reputation, operations, and long-term strategy.
Willem Kolff’s remarkable achievement By Neil Turner Willem Kolff is famously the man who first put the developing theory of therapeutic dialysis into successful practice in the most unlikely circumstances: Kampen, in the occupied Netherlands during World War II. Influenced by a patient he had seen die in 1938, and in a remote hospital to avoid Nazi sympathisers put in charge in Groningen, he undertook experiments with cellulose tubing and chemicals and then went straight on to make a machine to treat patients from 1943.
The Wiz, then and now By Isaiah Matthew Wooden When the late Ken Harper first began pitching his idea for a show featuring an all black cast that would repeat and revise the popular plot of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, augmenting it with a Hitsville USA-inspired score, he had television in his sights.
Do you know your human rights? [quiz] By Andrew Clapham In the last two hundred years, the concept of human rights has gained prevalence in society. We can define our rights in terms of freedom of speech, privacy, and to be treated humanely, but where did these ideas come from? Do you think you know your human rights?
Season’s greetings – Episode 29 – The Oxford Comment Say goodbye to endless stuffing: it’s time to welcome our most beloved season of wreaths, wrapping paper…and confusion. The questions, as we began delving, were endless. Should we say happy holidays or season’s greetings?
Do you know your NYC food and drink? By Connie Ngo Suffice to say that New York City has a smorgasbord of all types of food from all over the world. You want food from the southern coast of mainland China? Or maybe you’re feeling some British pub food? NYC’s got you covered.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2015 is… Nepal By Connie Ngo With the ballots cast and the year winding down, we recognize Nepal as Oxford’s Place of the Year 2015. The country came into the global spotlight back in April, when a devastating earthquake took over 9,000 lives and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Months later, critics point at the slow-moving recovery process that has still a far way to go before Nepal can resume normal operations.
Climate change – a very difficult, very simple idea By Jennifer Coopersmith Planet Earth doesn’t have ‘a temperature’, one figure that says it all. There are oceans, landmasses, ice, the atmosphere, day and night, and seasons. Also, the temperature of Earth never gets to equilibrium: just as it’s starting to warm up on the sunny-side, the sun gets ‘turned off’; and just as it’s starting to cool down on the night-side, the sun gets ‘turned on’.
The magic of Christmas: It’s Santa’s DNA By Dawn Field Knowledge that we all have DNA and what this means is getting around. The informed public is well aware that our cells run on DNA software called the genome. This software is passed from parent to child, in the long line of evolutionary history that dates back billions of years – in fact, research published this year pushes back the origin of life on Earth another 300 million years.
You’ll be a man, my son. Part 3 By Anatoly Liberman Obviously, I would not have embarked on such a long manhunt if I did not have my idea on the origin of the troublesome word. It will probably end up in the dustbin (also known as ash heap) of etymology, but there it will come to rest in good company.
‘If you have no better offer, do come’: Martial’s guide to Roman dinner parties By Gideon Nisbet “If you have no better offer, do come,” 11.52 helps put flesh on the bones of Martial’s Rome (‘you know Stephanus’ baths are right next door…’) and presents the city poet in a neighbourly light. It’s also a favourite of modern foodies in search of an unpretentious sample menu from ancient daily life.
Five differences between Canada and the United States By Robert Bothwell One of the tasks of a Canadian ambassador to the United States is persuading his audiences that Canadians really are distinct from Americans. One ambassador commented that if he asked an audience The Question – was there a difference – Americans would politely say no, not really, and Canadians would say the opposite. What is the correct answer to The Question – or is there a correct answer?
Studying pets’ cancers may yield health benefits for humans By Susan Jenks Initially tested in pet dogs with bone cancer, a new drug that delays metastasis now helps children with the same disease in Europe. The immune modulator, which mops up microscopic cancer cells, has not been approved in the United States, researchers say.
Meet the cast of Illuminating Shakespeare By Helena Palmer Get to know the team behind the Illuminating Shakespeare project as they reveal their stand-out Shakespearean memories, performances, and quotations.
Wartime bedfellows: Jack London and Mills & Boon By Joseph McAleer What do America’s most famous novelist and the world’s largest purveyor of paperback romances have in common? More than you would think. Jack London (1876-1916), author ofThe Call of the Wild, White Fang, and other classics, was published in the UK and overseas by Mills & Boon, beginning in 1912.
The Law of EU Public Procurement The EU and public procurement law By Christopher H. Bovis The stakes cannot be higher for the EU. Currently, the total public expenditure directed by the Member States in procuring goods, works and services accounts for over €1 trillion. Public procurement in the Member States is a highly fragmented and complex process.
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Entering an uncharted realm of climate change By Rong Fu This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, the 21st annual session of the Conference of the Parties since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, will be held in Paris from 30 November to 11 December.
Climate change in the courts: challenges and future directions By Ioanna Hadjiyianni, Stephen Minas, and Eloise Scotford In this fast-moving field, legal academics and legal experts have an important task, now and ahead, in reflecting on how adjudicative processes are accommodating the disruption that climate change inevitably brings to legal systems.
New York City: the gastronomic melting pot By Garrett Oliver My father was from New York City, and he made very sure that we were from New York City too. I was born in Queens, and no one in my family ever mentioned the possibility of living anywhere else. Although we were an African American family living in a largely African American neighborhood, when we were kids, we did not eat quite like other Americans.
HIV/AIDS: Ecological losses are infecting women By Laura McKinney As we celebrate the 27th annual World AIDS Day, it is encouraging to note the most recent trends of worldwide reductions in new HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths. However, the gains charted against the “disease that changed everything” are not equally distributed. In fact, the HIV/AIDS crisis has markedly widened gaps of inequality in health and well-being the world over.
The need for immediate presidential action to close Guantanamo By Robert H. Wagstaff Despite promising at the start of his presidency to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, President Obama has yet to exercise the clear independent authority to do so. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, 2009 White House counsel Gregory B. Craig and Cliff Sloan, special envoy for Guantanamo closure 2013 and 2014, urged President Obama to abandon trying to get Congressional approval.
Wine and DNA profiling By Dr José Vouillamoz In ampelographic collections, about ten living plants of each grape variety or clone are kept alive for future studies or plantings, which requires a large amount of time and money. Yet, in every collection we estimate an average of 5% of labelling errors. They can now be identified with DNA profiling and duplicates can be eliminated, thus saving time and money.
The first blood transfusion in Africa By Thaddeus Sunseri Does it matter when the first blood transfusion occurred in Africa? If we are to believe the Serial Passage Theory of HIV emergence, then sometime in the early twentieth century, not one, but as many as a dozen strains of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) passed from West African apes and monkeys to people, although only a handful became epidemic, and only one – HIV-1M – became a global pandemic.
What would Mark Twain make of Donald Trump? By Peter Stoneley The proudly coifed and teased hair, the desire to make a splash, the lust after wealth, the racist remarks: Donald Trump? Or Mark Twain? Today is Mark Twain’s birthday; he was born on 30 November 1835, and died on 21 April 1910.
The European Union: too much democracy, too little, or both? By Richard Rose In a symbolic gesture toward creating an ever closer Union, the European Union conferred citizenship on everyone who was also a subject of one of its member states. However, the rights of European citizens are more like those of subjects of the pre-1914 Germain Kaiser than of a 21st century European democracy.
This blasted heath – Justin Kurzel’s new Macbeth By Erin Sullivan How many children had Lady Macbeth? The great Shakespearean critic L. C. Knights asked this question in 1933, as part of an essay intended to put paid to scholarship that treated Shakespeare’s characters as real, living people, and not as fictional beings completely dependent upon, and bounded by, the creative works of which they were a part.
A world with persons but without guns or the death penalty By Robert Hanna In this post, starting again with a few highly-plausible Kantian metaphysical, moral, and political premises, I want to present two new, simple, step-by-step arguments which prove decisively that the ownership and use of firearms (aka guns) and capital punishment (aka the death penalty) are both rationally unjustified and immoral.
Analysing what Shakespeare has to say about gender By Heather Froehlich Humans are very good at reading from start to finish and collecting lots of information to understand the aggregated story a text tells, but they are very bad at keeping track of the details of language in use across many texts.
Women onstage and offstage in Elizabethan England Though a Queen ruled England, gender equality certainly wasn’t found in Elizabethan society. Everything from dress to employment followed strict gender roles, and yet there was a certain amount of room for play. There are several cases of (in)famous women who dressed as men and crossed the bounds of “acceptable behavior.”
The life of culture By Andreas De Block and Grant Ramsey Does culture really have a life of its own? Are cultural trends, fashions, ideas, and norms like organisms, evolving and weaving our minds and bodies into an ecological web? You hear a pop song a few times and suddenly find yourself humming the tune. You unthinkingly adopt the vocabulary and turns of phrase of your circle of friends.
Oral history and childhood memories By Evan Faulkenbury During my second semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I took an oral history seminar with Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. It was an eye-opening experience, not only because of what I learned, but how I learned.
Mitochondria donation: an uncertain future? By Rebecca Dimond Earlier this year, UK Parliament voted to change the law to support new and controversial in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures known as ‘mitochondrial donation’. The result is that the UK is at the cutting-edge of mitochondrial science and the only country in the world to legalise germ-line technologies. The regulations came into force on 29th October this year, and clinics are now able to apply for a licence.
What I learned about al Qaeda from analyzing the Bin Laden tapes By Flagg Miller In the months following the Taliban’s evacuation of Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 2001, cable news networks set up operations in the city in order to report on the war. In the dusty back rooms of a local recording studio, a CNN stringer came across an extraordinary archive: roughly 1,500 audiotapes taken from Osama bin Laden’s residence, where he had lived from 1997-2001, during al Qaeda’s most coherent organizational momentum.
What a load of BS: Q&A with Mark Peters By Mark Peters Terms for bullshit in the English language have grown so vast it has now become a lexicon itself. We talked to Mark Peters, author of Bullshit: A Lexicon, about where the next set of new terms will come from, why most of the words are farm related, and bullshit in politics.
Is neuroculture a new cultural revolution? By Francisco Mora Are we at the birth of a new culture in the western world? Are we on the verge of a new way of thinking? Both humanistic and scientific thinkers suggest as much.
Climate change and the Paris Conference: is the UNFCCC process flawed? By Mark Maslin As representatives from 146 countries gather in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference, we’ve turned to our Very Short Introduction series for insight into the process, politics and topics of discussion of the conference. Is the UNFCCC process flawed?
Apocalypse and The Hunger Games By Anthony O'Hear and Natasha O'Hear The final installment of The Hunger Games films (Mockingjay: Part Two) has been released. Amidst the acres of coverage about Jennifer Lawrence, the on-screen violence (is it appropriate for twelve year-olds?) and an apparently patchy and unconvincing ending, it is worth pausing to consider the apocalyptic nature of the franchise.
The life and work of Émile Zola By Amy Jelf To celebrate the new BBC Radio Four adaptation of the French writer Émile Zola’s, ‘Rougon-Macquart’ cycle, we have looked at the extraordinary life and work of one of the great nineteenth century novelists.
Place of the Year 2015 nominee spotlight: Greece By Stathis N. Kalyvas Earlier in the year, Greece faced some unsettling economic troubles. The country voted on a referendum that would decide whether they would pull their membership from the European Union (and thus, the union’s currency and economic system). It’s a wonder to think that this country, less than a decade ago, was among one of the richer nations.
Social opulence: re-branding Labour By Noel Thompson Corbynomics has yet to be unpacked. And when it is, there’s danger it will be branded as a return to the bad old days of tax and spend, when the 1983 Labour manifesto was dismissed by pundits as the longest suicide note in history. To avoid this, what Labour needs are some big and positive ideas; ideas that that resonate with the public and which capture that popular mood of radicalism that has put Jeremy Corbyn where he is.
Policing concert hall patriotism: consequences By Douglas W. Shadle If American orchestras want to be more patriotic, they should program more music by American composers. In context, however, the sentiment is deeply ironic. American composers are absent from today’s concert programs precisely because anti-nationalists consistently shackled them.
We must try harder to stop the drug cheats By Nicholas Agar Reports of a Russian state doping programme are jarring reminders of times when victorious athletes were offered as evidence for the superiority of political ideologies. The allegations have certainly complicated aspirations to keep drugs out of the Olympics. If your state colludes in your doping then you have only to arrange to be clean around the dates of competition.
Etymology gleanings for November 2015 By Anatoly Liberman It is true that the etymology of homo confirms the biblical story of the creation of man, but I am not aware of any other word for “man” that is akin to the word for “earth.” Latin mas (long vowel, genitive maris; masculinus ends in two suffixes), whose traces we have in Engl. masculine and marital and whose reflex, via French, is Engl. male, referred to “male,” not to “man.”
An African tree produces white flowers: The disappearance of the black population in Argentina 110 years later By Erika Edwards The 2014 Men’s World Cup finals pitted Germany against Argentina. Bets were made and various observations were cited about the teams. Who had the better defense? Would Germany and Argentina’s star players step up to meet the challenge? And, surprisingly, why did Argentina lack black players? Across the globe blogs and articles found it ironic that Germany fielded a more diverse team while Argentina with a history of slavery did not have a solitary black player.
‘A girl who made the peacock look ugly, the squirrel unloveable’: Martial mourns a lost love By Gideon Nisbet I begin with one of Martial’s more troublesome twentieth-century Avid Fans: the poet, editor, translator, and Fascist propagandist, Ezra Pound.
Academic knowledge and economic growth By Claudio Fassio and Cristiano Antonelli Policies aimed at fostering economic growth through public expenditure in tertiary education should be better aware of the different contribution of each specific academic discipline. Rather than introducing measures affecting the allocation of resources in the broad spectrum of academic knowledge, policies might instead introduce ad-hoc measures to foster specific disciplines, for example through differentiated enrollment fees for students.
The “Greater West” and sympathetic suffering By Clifford R. Backman At its root, Islam is as much a Western religion as are Judaism and Christianity, having emerged from the same geographic and cultural milieu as its predecessors. For centuries we lived at a more or less comfortable distance from one another. Post-colonialism and economic globalization, and the strategic concerns that attended them, have drawn us into an ever-tighter web of inter-relations.
Where did all the antihadrons go? By Jim Baggott Describing the very ‘beginning’ of the Universe is a bit of a problem. Quite simply, none of our scientific theories are up to the task. We attempt to understand the evolution of space and time and all the mass and energy within it by applying Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This theory works extraordinarily well. But when we’re dealing with objects that start to approach the infinitesimally small – elementary particles such as quarks and electrons – we need to reach for a completely different structure, called quantum theory.
Holy horsecrap, Batman! The equine BS vocabulary By Mark Peters When horses were a common means of transportation, horseshit was as common as potholes are today. While actual horse feces is rare nowadays, horseshit is as common as ever in our vocabulary.The list of synonyms and euphemisms—such as horsefeathers, horse hockey, horse hooey, horse pucky, and horse apples—is huge, taking up many pages in the Dictionary of American Regional English, Green’s Dictionary of Slang, and the Historical Dictionary of American Slang.
Policing concert hall patriotism: causes By Douglas W. Shadle Policing patriotism at the concert hall is a time-honored tradition. One of the latest targets is the Fort Worth Symphony, which has endured public criticism for performing The Star-Spangled Banner regularly before its concerts. One fed-up critic, Scott Cantrell, recently urged all American orchestras to abandon the practice because a concert should “transport” listeners to “another world” away from “narrow nationalism.”
Should intellectual property be abolished? By Jonathan D.C. Turner The Economist has recently popularised the notion that patents are bad for innovation. Is this right? In my view, this assessment results from too high an expectation of what should be achieved by patents or other intellectual property. Critics of intellectual property rights seem to think that they should be tested by whether they actually increase creativity.
Max Planck and Albert Einstein By Julie Fergus There was much more to Max Planck than his work and research as an influential physicist. For example, Planck was an avid musician, and endured many personal hardships under the Nazi regime in his home country of Germany.
The hijab can be a feminist act By Anderson Al Wazni Feminism and Islam are rarely considered to be complimentary to each other or even capable of coexisting. A mere cursory glance of any major media outlet and one can find endless articles, newscasts, and videos of radical Islam waging war against the West and systematically oppressing women. The image of the veiled Muslim woman has become emblematic of the patriarchal control Islam seems to yield unrelentingly over female followers of the faith.
On adapting Emile Zola: notes from a BBC script writer By Oliver Emanuel Why adapt Zola? What’s he got to say to us today? If the novels are so good why not leave them as they are – as novels – and forget it?
How fair are criticisms of the ICC? By Carsten Stahn It has become topical to say that the International Criminal Court (ICC) is in crisis. For some, the ICC has stepped from crisis to crisis. Even before its existence, the Court has been for criticized for its selectivity, statutory limitations, and potential overreach. The ICC faces serious challenges in relation to credibility, legitimacy and expectations. I would like revisit some of these critiques. Looking back at the past decade, it seems that both the work of the ICC, and some of its criticisms, deserve further scrutiny.
Wine ‘made in China’ By Young Shi Wine ‘made in China’ has gained increased attention around world in recent years. Splitting my time as I do between Europe and China, I have the opportunity to assess the health and potential of the Chinese market with a good degree of objectivity.
Is there an evolutionary advantage to religion? Few can deny the sheer significance of religious belief to human society, a topic of study that has provided much insight into how we lived previously, how we live today, and how we will live in the future. However, for what purpose, exactly, did religion originate?
Why Henry George matters By Edward T. O’Donnell What value does the story of Henry George, a self-taught economist from the late nineteenth century, hold for Americans living in the early 21st century? Quite a lot, if we stop to consider the ways in which contemporary American society has come to resemble America in the late-nineteenth century, a period popularly known as the Gilded Age.
Can institutions care? An analysis of Pope Francis’ call to care By Maurice Hamington On his recent trip to the United States, Pope Francis made an appeal for caring before a joint meeting of Congress: “A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk, is always based on care for the people.” At various points on his trip the Pope expressed concern for poverty, immigration, incarceration, and capital punishment. He was clearly suggesting that the United States could do so much more to care for its citizens and the world’s citizens.
Suicide in Nazi Germany in 1945 By Christian Goeschel When the US Army took the Saxon city of Leipzig in April 1945, a gruelling scene was revealed inside the town hall. The Nazi treasurer of the city, his wife, and his daughter had all committed suicide. But these suicides were not isolated cases. In the spring of 1945, Nazi Germany went to its end in an unprecedented wave of suicides.
Does the meat industry harm animals? By Ben Bramble Should we eat animals? Vegetarians often say “No, because the meat industry harms animals greatly.” They point to the appalling conditions in which animals are raised in factory farms, and the manner in which they are killed. Meat-eaters often reply that this objection is ill-founded because animals owe their very existence to the meat industry.
Should social work be evidence-based? By Edward J. Mullen Health care reform in the United States has promoted policies and practices that are evidence-based. Prevention, diagnoses, and treatment decisions are to be guided by the best available empirical evidence. Decisions about what treatments are to be provided are to be informed by findings of randomized, controlled, research studies when such evidence is available.
To Savor Gotham: book launch Food lovers with a soft spot for New York City gastronomy congregated to celebrate the upcoming book Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover’s Companion to New York City, edited by Andrew F. Smith.
Thinking the worst: an inglorious survival posture for Israel By Louis René Beres Sometimes, especially in humankind’s most urgent matters of life and death, truth may emerge through paradox. In this connection, one may usefully recall the illuminating work of Jorge Luis Borges. In one of his most ingenious parables, the often mystical Argentine writer, who once wished openly that he had been born a Jew, examines the bewildering calculations of a condemned man.
Time and tide (and mammoths) By Jonathan Conlin In July 1867 the British historian Edward Augustus Freeman was in the thick of writing his epic History of the Norman Conquest. Ever a stickler for detail, he wrote to the geologist William Boyd Dawkins asking for help establishing where exactly in Pevensey soon-to-be King Harold disembarked in 1052.
Going to the pictures with Shakespeare By Russell Jackson Not so long ago, we ‘went to the pictures’ (or ‘the movies’) and now they tend to come to us. For many people, visiting a cinema to see films is no longer their principal means of access to the work of film-makers. But however we see them, it’s the seeing as much as the hearing of Shakespeare in this medium that counts. Or rather, it’s the interplay between the two.
The phosphene dreams of a young Christian soldier By Justin Skirry On a blustery St. Martin’s Eve in 1619, a 23-year-old French gentleman soldier in the service of Maximilian of Bavaria was billeted near Ulm, Germany. Having recently quit his military service under Maurice of Nassau, he was new to the Bavarian army and a stranger to the area.
Spain 40 years after General Franco By William Chislett Forty years ago today (20 November), General Franco, the chief protagonist of nearly half a century of Spanish history, died. ‘Caudillo by the grace of God’, as his coins proclaimed after he won the 1936-39 Civil War, Generalissimo of the armed forces, and head of state and head of government (the latter until 1973), Franco was buried at the colossal mausoleum partly built by political prisoners at the Valle de los Caídos (Valley of the Fallen) in the Guadarrama mountains near Madrid.
What history can tell us about food allergy By Matthew Smith What can the history of medicine tell us about food allergy and other medical conditions? An awful lot. History is essentially about why things change over time. None of our ideas about health or medicine simply spring out of the ground. They evolve over time, adapting to various social, political, economic, technological, and cultural factors. If we want to know anything about the health issues that face us today and will face us in future, the very first thing we should do is turn to the history of such issues.
Obstacles on the road to a European Energy Union By David Buchan and Malcolm Keay Is Europe heading towards an Energy Union — the ambitious goal announced by the Commission at the beginning of this year? If so, many would say that it is about time. Energy has long been neglected by Europe.
Correcting the conversation about race By Carlos Hoyt On 6 November 2015, the New York Times featured a poignant five-minute documentary called “A Conversation About Growing Up Black,” produced by Joe Brewster and Perri Peltz. Brewster and Peltz present Rakesh, Miles, Malek, Marvin, Shaquille, Bisa, Jumoke, Maddox, and Myles. The youngest are 10 and the eldest is 25 years old.
Einstein’s mysterious genius By Andrew Robinson Albert Einstein’s greatest achievement, the general theory of relativity, was announced by him exactly a century ago, in a series of four papers read to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in November 1915, during the turmoil of the First World War. For many years, hardly any physicist—let alone any other type of scientist—could understand it.
Meet Dr. Kathy Battista, Benezit’s new Editor in Chief By Kathy Battista We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Kathy Battista as the new Editor in Chief of the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Director of the MA program in Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute, she has dedicated her life to furthering knowledge of art history through a teaching career, one that has taken her from London to New York City. From issues in contemporary art to dramatic changes in the art market over the past decade, Battista addresses all our burning questions regarding the state of her field.
When aging policies can’t keep up with aging families By Jacqueline L. Angel and Richard A. Settersten Jr. The very look and feel of families today is undergoing profound changes. Are public policies keeping up with the shifting definitions of “family”? Moreover, as the population ages within these new family dynamics, how will families give or receive elder care? Below, we highlight just a few social changes that are affecting the experiences of aging families.
Place of the Year 2015 nominee spotlight: Cuba By Connie Ngo This week, we’re shining the spotlight on another one of our Place of the Year 2015 shortlist contenders: Cuba.
Not a Beatle: Andy White By Gordon R. Thompson Every major news source last week carried news of Andy White’s death at 85. The Guardian’s “Early Beatles Drummer Andy White Dies at 85” represents a typical article title intended to attract readers albeit with misinformation that suggests that a particular two-minute-and-twenty-second episode from his life should be why we remember him.
The antimicrobial resistance crisis: is there a global solution? By Laura Bowater The serendipitous discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming in 1929 positively transformed modern medicine. Fleming’s decision to spend his summer holiday in East Anglia and his casual approach to laboratory housekeeping was an auspicious combination. After his return to the laboratory he observed that an uncovered culture plate of Staphyloccocus bacteria had been contaminated.
You’ll be a man, my son. Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman This is the continuation of the story about the origin of the Germanic word for man. Last week I left off after expressing great doubts about the protoform that connected man and guma and tried to defend the Indo-European girl from an unpronounceable name. As could be expected, in their attempts to discover the origin of man etymologists cast a wide net for words containing m and n.
The meaning of “terrorism” By Stephen Spector Anyone who saw the terror on the faces of the people fleeing the attacks in Paris last week will agree that terrorism is the right word to describe the barbaric suicide bombings and the shooting of civilians that awful Friday night. The term terrorism, though once rare, has become tragically common in the twenty-first century.
‘I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks’: Martial’s guide to getting boys By Gideon Nisbet Martial adores sexy boys. He craves their kisses, all the more so if they play hard to get, “… buffed amber, a fire yellow-green with Eastern incense… That, Diadumenus, is how your kisses smell, you cruel boy. What if you gave me all of them, without holding back?” (3.65) and “I only want struggling kisses – kisses I’ve seized; I get more of a kick out of your bad temper than your good looks…” (5.46).
Failed versus rogue states: which are worse? By Clint Peinhardt and Todd Sandler Today, the international community has its hands full with a host of global challenges; from rising numbers of refugees, international terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation, to pandemics, cyber-attacks, organized crime, drug trafficking, and others. Where do such global challenges originate? Two primary sources are rogue states like North Korea or Iran and failed states like Afghanistan or Somalia.
The origins of the Religious Right: a Q & A with Neil Young By Neil J. Young Neil J. Young traces the interactions among evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons from the 1950s to the present day to recast the story of the emergence of the Religious Right. We sat down with him to find out a bit more about his process researching the book, what role Mormons have in the rise of the Religious Right, and what the Religious Right’s relationship with Ronald Reagan was.
The flirtatious friendship of Alexander Hamilton and Angelica Church hits Broadway By Cassandra A. Good Theatergoers have been dazzled by the new Broadway hit Hamilton, and not just by its titular lead: the Schuyler women often steal the show. While Alexander Hamilton’s wife Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton provides heart and pathos, her sister Angelica Schuyler Church is sassy, witty, and flirtatious.
An educated fury: faith and doubt By Dominic Erdozain Novelists are used to their characters getting away from them. Tolstoy once complained that Katyusha Maslova was “dictating” her actions to him as he wrestled with the plot of his last novel, Resurrection. There was a story that after reading Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don, Stalin praised the work but advised the author to “convince” the main character, Melekhov, to stop loafing about and start serving in the Red Army.
British Journal of Aesthetics Perfumes, olfactory art, and philosophy By Larry Shiner What could philosophy have to do with odors and perfumes? And what could odors and perfumes have to do with Art? After all, many philosophers have considered smell the lowest and most animal of the senses and have viewed perfume as a trivial luxury.
The concept of ‘extraterritoriality’: widely used, but misguided and useless By Dan Svantesson ‘Territoriality’ plays a central role under our current paradigm of jurisdictional thinking. Indeed, a State’s rights and responsibilities are largely defined by reference to territoriality. States have exclusive powers in relation to everything that occurs within their respective territories, and this right is combined with a duty to respect the exclusive powers of other States over their respective territories.
Historical “emojis” By Melissa Mohr Emojis originated as a way to guide the interpretation of digital texts, to replace some of the clues we get in ordinary speech or writing that help us understand what someone is trying to communicate. In person or over the telephone, facial expression and voice modulation help us get our meaning across; in most forms of writing — blog posts, stories, even emails — we have the luxury of expressing ourselves at some length, which hopefully leads to clarity.
Emojis and ambiguity in the digital medium By Simon Horobin The selection of the ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ emoji by Oxford Dictionaries as its Word of the Year recognises the huge increase in the use of these digital pictograms in electronic communication. While 2015 may have witnessed their proliferation, emoji are not new. They were originally developed in Japan in the 1990s for use by teenagers on their pagers; the word emoji derives from the Japanese e ‘picture’ + moji ‘character, letter’.
Scholarly reflections on ’emoji’ Smiling face? Grimacing face? Speak-No-Evil Monkey? With the announcement of emoji as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year, we asked a number of scholars for their thoughts on this new word and emerging linguistic phenomenon.
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is… an emoji As 2015 draws to a close, it’s time to look back and see which words have been significant throughout the past twelve months, and to announce the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. Without further ado, we can reveal that the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is…
How and why are scientific theories accepted? By Stephen G. Brush November 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. This theory is one of many pivotal scientific discoveries that would drastically influence our understanding of the world around us.
“Did I do what I should have done?”: white clergy in 1960s Mississippi By Joseph T. Reiff In his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. expressed keen disappointment in white church leaders, whom he had hoped “would be among our strongest allies” and “would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure.”
Marie-Antoinette and the French Revolution By Thomas E. Kaiser Although most historians of the French Revolution assign the French queen Marie-Antoinette a minor role in bringing about that great event, a good case can be made for her importance if we look more deeply into her politics than most scholars have.
Three challenges for the International Criminal Court By Iain Macleod and Shehzad Charania The Rome Statute system is a partnership between the International Criminal Court as an institution and its governing body, the Assembly of States Parties. Both must work together in order to overcome a number of challenges, which fall within three broad themes.
5 academic books that will shape the future What is the future of academic publishing? We’re celebrating University Press Week and Academic Book Week with a series of blog posts on scholarly publishing from staff and partner presses. Following on from our list of academic books that changed the world, we’re looking to the future and how our current publishing could change lives and attitudes in years to come.
What to do about whooping cough? By Nicholas Carbonetti A century ago, pertussis, or whooping cough as it is also known, was one of those infectious diseases that most children went down with at some stage. There was a lot of suffering from the severe and prolonged bouts of coughing and many deaths occurred, especially in very young children.
Katy Perry vs. William Shakespeare: Grammar showdown By Stephen Spector Why is Katy Perry’s song title “I Kissed a Girl” grammatically correct? Which famous playwright frequently mixed up “who” vs. “whom?” Are students as terrible at using modern grammar as they think they are? We sat down with author and grammarian, Stephen Spector, to learn more about the history of English grammar and how we can get better at using it.
SIPRI Yearbook Online Are you a foreign affairs expert? [quiz] By Barney Cox From peace missions and cyber attacks, border disputes and disarmament treaties taking place across the globe, there’s no doubt that 2014 was a tumultuous and eventful year for foreign affairs and international relations. Which government declared itself feminist in 2014? Do you know which countries spend the most on their military? Who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize […]
Amartya Sen on gender equality By Amrita Dutta Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, author of The Country of First Boys: And Other Essays talks to Amrita Dutta from The Indian Express about why inequality persists, his educational experiences, and his love for Sanskrit literature.
OUP Philosophy The OUP Philosophy Festival 2015 By Katie Stileman The Oxford Philosophy group teamed up with Blackwell’s Bookshop Oxford to celebrate Philosophy in all its diversity. From a philosophical balloon debate (where David Hume blew the audience away with a song about the problem of induction) to panels dealing with the ethics of everyday life, we explored a huge variety of philosophical problems and had fun in the process.
A timeline of academic publishing at Oxford University Press How much do you know about the history of publishing at Oxford University Press? The first book was printed just two years after Caxton set up the first printing press in England. Fell type moulds were introduced two centuries later to make Oxford’s publishing comparable with the finest in Europe.
The AUTO- age By Denny Hilton How readily someone may be understood when using a new word will depend on several factors: the intuitable transparency of meaning, its clarity in context, the receptiveness of the audience, and so on.
Booker T. Washington’s undervalued legacy By Philip A. Mackowiak When Booker T. Washington died on this day in 1915, he was widely regarded not just as “the most famous black man in the world” but also “the most admired American of his time.” In the one hundred years since his death, he and his legacy have lost much of their luster in the eyes of the public, even though he, no less than Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the foremost figures in the history of the American civil rights movement.
Film-makers choices in adapting Richard II By Peter Holland The start of a film version of a Shakespeare play offers a pretty good clue to the nature of the adaptation. So how, for instance, does Richard II begin? In one sense it begins like this…
OAPEN-UK: 5 things we learnt about open access monographs By Alison Jones In September 2010, the OAPEN-UK research study set out to investigate the potential of open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences disciplines, which was, at the time, a relatively unknown concept. The collaborative study aimed to contribute to the evidence base and understanding of open publication models, in order to inform the direction taken by the scholarly community.
University Press Week blog tour round-up (Friday) For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Friday, their theme was “University Presses in Conversation with Authors” featuring interviews with authors on publishing with a university press, writing, and other authorial concerns.
Getting to the core of StoryCorps, and other audio puns By Andrew Shaffer In two weeks, as students across the United States are enjoying their Thanksgiving break, StoryCorps wants to give us all a bit of homework. Calling it the Great Thanksgiving Listen, they are asking high school students to use their mobile app (available in iTunes or Google Play) to “preserve the voices and stories of an entire generation of Americans over a single holiday weekend.”
Junior doctor contracts: should they be challenged? By Stefanie De Lucia On Saturday 17 October, 16,000 people marched to protest against the new junior doctor contracts in London for the second time. The feeling at the protest was one of overwhelming solidarity, as people marched with placards of varying degrees of humour. Purposely misspelled placards reading “junior doctors make mistaks” were a popular choice, while many groups gathered under large banners identifying their hospital, offering 30% off.
Harriet Jacobs: the life of a slave girl By R. J. Ellis In 1861, just prior to the American Civil War, Harriet Jacobs published a famous slave narrative – of her life in slavery and her arduous escape. Two years earlier, in 1859, Harriet Wilson published an autobiographical novel, Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black, tracing her life as “free black” farm servant in New England.
The politics of the ‘prisoners left behind’ By Harry Annison At the time of its creation, the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, targeted at ‘dangerous offenders’ considered likely to commit further serious offences, elicited little parliamentary debate and even less public interest. Created by the Labour government’s Criminal Justice Act 2003, the sentence was subsequently abolished by the Conservative-led coalition government in the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.
Seven ways to start and keep your writing going By Wilma Koutstaal Beginnings are tough. But if we’d only get started, our marks and words on the page can bootstrap our next moves. Marks and words out there, on the page, feed what in neuroscience is called our brain’s “perception-action” cycle. Through this built-in and biologically fundamental mechanism, we repeatedly act on the world, and then look to see what our actions have wrought in the world.
The case for chemistry By Peter Atkins What is all around us, terrifies a lot of people, but adds enormously to the quality of life? Answer: chemistry. Almost everything that happens in the world, in transport, throughout agriculture and industry, to the flexing of a muscle and the framing of a thought involves chemical reactions in which one substance changes into another.
“Fordham professors write your books, right?” By Kate O’Brien-Nicholson “Fordham professors write your books, right?” This is often less a question than an assumption and probably the biggest misconception about not just our, but all, university presses.
University Press Week blog tour round-up (Thursday) For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Thursday, their theme was “#tbt” or “Throwback Thursday” featuring the histories of various presses, some fascinating photographs and artifacts from university press history, and historical context from university press authors on today’s concerns.
Tracheal Intubation Guidelines By Alistair McNarry We are used to lines that guide – from those that keep our words straight on the page to those that direct planes down runways or trains along tracks. Moving from lines that guide our direction to guidelines that direct our behaviour, particularly in clinical medicine, is a very exciting time.
Place of the Year 2015 nominee spotlight: Nepal [quiz] By Connie Ngo As voting for the Place of the Year 2015 continues, we would like to take a moment to highlight one of the shortlist nominees: Nepal.
Beginning Theory at 20 By Peter Barry I had settled down with a pint and a ploughman’s at The Wellington in Park Road — the Friday lunchtime custom of LSU College academic staff — when Paul Gardner, our convivial HoD, asked casually, if I might be interested in devising an undergraduate course in literary theory. Being young and naïve (it was around 1982), I expressed enthusiasm, and Paul said, as if casually, ‘Could you do it for Monday?’
University Press Week blog tour round-up (Wednesday) For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Wednesday, their theme was “Design” featuring interviews with designers, examinations of the evolution of design, and parsing the process itself.
You’ll be a man, my son. Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman The title will probably be recognized at once: it is part of the last line of Kipling’s poem “If.” Unfortunately, Kipling’s only son John never became a man; he was killed in 1918 at the age of eighteen, a casualty of his father’s overblown patriotism. Our chances to reach consensus on the origin of the word man are not particularly high either.
‘Tomorrow I’ll start living’: Martial on priorities By Gideon Nisbet ‘Dear Martial’ – what a strange coincidence that Martial’s soul-mate, who leads the life he himself dreams of living, is called ‘Julius Martial’. In our selection we meet him first at 1.107, playfully teasing the poet that he ought to write “something big; you’re such a slacker”; at the start of book 3, JMa’s is ‘a name that’s constantly on my lips’ (3.5), and the welcome at his lovely suburban villa on the Janiculan Hill 4.64 is so warm, ‘you will think the place is yours’.
Research for the developing world: Moving from development studies toward global science By Bruce Currie-Alder Research for the developing world is the application of science to the challenges facing poor people and places. In the 20th century, such research fell into two camps.
Ten things you never knew about Elizabeth Stuart, ‘the Winter Queen’ By Nadine Akkerman Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662) was the charismatic daughter of King James VI of Scotland (later James I of England) and Anna of Denmark. She married the Calvinist Frederick V, Elector Palatine, at age 16, and lived happily in Heidelberg, Germany, for six years before being crowned Queen of Bohemia at 23 and moving to Prague.
The impact of On the Origin of Species By Gillian Beer Charles Darwin was widely known as a travel writer and natural historian in the twenty years before On the Origin of Species appeared in 1859. The Voyage of the Beagle was a great popular success in the 1830s. But the radical theories developed in the Origin had been developed more or less in secret during those intervening twenty years.
Change in publishing: A Q&A with Michael Dwyer Academic publishing is not as simple as it may appear. University presses such as Oxford and Fordham range from large to small; for-profit publishers such as Wiley and Elsevier must appeal to both academics and shareholders; start-ups such as Academia.edu and WriteLatex are fulfilling smaller services; and niche publishers, such as Hurst, offer tremendous depth and breadth of specific subject areas.
Hurst Publishers: 5 academic books that changed the world Which books have changed the world? Given our news today, one might expect that books no longer have as great an impact on it. ISIS has Syria in turmoil and refugees are making their way to Europe; the United States is gearing up for an election that may determine the future for many others around the globe; China is changing in rapid and unexpected ways, with political and economic consequences rippling around the world.
University Press Week blog tour round-up (Tuesday) For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Tuesday, their theme was “The Future of Scholarly Publishing” featuring commentary on trends in the industry, the case for financial support, and the meaning of gatekeeping in a digital era.
How the South was made By William A. Link Why study the South? What makes this peculiar region important from the point of views of Americans, or people abroad wanting to know more about the American experience? The South experienced changes and phenomena central to how the United States evolved over time.
How conservative are married priests? By D. Paul Sullins Following the Episcopal Church’s 1976 decision to ordain women, Catholic leaders in America and Rome were approached by Episcopal clergy who opposed the decision and sought conversion as a result.
Analyzing causal effects of multiple treatments in political methodology By R. Michael Alvarez, Jens Hainmueller, Daniel J. Hopkins, and Teppei Yamamoto Recent years have seen amazing growth in the development of new tools that can be used to make causal claims about complex social phenomenon. Social scientists have been at the forefront of developing many of these new tools, in particular ones that can give analysts the ability to make causal inferences in survey research.
Seeking the elusive dead By Dennis Harding It is a well-known fact of British prehistory that burial monuments, sometimes on a monumental scale, are well-documented in the Neolithic and Bronze Age, but largely absent in the Iron Age, outside certain distinctive regional groups at particular periods.
Shoehorn; or a new Grove spoof article Sturdy idiophone ubiquitous among dress shoe-wearing cultures. Rising to prominence during 15th century England, the shoehorn has today become one of the most widely used instruments in the world. This notoriety had lead many scholars to suggest that the shoehorn stands as Britain’s crowning contribution to contemporary music culture.
The right to a fair trial: part two By Geoffrey Rivlin QC Human rights law has had a long and tortuous history in the UK, defined by some of the most fascinating cases in legal memory. The case of John Wilkes was a milestone in establishing the right of free speech. In 1763, Wilkes wrote a scathing attack on a speech delivered by King George III when he opened Parliament.
The future of scholarly publishing By Sophie Goldsworthy In thinking about the future of scholarly publishing – a topic almost as much discussed as the perennially popular ‘death of the academic monograph’ – I found a number of themes jostling for attention, some new, some all-too familiar. What are the challenges and implications of open access?
University Press Week blog tour round-up (Monday) For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Monday, their theme was “Surprise!” featuring unexpected ideas, information, and behind-the-scenes looks at the presses.
The legacy of the New Atheism By Stephen LeDrew The ten-year anniversary of the publication of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is approaching, and it has already been over ten years since Sam Harris published The End of Faith. These two figures, along with the late Christopher Hitchens, are the most important in the anti-religious movement known as the New Atheism.
Max Planck: Einstein’s supportive skeptic in 1915 By Brandon R. Brown This November marks the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein completing his masterpiece of general relativity, an idea that would lead, one world war later, to his unprecedented worldwide celebrity. In the run-up to what he called “the most valuable discovery of my life,” he worked within a new sort of academic comfort.
Can flour fortification programs reduce anemia? By Helena Pachón and Sarah Zimmerman Two studies published this year yield conflicting results on whether fortifying flour with essential vitamins and minerals improves anemia prevalence. One study published in the British Journal of Nutrition (BJN) showed that each year of flour fortification was associated with a 2.4% decrease in anemia prevalence among non-pregnant women.
How do you decide who ‘qualifies’ as a citizen? By Liav Orgad Citizenship tests are meant to focus on facts essential to citizenship, yet reviewing them tells a different story. What knowledge makes one a good citizen? Citizenship tests are a sort of a “grab bag”; they include a little bit of everything—demography, geography, history, constitutional principles, national holidays, and a long list of practical knowledge of education, employment, healthcare, housing, taxes, and everyday needs.
Wine and social media By Elaine Chukan Brown Can Instagram really sell wine? The answer is, yes, though perhaps indirectly. In recent years the advent of social media, considered to be the second stage of the Internet’s evolution – the Web 2.0, has not only created an explosion of user-generated content but also the decline of expert run media. It’s a change that has led to the near demise of print media.
Liverpool University Press: 5 academic books that changed the world Which books have changed the world? While thoughts range from Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto (originally a political pamphlet) to George Orwell’s 1984 (a novel), great works of scholarship are often overlooked. However, it is these great works that can change our understanding of history, culture, and ourselves.
How to solve an anagram By Edwin Battistella Many word games—Scrabble, Words with Friends, Scribbage, Quiddler and more, involve anagrams, or unscrambling letters to make a word. This month, we take a look at how to do that unscrambling, so here is an anagram for you to solve: naitp.
What defines good writing? By Geoffrey J. Huck What distinguishes good writing from bad writing? How can people transform their writing to make it more powerful and more effective? Are universities teaching students how to become better writers? In order to answer these questions and others, we sat down with Geoffrey Huck, an associate professor of the Professional Writing Program at York University.
SIPRI Yearbook Online International security and foreign affairs in 2014 [interactive map] By Barney Cox What was happening in the world last year? Events such as the the devastating protest-turned-conflict in Ukraine, or the maritime disputes between states in the South China Sea, have wide-reaching repercussions – from the amount a country spends on its military, to the direction of foreign policies whole regions take.
Does news have a future? By Richard R. John For over two centuries, newspapers were the dominant news medium. Yet today “dead tree” media-like stamp collecting is, well, so twentieth century. Now that millions of Americans get their news from social media on-line, newspapers have been in free-fall, prompting many pundits to wonder aloud if journalism has a future.
Preparing for AMS Louisville By Celine Aenlle-Rocha We’re getting ready for the annual American Musicological Society Conference, beginning 11 November 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky. From panels to performances, there’s a lot to look forward to. We asked our past and present attendees to tell us what make AMS and Louisville such exciting places to be this month.
Paradox and self-evident sentences By Roy T Cook According to philosophical lore many sentences are self-evident. A self-evident sentence wears its semantic status on its sleeve: a self-evident truth is a true sentence whose truth strikes us immediately, without the need for any argument or evidence, once we understand what the sentence means.
10 academic books that changed the world What is the future of academic publishing? We’re celebrating University Press Week (8-14 November 2015) and Academic Book Week (9-16 November) with a series of blog posts on scholarly publishing from staff and partner presses. Today, we present Oxford’s list of ten academic books that changed the world.
Debunking ADHD myths: an author Q&A By Katherine Ellison and Stephen P. Hinshaw Psychologist Stephen P. Hinshaw, along with Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and author Katherine Ellison, authors of ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know, answered a few questions for us in hopes of decluttering some information about ADHD.
Shakespeare the Classicist By Colin Burrow The traditional view of Shakespeare is that he was a natural genius who had no need of art or reading. That tradition grew from origins which should make us suspect it. Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson famously declared that Shakespeare had ‘small Latin and less Greek’.
‘Death with Dignity’: is it suicide? By Margaret Pabst Battin But what’s the right term, really? After all, much of the political disagreement and legal wrangling over this issue is rooted in this fundamental conceptual question, is “physician-assisted suicide” really suicide? Let’s see if we can figure it out.
Game on – Episode 28 – The Oxford Comment Listen closely and you’ll hear the squeak of sneakers on AstroTurf, the crack of a batter’s first hit, and the shrill sound of whistles signaling Game on! Yes, it’s that time of year again.
Charles West and Florence Nightingale: Children’s healthcare in context By Edward Alan Glasper At the dawn of the children’s hospital movement in Europe and the West (best epitomised and exemplified by the opening of London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children (GOSH) on 14 February 1852), the plight of sick children was precarious at all levels of society. After a long campaign by Dr Charles West, Great Ormond Street hospital was the first establishment to provide in-patient beds specifically for children in England.
Key events and writings in contemporary Mormon feminism By Hannah Wheelwright, Joanna Brooks, and Rachel Hunt Steenblik Mormon feminism may seem to some a recent phenomenon, but events and writings in the history of Mormon feminism date back to the early 1970s. Here we have compiled these key moments in when Mormon women have engaged with question about gender in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a timeline of the pre-history and history of the Mormon feminist movement.
(Getting a) Malling: Youth, consumption and leisure in the ‘new Glasgow’ By Alistair Fraser The following extract is excerpted from Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City. The chapter, titled ‘Learning to Leisure’ traces the leisure lives of a group of young men from Langview, a deindustrialised working-class community in Glasgow.
The day that changed the 20th century: Russia’s October Revolution By Geoffrey Hosking The October Revolution was probably the determining event of the twentieth century in Europe, and indeed in much of the world. The Communist ideology and the Communist paradigm of governance aroused messianic hopes and apocalyptic fears almost everywhere.
Can neuroscience explain consciousness? By Anil Seth The study of consciousness has long been excluded from serious consideration within psychology and the neurosciences, but this field is gaining momentum again. We sat down with the editor of Neuroscience of Consciousness, Anil Seth, to learn a bit more about our “inner universe” – a landscape sometimes thought of as a problem beyond the reach of science.
Announcing the Place of the Year 2015 shortlist: vote for your pick By Connie Ngo Thank you to those of you who participated in the voting period for our Place of the Year 2015 longlist. The top five contenders have moved on to the next round into our shortlist, and we need your help again. If you’re interested about each place and why each has been nominated for Place of the Year 2015, read back on our previous blog post. Vote for your pick in this year’s shortlist by 30 November. The Place of the Year 2015 will be announced 3 December.
Six predictions for the future of the Religious Right By Neil J. Young For more than forty years now, the Religious Right has been a powerful force in the United States, helping reshape the Republican Party and realign the nation’s politics and culture.
The Angelina Jolie effect By Dawn Field It is hard to quantify the impact of ‘role-model’ celebrities on the acceptance and uptake of genetic testing and bio-literacy, but it is surely significant. Angelina Jolie is an Oscar-winning actress, Brad Pitt’s other half, mother, humanitarian, and now a “DNA celebrity”. She propelled the topic of familial breast cancer, female prophylactic surgery, and DNA testing to the fore.
Pathfinders By Anatoly Liberman For a long time I have been dealing with the words bad, bed, bud, body, bodkin, butt, bottom, and their likes. The readers who have followed the discussion will probably guess from today’s title that now the time of path has come round.
Distinctive dress: Martial’s index to life in a crammed metropolis By Gideon Nisbet His books are famous around the world, but their author struggles to get by – two themes that quickly become familiar to any reader. Martial has an eye for fabric. He habitually ranks himself and judges others by the price and quality of their clothing and accessories (e.g. 2.29, 2.57), a quick index in the face-to-face street life of the crammed metropolis.
Clean air… hot air By Richard S. Grossman With elections just about a year away, Americans can expect to hear a lot about regulation during the next twelve months—most of it from Republicans and most of it scathing. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump typifies the GOP’s attitude toward regulation.
What have the Romans ever done for us? LGBT identities and ancient Rome By Jennifer Ingleheart What have the Romans ever done for us? Ancient Rome is well known for its contribution to the modern world in areas such as sanitation, aqueducts, and roads, but the extent to which it has shaped modern thinking about sexual identity is not nearly so widely recognized.
Spectre and Bond do the damage By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones The durable Bond is back once more in Spectre. Little has changed and there has even been reversion. M has back-morphed into a man, Judi Dench giving way to Ralph Fiennes. 007 still works miracles, and not the least of these is financial – Pinewood Studios hope for another blockbuster movie. Hollywood roll over and die.
Elective neck dissection in early oral cancer: debate resolved By Charlie Schmidt A debate over whether to remove lymph nodes from the neck during surgical treatment of early oral cancer has gone on for decades. Now findings from a randomized control trial reported last June at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (ASCO) annual meeting, in Chicago may finally put that controversy to rest.
The literary fortunes of the Gunpowder Plot By Gordon Campbell The conspirators in what we now know as the Gunpowder Plot failed in their aspiration to blow up the House of Lords on the occasion of the state opening of parliament in the hope of killing the King and a multitude of peers. Why do we continue to remember the plot? The bonfires no longer articulate anti-Roman Catholicism, though this attitude formally survived until 2013 in the prohibition against the monarch or the heir to the throne marrying a Catholic.
Ten fun facts about the bagpipes By Callum Watts Depending on your tastes, bagpipes are primal and evocative, or crude and abrasive. Adore or despise them, they are ubiquitous across the city centers of Scotland (for tourists or locals?). In anticipation of St Andrews Day, and your Robert Burns poetry readings with a certain woodwind accompaniment, here are 10 facts you may not have known about the history of the bagpipes.
The right to a fair trial: part one By Geoffrey Rivlin QC Our legal history stretches back well over eight centuries. But however long this history may be, it is not one of which we can be universally proud, and the freedoms which we enjoy today have had to be hard won over the centuries.
California’s S.B. 185, thermal coal, and the fallacies of social investing By Edward A. Zelinsky S.B. 185, recently signed into law by California Governor Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown, Jr., requires California’s public employee pension plans to divest their investments in publicly-traded companies that derive half or more of their revenue from “the mining of thermal coal.”
“Challenging change” – extract from A Foot in the River By Felipe Fernández-Armesto We are not the only species to have a culture. However, the speed at which human culture changes is extremely rapid and can lead to baffling and dislocating effects. How, then, can people make sense of these changes?
How much do you know about Mormon feminists? By Hannah Wheelwright, Joanna Brooks, and Rachel Hunt Steenblik No issue in Mormonism has made more headlines than the faith’s distinctive approach to sex and gender. From its polygamous nineteenth-century past to its twentieth-century stand against the Equal Rights Amendment and its twenty-first-century fight against same-sex marriage, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) has consistently positioned itself on the frontlines of battles over gender-related identities, roles, and rights.
Fragile systems and development By Gary Milante The term fragile state originated as an alternative to “failed state” – a worldview predominated by assertions about “weak” or “strong” states, with very weak states referred to as “failures”, “failed states”, etc. A lot of critics rightly pointed out the naivete of a single dimension in conceptualizing the myriad ways in which states and societies can go wrong.
London Review of International Law The killing of Osama bin Laden: the facts are hard to come by, and where is the law? By Daniel Joyce It is said in the domestic practice of law that the facts are sometimes more important than the law. Advocates often win and lose cases on their facts, despite the perception that the law’s formalism and abstraction are to blame for its failures with regards to delivering justice.
What are the biggest challenges facing international lawyers today? What role does international law play in addressing global problems? How can international lawyers innovate to provide solutions? How can they learn new approaches from different legal systems? Which fields require greater research and expertise?
Ben Bernanke and Wall Street executives By Oonagh McDonald In a widely quoted interview with USA Today, Ben Bernanke said that ‘It would have been my preference to have more investigations of individual actions because obviously everything that went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm.’ He makes it clear that he thought some Wall Street executives should have gone to jail.
Raw politics: devolution, democracy and deliberation By Matthew Flinders As a long-time student of politics I have often found myself assessing various kinds of attempts to create new democratic processes or arenas. From citizens’ juries through to mini-publics and from area panels to lottery-based procedures the scope of these experiments with ‘new’ ways of doing politics has taken me from the local ward level right up to the international level.
The future of married priests By D. Paul Sullins “Western clerical celibacy is in an unprecedented crisis,” says the conservative Catholic canon lawyer Edward Peters. The reason? Since the 1960s, the Catholic Church has permitted married men to be ordained as deacons, an order of clergy just below that of priests; and in the past 35 years about 100 married converts, all former Episcopal priests, have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood.”
October 2015 (139))
Preparing for International Law Weekend 2015 By Ciara O’Connor This year’s International Law Weekend (ILW) will take place in New York City, from 5 November through the 7th. Organized by the American Branch of the International Law Association and the International Law Students Association, this annual event attracts over 800 attendees including practitioners, diplomats, academics, and law students.
Catching up with Jack Campbell-Smith, Multimedia Producer By Jack Campbell-Smith Another week, another great staff member to get to know. When you think of the world of publishing, the work of videos, podcasts, photography, and animated GIFs doesn’t immediately come to mind. But here at Oxford University Press we have Jack Campbell-Smith, who joined the Social Media team as a Multimedia Producer just last year.
Shakespeare and the suffragettes By Sophie Duncan The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were famously the age of “Bardolatry,” Shakespeare-worship that permeated artistic, social, civic, and political life. As Victorian scientific advances including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in On the Origin of Species (1859), destabilised Christianity as ultimate arbiter of truth, rhetoricians invoked Shakespeare’s plots and characters to support their arguments.
Seders, symposiums, and drinking parties By Susan Sauvé Meyer The symposium is a familiar feature of academic life today: a scholarly gathering where work on a given topic or theme is presented and discussed. While the event may be followed by a dinner and drinks, the consumption of alcohol is in no way essential to the business of the gathering.
What were Tampa’s top Twitter debates at #OHA2015? By Jessica Taylor Some of you open a can of soup and tweet about it, others of us would never know about your tweet since we don’t use Twitter. Others at this year’s Oral History Association annual meeting put their phones away for a second to do what they do best: listen.
The Magic Fix: De Quincey’s portrait of the artist as addict By Robert Morrison Thomas De Quincey produced two versions of his most famous work, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He launched himself to fame with the first version, which appeared in two instalments in the London Magazine for September and October 1821, and which created such a sensation that the London’s editors issued it again the following year in book form.
Marketing Mozart By Gary McPherson and Solange Glasser If you’re a parent, or soon to be one, you’ll know that the imminent arrival of a newborn generates above all else a mile-long shopping list. Up there with the organic cotton onesies, on many parents’ list is a CD entitled The Mozart Effect.
A Very Short (and spooky) Introduction to Halloween By Katie Stileman It’s that time of year when pumpkin sales go soaring, horror specials sell out at the cinema, and everyone is seemingly dressed up as a vampire or a zombie. To mark the spookiest time of year, we wanted to give you a Very Short Introduction to some of our favourite Halloween themes with free chapters from VSI Online.
Ukraine’s two years of living dangerously By Serhy Yekelchyk Last year in 2014, Ukraine made its way into our Place of the Year shortlist, garnering 19.86% of votes. Though Scotland beat out Ukraine for the top spot (with its impressive 37.98% of votes out of five on the shortlist), that by no means undermines everything this Eastern European country has gone through. Serhy Yekelchyk, author of The Conflict in Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know, reflects on how Ukraine has transformed in recent years.
Screen Cover Gérard Depardieu, an unlikely poster boy for French ambitions By Sue Harris There is no one more acutely aware of the damage done to his reputation in recent years than Gérard Depardieu himself. “When I travel the world” he admitted to Léa Salamé in a recent interview for France Inter radio “what people remember above all else is that I pissed in a plane, I’m Russian, and that I wrote a letter of protest to the Prime Minister.”
Dickens’ fascination with London [map] By Daniel Tyler At the height of his career – during the time he was writing Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend – Dickens wrote a series of sketches, mostly set in London, which he collected as The Uncommercial Traveller. The persona of the ‘Uncommercial’ allowed Dickens to unify his series of occasional articles by linking them through a shared narrator.
Monthly etymology gleanings for October 2015 By Anatoly Liberman I keep receiving comments and questions about idioms. One of our correspondents enjoys the phrase drunk as Cooter Brown. This is a well-known simile, current mostly or exclusively in the American south. I can add nothing to the poor stock of legends connected with Mr. Brown. Those who claim that they know where such characters came from should be treated with healthy distrust.
The legal profession [infographic] By Benjamin H. Barton and Deborah L. Rhode The legal profession has endured many changes, particularly in the last ten years. As the price of education continues to increase, competition becomes stiffer and jobs are harder to come by. Law schools are producing more and more graduates, and while big law firms continue to dissolve, more students turn to jobs in business.
Roman author, Greek genre: Martial’s use of Epigrams By Gideon Nisbet An epigram is a short poem, most often of two or four lines. Its typical metre is the elegiac couplet, which is also the metre of Roman love poetry (elegy) and the hallmark of Ovid. In antiquity it was a distinctively Greek literary form: Roman writers were never comfortable in it as they were in other imported genres, such as epic and elegy. When they dabbled in epigram they often used Greek to do so. Martial’s decision to write books of Latin epigrams, and nothing else, is thus a very significant departure.
Food and agriculture: shifting landscapes for policy By Douglas Gollin and Lilli Teresa Probst Where does our food come from? A popular slogan tells us that our food comes from farms: “If you ate today, thank a farmer.” Supermarkets cater to the same idea, labelling every bag of produce with the name of an individual farm.
Thinking of Kepler on the beach By Ulinka Rublack Johannes Kepler, the astronomer who famously discovered that planets move in ellipses, presents an exceptional case we can reconstruct. Kepler got his assistant to paint an image of himself for a friend. This was just before Kepler stored up all his belongings to move his family back from Austria to Germany. His aged mother had been accused of witchcraft.
“Hotwash,” oral history, and wartime reflection By David W. Peters The military is a total institution and army chaplains are embedded deeply within it. They wear the uniforms and the rank, they salute and are saluted. I was reminded how deeply embedded we are, when I arrived at the US Army Chaplain Center and School at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina about two weeks ago.
Literary lottery? Antonio Machado’s reputation at home and abroad By Xon De Ros Comparison between the lives of Antonio Machado and Federico García Lorca is inevitable and not just because they are the two major Spanish poets of the twentieth century. They had met, and admired each other’s work. Both were victims of the Civil War.
Hip hop & Obama playlist By Travis L. Gosa and Erik Nielson When Obama ran for president in 2008, there’s no question that hip hop artists provided a vital soundtrack for his campaign. Energized by the possibility that Obama could become America’s first black president, deeply optimistic tracks like Will.i.am’s “It’s A New Day” and Kidz in the Hall’s “Work to Do (Obama 08)” celebrated Obama’s historic presidency.
9780198717997 A European victory for the pharmaceutical industry By Marie Manley and Elizabeth Amos Following a preliminary reference made in the context of Seattle Genetics Inc. v Österreichisches Patentamt, the Court of Justice of the European Union has put an end to the uncertainty faced by both the innovative and the generic pharmaceutical industries regarding the duration of the effective patent protection afforded to medicinal products.
How to cope when the words don’t come By Jessica Hoyle Imagine someone close to you disappears. She no longer shows up on the day on which she always visited. She does not call or write. No one says where she has gone or if she is coming back. To make matters worse, you cannot ask about her. You experience feelings of sadness, anger, disappointment, and grief, to name a few. The only way you have to express yourself is through your behavior.
Why global health matters By Anita Gupta and Eleni Demas It is every human being’s right to enjoy a state of complete mental, physical, and social well being on this planet. However, health is also a right that is unequally distributed throughout the world due to lack of access to proper healthcare facilities and professionals, lack of sanitation, feeble vaccination delivery systems, and treatment-oriented healthcare systems rather than preventative systems.
Genius loci: war poets of place By John Greening It’s curious how intensely some writers, especially poets, respond to place. Wordsworth and the Lake Poets, of course, John Clare at Helpston, and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex. But there are earlier names: William Cowper and Olney, Alexander Pope’s Windsor or Twickenham, Charles Cotton in Derbyshire…
Cyber war and the question of causation By Jens David Ohlin Everyone knows that the increasing threat of cyber attacks will place immense pressure on the operational capacities for various intelligence and defense agencies. Speak with anyone in military operations (from several countries), and their lists of security concerns are remarkably similar: Russia, ISIS, and cyber (in no particular order).
Biodynamic wine By Monty Waldin All vineyards and thus the wines they produce are not created equal. Two Chardonnays grown in neighbouring plots but with slightly differing soils, slopes and sun exposure will taste subtly different, even if both will still taste of Chardonnay too. This unique ‘somewhereness’ is what the French call terroir.
Media policy and political polarization By Jay Hmielowski, Michael Beam, and and Myiah Hutchens Does media policy impact the rising political polarization in the United States? The US Congress passed The Telecommunications Act of 1996 that comprehensively overhauled US media policy for the first time since 1934, resulting in relaxed ownership regulations intended to spur competition between cable and telephone telecommunications systems.
Are drug companies experimenting on us too much? By Robert Klitzman For years, my cholesterol level remained high, regardless of what I ate. I gave up all butter, cheese, red meat, and fried food. But every time I visited my doctor, he still shook his head sadly, as he looked at my lab results. Then, anti-cholesterol medications became available, and I started one.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Karl Marx? [quiz] By Joy Mizan This October, the OUP Philosophy team has chosen Karl Marx as their Philosopher of the Month. Karl Marx was an economist and philosopher best known for ‘The Communist Manifesto’ and ‘Das Kapital’. Although sometimes misconstrued, his work has influenced various political leaders including Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and the 14th Dalai Lama.
George Orwell and the origin of the term ‘cold war’ By Katherine Connor Martin On 19 October 1945, George Orwell used the term cold war in his essay “You and the Atom Bomb,” speculating on the repercussions of the atomic age which had begun two months before when the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.
History of Eurasia [interactive map] By Barry Cunliffe The history of Eurasia is vast, much like the land it covered millions of years ago. Over time the development, not only of European, Near Eastern, and Chinese civilizations, but also food production, the first use of gunpowder, and the cavalry took place.
“There is figures in all things”: Historical revisionism and the Battle of Agincourt By Andrew Zurcher Young Cressingham, one of the witty contrivers of Thomas Middleton’s and John Webster’s comedy Anything for a Quiet Life (1621), faces a financial problem. His father is wasting his inheritance, and his new stepmother – a misogynistic caricature of the wayward, wicked woman – has decided to seize the family’s wealth into her own hands, disinheriting her husband’s children.
What might superintelligences value? By Tim Mulgan If there were superintelligent beings – creatures as far above the smartest human as that person is above a worm – what would they value? And what would they think of us? Would they treasure, tolerate, ignore, or eradicate us?
Which persona are you? By Cass R. Sunstein The US Supreme Court has been a vessel for controversy, debate, and deliberation. With a variety of cases filtering in and out of the Supreme Court each year, one would suspect that the decisions would be varied.
Q & A with Martin R. Turner and Matthew C. Kiernan: Neurology’s past, present, and future By Martin R. Turner and Matthew C. Kiernan To mark this month’s release of Martin R. Turner and Matthew C. Kiernan’s Landmark Papers in Neurology, we spoke with the two editors, to discuss their thoughts on neurology – past and present. We asked about the origins of neurology, the understanding of neurological diseases, milestones in the field, why historical context is so important – and their predictions for the future…
The ethics of criminological engagement abroad By Jarrett Blaustein Criminological knowledge originating in the global North is drawn upon to inform crime control practices in other parts of the world. This idea is well established and most criminologists understand that their efforts to engage with policy makers and practitioners for the purpose of generating research impact abroad can have positive and negative consequences.
Biophilia: technology that transforms music education By Gary McPherson and Solange Glasser In today’s society, technology is fundamentally embedded in the everyday learning environments of children. The development of educative interactive apps is constantly increasing, and this is undoubtedly true for apps designed to facilitate musical development. So much so that computer-based technology has become an integral part of children’s musical lives
Why know any algebra? By Peter M. Higgins A recent meme circulating on the internet mocked a US government programme (ObamaCare) saying that its introduction cost $360 million when there were only 317 million people in the entire country. It then posed the rhetorical question: “Why not just give everyone a million dollars instead?”
In search of Thomas Smith Grimké’s portrait By Louise W. Knight Most biographers would agree that it is difficult to write about someone whose face you have never seen. When I set out to write a biographical entry on Thomas Smith Grimké (1786-1834) for the American National Biography Online, I confronted that challenge.
Place of the Year 2015: behind the longlist By Connie Ngo You don’t need to follow the news too closely to know that 2015 has been a roller coaster of a year. Last week we announced our longlist for Place of the Year 2015, but since then some of you have been asking, “why is x included?”, or “why is y worth our attention?”
Ethics at the chocolate factory By Nancy Berlinger Two women are being trained for work on a factory assembly line. As products arrive on a conveyor belt, their task is to wrap each product and place it back on the belt. Their supervisor warns them that failing to wrap even one product is a firing offense, but once they get started, the work seems easy.
Keep the bike but look under the helmet: when Orwell met Corbyn on Upper Street By Robert Colls Many people fear that Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader will throw Labour into a policy war so long drawn out that it will end up in the zombie world of the undead and unelectable (like the Liberal Democrats). Corbyn has already been subjected to unfavourable comparisons with previous Labour leaders but in truth he is incomparable.
The “Bottom” Line By Anatoly Liberman As promised in the previous post, I am going from body to bottom. No one attacked my risky etymology of body. Perhaps no one was sufficiently interested, or (much more likely) the stalwarts of the etymological establishment don’t read this blog and have no idea that a week ago a mine was planted under one of their theories.
How much do you know about failure? By Priscilla Yu To most of us, good scientific research is often defined by the “eureka” moment – the moment at which a successful result is discovered. We tend to only glorify research that leads us to definite solutions and we tend to only praise the scientists that are responsible for this research.
Introducing Martial: Epigrams By Gideon Nesbit Who is ‘Martial’? “Up to this point, Madam, this little book has been written for you. You want to know for whom the bits further in are written? For me.” (3.68) Marcus Valerius Martialis was born some time around AD 40 (we know his birthday, 1st March, but not the year) at Bilbilis in Hispania Tarraconensis, a province of oil- and wine-rich Roman Spain.
Of honeymoons, hangovers, and fixed-term contracts By Adrian Chadi and Clemens Hetschko Companies care about the job satisfaction of their employees, because this is in their very own interest. In fact, dissatisfied workers perform poorly, are often absent and impose hiring costs as they switch employers frequently. Managers, as well as management researchers, agree on the importance of job satisfaction, since the Hawthorne experiments suggested in the 1920s that employees like attentive employers.
From number theory to e-commerce By Leo Corry The American Mathematical Society held on October 1903 its regular meeting in New York City. The program announced a talk by Frank Nelson Cole (1861-1921), with the unpretending title of ‘On the factorization of large numbers’. In due course, Cole approached the board and started to multiply the number 2 by itself, step after step and without saying a word, sixty seven times.
Pressing Giles Cory By Emerson W. Baker Giles Cory has the dubious distinction of being the only person in American history to be pressed to death by a court of law. It is one of the episodes in the Salem witch trials that has captured the American imagination.
Open Access Week – continuing on the journey By Ben Johnson That time of the year is upon us again – Strictly Come Dancing is on the telly, Starbucks is selling spiced pumpkin lattes, and the kids are getting ready for a night of trick-or-treating. It can mean only one thing: Open Access Week is upon us.
Building momentum for women in science By Kristin L. Bigos I recently attended an event at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine “Celebrating 200+ Women Professors”. The celebration of these women and their careers inspired me, especially as a “young” woman and an assistant professor. It was also humbling to hear about their successes in spite of the many challenges they faced solely due to their sex.
Admiral Nelson in letters By Robert V. McNamee This year, on 21st October, marks the 210th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. This naval battle was between the British Royal Navy, led by Admiral Lord Nelson, and the combined French and Spanish fleets led by French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve. The most decisive victory of the Napoleonic Wars, this battle ensured Nelson’s place as one of Britain’s greatest war heroes.
Ten facts about the French horn By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Although there are several different bell-shaped brass instruments, from trumpets to tubas, it’s the French horn that people are talking about when they mention “the horn”. Known for its deep yet high-ranging sound, the French horn is an indispensable part of any orchestra or concert band.
Shale oil and gas in the United States [infographic] By Grant Mark Nülle and Fiona Parker The growth of United States’ shale oil and gas production over the last decade has been nothing short of phenomenal. Already the premier natural gas producer, Already the premier natural gas producer, the United States is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the largest oil producer and will likely become a net exporter of both oil and gas within a decade or more.
“The Created Agincourt in Literature” extract from Agincourt By Anne Curry In the six hundred year since it was fought the battle of Agincourt has become an exceptionally famous one, which has generated a huge and enduring cultural legacy. Everybody thinks they know what the battle was about but is the Agincourt of popular image the real Agincourt, or is our idea of the battle simply taken from Shakespeare’s famous depiction of it?
World Statistics Day: a reading list By Franca Driessen, Stefanie De Lucia, Kelly Henwood, Brittany Hobson, and Charley James On 20 October 2015, the global mathematical community is celebrating World Statistics Day. In honour of this, we present here a reading list of OUP books and journal articles that have helped to advance the understanding of these mathematical concepts.
What should you read for ASIL Research Forum 2015? By Ciara O’Connor The fifth annual ASIL Research Forum is taking place 23-24 October 2015 in Washington, DC. Attendees will present and discuss works-in-progress that explore many topics in international law including energy, financial regulation, international criminal courts, trade, and treaty practice.
Better medical research for longer, healthier lives By Martin Bland When I started my career as a medical statistician in September 1972, medical research was very different from now. In that month, the Lancet and the British Medical Journal published 61 research reports which used individual participant data, excluding case reports and animal studies. The median sample size was 36 people. In July 2010, I had another look.
Naivety in the US approach to Syria By Michael Oppenheimer Repeatedly blind-sided, chasing the latest crisis, reacting to new realities established by others, and trying to find silver linings in the storm clouds, the Obama administration has failed to adjust its grand strategy of restraint
Why you must stop for coffee and donuts this morning By Gary L. Wenk Sometimes, what your brain wants is not always good for your body. Donuts are a good example. It’s early morning and you’re driving to work after a nice breakfast of black coffee and two eggs, easy-over, with bacon. Yet, you’re still hungry and having difficulty paying attention to the traffic. Why? Your brain is not cooperating because it is not satisfied with that breakfast because it lacked one critical ingredient that your brain urgently needs: sugar.
An ‘in-spite-of’ joy By John K. Roth The Armenian genocide and the Holocaust took place decades ago, but the novelist William Faulkner was right when he said that “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It had been hoped that “Never again!” might be more than a slogan, but in April 1994, the Rwandan genocide began and was soon in full cry.
Rediscovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper By Eric Gardner If you’re a student of African American literature or of the nineteenth century in the United States, you may have already heard about Johanna Ortner’s rediscovery of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s first book, Forest Leaves, which has long been assumed lost – perhaps even apocryphal.
Hey everybody! Meet Priscilla! By Priscilla Yu Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Priscilla Yu, who joined the gang in September 2015, just a month ago, as an OUPblog Deputy Editor and Social Media Marketing Assistant! You can learn more about Priscilla below.
Lady Macbeth on Capitol Hill By Emma Smith Describing her role as the ambitious political wife Claire Underwood in the American TV series House of Cards, Robin Wright recognized she is “Lady Macbeth to [Francis] Underwood’s Macbeth.” At one point in the second series, Claire emboldens her wavering husband: “Trying’s not enough, Francis. I’ve done what I had to do. Now you do what you have to do.”
Sex, death, booze, and mung bean sandwiches By Tomas McAuley How do opera and philosophy intersect? At first glance, this might seem like a strange question, for opera and philosophy are unlikely bedfellows. To speak of philosophy conjures up images of dry abstraction and bookish head-scratching, whereas to talk of opera is to call to mind cacophonous spectacles of colours and voices, of multitudinous audiences enthralled by impassioned song.
Landscapes of meaning By Andrew Shaffer This week, we’re bringing you another exciting edition of the Oral History Review podcast, in which Troy Reeves talks to OHR contributor Jessica Taylor.
World Anaesthesia Day: Key events in the history of anaesthesia By Amelia Carruthers Today (Friday 16 October) is World Anaesthesia Day. To mark this occasion, we have selected ten of the most interesting events in the history of anaesthesia. From the discovery of diethyl ether by Paracelsus in 1525, to James Young Simpson’s first use of chloroform in 1847, and the creation of the first specialist anaesthetic society in 1992 – anaesthesia is a medical discipline with a fascinating past.
Did human grammar(s) evolve? By Ljiljana Progovac In order to hypothesize about the evolutionary origins of grammar, it is essential to rely on some theory or model of human grammars. Interestingly, scholars engaged in the theoretical study of grammar (syntacticians), particularly those working within the influential framework associated with linguist Noam Chomsky, have been reluctant to consider a gradualist, selection-based approach to grammar.
The soda industry exposed [infographic] By Marion Nestle Although soda companies such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are recognized around the world – the history, politics, and nutrition of these corporations are not as known. In her latest book, Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), Marion Nestle exposes the truth behind this multi-billion dollar industry. Check out these hard hitting facts and see how much you actually know about the soda industry.
Music: the language of play By Gary McPherson and Solange Glasser Every day after school, eager children cross the doorstep of a suburban Melbourne house. It’s the home of Daphne Proietto, an exceptional piano teacher who gives lessons to children six days a week, entirely pro bono. While some kids would be more inclined to see piano lessons as a chore, these kids can’t wait. The reason? Music for them is more than just an activity.
In defense of myth By Robert A. Segal I approach myth from the standpoint of theories of myth, or generalizations about the origin, the function, and the subject matter of myth. There are hundreds of theories. They hail from anthropology, sociology, psychology, politics, literature, philosophy, and religious studies.
On Indian democracy and justice By Amartya Sen We have reason to be proud of our determination to choose democracy before any other poor country in the world, and to guard jealously its survival and continued success over difficult times as well as easy ones. But democracy itself can be seen either just as an institution, with regular ballots and elections and other such organizational requirements, or it can be seen as the way things really happen in the actual world on the basis of public deliberation.
Climate change and the Syrian refugee crisis: being honest about root causes By Byron Williston What should we make of Chancellor George Osborne’s recent claim that we need a “comprehensive plan” to address the burgeoning Syrian refugee crisis, a plan that addresses the “root causes” of this tragic upheaval? The UK government’s way of framing the issue is not unique. Many other governments as well as political pundits of various ideological stripes have been urging us to see the issue in precisely these terms.
Announcing Place of the Year 2015 longlist: vote for your pick Today we officially launch our efforts to discover what should be the Place of the Year 2015, coinciding with the publication of the Atlas of the World, 22nd edition–the only atlas that’s updated annually to reflect current events and politics.
Consumer reactions to attractive service providers By Lisa C. Wan and Robert S. Wyer Imagine that you are going to buy a health care product. You see a highly attractive salesperson. What would be your reaction? Would you feel very happy? Would you spend more time interacting with the salesperson and be more likely to buy his/her products?
Learning to listen By Kate Guthrie If your experience of school music was anything like mine, you’ll recall those dreaded aural lessons when the teacher put on a recording and instructed you to identify the instruments, to describe the main melody, to spot a key change, perhaps even to name the composer.
How did life on earth begin? By Jim Baggott News broke in July 2015 that the Rosetta mission’s Philae lander had discovered 16 ‘carbon and nitrogen-rich’ organic compounds on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The news sparked renewed debates about whether the ‘prebiotic’ chemicals required for producing amino acids and nucleotides – the essential building blocks of all life forms – may have been delivered to Earth by cometary impacts.
Gin a body meet a body By Anatoly Liberman I am not sure that any lexicographer or historian of linguistics thought of writing an essay on James Murray as a speaker and journalist, though such an essay would allow the author to explore the workings of Murray’s mind and the development of his style. (Let me remind our readers that Murray, 1837-1915, died a hundred years ago.)
Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group Season 4: Martial’s Epigrams By Gideon Nisbet The poet we call Martial, Marcus Valerius Martialis, lived by his wits in first-century Rome. Pounding the mean streets of the Empire’s capital, he takes apart the pretensions, addictions, and cruelties of its inhabitants with perfect comic timing and killer punchlines.
Tax competition – a threat to economic life as we know it By Peter Dietsch The creativity of rich individuals and their tax advisors to hide private wealth in tax havens such as the Cayman Islands or Switzerland knows hardly any bounds. Just as unethical, though often legal, are the multiple techniques multinational corporations use to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions such as Panama or Bermuda.
Should we ‘consent’ to oral history? By Don Ritchie All of those presidential candidates who promise to change the world on “my first day in office” have a lot to learn about the federal government’s glacial pace. The government does tend to do the right thing, so long as you have the patience to wait a few years (or decades).
Arabia: ancient history for troubled times By Greg Fisher In antiquity, ‘Arabia’ covered a vast area, running from Yemen and Oman to the deserts of Syria and Iraq. Today, much of this region is gripped in political and religious turmoil that shows no signs of abating.
The real charm of imaginary numbers By Leo Corry Few elementary mathematical ideas arouse the kind of curiosity and astonishment among the uninitiated as does the idea of the “imaginary numbers”, an idea embodied in the somewhat mysterious number i. This symbol is used to denote the idea of , namely, a number that when multiplied by itself yields -1. How come?
A session life for me: Studio musicians and London’s popular music industry in the 1960s By Gordon R. Thompson The popular music industries of the 1960s produced thousands of recordings with each studio relying on an infrastructure of producers, engineers, music directors, songwriters, and, of course, musicians. In recent years, documentaries have introduced us to instrumentalists and singers who formed the artistic backbones of America’s major studios.
A Chekhovian view of privacy for the internet age By Christopher Kuner Defining “privacy” has proven akin to a search for the philosopher’s stone. None of the numerous theories proposed over the years seems to encompass all the varied facets of the concept. In considering the meaning of privacy, it can be fruitful to examine how a great artist of the past has dealt with aspects of private life that retain their relevance in the Internet age.
Cars – are they a species? By Jennifer Coopersmith The Edwardian seer and futurologist, H. G. Wells, wondered whether aircrafts would ever be used commercially. He did the calculations and found that, yes, an airplane could be built and, yes, it would fly, but he proclaimed this would never be commercial.
Can you get X out of X in our Latin poetry quiz? By Hannah Charters The shadow of the Roman poets falls right across the entire western literary tradition: from Vergil’s Aeneid, about the fall of Troy, the wooden horse, and the founding of Rome; through the great love poets, Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus; Ovid’s Metamorphoses, treasure-house of myth for the Renaissance and Shakespeare; to Horace’s Dulce et decorum est, echoing through the twentieth century. We all take it for granted … so now’s the time to check your working.
The power of the algorithm By Stavroula Karapapa and Maurizio Borghi Recently Google Inc. was ordered to remove nine search results after the Information Commissioner’s office (ICO) ruled that they linked to information about a person that was no longer relevant. Almost ten years ago, that individual had committed a minor criminal offence and he recently put on a request to Google that related search results be removed, in compliance with the decision of the European Court of Justice in Google Spain.
On the unstoppable rise of vineyard geology By Alex Maltman The relationship between wine and the vineyard earth has long been held as very special, especially in Europe. Tradition has it that back in the Middle Ages the Burgundian monks tasted the soils in order to gauge which ones would give the best tasting wine, and over the centuries this kind of thinking was to become entrenched. The vines were manifestly taking up water from the soil.
Words from books By Edwin Battistella October is an important month for book festivals—in Boston, Austin, Madison, Baton Rouge, and of course Frankfurt, Germany, which hosts the world’s oldest book festival. In honor of book festivals, I want to delve a bit into the way that the language of books expanded the English vocabulary.
Clement Attlee and the bomb By John Baylis As the new leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, wrestles with his own beliefs about nuclear weapons and those opposing beliefs of many members of the Shadow Cabinet, it is interesting to look back to the debates which took place in the Labour Government of Clement Attlee in the immediate post-war period.
Reasonable suspicion for arrest in the era of Operation Midland By Matthew Hardcastle On 21 September 2015 the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) released a statement into Operation Midland. Within this statement the MPS provide a description of the current practice of investigating claims of child sexual abuse or serious sexual assault.
A world with persons but without borders By Robert Hanna Robert Hanna presents an argument based on some highly-plausible Kantian metaphysical, moral, political premises, about a huge real-world problem that greatly concerns me: the global refugee crisis, including its current manifestation in Europe.
Do East and West Germans still speak a different language? By Tanja Cranz On 12 September 1990, about ten months after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the foreign ministers of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) met with their French, American, British, and Soviet counterparts in Moscow to sign the so-called Two-Plus-Four Treaty.
Perceiving dignity for World Mental Health Day By John Z. Sadler Each year in July, I greet a new group of post-doctoral psychiatric trainees (‘residents,’ ‘registrars’) for a year’s work in our psychiatric outpatient clinic. One of the rewards of being a psychiatric educator is witnessing the professional growth of young clinicians as they mature into seasoned, competent, and humanistic psychiatrists.
Biology Week: a reading list By Franca Driessen Biology Week is an annual celebration of the biosciences in the UK organised by the Royal Society of Biology. By engaging the public through fun and interesting activities, Biology Week aims to promote the life sciences and their importance in our understanding of the planet we inhabit. In honour of this, we have compiled a reading list of biology titles that have helped further the cause through education and research.
Mars, Pluto… and beyond By Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams The story of our solar system is developing into one of the most absorbing – and puzzling – epics of contemporary science. At the heart of it lies one of the greatest questions of all – just how special is our own planet, which teems with life and (this is the difficult bit) which has teemed with life continuously through most of its 4.5 billion year lifetime?
Shakespeare on screen [infographic] Since the advent of film and television production, Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted, re-imagined, and performed on screen hundreds of times. Although many early Shakespeare adaptations remained faithful to his work, over time writers and directors selected only certain characters, plot lines, conflicts, or themes into their films.
Is “Nothing nothings” true? By Roy T Cook In a 1929 lecture, Martin Heidegger argued that the following claim is true: Nothing nothings. In German: “Das Nichts nichtet”. Years later Rudolph Carnap ridiculed this statement as the worst sort of meaningless metaphysical nonsense in an essay titled “Overcoming of Metaphysics Through Logical Analysis of Language”. But is this positivistic attitude reasonable?
An (in)effective interrogation By John W. Schiemann In early July, the American Psychological Association (APA) released an independent report detailing collusion between the APA and the Bush Administration on abusive interrogation techniques. The 500 plus page Hoffman report found that a small group of APA officials colluded with counterparts in the Department of Defense (DOD).
How well do you know the soda industry? [quiz] By Bridget Stokes The history of soda is full of Norman Rockwell paintings, nostalgic Americana, athletes and other celebrities—so many familiar faces that soda companies seem like the industry next door. But these are the same companies that use municipal water supplies in drought-stricken areas and spend large amounts of money on lobbying. So how much do you actually know about the soda industry? Take the quiz and find out.
The rise of epigenetics and the demise of nature vs nurture By David S. Moore Epigenetics has been a buzzword in biology for the past several years, as scientific understanding has grown about how genes are expressed. We now know that segments of DNA–genes–can be silenced by chemicals in DNA’s local environment; likewise, genes can be “turned on” in ways that allow populations of cells to churn out proteins at high speed, at sluggish rates, or at any speed in between.
The music next door By Erin Golden and Keith A. Josephs It was midnight and I had just slumped into bed, exhausted after one of my first days on-call as a new intern, and still adjusting to life in a new apartment. As my nagging reflections on the day were just beginning to subside, insistent knocking at my door jolted me back to alertness. Dragging myself out of bed to open the door, I was surprised to see a diminutive elderly lady who appeared quite perturbed.
Catching up with Courtney McCarroll, Assistant Editor in Psychology By Courtney McCarroll Every so often, we catch up with someone in our offices to learn more about life in publishing, from how editors cultivate a list to how each office’s coffee brews compare. This week, we’re concerned with matters of the mind and a member of our editorial team. Courtney McCarroll is an Assistant Editor in Psychology, and recently celebrated her one-year anniversary of working at Oxford University Press.
NASA discovers water on Mars again: take it with a pinch of salt By David Rothery The discovery of water on Mars has been claimed so often that I’d forgive anyone for being skeptical about the latest announcement. Frozen water, ice, has been proven on Mars in many places, there are lots of ancient canyons hundreds of kilometres long that must have been carved by rivers, and much smaller gullies that are evidently much younger.
Telemental health: Are we there yet? By Elias Aboujaoude An unacceptably large proportion of mentally ill individuals do not receive any care. Reasons vary but include the dearth of providers, the cost of treatment and stigma. Telemental health, which uses digital technology for the remote delivery of mental health services, may help toward finding a solution.
The science of rare planetary alignments By Paolo Molaro The alignment of both the Sun and the Earth with another planet in the Solar System is a rare event, which we are seldom able to observe in a lifetime. The Sun-Venus-Earth alignment for example only takes place once every 105.5 or 121.5 years. Similarly, the next Sun-Earth-Mars alignment will only occur in 2084. But on 5 January 2014, we were lucky enough to witness one such rare event: the alignment of the Sun, Earth, and Jupiter. Much to our surprise, we saw a new physical effect never observed before.
A mapping of musical modernity By Julian Johnson What has history got to do with music? Music, surely, has to do with the present moment. We value it as a singularly powerful means of intensifying our sense of the present, not to learn about the past. If we listen to Mozart, it’s for pleasure, not for a snapshot of Viennese life in the 1780s. Nevertheless, that begs the question why we take pleasure in something from such a distant time and place.
10 things you may not know about our Moon By Ernest Naylor Throughout history, the influence of the full Moon on humans and animals has featured in folklore and myths. Yet it has become increasingly apparent that many organisms really are influenced indirectly, and in some cases directly, by the lunar cycle. Here are ten things you may not know concerning the way the Moon affects life on Earth.
Bare bodkins and sparsely clothed buttinskis, or, speaking daggers but using none By Anatoly Liberman Few people would today have remembered the word bodkin if it had not occurred in the most famous of Hamlet’s monologues. Chaucer was the earliest author in whose works bodkin occurred. At its appearance, it had three syllables and a diphthong in the root, for it was spelled boidekin. The suffix –kin suggested to John Minsheu, our first English etymologist (1617), that he was dealing with a Dutch noun.
Compassion or compromise? The ethics of assisted suicide By Janice L. Berliner “Death is inevitable, but suffering doesn’t have to be,” says Tennessee native John Jay Hooker, who has devoted his life to fighting for civil liberties, and hasn’t let his deadly cancer stand in his way. This past summer, he filed a lawsuit against his state to sue for the right to die on his own terms.
Don’t panic: it’s October By Richard S. Grossman t the conclusion of the mid-September meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve announced its decision to leave its target interest rate unchanged through the end of this month. Although some pundits had predicted that the Fed might use the occasion of August’s decline in the unemployment rate (to 5.1 percent from 5.3 percent in July), to begin its long-awaited monetary policy tightening, those forecasts left out one crucial fact.
Charles Williams: Oxford’s lost poetry professor By Grevel Lindop It was strikingly appropriate that Sir Geoffrey Hill should have focused his final lecture as Oxford Professor of Poetry on a quotation from Charles Williams. Not only was the lecture, in May 2015, delivered almost exactly seventy years after Williams’s death; but Williams himself had once hoped to become Professor of Poetry.
Little progress in how to advise women with dense breasts By Judy Peres Lawmakers around the country are rushing to enact laws that require providers to notify women if their screening mammograms find dense breast tissue. Meanwhile, clinicians remain at a loss concerning how to counsel such women.
For the love of reason By Anna Strhan and Lois Lee As the political theorist Jane Bennett argues, the story is that there was once a time when God acted in human affairs and when social life, characterized by face-to-face relations, was richer; but this world then ‘gave way to forces of scientific and instrumental rationality, secularism, individualism, and the bureaucratic state – all of which, combined, disenchant the world’.
Cuban cultural capital and the renewal of US-Cuba relations By Melissa Gonzalez This year, 2015, has been quite a year for Cuba. Starting in January with President Obama’s announcement that the United States and Cuba will re-establish diplomatic and economic relations, followed by Pope Francis’s visit to the island earlier this month, Cuba has been under the global spotlight.
The Icelanders, the Cypriots, and the Greeks: is history repeating itself? By Nikoletta Kleftouri In 2008 Iceland experienced one of the worst financial crises in history, which involved the collapse of all three of its major commercial banks. The causes of this collapse were numerous and complex, and included the banks’ difficulty in refinancing their short-term debt and a run on their deposits.
The Carr case: New York is still the tax capital of the nation By Edward A. Zelinsky Governor Andrew Cuomo says that he no longer wants New York to be “the tax capital of the nation.” The recent experience of Patrick J. Carr demonstrates the long distance New York must still travel to reach the governor’s goal.
Global health inequalities and the “brain drain” By Gillian Brock and Michael Blake There are massive inequalities in global health opportunities and outcomes. Consider, for instance, that Japan has around twenty-one physicians per 10,000 people, while Malawi has only one physician for every fifty thousand people. This radical inequality in medical skills and talents has, obviously, bad consequences for health; people born in Malawi will live, on average, 32 years fewer than their counterparts born in Japan.
Diamonds are forever, and so are mathematical truths? By Leo Corry Try googling ‘mathematical gem’. I just got 465,000 results. Quite a lot. Indeed, the metaphor of mathematical ideas as precious little gems is an old one, and it is well known to anyone with a zest for mathematics. A diamond is a little, fully transparent structure all of whose parts can be observed with awe from any angle.
JLA Cover Legal order: lessons from ancient Athens By Federica Carugati, Gillian K. Hadfield, and Barry R. Weingast How do large-scale societies achieve cooperation? Since Thomas Hobbes’ famous work, Leviathan (1651), social scientific treatments of the problem of cooperation have assumed that living together without killing one another requires an act of depersonalization in the form of a transfer of individual powers to an all-powerful central government.
Where next? New politics, kinder politics, and the myth of anti-politics By Matthew Flinders For many commentators the 2015 General Election was the first genuinely ‘anti-political’ election but at the same time it was one in which the existence of a major debate about the nature of British democracy served to politicize huge sections of society.
What is your favourite Shakespeare adaptation? By Helena Palmer In anticipation of Shakespeare celebrations next year, we asked Oxford University Press and Oxford University staff members to choose their favourite Shakespeare adaptation. From classic to contemporary, the obscure to the infamous, we’ve collected a whole range of faithful and quirky translations from play text to film. Did your favourite film or television programme make the list?
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Karl Marx By Mohamed Sesay This October, the OUP Philosophy team are highlighting German social and political theorist Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) as their Philosopher of the Month. Known as the founder of revolutionary communism, Marx is credited as one of the most influential thinkers for his theoretical framework, widely known as Marxism.
Understanding modern Ukraine: a timeline By Serhy Yekelchyk As with most other countries, the Ukraine we know today—with everything good, bad, and in-between about it—is a result of its history. It shares more than half its borders with Russia, accounting for the two countries’ complicated history.
India’s foreign policy: Nehru’s enduring legacy By C. Raja Mohan Any discussion or study on India’s foreign policy must inevitably come to terms with the extraordinary legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. Even more demanding is the challenge of disentangling Nehru’s contributions from the unending current political contestations on India’s first prime minister.
Israel’s survival amid expanding chaos By Louis René Beres In world politics, preserving order has an understandably sacramental function. The reason is plain. Without minimum public order, planetary relations would descend rapidly and perhaps irremediably into a “profane” disharmony.
Who was on Shakespeare’s bookshelf? [infographic] George Bernard Shaw once remarked on William Shakespeare’s “gift of telling a story (provided some one else told it to him first).” Shakespeare knew the works of many great writers, such as Raphael Holinshed, Ludovico Ariosto, and Geoffrey Chaucer. How did these men, and many others, influence Shakespeare and his work?
Women in the history of philosophy By Jacqueline Broad For the most part, the practice of philosophy tends to be collective and conversational and collaborative. We enjoy reading what others have written on a given topic, and we like to hear what others have to say, because different people see things differently.
Archivist by day, audio enthusiast by night: an interview with Dana Gerber-Margie By Andrew Shaffer This week, we’re pushing the boundaries a bit to bring you an interview with Dana Gerber-Margie, who publishes The Audio Signal, a “weekly digest about audio.” Troy and I are huge fans of the newsletter, as are Pop Up Archive and even the Wall Street Journal.
How much do you know about travel medicine? By Dom Colbert Is garlic or citronella more useful in repelling insects? Which disease is typically identified as an ‘urban’ disease? What is the most reliable way to purify water? Which factors contributes most to psychological stress in frequent international travellers? Whether you’re climbing Mount Everest in the Himalayas, making your way through the Amazon, or just curious about various hazards abroad, prepare for your travels and test your knowledge of the unique dangers and diseases faced in travel medicine.
No child left inside on the Holy Earth: Liberty Hyde Bailey and the spirituality of nature study By Kevin M. Lowe In the United States today there is a great push to get children outside. Children stay indoors more and have less contact with nature and less knowledge of animals and plants than ever before. When children do go outside, our litigious society gives them less freedom to explore. Educators and critics such as Richard Louv and David Sobel express a concern that without a real connection to the natural world, something vital will be lost in the next generation — and that the challenges of climate change may be unsolvable.
Effective communications for conservation By Susan K. Jacobson, Mallory D. McDuff, and Martha C. Monroe From conserving endangered species to confronting climate change, natural resource management and conservation requires effective education and communication to achieve long-term results in our complex world. Research can help natural resource managers understand how to strategically use different outreach techniques and to promote new behaviors by involving and targeting their diverse audiences.
Mentalizing in groups By Sigmund Karterud ‘Mentalizing’ is the new word for making sense of oneself, others, and intersubjective transactions in terms of inner motivations. It can be fast and intuitive (implicit mentalizing), as in most informal and routine interactions, or slow and elaborate (explicit mentalizing), when one steps back to indulge in reflective thinking. “Why did she say that?” The thought is such an integral part of being human that it is most often taken for granted. Yet it is an evolutionary achievement.
Evolution: Some difficult problems By Brian Charlesworth and Deborah Charlesworth Two other major and largely unsolved problems in evolution, at the opposite extremes of the history of life, are the origin of the basic features of living cells and the origin of human consciousness. In contrast to the questions we have just been discussing, these are unique events in the history of life.
Trick or treat – Episode 27 – The Oxford Comment From baristas preparing pumpkin spiced lattes to grocery store aisles lined with bags of candy, the season has arrived for all things sweet-toothed and scary. Still, centuries after the holiday known as “Halloween” became cultural phenomenon, little is known to popular culture about its religious, artistic, and linguistic dimensions.
Youth violence By Catherine L. Ward Perhaps one of the most politically unpopular truths about violence is that it is young people who are most vulnerable to it, not the elderly or children, but youth. Global estimates from the World Health Organization are that, each year, 200,000 young people are murdered.
Can we trust religious polls? [infographic] By Robert Wuthnow Polls about religion have become regular features in modern media. They cast arguments about God and the Bible and about spirituality and participation in congregations very differently from the ones of preachers and prophets earlier in our nation’s history. They invite readers and viewers to assume that because a poll was done, it was done accurately.
The Anglo-Saxons and the Jews By Conor O’Brien Anglo-Saxon England may seem like a solidly monochrome Christian society from a modern perspective. And in many respects it was. The only substantial religious minority in early medieval Western Europe, the Jews, was entirely absent from England before the Norman Conquest.
The James Bond songs: Best of the forgotten and underrated By Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold If you’re getting ready for the new Bond movie—and its recently released James Bond song—you might want to sift through the history of this 50-year-old franchise and think about your favorite Bond films and songs. But how many songs do you remember once you get past “Goldfinger” and “Live and Let Die”? We dug into the ones you might not recall, and those we believe deserve another listen. Here are our top 10.
The woman who changed the world By Dawn Field Society owes a debt to Henrietta Lacks. Modern life benefits from long-term access to a small sample of her cells that contained incredibly unusual DNA. As Rebecca Skloot reports in her best-selling book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the story that unfolded after Lacks died at the age of 31 is one of injustice, tragedy, bravery, innovation and scientific discovery.
September 2015 (126))
Etymology gleanings for September 2015 By Anatoly Liberman It so happened that I have been “gleaning” the whole month, but today I’ll probably exhaust the questions received during the last weeks. From a letter: “I have been told Norwegians would say forth and back rather that back and forth since it was logical for them to envision going away, then coming back.”
Great Power: a ‘bridge too far’ for India? By Bharat Karnad Think of it. India was there when the Pharaohs ruled Egypt, it interacted with the long ago Mesopotamian empires on the Tigris and the Euphrates. India was the mysterious beyond Alexander of Macedon set out to conquer, and Indian spice and precious stones, finely woven cottons and silk, and peacocks, were the luxuries and the exotica craved by Imperial Rome in the age of the Caesers.
Sex, hygiene, and style in 1840s Paris By René Weis The young woman who inspired Dumas’s La Dame aux Camélias and Verdi’s Violetta in La traviata conceived at least once in the course of her 23 years. At the time she was in her late teens. During the five years that followed the birth of her baby, between the ages of 17 and 22, she prospered as the leading courtesan of the most glamorous city in Europe. The word ‘courtesan’ is a euphemism for an upper class prostitute, a paid woman who doubled as a trophy exhibit at the theatre and opera.
Leadership for change By Michael Maccoby Change is constant. We are all affected by the changing weather, natural disasters, and the march of time. Changes caused by human activity—inventions, migrations, wars, government policies, new markets, and new values—affect organizations as well as individuals.
Breaking down barriers By Helen Constantine Barriers, like promises and piecrust, are made to be broken. Or broken down, rather. Translators, like teachers, are great breakers-down of barriers, though, like them, they are almost always undervalued. This autumn our minds and our media are full of images of razor-wire fences as refugees, fleeing war zones, try to cross borders legally or illegally in search of a safe haven.
Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2015 winners By Stephanie Swain The ‘Connecting with Law Short Film Competition’ is an annual event run by Oxford University Press Australia & New Zealand. Now in its seventh year, the ‘Connecting with Law Short Film Competition’ runs from March to July and is open to all students currently enrolled in an Australian law school. Over the years, the competition has proven to be a unique way to encourage students to connect with the law and make a contribution to legal education in Australia.
Preparing for world travel [infographic] Are you planning a trip to Brazil, Cambodia, The Dominican Republic, Haiti, or another destination that requires immunizations in advance of your arrival? Are you a health care worker, about to travel to a destination currently dealing with an epidemic or outbreak?
New appreciation for composer Henry Cowell By Joel Sachs The extraordinarily innovative American composer Henry Cowell took Europe by storm as a touring pianist in the 1920s, playing his unforgettable compositions that often required using the entire forearm to play dozens of keys simultaneously. In later years he returned to give talks about his music and American music under the auspices of the State Department.
Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration Hallo Wien! International Bar Association annual meeting 2015 By Christopher Wogan and Louise Murgatroyd After venturing to the far East of Japan last year, 2015 sees the return of the International Bar Association’s annual meeting to Europe. Vienna will host the conference this year, a city which holds an interesting pedigree as a legal centre. The Annual Meeting itself promises to be a must-attend event for all international lawyers, with sessions ranging from climate change justice to human trafficking.
Gershwin and color: how blue is the Rhapsody? By Olivia Mattis Everyone knows George Gershwin as a composer, songwriter, pianist and icon of American music. But few know of his connections to the world of paintings and fine art. As a practicing artist himself, Gershwin produced over 100 paintings, drawings, and photographs.
Patients battle for justice By Leonard A. Jason Is it possible that a disease as impairing as Type II diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure, Multiple Sclerosis, and end-stage renal disease could be repeatedly belittled and delegitimized by scientists and health care professionals? Tragically, this is the case for a devastating illness affecting over one million Americans, and these patients have been deprived of their basic rights to respect, appropriate diagnosis, and humane treatment.
Blackstone’s Statutes: top legislation By Alison Bisset and Matthew Parsloe With the recent publication of the 2015-2016 editions of the Blackstone’s Statutes series, we asked some of the authors to select a piece of legislation from the series that has the most impact on their subject area.
Combatting the IS’s law violations: Should we reprise reprisals? By Eric Talbot Jensen Since its inception, the Islamic State (IS) has engaged in continuous behavior that violates the law of armed conflict (LOAC). These acts include the torture and killing of civilians; inhumane treatment of detainees generally, and in particular, women; forced compliance with religious and cultural practices; and, most recently, the systematic destruction and/or illegal sale of important cultural property.
Wine globalization set to continue By Kym Anderson The past two decades have seen globalization of the world’s wine markets proceed like never before, in both speed and comprehensiveness. There was a degree of trade expansion in the five decades to World War I but, until the late 20th century, interactions across continents involved little more than the exporting of vine cuttings and traditional production expertise.
Improving police and public safety: a win-win opportunity? By Tim Prenzler The month of September marks commemorative services for both the United Kingdom’s National Police Memorial Day on the 27th, and the Australian Police Remembrance Day on the 29th.
Richard Cobden: hero of the Left or Right? By Anthony Howe This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of the great Victorian politician and ‘sage’, Richard Cobden, born in 1804, who died on 2 April 1865. Once a name familiar to every school-child, the prophet of ‘free trade, peace, and goodwill’ is now all but forgotten save among professional historians but he has spawned a diverse political legacy.
Our exhausted (first) world: a plea for 21st-century existential philosophy By Sheridan Hough Consider: a lecture hall of undergraduates, bored and fidgety (and techne-deprived, since I’ve banned computers and devices in class) in distinctive too-cool-for-school Philosophy 101 style.—Ah, but today will be different: the current offering is not Aristotle on causation, or Cartesian dualism, or Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception—no.
Shakespeare’s encounter with Michel de Montaigne By William M. Hamlin Some people sign their books but never read them. Others devour books without bothering to inscribe their names. Shakespeare falls in the latter category. In fact we don’t truly know whether he owned books at all; just six Shakespearean signatures are considered authentic, and they appear exclusively in legal documents.
OUP Philosophy How much do you know about Hannah Arendt? [quiz] By Mohamed Sesay This September, the OUP Philosophy team have chosen Hannah Arendt as their Philosopher of the Month. Hannah Arendt was a German political theorist and philosopher best known for coining the term “the banality of evil.” She was also the author of various influential political philosophy books.
Istanbul, not Constantinople Throughout history, many cities changed their names. Some did it for political reasons; others hoped to gain an economic advantage from it.
Substance, style, and myth in the Kennedy-Nixon debates By Christopher McKnight Nichols On the evening of September 26, 1960, in Chicago, Illinois, a presidential debate occurred that changed the nature of national politics. Sixty-five years ago debates and campaign speeches for national audiences were relatively rare. In fact, this was the first live televised presidential debate in U.S. history.
Forum for Modern Language Studies cover Why does the European Day of Languages matter? By David Evans, Michael Gratzke, Claire Whitehead, and Fiona Mackintosh Each year, the European Union celebrates the European Day of Languages on 26 September. To mark this celebration of linguistic diversity, we asked the editors of Forum for Modern Language Studies to tell us why they think people should study some of the major European languages.
Five astonishing facts about women in Shakespeare What would Macbeth be without Lady Macbeth? Or Romeo and Juliet with only Romeo? Yet there’s an enormous disparity between female and male representation in Shakespeare’s play. Few, great female characters deliver as many lines or impressive speeches as their male counterparts. While this may not be surprising considering 16th century society, literature, and theater, data can reveal a wider disparity than previously thought.
A crisis of commitment By Berislav Marušic A reasonable line of thought can give rise to a crisis of commitment: Many a commitment requires persistence or willpower, especially in the face of temptation. A straightforward example is the decision to quit smoking; another is the promise to be faithful to someone for the rest of one’s life.
The meaning of the Silk Road today By Valerie Hansen The Silk Road initiative, announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 and implemented this year, contemplates so vast an investment in highways, ports, and railways that it will transform the ancient Silk Road into a ribbon of gold for surrounding countries. Multiple new trade corridors could potentially run through Xinjiang, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and many other […]
Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015): an inspirational life remembered By William Owen Sir David Willcocks sadly passed away in September 2015. This is OUP’s tribute to a highly gifted musician and outstanding choral director whose leadership, decency, and humanity have inspired countless singers and conductors to try to follow his example.
Addressing the elephant in the room: suicide awareness and prevention [infographic] By Callum Watts Every year in the United States, over 40,000 individuals take their own lives, making suicide the tenth most common cause of death in the country. September, National Suicide Prevention Month, seeks to raise awareness of this problem and—most importantly—help those who might be affected.
Top ten facts about Buddhism By Damien Keown Damien Keown, author of Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, tells us ten things we need to know about buddhism. From the Sangha to reincarnation, discover fascinating facts about Buddhism below.
James Baldwin and the fire this time By Douglas Field As the fires burned in Baltimore, following the arrest and subsequent death of Freddie Gray in April 2015, protesters brandished placards with quotations from James Baldwin’s work, and thousands of blogs and twitter feeds invoked the legendary writer.
A history of firsts [slideshow] By Barry Cunliffe We live in a globalized world, but mobility is nothing new. Set on a huge continental stage, By Steppe, Desert and Ocean tells the story how human society evolved across the Eurasian continent from Europe to China.
Ten fun facts about the xylophone By Celine Aenlle-Rocha You’d probably recognize the rainbow-patterned, lap-size plastic xylophone in the playroom, popular among music-minded toddlers. But what do you know about the real thing? The xylophone is a wooden percussion instrument with a range of four octaves, and can be used in a variety of musical genres.
Beyond the ‘God Wars’ By Anna Strhan and Lois Lee For many years – running into decades, even centuries – the idea of a fundamental opposition between believers and non-believers has anchored public discussion about religion. The metaphors are of battles: these are ‘God Wars’, with ‘zealous religionists’ mounting their defences against ‘militant atheists’.
The B-word and its kin By Anatoly Liberman Not too long ago, I promised to return to the origin of b-d words. Today I’ll deal with Engl. bad and its look-alikes, possibly for the last time—not because everything is now clear (nothing is clear), but because I have said all I could, and even this post originated as an answer to the remarks by our correspondents John Larsson (Denmark) and Olivier van Renswoude (the Netherlands).
French History cover Subversive voting, or how the French spoil their ballot papers By Malcolm Crook You might not guess, but the image below celebrating the Second Republic of 1848 was cast at Dijon as a negative vote in the referendum of 1851, which sought approval for the coup d’état that brought Louis-Napoleon (nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) to power in France.
Simplicity in a complex world By Jean Boulton There is a polarization in management and policy thinking. On the one hand, there is an increasing focus, for organizations, on defining detailed rules, standardizing methods, evidencing and measuring outcomes. The intention is to make the hospital, school, or firm work as an efficient, optimized, well-oiled machine.
Four top tips about student finance By Jane King and Mary Carey Starting University can be daunting. For most, becoming a University student is the beginning of a new academic challenge and social life. However, with these exciting ventures comes financial responsibility.
Agents of Empire: Who were the Bruni and Bruti families? [infographic] By Noel Malcolm Representing a broad span of empires, cultures and religions during the sixteenth century, the Bruni and Bruti families exemplify a snapshot of Albania at a time when European and Ottoman histories collided. Only a small piece of the greater story, Noel Malcolm uses the Bruni and Bruti families to paint a panoramic landscape of history that covers the Venetian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Papacy, Malta, north Africa, Spain, southern France, Poland and the Holy Roman Empire.
The wooden box strung with taut wire and scraped with horse-hair tied to a stick By Jane Griffiths After a recent performance, a member of the audience came up to tell me that he’d enjoyed my playing. “I always think,” he said, as if he were being original, “that the violin is the instrument that most closely resembles the human voice.” Outwardly I nodded assent and smiled; inwardly I groaned. If you happen to be a violinist, then you’ll be only too familiar with this particular cliché.
Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration Oxford Law Vox: The evolution of international arbitration By Constantine Partasides, Nigel Blackaby, and Fiona Parker As part of the launch of the sixth edition of ‘Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration’, one half of the book’s authorial team Nigel Blackaby and Constantine Partasides QC met up with Law Vox podcast host George Miller. Together they discussed the evolution of international arbitration and the influential role Redfern and Hunter have played in the field.
Time to reform the international refugee regime By Khalid Koser Europe is currently scrambling to cope with the arrival of over one million asylum seekers. Responses have ranged from building walls to opening doors. European Union countries have varied widely in their offers to resettle refugees.
The history of international law [timeline] Where and when did the history of international law begin? Many scholars have argued about the definitive date and periodisation of certain dynamic developments, let alone which treaties, institutions, and figures have shaped the field’s core doctrines.
When everywhere is a grave: remembering WWII casualties in Belarus By Anika Walke On 22 June 2015, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko opened a new memorial complex at the site of the former extermination camp Maly Trostenets near Minsk. Between 1941 and 1944, German occupants and their helpers interned and killed up to 206,500 people in this camp and in the nearby forest of Blagovshchina.
Separating Church and State By Alan S. Kahan Since the 17th century Western thinkers have struggled with the problem of how to stop conflicts over religious differences. Not long ago, we mostly thought that the problem had been solved. Two rather different solutions served widely as paradigms, with many variations. One was the American Separation of Church and State, and the other French laïcité, usually if misleadingly translated as ‘secularism’.
Which Shakespearean heroine are you? [quiz] Did you know that out of a total of 981 characters from Shakespeare’s plays, only around 150 characters are women? There is an ongoing debate concerning what truly qualifies a character as female, but this ratio of male to female characters is nevertheless astounding.
The philosophical computer store By Gualtiero Piccinini Once again, searching for unconventional computing methods as well as for a neurocomputational theory of cognition requires knowing what does and does not count as computing. A question that may appear of purely philosophical interest — which physical systems perform which computations — shows up at the cutting edge of computer technology as well as neuroscience.
Getting to know Anna Hernandez-French, Assistant Editor in Journals From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Anna Fernandez-French, an Assistant Editor in Scientific and Medical Journals.
Who was Giles Cory? By Emerson W. Baker “Monday, Sept. 19, 1692. About noon, at Salem, Giles Cory was press’d to death for standing Mute; much pains was used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance: but all in vain.” Thus reads Judge Samuel Sewall’s terse account of one of the most gruesome incidents in early American history, one that continues to horrify yet fascinate. Who was Giles Cory? Why was he accused of witchcraft? And how did he come to such a horrible fate?
How much do you know about fool’s gold? [quiz] Many people have heard of Pyrite, most-commonly referred to as fool’s gold, but far less people know about pyrite’s cultural significance or its prevalence throughout history. From American mining lore to Greek philosophy and medieval poetry, pyrite appears throughout our past, and continues to influence our lives today.
Shakespeare and film around the world From the birth of film, Shakespeare’s plays have been a constant source of inspiration for many screenwriters, directors, and producers. As a result, hundreds of film and television adaptations have been made, each featuring either a Shakespearean plot, theme, character, or all three.
Religious belief: A natural phenomenon with natural causes By Arif Ahmed In our time, as in Hume’s, billions of people all over the world derive their moral framework, attitude towards life, and conduct towards others from belief in a supernatural entity and the miraculous achievements of its terrestrial agents.
Bringing the Digital Humanities into the classroom By Troy Reeves I spent four days last month with my colleague and friend, Doug Boyd, as he and I (mainly he) gave oral history workshops in Milwaukee and Madison. While the idea to bring Boyd to Wisconsin for these trainings began with Ann Hanlon, Digital Humanities Lab head at UW-Milwaukee, I jumped at the chance to find groups to sponsor his time in Madison.
10 ways hospitals can heal the planet By Kathy Gerwig A healthy and sustainable environment is a necessary foundation for human health. On that most people agree. But there is an interesting paradox in health care: As hospitals deliver life-saving care to people, their environmental footprint — pollution, energy use, waste production, etc. — can be harmful to our health. Here are 10 ways hospitals can heal the planet.
Incorporating sex as a biological variable in preclinical research By Margaret M. McCarthy In the spring of 2015 the National Institutes of Health announced new guidelines for the incorporation of sex as a biological variable in any research they fund. Chromosome compliment (XX for female, XY for male in all mammals), gonadal phenotype, and gamete size define sex as a biological parameter. (In contrast, gender is a human construction based on an individual or society’s perception of sex.)
How much do you know about pilgrimages? By Ian Reader Pilgrimage has been celebrated in literature from ‘The Canterbury Tales’> to Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Pilgrimage’. Test your knowledge of pilgrimages throughout history, across religions, and around the world.
Five years of discovery By Susan MacArthur The librarians at Bates College became interested in Oxford Bibliographies a little over five years ago. We believed there was great promise for a new resource OUP was developing, in which scholars around the world would be contributing their expertise by selecting citations, commenting on them, and placing them in context for end users.
Beyond the page: music students and emotion By Bruce Adolphe Even though I recently turned sixty and have taught at colleges and conservatories, when I hear the words “back to school,” the image that springs to mind is of my teenage self as a Juilliard student in the 1970s. If I ask that self what my main educational breakthrough from those years was, the answer surprises me: discovering what actors learn. Actors study their own emotions.
Wading through an endless field, or, still gleaning By Anatoly Liberman What is the origin of the now popular phrase in the house, as in “Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Brown is in the house”? I don’t know, but a short explanation should be added to my response. A good deal depends on the meaning of the question “What is the origin of a certain phrase?” If the querist wonders when the phrase surfaced in writing, the date, given our resources, is usually ascertainable.
Text analysis for comparative politics By R. Michael Alvarez, Christopher Lucas, Richard A. Nielsen, Margaret E. Roberts, Brandon M. Stewart, Alex Storer, and Dustin Tingley Every two days, humans produce more textual information than the combined output of humanity from the dawn of recorded history up through the year 2003. Much of this text is directly relevant to questions in political science. Governments, politicians, and average citizens regularly communicate their thoughts and opinions in writing, providing new data from which to understand the political world and suggesting new avenues of study in areas that were previously thought intractable.
Yes, maths can be for the amateur too By Snezana Lawrence A friend of mine picked an argument with me the other day about how people go on about the beauty of mathematics, but this is not only not obvious to non-mathematicians, it cannot be accessed by those outside the field. Unlike, for example, the modern art, which is also not always obvious, mathematical beauty is elusive to all but the mathematicians. Or so he said.
Oxford Economic Papers Greek wages in crisis: Whose loss and whose hope? By Rebekka Christopoulou and Vassilis Monastiriotis Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the crisis in Greece must be aware of its record-high unemployment. From an already elevated value of 8% in 2008, the Greek unemployment rate rocketed to 27% in 2013 and has since remained in that ballpark.
Amartya Sen on poverty in India By Manjula Narayan Just before the release of his new book, The Country of First Boys, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen talks exclusively to the Hindustan Times‘ Manjula Narayan about our blindness to poverty, flaws of the Gujarat model, miniaturisation of great ideas by the Hindu right wing and interference in academia.
The desnudas of Times Square By Elizabeth L. Wollman Because nothing noteworthy occurred anywhere in the world through the month of August and the first half of September, the local news in New York City turned its attentions to a few women who have apparently been bothering people in the otherwise calm, decent section of Manhattan known as Times Square.
Res gestae: The prosecutor’s backdoor By Richard Glover One of the principal dangers of admitting hearsay evidence in court is that a witness’s veracity cannot be tested by cross-examination. Notwithstanding that, where a witness is dead, or it is impractical for the witness to attend because she is out of the country, we may recognise the case for admitting hearsay under the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Police shootings and the black community By David J. Leonard In a recent Huffington Post piece entitled “Police Shootings Are About Class as Well as Race,” Jesse Jackson argued that the issue of police violence specifically, and an unjust and excessive criminal justice system in general, are disproportionately experienced by the poor, irrespective of race.
All will and no grace: The drama of family provision By Gary Watt The legal wishes of the dead have long been fertile ground for domestic drama. Shakespeare’s As You Like It opens on the theme: “As I remember, Adam, it was upon this fashion bequeathed me by will”.
My life as a ‘career Special’ By Julie Rainey In 2004, I was waiting on a tube platform and spotted posters asking: ‘Police – could you?’. I thought about that a lot and realised that, at that point in time, I couldn’t. I didn’t feel certain enough that, in difficult situations, I would have good enough judgement always to do the right thing. Fast forward ten years and I’d done a fair bit of growing up. I’d worked in a police force and spent a lot of time with officers – both regulars and Specials.
From ad hoc arbitral tribunals to permanent courts: three examples By Florian Grisel and Thomas Schultz Should EU-US investment disputes be solved by arbitral tribunals constituted separately for each dispute, as is currently the case under most Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), or should a permanent court be established? This is one of the key questions that might kill the efforts for what would be the largest regional free-trade agreement in history, covering 46% of world GDP: the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Twelve important figures in the modern history of wine By Phil Henderson Many people have influenced the world of wine over the course of the last 400 years. They have changed, developed, and perfected the winemaking process, introduced grapes and viticulture to different continents, and left their mark on an industry that has been with us since the dawn of civilization.
English in 2065 By Edwin Battistella Students are heading back to school this month and many recent high school grads are off to college. At institutions across the country, deans are dutifully studying the Beloit College Mindset List to remind their faculty of the recent cultural experiences that have shaped the today’s youth—and to remind us of how much the world has changed.
Grandparents Day: A reading list By Deborah Carr On Sunday September 13, the United States will celebrate National Grandparents’ Day. This annual holiday, held on the first Sunday after Labor Day, celebrates our grandmothers and grandfathers. Marian McQuade, grandmother to 43 and great-grandmother of 15, is widely credited with founding the holiday.
How well do you know the film adaptations of Shakespeare’s work? [quiz] It’s fun to read Shakespearean plays, but watching our most beloved scenes on stage or screen makes the characters and the plots even more engaging. Reading the scene in which Juliet wakes up to find her Romeo dead is indeed tragic, but watching Claire Danes and Leonardo DiCaprio lock eyes right before he dies is heart-wrenching. Gazing, unable to reach through the screen and offer help, as Ralph Fiennes is outnumbered and murdered in his directorial debut, Coriolanus, is unparalleled.
Paradoxes and promises By Roy T Cook Imagine that, on a Tuesday night, shortly before going to bed one night, your roommate says “I promise to only utter truths tomorrow.” The next day, your roommate spends the entire day uttering unproblematic truths like: 1 + 1 = 2.
Finding wisdom in Old English By Eleanor Parker Anglo-Saxon literature is full of advice on how to live a good life. Many Anglo-Saxon poems and proverbs describe the characteristics a wise person should strive to possess, offering counsel on how to treat others and how to obtain and use wisdom in life. Here are some words in Old English that describe what a wise person should aspire to be—and some qualities it’s better to avoid.
Our diet and the environment [infographic] Our diets are a moral choice. We can decide what we want to eat, though more often than not we give little thought to our diet and instead rather habitually and instinctively eat foods that have been served to us since a young age.
Shakespeare’s work: pure genius or imitatio? William Shakespeare was undoubtedly a literary mastermind, yet several allusions and quotations in his works suggest that he gathered ideas from other texts. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for example, was alluded to more than any other classical text, and the Bishop’s and Geneva Bibles were quoted numerous times in his works. Shakespeare’s reliance on source material from external literature was a common practice of the time period.
Can you match the quote to the philosopher? Part two [quiz] By Joy Mizan In April this year, we questioned whether or not you could match the quote to the philosopher who said it. After demonstrating your impressive knowledge of philosophical quotations, we’ve come back to test your philosophy knowledge again. In this second installment of the quiz, we ask you if you can make the distinction between Aquinas, Hume, Sophocles, and Descartes?
From colony to modern state: a history of India’s foreign policy By C. Raja Moha, David M. Malone, and Srinath Raghavan Since the turn of the century, the number of scholars and practitioners with an in-depth knowledge of India has multiplied worldwide. Specifically, close attention has been paid to the country’s international relationships, international objectives, and policy implementations as a result of its relevance to a wide range of global actors. But what accounts for India’s rapid ascension to the global stage?
Managing high-risk pregnancies in obstetrics today By Harini Narayan Every year, across the world 287,000 women die in pregnancy and childbirth along with at least 2.6 million stillbirths, of which about 50% are intrapartum deaths. Among 133 million babies born alive each year, 2.8 million die in the first week of life. The latest MBRRACE reports of the UK show a maternal mortality rate of 10 per 100,000 women giving birth (December 2014).
Step 5 to end military suicides: Enforce zero tolerance By John Bateson In June 2015, the results of a new study by the Department of Veterans Affairs were released. The study examined more than 170,000 suicides of adult men and women in 23 states between 2000 and 2010, and concluded that female military veterans kill themselves at a rate that is nearly six times higher than their civilian counterparts.
Predicting future cognition in preterm children with MRI By Henrik Ullman In the wake of the development of advanced neonatal intensive medical care, more and more children born very preterm manage to beat the previously tough odds and survive the perils of infections and respiratory distress that are some of the common problems in the group. While this is one of the success stories of modern medicine, long-term follow-up of premature-born pediatric cohorts show that the obstacles don’t cease with the need of intensive medical care.
10 things you need to know about Magna Carta By Nicholas Vincent This year marks the 800th anniversary of one of the most famous documents in history, the Magna Carta. Nicholas Vincent, author of Magna Carta: A Very Short Introduction , tells us 10 things everyone should know about the Magna Carta.
There are many excellent African leaders By Heidi G. Frontani A common perception is that the problem with Africa is its leaders. In 2007, Sudanese billionaire Mo Ibrahim even created a major cash prize through his charitable foundation as an incentive to African heads of state to treat their people fairly and equitably and not use their countries’ coffers for their personal enrichment.
The garden palaces of Europe and Asia [interactive map] By Kathleen James-Chakraborty In 1682, the French court moved from Paris to the former royal hunting lodge of Versailles, which had been transformed under the supervision of Louis XIV into Europe’s most splendid palace, one which moreover was set in a stunning park that stretched all the way to the horizon. Versailles established a fashion for palaces surrounded by ample gardens that most major European courts would soon imitate.
Step 4 to end military suicides: Expedite treatment By John Bateson In 1789, President George Washington said, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.” Judging by this standard, we are failing.
The direct link between income and impact: savvy music teachers By David Cutler On the surface, the suggestion that the best independent music teachers are those who earn the most money seems ludicrous. No obvious, mathematical correlation can be drawn between fiscal and pedagogical success. We have all encountered incredible educators who struggle to make ends meet, or financially comfortable ones who are mediocre instructors at best.
Aylan Kurdi: A Dickensian moment By Thomas Dixon The international response to the photographs of the dead body of three year-old Syrian boy Aylan Kurdi, washed ashore on a Turkish beach on 2 September 2015, has prompted intense debate. That debate has been not only about the proper attitude of Britain and other countries to the refugee crisis, but also about the proper place of strong emotions in political life.
Divide and conquer, or, the riddle of the word “Devisen” By Anatoly Liberman This is the continuation of last week’s “gleanings.” Once again, I hasten to thank our correspondents for their questions and comments and want only to say something on the matter of protocol. When I receive private letters, I refer to the writers as “our correspondents” because I cannot know whether they want to have their names bandied about in the media.
How well do you know Sherlock Holmes? [quiz] Sherlock Holmes is one of the most famous detectives of all time. The detective featured in 4 novels and 56 short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and is a regular figure in modern day culture; Holmes has been portrayed on stage, radio, film and television for over a century, most recently by Sir Ian McKellan in the 2015 film, Mr. Holmes.
Step 3 to end military suicides: Reduce stigma By John Bateson The stigma of mental illness poses a major barrier when it comes to individuals seeking help. As a society, we are much more comfortable admitting physical problems than psychological ones. Nowhere is this more true than in the military, where troops are trained to be tough and not acknowledge any weaknesses.
Does war cause xenophobia? By Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee Does war cause xenophobia? Or does xenophobia cause war? That’s a “chicken and egg” sort of question. The fact is, fear of “the other” had already prevailed in pre-World War I European society—even in more liberal polities such as Britain—later manifesting itself in various ways throughout the conflict.
Step 2 to end military suicides: Beyond combat exposure By John Bateson According to a new study of nearly 4 million men and women who served in the military between 2001 and 2007, deploying to a war zone doesn’t increase a service member’s risk of suicide. The study was conducted by the military’s National Center for Telehealth and Technology, and its findings would seem to serve the military’s purpose. After all, if no causal connection is found between deployment and suicide, recruitment efforts aren’t affected.
In praise of SoundCloud By Pedro de Alcantara When you’re a musician, you’re constantly passing between the private and the public spheres. Practicing by yourself in a soundproof room is a private activity. Playing an audition is a public act. Reading a score silently is private; releasing a CD is public.
History of ICSID Establishing ICSID: an idea that was “in the air” By Antonio R. Parra As a young ICSID neophyte, I once asked Aron Broches, the World Bank’s General Counsel from 1959 to 1979, how he had come up with the idea for the Centre. “It was in the air,” he explained. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were indeed a number of proposals circulating for the creation of an international arbitral mechanism for the settlement of investment disputes.
John Oliver, televangelists, and the Internal Revenue Service By Edward A. Zelinsky John Oliver’s sardonic spoof of televangelists raises important issues that deserve more than comic treatment. Oliver’s satire was aimed both at the televangelists themselves and at the IRS. In Oliver’s narrative, the IRS acquiesces to televangelists’ abuse by granting their churches tax-exempt status and failing to audit these churches.
The origins of Labor Day: Marches and civil unrest in 1880s Chicago By Heath Carter When I ask college students what they know about the origins of Labor Day, the answer is usually straightforward: not much. But if the labor movement’s story is not on the tip of their tongues, it says less about them than it does about our era.
Step 1 to end military suicides By John Bateson Fifteen years ago, the suicide rate among patients in a large behavioral care system in Detroit was seven times the national average. Then leaders there decided to tackle the problem. The first question asked was what should be the goal—to cut the rate in half, reduce it to the national level, or more? One employee said even a single suicide was unacceptable if it was your loved one, and that helped set the target: zero.
‘Us’ and ‘Them’: Can we define national identity? By Liav Orgad Surveys show that a high percentage of British citizens “feel British.” But what exactly do people have in mind when they say this? People may think differently about this question, and perhaps it is also British to give various meanings to British identity. Still, can we define what it is to “feel” British? Or even what is un-British—be it a pattern of behavior, a belief, or a way of doing things?
A fairy tale is more than just a fairy tale By Jack Zipes When some one says to you “that’s just a fairy tale,” it generally means that what you have just said is untrue or unreal. It is a polite but deprecating way of saying that your words form a lie or gossip. Your story is make-believe and unreliable. It has nothing to do with reality and experience. Fairy tale is thus turned into some kind of trivial story.
Where is architecture truly ‘modern’? By Kathleen James-Chakraborty Too often, we in Europe and the English-speaking world presume that we have a monopoly on both modernity and its cultural expression as modernism. But this has never been the case. Take, for instance, the case of sixteenth and seventeenth century urbanism in Europe and Asia. One can focus on the different ways in which classical precedent was deployed in Europe, teasing out the distinctions between the early and late Renaissance, not to mention Mannerism and Baroque.
Scrutinizing the script of the medieval ‘Tremulous Hand of Worcester’ By Deborah Thorpe and Jane Alty How would we know if a medieval person had a neurological disorder? If we did know, would it be possible to pinpoint the type of condition? What insight can we gain about the practical impact of disorders on medieval life? Fortunately, a physical record survives that provides a reliable window into the health of medieval people—or, at least, those who were able to write.
How well do you know Shakespeare’s influences? [quiz] Many Shakespeare fans prefer to imagine him as an untrained genius, but, in reality, Shakespeare drew inspiration from many classical sources for his own writing. His most famous plays, such as Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, and Hamlet, allude to and reference external sources that Shakespeare was already familiar with. How much do you know about the influence of other writers on, what some would call, the greatest English dramatist to date?
A snapshot of the jihadist movement today By Daniel Byman Fighting terrorism is one of the few foreign policy issues that unites Democrats and Republicans, though of course both are quick to point fingers at any perceived failures or lapses. Yet America’s and the world’s leaders often do not recognize that the jihadist movement today is in flux, and the threat it poses differs dramatically from the 9/11 era.
The future of aesthetic surgery By Foad Nahai Plastic surgery, aesthetic surgery, cosmetic surgery: the field has many different names. Yet despite its high profile today, many people even within the medical field have a limited understanding of it and the drastic changes it’s undergoing. From noninvasive procedures to patient education, aesthetic surgeons face a variety of new challenges. We sat down with Foad Nahai, editor of Aesthetic Surgery Journal?, to learn more about developments in the field.
Sexual decision-making for older adults with dementia By James M. Wilkins Who decides with whom we are allowed to have sex? Generally, consenting adults are considered to have the ability to make decisions regarding sexual activity and are allowed to pursue a sexual relationship with whomever they choose, assuming appropriate criteria for consent are met.
Art across the early Abrahamic religions By Robert Gregg Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are considered kindred religions–holding ancestral heritages and monotheistic belief in common–but there are definitive distinctions between these “Abrahamic” peoples. The early exchanges of Jews, Christians, and Muslims were dominated by debates over the meanings of certain stories sacred to all three groups.
OUP Philosophy Philosopher of the month: Hannah Arendt By Mohamed Sesay and Taylor Steimle The OUP Philosophy team have selected Hannah Arendt (4 October 1906- 4 December 1975) as their September Philosopher of the Month. Born into a Jewish German family, Arendt was widely known for her contributions to the field of political theory, writing on the nature of totalitarian states, as well as the resulting byproducts of violence and revolution.
Back to the “stove front”: an oral history project about Cuban housewives By Carmen Doncel and Henry Eric Hernández We recently asked you to tell us to send us your reflections, stories, and the difficulties you’ve faced while doing oral history. This week, we bring you another post in this series, focusing on an oral history project from Carmen Doncel and Henry Eric Hernández. We encourage you to to chime into the discussion, comment below or on our Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and G+ pages.
Hypertension: more fatal than essential By Sunil Nadar Hypertension (or high blood pressure) is a common condition worldwide, and is known to be one of the most important risk factors for strokes, and heart attacks. It is considered to affect almost a third of all adults over the age of 18.
Four myths about the status of women in the early church By Susan E. Hylen There is a good deal of historical evidence for women’s leadership in the early church. But the references are often brief, and they’re scattered across centuries and locations. Two interpretations of the evidence have been common in the last forty years.
Journal of Public Health cover Health inequalities: what is to be done? By Katherine E. Smith The research literature on health inequalities (health differences between different social groups) is growing almost every day. Within this burgeoning literature, it is generally agreed that the UK’s health inequalities (like those in many other advanced, capitalist economies) are substantial.
Compassionate law: Are gay rights ever really a ‘non-issue’? By Raymond Wacks On his recent visit to Kenya, President Obama addressed the subject of sexual liberty. At a press conference with the Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, he spoke affectingly about the cause of gay rights, likening the plight of homosexuals to the anti-slavery and anti-segregation struggles in the United States.
Between the stacks – Episode 26 – The Oxford Comment Aside from announcing the start of another academic semester, September also marks an essential, if lesser-known, national holiday celebrated since 1987: Library Card Sign-up Month. Once a year, the American Library Association (ALA)—working in conjunction with public libraries across the country—makes an effort to spotlight the essential services provided by libraries now and throughout history. But what, exactly, are the origins of the American public library?
Getting to know Celine in music marketing By Celine Aenlle-Rocha Our New York office has welcomed a new assistant to our cubicle jungle. Celine Aenlle-Rocha joined the marketing team in August 2015 after recently graduating from college. We sat down with her to talk about publishing, New York, and sweaters.
The reptiles of Thailand [interactive map] Thailand is one of the most ecologically diverse countries in the world, housing more than 350 different species of reptiles. Learning about these turtles, tortoises, lizards, crocodiles, and snakes is more important than ever in light of recent threats to their extinction due to wildlife trade and loss of habitat for agricultural use of their habitat.
Kuwait’s war on ISIS and DNA By Dawn Field Kuwait is changing the playing field. In early July, just days after the June 26th deadly Imam Sadiq mosque bombing claimed by ISIS, Kuwait ruled to instate mandatory DNA-testing for all permanent residents. This is the first use of DNA testing at the national-level for security reasons, specifically as a counter-terrorism measure. An initial $400 million dollars is set aside for collecting the DNA profiles of all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents
Etymology gleanings for August 2015 By Anatoly Liberman I received a question about the greatest etymologists’ active mastery of foreign languages. It is true, as our correspondent indicated, that etymologists have to cast their nets wide and refer to many languages, mainly old (the deader, the better). So would the masters of the age gone by have felt comfortable while traveling abroad, that is, not in the tenth but in the nineteenth century?
Prepping for APSA 2015 By Cody Merrow and Taylor Steimle This year’s American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting takes place September 3-6 in San Francisco, where over 6,000 of the world’s foremost academic political scientists will gather for four days of lectures, sessions, networking, and scholarly discussion. This year’s theme, “Diversities Reconsidered”, promises to ignite intellectual discussion among all participants while still staying grounded in the current state of the nation’s political climate.
How much do you know about Great Expectations? [quiz] By Amy Jelf Do you know your Magwitch from your Miss Havisham? Your Philip Pirrip from your Mr Pumblechook? Perhaps Dickens’s best-loved work, Great Expectations features memorable characters such as the convict Magwitch, the mysterious Miss Havisham and her proud ward Estella, as Pip unravels the mystery of his benefactor and of his own heart.
“The discovery of a dead body”, extract from The Murder of William of Norwich By E. M. Rose The discovery of the mutilated body of William of Norwich in 1144 soon sparked stories of a ritual murder performed by Jews that quickly spread beyond the walls of Norwich. E. M Rose examines the events surrounding the murder as well as the trial that followed the discovery of the body and launches a historical forensic analysis into the death.
Meta-analysis of animal studies: a solution to animal waste By Joanna IntHout, Carlijn R. Hooijmans, Maroeska M. Rovers, and Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga Animal research has always attracted a lot of attention because it involves the welfare of animals being compromised. Given this pressure, you would expect that animal studies are performed according to the highest scientific standards; however, there are big methodological problems.
Wrong again By Richard S. Grossman Unlike fine wine, bad ideas don’t improve with age. One such idea is the Invest in Transportation Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), which would institute a temporary tax cut on profits brought back to the United States by American firms from their overseas operations and use the proceeds to fund investment in transportation infrastructure.
Could a Supreme Court justice be president? By Lewis L. Gould Bill Kristol, whose major political contribution to American public life is the national career of Sarah Palin, has another bright idea to free the Republican Party from the looming prospect of a Donald Trump presidential candidacy. The GOP, he writes, should turn to a dark horse from an unlikely source. After naming several long-shot contenders such as Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan, Kristol essays the presidential equivalent of a two-handed shot from half court. Why not, he inquires, Justice Samuel Alito from the Supreme Court?
Is phantom limb pain all in one’s head? By Tamar Makin Phantom limb pain is thought to result from changes in brain organisation. Recent evidence challenges this view, leaving this mysterious phenomenon unsolved. Picture yourself waking up in the hospital. Your body is hurting, but you can’t remember what happened. The doctor tells you that you had a severe accident causing you to lose your left arm.
Yorkshire: the birthplace of film? By Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell Any assertions of ‘firsts’ in cinema are open invitations to rebuttal, but the BBC has recently broken news of a claim that the West Yorkshire city of Leeds was in fact film’s birthplace. Louis Le Prince, a French engineer who moved to Leeds in 1866, became one of a number of late 19th-century innovators entering the race to conceive, launch, and patent moving image cameras and projectors.
How well do you know the James Bond songs? [quiz] By Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold Very soon now, we’ll find out who sings the next James Bond song. SPECTRE, the superspy’s twenty-fifth outing, will be coming out in the fall. But the song will be more like the thirtieth or so, depending on how you count.
Brand management in the internet age: new options, new concerns By Allegra Waddell Starting in 2012, ICANN revolutionized the internet with the release of a vast number of new top-level domain spaces. With the launch of over 1000 new spaces in the near future, simply registering your client’s business name in one or two extensions may not prove sufficient to reach their audiences.
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Is the glass half full or will trouble for lawyers prevail? By Benjamin H. Barton and Deborah L. Rhode As new students dive into life as a 1L, recent graduates await their bar results and lawyers continue to soldier on in their ever-changing, ever-growing profession. Legal ethics scholar Deborah L. Rhode, author of The Trouble with Lawyers, and law professor Benjamin H. Barton, author of Glass Half Full, joined us to chat about a few hot topics in law.
Silencing Jean Louise: the media and Harper Lee By Gregory Jay For a brief moment in July of 2015, the American news media exploded with headline stories about a work of literature, something of an unprecedented turn for the mass media. That this coverage should have focused almost exclusively on race issues and ignored the “new” volume’s revelations about gender issues in Lee’s novels is understandable. The explanation lies in the coincidence of the book’s publication with a series of wrenching racial events from Ferguson to Charleston and summarized in the “Black Lives Matter” campaign.
Sects, witches, and wizards-from Pythagoreans to Kepler By Snezana Lawrence To start a conversation based on mathematics may seem to some to be one of the tasks inevitably converging towards the plot-line of Mission Impossible. Well, certainly there are more pressing things that would occupy people’s minds, concerning international politics, the future of Europe, and the future of the Middle East. What’s new?
Sexual exploitation and abuse by UN Peacekeepers By Melanie O'Brien Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers is not fresh news. It has been going on for years. It first hit the headlines over ten years ago, and the scandal drove the UN to take action. Yet recent allegations over SEA by French peacekeepers in 2014 have brought the issue to the forefront again, and have motivated the UN Secretary-General to escalate the UN’s response to SEA in its peacekeeping operations.
Wine around the world [infographic] By Phil Henderson It’s a multi-million dollar global industry. It’s been with us since the dawn of civilization. And it’s constantly developing. The wine business is an intriguing marker of human activity – economic changes, consumer fashions, globalization, social and technological developments.
Four ways in which policy-makers resolve moral dilemmas By Christian Adam, Christoph Knill, and Steffen Hurka Moral dilemmas are ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Can we protect the bodily integrity of women and their unborn children at the same time? How can we protect the free will of adults while at the same time denying them to engage in self-harming activities, like (assisted) suicide or drug use?
‘Abrahamic religions’ – From interfaith to scholarship By Guy G. Stroumsa Together with Ulysses, Abraham is the earliest culture hero in the Western world. More precisely, as Kierkegaard, who called him ‘the knight of faith,’ reminds us, he has remained, throughout the centuries, the prototype of the religious man, of the man of faith. The wandering Aramean from the Book of Genesis, who rejected his parents’ idols and native Mesopotamia to follow the call of the One God to the land of Canaan, started a saga reverberated not only in early Jewish literature, but also in the New Testament (Galatians 3: 6-8), and in early Christian literature.
Hey everybody! Meet Elizabeth! By Elizabeth Furey Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Elizabeth Furey, who joined the gang in August 2015, just two weeks ago, as an OUPblog Deputy Editor and Social Media Manager! You can learn more about Elizabeth below.
OUP Philosophy How well do you know Lao Tzu? [quiz] By Mohamed Sesay This August we are featuring Lao Tzu, the legendary Chinese thinker and founder of Taoism, as Philosopher of the Month. He is best known as the author of the classic ‘Tao Te Ching’ (‘The Book of the Way and its Power’). Take our quiz to see how much you know about the life and studies of Lao Tzu!
Ghosts of Katrina By Mark Cave Ten years have passed since Katrina. New Orleans is in the midst of celebrating a remarkable renewal. I still live in the same apartment that I lived in before the storm. It looks the same, perhaps a bit more cluttered, but the neighborhood has certainly changed.
Oxford Medicine Online Common infectious diseases contracted by travellers worldwide [infographic] By Joe Couling This summer intrepid travelers everywhere are strapping on backpacks, dousing themselves in mosquito spray, and getting their inoculations — ready to embark on journeys that will take them into contact with some of the most virulent viruses and nastiest bacteria on the planet. Even those of us who aren’t going off the beaten track may end up in close quarters with microbes we’d rather not befriend. Explore some of the most common infectious diseases around the globe and how to identify them in this infographic.
Take down the wall: a Q&A with Michael Dear By Michael Dear We asked Michael Dear to describe his day-to-day experiences of borderland communities. Most of my travel time is devoted to listening to people, observing, and trusting to serendipity. People on both sides of the border are generally helpful and friendly. Once I got lost in fog on my way to the mouth of the Rio Grande at the Gulf of Mexico, and pair of Mexican cops offered me a ride along the beach in their truck. And they came back later to pick me up!
Austerity and the prison By Julian V. Roberts Greece is not alone in suffering from budget cuts arising from the era of austerity. In the UK, local councils, libraries, museums – all public services have been cut. Criminal Justice has not escaped this cost-cutting. The consequence has been fewer police officers on the streets, less money for legal aid lawyers, and closures of Magistrates courts.
60 years of Guinness World Records By Ellie Gregory On 27 August 1955, the first edition of the Guinness Book of Records–now Guinness World Records, was published. Through listing world records of both human achievements and of the natural world, what started as a reference book became an international franchise, gaining popular interest around the globe. In celebration of this anniversary of weird and wonderful world records, we’ve selected a few favourites from talented individuals featured in our online products.
Ten facts about the steel drum By Victoria Davis The steel drum originated in the late 1930s on the island of Trinidad and was played as part of a steel band, a percussion ensemble contrived by lower-class rebellious teens. Learn more about the steel drum’s complex history, development, and current form with our 10 fun facts.
Creativity and mental health By Albert Rothenberg I am constantly perplexed by the recurring tendency in western history to connect creativity with mental disability and illness. It cannot be denied that a number of well-known creative people, primarily in the arts, have been mentally ill—for example, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Robert Schumann, Robert Lowell, and Sylvia Plath.
Speak—Spoke and Spoke—Spike By Anatoly Liberman This is my 500th post for “The Oxford Etymologist,” nine and a half years after this blog started in March 2006, and I decided to celebrate this event by writing something light and entertaining. Enough wrestling with words like bad, good, and god! Anyone can afford a week’s break. So today I’ll discuss an idiom that sounds trivial only because it is so familiar. Familiarity breeds not only contempt but also indifference.
Great Expectations: novel vs. miniseries adaptation By Connie Ngo After finishing this season’s Oxford World’s Classics reading group season, I obsessed over the characters, Dickens’s literary finesse– nothing was out of bounds of curiosity. The adaptation that caught my attention the most was BBC’s television miniseries that broadcasted on PBS in the US.
Industrial policy in Ethiopia By Arkebe Oqubay The ‘Africa Rising’ narrative means different things to different people. Yes, Africa has performed better in the last decade. But views diverge on the drivers of growth and on its sustainability, and on whether this growth will translate into structural transformation.
Cancer science and the new frontier What is the future of cancer research? In recent years, new developments in this rapidly changing field have delivered fundamental insights into cancer biology. Patient options have not only increased but improved, with thousands of individuals benefiting from these often life-saving discoveries, many of which have been documented by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, an internationally acclaimed source for original cancer-related research, up-to-date news, and information.
America’s mass incarceration problem By Alex Fulton The United States holds the world’s largest prison population, but just how deep does our nation’s system of punishment and containment run? In the June 2015 issue of the Journal of American History, historians examine the origins and consequences of America’s carceral state. These articles discuss how mass incarceration’s effects seep into all facets of American society—economic, political, legal, and social. Process, the OAH’s blog, delves into such perspectives through a series of posts from the special issue’s authors.
Space, place, and policing [interactive map] By Caitie-Jane Cook and Sophie Butchers “For policing scholars, space, places, and the physical and social environment have served as significant contextual backdrops,” state Cynthia Lum and Nicholas Fyfe, Special Editors of the Policing Special Issue. To mark Policing’s new Special Issue on ‘Space, Place, and Policing: Exploring Geographies of Research and Practice’, we’ve put together a map showcasing the global and place-based approaches the journal’s contributors have taken towards policing research.
Good health is a creative act By Pedro de Alcantara Musicians lead demanding lives. Practicing, sight-reading, rehearsing, and auditioning all can be stressful and, at times, actually painful. How to stay healthy and free from pain? I think the answer lies in realizing that your health is completely tied in with your creative efforts, or the way you respond to music itself. In brief, good health is a creative act. Here are seven tips to get you started.
The top ten films all aspiring lawyers need to see By Martin Partington Preparing for law school doesn’t have to be purely academic; there’s plenty you can learn from film and TV if you look in the right places. We asked Martin Partington, author of Introduction to the English Legal System, for his top ten film recommendations for new law students and aspiring lawyers.
The new intergovernmentalism and the Greek crisis By Chris Bickerton Just as some thought it was over, the Greek crisis has entered into a new and dramatic stage. The Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, has declared snap elections to be held on the 20th September. This comes just as the European Stability Mechanism had transferred 13 billion Euros to Athens, out of which 3.2 billion was immediately sent to the European Central Bank to repay a bond of that amount due on the 20th August.
Why we like to blame buildings By Kenny Cupers On 27 October 2005, two French youths of Tunisian and Malian descent died of electrocution in a local power station in the Parisian suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. Police had been patrolling their neighborhood, responding to a reported break-in, and scared that they might be subject to an arbitrary interrogation, the youngsters decided to hide in the nearest available building. Riots immediately broke out in the high-rise suburbs of Paris and in hundreds of neighborhoods across the country.
Greece: The paradox of power By Kevin Featherstone and Dimitris Papadimitriou Why doesn’t Greece reform? Over the past few years the inability of successive Greek governments to deliver on the demands of international creditors has been a key feature of Greece’s bailout drama. Frustrated observers have pointed to various pathologies of the Greek political system to explain this underperformance.
America’s irrational drug policies By Edward L. Rubin Ten students at two visitors at Wesleyan University have been hospitalized after overdosing on the recreational drug Ecstasy, the result of having received a “bad batch.” The incident elicited a conventional statement from the President of the University: “Please, please stay away from illegal substances the use of which can put you in extreme danger.”
The value of knowledge By John Hyman Traditionally, the story that opens chapter three of Genesis is called The Fall. In the Christian tradition, both the name and the interpretation of the story associated with it were made canonical by Saint Augustine in the first decades of the fifth century AD, about fourteen hundred years after Genesis was written down.
The curious case of culprit By John Kelly Amnesia, disguises, and mistaken identities? No, these are not the plot twists of a blockbuster thriller or bestselling page-turner. They are the story of the word culprit. At first glance, the origin of culprit looks simple enough. Mea culpa, culpable,exculpate, and the more obscure inculpate: these words come from the Latin culpa, “fault” or “blame.”
What is climate change law? By J.B. Ruhl Some years ago Dave Markell and I noticed that commentary on climate change law was devoting a tremendous amount of attention to a small handful of judicial opinions as being representative of trends in climate change litigation, whereas inventories of climate change litigation, such as the Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center blog, included hundreds of active and resolved cases.
Moral responsibility and the ‘honor box’ system By John M. Doris If you’ve worked in an office, you’re probably familiar with “honor box” coffee service. Everyone helps themselves to stewed coffee, adds to the lounge’s growing filth, and deposits a nominal sum in the honor box, with the accumulated proceeds being used to replenish supplies. Notoriously, this system often devolves into a tragedy of the commons, where too many people drink without paying.
Off the beaten path: An insider’s guide to Tampa history for #OHA2015 By Jessica Taylor There are less than two months left before we converge on Tampa for the Oral History Association’s annual meeting! This week, we asked Jessica Taylor of the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, who authored “We’re on Fire: Oral History and the Preservation, Commemoration, and Rebirth of Mississippi’s Civil Rights Sites” in the most recent Oral History Review.
Military radiology and the Boer War By Arpan K. Banerjee The centenary of the Great War has led to a renewed interest in military matters, and throughout history, war has often been the setting for medical innovation with major advances in the treatment of burns, trauma, and sepsis emanating from medical experience in the battlefield. X-rays, which were discovered in 1895 by Roentgen, soon found a role in military conflict. The first use of X-rays in a military setting was during the Italo-Abyssinian war in 1896.
Learning from Chris Norton over three decades—Part III By Michael A. Messner Flash forward to 2010. I was now a tenured full professor. I was working with two young male Ph.D. students who in some ways reminded me of myself thirty years earlier—inspired by feminism, wanting to have an impact on the world. Both Tal Peretz and Max Greenberg had, as undergrads, gotten involved in campus-based violence prevention work with men.
How much do you know about the American Revolution? [quiz] By Robert J. Allison Do you know your George Washingtons from your Thomas Jeffersons? Do you know your British tyrants from your American Patriots? Test your knowledge of the American Revolution with this quiz, based on Robert J. Allison’s The American Revolution: A Very Short Introduction.
Misty Copeland dances On the Town By Carol J. Oja Misty Copeland captured the world’s attention this summer when she became the first black female principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. In late August, Copeland will once again be in the headlines when she stars in Leonard Bernstein’s On the Town for a limited engagement at New York’s Lyric Theatre, where she will bring the show’s nearly year-long run to a close.
Learning from Chris Norton over three decades—Part II By Michael A. Messner In my 1980 interview with Chris Norton, he spoke of the tensions of being a pro-feminist man, of struggling with how to integrate his commitments to feminism with his daily life as a carpenter, where he worked with men who didn’t always share those commitments. He spoke of Men Against Sexist Violence’s (MASV) internal discussions of sexism and pornography, and of his own complicated relationship to feminism and other progressive politics.
A magical elixir for the mind By Gary L. Wenk The brain is a product of its complex and multi-million year history of solving the problems of survival for its host, you, in an ever-changing environment. Overall, your brain is fairly fast but not too efficient, which is probably why so many of us utilize stimulants such as coffee and nicotine to perform tasks more efficiently. Thus far, no one has been able to design a therapy that can make a person truly smarter.
Playing God, Chapter 3 By Anatoly Liberman The question then is: “What does the root gu– signify?” The procedure consists in finding some word in Germanic and ideally outside Germanic in which gu– or g-, followed by another vowel and alternating with u means something compatible with the idea of “god.” Here, however, is the rub. Old Germanic guð– certainly existed, but we don’t know what it meant when it was coined centuries before it surfaced in texts.
Discussion questions for Great Expectations by Charles Dickens By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst We’re just over a fortnight away from the end of our third season of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group. It’s still not too late to join us as we follow the story of young Pip and his great expectations. If you’re already stuck in with #OWCReads, these discussion questions will help you get the most out of the text.
Learning from Chris Norton over three decades—Part I By Michael A. Messner The guy at the front of the room was saying stuff I’d never heard a man say before, especially to a room full of young college guys. Through my basketball-player-eyes, I sized him up to be at least 6’5” with the broad shoulders of a power forward
How much do you know about sources of energy? [quiz] By William Bocholis Energy consumption is changing. Governments and businesses around the world are exploring low carbon options including biofuels, natural gas and wind in an attempt to achieve longstanding energy security. Production of new sources has led to controversies about economic and environmental impacts and the trade-offs they generate between food and fuel production, energy security and environmental quality.
Max Planck’s debt By Brandon R. Brown The great German physicist Max Planck once said, “However many specialties science may split into, it remains fundamentally an indivisible whole.” He declared that the divisions and subdivisions of scientific disciplines were “not based on the nature of things.”
Will we ever need maths after school? By Snezana Lawrence What is the purpose of mathematics? Or, as many a pupil would ask the teacher on a daily basis: “When are we going to need this?” There is a considerably ruder version of a question posed by Billy Connolly on the internet, but let’s not go there.
Technology and the evolving portrait of the composer By Robert Raines It’s a cartoon image from my childhood: a man with wild hair, wearing a topcoat, and frantically waving a baton with a deranged look on his face. In fact, this caricature of what a composer should look like was probably inspired by the popular image of Beethoven: moody, distant, a loner… a genius lost in his own world.
The new social contracts By David Snyder Fire and collapse in Bangladeshi factories are no longer unexpected news, and sweatshop scandals are too familiar. Conflicting moral, legal, and political claims abound. But there have been positives, and promises of more. The best hope for progress may be in the power of individual contracts.
The undiscovered elements By Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa, and Mary Virginia Orna How can an element be lost? Scientists, and the general public, have always thought of them as being found, or discovered. However, more elements have been “undiscovered” than discovered, more “lost” than found.
Freedom from Detention for Central American Refugee Families By Jennifer Moore August 19th is World Humanitarian Day, declared by the UN General Assembly in 2008, out of a growing concern for the safety and security of humanitarian workers who are increasingly killed and wounded direct military attacks or infected by disease when helping to combat global health pandemics.
Incoherence of Court’s dissenters in same-sex marriage ruling By Edward Rubin The Supreme Court’s much-anticipated decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, the same-sex marriage case, is pretty much what most people expected: a 5-4 decision, with Justice Kennedy — the swing voter between the Court’s four liberals and four conservatives — writing a majority opinion that strikes down state prohibitions.
Who was Richard Abegg? By Eric Scerri One of the most interesting developments in the history of chemistry has been the way in which theories of valency have evolved over the years. We are rapidly approaching the centenary of G.N. Lewis’ 1916 article in which he proposed the simple idea that a covalent bond consists of a shared pair of electrons.
Individuals as groups, groups as individuals By Brian Hedden People exist at different times. My life, for instance, consists of me-at-age-five, me-as-a-teenager, me-as-a-university-student, and of course many other temporal stages (or time-slices) as well. In a sense, then, we can see a single person, whose life extends over time, as akin to a group of people, each of whom exists for just a short stretch of time.
Getting to know the Online Product Marketing Team By Joe Couling Spanning the Atlantic from New York to Oxford, the Global Online Product Marketing team is a motley bunch with a love for all things digital. Custodians of a diverse portfolio of online offerings, they definitely know what’s what on the web. Read on for some literary and digital favourites from the team, and a glimpse into the minds of our online gurus here at Oxford University Press.
Stanley Milgram: Life and legacy By Callum Watts and Danielle Mermelstein Stanley Milgram was born on the 15 August 1933. In the early 1960s he carried out a series of experiments which had a not just a significant impact on the field of psychology, but had enormous influence in popular culture. These experiments touched on many profound philosophical questions concerning autonomy, authority, and the capacity of individuals to do the right thing in difficult circumstances.
Mullah Omar’s death and the Haqqani factor By Leah Farrall The recently-acknowledged death of Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar has prompted a raft of commentary on what this means for the movement, particularly in relation to its ability and willingness to continue engaging in peace talks. But how much can we reasonably know about how the Taliban will move forward, particularly when so much hinges on how the leadership transition unfolds?
A comma in Catullus By Patrick Finglass Only Oscar Wilde could be quite so frivolous when describing a matter as grave as the punctuation of poetry, something that causes particular grief in our attempts to understand ancient texts. Their writers were not so obliging as to provide their poems with punctuation marks, nor to distinguish between capitals and small letters.
Amartya Sen on the Modi government, education, health care, and politics By Shutapa Paul “I had been out for a walk and got caught in the rain,” says Sen, smiling as he walks in to greet us. His knees do not permit him to pedal around Santiniketan as he once did. He is in a pleasant mood, in spite of the controversy surrounding his ouster from Nalanda University and his latest book, The Country of First Boys: And Other Essays, out next month.
Does ‘divine hiddenness’ belong to theists or to atheists? By J. L. Schellenberg Theistic literature is full of references and allusions to a self-concealing deity. The psalm writer whose poems are included in the Hebrew Bible regularly calls out, in alternating notes of perplexity, impatience and despair, to a God whose felt presence apparently seemed frustratingly inconstant. But he or she still assumes that God is there.
Preparing for ASA 2015 By Sinead O'Connor and Taylor Steimle This year’s American Sociological Association Annual Meeting takes place in Chicago, and our Sociology team is gearing up. The 110th Annual Meeting will bring together over 6,000 sociologists nationwide for four days of lectures, sessions, and networking with some of the top figures in the field. This year’s theme is “Sexualities in the Social World”
Neuroscience, Botticelli, and marizpan: Darra Goldstein on sugar and sweets When trying to gauge someone’s personality, a few well-phrased questions are sometimes all it takes to light the fire of passions within someone. We had the pleasure of speaking with Darra Goldstein, Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, and asked her a number of questions that reveal what “bakes her cake.”
Water and conflict By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel The four-year drought in California, which is causing severe water shortages and related problems, is receiving increasingly more attention. It is affecting everyone, causing people to adjust their lifestyles and causing small business owners and entire industries to rethink their use–and misuse–of water.
Studying botany in college By Frederick B. Essig Many of us involved in teaching botany feel a sense of urgency in our profession. Botany departments, botany majors, and botany curricula have gradually disappeared from most colleges and universities in the United States, and I suspect in many other parts of the world as well.
Commemorating Sri Aurobindo’s anniversary, the birth of a nation, and a new world By Olga Real-Najarro The fifteenth of August commemorates Sri Aurobindo’s birthday, and the birth of independent India, a historical landmark where he played a significant role. Aurobindo, the founder of Purna, or Integral Yoga, is a renowned and controversial poet, educationist, and literary critic, a politician, sociologist, and mystic whose evolutionary worldview represents a breakthrough in history. Nevertheless, what is the relevance of Aurobindo nowadays?
Introducing psychoanalysis By Daniel Pick Daniel Pick, author of Psychoanalysis: A Very Short Introduction, introduces psychoanalysis, discusses its role within history and culture and tells us how psychoanalysis is used today. How has psychoanalysis developed from the late nineteenth century?
Florence Nightingale’s syphilis that wasn’t By Philip A. Mackowiak Nursing lore has long maintained that the mysterious illness that sent Florence Nightingale to bed for 30 years after her return from the Crimea was syphilis. At least that’s what many nursing students were told in the 1960s, when my wife was working on her BSN. Syphilis, however, would be difficult to reconcile with the fact that Nightingale was likely celibate her entire life and had not a single sign or symptom typical of that venereal infection.
The mystery of Meryl Streep By Kyle Stevens In Ricki and the Flash, now in theaters, Meryl Streep plays an aging rocker, managing in her fourth decade atop the star pile to once again give us a character unlike any she has played before. Raymond Durgnat attests that, “the stars are a reflection in which the public studies and adjusts its own image of itself…The social history of a nation can be written in terms of its film stars.” So what does Streep’s capricious, unpredictable style reflect?
Complexities of causation By Stephen H. Jenkins Imagine the thrill of discovering a new species of frog in a remote part of the Amazon. Scientists are motivated by the opportunity to make new discoveries like this, but also by a desire to understand how things work. It’s one thing to describe the communities of microorganisms in our guts, but quite another to learn what causes these communities to change and how these changes influence health.
Hillary has a point: In defense of empathy and justice By John C. Gibbs and Martin L. Hoffman Hillary Rodham Clinton had a point when she recently urged: “The most important thing each of us can do… is to try even harder to see the world through our neighbors’ eyes, to imagine what it is like to walk in their shoes, to share their pain and their hopes and their dreams.”
In memoriam: Terry Vaughn Oxford University Press mourns the passing of Terry Vaughn, friend, colleague, and fellow traveler. Terry was a legendary editor whose influence in economics and finance publishing was powerfully in evidence for decades and whose contributions spanned the programs of MIT Press, Princeton University Press, and Oxford University Press. His most important legacy, however, is his family and the network of friends and admirers he leaves behind.
Playing God, Chapter 2 By Anatoly Liberman From what was said last week it follows that pagans did not need a highly charged word for “god,” let alone “God.” They recognized a hierarchy of supernatural beings and the division of labor in that “heavenly” crowd. Some disturbed our dreams, some bereaved us of reason, and still others inflicted diseases and in general worked evil and mischief.
Which Great Expectations character are you? By Connie Ngo The characters in Great Expectations are a rather lively bunch; even Orlick, who is (arguably) one of the most foul characters in the book, has a deal of depth that makes us love to hate him. Throughout this season’s reading group, have you ever wondered which of Dickens’s characters you’re most like?
The hidden side of natural selection By G.P. Cheplick The agents of natural selection cause evolutionary changes in population gene pools. They include a plethora of familiar abiotic and biotic factors that affect growth, development, and reproduction in all living things.
Age-friendly community initiatives: coming to a neighborhood near you? By Emily A. Greenfield The saying that “It takes a village” is well known when recognizing the role of communities in promoting children’s health and human development. At the same time, there is a growing worldwide movement drawing attention to how much communities matter for people of other ages—especially adults confronting the challenges of later life. Efforts to make communities better places for older adults (and potentially for people of all ages) reflect a growing field of research, policy, and practice called “age-friendly community initiatives” (AFCIs).
Eroding norms in reinsurance trading: Can it cause industry collapse? By Paul Spee, Paula Jarzabkowski, and Rebecca Bednarek In the face of severe disasters, or ‘Acts of God’, society turns to reinsurance. It is a financial market that insures insurance firms, and thus trades in large-scale disasters. Reinsurance is therefore the backbone for economic and social recovery in times of unimaginable losses, such as Hurricane Katrina or the attack on the World Trade Centre, through enabling insurers to pay their claims.
How to write a compelling book review By Edwin Battistella Summer is a time when many of us have a little extra time for reading. For me, that means Go Set a Watchman, some Haruki Murukami and James Lee Burke, plus summer mysteries and thrillers. It means catching up on what local authors and friends have published. And it means reading new books in my field and writing book reviews.
Wendell Willkie: a forerunner to Donald Trump By Lewis L. Gould It is the stuff of political legend: facing a bevy of prominent candidates within the Republican Party, a straight-talking businessman comes out of nowhere to wrest the GOP nomination away from the party’s customary leadership. Energizing volunteers from across the country, the former executive capitalizes on fear about the international situation to achieve a stunning, dark-horse victory unique in American politics.
A prescient voice on climate change By Janet Biehl Everyone knows that in June 1962, Rachel Carson published a series of articles that became Silent Spring, the eloquent book that launched the American environmental movement.
Frank Wijckmans speaks to the Oxford Law Vox By Frank Wijckmans and Fiona Parker In the sixth instalment of the Oxford Law Vox podcast series, competition law expert Frank Wijckmans talks to George Miller about cartels and EU competition law. Frank is an author, alongside Filip Tuytschaever, of Horizontal Agreements and Cartels in EU Competition Law, and he covers the key themes of the book in his conversation with Law Vox.
Are you ready to travel? By Rebekah Daniels There’s more to international travel than booking a flight, finding a place to stay, and figuring out transportation. When traveling internationally, it is important to pay attention to the different vaccinations and immunizations that are required or suggested. Keeping yourself and your travel companions safe should be a top priority when preparing to go on a trip to another country. Are you ready to get on that plane?
Ecologists, drunkards, and statistics By Gordon A. Fox and Simoneta Negrete-Yankelevich “Statistics,” as an old saying has it, sometimes “are used much like a drunk man uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination” This sounds bad, but is it? And if so, why? cientists sometimes use statistics to support an argument because statistics appear to lend authority that otherwise may seem lacking.
Urban heat islands – What are they and why are they a big deal? By Daniel C. Staley The recent brutal heat waves on the Indian subcontinent, in western North America, and in western Europe are instructive reminders of an often forgotten challenge for an urbanizing human population in a warming world: alleviating urban heat stress. Cities are durable and costly to change, so what we do now to reduce risk in a future with more numerous and more dangerous heat waves that will directly affect future generations.
What is global law? By Giuliana Ziccardi Capaldo Since the end of World War II, with the creation of the United Nations, the rules and structure of the traditional inter-state community have been changing. International law is increasingly shifting its focus from the state to the individual. It gradually lost the features of the classical era, placing greater emphasis on individuals, peoples, human beings as a whole, humanity, and future generations.
Faith and conflict in the 21st century By Teresa Morgan As another summer is overcast by reports of religious conflicts and atrocities around the world, I have been thinking about faith, and how the way we understand it affects our response to some of the global challenges we face.
Tips from a journal editor: being a good reviewer By R. Michael Alvarez Peer review is one of the foundations of science. To have research scrutinized, criticized, and evaluated by other experts in the field helps to make sure that a study is well-designed, appropriately analyzed, and well-documented. It helps to make sure that other scholars can readily understand, appreciate, and build upon that work.
What five recent archaeological sites reveal about the Viking period By T. Douglas Price The famous marauders, explorers, traders, and colonists who transformed northern Europe between AD 750 and 1100 continue to hold our fascination. The Vikings are the subject of major new museum exhibitions now circulating in Europe and a popular dramatic television series airing on The History Channel.
Jazz at the BBC Proms By Alyn Shipton Celebrating their 120th birthday this year, the BBC Promenade Concerts – universally known as “The Proms” – rank as the world’s biggest classical music festival. With 76 concerts, running from July to September, of which the vast majority focus on classical music, not only do the events reach a sizeable audience live in London’s Royal Albert Hall, or for the earlier daytime concerts, the Cadogan Hall, but there’s a much bigger audience for the nightly live broadcasts on BBC radio and for the highlights on television.
Curry paradox cycles By Roy T Cook A ‘Liar cycle’ is a finite sequence of sentences where each sentence in the sequence except the last says that the next sentence is false, and where the final sentence in the sequence says that the first sentence is false.
Coleridge’s way with words By H.J. Jackson Why should we commemorate Samuel Taylor Coleridge? The obvious reason is his high status as a poet, but a better one might be his exuberance as a wordsmith. As a poet, after all, he is widely known for only two relatively short works: ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Kubla Khan.’ While the academy would no doubt add four or five others prized by specialists, the total number is still small.
Looking forward to ESEB 2015 By Lucy Nash My first experience of an academic conference as a biology books editor at Oxford University Press was of sitting in a ballroom in Ottawa in July 2012 listening to 3000 evolutionary biologists chanting ‘I’m a African’ while a rapper danced in front of a projection of Charles Darwin
Cecil the lion’s death is part of a much larger problem By Heidi G. Frontani Effective wildlife conservation is a challenge worldwide. Only a small percentage of the earth’s surface is park, reserve, or related areas designated for the protection of wild animals, marine life, and plants. Virtually all protected areas are smaller than what conservationists believe is needed to ensure species’ survival, and many of these areas suffer from a shortage of
Many forms of doing: a surprising source for pluralism about agency By Christopher Yeomans Since roughly the middle of the last century, there has been a thriving philosophical debate about the nature of action. What is it that makes us agents rather than patients? What makes us responsible for the things that we do rather than the things that happen to us?
On spatial strategies of narration By Tim Cole Tim Cole’s article “(Re)Placing the Past: Spatial Strategies of Retelling Difficult Stories” in the most recent Oral History Review raises some really intriguing questions about the function of space and distance in oral history interviews. Cole graciously agreed to answer some of our questions over email, which we’ve reproduced here for your enjoyment.
The AA talking cure By Owen Flanagan 80 years ago, in the summer of 1935, Bill Wilson, a stockbroker from NYC, and Dr. Bob Smith, a surgeon from Akron Ohio, both formerly hopeless alcoholics, shared their “experience, strength, and hope” with each other in Dr. Bob’s living room, and Alcoholic’s Anonymous was born. Today, 2 million people in 170 countries continue to do exactly what Bill W. and Dr. Bob did. Formerly hopeless drunks sit in church basements and in clubhouses, and share their stories with each other, not with ministers, addiction experts or psychiatrists, but with fellow alcoholics.
The symbolism of sweetness By Darra Goldstein Given the evolutionary origin of religion among humans, it is no surprise that symbolism would also be attributed to sweet foods. Across many cultures, sweetness prevails as a positive symbol, representing joyous occasions and victories. In recognition of these sweet symbols, we’ve compiled our favorites from The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets into a gallery we hope you’ll enjoy perusing as much as we enjoyed creating it.
How much do you know about the history of myth? [quiz] By Robert A. Segal Myths have been applied to the arts and sciences for thousands of years and been used in seminal works by prominent figures such as Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes. How much do you know about the history of myth? Test your knowledge in the following quiz, based on Robert Segal’s Myth: A Very Short Introduction.
Portrait of a lady – Episode 25 – The Oxford Comment By Susan Doran Much mystery surrounds Elizabeth I, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. It’s said that the beloved Queen, for centuries immortalized in private letters and state papers, portraits and poetry, remains more myth than memory in the canon of British history. How, then, can we begin to uncover the personal and political dimensions that made up Elizabeth’s life? And what is it like—as writers, students, and scholars of history—to attempt to understand a legend of the royal kind?
A rare treat in Berlioz’s The Trojans By David Ostwald The San Francisco Opera has undertaken the enormous challenge of mounting Berlioz’s The Trojans. It consists of two complete operas, The Capture of Troy and The Trojans at Carthage. They are being performed together, which is most unusual, but is how Berlioz envisioned it. The forces involved are enormous. In this production there are 72 instrumentalists in the pit and 23 backstage including 4 trumpets.
Genomically speaking By Dawn Field Today, the amount of global genetic data is doubling on the order of every seven months. This time span has shortened significantly over the past years as the field of genomics continues to mature. A recent study showed genomics is starting to compete with the data outputs of digital giants like Twitter and YouTube.
Playing God, Chapter 1 By Anatoly Liberman While dealing with the etymology of the adjective bad, I realized that an essay on good would be vapid. The picture in Germanic and Slavic with respect to good is trivial, while the word’s ties outside those two groups are bound to remain unclear. Especially troublesome is Greek agathós “good,” from which we have the given name Agatha.
The public life of Charles Dickens Our Oxford World’s Classics reading group, in its third season, has chosen Dickens’s Great Expectations for discussion. In addition to analyzing that a work for its literary depth, it is just as important to consider an author’s life and the context in which the work was written.
Neighbourhood leadership in the wake of the Baltimore riots By Robin Hambleton Having visited several American cities in recent weeks and talked to public servants, business leaders, community activists, and academics about current urban stresses and strains, it is difficult not to conclude that they face deeply troubling challenges. The riots in West Baltimore in April and May 2015 are only the most recent in a long line of outbreaks of urban violence suggesting that all is not well.
A fist-full of dollar bills By Richard S. Grossman The next time you are slipping the valet a couple of folded dollar bills, take a good look at those George Washingtons. You might never see them again. Every few years, there is a renewed push for the United States to replace the dollar bill with its shiny cousin, the one dollar coin.
Celebrating 50 years of the Voting Rights Act By Emily Indig On 6 August 2015, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) will be turning 50 years old. In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson approved this groundbreaking legislation to eliminate discriminatory barriers to voting. The Civil Rights Movement played a notable role in pushing the VRA to become law. In honor of the law’s birthday, Oxford University Press has put together a quiz to test how much you know about its background, including a major factor in its success, Section 5.
“Deflategate” and the “Father of Football” By Julie Des Jardins The Wells Report besmirched the reputation of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, concluding that the NFL ‘golden boy’ was likely aware that he was playing with under-inflated footballs in the 2015 AFL conference game against the Indianapolis Colts. If the report is to be believed, even Brady has stooped to less-than-savory methods to win a game of football. There are a range of opinions about Brady’s innocence, offered by nearly every sports commentator and former football player.
The Beatles, the Watts Riots, and America in transition, August 1965 By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago during their North American tour, The Beatles played to the largest audience in their career against the backdrop of a nation shattering along economic, ethnic, and political lines. Although on the surface the events of August 1965 would seem unconnected, they nevertheless illustrate how the world was changing and how music reflected that chaotic cultural evolution.
The role of cross-examination in international arbitration By Kaj Hobér and Howard S. Sussman Knowing when and how to cross-examine is an essential part of properly representing clients in international arbitrations. Many cases have been won by good cross-examinations and lost by bad cross-examinations, and that is just as true in international arbitrations as it is in any other dispute resolution procedure in which counsel are permitted to cross-examine witnesses.
Medicare and end-of-life medical care By Edward A. Zelinsky Medicare recently announced that it will pay for end-of-life counseling as a legitimate medical service. This announcement provoked little controversy. Several groups, including the National Right to Life Committee, expressed concern that such counseling could coerce elderly individuals to terminate medical treatment they want. However, Medicare’s statement was largely treated as uncontroversial—indeed, almost routine in nature.
Animal, vegetable or mineral? [quiz] By Susannah Gibson In the late eighteenth century, against a troubled background of violent change on the continent and rising challenges to the Establishment at home, botanists were discovering strange creatures that defied the categories of ‘animal, vegetable, and mineral’.
How much do you know about Nordic countries and international law? Which Nordic state had sovereignty over Iceland until 1918? Which state was allowed to discriminate against a transgender woman by annulling her marriage? Who disputed ownership of Eastern Greenland before the Permanent Court of International Justice? In preparation for the European Society of International Law’s 11th annual conference, this year held in Oslo, test your knowledge of Nordic countries in international law with our quiz.
Being a responsible donor By Jennifer Rubenstein Part I of this post addressed a familiar question: how should individuals concerned about international issues decide where to donate money? Here I turn to a second, less familiar question that follows from the first: what is entailed in being a responsible donor after the question of where to donate has been settled?
Dangerous minds: ‘Public’ political science or ‘punk’ political science? By Matthew Flinders The end of another academic year and my mind is tired. But tired minds are often dangerous minds. Just as alcohol can loosen the tongue (in vino veritas) for the non-drinkers of this world fatigue can have a similar effect (lassitudine veritas liberabit). Professional pretensions are far harder to sustain when one is work weary but I can’t help wondering if the study of politics has lost its way.
William Lawrence Bragg and Crystallography By A. M. Glazer The history of modern Crystallography is intertwined with the great discoveries’ of William Lawrence Bragg (WLB), still renowned to be the youngest Nobel Prize in Physics. Bragg received news of his Nobel Prize on the 14th November 1915 in the midst of the carnage of the Great War. This was to be shared with his father William Henry Bragg (WHB), and WHB and WLB are to date the only father and son team to be jointly awarded the Nobel Prize.
Philosopher of the month: Lao Tzu By Mohamed Sesay Lao (Laozi) Tzu is credited as the founder of Taoism, a Chinese philosophy and religion. An elusive figure, he was allegedly a learned yet reclusive official at the Zhou court (1045–256 BC) – a lesser aristocrat of literary competence who worked as a copyist and archivist. Scholars have variously dated his life to between the third and sixth centuries BC, but he is best known as the author of the classic Tao Te Ching (‘The Book of the Way and its Power’).
Overfishing: a bigger problem than we think By Ray Hilborn and Ulrike Hilborn Many of us probably tend to take fish for granted, as it’s a fairly sustainable resource—at least, that’s what we’d like believe. It’s difficult to imagine that we could even come close to depleting what seems to be limitless; after all, the earth is mostly covered in water. But as Ray and Ulrike Hilborn discuss in an excerpt from their book, Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, there is reason for concern in our flippancy towards our complex ecosystem.
Rivers in distress By Ramaswamy R. Iyer A river is a natural, living, organic whole, a hydrological and ecological system. It flows; that is its defining characteristic. As it flows, it performs many functions. It supports aquatic life and vegetation; provides drinking water to human beings, their livestock and wildlife; influences the micro-climate; recharges groundwater; dilutes pollutants and purifies itself; sustains a wide range of livelihoods; transports silt and enriches the soil; maintains the estuary in a good state; provides the necessary freshwater to the sea to keep its salinity at the right level; prevents the incursion of salinity from the sea; provides nutrients to marine life; and so on. It is also an integral part of human settlements, their lives, landscape, society, culture, history, and religion.
Toilet paradigms and the sanitation crisis in India By Philippe Cullet and Lovleen Bhullar Sanitation has evinced considerable interest from policy-makers, lawmakers, researchers and even politicians in recent years. Its transformation from a social taboo into a topic of general conversation is evident from the fact that one of the central themes of a recent mainstream Bollywood production (Piku, 2015) was the inability of the protagonist’s father to relieve himself.
What can we expect at Japan’s 70th war commemoration? By Akiko Hashimoto As we approach the 70th anniversary of the end of Japan’s War, Japan’s “history problem” – a mix of politics, identity, and nationalism in East Asia, brewing actively since the late 1990s – is at center stage. Nationalists in Japan, China, and the Koreas have found a toxic formula: turning war memory into a contest of national interests and identity, and a stew of national resentments.
Digital dating dynamics: age differences in online dating profiles By Eden M. Davis Online dating is becoming an increasingly prevalent context to begin a romantic relationship. Nearly 40% of single adults have used online dating websites or apps. Furthermore, the world of online dating is no longer confined to young adults; reports suggest adults aged 60 and older are the largest growing segment of online daters. Obviously, adults using these websites are motivated to find a partner, but we know little about why they want to date or how adults of different ages present themselves to potential partners.
Who’s in charge anyway? By Peter Carruthers Influenced by the discoveries of cognitive science, many of us will now accept that much of our mental life is unconscious. There are subliminal perceptions, implicit attitudes and beliefs, inferences that take place tacitly outside of our awareness, and much more.
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Why do we prefer eating sweet things? Is the “sweet tooth” real? The answer may surprise you. Humans vary in their preference towards sweet things; some of us dislike them while others may as well be addicted. But for those of us who have a tendency towards sweetness, why do we like what we like? We are hardly limited by type; our preference spans across both food and drinks, including candy, desserts, fruits, sodas, and even alcoholic beverages.
Does homeownership strengthen or loosen the marriage knot? By Megan Brewster and Michal Grinstein-Weiss Picture a snapshot of the American Dream. Chances are, this calls to mind a house and a family. Perhaps the most enduring institutions in American society, homeownership and marriage have shaped the economic fortunes of families in the United States since the country’s origin. So what is the relationship between the two?
Death is not the end: The rise and rise of Pierre Bourdieu in US sociology By Etienne Ollion Pierre Bourdieu would have turned 85 on 1 August 2015. Thirteen years after his death, the French sociologist remains one of the leading social scientists in the world. His work has been translated into dozens of languages (Sapiro & Bustamante 2009), and he is one of the most cited social theorists worldwide, ahead of major thinkers like Jurgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, or Irving Goffman (Santoro 2008).
Pluto and Charon at last! By David A. Rothery NASA’s New Horizons probe swept past Pluto and its moons at 17 km per second on 14 July. Even from the few close up images yet beamed back we can say that Pluto’s landscape is amazing. Charon, Pluto’s largest moon, is quite a sight too, and I’m glad that I delayed publication of my forthcoming Very Short Introduction to Moons so that I could include it.
Medicare and Medicaid myths: setting the 50-year record straight By Alan B. Cohen, David C. Colby, Julian E. Zelizer, and Keith A. Wailoo Over the past half-century, Medicare and Medicaid have constituted the bedrock of American healthcare, together providing insurance coverage for more than 100 million people. Yet these programs remain controversial: clashes endure between opponents who criticize costly, “big government” programs and supporters who see such programs as essential to the nation’s commitment to protect the vulnerable.
Cancer diagnosis response: Being hit by an existential Mack Truck By Shannon R. Poppito When I meet with patients newly diagnosed with cancer, they often find it difficult articulate the forbidding experience of being told for the first time they have cancer. All they hear is ‘die’-gnosis and immediately become overwhelmed by that dreadful feeling: “Oh my God, I’m gonna die!” I often try to meet them in that intimate and vulnerable moment of existential shock and disbelief by stating, “It’s like being hit by an existential Mack truck.”
Who will be singing the next Bond song? Who should be? By Adrian Daub and Charlie Kronengold Now’s the moment to be a fan of the Bond songs. SPECTRE, the new film, comes out this November. That means we’ll hear an official unofficial leak of the title song sometime this summer. Everybody’s been guessing who the singer is. Twitter says it’ll be Sam Smith or Lana Del Rey. Sam Smith says it isn’t him and claims that he “heard Ellie Goulding was going to do it.” The Telegraph wants to know why no one has considered Mumford and Sons (don’t answer that). Even Vegas is paying attention. Who would you put your money on?
The question of belonging By Tim Parks “Don’t discuss the writer’s life. Never speculate about his intentions.” Such were the imperatives when writing literary criticism at school and university. The text was an absolute object to be dissected for what it was, with no reference to where it came from. This conferred on the critic the dignity of the scientist. It’s surprising they didn’t ask us to wear white coats.
Get ready with Oxford for the 2015 APA Convention By Miki Onwudinjo We’re excited for the upcoming annual conference of the American Psychological Association in Toronto, Canada this year from 6-9 August 2015. The conference will be held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The annual convention of the American Psychological Association is the largest assembly of psychologists and psychology students in the world.
What is life? By Susannah Gibson Did you learn about Mrs Gren at school? She was a useful person to know when you wanted to remember that Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion, and Nutrition were the defining signs of life. But did you ever wonder how accurate this classroom mnemonic really is, or where it comes from?
Monthly etymology gleanings for July 2015 By Anatoly Liberman During the month of July I have received some questions, comments, and queries about things new to me. Thus, I know next to nothing about Latvian (my Indo-European interests more often make me turn to Lithuanian) and feel insecure when it comes to Romance etymology. The questions made me examine the areas that would under normal circumstances have not attracted my attention, and I am pleased.
10 moments in the life of Vincent van Gogh By Miki Onwudinjo Today, 29 July 2015 marks the 125th anniversary of the death of Vincent Willem van Gogh, the legendary Dutch post-impressionist painter behind Starry Night and Café Terrace at Night. His talents went widely unrecognized until after his death. Van Gogh was a brilliant artist with a tormented soul suffering from a mental illness.
What makes a good policing leader? By Mark Kilgallon Over the last 20 years I have been involved in policing leadership development against a backdrop of increasing complexity. I have had the enviable role of having been a police officer, medically retired as a result of an almost fatal stabbing, as well as being a coach and mentor to high performing leaders at all levels in the service.
We are all African, but we also have our own histories By Matthew Davies In May 2015, at a press conference in Nairobi, Kenya, a French-led international team announced the discovery of the oldest stone tools known yet. Dating back to more than 3.3 million years ago, these crude flakes, cores, and anvils represent the earliest steps in our evolution into a species reliant on, if not defined by, the use of tools and other manufactured objects. Coined the ‘pre-Oldowan’ or ‘Lomekwian’ after the site in West Turkana at which they were found, these tools are larger and cruder than the more recent Oldowan industry.
Meet the Economics journals marketing team at OUP! By Kathleen Sargeant We are pleased to introduce the marketing team for Economics journals at Oxford University Press. Kelly, Kimberly, Will, Kathleen, and Heather work across two continents, based both in the Oxford office and in Cary, North Carolina. They are responsible for the marketing of academic journals relating to economics, business, finance, and econometrics, and work together on the @OUPEconomics Twitter feed.
First biosimilar drug approved for sale in the United States By Karyn Hede New options for biologic cancer treatment are coming for the first time to the United States, and their arrival could help drive down costs for some of the biggest-ticket items in cancer care. Treatments that interfere with cancer’s biological underpinnings have revolutionized treatment for some cancers. But their cost now accounts for half of oncology drug spending—up from 11% a decade ago, according to the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.
A treatment for despair and loss of meaning By William S. Breitbart The Psychotherapy Laboratory within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at MSKCC was established about 12 years ago. I have been the Director of the Lab from its establishment. In addition to developing interventions for anxiety, depression, and PTSD, we have studied a whole group of existential problems that had as yet no established interventions.
Correspondence of colonial & revolutionary America By Robert V. McNamee The idea of social networks is not new, nor is their range of importance: from shared intimacy, to commercial nicety, to revolutionary provocation. At no time do we see more of their range and variety and importance than in the letters of Colonial and Revolutionary America. Letters connected families and friends, facilitated commerce and legal disputes, and turned all of these into a porridge of political transformation. Not only can we read history as part of everyday life, we can see it expressed in language of considerable beauty, grace and virtue.
Ethnomusicology’s queer silences By William Cheng and Gregory Barz An audible silence lingers in the field and fieldwork of ethnomusicology. Queer subjects and topics have made few appearances in the literature to date. Such paucity doesn’t owe to an absence of LGBTQ-identified members and allies; by and large, ethnomusicologists are as fabulous and open-minded as scholars come. So why has queer ethnomusicology arrived late to the party?
A look at the ‘Internet of Things’ By Marie-Helen Maras Everyday objects are becoming increasingly connected to the internet. Whether it’s a smart phone that allows you to check your home security, or an app that lets you start your car or close your garage door from anywhere in the world; these technologies are becoming part of what is known as the Internet of Things.
India’s unique identification number: is that a hot number? By S. K. Das Perhaps you are on your way to an enrollment center to be photographed, your irises to be screened, and your fingerprints to be recorded. Perhaps, you are already cursing the guys in the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) for making you sweat it out in a long line.
How much money does the International Criminal Court need? In the current geopolitical context, the International Criminal Court has managed to stand its ground as a well-accepted international organization. Since its creation in 1998, the ICC has seen four countries refer situations on their own territory and adopted the Rome Statute which solidified the Court’s role in international criminal law. Is the ICC sufficiently funded, how is the money spent, and what does this look like when compared to other international organisations?
Ten myths about the French Revolution By Marisa Linton The French Revolution was one of the most momentous events in world history yet, over 220 years since it took place, many myths abound. Some of the most important and troubling of these myths relate to how a revolution that began with idealistic and humanitarian goals resorted to ‘the Terror’.
How well do you know Jacques Derrida? [quiz] By Mohamed Sesay This July, we’re featuring Jacques Derrida as our Philosopher of the Month. Derrida was a French philosopher known for his work on deconstruction and postmodern philosophy and literature. A controversial figure, he received criticism from many analytic philosophers. Derrida passed way in 2004, but his works has had a lasting impact on philosophers and literary theorists today. Take our quiz to see how well you know the life and studies of Derrida.
Pluto and its underworld minions By Ashley Wagner Early this week the spacecraft New Horizons began its flyby of Pluto, sending a wealth of information to back to Earth about Pluto and its moons. It’s an exciting time for astronomers and those intrigued by the dark dwarf planet. Pluto has special significance because it is the only planet in our solar system to have its status as a planet stripped and downgraded to a dwarf planet.
Selfies in black abayas By Tabassum Ruhi Khan Today, when worlds collide with equal force and consequence as speeding cars on a California highway, can we imagine escaping the impact of even a single collision? Is the option of being miraculously air-lifted out of the interminable traffic log-jams available for us, even if we are spared physical injury? Just as avoiding California highways is an impossibility (given the systemic destruction of public transportation system), meeting head-on forces of neoliberal globalization with its unique technological, financial, and ideological structures is an inevitability.
Preparing for IVR 2015 By Ciara O’Connor The XXVII World Congress of the International Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy (IVR) will take place 27-31 July 2015 at Georgetown Law Center in Washington, DC. This year’s theme — “Law, Reason, and Emotion” — focuses on the nature and function of law.
The end of liberalism? By Mark Philp Following the disastrous performance of the Liberal Democrats in the recent British election, concern has been expressed that ‘core liberal values’ have to be kept alive in British politics. At the same time, the Labour Party has already begun a process of critical self-examination that would almost certainly move it to what they consider more centrist ground.
Indirect discrimination in US and UK law By Tarunabh Khaitan The set of (relatively) liberal recent pronouncements from the United States Supreme Court features a judgment in Texas Department of Housing v Inclusive Communities Project(2015). The Court, by a slender majority, held that the Fair Housing Act 1968 prohibited not just disparate treatment (direct discrimination in UK law), but also disparate impact (indirect discrimination), based on race.
William Godwin on debt By Alexander X. Douglas William Godwin did not philosophically address the question of debt obligations, although he often had many. Perhaps this helps to explain the omission. It’s very likely that Godwin would deny that there is such a thing as the obligation to repay debts, and his creditors wouldn’t have liked that.
What’s your story? Calling all oral history bloggers By Andrew Shaffer Over the last few months, we’ve had the pleasure of publishing thoughtful reflections, compelling narratives, and deep engagements with what it means to do oral history. Each post was written by a member of the oral history community who was willing to share their thoughts and experiences with all of us. We received an incredible response from our last call for submissions, so we’re coming back again to ask for more.
A different Pioneer Day By Matthew J. Grow On 24 July 1847, Brigham Young, the Mormon prophet, entered the Salt Lake Valley with the first company of Latter-day Saint pioneers. They had endured an arduous trek across the American plains after having been forcibly driven from Nauvoo, Illinois. Entering the Salt Lake Valley, Latter-day Saints expressed both bitterness and joy.
On ‘cookbook medicine,’ cookbooks, and gender By Miriam Solomon It is not a compliment to say that a physician is practicing “cookbook medicine.” Rather, it suggests that the physician is employing a “one size fits all” approach, applying unreflective, impersonal clinical methods that may cause patient suffering due to lack of nuanced, reflective, and humanistic care. The best physicians—just like the best cooks—make use of creativity, intuition, judgment, and even je ne sais quoi.
How are the smallest beasts of the stellar zoo born? By Vicente Hernández Hernández and Aina Palau In the same way as a jungle harbours several species of birds and mammals, the stellar (or almost stellar) zoo also offers a variety of objects with different sizes, masses, temperatures, ages, and other physical properties. On the one hand, there are huge massive stars that easily overshadow one as the Sun. On the other, there are less graceful, but still very interesting inhabitants: small low-mass stars or objects that come out of the stellar classification. These last objects are called “brown dwarfs”.
Five unexpected areas influenced by the Christian Reconstruction By Julie Ingersoll Beginning in the early 1960s, a Calvinist scholar named Rousas John Rushdoony started a movement called “Christian Reconstruction.” Rushdoony sought to develop a “biblical worldview” in which every aspect of life is governed by biblical law from the Old and New Testaments. The movement has been influential in some very conservative corners of American Christianity, especially the religious right.
A royal foxhunt: The abdication of Mary Queen of Scots By Rab Houston Mary Stewart became Queen of Scots aged only 6 days old after her father James V died in 1542. Her family, whose name was anglicised to Stuart in the seventeenth century, had ruled Scotland since 1371 and were to do so until the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Raised in France from 1548, she married the heir to the French throne (1558) and did not come to Scotland until after he died in 1561.
Smuggling for Christ the King By Julia G. Young Guns, ammunition, bootlegged liquor, illegal drugs, counterfeit cash—these are the most common objects that generations of smugglers have carried across the US-Mexico border. Historians of the borderlands, as well as residents of the area, know that government agents on both sides of the line have never been able to gain complete control over this type of trafficking, despite their best efforts. And so, from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the borderlands have been portrayed in popular culture as a site of sin and dissolution, contraband and illicit trade.
“It’s an exciting time to be an editor”: Dan Parker on the OUPblog By Dan Parker It’s an exciting time to be an editor of the OUPblog. Over the course of the last ten years, the blog has gone from strength to strength. In order to help the blog continue to develop, the focus has been on reaching the right communities with the right content.
Salsa or tango: Which Latin dance is right for you? By Juliet McMains Partnered social dancing has enjoyed a steady rise in popularity over the past decade as more and more people recognize its social, physical, and emotional benefits. Because “touch” dancing never fell out of fashion in Latin America, Latin dances have evolved to respond to the sensibilities of their contemporary practitioners without loosing their deep connection to a historical legacy. Two of the most popular Latin dances worldwide are salsa, with roots in the Spanish Caribbean, and the Argentine tango.
Persecuted Christians in America By Julie Ingersoll Are Christians persecuted in America? For most of us this seems like a preposterous question; a question that could only be asked by someone ginning up anger with ulterior motives. No doubt some leaders do intentionally foster this persecution narrative for their own purposes, and it’s easy to dismiss the rhetoric as hyperbole or demagoguery, yet there are conservative Christians all across the country who genuinely believe they experience such persecution.
Beauty and the brain By Francisco Mora Can you imagine a concert hall full of chimpanzees sitting, concentrated, and feeling ‘transported’ by the beauty of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony? Even harder would be to imagine a chimpanzee feeling a certain pleasure when standing in front of a beautiful sculpture. The appreciation of beauty and its qualities, according to Aristotle’s definition, from his Poetics (order, symmetry, and clear delineation and definiteness), is uniquely human.
Down the doughnut hole: fried dough in art By Darra Goldstein Fried dough has been enjoyed for centuries in various forms, from the celebratory zeppole of St. Joseph’s Day to the doughnuts the Salvation Army distributed to soldiers during World War I. So important were doughnuts for boosting troop morale that when World War II came around, the Red Cross followed closely behind the US Army as it advanced across Europe, offering doughnuts from trucks specially outfitted with vats for deep-frying.
Praising a cat to sell a horse By Anatoly Liberman For a long time the etymology of the word bad has been at the center of my attention (four essays bear ample witness to this fact), and the latest post ended with a cautious reference to the idea that Middle Engl. bad ~ badde, a noun that occurred only once in 1350 and whose meaning seems to have been “cat,” is, from an etymological point of view, identical with the adjective bad.
“a rather unexpected start”: Alice Northover on the OUPblog By Alice Northover I had a rather unexpected start for the OUPblog. I spent my first day getting to grips with all the customizations and plugins of the blogging platform. I was armed with quite possibly the most amazing exit memo ever written (thank you Lauren). I was fully confident that a smooth transition was underway.
All the Year Round, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations, 1859–1861 By Michael Slater When, in 1859, Dickens decided to publish a statement in the press about his personal affairs he expected that Bradbury and Evans would run it in Punch, which they also published. He was furious when they, very reasonably, declined to insert ‘statements on a domestic and painful subject in the inappropriate columns of a comic miscellany’ (Patten, 262). He therefore determined to break with them completely and to return to his old publishers Chapman and Hall.
The Urgenda decision: balanced constitutionalism in the face of climate change? By Ceri Warnock Over the coming months and years, much will undoubtedly be written about Urgenda v Netherlands, the decision by a District Court in the Hague ordering the Dutch Government to ‘limit or have limited’ national greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25% by 2020 compared to the level emitted in 1990. A full analysis of the decision is due to appear in the Journal of Environmental Law before the end of the year, but given the myriad of legal issues thrown up by the case, it deserves the close and immediate attention of a wide community of scholars and practitioners.
The future of development – aid and beyond By Myles A Wickstead Just over a year ago, in March 2014, UNU-WIDER published a Report called: ‘What do we know about aid as we approach 2015?’ It notes the many successes of aid in a variety of sectors, and that in order to remain relevant and effective beyond 2015 it must learn to deal with, amongst other things, the new geography of poverty; the challenge of fragile states; and the provision of global public goods, including environmental protection.
Ten years of social media at OUP [infographic] The creation of the OUPblog in 2005 marked our first foray into the world of social media. A decade later, more than 8,000 articles have been published and we’ve evolved into one of the most widely-read academic blogs today, offering daily commentary from authors, staff, and friends of Oxford University Press on everything from data privacy to the science of love. While eagerly anticipating our next chapter, we would be remiss in not taking a moment to reflect on our own story.
What Happened, Miss Simone? : Liz Garbus’ documentary in review By Ruth Feldstein Award-winning director Liz Garbus has made a compelling, if sometimes troubling, documentary about a compelling and troubling figure—the talented and increasingly iconic performer, Nina Simone. The title, What Happened, Miss Simone?, comes from an essay that Maya Angelou wrote in 1970. In the opening seconds of the film, excerpts from Angelou’s words appear: “Miss Simone, you are idolized, even loved, by millions now. But what happened, Miss Simone?”
Policing – the new graduate career path? By David Spencer As anyone who has experienced the very best of the British policing profession could attest, high quality policing can contribute to the transformation of a community, laying the foundations for flourishing neighbourhoods and the lives of those who live there. It is Police Now’s overarching aim to contribute to the creation and development of safe, confident communities in which people can thrive. Our Theory of Change is that by attracting Britain’s best graduates to a policing career, training them intensively as community leaders, and then deploying them as police officers in those communities who need us most, we can have a disproportionate impact.
What’s your go-to summer concert? By Miki Onwudinjo It’s that time of year again! Summer concerts are warming up and festivals are in full swing. Cities around the world are putting on some of the best shows for locals and tourists to enjoy. Check out what concerts Oxford University Press employees love attending every year. You just might stumble upon your new favorite band.
Journal of Antitrust Enforcement The curious case of competition and quality By Ariel Ezrachi and Maurice E. Stucke Why should firms compete? The belief is that through competition society benefits with lower prices, better quality and services, and more innovation. Indeed, anyone who frequents restaurants or hotels protected from competition can recount the inferior meal, poor service, and high price. By contrast, in a competitive environment we expect more quality, for less.
Love before logic: politics, persuasion, and the Puritans By Abram Van Engen Election Day is more than a year away, yet already the presidential campaigns have begun. Given previous contests, we should most likely expect a good deal of disingenuous diatribes and debates—some of it from the candidates, and even more of it from their supporters. In anticipation of the coming ugliness, it seems as good a time as any to learn something about civil disagreement and the possibilities of persuasion from an unlikely source: the Puritans.
“who wouldn’t want to get involved?” : Kirsty Doole on the OUPblog By Kirsty Doole The OUPblog has been a part of my working life for something like eight years. These days I am mainly ‘just’ a reader, but for a long time, the blog was something I worked with on a daily basis.
Marijuana legalization in the American states: recent developments and prospects By Sam Kamin and John Dinan Although in the U.S. marijuana remains illegal under federal law, a number of states have legalized marijuana in some fashion. Sam Kamin, author of “The Battle of the Bulge: The Surprising Last Stand Against State Marijuana Legalization,” agreed to answer several questions from John Dinan, editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, about recent developments in this area and the future of marijuana law reform in the U.S.
Why a technologically enhanced future will not be as good as we think By Nicholas Agar Today there are high hopes for technological progress. Techno-optimists expect massive benefits for humankind from the invention of new technologies. Peter Diamandis is the founder of the X-prize foundation whose purpose is to arrange competitions for breakthrough inventions.
“I should’ve picked a better hashtag”: Lauren Appelwick on the OUPblog By Lauren Appelwick I was late turning in this reflection. Do you know how embarrassing that is? The former Editor missing a deadline to the current Editor? Apparently blogging muscles atrophy after you adapt to writing mostly in 140-character sprints.
Let’s fly away: IAG and Aer Lingus By Raj Chari News has erupted of another potential merger and acquisition (M&A) in the Airline sector – the acquisition of Irish airline Aer Lingus by the International Airlines Group, IAG. IAG, the product of the merger in the early 2010s between ex-state-owned enterprises British Airways and Spain’s Iberia, has become one of the world’s global giants, ranked in the latest Forbes 2000 index of 2015 as the third largest airline in the world.
10 things you may not know about Samuel Pepys By Kate Loveman Samuel Pepys’s diary of the 1660s provides ample evidence that he enjoyed writing about himself. As a powerful naval administrator, he was also a great believer in the merits of official paperwork. The upshot is that he left behind many documents detailing the dangers and the pleasures of his life in London. Here are some facts about him that you may not know…
Devising data structures for scholarly works By Mark Dunn For over 100 years, Oxford University Press has been publishing scholarly editions of major works. Prominent scholars reviewed and delivered authoritative versions of authors’ work with notes on citations, textual variations, references, and commentary added line by line—from alternate titles for John Donne’s poetry to biographical information on recipients of Adam Smith’s correspondence.
“Smart people blogging”: Becca Ford on the OUPblog By Rebecca Bernstein Today we speak to Rebecca Bernstein (aka Becca Ford) who served as OUPblog Editor from 2006-2010. No OUPblog editor has had a longer tenure and she shepherded the blog through its early years and many of its growing pains.
The belated autopsy of a forgotten Revolutionary War hero By Philip A. Mackowiak John Paul Jones died in Paris on this day in 1792, lonely and forgotten by the country he helped bring into existence. Shortly before his death, he began to lose his appetite. Then his legs began to swell, and then his abdomen, making it difficult for him to button his waistcoat and to breath.
Emerson and Islam By Russell B. Goodman Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), a quintessentially American writer and thinker, is also one of the most international. Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, French, British, and German philosophers and literary figures pervade his work. As we think about “Western values” and “the clash of civilizations” today, it may be useful to consider the significant role that Islam plays in Emerson’s thought.
Contemporary Muslims and the challenge of modernity By Asma Afsaruddin In my 22 years of teaching and writing about Arabic and Islamic Studies, I have probably heard every kind of naive and uninformed comment that can possibly be made in the West about Islam and Muslims. Such remarks are not necessarily all due to ill will; most of the time, they express bewilderment and stem from an inability to find accessible, informed sources that might begin to address such widespread public incomprehension. Add that to the almost daily barrage of news and media commentary concerning violence in the Middle East and South Asia, two regions viscerally connected with Islam and Muslims.
An illustrated history of social media at Oxford University Press By Sara Levine From our first tweet in 1587 to Oxford Fortune Cookie by signal flag, social media is part of the long history and tradition of Oxford University Press.
Oxford Medicine Online War: a legacy of innovation and trauma By Joe Couling War. Of all human endeavours, perhaps none demonstrates the extremes of ingenuity and barbarity of which humanity is capable. The 21st century may be the century in which the threat of perpetual war is realised. Although many innovations have been brought about as a bi-product of the challenges war presents, the psychological and physical trauma wrought on the human body may prove too high a cost.
Darra Goldstein on the history of sugar Sugar has had an important hand in many facets of history, not all of it fun and games (but certainly not all of it dreary, either). Did you know fudge played a huge part in American women’s college education? or that slavery in sugar plantations was rampant? We asked Darra Goldstein a number of questions on sugar and its history, unearthing the good, the bad, and everything in between.
How much do you know about Roman Britain? [quiz] For four centuries Britain was an integral part of the Roman Empire, a political system stretching from Turkey to Portugal and from the Red Sea to the Tyne and beyond. Britain’s involvement with Rome started long before its Conquest, and it continued to be a part of the Roman world for some time after the final break with Roman rule. But how much do you know about this important period of British history?
Children’s voices in family law conflicts By Benedetta Faedi Duramy and Tali Gal Children are commonly recognized as separate human beings with individual views and wishes worthy of consideration. Their ability to freely express these views and wishes constitutes the concept of child participation, defined by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the right of children capable of forming their own views to be able to express themselves freely in all matters affecting their lives.
The 34 most popular OUPblog posts of the last ten years By Alice Northover Yesterday we shared 34 selections of the OUPblog’s best work as judged by sharp editorial eyes and author favorites. However, only one of those selections coincides with the most popular posts according to pageviews. Does Google Analytics know something that our editors do not? Do these articles simply “pop” (and promptly deflate)? Or are there certain questions to which people always demand an answer?
This land is your land By Stephen Petrus Seventy-five years ago folk singer Woody Guthrie penned the initial lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land,” considered by many to be the alternative national anthem. Sung in elementary schools, children’s summer camps, around campfires, at rallies, and during concert encores, “This Land Is Your Land” is the archetypal sing-along song, familiar to generations of Americans. But what most do not know is that Guthrie, the “Oklahoma Cowboy,” actually wrote the song in New York and that its production and dissemination were shaped by the city’s cultural institutions.
What makes Earth ‘just right’ for life? By Karel Schrijver and Iris Schrijver Within a year, we have been able to see our solar system as never before. In November 2014, the Philae Probe of the Rosetta spacecraft landed on the halter-shaped Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. In April 2015, the Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around the largest of the asteroids, Ceres (590 miles in diameter), orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. And in July, the New Horizons mission made the first flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto, making it the most distant solar-system object to be visited. Other spacecraft continue to investigate other planets.
What stays when everything goes By Robert Turner and Jörn-Henrik Jacobsen Imagine the unimaginable. Suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), the person with whom you shared most of your life has forgotten who you are, and even worse, can no longer remember their own experiences, their relationships, and how to behave appropriately in everyday situations. But although most of their long-term memory is heavily impaired, they may continue to relate astonishingly well to autobiographically relevant pieces of music.
The history of the word “bad”, Chapter 3 By Anatoly Liberman The authority of the OED is so great that, once it has spoken, few people are eager to contest or even modify its verdict. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology adds perhaps (not probably!) to Murray’s etymology, cites both bæddel and bædling (it gives length to æ in both words) and adds that there have been other, more dubious conjectures.
The best of a decade on the OUPblog By Alice Northover Wednesday, 22 July 2015, marks the tenth anniversary of the OUPblog. In one decade our authors, staff, and friends have contributed over 8,000 blog posts, from articles and opinion pieces to Q&As in writing and on video, from quizzes and polls to podcasts and playlists, from infographics and slideshows to maps and timelines. Anatoly Liberman alone has written over 490 articles on etymology. Sorting through the finest writing and the most intriguing topics over the years seems a rather impossible task.
Miss Havisham takes on the London Gentleman: An OWC audio guide to Great Expectations By Robert Douglas-Farihurst Perhaps Dickens’s best-loved work, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip, a young man with few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefactor allows him to escape the Kent marshes for a more promising life in London.
Who was Jonas Salk? By Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs Most revered for his work on the polio vaccine, Jonas Salk was praised by the mainstream media but still struggled to earn the respect and adoration of the medical community. Accused of abusing the spotlight and giving little credit to fellow researchers, he arguably become more of an outcast than a “knight in a white coat.” Even so, Salk continued to make strides in the medical community, ultimately leaving behind a legacy larger than the criticism that had always threatened to overshadow his career.
Can leadership be taught? By Michael Maccoby Leadership training has become a multi-billion dollar global industry. The reason for this growth is that organizations, faced with new technology, changing markets, fierce competition, and diverse employees, must adapt and innovate or go under. Because of this, organizations need leaders with vision and the ability to engage willing collaborators. However, according to interviews with business executives reported in the McKinsey Quarterly, leadership programs are not developing global leaders.
Was the French revolution really a revolution? By Reidar Maliks The French celebrate their National Day each year on July 14 by remembering the storming of the Bastille, the hated symbol of the old regime. According to the standard narrative, the united people took the law in its own hands and gave birth to modern France in a heroic revolution. But in the view of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the famous German philosopher, there was no real revolution, understood as an unlawful and violent toppling of the old regime.
Greece’s uphill battle: a weekend roundup By Stathis N. Kalyvas With the world bracing for Greece’s exit from the Eurozone, Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, miraculously announced that a deal with the debt-crippled country had been reached. After nearly 17 hours of negotiations at the Euro Summit, Eurozone leaders extended a $96 billion bailout to Greece in what has proved to be the third bailout since 2010. As rumors continue to circulate regarding Greece’s next steps, Stathis Kalyvas, leading expert and author of Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs, joined the international conversation, responding to the announcement of the recent bailout via Twitter.
“Are there black Mormons?” By W. Paul Reeve In the months leading up to the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, a few media outlets reinforced the public perception that Mormons (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) were mostly white. Jimmy Kimmel asked on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, “Are there black Mormons? I find that hard to believe.”
Insights into traditionalist Catholicism in Africa By Randall Woodard and Simon Aihiokhai Since the promulgation of the revised missal, popularly known as the Novus Ordo by Pope Paul VI, with the Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanun in 1969, a growing call for either a return to the Tridentine Mass or recognition of the legitimate place of such a rite alongside the Novus Ordo has gained an international status.
The British Invasion, orientalism, and the summer of 1965 By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago, at the height of the British Invasion, The Yardbirds released “Heart Full of Soul” (28 May 1965) and The Kinks, “See My Friends” (30 July 1965). Both attempted to evoke something exotic, mysterious, and distinctly different from the flood of productions competing for consumer attention that summer. Drawing on Britain’s long fascination with “The Orient,” these recordings started sixties British pop down a path that proved both rewarding and problematic.
Rihanna, the Court of Appeal, and a Topshop t-shirt By Darren Meale Can a fashion retailer take a photograph of a celebrity, print it on a t-shirt and sell it without the celebrity’s approval? Yes, but sometimes no – not when the retailer has previously gone out of its way to draw a connection between its products and that celebrity, in this case Robyn Fenty, aka Rihanna. How did this begin?
From communist power to political collapse: twentieth-century Russia [timeline] By Abbey Lovell Marked by widespread political and social change, twentieth-century Russia endured violent military conflicts, both domestic and international in scope, and as many iterations of government. The world’s first communist society, founded by Vladimir Lenin under the Bolshevik Party in 1917, Russia extended its influence through eastern Europe to become a global power.
South Africa and al-Bashir’s escape from the ICC By Nerina Boschiero Ten years after the UNSC’s referral of the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the ICC, the sad reality is that all the main suspects still remain at large, shielded by their high position within the Government of Sudan.
Did the League of Nations ultimately fail? By Susan Pedersen The First World War threw the imperial order into crisis. New states emerged, while German and Ottoman territories fell to the allies who wanted to keep their acquisitions. In the following three videos Susan Pedersen, author of The Guardians, discusses the emegence of the League of Nations and its role in imperial politics.
Talkin’ about a ‘Revolution’ By Edwin Battistella Amid Fourth of July parades and fireworks, I found myself asking this: why do we call this day ‘Independence Day’ rather than ‘Revolution Day?’ The short answer,of course, is that on 4 July, we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a day that has been commemorated since 1777.
A Yabloesque variant of the Bernardete Paradox By Roy T Cook Here I want to present a novel version of a paradox first formulated by José Bernardete in the 1960s – one that makes its connections to the Yablo paradox explicit by building in the latter puzzle as a ‘part’. This is not the first time connections between Yablo’s and Bernardete’s puzzles have been noted (in fact, Yablo himself has discussed such links). But the version given here makes these connections particularly explicit.
Swear words, etymology, and the history of English By Adrastos Omissi Have you ever noticed that many of our swear words sound very much like German ones and not at all like French ones? From vulgar words for body parts (a German Arsch is easy to identify, but not so much the French cul), to scatological and sexual verbs (doubtless you can spot what scheissen and ficken mean, English and German clearly draw their swear words from a shared stock in a way that English and French do not.
The status of older people in modern times By Christin-Melanie Vauclair The nineteenth century witnessed radical changes in the social and economic landscape, especially in Western Europe and North America. Social scientists observed that industrialized countries were becoming wealthier; more powerful and politically more stable. Yet, the changes that accompanied modernization were not altogether positive. There were also dramatic social changes such as the breakdown of the traditional extended family into nuclear families.
Music and metaphysics: HowTheLightGetsIn 2015 By Hilary Lawson and Katie Stileman How The Light Gets In (named, aptly, in honour of a Leonard Cohen song) has taken the festival world by storm with its yearly celebration of philosophy and music. We spoke to founder and festival organiser Hilary Lawson, who is a full-time philosopher, Director of the Institute of Art and Ideas, and someone with lots to say about keepings things equal and organising a great party.
Uniqueness lost By Eliza Lambert “When I went to the Iv’ry Coast, about thirty years ago, I remember coming off the plane and just being assaulted with not only the heat but the color.” These were the first words of the most moving story I have ever heard—but it wasn’t the story I was there to collect. For me, the best oral histories are the ones that sound a human chord, stories that blur the spaces between historically significant narrative and personal development.
Stathis Kalyvas imagines Alexis Tsipras’ speech to Greece By Stathis N. Kalyvas How does a leader address a country on the brink of economic collapse? In the wake of Greece’s historic referendum, many people around the world have engaged in fierce debate, expressing very different perspectives over its highly controversial outcome. Earlier today on Twitter, Stathis Kalyvas, leading expert and author of Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know, swiftly responded to the political chorus, making a courageous foray into the world of social media. Here, he imagines his version of what Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ speech would have been using the hashtag #fauxTsipras.
Overcoming the “angel” perception of nursing By Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers Most of us have vaguely positive sentiments about nurses, but at the same time, nursing is plagued by feminine stereotypes that continue to undermine the profession. These double-edged views are never more striking than in efforts to honor nurses, which often rely on emotional “angel” images rather than recognition of nurses’ health skills or tangible contributions to patient outcomes.
“Daemonic preludium”, an extract from The Daemon Knows By Harold Bloom Our two most ambitious and sublime authors remain Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Whitman creates from the powerful press of himself; Melville taps his pen deeply into the volcanic force of William Shakespeare.
Five unusual ingredients in sweets By Connie Ngo Though many of us are familiar with the use of fresh fruits in desserts, flavorings in candy, and other ubiquitous ingredients, a great deal are unusual. They’re unusual in the sense that they’re “not commonly occurring,” or that we believe them to be so. With that, here are five ingredients you might find, but not expect, in your next dessert.
Carefully constructed: The language of Franz Kafka By Ritchie Robertson A few months ago I took part in a discussion of Kafka on Melvyn Bragg’s radio programme In Our Time. One of the other participants asserted that Kafka’s style describes horrific events in the emotionally deadpan tone of a bureaucrat report. This struck me immediately as wrong in lots of ways. I didn’t disagree, because time was short, and because I wouldn’t want to seem to be scoring points of a colleague. But it occurred to me that the speaker, a professor of English Literature, had probably only read Kafka in English, and only the old translations by W. and E. Muir.
How much do you know about Ramadan? By Miki Onwudinjo Every day during the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, Ramadan observers spend their daylight hours fasting. During Ramadan, a sense of belonging, social cohesion, and togetherness is reinforced among community members. There is no eating or drinking from sunrise to sunset. Observers also abstain from sexual activity. At the end of the fast, delicious meals are shared with family and friends. Eid al-Fitr, a three-day festival, awaits observers at the end of Ramadan.
Ten questions about Braddock’s Defeat By David L. Preston On 9 July 1755, British troops under the command of General Edward Braddock suffered one of the greatest disasters of military history. Braddock’s Defeat, or the Battle of the Monongahela, was the most important battle prior to the American Revolution, carrying with it enormous consequences for the British, French, and Native American peoples of North America.
The reality of the sweating brow By Jason C. Bivins Many, perhaps most people listen to music with the hope that it permits them to step outside of the world as it usually is, the demands it places on us and the ugliness that so obviously mars it. People gravitate to music’s bright melodies, infectious rhythms, and perhaps especially to lyrics that, whether Beethoven’s or Beyoncé’s, give us some kind of life-raft or a phrase that clarifies our condition.
The US Supreme Court, same-sex marriage, and children By Carlos A. Ball During the decades of debates over marriage equality in the United States, opponents centered much of their advocacy on the purported need to maintain marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution in order to promote the well-being of children. It was therefore fascinating to see the well-being of children play a crucial role in the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage bans in Obergefell v. Hodges, albeit not in the way opponents of marriage equality hoped.
The history of the word ‘bad’, Chapter 2 By Anatoly Liberman Quite often the first solid etymology of an English word comes from Skeat, but this is not the case with the adjective bad. In the first edition of his dictionary (1882), he could offer, with much hesitation, two Celtic cognates of bad, one of them being Irish Gaelic baodh “vain, giddy, foolish, simple.” Much later, Charles Mackay, who believed that Irish Gaelic was the source of most English words, mentioned beud “mischief, hurt” as the etymon of bad.
The lasting appeal of Great Expectations By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst According to George Orwell, the biggest problem with Dickens is that he simply doesn’t know when to stop. Every sentence seems to be on the point of curling into a joke; characters are forever spawning a host of eccentric offspring. “His imagination overwhelms everything”, Orwell sniffed, “like a kind of weed”.
Stop worrying about Cyber Pearl Harbor and start collecting data By Brandon Valeriano A moderate and measured take on cyber security is bit out of place among the recent flood of research and policy positions in the cyber security field. The general tone of the debate suggests that cyber war is here, it is our present, and will be our future.
What are the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of international donation? By Jennifer Rubenstein The Nepal earthquake. The conflict in Syria. Malaria. More than two billion people in or near “multi-dimensional” poverty (Human Development Report 2014). While the world is getting better in some respects, massive needs and injustices remain. Many of us want to do something to help. For individuals in rich countries who lack personal ties to individuals or organizations in poor or disaster-affected countries, “doing something” often means donating to an international non-governmental organization (INGO).
Global warming and clean energy in Asia By Lucas Bernard and Unurjargal Nyambuu Modern industry is foundational for contemporary society. Yet, its dependence upon fossil fuels, primarily, and upon other chemicals, secondarily, threatens to destroy that very same society. One should note, at the outset, that those industrial processes do not so much create greenhouse gases, as they are termed, but rather release them. Global warming threatens to restore our planet to an ancient equilibrium – an equilibrium that was home to tropical plants and dinosaurs, but not to man.
All life is worth saving By Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier Just as in Clarence Darrow’s day, the death penalty continues to be practiced in many American states. Yet around the world, the majority of nations no longer executes their prisoners, showing increasing support for the abolition of capital punishment. Recently, in December 2014, when the United Nations General Assembly introduced a resolution calling for an international moratorium on the use of the death penalty, a record 117 countries voted in favor of abolition, while only 38 nations, including the United States, voted against it.
Happy 120th birthday BBC Proms By Emma Turner In celebration of The BBC Proms 120th anniversary we have created a comprehensive reading list of books, journals, and online resources that celebrate the eight- week British summer season of orchestral music, live performances, and late-night music and poetry.
A tiny instrument with a tremendous history: the piccolo By Dani Mermelstein Although often overlooked, the piccolo is an important part of the woodwind instrument family. This high-pitched petite woodwind packs a huge punch. Historically, the piccolo had no keys and was an instrument of its own kind.
Jeremy Phillips speaks to the Oxford Law Vox By Christopher Wogan and Jeremy Phillips In the second of Oxford’s new series of Law Vox podcasts, Jeremy Phillips, editor of Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, describes how the field of intellectual property law looked when he started his illustrious intellectual property law career. Jeremy’s conversation with Law Vox also addresses how intellectual property evolved and grew to encompass many different features. He uses the analogy of Tracey Emin’s bed to explain how intellectual property touches many aspects of our lives without us consciously realising it.
The continuing benefits (and costs) of the Giving Pledge By Edward Zelinsky The recent news about charitable contributions in the United States has been encouraging. The Giving Pledge, sponsored by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Jr., recently announced that another group of billionaires committed to leave a majority of their wealth to charity. Among these new Giving Pledgers are Judith Faulkner, founder of Epic Systems; Hamdi Ulukaya, founder of Chobani Yogurt; and Brad Keywell, a co-founder of Groupon.
Capturing the essence of Madame Bovary By Gustave Flaubert The tragic story of Madame Bovary has been told and retold in a number of adaptations since the text’s original publication in 1856 in serial form. But what differences from the text should we expect in the film adaptation? Will there be any astounding plot points left out or added to the mix?
Echoes of caste slavery in Dalit Christian practices By P Sanal Mohan In the mid-twentieth century Dalit migration from the villages of southern princely State of Travancore to the villages in the Western Ghats hills in the north was reminiscent of Exodus, although we are yet to have substantial narratives of the difficult journeys they undertook.
Lies, truth, and meaning By Mark Schroeder Words have meaning. We use them to communicate to one another, and what we communicate depends, in part, on which words we use. What words mean varies from language to language. In many cases, we can communicate the same thing in different languages, but require different words to do so. And conversely, sometimes the very same words communicate different things in different languages.
DIY democracy: Festivals, parks, and fun By Matthew Flinders Wimbledon has started, the barbeques have been dusted off, the sun is shining, and all our newly elected MPs will soon be leaving Westminster for the summer recess. Domestic politics, to some extent, winds down for July and August but the nation never seems to collapse. Indeed, the summer months offer a quite different focus on, for example, a frenzy of festivals and picnics in the park. But could this more relaxed approach to life teach us something about how we ‘do’ politics? Is politics really taking place at festivals and in the parks? Can politics really be fun?
Sustainability If By Lisa Kemmerer Environmental sustainability includes an ‘if’. The ‘if’ is implied, but invariably left unstated. Sustainability means ‘ability to endure across time’. When used as a matter of physical limitation, no ‘if’ is implied or needed.
Philosopher of the month: Jacques Derrida By Mohamed Sesay This July, the OUP Philosophy team will be honoring Jacques Derrida as their Philosopher of the Month. Jackie (Jacques) Élie Derrida (15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French philosopher born to an Algerian Jewish family in El-Biar, Algeria. Derrida is widely known as the founder of the Deconstructionist movement. At the age of 22, Derrida began studying philosophy in Paris at the École Normale Supérieure where phenomenology and Edmund Husserl were influential elements in his training.
Five things to know about Al Qaeda and Bin Laden By Daniel Byman Despite Bin Laden’s death in 2011, the extremist group Al Qaeda has since survived and, some argue, continued to thrive. The effort and resources Bin Laden invested into Al Qaeda fortified its foundation, making it difficult, if not impossible, to disband or weaken the group after his death. But how did the terrorist group come to be what it is today?
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland artifacts: [slideshow] By Miranda Dobson and Jack Campbell-Smith Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is a children’s story that has captivated the world since its publication in the 1860s. The book is celebrated each year on 4th July, which is also known as “Alice’s Day”, because this is the date that Charles Dodgson (known under the pen name of Lewis Carroll) took 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her sisters on a boating trip in Oxford, and told the story that later evolved into the book that is much-loved across the world.
The meanings behind the anthems of Fourth of July By Mark Stoll On the Fourth of July, Americans will celebrate Independence Day at picnics, concerts, fireworks displays, and gatherings of many kinds, and they almost always sing. “America the Beautiful” will be popular, and so will “Our County, ’Tis of Thee” and of course the national anthem, “Star-Spangled Banner” (despite its notoriously unsingable tune). The words are so familiar that, really, no one pays attention to their meaning. But read them closely and be surprised how the lyrics describe the meaning of America in three very different ways.
What marriage (equality) means By John Corvino Like many, I’m still digesting the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision—not just its text, but its personal and social significance. When I wrote Debating Same-Sex Marriage with Maggie Gallagher (Oxford University Press, 2012), only a handful of states permitted same-sex couples to marry. In the three years since, that handful grew to dozens; last Friday’s decision grows it to all 50. One striking thing about the decision itself is the importance of the definitional question: What is marriage?
Alice down the microscope By Melanie Keene Tomorrow Oxford will celebrate Alice’s Day, with mass lobster quadrilles, artwork and performances, croquet, talks, and teapot cocktails, and exhibitions of photographic and scientific equipment. The diverse ways in which Alice and her wonderland are remembered and recast reveal how both heroine and story continue to speak to many different kinds of audience, 150 years since Lewis Carroll’s book was first published.
City University London triumph at OUP BPP Moot 2015 Congratulations to City University’s Charlotte Bellamy and Raphael Gray, who gave an exceptionally polished and professional performance and won the Oxford University Press (OUP) and BPP National Mooting Competition 2014-2015 on 25 June 2015. His Honour Judge Charles Gratwicke of Chelmsford Crown Court presided over the final and praised the hard work and depth of knowledge the students demonstrated. Indeed, it was the the closest final in years.
The history of American women [quiz] By Michael Smith Over the past several decades, few fields of American history have grown as dramatically as women’s history. Today, courses in women’s history are standard in most colleges and universities, and historians regularly produce scholarship on women and gender. In 1981, historian Gerda Lerner provocatively challenged, “always ask what did the women do while the men were doing what the textbook tells us was important.”
Entertaining Judgment – Episode 24 – The Oxford Comment What truly awaits us on the ‘other side?’ From heaven to hell (and everything in between), our conceptions of the afterlife are more likely to be shaped by shows like The Walking Dead than biblical scripture. Speculation about death, it seems, has permeated every aspect of our everyday experience, manifesting itself in lyrics, paintings, and works of literature.
Going sour: sweet words in slang By Jonathon Green Slang—mocking, sneering, casting a jaundiced eye on the world’s proprieties—is by its nature sour. It finds approval hard, congratulation challenging, and affection almost impossible. Yet even if slang’s oldest meaning of “sugar” is money, and the second oldest a euphemism for the most common term for defecation, slang, for all its skepticism, cannot resist the tempting possibilities of “sweet.”
The baby is all grown up By Marc Marschark This year, the Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education is celebrating its 20th birthday, and I’m celebrating my 20th year as Editor. After bringing JDSDE into this world, watching it grow up, attending to its bumps, bruises, and milestones, it’s time for me to let it go and let it find its own way in the world.
International Kissing Day and DNA By Dawn Field Another ‘Awareness Day’, International Kissing Day, is coming up on July 6. It might not seem obvious but kissing, like most subjects can now be easily linked to the science of DNA. Thus, there could be no more perfect opener for my Double Helix column, given the elegance and beauty of a kiss. To start, there is the obvious biological link between kissing and DNA: propagation of the species. Kissing is not only pleasurable but seems to be a solid way to assess the quality and suitability of a mate.
Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2015 By Anatoly Liberman Several years ago, I wrote a post on the origin of the word frigate. The reason I embarked on that venture was explained in the post: I had run into what seemed to me a promising conjecture by Vittorio Pisani. As far as I could judge, his note had attracted no attention, and I felt it my duty to rectify the injustice.
George Washington and an army of liberty By David Hackett Fischer It was March 17, 1776, the mud season in New England. A Continental officer of high rank was guiding his horse through the potholed streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Those who knew horses noticed that he rode with the easy grace of a natural rider, and a complete mastery of himself.
Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group Season 3: Great Expectations When a mysterious benefaction takes Young Pip from the Kent marshes to London, his prospects of advancement improve greatly. Yet Pip finds he is haunted by figures from his past: the escaped convict Magwitch; the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward Estella; his abusive older sister and her kind husband Joe. In time, Pip uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart.
Hearing, but not understanding By Jos J. Eggermont Imagine that your hearing sensitivity for pure tones is exquisite: not affected by the kind of damage that occurs through frequent exposure to loud music or other noises. Now imagine that, despite this, you have great problems in understanding speech, even in a quiet environment. This is what occurs if you have a temporal processing disorder
Prince Charles, George Peele, and the theatrics of monarchical ceremony By Marisa R. Cull Today marks the forty-sixth anniversary of Prince Charles’s formal investiture as Prince of Wales. At the time of this investiture, Charles himself was just shy of his twenty-first birthday, and in a video clip from that year, the young prince looks lean and fresh-faced in his suit, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasping and unclasping as he speaks to the importance of the investiture.
The limits of regulatory cooperation By Richard S. Grossman One of the most striking structural weaknesses uncovered by the euro crisis is the lack of consistent banking regulation and supervision in Europe. Although the European Banking Authority has existed since 2011, its influence is often trumped by national authorities. And many national governments within the European Union do not seem anxious to submit their financial institutions to European-wide regulation and supervision.
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Immune profiling of tumors may better stage early cancers By Gunjan Sinha When immune cells infiltrate tumors in large numbers, patients do better. Now researchers aim to harness this immune response to predict outcomes. The Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC) in Milwaukee is coordinating an international effort to validate Immunoscore, an assay that quantifies this immune response.
Hart-Celler and a watershed in American immigration By Reed Ueda This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the congressional passage of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. It was the culmination of a trend toward reforming immigrant admissions and naturalization policies that had gathered momentum in the early years of the Cold War era.
100 years of black music By Miki Onwudinjo Celebrate the end of Black Music Month with this timeline highlighting over 100 years of music created and produced by influential African-Americans. Kenny Gamble, Ed Wright, and Dyana Williams developed the idea for Black Music Month back in 1979 as a way to annually show appreciate for black music icons. After lobbying, President Jimmy Carter hosted a reception to formally recognize the month.
We'll Have Manhattan Dominic Symonds Cover A West Ender’s stop on Broadway By Dominic Symonds We’ve got one day here and not another minute…”. Well, not one day exactly, but just five—a short week’s stay in NYC from England, and four nights to catch a few shows. So how to choose? The first choices were easy: two new productions of classic musical comedies, and as it happens, shows by the same team of writers. Betty Comden and Adolph Green were veterans of Broadway by the time they came to write On the Twentieth Century (1978), though merely young starlets when they first scored a hit with On the Town (1944).
Hedge funds and litigation: A brave new world By Natasha Harrison and Fiona Huntriss Hedge funds and other investment funds are emerging as sophisticated litigators, viewing litigation as an asset, which can create value and mitigate risk, rather than something to be avoided or feared. As a consequence, both the market and various legal systems are being disciplined and developed. How and why is this happening? Willing to litigate relentlessly and fearlessly, hedge funds will seek out and find gaps in documents and uncertainties in the law, and exploit them with ruthless efficiency, entering new legal territory and pushing the boundary of legal theories.
The Battle of Marston Moor and the English Revolution By Michael J. Braddick As a schoolboy I was told that on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, as the rival armies drew up, a sturdy yokel was found ploughing his fields. When brought up to speed about the war between King and parliament he asked, “What has they two fallen out again?”.
Tensions in domestic and international criminal justice By Nicola Palmer In the wake of political violence, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has shown a clear and continued preference for multiple trials to be pursued at both a national and international level. The Court’s approach to complementarity and it’s reading of what constitutes ‘a case’ under Article 17 of its Statute lays the legal foundation for this move.
When politicians talk science By Stephen H. Jenkins With more candidates entering the 2016 presidential race weekly, how do we decide which one deserves our vote? Is a good sense of humor important? Should she be someone we can imagine drinking beer with? Does he share our position on an issue that trumps all others in our minds? We use myriad criteria to make voting decisions, but one of the most important for me is whether the candidate carefully considers all the evidence bearing on the positions he advocates.
India’s foreign policy at a cusp? By Sumit Ganguly Is India’s foreign policy at a cusp? The question is far from trivial. Since assuming office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has visited well over a dozen countries ranging from India’s immediate neighborhood to places as far as Brazil. Despite this very active foreign policy agenda, not once has he or anyone in his Cabinet ever invoked the term “nonalignment”. Nor, for that matter, has he once referred to India’s quest for “strategic autonomy”.
How well do you know Ludwig Wittgenstein? [quiz] By Mohamed Sesay This June, we’re featuring Ludwig Wittgenstein as our philosopher of the month. Born into a wealthy industrial family in Austria, Wittgenstein is regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century for his work around the philosophy of language and logic. Take our quiz to see how well you know the life and studies of Wittgenstein.
Twerking since 1820: an OED antedating By Katherine Connor Martin When the word twerk burst into the global vocabulary of English a few years ago with reference to a dance involving thrusting movements of the bottom and hips, most accounts of its origin pointed in the same direction, to the New Orleans ‘bounce’ music scene of the 1990s, and in particular to a 1993 recording by DJ Jubilee, ‘Jubilee All’, whose refrain exhorted dancers to ‘twerk, baby, twerk’. However, information in a new entry published in the historical Oxford English Dictionary this month, as part of the June 2015 update, reveals that the word was in fact present in English more than 170 years earlier.
Real change in food systems needs real ethics By Paul B. Thompson In May, we celebrated the third annual workshop on food justice at Michigan State University. Few of the people who come to these student-organized events doubt that they are part of a social movement. And yet it is not clear to me that the “social movement” framing is the best way to understand food justice, or indeed many of the issues in the food system that have been raised by Mark Bittman or journalists such as Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan or Barry Estabrook.
Elspeth Brown on digital collaboration in LGBTQ oral history By Elspeth Brown This week on the Oral History Review blog, we’re continuing our recognition of LGBTQ Pride month with a special podcast featuring Elspeth Brown. In the podcast, Brown discusses the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, as well as her work as a member of the community and a historian. Check out the links below for more information, and send us your proposals if you’d like to share your work with the OHR blog.
Does everyone love the National Health Service? Uncovering history’s critics By Andrew Seaton The National Health Service (NHS) has never just been about the state’s provision of universal healthcare. Since 1948, it has been invested with a spectrum of ‘British values’, including decency, fairness, and respect. Featured in the Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, and hailed in polls as the thing that makes people most proud of being British, the NHS enjoys widespread affection.
Hope, women, the police panchayat, and the Mumbai slums By Oliver Mendelsohn The Mumbai slums have recently achieved a weird kind of celebrity status. Whatever the considerable merits of the film Slum Dog Millionaire and the best-selling book by Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers (now also a play and a film), these works have contributed to the making of a contemporary horror myth.
Are you a sugar scholar? By Connie Ngo How much do you know about all things sweet? Are you an obsessive “Top-tier Sugar Scholar”? Or are you a dabbling “Sugar Novice”? No matter your level of scholarship, if sweetness and obscure facts are your game, we have just the perfect quiz for you.
Look away now: The prophecies of Nostradamus By Bill McGuire If you like your prophecies pin sharp then look away now. The 16th century celebrity seer Nostradamus excelled at the exact opposite, couching his predictions in terms so vague as to be largely meaningless. This has not, however, prevented his soothsayings attracting enormous and unending interest, and his book – Les Propheties – has rarely been out of print since it was first published 460 years ago. Uniquely, for a renaissance augur, the writings of Nostradamus are perhaps as popular today as they were four and a half centuries ago.
Foods and festivals of Ramadan around the world By Melanie Trexler On 17 June, the new moon signaled the start of Ramadan (or Ramzan as it’s called throughout South Asia), the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar in which observant Muslims abstain from eating, drinking, smoking, and sex during daylight hours. Increased religious devotion sets the tone for the month as Muslims gather for special prayers, acts of charity, and Qur’anic recitations in gratitude and devotion to God.
Music mentorship and the learning process By Mark Ross Clark At age 23 I had finished my second degree in vocal performance from a distinguished music program, but so what? I felt that I was too young and inexperienced in the professional world to embark on a solo career. As luck (and connections) would have it, a well-known recording group in the Midwest, The Roger Wagner Chorale, eventually offered me that on-the-road experience and performance confidence that would also allow me to meet one of the greatest singing actors of the 20th century.
African health leaders claiming the future By Agnes Binagwaho and Nigel Crisp Health leaders in sub Saharan African countries face some of the most demanding challenges anywhere in the world. Disease, poverty, the legacy of colonialism and, all too often, conflict, corruption and political instability, combine to make improving health extraordinarily difficult. Looking back we can see many great African health leaders who have played their part as the following few examples show.
Can schizophrenia really be treated by “talk therapy” alone? By Brandon A. Gaudiano A recent study published by psychologist Anthony Morrison and colleagues in the British medical journal, The Lancet, is stirring up a long-standing debate about the treatment of schizophrenia. The article describes a randomized controlled trial with people diagnosed with schizophrenia who refused to take psychiatric medications called “antipsychotics.” The researchers tested whether these patients could be treated with a form of talk therapy called cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in lieu of medications.
Lesbian existence and marginalization in India By Srila Roy India’s first ‘lesbian ad’ went viral at the start of June this year. The advert featuring a young lesbian couple awaiting the arrival of one set of parents to their joint home is uncompromisingly ‘out’ even as it sets this exceptional moment in the everyday intimacy and domesticity that most relationships share. The ad is actually part of a new digital campaign launched by the brand Myntra for its range of ‘contemporary ethnic apparel’ called Anouk.
The history of the word ‘bad’, Chapter 1 By Anatoly Liberman Our earliest etymologists did not realize how much trouble the adjective bad would give later researchers. The first of them—John Minsheu (1617) and Stephen Skinner (1671)—cited Dutch quaad “bad, evil; ill.” (Before going on, I should note that today quad is spelled kwaad, which shows that a civilized nation using the Roman alphabet can do very well without the letter q.)
Receiving “Laudato Si”: will Pope Francis be heard? By Gary J. Adler Jr. Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Laudato Si, will be surrounded for some time by intense debate among and between journalists, columnists, Catholic journals, political leaders, and environmentally-focused scientists and NGOs. In other words, the fight over how it’s received is well underway. In the 125 years or so that papal social encyclicals have been written, their reception has been hotly debated, with the most infamous such episode occurring in the pages of the National Review.
The criminal enterprise of stealing history By Miki Onwudinjo After illegal drugs, illicit arms and human trafficking, art theft is one of the largest criminal enterprises in the world. According to the FBI Art Crime Team (ACT), stolen art is a lucrative billion dollar industry. The team has already made 11,800 recoveries totaling $160 million in losses.
Psychological deterioration in solitary confinement By Ian O’Donnell It is difficult to imagine a more disempowering place than a solitary confinement cell in a maximum security prison. When opportunities for meaningful human engagement are removed, mental health difficulties arise with disturbing regularity. In the United States, where prisoners can be held in administrative segregation for years on end, stories of psychological disintegration are common.
Why care? By Marina Della Giusta and Sarah Jewell If your parents required care, would you or a family member provide care for them or would you look for outside help? If you required care in your old age would you expect a family member to provide care? Eldercare is becoming an important policy issue in advanced economies as a result of demographic and socio-economic changes. It is estimated that by 2030, one quarter of the population will be over 65 in both Europe and the USA.
Elisabeth Bing and an American revolution in birth By Paula A. Michaels On May 15, Elisabeth Bing died at the age of 100. It is no exaggeration to say that during her long life she perhaps did more than any other individual to humanize childbirth practices in the United States. Obituaries and tributes to her rightly celebrate her role as a founding mother of the Lamaze movement in America and a lifelong advocate for improvement in maternity care.
Book vs. Movie: Far From the Madding Crowd By Thomas Hardy A new film adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy was recently released, starring Carey Mulligan as the beautiful and spirited Bathsheba Everdene and Matthias Schoenaerts, Tom Sturridge, and Michael Sheen as her suitors.
In memoriam: Gunther Schuller By Suzanne Ryan Gunther Schuller (1925-2015) was one of the most influential figures in the musical world of the past century, with a career that crossed and created numerous genres, fields, and institutions. Oxford offers heartfelt condolences to his family, and gratitude for the profound impact his work continues to have on music performance, study, and scholarship.
Top 5 most infamous company implosions By Miranda Dobson Since the global financial crisis in 2008, the world has paid close attention to corporations and banks around the world that have faced financial trouble, especially if there is some aspect of scandal involved. The list below gives a brief overview of some of the most notorious company implosions from the last three decades.
How do we resolve reproductive material disputes? By Jesse Wall Recent scientific advances have enabled us to have more control than ever over how and when we reproduce. However, these developments have resulted in serious legal discussions, raising the question: Do we lose the right to control what happens to our reproductive materials once they have left our body? Here, Jesse Wall discusses the courts’ different approaches for such disputes and the justification for their decisions.
Being defaced: John Aubrey and the literary sketch By Kate Bennett John Aubrey might have made an excellent literary agent. When Charles II was restored, Aubrey told Thomas Hobbes to come down to London straight away to get his portrait painted. It was a successful bid for patronage. Aubrey correctly calculated that Hobbes would meet the King at the studio of Samuel Cooper, ‘the prince’ of miniaturists. Cooper painted two watercolour miniatures, ‘as like as art could afford’. One the King took away for his ‘closet’ at Whitehall Palace, and another was not finished.
Climate change and self-adapting law By David D. Caron How would law look different if we had always known about climate change? One difference – I would suggest – is that it would have been constructed so as to self-adapt to the changing context that it seeks to govern. What does it mean to self-adapt? An example of self-adapting law can be found in long term supply agreements.
Islamic State and the limits of international ethics By John Williams The moral outrage at the actions of Islamic State (IS) is easy to both express and justify. An organisation that engages in immolation, decapitation, crucifixion and brutal corporal punishment; that seemingly deploys children as executioners; that imposes profound restrictions on the life-choices and opportunities of women; and that destroys cultural heritage that predates Islam is despicable. What drives such condemnation is complex and multifaceted, however.
OUP staff discuss their favourite independent bookstores to celebrate Independent Bookshop Week In support of Independent Bookshop Week, a campaign run by the Booksellers Association that supports independent bookstores, we asked the Oxford University Press UK office what their favorite independent bookstores were.
How is the mind related to the body? By Nicholas Jolley At one point in the recent film The Imitation Game the detective assigned to his case asks Alan Turing whether machines could think. The dialogue that follows is perhaps not very illuminating philosophically, but it does remind us of an important point: the computer revolution that Turing helped to pioneer gave a huge impetus to interest in what we now call the mind-body problem. In other words, how is the mind related to the body? How could a soggy grey mass such as the brain give rise to the extraordinary phenomenon of consciousness?
Getting to know our Institutional Marketing team for Latin America From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to introduce three members of our Institutional Marketing team for Latin America. Seth, Molly, and Juan work with libraries and other institutions around the world, from setting up educational webinars to holding Library Advisory councils, from updating librarians on new journals and websites to providing them with tools to help faculty and students.
Murders in rural Mississippi: remembering tragedies of the Civil Rights Movement By Carol V.R. George On June 21, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in Philadelphia, Mississippi will hold its fifty-first memorial service for three young civil rights workers murdered by the Ku Klux Klan at the start of the Freedom Summer. Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner were activists who planned to create a voting rights school at the church, located in rural Neshoba County.
The role of logic in philosophy: A Q&A with Elijah Millgram By Elijah Millgram and Svantje Guinebert Elijah Millgram, author of The Great Endarkenment, Svantje Guinebert, of the University of Bremen, to answer his questions and discuss the role of logic in philosophy. On other occasions, you’ve said that logic, at least the logic that most philosophers are taught, is stale science, and that it’s getting in the way of philosophers learning about newer developments. But surely logic is important for philosophers. Would you like to speak to the role of logic in philosophy?
Sweetness around the world No matter where in the world you go, pastries are a universal treat. From Turkish baklava to Italian cannolis, French croissants to American cherry pie, these morsels of sweetness are a culinary tradition that knows no borders. Whether you’re boarding an overseas flight or hanging around the neighborhood, we’ve hand-picked several pastry shops from the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets to add to your personal itinerary.
Oxford Medicine Online Palliative care around the world By Joe Couling With a failing NHS and an ageing population in Britain, palliative care is a topic currently at the forefront of healthcare debate. Whether to abandon treatment in favour of palliation, is a challenging decision with profound implications for end-of-life care.
For refugees, actions speak louder than words By James Milner Calls for more to be done to respond to the plight of refugees will likely intensify as we get closer to 20 June, World Refugee Day, when groups in more than 100 countries will host events and issue reports to increase awareness about the needs of refugees and to mobilize a more effective response.
Just a face in the crowd By Niloufer Selvadurai and Julia Hörnle The widespread practice of uploading photographs onto internet social networking and commercial sites has converged with advances in face recognition technologies to create a situation where an individual can no longer be just a face in the crowd. Despite the intrusive potential of face recognition technologies (FRT), the unauthorised application of such technologies to online digital images so as to obtain identity information is neither specifically prohibited nor a critical part of the international law reform discourse.
The Jurassic world of … dinosaurs? By David Norman The latest incarnation (I chose that word advisedly!) of the Jurassic Park franchise has been breaking box-office records and garnering mixed reviews from the critics. On the positive side the film is regarded as scary, entertaining, and a bit comedic at times (isn’t that what most movies are supposed to be?). On the negative side the plot is described as rather ‘thin’, the human characters two-dimensional, and the scientific content (prehistoric animals) unreliable, inaccurate, or lacking entirely in credibility.
Ramadan and remembrance By Sophia Rose Arjana Ramadan is an important time for Muslims, whether they live in New York City, Tehran, Cairo, or Jakarta. While there is great diversity in Islam, for most Muslims this month reflects an intensification of the religious devotion and contemplation that characterizes many Islamic traditions from prayer (salat) to pilgrimage (hajj/ziyarat). Ramadan is structured around food, a lack of food, and prayer—the early meal before dawn, the fasting during daylight, the meal at the end of the day, and the daily prayers.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Pipe Dream By Ethan Mordden The seventh of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s stage works, Pipe Dream came along at a particularly vulnerable time in their partnership. After the revolutionary Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945)—with, above all, two of the most remarkable scores ever heard to that point—they disappointed many with Allegro (1947).
Six people who helped make ancient Naples great By Jessica Hughes The city that we now call Naples began life in the seventh century BC, when Euboean colonists from the town of Cumae founded a small settlement on the rocky headland of Pizzofalcone. This settlement was christened ‘Parthenope’ after the mythical siren whose corpse had supposedly been discovered there, but it soon became known as Palaepolis (‘Old City’), after a Neapolis (‘New City’) was founded close by.
Parent relationships: perspectives from emerging adults Relationships with teens and parents can be difficult, but significant changes often take place during emerging adulthood as well. How do emerging adults relationships with their parents develop? Are they better or worse than their teenage years?
The Democratic Party and the (not-so?) new family values By Natalia Mehlman Petrzela In 1970, archconservative journalist John Steinbacher seethed at what he considered the worst casualty of the Sixties, a decade defined by two Democratic presidencies, expanded federal intervention in what felt like every dimension of daily life and defiant young activists sporting shaggy beards and miniskirts rejecting authority of all kinds. Unable to withstand these seismic shifts, he despaired, the American family was in grave peril.
Approaching the big bad word “bad” By Anatoly Liberman In the near future I’ll have more than enough to say about bad, an adjective whose history is dismally obscure, but once again, and for the umpteenth time, we have to ask ourselves why there are words of undiscovered and seemingly undiscoverable origin. Historical linguists try to reconstruct ancient roots.
50 shades of touch By Alberto Gallace Disgusting or delighting, exciting or boring, sensual or expected, no matter what you think about it, 50 Shades of Grey is certainly not a movie that passes by without leaving a mark on your skin. Based on E.L. James’ novel (honestly, somehow even more breathtaking than the movie), it tells the story of the complicated relationship between the dominant multi-millionaire Christian Grey, and the newly graduated, inexperienced, and shy, Ana Steele.
What 4,000 years of hallucinations have taught us about our brain By Gary L. Wenk Over the past forty years, many of my students have shared their personal experiences with hallucinogenic drugs. They are typically more fascinated, than frightened, by the experience. About sixty years ago the scientist C.H.W. Horne commented that “It is remarkable that one characteristic which seems to separate man from the allegedly lower animals is a recurring desire to escape from reality.”
Dispelling myths about EU law By Catherine Seville and Phil Syrpis What are the most common myths surrounding the laws of the European Union? We asked two experts, Phil Syrpis and Catherine Seville, to describe and combat some misconceptions. From the Maastricht Treaty to intellectual property law, here are some of the topics they addressed.
How did emerging market multinationals internationalize successfully? By Jedrzej George Frynas and Kamel Mellahi Emerging market multinational enterprises (EM-MNEs) are the new kids on the block. When Forbes magazine first released its list of the world’s largest 2000 companies in 2003, the list was dominated by companies from the USA, Japan, and Britain. In the latest “Global 2000” list, companies from China and other emerging markets feature prominently. In 2014, 674 companies came from Asia, compared with 629 from North America and 506 from Europe.
Why do we eat? By Nicole Avena At first pass, the answer is obvious—to obtain energy to support our everyday activities and ultimately, to promote our survival. However, many of our modern day food choices suggest another answer, one that actually stands to threaten our health and functioning.
The ideology of counter-terrorism By Mary Barton An effective counter-terrorism policy requires the identification of domestic or international threats to a government, its civil society, and its institutions. Enemies of the state can be internal or external. Communist regimes of the twentieth century, for example, focused on internal enemies.
From Galileo to Rosetta By Marco Piccolino For some people, recent images of the Rosetta space program have been slightly disappointing. We expected to see the nucleus of the Churyumov-Gerasimenko comet as a brilliantly shining body. Instead, images from Rosetta are as black as a lump of coal. Galileo Galilei would be among those not to share this sense of disappointment.
My Mandolin & I By Anna-Lise Santella The first time I held a mandolin was at a rehearsal for Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. In the second act, the Don is trying to seduce the maid Zerlina by singing a serenade under her mistress’ window (the canzonetta “Deh, vieni alla finestra”).
Celebrating 50 years of the German Copyright Act at ALAI By Louise Murgatroyd As the native city of composer Ludwig van Beethoven, Bonn seems to be an appropriate location for a meeting of the International Literary and Artistic Association (ALAI); a society dedicated to protecting the interests of creative individuals. ALAI has roots in the 19th century, when in 1878 the French writer Victor Hugo founded the society in order to promote recognition of the legal protection of authors for their intellectual work.
Using web search data to study elections: Q&A with Alex Street By Alex Street and R. Michael Alvarez Social scientists made important contributions towards improving the conduct and administration of elections. A paper recently published in Political Analysis continues that tradition, and introduces the use of web search data to the study of public administration and public policy.
Bamboo Universe By Kate Teltscher Early summer in London is heralded by the Chelsea Flower Show. This year, the winner of the Best Fresh Garden was the Dark Matter Garden, an extraordinary design by Howard Miller. Dark matter is invisible and thought to constitute much of the universe, but can only be observed through the distortion of light rays, an effect represented in the garden by a lattice of bent steel rods and lines of bamboo, swaying in the wind.
How do we remember the Battle of Waterloo? By Alan Forrest From the moment the news of the victory was announced in London, Waterloo was hailed as a victory of special significance, all the more precious for being won on land against England’s oldest rival, France. Press and politicians alike built Waterloo into something exceptional. Castlereagh in Parliament would claim, for instance, that Waterloo was Wellington’s victory over Napoleon and that ‘it was an achievement of such high merit, of such pre-eminent importance, as had never perhaps graced the annals of this or any other country till now’.
“Deflategate,” Fox News, and frats: this year in public apologies By Edwin Battistella Since publishing Sorry About That a year ago, I’ve been trying to keep track of apologies in the news. Google sends me a handful of news items every day. Some are curious (“J.K. Rowling issues apology over slain ‘Harry Potter’ character”), some are cute (“Blizzard 2015: Meteorologist apologizes for ‘big forecast miss’”), and some are sad (“An open apology to my kids on the subject of my divorce”).
Oil, arms, and corruption: a poisonous nexus? By Sam Perlo-Freeman While world military spending has fallen slightly in recent years, some regions, notably Africa and the Middle East, have seen continuing rapid increases. When SIPRI published our annual military expenditure data for 2014 this April, we featured a list of the 20 countries with ‘military burdens’ – the share of military expenditure in GDP – above 4%. This compares with only 13 in 2005.
Looking for God in the sociology of religion and in Game of Thrones By Anna Strhan Religion has played an increasingly significant part in Season 5 of the HBO series Game of Thrones, with the ‘Faith Militant’ taking over the reins of power at King’s Landing, mostly unopposed. Yet internet discussions indicate that some viewers have found this storyline unsatisfying, as the Sparrows are depicted as crazed religious fanatics, piously obsessed with driving out vice and immorality from the city.
Paradox and flowcharts By Roy T Cook The Liar paradox arises when we consider the following declarative sentence: This sentence is false. Given some initially intuitive platitudes about truth, the Liar sentence is true if and only if it is false. Thus, the Liar sentence can’t be true, and can’t be false, violating out intuition that all declarative sentences are either true or false (and not both). There are many variants of the Liar paradox. For example, we can formulate relatively straightforward examples of interrogative Liar paradoxes, such as the following Liar question: Is the answer to this question “no”?
What is the history of the word ‘hip’? By Tom Dalzell James Brown was famously introduced by Lucas ‘Fats’ Gonder at the Apollo Theater in the early 1960s as ‘The Hardest Working Man in Show Business’, an epithet that stuck with Brown for his entire life. It is a fitting term for the word hip–the hardest working word in the lexicon of American slang. For more than 110 years, hip has found a prominent place in our slang, reshaping and repurposing itself every few decades to carry itself forward, from the early 20th century’s hip to today’s hipster movement.
Yeats at 150 By Joseph M. Hassett Today, 13 June is the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats. The day still resonates because Yeats’s life did not so much terminate as simply enter a new phase upon his death in 1939. In Auden’s famous phrase, he “became his admirers” and was “scattered among a hundred cities.” This is no exaggeration.
A Magna Carta reading list King John II of England ascended to the throne in 1199 after a tumultuous accession war with his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, and his ally Phillip II of France. His inheritance was the Angevin Empire, consisting of England, most of Wales and Ireland, and a large swathe of France stretching south to Toulouse and Aquitaine. And yet, this empire was crumbling. It is in this context that one of the greatest legal documents in the world was written.
Philosopher of the month: Ludwig Wittgenstein By Mohamed Sesay This June, the OUP Philosophy team are proud to announce that Ludwig Wittgenstein is their Philosopher of the Month. Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein (26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-born philosopher and logician, regarded by many as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein was born the youngest of eight children into a wealthy industrial family in Vienna, Austria. He intended on studying aeronautical engineering, but his interest in the philosophy of mathematics led him to Cambridge where he studied under Bertrand Russell.
Celebrating pride through oral history By Andrew Shaffer In recognition of Pride Month, we’re looking at some of the many oral history projects focused on preserving the memories of LGBTQ communities. The LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory is connecting archives across North America to produce a digital hub for the research and study of LGBTQ oral histories. The University of Chicago is cataloguing the history of students, faculty, and alumni for its “Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles” project. The University of Wisconsin – Madison continues to collect the histories of Madison’s LGBT Community, and has even prepared mini-movies to make the materials more accessible.
Oxford Medicine Online World Blood Donor Day 2015: blood types [infographic] By Joe Couling World Blood Donor Day 2015 is celebrated on 14 June each year. This Sunday, the theme is “Thank you for saving my life,” a chance for everyone who has benefited from a blood donation to thank the donors that selflessly donated to the cause. The demand for blood is always high as the shelf life of donated blood is only 42 days.
How much do you know about Dracula? [quiz] By Amy Jelf Now that the second season of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group is drawing to a close, let’s see how much you’ve learnt from reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Test your knowledge of all things Vampire with our quiz.
Magna Carta: the international dimension By Henry Summerson The importance of Magna Carta—both at the time it was issued on 15 June 1215 and in the centuries which followed, when it exerted great influence in countries where the English common law was adopted or imposed—is a major theme of events to mark the charter’s 800th anniversary.
The greatest charter? By Nicholas Vincent On 15th June 2015, Magna Carta celebrates its 800th anniversary. More has been written about this document than about virtually any other piece of parchment in world history. A great deal has been wrongly attributed to it: democracy, Habeas Corpus, Parliament, and trial by jury are all supposed somehow to trace their origins to Runnymede and 1215. In reality, if any of these ideas are even touched upon within Magna Carta, they are found there only in embryonic form.
Darra Goldstein on food scholarship What do Russians poets eat? When does food heritage become international politics? How has sugar been used as medicine? Darra Goldstein, the editor-in-chief to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, shares her insights on how a three-year project transformed into the lively compendium of all things sweet. She takes us through the process of what it was like to oversee 265 contributors and over 600 entries, and the journey she took to get where she is today.
Composition, performance, and mashups By Kyle Adams What does it mean to create an artwork? For centuries, we thought we knew the answer. In literature, an author recorded words on a page. In the visual arts, an artist put paint to canvas. In music, a composer jotted down notes and rhythms on a staff as the raw material for his/her creations.
Environmental Epigenetics cover A Q&A with the Editor of Environmental Epigenetics Environmental Epigenetics is a new, international, peer-reviewed, fully open access journal, which publishes research in any area of science and medicine related to the field of epigenetics, with particular interest on environmental relevance. With the first issue scheduled to launch this summer, we found this to be the perfect time to speak with Dr. Michael K. Skinner, Editor-in-Chief to discuss the launch of the journal into an exciting and rapidly developing field.
Happiness: it’s not always smiley faces and that’s okay By Amanda Conley Ayers Imagine that today is Happiness Day. For the next 24 hours, you get to enjoy the day to the best of your ability. What would you do?’ I asked some of my friends and family this same question. If you’re like many of the people I polled, you would probably plan to spend the day with family, indulge in a pleasurable activity, or aim to carve out a significant chunk of time with one of your favorite hobbies. But not everyone approaches happiness the same way.
Redefining beauty in the suburbs of Victorian London By Kate Nichols The British Museum’s current blockbuster show, Defining Beauty: the Body in Ancient Greek Art, amasses a remarkable collection of classical sculpture focusing on the human body. The most intriguing part of the show for me was the second room, “Body colour,” which displays plaster casts of several Greek sculptures brightly painted in green, blue, yellow, red and pink. The press has not known what to make of “Body colour.” It has been met with surprise, sneers, or been entirely ignored in otherwise glowing reviews.
An etymologist fidgets on a bad bed. Part 1: “Bed.” By Anatoly Liberman As a rule, I try not to deal with the words whose origin is supposedly known (that is, agreed upon). One can look them up in any dictionary or on the Internet, and no one needs a blog for disseminating trivialities. The etymology of bed has reached the stage of an uneasy consensus, but recently the accepted explanation has again been called into question.
Facing the challenges of palliative care: evolution By David C. Currow, Marie Fallon, Nathan Cherny, Russell K. Portenoy, and Stein Kaasa The last two decades have witnessed truly remarkable growth in the field of palliative care. Such growth is challenging, and brings both uncertainties and optimism about the future. In this three-part blog, we’ll take a look at some of the complex issues of continuity, development and evolution in palliative medicine.
Hey everybody! Meet Yasmin! By Yasmin Coonjah Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Yasmin Coonjah, who joined the gang in May 2015 as an OUPblog Editor and Social Media Marketing Assistant!
Vincent van Gogh’s images of motherhood By Amalia Vavala Vincent van Gogh’s turbulent relationship with mothers—especially his own—began a full year before his birth. On 30 March 1852, Anna Carbentus van Gogh gave birth to a son, Vincent Willem van Gogh, who was stillborn. Anna tearfully buried her son in the cemetery of the parsonage where the Van Goghs lived. A year later to the day, Anna would give birth to another son, whom she also named Vincent Willem van Gogh.
A Q&A with Work, Aging and Retirement Editor, Mo Wang By Mo Wang Recently, we sat down with the Editor of Work, Aging and Retirement, Mo Wang, to discuss how he got involved with the journal and the plans he has in store for the journal in the future. Work, Aging and Retirement is a peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal that dedicates to publish evidence-based, translational research on worker aging and retirement, with the goal of enhancing understanding about these phenomena.
Bridget Bishop: first victim of Salem’s Gallows Hill By Emerson W. Baker On 10 June 1692, the condemned Bridget Bishop was carted from Salem jail to the place that would later be known as Gallows Hill, where Sheriff George Corwin reported he “caused the said Bridget to be hanged by the neck until she was dead.” She would be the first of 19 victims executed during the Salem witch trials.
Unmasking Origen By Mark S. M. Scott If the degree of misunderstanding determines the greatness of a theologian, then Origen (c. 185-254 C.E.) ranks among the greatest. He was misunderstood in his own time and he continued to be misunderstood in subsequent centuries, resulting in his condemnation—or the condemnation of distortions of his ideas—at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 C.E. Why has Origen been misunderstood? How do we understand him better?
Giving up control One of the great joys of classical composing is the plotting and planning of new sounds, harmonies, and rhythms. Many composers delight in working out exactly which instrument will sound when, which voice forms what part of a harmony, or how a motif will be created, twisted, and perhaps developed, morphed, or abandoned.
Six things you didn’t know about Brighton and the law By Joe Couling This coming weekend is the BIALL (British and Irish Association of Law Librarians) conference in Brighton. As always, the event looks to be an engaging two days with an excellent selection of speakers talking around the theme of ‘Collaboration, Co-operation and Connectivity.’ But how well do you know the host city?
Before Wolf Hall: How Sir Walter Scott invented historical fiction By Kathryn Sutherland Historical fiction, the form Walter Scott is credited with inventing, is currently experiencing something of a renaissance. It has always been popular, of course, but it rarely enjoys high critical esteem. Now, however, thanks to Hilary Mantel’s controversial portraits of Thomas Cromwell (in Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies), James Robertson’s multi-faceted studies of Scotland’s past (in The Fanatic and And the Land Lay Still), and Richard Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the genre has recovered serious ground, shrugging off the dubious associations of bag-wig, bodice, and the dressing-up box.
Roger Luckhurst’s top 10 vampire films By Roger Luckhurst There are many film adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula; many, of course, that are rubbish. If you need fresh blood and your faith restored that there is still life to be drained from the vampire trope, here are ten recommendations for films that rework Stoker’s vampire in innovative and inventive ways.
Changing languages By Aidan Doyle In the literature on language death and language renewal, two cases come up again and again: Irish and Hebrew. Mention of the former language is usually attended by a whiff of disapproval. It was abandoned relatively recently by a majority of the Irish people in favour of English, and hence is quoted as an example of a people rejecting their heritage. Hebrew, on the other hand, is presented as a model of linguistic good behaviour: not only was it not rejected by its own people, it was even revived after being dead for more than two thousand years, and is now thriving.
Vienna and the abolition of the slave trade By Randall Lesaffer In April 1822, sailors from the British warships HMS Iphigenia and HMS Myrmidon, after a brief but fierce fight, captured two Spanish and three French slave ships off the coast of what is now Nigeria. Prize crews sailed the ships to Freetown in Sierra Leone, where the international mixed commission which was competent to hear cases regarding the slave trade decided to liberate the slaves found on the Spanish schooners, as well as those slaves found on a Portuguese ship which the British naval vessels had taken earlier.
Sexual deception in orchids By Alun Salt “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson), but he could have said the same for insects too. Male insects will be following the scent of females, looking for a partner, but not every female is what she seems to be. It might look like the orchid is getting some unwanted attention in the video below, but it’s actually the bee that’s the victim. The orchid has released complex scents to fool the bee into thinking it’s meeting a female.
Party games: coalitions in British politics By Angus Hawkins The general election of May 2015 brought an end to five years of coalition government in Britain. The Cameron-Clegg coalition, between 2010 and 2015, prompted much comment and speculation about the future of the British party system and the two party politics which had seemed to dominate the period since 1945. A long historical perspective, however, I think throws an interesting light on such questions.
The 2015 General Rejection? Disaffected democrats and democratic drift By Matthew Flinders Political science and journalistic commentaries are full of woe about the abject state of modern politics and the extent of the gap that has supposedly emerged between the governors and the governed. In this context, the 7 May 2015 might have been expected to deliver a General Rejection of mainstream democratic politics but did this really happen? Is British democracy in crisis?
Watching the true detectives By Ian Cummins, Marian Foley, and Martin King The media has a key role to play in the construction of our knowledge of crime and policing. In the post-war decades, they argue the representation of policing in the UK reflected the general social consensus. The dominant image here is Jack Warner playing George Dixon in the popular UK TV series Dixon of Dock Green that ran from 1955 to 1976. George Dixon came to represent the archetypal ‘British Bobby’, a pillar of the community who was widely respected. The homely and reassuring values that Dixon represented were summarized in his catchphrase ‘Evenin’ all’.
Italian women and 16th-century social media By Lisa Kaborycha Venetian courtesan Veronica Franco (1546-1591) describes the perils of her profession in one of her Familiar Letters, which she published in 1580: “To give oneself as prey to so many men, with the risk of being stripped, robbed or killed, that in one single day everything you have acquired over so much time may be taken from you, with so many other perils of injuries and horrible contagious diseases; to drink with another’s mouth, sleep with another’s eyes, move according to another’s desires, always running the clear risk of shipwreck of one’s faculties and life, what could be a greater misery?”
What made Russell feel ready for suicide? By Peter Hanks In early May 1913 Bertrand Russell sat down to write a book on the theory of knowledge, his first major philosophical work after Principia Mathematica. He set a brisk pace for himself – ten pages a day at first, up to twelve by mid-May. He was “bursting with work” and “felt happy as king”. By early June he had 350 pages. 350 pages in one month!He never finished the manuscript. Some parts of it were published as journal articles, but the book itself was never completed. (It was later published posthumously under the title Theory of Knowledge.) What went wrong?
The cases for and against hydrofracking By Alex Prud'homme The EPA recently released a report stating that while hydrofracking has not led to significant impacts on drinking water, contamination may occur with “potential vulnerabilities in the water lifecycle that could impact drinking water”. In this extract from Hydrofracking: What Everyone Needs to Know, Alex Prud’homme breaks down the cases for and against hydrofracking.
Human Reproduction Preconception stress and infertility: a Q&A with Dr. Courtney D. Lynch By Courtney D. Lynch Does preconception stress increase the risk of infertility? Dr Courtney D. Lynch will be presenting the results from a couple-based prospective cohort study, the LIFE study, at this year’s Human Reproduction Keynote Lecture in Lisbon. We meet Dr Lynch to learn more about how she came to specialise in reproductive medicine and the findings of her research.
It’s time to play the (Broadway) music By Estelle Hallick Whether you think the Tony Awards is the epitome of Broadway talent or just another marketing device, it’s a night where everyone has a front row seat to the creative, the lively, the emotional moments that have made a home on the Great White Way.
American religion in the Age of Reagan [quiz] By Anthony M. Petro You may have heard about the recent Pew Research Center study that shows millennials (born roughly between 1980 and 1995) fleeing Christian churches to occupy the ranks of the “nones,” those professing no religious affiliation. But how much do you know about the decade that gave birth to the millennial generation?
Is pleasure all that matters? By Roger Crisp This week I convened a philosophy seminar in Oxford with Kasia de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer. Singer is probably the world’s most famous living philosopher, well known for his pioneering work on the ethics of our treatment of non-human animals, on global poverty, and on many other issues. Less well known, perhaps, is the fact that Singer has recently changed his mind on the question of what really matters. I’m talking here about what matters for individual beings – what makes their lives good or bad for them.
Catholics and the torture chamber By Gustavo Morello Argentina, 1976. On the afternoon of 3 August, Fr. James Weeks went to his room to take a nap while the five seminarians of the La Salette congregation living with him went to attend classes. Joan McCarthy, an American nun who was visiting them, stayed by the fireplace, knitting a scarf. They would have dinner together and discuss the next mission in Jujuy, a Northwestern province of Argentina, where McCarthy worked. Suddenly, a loud noise came from the door. Before McCarthy could reach it, a mob burst into the house. Around ten men spread all over the house, claiming to be the police, looking for weapons, guerrilla hideouts, and ‘subversive fighters.’
Residency training and lifestyle By Kenneth M. Ludmerer For many generations, doctors seemingly had little choice. Work came first. Doctors were expected to live and breathe medicine, spend long hours at the office or hospital, and, when necessary, neglect their families for the sake of their patients.
Jesus takes a selfie: the Vernicle and Julian of Norwich By Barry Windeatt During her second ‘revelation’, Julian of Norwich has a bewilderingly dark vision of Christ’s face, which she compares with the most celebrated relic in medieval Rome. This was the ‘Vernicle’: the image of Christ’s face miraculously imprinted on a cloth that St Veronica lent Christ to wipe his face on his way to Calvary.
BioScience Five ways nature can improve our health By Danielle Shanahan How does nature benefit our health? Many of us intuitively know that we simply feel better after ‘stepping out for some fresh air.’ Now over 30 years of research has begun to reveal exactly what health benefits we get from nature. Here are five reasons why we need to make space and time for nature in our lives.
The real world of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell By Owen Davies Some reviewers of the first episodes of the current BBC1 adaptation have dismissed it is over-blown fantasy, even childish, yet Clarke’s characters are only once removed from the very real magical world of early nineteenth-century England. What few readers or viewers realise is that there were magicians similar to Strange and Norrell at the time: there really were ‘Friends of English Magic’, to whom the novel’s Mr Segundus appealed in a letter to The Times.
The ‘mullet’ mystery – Episode 23 – The Oxford Comment Often described as ‘business in front, party in the back,’ most everyone is familiar with this infamous hairstyle, which is thought to have been popularized in the 1980s. How, then, could the term have originated as early as 1393, centuries before David Bowie ever rocked it? We embarked on an etymological journey, figuratively traveling back in time to answer what seemed like a simple question: What, exactly, is a mullet? And does it really mean what we think it means?
The Stones’ “Satisfaction,” June 1965 By Gordon R. Thompson In the spring of 1965, The Rolling Stones could be forgiven their frustration. Even though they had scored three number-one UK hits in the past year, the American market remained a challenge. Beatles recordings had already thrice dominated the US charts since New Year’s Day and Brits Petula Clark, Herman’s Hermits, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and Freddie and the Dreamers had all topped Billboard between January and May.
ZaSu Pitts, the little-known confectioner By Darra Goldstein Silent-screen star ZaSu Pitts is usually remembered for her extraordinary name, her huge eyes, and her fluttering fingers, but not many know that she also put her nimble fingers to confectionery use, crafting elegant candies that were famous on Hollywood sets.
How do gut bugs affect brain health? By Gary L. Wenk Our brain lives in a symbiotic relationship with the bugs in our gut. Whatever we eat, they eat. In return, they help our brain function optimally in a variety of ways. During the past few years, it has become increasingly apparent that in the absence of bacteria humans would never have evolved to our current level of cognitive performance. Our brains are profoundly dependent upon a wide range of chemicals produced by these gut bugs.
TED Talks and DNA By Dawn Field One of the most fun and exciting sources of information available for free on the Internet are the videos found on the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) website. TED is a hub of stories about innovation, achievement and change, each artfully packaged into a short, highly accessible talk by an outstanding speaker. As of April 2015, the TED website boasts 1900+ videos from some of the most imminent individuals in the world. Selected speakers range from Bill Clinton and Al Gore to Bono and other global celebrities to a range of academics experts.
Bugs: a postscript By Anatoly Liberman Most of what I had to say on bug can be found in my book Word Origins and in my introductory etymological dictionary. But such a mass of curious notes, newspaper clippings, and personal letters fester in my folders that it is a pity to leave them there unused until the crack of etymological doom. So I decided to offer the public a small plate of leftovers in the hope of providing a dessert after the stodgy essays on bars, barrels, barracks, and barricades, to say nothing about cry barley.
Facing the challenges of palliative care: development By David C. Currow, Marie Fallon, Nathan Cherny, Russell K. Portenoy, and Stein Kaasa The maturing of palliative medicine as a profession has been accompanied by the ongoing development of palliative medicine education and educational resources all over the world. Globally, the principles and precepts of palliative care are finding a new home in medical education. Palliative care is an excellent framework for teaching the bio-psycho-social model of illness and the inter-professional approach to complex health care problems.
Progressivism, Presbyterianism, and the White House By Mark Stoll Surely no President epitomized the Progressive Era like Theodore Roosevelt, from trustbusting to conservation. Oddly, we rarely remember him as his contemporaries often did: “the greatest preacher of righteousness in modern times” (Gifford Pinchot); “essentially a preacher of righteousness” (William Loeb); “a veritable preacher of social righteousness with the irresistible eloquence of faith sanctified by work” (Jane Addams); “always ready to appeal for justice and righteousness” (Henry Cabot Lodge).
One-handed economics By Richard S. Grossman Once again, one of President Obama’s major legislative initiatives is being battered by a hostile Congress. Only this time, it is not Republicans standing in the way of the Administration’s plans, but the Democratic minority in the US Senate holding up the president’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The TPP is an ambitious trade deal currently being negotiated between eleven countries: Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, United States, Singapore and Vietnam.
Misunderstood: The FIFA scandal and the extraterritorial reach of US law By Stuart H. Deming In some quarters, the recent indictment by the United States of a number of individuals associated with FIFA has led to an outcry as to the extraterritorial reach of US law. Implicit in the outcry is the suggestion that the United States is unique in the application of its criminal laws.
The prophet and the reformer By Matthew J. Grow Ronald W. Walker Brigham Young is well known in history as the founder of Salt Lake City, the first governor of the Utah Territory, and a leader in the Latter-day Saint movement. Thomas L. Kane, on the other hand, is not quite as known; he was an attorney born in Philadelphia. However, some would say Kane is the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Church of Latter-day Saints.
Religion and environmentalism: a Q&A with Mark Stoll By Mark Stoll In Inherit the Holy Mountain: Religion and the Rise of American Environmentalism, Mark Stoll explores the religious roots of the American environmental movement. We sat down with him to find out a bit more about his process researching the book, issues in the field, and some tips for aspiring authors.
A century of British cinema By Luke McKernan Film is little over 120 years old, and lives in film seem to fall into three phases. The first comprises those who were born before the era of film, and whose different experiences and expectations helped shape the young medium. The second comprises those who grew up with film, in the era of the studios and mass cinema-going. The third consists of those who saw the bastion of the film world assailed by new technologies, from television to video games, which divided the audience’s attention and changed professions.
Tales of two Europes: sameness and difference at the Eurovision Song Contest 2015 Vienna By Philip V. Bohlman The negotiation of sameness and difference seemingly moved to Central Europe again with the 60th Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) in Vienna, which took as its motto “Building Bridges.” Austria became the host of the 2015 Eurovision after the sensational victory at the 2014 ESC in Copenhagen by Conchita Wurst, whose winning entry, “Rise like a Phoenix,” ascended to continent-wide popularity as an anthem for the diversity of sexual identity.
Government by contract: Who prods the procurers? By Abby Semple When Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus commissioned the city’s first aqueduct in 312 BC, he started a network which would grow to some 500 kilometres and sustain a population of one million. There is no record of the contract awarded, but it likely specified that the Aqua Appia be built mostly underground to protect it from contamination and sabotage. It was kept in use for over 250 years, undergoing various renovations and expansions.
President Obama, the Senate, and state private-sector retirement laws By Edward Zelinsky In a letter addressed to President Obama, 26 members of the United States Senate expressed their support for the private sector retirement savings laws adopted in Illinois and California, and also being considered in other states. In particular, the senators asked that the United States Treasury and Labor Departments resolve three legal issues clouding the prospects of these adopted and proposed state laws.
Heart Rhythm Week 2015: detect, protect, and correct arrhythmias By John Camm Do you know what a heart rhythm disorder is? What it means and how to help prevent it? This year, Heart Rhythm Week takes place from 1-7 June and continues its mission raise awareness and understanding of arrhythmias. To show our support for Heart Rhythm Week, organized by Arrhythmia Alliance, we asked Editor in Chief of EP-Europace, Professor John Camm, and expert in atrial fibrillation, to answer some questions on the topic.
What can green fluorescent proteins teach us about diseases? By Julie Fergus Green fluorescent proteins, or GFPs for short, are visibly advancing research in biology and medicine. By using GFPs to illuminate proteins otherwise undetectable under the microscope, scientists have learned a great deal about processes that take place within our cells.
Has ISIS become the new pretext for curtailing our civil liberties? By Robert Diab A series of measures put in place in the years following 9/11 have now become a fixture of Western government: mass warrantless surveillance, longer periods of detention without charge, and greater state secrecy without accountability. The United States finds itself at the vanguard of this movement with its embrace of executive authority to authorize targeted killing of its own citizens.
Who was Amelia Edwards? By Penelope Tuson Surprisingly few people have heard of Amelia Edwards. Archaeologists know her as the founder of the Egyptian Exploration Fund, set up in 1882, and the Department of Egyptology at University College London, created in 1892 through a bequest on her death. The first Edwards Professor, Flinders Petrie, was appointed on Amelia’s recommendation and her name is still attached to the Chair of Egyptian Archaeology.
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Will data privacy change the law? By Dan Jerker B. Svantesson It is customary to distinguish between three different forms of jurisdiction. As is well known, prescriptive (or legislative) jurisdiction relates to the power to make law in relation to a specific subject matter. Judicial (or adjudicative) jurisdiction, as the name suggests, deals with the power to adjudicate a particular matter. And, finally, enforcement jurisdiction relates to the power to enforce the law put in place, in the sense of, for example, arresting, prosecuting and/or punishing an individual under that law.
Over-consumption in America: beyond corporate power By Robert Paarlberg It is easy enough for critics to trace America’s over-consumption of things like food and fuel to the excess power of our profit-making corporations. Americans consume more food and fuel than Europeans in part because these companies in America are better able to resist taxes and regulations.
Authoritative speech By Sanford C. Goldberg There are various more or less familiar acts by which to communicate something with the reasonable expectation of being believed. We can do so by stating, reporting, contending, or claiming that such-and-such is the case; by telling others things, informing an audience of this-or-that, or vouching for something; by affirming or attesting to something’s being the case, or avowing that this-or-that is true. What do these acts have in common? Each is an instance of the kind of speech act known as an assertion.
Unequal at birth By John Komlos Recent events in Baltimore, Ferguson, and other places have highlighted the explosive potential of discrimination and inequality. Much attention has been paid to police practices, the long-term effect of joblessness, and the trauma of the criminal justice system incarcerating large numbers of African-Americans. This focus on the present is understandable. It is also insufficient. There is a need to understand and address the huge disadvantages, and indeed disabilities, imposed on future generations by pre-natal conditions.
An interview with the Editor of The Monist By Barry Smith Oxford University Press has partnered with the Hegeler Institute to publish The Monist, one of the world’s oldest and most important journals in philosophy. The Monist publishes quarterly thematic issues on particular philosophical topics which are edited by leading philosophers in the corresponding fields. We sat down with the Editor of The Monist, Barry Smith, to discuss the Journal’s history and future plans.
Getting to know Scott Morales, Stock Planning & Publications Coordinator By Scott Morales From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Scott Morales, a US Stock Planning & Publications Coordinator in New York. Scott has been working at the Oxford University Press since July 2008.
Harris Wittels: another victim of narcotics and America’s drug policy By Edward L. Rubin Harris Wittels, stand-up comedian, author, writer, and producer for Parks and Recreation — and generally a person who could make us laugh in these seemingly grim times — died of a drug overdose at the age of thirty. He joins the list of people who brought pleasure to our lives but died prematurely in this manner […]
How well do you know Australia and New Zealand? [quiz] By Miki Onwudinjo Happy Australian Library and Information Week! We’re wrapping up Library and Information Week here in Australia. This year’s theme is “Imagine.” Help us celebrate all of the fantastic libraries and librarians doing great things over on that side of the world. Oxford University Press has put together a quiz about all things Australia and New Zealand. Once you’ve made it through the quiz, reward yourself with a dollop of Vegemite or catch a Russell Crowe flick to get your fix of the good old outback.
A picture of violence and degradation By Marc Buggeln It is absolutely essential to take a critical view of source material when it comes to violent images and war photographs. Photos taken by perpetrators are always an expression of a relationship that is characterized by an imbalance of power between photographers and their subjects.
FIFA and the internationalisation of criminal justice By Robert Cryer The factual backdrop to this affair is well-known. FIFA, world football’s governing body has, for a number of years, been the subject of allegations of corruption. Then, after a series of dawn raids on 27 May 2015, seven FIFA officials, of various nationalities, the most famous being Jack Warner, the Trinidadian former vice president of FIFA, were arrested in a luxury hotel in Zurich where they were staying prior to the FIFA Congress.
Mentoring the next generation of oral historians By Andrew Shaffer Ask anyone who has been to an Oral History Association annual meeting and they’ll tell you that one of the best parts of the conference is the people. The conference offers the chance to meet and learn from oral history veterans, as well as those just getting started in the field. This week on the blog, we’re highlighting the OHA mentorship program, which aims to help newcomers at the meeting to get the most out of the experience by partnering them with mentors. The program paired 47 mentors and newcomers at the 2014 conference, and hopes to connect even more people going forward.
The 12 sweets you need to know about (and try) Have you ever tried vinarterta? How about gugelhupf? Whether these are familiar or completely foreign to you, this list of sweets are a must for everyone with a sweet tooth. All the sweets, cakes, desserts, and treats on this list come from The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, so give them a go and try one, some, or all!
Facing the challenges of palliative care: continuity By David C. Currow, Marie Fallon, Nathan Cherny, Russell K. Portenoy, and Stein Kaasa The last two decades have witnessed truly remarkable growth in the field of palliative care. Such growth is challenging, and brings both uncertainties and optimism about the future. In this three-part blog, we’ll take a look at some of the complex issues of continuity, development and evolution in palliative medicine.
All about that Double Bass By Miki Onwudinjo Distinguished musicians Domenico Dragonetti (1763-1846) and Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889) established a long-standing tradition of playing the double bass that was carried on into the 20th and 21st centuries. From the 1500s, this deep-toned string instrument has made its way from European orchestras to today’s popular music to retain a more natural acoustic sound in performances.
Exploring the final frontier By Stewart A. Weaver On this day in 1953, the New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. In the following excerpt from his book, Exploration: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2015), Stewart A. Weaver discusses why we, as humans, want to explore and discover. For all the different forms it takes in different historical periods, for all the worthy and unworthy motives that lie behind it, exploration, travel for the sake of discovery and adventure, seems to be a human compulsion.
Reframing gangs By Alistair Fraser Picture the scene. Scene 1: A group of wildly drunk young men smash a local business to smithereens, systematically destroying every inch, before beating the owner within an inch of his life. Scene 2: A group of power-crazed men (and one woman), driven by an aggressive culture of hyper-competitiveness, commit economic crime on an epic scale.
Julius Eastman: Gay Guerrilla By Matthew D. Morrison Julius Eastman (27 October 1940-28 May 1990)—composer, pianist, vocalist, improviser, conductor, actor, choreographer, and dancer—has left a musical legacy worthy of special attention. Now is a prime moment to attend to Eastman and his work, as we recognize and honor the loss of this significant musical figure just twenty-five years ago from today.
Can the Sequential Intercept Model help with behavioral health justice? By Kirk Heilbrun Patricia A. Griffin There is now pending legislation in the United States Senate and the U.S. House involving the diversion of justice-involved individuals with behavioral health disorders from standard prosecution. Both bills use the Sequential Intercept Model (SIM), developed by Mark Munetz and Patty Griffin in collaboration with Hank Steadman, as an organizing tool to help structure the proposed law. What is the SIM? How can it be used?
College education for emerging adults [infographic] College education trends have been changing a lot over the past few decades — from the cost of education to the enrollment rates to reasons for attending. While it may seem as though today’s emerging adults aren’t satisfied with today’s education trends, 9 out of 10 high schoolers expect to continue their education in some way after graduation, and 84% of college graduates believe their education was a good investment.
Surveillance and privacies By David Vincent In its recent report, Privacy and Security: A modern and transparent legal framework, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee pondered on the scale of public concern about digital surveillance. A feature of the current controversy is its narrow chronology. The decades before 9/11 correspond to the medieval period and the centuries before the internet are lost in the mists of time. The legislation that controls the behaviour of the security agencies, particularly the Acts of 1989, 1994 and 2000, is generally seen as obsolete.
Monthly etymology gleanings for May 2015 By Anatoly Liberman In the United States everything is planned very long in advance, while in Europe one can sometimes read about a conference that will be held a mere three months later. By that time all the travel money available to an American academic will have been spent a millennium ago. In the United States, we have visions rather than short-range plans.
The importance of continuing professional development in medicine By Jeremy A. Langton We all want our doctors to be familiar with the latest developments in medicine, and to be able to offer us as patients the very best and informed healthcare. It is important that doctors in the fields of anaesthesia, critical care, and pain are up to date and familiar with the latest developments in these rapidly developing areas of medicine, with new techniques and drugs emerging which improve outcomes for patients. As professionals, we cannot stand still and we must always strive to improve outcomes for our patients.
Can your diet make you feel depressed? By Gary L. Wenk I am often asked whether eating particular foods can enhance mood and treat the symptoms of depression. With very few exceptions, the answer is no. In contrast, our mood can be easily depressed by our diet. Why? For adults, the brain responds primarily to deficits, not surpluses, in the diet.
Leaving for the Rising Sun What is ‘Zen’ diplomacy? From Chinese monk to ambassador By Jiang Wu In 1654, a Chinese monk arrived in Japan. His name was Yinyuan Longqi (1592-1673), a Zen master who claimed to have inherited the authentic dharma transmission—the passing of the Buddha’s teaching from teacher to student—from the Linji (Rinzai) sect in China. This claim gave him tremendous authority in China, as without it a Zen teacher cannot be considered for leading a Zen community. Considering the long history of interactions between China and Japan, Chinese monks arriving in Japan with teachings, scriptures, relics and such were very common, and were welcomed by Japanese monks and rulers.
Ten facts about economic gender inequality By Paola Profeta Gender is a central concept in modern societies. The promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment is key for policymakers, and it is receiving a growing attention in business agendas. However, gender gaps are still a wide phenomenon. While gender gaps in education and health have been decreasing remarkably over time and their differences across countries have been narrowing, gender gaps in the labour market and in politics are more persistent and still vary largely across countries.
Electronic cigarettes may lead to nicotine addiction By Mike Fillon Are electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) a relatively harmless substitute for cigarettes? Or are they a Trojan horse leading to nicotine addiction and ultimately chronic smoking? Many researchers believe the latter. E-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that deliver aerosolized nicotine and kid-friendly flavored additives, such as chocolate mint, piña colada, atomic fireball candy, and even gummy bears. Designed to mimic the look and habit of smoking, the devices are marketed as a relatively benign alternative to smoking, without the tar, carbon monoxide, and other harmful ingredients adversely affecting the heart and respiratory system. “Vaping,” the term for using e-cigarettes, emits only a cloud of vapor—not secondhand smoke.
The Salem Witch Trial judges: “persons of the best prudence”? By Emerson W. Baker On 27 May 1692, Sir William Phips, the newly appointed royal governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, appointed nine of the colony’s leading magistrates to serve as judges for the newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer. When Phips sailed into Boston from London on 14 May, there were already 38 people in jail for witchcraft, and the accusations and arrests were growing daily.
Prisons built to expel By Emma Kaufman Every few months, a new report announces the breakdown of the British immigration system. In January, the Committee of Public Accounts issued a searing review of the Home Office’s migration policy. Three months earlier, the National Audit Office released a near-identical critique.
A behind-the-scenes look at OUP’s recording sessions of new choral music for 2015 By Griselda Sherlaw-Johnson Bob Chilcott, as conductor, and John Rutter, as producer and engineer, join forces with some talented freelance professional singers in a church in Highgate, London every February. For three days these singers become The Oxford Choir, formed to record Oxford University Press’s latest choral publications so that choral directors worldwide can discover new repertoire.
The biggest IPOs from across the globe By Miranda Dobson In 2014, the Chinese corporation Alibaba Group famously released the world’s biggest US-listed IPO. IPO stands for ‘initial public offering’ and represents the first sale of stock by a company to the public. There have been many instances of record-breaking IPOs from around the world – and as far back in history as 1602 – that also deserve our attention. Click on our interactive map below to find out about the biggest IPOs from across the globe.
Is Christian feminism an oxymoron? By Kristin Kobes Du Mez Is Christian feminism an oxymoron? For the past century or so, it’s often seemed that way. But it wasn’t all that long ago that many women not only considered Christianity and feminism compatible, but in fact believed each essential to the other. Perhaps no figure makes this case more powerfully than Katharine Bushnell. An internationally-known anti-trafficking activist in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Bushnell repeatedly encountered Christian men who had perpetrated acts of appalling cruelty against women, often without remorse or consequence.
Parsing schizophrenia By William Carpenter and Paul D. Shepard The effective treatment of schizophrenia has long presented a challenge to clinicians and scientists. Common misunderstandings around symptoms and behaviors, and inadequate approaches to diagnosis and physiology, have hindered significant progress for patients and professionals.
Did dark matter kill the dinosaurs? By Michael R. Rampino In 1980, Walter Alvarez and his group at the University of California, Berkeley, discovered a thin layer of clay in the geologic record, which contained an anomalous amount of the rare element iridium. They proposed that the iridium-rich layer was evidence of a massive comet hitting the Earth 66 million years ago, at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. The Alvarez group suggested that the global iridium-rich layer formed as fallout from an intense dust cloud raised by the impact event.
In the service of peace By Haidi Willmot and Scott Sheeran May 29th marks the International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, during which the world pays tribute to those who are serving, those who have served, and those who have lost their lives in the service of peace. Although peacekeeping was not envisaged in the UN Charter, it has become the flagship activity of the Organisation and perhaps the most innovative evolution within the UN collective security system.
Remembering Buddhas in Japan By Steven Heine Commemoration of the birthday of Sakyamuni Buddha forms an important but relatively small part of a remarkable emphasis on wide-ranging types of memorials that continue to be observed in modern Japan. However, celebrations in remembrance of death, including for all deceased ancestors who are regarded as Buddhas (hotoke) at the time of their passing marked by ritual burial, generally hold far greater significance than birth anniversaries. Buddha’s birthday is celebrated in Japan every year on 8 April.
How much do you know about Søren Kierkegaard? [quiz] By Mohamed Sesay This May, we’re featuring Søren Kierkegaard as our philosopher of the month. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kierkegaard made his name as one of the first existentialist philosophers of his time. Centuries later, scholars continue to comb through his works, which were produced in such abundance that it is difficult, even now, to come away with a cohesive portrait of the Danish scholar; not to mention the fact that many details of Kierkegaard’s personal life remain unknown.
The unfinished work of feminism By Rawwida Baksh These transnational feminist movements are rich and diverse. Their origins and struggles are located in anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, civil rights, anti-war, pro-democracy, indigenous peoples, workers, peasants, youth, disability, and LGBT movements, among others. They seek to transform patriarchal institutions in all their manifestations — from violations of intimate relations to the discriminatory and unequal gender norms of political, economic, social, and cultural institutions.
Bessie Smith: the Empress of the Blues By Scott Yanow The filming and recent airing of the HBO film Bessie, which stars Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith, serves as a perfect excuse to look back at the music and life of the woman who was accurately billed as the Empress Of The Blues. When Bessie Smith made her recording debut in 1923, she was not the first blues singer to record.
Cured with sparks: a history of electrotherapy for functional neurological symptoms By Laura McWhirter and Jon Stone Functional disorders are one of the most common reasons for attendance at the neurology clinic. These disorders — at other times and in other places called psychogenic, non-organic, conversion or hysterical — encompass symptoms such as paralysis, tremor and other abnormal movements, gait disorders and seizures.
Being true to your true self By David Shoemaker Huckleberry Finn, when faced with the opportunity to turn in the slave Jim, is tortured about what to do. At first he leans in favor of turning him in, because Jim is someone else’s property. And as he was taught in Sunday school, acting as he had been toward Jim was what got people sent to hell. But he can’t stop thinking about Jim’s companionship on the river, and how Jim had been nothing but kind to him all along, a real source of comfort and friendship. So Huck, with trembling hands, finally declares, “All right, then, I’ll GO to hell,” and decides not to turn Jim in.
16 words from the 1960s By Taylor Coe As the television show Mad Men recently reached its conclusion, we thought it might be fun to reflect on the contributions to language during the turbulent decade of the 1960s. This legacy is not surprising, given the huge shifts in culture that took place during this point in time, including the Civil Rights movement, the apex of the space race, the environmental movement, the sexual revolution, and—obviously—the rise of advertising and media. With this in mind, we picked 16 words from the 1960s that illuminate this historical moment.
Philosophie sans frontières By Graham Priest “East is East and West is West, and ne’er the twain shall meet.” Well, no. Kipling got it wrong. The East and the West have been meeting for a long time. For most of the last few hundred years, the traffic has been mainly one way. The West has had a major impact on the East. India felt the full force of British imperialism with the British East India Company and the British Raj.
Hop, the essence of beer By Hiroo Matsui and Eiichiro Ono Hop (Humulus lupulus L.) is an essential ingredient for brewing beer, and contributes a characteristic bitterness, aroma, and fullness. However, during the Middle-Ages, various other herbs including Rhodomyrtus tomentosa and Salix subfragilis, had also been used for brewing beer in Europe.
FEMS Microbiology Letters Is the history of science still relevant? By Lesley Robertson It was a simple request: “Try and put the fun back into microbiology”. I was about to write a new practical course for first year students, and apparently there had been complaints that microbiology is just another form of cookbook chemistry. Discussions showed that they liked the idea of doing their own experiments without a pre-determined outcome. Of course, with living microorganisms, safety must be a major concern, and some control was needed to prevent hazardous surprises, but “fun” and safety are not mutually exclusive.
Believing victims By P.A.J. Waddington Hampshire Constabulary are the latest in a long line of police forces obliged to apologise to a victim of crime for failing to investigate an allegation properly. In this case, a young woman accused a man of rape. She was not believed; forensic examination of clothing was delayed; in the meanwhile, the complainant was threatened with arrest for ‘perverting the course of justice’ and she attempted suicide. Eventually, following belated forensic analysis, the man was arrested and has since then been convicted.
The Irish referendum on same-sex marriage By Lorenzo Zucca Today, the people of Ireland will vote in a Referendum to decide whether to include the following new wording in their Constitution: ‘Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex.’ This may happen despite the fact that Ireland has a Constitution grounded in Catholic values. Indeed, abortion in Ireland is still constitutionally prohibited. Homosexuality was only decriminalized in 1993, and the option to divorce has only been available since 1995.
The role of the law, in the matter of Ashya King By Jo Bridgeman Parents of a child diagnosed with a serious illness are immediately required to make decisions about their child’s medical treatment which, in order to save life, may cause pain, unpleasant side-effects and risk damaging their child’s future quality of life. The actions, last summer, of the parents of five year old Ashya King offer just one example of the lengths to which parents will go to secure the best possible treatment for their child […]
Parkinson’s disease: the flip side of the coin By Murat Emre The human brain might be perceived as an organ with two main strategic tasks: goal-directed motor behavior, and mental functioning in order to work out that goal. These two main functions have two prototypical diseases: Alzheimer disease, in case of mental function, and Parkinson’s disease, with motor function. Following its inception as an entity, Parkinson’s disease (PD) was long perceived to be a purely motor disorder with unimpaired mental functions.
Climate consciousness in daily legal practice By Kim Bouwer Thinking about climate change generates helplessness in us. Our persistent role creating this global catastrophe seems so inevitable as to be predetermined; our will to contain it, or even reach agreement to contain it, feeble.
Do America’s political parties matter in presidential elections? By Richard M. Valelly April 2015 will go down in history as the month that the 2016 race for the White House began in earnest. Hillary Clinton’s online declaration of her presidential candidacy was the critical moment. With it America’s two major political parties have locked horns with each other. The Democrats intend to continue their control of the presidency for another four years; Republicans hope to finally make good on a conservative bumper sticker that began appearing on automobiles as early as the summer of 2009 and that read, “Had Enough Yet? Next Time Vote Republican.”
How well do you know Shakespeare actors? By Stanley Wells ‘All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.’ Over the past 400 years, Shakespeare’s plays have been performed across the globe, in productions big and small. Many actors have tried their hand at bringing characters such as Hamlet, Othello, Puck, and Juliet to life. How well do you know some of the great Shakespeare actors and the plays they performed in? Test your knowledge with our quiz below.
Salamone Rossi and the preservation of Jewish identity By Don Harrán Like other Jewish musicians in later times, among them Ernest Bloch, Darius Milhaud, and Leonard Bernstein, Rossi confronted the problems, in his own time, of preserving his Jewish identity in a non-Jewish environment and of communicating with Jews and Christians in such a way as to be understood and appreciated by both.
The missing emotion By Eric Taylor Wrath, people say, is not an emotion but a sin; and a deadly sin at that. Yet anger is just as much an emotion as anxiety or misery. Like them, it is an inescapable part of life; like them, it can be necessary and useful; and like them, an excess can wreck lives. Mental health language, however, has not elevated the extreme into a syndrome comparable to depression or anxiety states.
Traumatic brain injury in the military By Lee Ashendorf Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has often been called the “signature wound” of the recent conflicts in the Middle East. While some tend to discuss TBI as an overarching diagnostic category, there is a plethora of evidence indicating that severity of TBI makes a large difference in the anticipated outcome.
The genetics of consciousness By John Parrington Nipple of a cat. Nose of a pig. Hair of a poodle. Eyes of a baboon. Brain of a chimpanzee. If this sounds like a list of ingredients for a witches’ cauldron, think again, for it’s merely a reminder of how many general characteristics we share with other mammals. This similarity in basic body parts has a genetic basis. So humans and chimps share 99 percent DNA similarity in our protein–coding genes and even the tiny mouse is 85 percent similar to us in this respect.
Putting one’s foot into it By Anatoly Liberman Last week, I wrote about the idiom to cry barley, used by children in Scotland and in the northern counties of England, but I was interested in the word barley “peace, truce” rather than the phrase. Today I am returning to the north, and it is the saying the bishop has put (or set) his foot in it that will be at the center of our attention.
Edward Jenner: soloist or member of a trio? Part 2 By Anthony R. Rees In 1805 a Dorset farmer, Benjamin Jesty arrived in London on an invitation from the Original Vaccine Pock Institute to describe his cowpox vaccination procedure on his own family which included a real time inoculation of his son Robert with smallpox. This new institute was formed by the anti-Jenner physician George Pearson in an attempt to shift the credit for vaccination discovery away from Jenner.
Where was Christopher Columbus really from? By Philip A. Mackowiak Of the many controversies surrounding the life and legacy of Christopher Columbus, who died on this day 510 years ago, one of the most intriguing but least discussed questions is his true country of origin. For reasons lost in time, Columbus has been identified with unquestioned consistency as an Italian of humble beginnings from the Republic of Genoa. Yet in over 536 existing pages of his letters and documents, not once does the famous explorer claim to have come from Genoa.
Field experimenting in economics: Lessons learned for public policy By Robert Metcalfe Do neighbourhoods matter to outcomes? Which classroom interventions improve educational attainment? How should we raise money to provide important and valued public goods? Do energy prices affect energy demand? How can we motivate people to become healthier, greener, and more cooperative? These are some of the most challenging questions policy-makers face. Academics have been trying to understand and uncover these important relationships for decades.
Do we choose what we believe? By Alexander X. Douglas Descartes divided the mind up into two faculties: intellect and will. The intellect gathers up data from the world and presents the mind with various potential beliefs that it might endorse; the will then chooses which of them to endorse. We can look at the evidence for or against a particular belief, but the final choice about what to believe remains a matter of choice. This raises the question of the ‘ethics of belief,’ the title of an essay by the mathematician William K. Clifford, in which he argued that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.’
Remembering the “good” and “bad” wars: Memorial Day 40, 50, and 70 years on By Steven Casey Memorial Day is always a poignant moment — a time to remember and reflect on the ultimate sacrifice made by so many military personnel over the decades — but this year three big anniversaries make it particularly so. Seventy years ago, Americans celebrated victory in a war in which these sacrifices seemed worthwhile.
The destruction of an Assyrian palace By David Kertai Ashurnasirpal’s palace at Nimrud (Assyrian Kal?u) was constructed around 865 BCE during a period in which Assyria was slowly becoming the empire that would come to rule most of the Middle East two centuries later. Ashurnasirpal’s palace is among the few Assyrian palaces to have been excavated (more or less) in its entirety. Measuring at least 2 hectares, it must have been one of the largest and most monumental buildings of its time.
A sugar & sweets music mixtape By Connie Ngo Incorporating the idea of sweetness in songs is nothing new to the music industry. Ubiquitous terms like “sugar” and “honey” are used in ways of both endearment and condescension, love and disdain. Among the (probably) hundreds of songs about sweets, Aaron Gilbreath, essayist and journalist from Portland, Oregon, curated a list of 50 songs, which is included in The Oxford Companion of Sugar and Sweets.
Companies House and the £9m typo By Lee Roach Conducting business through a company provides tremendous benefits. The price to be paid for these benefits is disclosure – companies are required to disclose substantial amounts of information, with much of this information being disclosed to Companies House. Every day, suppliers, creditors, potential investors, credit agencies and other persons utilise information provided by Companies House to make informed commercial decisions.
The final years of Fanny Cornforth By Mark Curthoys Family historians know the sensation of discovery when some longstanding ‘brick wall’ in their search for an elusive ancestor is breached. Crowds at the recent ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ exhibition at Birmingham explored the new resources available to assist their researches, and millions worldwide subscribe to online genealogical sites, hosting ever-growing volumes of digitized historical records, in the hope of tracking down their family roots.
The history of chocolate [infographic] From its journey to Europe from the New World at the beginning of the sixteenth century to its modern-day iteration as we know it, chocolate climbed its way into the hearts and homes of people all over the world. In its long and fruitful evolution through time, we’ve pulled together a timeline of chocolate’s history from Europeans first encounter with the substance with the Aztecs through the Heirloom Cacao Initiative in 2014.
Customary international law’s uncertain status in the US Legal System By Curtis A. Bradley Customary international law arises from the practices of nations followed out of a sense of legal obligation. Although long an important source of international law, there continues to be debate and uncertainty about customary international law’s status in the US legal system.
Who said it? Napoleon or Clausewitz By Bruno Colson How well do you know your military strategists? Napoleon Bonaparte and Carl von Clausewitz are considered some of the finest thinkers on war and strategy. Although they were enemies on the battlefield, both men’s insights into the dynamics of war are still widely consulted today. Take our quiz and see if you can tell who said what. Quotes are drawn from Napoleon: On War and On War by Carl Von Clausewitz.
What’s so fascinating about plants? By Suzie Eves On 18th May plant lovers around the world take part in Fascination of Plants Day to raise awareness of the importance of plant science to our lives. Well, what is so fascinating about plants? We asked some of our authors and editors to share why they think plants are fascinating and why they are worth studying.
The dangers of evolution denial By Edward L. Rubin As the 2016 presidential election season begins (US politics, unlike nature, has seasons that are two years long), we will once again see Republican politicians ducking questions about the validity of evolution. Scott Walker did that recently in response to a London interviewer. During the previous campaign, Rick Perry answered the question by observing that there are “some gaps” in the theory of evolution and that creationism is taught in the Texas public schools (it isn’t, of course).
Female service members in the long war By Elspeth Cameron Ritchie We are still in the longest war in our nation’s history. 2.7 million service members have served since 9/11 in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands have been killed, tens of thousands wounded, and approximately 20 to 30% have post-traumatic stress disorder and/or traumatic brain injury.
Philosopher of the month: Søren Kierkegaard By Mohamed Sesay This May, the OUP Philosophy team are honouring Kierkegaard as the inaugural ‘Philosopher of the Month’. Over the next year, in order to commemorate the countless philosophers who have shaped our world by exploring life’s fundamental questions, the OUP Philosophy team will celebrate a different philosopher every month in their new Philosopher of the Month series. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, and the father of existentialism.
Getting to know Sara McNamara, Associate Editor By Sara McNamara From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Sara McNamara, an Associate Editor on our Journals team in New York. Sara has been working at the Oxford University Press since September 2012.
Edward Jenner: soloist or member of a trio? Part 1 By Anthony R. Rees This month marks 266 years since the birth of one of the most celebrated names in medical discovery. Edward Jenner, credited with the discovery of the smallpox vaccination, was born on 17 May 1749 (6 May by the Julian calendar, still in use in England by a quirk of anti-papal authoritarianism until 1752) in the village of Berkeley in Gloucestershire, England.
DSM-5: two years since publication By Joel Paris It is now two years since the publication of DSM-5. As one might expect when a widely used manual is revised, some mental health clinicians were worried they would have to learn diagnosis from scratch.
Cold feet in literature By Beci Carver The act of writing has a long history of being associated with romantic reluctance. The figure of speech ‘cold feet’ made its debut in print in 1896 in Stephen Crane’s Maggie as a riff on the idea of writing as a kind of forward movement. Crane’s novel about the life of a New York slum girl called Maggie, begins with a decision to run; Maggie’s brother Jimmy thinks better of his resolution.
Using Pop Up Archive for oral history transcription By Samantha Snyder After completing my first transcription process using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I was asked to transcribe an interview using Pop Up Archive, an online platform for storing, transcribing, and searching audio content developed by the Public Radio Exchange (PRX). They explain the process in three steps: 1. You add any audio file. 2. We tag, index, and transcribe it automatically. 3. Your sound, in one place, searchable to the second.
The most exciting advances in intensive and acute cardiac care By Susanna Price Things move fast at the acute end of medicine – and nowhere is this more apparent than in the field of intensive and acute cardiovascular care. This important field has been somewhat neglected at the expense of super-subspecialisation in cardiology. But times are changing.
All gone to look for America: Mad Men‘s treatment of nostalgia By Thomas Jundt The popularity of Mad Men has been variously attributed to its highly stylized look, its explication of antiquated gender and racial norms, and nostalgia for a time when drinking and smoking were not sequestered to designated zones but instead celebrated in the workplace as necessary ingredients for a proper professional life. But much of Mad Men’s lasting appeal lay in its complicated relationship with nostalgia.
For the love of trees By Jaboury Ghazoul I used to climb trees when I was young (and I still, on occasion, do). As a boy in Iraq I had a favoured loquat tree, with branches that bore leathery, serrated leaves, shiny on the upper surface, and densely matted with fine hairs underneath. It seemed so big, though I now reflect it was probably rather small. I would haul myself up and over the lowest branch, making whatever use of the twists and folds of the trunk as provided purchase to my small feet.
What puts veterans at risk for homelessness? By Jack Tsai Kevin Payne There has been an ongoing battle to end homelessness in the United States, particularly among veterans. Over the past three decades, considerable research has been conducted to identify risk factors for veteran homelessness, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has funded much of that research. In 2009, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced its commitment to end veteran homelessness in five years. As we near the end of that five years, it’s important to reflect on what we have learned and what we now know about veteran homelessness.
Four steps to singing like a winner By Susan Mohini Kane Singing like a winner is what every emerging professional aspires to do. Yet there are so many hardships and obstacles; so much competition and heartache; so many bills to pay that more people sing like whiners than winners.
How does food affect your mood? By Gary L. Wenk Considerable evidence has linked an unhealthy diet to obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes and cancer. We now understand how chronic obesity ages us and then underlies the foundation of our death. Furthermore, obesity leads to body-wide chronic inflammation that predisposes us to depression and dementia. However, these are all the long-term consequences of our diet upon our body and brain.
Sex, cars, and the power of testosterone By Joe Herbert A red open car blasts past you, exhaust and radio blaring, going at least 10 miles faster than the speed limit. Want to take a bet on the driver? Well, you won’t get odds. Everyone knows the answer. All that exhibitionism shouts out the commonplace, if not always welcome, features of young males. Just rampant testosterone, you might say. And that’s right. It is testosterone. The young man may be driving the car but testosterone is what’s driving him.
The barrage continues with “barricade” and ends with an appeal for peace By Anatoly Liberman To finish the bar(r)-series, I deviated from my usual practice and chose a word about which there is at present relatively little controversy. However, all is not clear, and two theories about the origin of barricade still compete. According to one, the story begins with words like Italian barra and French barre “bar” (barricades bar access to certain places), while, according to the other, the first barricades were constructed of barrels filled with earth, stones, and the like, so that the starting point should be French barrique or Spanish barrica.
Discussion questions for Dracula by Bram Stoker By Roger Luckhurst We’re just over a fortnight away from the end of our second season of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group. It’s still not to late to join us as we explore the foggy streets of Victorian London in search of the King of Vampires! If you’re already stuck in with #OWCReads, these discussion questions will help you get the most out of the text.
Are you smarter than a medical professional? [quiz] By Miki Onwudinjo How sharp is your medical lexicon? Even experienced professionals may be stumped by these obscure terms! Definitions are drawn from the Dictionary of Nursing and the Oxford Concise Medical Dictionary on Oxford Reference.
Retail and the royals By Clare Hanson With the arrival of little Princess Charlotte of Cambridge earlier this month, retailers will have inevitably experienced an influx of customers purchasing commemorative memorabilia and other royal baby related souvenirs. The UK economy is expecting a huge boost with the excitement generated by the new baby. With the Monarchy estimated to be worth £44 billion, we take a brief look at four ways the Royal family has given the UK’s economy a much needed lift in the past.
The history of the nursing profession Throughout history, nurses have been the unsung heroes of the medical profession. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for instance, refused to proclaim a “Nurses’ Day” at the request of Dorothy Sutherland, an official with the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953. More than two decades later, however, the International Council of Nurses (ICN), succeeded in establishing International Nurses Day on the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, a 19th century wartime nurse considered the founder of modern nursing.
Civil War peas, shamrocks, and state beds: collecting a collection By Sarah Anne Carter The Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, an organization devoted to innovative museum practice as well as to the study of historic American furniture, American and British ceramics, and American prints, doesn’t always collect what one might expect. Recently we acquired three peas said to have been served at Andersonville Prison, a swatch from bareknuckle boxer Joe Goss’s colors, splinters from the wreck of an ill-fated arctic expedition, and a feather collected from a Russian state bed.
A holding corporation called old America: Charles Mingus’ religious multitudes By Jason C. Bivins You can’t understand jazz without its continual, creative religiosities. But to investigate this association is to encounter the scrambling of format and expectation in terms both musicological and religious. For while it is certainly true that jazz has strong roots in African-American Protestantism, not only do these roots twist in unexpected directions but there are other branches reaching into farther soils as well.
Transparency and co-operation in the international trusts industry By Geoff Cook It is, perhaps, unsurprising in a UK General Election year that tax transparency and tax information exchange continue to inform a fair amount of debate at the moment. As it evolves, this debate has demanded a real focus for those working both in International Financial Corporations (IFCs) and in the wider trust sector, with both communities often finding themselves in the frame when it comes to some of the political rhetoric and misinformation relating to secrecy, illicit financial flows and their supposed links with IFCs and trust structures.
What the professor saw on YouTube By Oliver Gaycken The pervasiveness of digital media in contemporary, moving-image culture is transforming the way we make connections of all kinds. The recent rediscovery of the 1903 film Cheese Mites is a perfect example, as the way the film came to light could only have taken place in the last decade. Cheese Mites is a landmark of early cinema, one of the first films ever made for general audiences about a scientific topic. It belonged to a series of films called “The Unseen World” and was made for the Charles Urban Company by F. Martin Duncan, a pioneer of microcinematography. It was a sensation in its day, capitalizing on the creepy fascination with microscopic creatures inhabiting our food and drink.
The School for Scandal on the Georgian stage By Robert W. Jones Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comic masterpiece ‘The School for Scandal’ premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in May 1777. The play was an immediate success earning Drury Lane, which Sheridan owned and managed an enormous amount of money. ‘The School for Scandal’ explores a fashionable society at once addicted to gossip and yet fearful of exposure. Jokes are had at the expense of aging husbands, the socially inexpert, and, most of all, the falsely sentimental.
How to write a great graduation speech By Edwin Battistella It’s graduation time at many of the nation’s schools and colleges. The commencement ceremony is a great exhalation for all involved and an annual rite of passage celebrating academic achievements. Commencement ceremonies typically feature a visiting dignitary who offers a few thousand inspirational words. Over the years, I’ve heard more of these speeches than I care to admit and have made my own checklist of suggestions for speakers. For those of you giving commencement speeches or listening to them, here’s my advice.
Neverending nightmares: who has the power in international policy? By Carmen Pavel Late last year, North Korea grabbed headlines after government-sponsored hackers infiltrated Sony and exposed the private correspondence of its executives. The more significant news that many may have missed, however, was the symbolic and long overdue UN resolution condemning the crimes against humanity North Korean committed against its own people.
Stonewall Jackson’s “Pleuro-Pneumonia” By Philip A. Mackowiak On this day in 1863, General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, one of the wiliest military commanders this country ever produced, died eight days after being shot by his own men. He had lost a massive amount of blood before having his left arm amputated by Dr. Hunter Holmes McGuire, arguably the most celebrated Civil War surgeon of either side.
What can we learn from Buddhist moral psychology? By Jay L. Garfield Buddhist moral psychology represents a distinctive contribution to contemporary moral discourses. Most Western ethicists neglect to problematize perception at all, and few suggest that ethical engagement begins with perception. But this is a central idea in Buddhist moral theory. Human perception is always perception-as. We see someone as a friend or as an enemy; as a stranger or as an acquaintance. We see objects as desirable or as repulsive. We see ourselves as helpers or as competitors, and our cognitive and action sets follow in train.
The evolution of the word ‘evolution’ By Jeremy Marshall It is curious that, although the modern theory of evolution has its source in Charles Darwin’s great book On the Origin of Species (1859), the word evolution does not appear in the original text at all. In fact, Darwin seems deliberately to have avoided using the word evolution, preferring to refer to the process of biological change as ‘transmutation’. Some of the reasons for this, and for continuing confusion about the word evolution in the succeeding century and a half, can be unpacked from the word’s entry in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
Brain function and brain surgery in children with epilepsy By Caroline Skirrow and Torsten Baldeweg Our actions, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and memories are underpinned by electrical activity, which passes through networks of neurons in the brain. As a child grows and gains new skills their brain changes rapidly and brain networks are formed and strengthened with learning and experience.
Why Lincoln’s last speech matters By Louis P. Masur Lincoln’s last speech, delivered on 11 April 1865, seldom receives the attention it deserves. The prose is not poetic, but then it was not meant to inspire but to persuade. He had written the bulk of the speech weeks earlier in an attempt to convince Congress to readmit Louisiana to the Union.
Literary fates (according to Google) By Richard Lansdown Where would old literature professors be without energetic postgraduates? A recent human acquisition, working on the literary sociology of pulp science fiction, has introduced me to the intellectual equivalent of catnip: Google Ngrams. Anyone reading this blog must be tech-savvy by definition; you probably contrive Ngrams over your muesli. But for a woefully challenged person like myself they are the easiest way to waste an entire morning since God invented snooker.
How can we reconstruct history on the silver screen? By Seamus O’Malley A perpetual lament of historians is that so many people get their historical knowledge from either Hollywood or the BBC. The controversies that surrounded Lincoln and Selma will no doubt reappear, in other guises, with the release of Wolf Hall, based on Hilary Mantel’s popular historical novel. Historical films play an outsize role in collective historical knowledge, and historians rightly bemoan the inaccuracies and misleading emphases of popular film and television: no doubt a generation of viewers believe that the Roman Republic was restored by a dying gladiator.
Body weight and osteoarthritis By David Hunter Osteoarthritis is a chronic condition of the synovial joint. The disease develops over time and most commonly affects the knees, hips and hands, and less commonly the shoulder, spine, ankles and feet. It’s a prevalent, disabling disease, and consequently has a formidable individual and social impact.
How complex is net neutrality? By V. Sridhar and Rohit Prasad Thanks to the recent release of consultation paper titled “Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTT) services," for the first time in India's telecom history close to a million petitions in favour of net neutrality were sent; comparable to millions who responded to Federal Communications Commission’s position paper on net neutrality last year.
Hillary Clinton and voter disgust By Donald T. Critchlow Hillary Clinton declared that she is running for the Democratic Party nomination in a Tweet that was sent out Sunday, 12 April 2015. This ended pundit conjecture that she might not run, either because of poor health, lack of energy at her age, or maybe she was too tarnished with scandal. Yet, such speculation was just idle chatter used to fill media space. Now that Clinton has declared her candidacy, the media and political pundits have something real to discuss.
What if printed books went by ebook rules? By Dennis Baron I love ebooks. Despite their unimaginative page design, monotonous fonts, curious approach to hyphenation, and clunky annotation utilities, they’re convenient and easy on my aging eyes. But I wish they didn’t come wrapped in legalese. Whenever I read a book on my iPad, for example, I have tacitly agreed to the 15,000-word statement of terms and conditions for the iTunes store. It’s written by lawyers in language so dense and tedious it seems designed not to be read, except by other lawyers, and that’s odd, since these Terms of Service agreements (TOS) concern the use of books that are designed to be read.
The History of Grove Music: an interactive timeline By Miki Onwudinjo Since 1873, Grove Music has expanded from one piece of hardbound reference detailing the work and lives of musicians to becoming a powerful online encyclopedic database that serves to educate the world about music. George Grove, founder of the Grove dictionaries, was motivated by the lack of music reference works available to scholars and music professionals.
Afterwar – Episode 22 – The Oxford Comment As 2.6 million men and women return home from war, the prevalence of veteran suicide and post-traumatic stress is something that is frequently discussed by civilians, politicians, and the media, but seldom understood. These changes extend beyond psychological readjustment, physical handicap, and even loss of life. The greatest wounds, in fact, may not even be visible to the naked eye. While the traditional dialogue concerning veteran assistance typically involves the availability of institutional services, military hospitals, and other resources, there is an increasing need to address what many call the “moral injuries” sustained by soldiers during combat.
The role of marijuana in your coffee addiction By Gary L. Wenk Does coffee enhance marijuana? A study published recently in the Journal of Neuroscience by neuroscientists from the Integrative Neurobiology Section of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, has finally provided a definitive answer: Yes, No, and it depends.
DNA: The amazing molecule By Dawn Field DNA is the foundation of life. It codes the instructions for the creation of all life on Earth. Scientists are now reading the autobiographies of organisms across the Tree of Life and writing new words, paragraphs, chapters, and even books as synthetic genomics gains steam. Quite astonishingly, the beautiful design and special properties of DNA makes it capable of many other amazing feats. Here are five man-made functions of DNA, all of which are contributing to the growing “industrial-DNA” phenomenon.
Putting industrial policy back on the agenda By David Bailey, Keith Cowling, and Philip Tomlinson As the UK General Election draws near, the economy has again been the over-riding feature of the campaign. Yet the debate itself has been pretty narrow, being principally framed around ‘austerity’ and the reduction of the size of the government’s budget deficit. The major political parties are all committed to eradicating this deficit, with the main question being the time-frame in achieving this goal.
On barrels from East to West By Anatoly Liberman The post two weeks ago was devoted to the origin and history of bar. In English, all words with the root bar- ~ barr- are from French. They usually have related forms in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, but their source in the Romance-speaking world remains a matter of unending debate.
Will our political leaders survive 2015? As the 2015 UK General Election approaches, the world’s eyes are focused on the main party leaders, and on the ways in which the outcome of this election may affect their political careers. And as Tony Blair stated: ‘The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes.’
Orson Welles at 100 By Catherine L. Benamou Today, 6 May 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Orson Welles in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to concert pianist Beatrice Welles and inventor Richard Head Welles. Widely recognized as a child prodigy, Welles exhibited musical talent, a fascination with magic, and the ability to recite Shakespeare all before the age of ten. At age sixteen, he traveled to Ireland, where he seized the opportunity to appear on the professional stage in a production of Jew Süss at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
Parliamentary procedure By Richard S. Grossman On May 7, British voters will head to the polls to elect a new Parliament. If mid-April forecasts are correct, the formation of a government will be a bit more complicated than in elections past. The results of those elections will have important ramifications for the conduct of economic policy in both Britain and the European Union. For most of the last two centuries, British governments have been formed by one of the two major political parties of the time.
Legislating for justice By Jairam Ramesh Legislating on land rights is an exercise fraught with challenges. States are reluctant and often opposed to any central legislation on the subject viewing such an exercise as an encroachment into their domain.
Minding your stems and crowns By Frederick B. Essig Since evolution became the primary framework for biological thought, we have been fascinated—sometimes obsessed—with the origins of things. Darwin himself was puzzled by the seemingly sudden appearance of angiosperms (flowering plants) in the fossil record. In that mid-Cretaceous debut, they seemed to be diversified into modern families already, with no evidence of what came before them. This was Darwin’s famous “abominable mystery.”
Cyber won’t protect us: the need to stand behind the Iranian nuclear framework agreement By Brandon Valeriano After two years of negotiations, Israel throwing whatever they can against any possible agreement, and the Republicans in the US Congress doing what they can to scuttle the deal, we finally have a framework for an agreement between Iran and its negotiating partners. It is not a perfect deal, but it is likely the best the West can get and given the other options, it is literally the only hope standing between a rational dialogue with Iran and outright conflict.
The “Blurred Lines” of music and copyright: Part two By Neil Wilkof The infrequency of two high-profile songsters or their representatives going all the way to trial over claims of copyright infringement means that such a case usually receives heightened public scrutiny. This is especially so when mere sampling of the plaintiff’s song is not at issue. In recent years, few cases have drawn more public attention than the dispute between the Marvin Gaye estate and singer/songwriter Robin Thicke and song producer Pharrell Williams, over whether the song “Blurred Lines” infringed Marvin Gaye’s 1977 hit, “Got to Give It Up.”
Keep the Cadillac tax By Edward Zelinsky The Obamacare “Cadillac tax” is currently scheduled to go into effect in 2018. However, last week, sixty-six members of the House of Representatives, including both Republicans and Democrats, proposed to repeal the Cadillac tax before it becomes effective. The Cadillac tax will be imposed at a 40% rate on the cost of health care insurance, exceeding statutorily-established thresholds. Unions and many of their Democratic stalwarts, otherwise supportive of Obamacare, oppose the Cadillac tax because generous union-sponsored health care plans will trigger the tax.
May the Fourth be with you! By Michael Adams May the Fourth be with you! Playing off a pun on one of the movie’s most famous quotes, May the 4th is the unofficial holiday in which Star Wars fans across the globe celebrate the beloved blockbuster series. The original Star Wars movie, now known as Star Wars IV: A New Hope, was released on 25 May 1977, but to those of us who waited in line after line to see it again and again in theaters, it will always be just Star Wars.
In memoriam of M.H. Abrams By Ira Nadel My first encounter with M.H. Abrams involved a bicycle. In a Beckettian scene in Goldwin Smith Hall at Cornell, I stopped a gentleman in shorts one spring morning with a bicycle. “Excuse me, do you know a Professor Abrams?” Removing a pipe from his mouth, he smiled and said “Follow me.” I did, and he stopped at an office door, asked me to hold the bike, fished out a key, and directed me to bring the bike in and sit down. “But what about Professor Abrams? I’m to be his new assistant,” I added nervously. The cyclist sat down among the piles of books, relit his pipe, and said through a grin, “Let’s get started.”
How many of these famous political quotes have you heard before? By Dan Parker The week of the UK general election has finally arrived. After suffering weeks of incessant sound-bites, you will soon be free of political jargon for another few years. Phrases like “long-term economic plan” have been repeated so often that they have ceased to mean anything. From Margaret Thatcher to Harold Wilson, from Benjamin Disraeli to Winston Churchill, British prime ministers and politicians have uttered phrases that have echoed throughout history. How many of these famous political quotes do you remember?
Five years of Labour opposition By Tim Bale The 7 May 2015 marks the conclusion of a long and challenging five years for Ed Miliband as leader of the opposition. After one of the worst defeats in the party’s history in May 2010, he took over as the new leader of the Labour party with the mission to bring the party back into power after only one term in opposition. A difficult task at the best of times, but made even harder due to internal tensions between Blairites and Brownites, Blue Labour and New Labour as well as many voters blaming the previous Labour government for the economic state of the country immediately after the 2010 election.
Fig leaves and fairy tales: political promises and the Truth-O-Meter By Matthew Flinders The Tampa Bay Times is a very fine newspaper. One of its most insightful features — indeed, a feature that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 — is its PolitiFact website. This is an independent on-line platform through which a legion of reporters and editors fact-check every statement, promise and half-hearted mumble ever made by a politician, political candidate, political party, or campaign group.
Destination India By Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph What would it be like driving overland from London — East of Suez and over the Khyber Pass — to India ? Day by day and mile by mile, we found out, recording our impressions and experiences of people, landscape and encounters as we drove a 107" wheel base Land Rover from London to Jaipur.
Reference and the election of the new Italian President By Andrea Bianchi After three inconclusive rounds in the preceding days, in which nobody secured the two-thirds majority needed to win, on the morning of 31 January 2015 a fourth round of voting was held in the Italian Parliament to elect the country’s President. This time, a simple majority of the 1,009 eligible voters (the members of both Chambers of the Parliament plus some delegates from the Regions) was enough to decide the election.
What is the history of the Green Berets? By John Prados With Memorial Day fast approaching, it is worth examining the history of our armed services, including the modernization of the military during the Cold War. This excerpt from The U.S. Special Forces: What Everyone Needs to Know® by John Prados, explains how the Special Forces, also known as the Green Berets, evolved during President John F. Kennedy’s term.
Authors for Indies: Oxford University Press celebrates Canada’s independent bookstores This year, Authors for Indies Day takes place on Saturday, 2 May. To celebrate, the staff at Oxford University Press Canada have decided to highlight some of their favourite independent bookstores. Here are some of Canada’s favourite literary hangouts, and where you can find them. * * * Novel Idea 156 Princess Street, Kingston, Ontario […]
What is your most memorable election experience? By Simon Usherwood, Tim Bale, and Tony Harcup We asked three Oxford University Press authors to describe their most memorable election experience in the build up to next week’s general election in the UK. Their stories range from Press Association mishaps to covering elections in New Zealand to the importance of voting. What has been your most memorable election experience? Let us know in the comments below.
Later interviews as counter narratives: Treblinka and the ardent lover By Henry Greenspan Oral historians differ on the utility of retrieving participants’ full life stories, but we agree that “full” is a relative term. There is always much unsaid in any life’s retelling, and for a wide range reasons. Drawing on forty years of interviewing Holocaust survivors, I emphasize here that what is unsaid in early interviews often emerges in later ones. Indeed, later interviews may even become counter narratives to earlier recounting—a way for participants to tell us not to “peg” them too easily or too soon.
Cultural origins of residency training By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Given the highly scientific and technical nature of medical practice, it is tempting to assume that the system of residency training developed in response to intellectual forces within medicine. There is much truth to this. After all, the need to learn scientific concepts and principles, to develop skills of critical reasoning, to acquire the capacity to manage uncertainty, to master technical procedures, and to learn how to assume responsibility for patient care all reflected powerful professional demands.
Making plans for Nigel (Dodds): the General Election and Northern Ireland By Jonathan Tonge Northern Ireland’s part in the General Election, often seen as peripheral, has already attracted more interest than usual. The Democratic Unionist Party’s (DUP) status as Westminster’s fourth largest party has not gone unnoticed – except perhaps by television broadcasters anxious to clinch election debates involving the leaders of much smaller parliamentary parties.
Six things you didn’t know about light By Ian Walmsley Light occupies a central place in our understanding of the world both as a means by which we locate ourselves in nature and as a thing that inspires our imagination. Light is what enables us to see things, and thus to navigate our surroundings. It is also a primary means by which we learn about the world – light beams carry information about the constituents of the universe, from distant stars and galaxies to the cells in our bodies to individual atoms and molecules.
April 2015 (130))
Making sense of mathematics By David Tall and Ian Stewart Mathematics is used in increasingly sophisticated ways in modern society, explicitly by experts who develop applications and implicitly by the general public who use technological devices. As each of us is taught a broad curriculum in school and then focuses on particular specialisms in our adult life, it is useful to ask the question ‘what does it mean to make sense of mathematics?’.
Kurt Cobain, making comedy of commercialism By Rob Heinrich The release of Brett Morgen’s documentary Montage of Heck has inspired new discussions of the legacy of Kurt Cobain, the Nirvana frontman who upended popular music before committing suicide in 1994. Few artists have straddled the line between nonconformity and commercialism like Cobain. Consider the three-album arc of his band’s life: though Nirvana boasted of producing its debut album Bleach for $600, Cobain became a Generation X icon by releasing its follow-up, Nevermind, on a major label, and by having a hit single, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” that dominated MTV.
Does a person’s personality change when they speak another language? By Arturo E. Hernandez During the first run of my Coursera course on the bilingual brain, a student asked whether changing languages leads to people changing personalities. Considerable discussion ensued about this on the forums. My initial answer was that language was a marker of a set of circumstances and as such was likely to be accompanied by a shift in context.
Which Shakespeare performance shocked you the most? Inspired by Stanley Wells’ recent book on Great Shakespeare Actors, we asked Oxford University Pressstaff members to remember a time when a theatrical production of a Shakespeare play shocked them. We discovered that some Shakespeare plays have the ability to surprise even the hardiest of OUP employees. Grab an ice-cream on your way in, take a seat, and enjoy the descriptions of shocking Shakespeare productions.
Monthly etymology gleanings for April 2015 By Anatoly Liberman Last month was a disaster: I confused the Wednesdays and then wrote 2014 for 2015. A student of the Middle Ages, I often forget in which millennium I live, so plus or minus one year does not really matter. We say: “The migration happened six or seven thousand years ago.” This is the degree of precision to which I am accustomed.
Nature vs. nurture: genes strongly influence survival to the oldest ages By Thomas Perls In our study analyzing data from the New England Centenarian Study, we found that for people who live to 90 years old, the chance of their siblings also reaching age 90 is relatively small – about 1.7 times greater than for the average person born around the same time.
Man’s best friend: companion or animal? By Adam Miklosi Most scientific inquires, referring to animals en masse, neglect the idea of individuality among animals. However, disregarding this academic approach, many people view their animal companions as family members. Dogs, often called ‘man’s best friend,’ are no exception. Despite this old saying, science had generally neglected research on dogs until the end of the 19th century.
The euro zone leadership suffers from cognitive closure By Piet Keizer The euro zone has still not recovered from the global depression 2009. A major cause is the idea that every member should solve its own problems by lowering prices on all markets, and by reducing the influence of the government. Lower prices stimulate the exports to other countries, which would result in the beginning of a genuine recovery. Because the interrelationships between the various member-economies are quite strong, and the influence of the big euro zone on the global economy is significant, this policy advice has failed so far.
The truth will set you free By David Ostwald First of all, gratitude. Gratitude to Opera Parallèle for its consistently high quality productions of contemporary works, and for their extensive educational outreach program; more specifically, for its new production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, featuring revised scoring for smaller orchestral ensembles—a revision that loses nothing and makes the piece more accessible for smaller companies.
The life of Colonel William Eddy By David A. Hollinger Missionaries and US Marines? It did not seem a natural combination. But while working on a book about American Protestant missionaries and their children I came across a missionary son who became a prominent officer in the USMC and one of the most effective agents of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Col. William Eddy was in charge of the OSS operations in North Africa […]
The “Blurred Lines” of music and copyright: Part one By Alex Sayf Cummings A peppy beat and bassline. Cowbell. An ecstatic whoop in the background. Make a note, because all these elements now belong to family of Marvin Gaye. Or do they? The recent verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in the ‘Blurred Lines’ case has perplexed followers of the music industry. One might think the ruling was a vindication of the rights of artists, but composers like Bonnie McKee see it differently.
The evolution of Taiwan statehood By Lung-chu Chen Taiwan easily satisfies the traditional requirements for statehood: a permanent population, effective control over a territory, a government, and the capacity to interact with other states. Yet the realities of global power politics have kept Taiwan from being recognized as such.
Anthony Trollope: an Irish writer By John McCourt Nathaniel Hawthorne famously commented that Anthony Trollope’s quintessentially English novels were written on the “strength of beef and through the inspiration of ale … these books are just as English as a beef-steak.” In like mode, Irish critic Stephen Gwynn said Trollope was “as English as John Bull.” But unlike the other great Victorian English writers, Trollope became Trollope by leaving his homeland and making his life across the water in Ireland, and achieving there his first successes there in both his post office and his literary careers.
Play it again (Uncle) Sam: continuities between the adoption and renewal of Trident By John Baylis and Kristan Stoddart In March 2007 the British government of Tony Blair officially decided to extend the life of the Trident submarine deterrent through a ‘life extension programme’ whilst also placing before parliament the need for a successor system. This essentially began the debate on a successor system.
A World Intellectual Property Day Quiz By Joe Couling Every year on 26 April, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) celebrates World Intellectual Property Day to promote discussion of the role of intellectual property in encouraging creativity and innovation. As the recent lawsuit between the Marvin Gaye estate and Pharrell Williams showed, intellectual property law is just as relevant as ever.
Thought experiments in philosophy By David Shoemaker Philosophers love thought experiments. Many of us deploy them as our version of the scientific method: They isolate some feature of our experience and evoke intuitions about it, and these revealed verdicts enable us to adjust relevant theories in light of what we find. Sometimes we appeal to these science fiction cases too quickly when there are plenty of real life cases all around us that are potentially more fruitful.
Guns, herbs, and sores: inside the dragon’s etymological lair By John Kelly 23 April marks St. George’s Day. While St. George is widely venerated throughout Christian communities, England especially honors him, its patron saint, on this day. Indeed, his cross, red on a white field, flies as England’s flag. St. George, of course, is legendary for the dragon he slew, yet St. George bested the beast in legend alone. From Beowulf to The Game of Thrones, this creature continues to breathe life (and fire) into our stories, art, and language; even the very word dragon hoards its own gold. Let’s brave our way into its etymological lair to see what treasures we might find.
Oxford Medicine Online DNA Day 2015: celebrating advances in genetics and gene therapy [infographic] Today, 25 April is a joint celebration for geneticists, commemorating the discovery of the helix nature of DNA by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953 and the completion of the human genome project fifty years later in 2003. It may have taken half a century to map the human genome, but in the years since its completion the field of genetics has seen breakthroughs increase at an ever-accelerating rate.
Meeting and mating with Neanderthals: good and bad genes By Eugene E. Harris Analyses of Neanderthal genomes indicate that when anatomically modern humans ventured out of Africa around 50,000 years ago, they met and mated with Neanderthals, probably in regions of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Remembering Anzac Day: how Australia grieved in the early years By John Connor, Peter Stanley, and Peter Yule ‘Anzac’ (soon transmuting from acronym to word) came to sum up the Australian desire to reflect on what the war had meant. What was the first Anzac Day? At least four explanations exist of the origins of the idea of Anzac, the most enduring legacy of Australia’s Great War.
Finding Trollope By Dominic Edwardes Finding Trollope is one of the great pleasures of life. Unlike other Victorian authors Trollope is little studied in schools, so every reader comes to him by a different path. It might be a recommendation by a friend, listening to a radio adaptation or watching a TV production that leads to the discovery of Trollope and his world. I stumbled across Trollope in the early 1990s. I had recently graduated, moved to London and found myself working in a bookshop.
Ten tips for making a successful clinical diagnosis By T A Roper The past can sometimes point to the present. The patient may present with a flare up of a previous medical condition, or may suffer a complication of a previous problem. For example a patient who has had previous bowel surgery can develop an acute bowel obstruction because of adhesions produced by the past surgery.
A thousand words: Photography in the Lincoln era By Christopher Hall Lincoln was not the first president of the United States to be photographed, but he was the first to be photographed many times, and not only in the portrait studio. His photo archive makes him a modern figure, a celebrity. His short presidency happened just at the time when photography first became straightforward and reliable. Many of the Lincoln photographs were taken by Scottish-born Alexander Gardner.
Why do we read literature? By Derek Attridge A friend has recommended a new novel to you. You save it for the holiday and then, sitting out in the sun and feeling relaxed, you start reading. And something strange happens: the little black signs on the page before your eyes draw you into a world that has nothing to do with the sights and sounds of your surroundings, which quickly fade from your consciousness. Your thoughts are shaped by ideas that are not yours, your feelings are stirred by unfamiliar emotional currents, and your mind is populated by newly-minted images.
Advocacy and pedagogy in secondary school singing By Martin Ashley Music as a school subject, it so often seems, retains its apparently perilous position in the school largely as a result of the unstinting pressure of advocacy groups. The 2004 Music Manifesto that underpins much of the current drive to keep school music alive was unashamedly “a voluntary, apolitical 13-strong Partnership and Advocacy Group”.
What is Positive Education? Lessons from a Year 3 classroom By Jacolyn M. Norrish What is Positive Education? This is a question I am asked on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. Whenever I am asked this question, what immediately comes to mind is a visit to Bostock House, one of Geelong Grammar School’s junior campuses.
The ‘Golden Nikes’ for Greek tragedy By Oliver Taplin With Greek tragedies filling major venues in London in recent months, I have been daydreaming about awarding my personal ancient Greek Oscars, to be called “Golden Nikes” (pedantic footnote: Nike was the Goddess of Victory, not of Trainers). There has been Medea at the National Theatre, Electra (Sophocles’ one) at the Old Vic, and Antigone, just opened at the Barbican. There are yet more productions lined up for The Globe, Donmar and RSC.
Is asylum a principle of the liberal democratic state? By María-Teresa Gil-Bazo Asylum is the protection that a State grants on its territory or in some other place under its control—for instance an Embassy or a warship—to a person who seeks it. In essence, asylum is different from refugee status, as the latter refers to the category of individuals who benefit from asylum, as well as the content of such protection. Recently, there has been renewed interest in the debate on asylum.
An embarrassment of riches By Anatoly Liberman A priest can be defrocked, and a lawyer disbarred. I wonder what happens to a historical linguist who cannot find an answer in his books. Is such an individual outsourced? A listener from Quebec (Québec) asked me about the origin of the noun bar. He wrote: “…we still say in French barrer la porte as they still do (though less and less) on the Atlantic side of France.
Why bother reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula? By Roger Luckhurst The date-line is 2014. An outbreak of a deadly disease in a remote region, beyond the borders of a complacent Europe. Local deaths multiply. The risk does not end with death, either, because corpses hold the highest risk of contamination and you must work to contain their threat. All this is barely even reported at first, until the health of a Western visitor, a professional man, breaks down.
Why understanding the legally disruptive nature of climate change matters By Liz Fisher, Eloise Scotford, and Emily Barritt It is now commonly recognized by governments that climate change is an issue that must be addressed. The 21st Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in Paris in December 2015 is the most high profile example of this, but there are also many examples of governments beginning to craft national and supranational regulatory responses.
Are you an “earth ranger”? [quiz] By Samantha Zimbler No time to plant a garden or ride your bike to work this Earth Day? Don’t worry–you can still do your part to honor Mother Nature today by staying informed about our global environment. Test your knowledge of water, weather, air, sea, and soil with the Earth Day quiz below, featuring content from Oxford Bibliographies in Environmental Science.
Food security in the twenty-first century By Ian Goldin There are currently about 7 billion people on Earth and by the middle of this century the number will most likely be between 9 and 10 billion. A greater proportion of these people will in real terms be wealthier than they are today and will demand a varied diet requiring greater resources in its production. Increasing demand for food will coincide with supply-side pressures: greater competition for water, land, and energy, and the accelerating effects of climate change.
Ritual in our lives [quiz] By Barry Stephenson Whether we know it or not, ritual pervades our lives, silently guiding our daily behavior. Like language, tool use, and music, ritual is a constituent element of what it means to be human, joining together culture, archaeology, and biology. The study of ritual, therefore, is a reflection on human nature and the society we inhabit.
Celebrating Saint John Muir’s birthday By Mark Stoll John Muir practically glowed with divine light in the early 1870s. “We almost thought he was Jesus Christ,” the landscape painter William Keith exclaimed to an interviewer. “We fairly worshipped him!”
The life and legacy of Lucy Stone A gifted orator, Lucy Stone dedicated her life to the fight for equal rights. Among the earliest female graduates of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in Ohio, Stone was the first Massachusetts-born woman to earn a college degree. Stone rose to national prominence as a well-respected public speaker – an occupation rarely pursued by women of the era.
Air pollution and cognitive function in older adults By Jennifer Ailshire and Philippa Clarke As a resident of Los Angeles, one of the most polluted cities in the United States, I think a lot about the air we breathe. It’s well established that outdoor air pollution is a health threat — exposure to high pollution concentrations has been linked to increased risk of respiratory and cardiovascular damage, emergency room visits and hospitalization, and premature mortality.
Death and all of his tunes By Greg Garrett Whether they be songs about angels or demons, Heaven or Hell, the theme of the afterlife has inspired countless musicians of varying genres and has embedded itself into the lyrics of many popular hits. Though their styles may be different, artists show that our collective questions and musings about the afterlife provide us with a common thread across humanity. Here are some of the songs that best represent this wide range of emotions that many people have about what lies beyond.
An overview of the UNIDROIT PICC, with Stefan Vogenauer By Stefan Vogenauer and Miranda Dobson The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, or PICC, were created in 1994 after decades of preparation, against what Oxford author Stephan Vogenauer calls a “romantic background” of a global commercial law, or lex mercatoria. While the UNIDROIT PICC offer a harmonizing global contract law, some objectors may say that as “principles”, they are too vague. Stefan tackles this objection in the video below, and also highlights how some practitioners may be surprised by the contents of the Principles.
Six features of hip hop poetry By David Caplan Hip hop has increasingly influenced a new generation of American poets. For instance, the current issue of Poetry excerpts poems and essays from the recently published anthology, The BreakBeat Poets, edited by Kevin Coval, Quraysh Ali Lansana, and Nate Marshall. In the anthology’s introduction, Marshall asserts: “This is the story of how generations of young people reared on hip-hop culture and aesthetics took to the page and poem and microphone to create a movement in American letters in the tradition of the Black Arts, Nuyorican, and Beat generations and add to it and innovate on top.”
Mapping out the General Election By Ellie Gregory In anticipation of the imminent General Election on 7 May 2015, we pulled together information from Who’s Who to take a closer look at the major players bidding for our votes. We’ve mapped nine party leaders and deputy leaders to their constituencies.
Autonomy: the Holy Grail By Christian Tomuschat When within the European Union the Lisbon Treaty was elaborated, the negotiators easily reached agreement on subjecting the EU to the constraints of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It seemed to be an anomaly that all the Member States should be subject to the review power of the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) while the EU itself was exempt from that control procedure.
Earth Day: A reading list By Joy Mizan To celebrate Earth Day on 22 April, we have created a reading list of books, journals, and online resources that explore environmental protection, environmental ethics, and other environmental sciences. Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 in the United States. Since then, it has grown to include more than 192 countries and the Earth Day Network coordinate global events that demonstrate support for environmental protection. If you think we have missed any books, journals, or online resources in our reading list, please do let us know in the comments below.
Crazy Horse and Custer By Cary Nelson Fifteen years ago, not long after publishing Anthology of Modern American Poetry with Oxford, I began to receive the typical mix of complimentary and complaining letters. In the latter category, faculty members wanted to know why a favorite poem or poet was left out and some poets who were not included wrote pointed letters to let me know they weren’t happy with the fact. But one poet, William Heyen, took a different approach.
A woman’s journey in Kashmiri politics By Rekha Chowdhary Nyla Ali Khan’s recent book The Life of a Kashmiri Woman: Dialectic of Resistance and Accommodation, though primarily a biography of her grandmother Akbar Jehan, promises to be much more than that. It is also a narration of the story of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, the charismatic political leader who is still recognized as the greatest political leader that Kashmir ever produced.
Learning country music in the digital age By Taylor Coe Recently reading through the Notes and Discographies section of Greil Marcus’s book Mystery Train (first published in 1975), I was struck by Marcus’s meticulousness when it came to recommending records.
Wittgenstein and natural religion By Gordon Graham In the philosophy of religion ‘Wittgensteinianism’ is a distinctive position whose outlines are more or less unanimously agreed by both its defenders and detractors. By invoking a variety of concepts to which Wittgenstein gave currency – language games, forms of life, groundless believing, depth grammar, world pictures – the defenders aim to defuse rationalistic criticisms of religion by showing them to be, in the strict sense, impertinent.
Getting to know Brian Muir By Brian Muir From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Brian Muir, an Online Marketing Assistant on our Direct Marketing team in New York. Brian has been working at the Oxford University Press since March 2014.
Darwin’s “gastric flatus” By Philip A. Mackowiak When Charles Darwin died at age 73 on this day 133 years ago, his physicians decided that he had succumbed to “degeneration of the heart and greater vessels,” a disorder we now call “generalized arteriosclerosis.” Few would argue with this diagnosis, given Darwin’s failing memory, and his recurrent episodes of “swimming of the head,” “pain in the heart”, and “irregular pulse” during the decade or so before he died.
A Jazz Appreciation Month Playlist By Ayana Young Established in 2001, Jazz Appreciation Month celebrates the rich history, present accolades, and future growth of jazz music. Spanning the blues, ragtime, dixieland, bebop, swing, soul, and instrumentals, there’s no surprise that jazz music has endured the test of time from its early origins amongst African-American slaves in the late 19th century to its growth today.
The long history of World War II By Richard Overy World War Two was the most devastating conflict in recorded human history. It was both global in extent and total in character. It has understandably left a long and dark shadow across the decades. Yet it is three generations since hostilities formally ended in 1945 and the conflict is now a lived memory for only a few. And this growing distance in time has allowed historians to think differently about how to describe it, how to explain its course, and what subjects to focus on when considering the wartime experience.
Narrating nostalgia By Jennifer Helgren The most recent issue of the Oral History Review will be zipping across the world soon. To hold you over until it arrives, we interviewed one of the authors featured in this edition, Jennifer Helgren, about her article, “A ‘Very Innocent Time’: Oral History Narratives, Nostalgia and Girls’ Safety in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Publishing the Oxford Medical Handbooks: an interview with Elizabeth Reeve By Joe Hitchcock Many medical students are familiar with the “cheese and onion,” but not the person responsible for the series. We caught up with Oxford Medical Handbooks’ Senior Commissioning Editor, Liz Reeve, to find out about her role in producing Oxford’s market leading series.
Living with multiple sclerosis By Barbara S. Giesser Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is widely thought to be a disease of immune dysfunction, whereby the immune system becomes activated to attack components of the nerves in the brain, spinal cord and optic nerve. New information about environmental factors and lifestyle are giving persons with MS and their health care providers new tools…
From Carter to Clinton: Selecting presidential nominees in the modern era By Charles O. Jones Franklin D. Roosevelt broke the two-term precedent set by George Washington by running for and winning a third and fourth term. Pressure for limiting terms followed FDR’s remarkable record. In 1951 the Twenty-Second constitutional amendment was ratified stating: “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Accordingly, reelected Presidents must then govern knowing they cannot run again.
Five lessons from ancient Athens By Peter Acton There’s a lot we can learn from ancient Athens. The Greek city-state, best recognized as the first democracy in the world, is thought to have laid the foundation for modern political and philosophical theory, providing a model of government that has endured albeit in revised form. Needless to say, the uniqueness of its political institutions shaped many of its economic principles and practices, many of which are still recognizable in current systems of government.
Nostalgia and the 2015 Academy of Country Music Awards By Travis D. Stimeling The country music tradition in the United States might be characterized as a nostalgic one. To varying degrees since the emergence of recorded country music in the early 1920s, country songs and songwriters have expressed longing for the seemingly simpler times of their childhoods—or even their parents’ and grandparents’ childhoods. In many ways, one might read country music’s occasional obsession with all things past and gone as an extension of the nineteenth-century plantation song, popularized by Pittsburgh native Stephen Collins Foster, whose “Old Folks at Home” (1851) and “My Old Kentucky Home” (1853) depicted freed slaves longing for the simpler times of their plantation youths.
Can marijuana prevent memory decline? By Gary L. Wenk Can smoking marijuana prevent the memory loss associated with normal aging or Alzheimer’s disease? This is a question that I have been investigating for the past ten years. The concept of medical marijuana is not a new one. A Chinese pharmacy book, written about 2737 BCE, was probably the first to mention its use as a medicine for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria, constipation, and (ironically) absent-mindedness.
How well do you know Anthony Trollope? Next week, 24 April 2015 marks the bicentenary of one of Britain’s great novelists, Anthony Trollope. He was an extremely prolific writer, producing 47 novels, as well as a great deal of non-fiction, in his lifetime. He also worked for the Post Office, and introduced the pillar box to Britain. So, do you think you know Anthony Trollope? Test your knowledge with our Trollope bicentenary quiz.
The Oxford Etymologist gets down to brass tacks and tries to hit the nail on the head By Anatoly Liberman I have always been interested in linguistic heavy metal. In the literature on English phrases, two “metal idioms” have attracted special attention: dead as a doornail and to get (come) down to brass tacks. The latter phrase has fared especially well; in recent years, several unexpected early examples of it have been unearthed.
Before Bram: a timeline of vampire literature There were many books on vampires before Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Early anthropologists wrote accounts of the folkloric vampire — a stumbling, bloated peasant, never venturing far from home, and easily neutralized with a sexton’s spade and a box of matches. The literary vampire became a highly mobile, svelte aristocratic rake with the appearance of the short tale The Vampyre in 1819.
Who was Leonardo da Vinci? [quiz] By Miki Onwudinjo On 15 April, nations around the globe will be celebrating World Art Day, which is also Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday. A creative mastermind and one of the top pioneers of the Italian Renaissance period, his artistic visions fused science and nature producing most notably the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
Greece vs. the Eurozone By Costas Simitis The new Greek government that took office in January 2015 made a commitment during the election campaign that Greece would stay in the Eurozone. At the same time, it also declared that Greece’s relations with its European partners would be put on a new footing. This did not materialize. The Greek government accepted the continuation of the existing agreement with its lenders, the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank. This was the only way of ensuring Greece would not run out of funding.
Capital flight from Africa and financing for development in the post-2015 era By Léonce Ndikumana and S. Ibi Ajayi The more money you make, the more you lose. That is the story of Africa over the past two decades. Indeed, along with the impressive record of economic growth acceleration spurred by booming primary commodity exports, Africa continent has experienced a parallel explosion of capital flight.
Boko Haram and religious exclusivism By Alexander Thurston How do violent Muslim groups justify, at least to themselves, their violence against fellow Muslims? One answer comes from Nigeria’s Boko Haram, which targets the state as well as both Muslim and Christian civilians. Boko Haram is infamous for holding two ideological stances: rejection of secular government and opposition to Western-style education.
The top sci five classical receptions on screen By Benjamin Eldon Stevens and Brett M. Rogers Recently, a number of prominent publications have featured a growing body of work on classical receptions in science fiction and fantasy, including Mélanie Bost-Fiévet’s and Sandra Provini’s collection L’Antiquité dans l’imaginaire contemporain (Garniers Classiques 2014), a special issue of the journal Foundation on “Fantastika and the Greek and Roman Worlds” (Autumn 2014), and our own collection, Classical Traditions in Science Fiction (OUP 2015). This focus on science fiction, now an important part of popular culture, reveals much about how ancient classics are being received by modern audiences, particularly when it comes to the silver screen.
“Under the influence of rock’n’roll” By David George Surdam Rock’n’Roll music has defied its critics. When it debuted in the 1950s, many adults ridiculed the phenomenon. Elvis, Chuck Berry, and their peers would soon be forgotten, another passing fancy in the cavalcade of youth-induced fads. The brash conceit, “Rock’n’roll is here to stay,” however, proved astute. Why were American adults and, for that matter, their Soviet counterparts frightened of rock’n’roll?
Iconic trumpet players who defined jazz history By Miki Onwudinjo Since emerging at the beginning of the 20th century, jazz music has been a staple in American culture. Historians are not clear on when exactly jazz was born or who first started playing it, but it can be agreed upon that New Orleans, Louisiana is the First City of Jazz.
Signs, strategies, and brand value By Laura Oswald The semiotic paradigm in market research gives new meaning to the expression, “You are what you eat.” The semiotic value of goods, from foodstuffs to cars, transcends their functional attributes, such as nutrition or transportation, and delivers intangible benefits to consumers in the form of brand symbols, icons, and stories. For instance, Coke offers happiness, Apple delivers “cool,” and BMW strokes your ego.
Reflections on the Reith Lectures: the future of medicine By Arpan K. Banerjee The Reith lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC to celebrate and commemorate Lord Reith’s major contribution to British broadcasting. Many distinguished names are to be found in the alumni of lecturers, whose origins are not confined to this sceptred isle in which the concept of these educational thought provoking radio talks were conceived.
Who was the first great Shakespearean actress? By Stanley Wells The first female Juliet appears to have been Mary Saunderson, to Henry Harris’s Romeo in 1662 when her future husband, Thomas Betterton, played Mercutio. Later she acted admirably as Ophelia and Lady Macbeth but nothing I have read characterizes her as great. Elizabeth Barry (c.1658–1713) succeeded her as Betterton’s leading lady, excelling in pathetic roles and achieving her greatest successes in the heroic tragedies of her own time.
‘Buyer beware’: how the Federal Trade Commission redefined the word ‘free’ By Edwin Battistella Last month marked the hundredth anniversary of the Federal Trade Commission, the regulatory agency that looks after consumer interests by enforcing truth in advertising laws. Established by the Federal Trade Commission Act of 1914 and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, the FTC opened its doors in March 16 of 2015, taking the place of the older Bureau of Corporations.
A better strategy for presidential candidates By Hahrie Han and Elizabeth McKenna The invisible primary is well underway. From Jeb Bush to Hillary Clinton, Rand Paul to Marco Rubio, candidates are already angling for votes in the prized Iowa caucus. News cycles are abuzz with speculation about who the candidates will be and what their chances are, but much of this coverage asks the wrong question.
Jonas Salk and the polio vaccination By Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs Today, 12 April 2015 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the announcement that Jonas Salk’s vaccine could prevent poliomyelitis. We asked Charlotte Jacobs, author of Jonas Salk: A Life, a few questions about this event.
Older adult’s social networks and volunteering By Kristine J. Ajrouch, Toni C. Antonucci, and Noah J. Webster We know that volunteering is important for health and well-being among older people. While higher education is known to facilitate volunteerism, much less is known about the role of social networks.
The world as hypertext By Michael Pelczar We all have experiences as of physical things, and it is possible to interpret these experiences as perceptions of objects and events belonging to a single universe. In Leibniz’s famous image, our experiences are like a collection of different perspective drawings of the same landscape. They are, as we might say, worldlike. Ordinarily, we refer the worldlike quality of our experiences to the fact that we all inhabit the same world, encounter objects in a common space, and witness events in a common time.
Shakespeare’s false friends By David Crystal False friends (‘faux amis’) are words in one language which look the same as words in another. We therefore think that their meanings are the same and get a shock when we find they are not. Generations of French students have believed that demander means ‘demand’ (whereas it means ‘ask’) or librairie means ‘library’ (instead of ‘bookshop’). It is a sign of a mature understanding of a language when you can cope with the false friends, which can be some of its most frequently used words.
Lincoln’s eleven greatest speeches By Louis P. Masur Leaving behind a legacy that transcends generations today, Abraham Lincoln was a veteran when it came to giving speeches. Delivering one of the most quoted speeches in history, Lincoln addressed the nation on a number of other occasions, captivating his audience and paving the way for generations to come. Here is an in-depth look at Lincoln’s eleven greatest speeches, in chronological order.
Journal of Public Health cover What evidence should be used to make decisions about health interventions? By Anthony Threlfall When making decisions about health interventions in whole populations, many people believe that the best evidence comes from analysis of the results of randomized control trials (RCTs). This belief is reinforced by the notion of a hierarchy of evidence in which the RCT is close to the pinnacle of evidence. It has that position because the RCT is a powerful tool for eliminating bias.
Diversity in policing, really? By Franstine Jones There have been lots of recent debates, both in the police service and in the news, about the importance of having a diverse workforce. What does that really mean? Senior leaders in policing have called for police forces to positively discriminate in favour of black and ethnic minority officers (BME) in the face of a growing diversity crisis. Nationally, 14% of the population is from black and multi-ethnic communities, compared with 5% of police officers.
Animal Mother, Mother of Animals, Guardian of the Road to the Land of the Dead By Esther Jacobson-Tepfer We were working in Baga Oigor II when I heard my husband yelling from above, “Esther, get up here, fast!” Thinking he had seen some wild animal on a high ridge, I scrambled up the slope. There, at the back of a protected terrace marked by old stone mounds was a huge boulder covered with hundreds of images. Within that maze of elements I could distinguish a hunting scene and several square patterns suggesting the outlines of dwellings.
Whig literary culture and the canon: the legacy of the Tonsons By Stephen Bernard Jacob Tonson the elder (1656-1736) was, as has long been recognized, one of the most influential and pioneering booksellers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and, as such, is the subject of four major biographies of the past hundred years. The leading publisher of his day, Tonson published writers such as Joseph Addison, Aphra Behn, William Congreve, John Dryden, Laurence Echard, John Gay, John Oldmixon, Alexander Pope, Matthew Prior, Nicholas Rowe, Richard Steele, George Stepney, and John Vanbrugh.
Race relations in 20th-century Liverpool By John Belchem As I approached retirement, it seemed appropriate that I should tackle one of the most controversial aspects of Liverpool history: race relations. Since there is outstanding scholarship on the operation, legacy, and memorialisation of the heinous slave trade, I chose to concentrate on later developments, particularly the growth of a large ‘black’ population from the late 19th century, primarily composed of ‘seamen’ who dropped anchor in ‘sailortown’ Liverpool.
Oxford Medicine Online An interactive timeline of the history of polio By Joe Couling Today is the 60th anniversary of the polio vaccine being declared safe to use. The poliovirus was a major health concern for much of the twentieth century, but in the last sixty years huge gains have been made that have almost resulted in its complete eradication. The condition polio is caused by a human enterovirus called the poliovirus.
Britain, political leadership, and nuclear weapons By John Baylis and Kristan Stoddart The beliefs of British Prime Ministers since 1941 about the nation’s security and role in the world have been of critical importance in understanding the development and retention of a nuclear capability. Winston Churchill supported the development as a means of national survival during the Second World War.
The perils of cell confession evidence: principles and pitfalls By Simon McKay Cell confession evidence – evidence from inmates alleging that the accused has confessed to the crime – is a discrete but controversial covert policing resource. This type of evidence can be volunteered to investigators by the source, though rarely is it done so unconditionally. In other cases, it is a result of the deliberate use and conduct of a covert human intelligence source, authorized under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.
Why do British politicians find it so hard to talk about the EU? By Simon Usherwood As the general election rolls around into its final phase it’s worth observing one of the great paradoxes of British political life. On the one hand, everyone says that ‘Europe’ is an important issue and that we must debate it, but on the other, nobody ever seems to actually have that debate.
Anthony Trollope: not as safe as we thought he was? By John Bowen Anthony Trollope. Safe, stodgy, hyper-Victorian Anthony Trollope, the comfort reading of the middle classes. As his rival and admirer Henry James said after his death ‘With Trollope we were always safe’. But was he really the most respectable of Victorian novelists?
A great precedent for freelancing By Peter Acton In a recent survey, 87% of UK graduates with first or second class degrees saw freelancing as highly attractive. 85% believe freelancing will become the norm. In the US, as reported in Forbes in August 2013, 60% of millennials stay less than three years in a job and 45% would prefer more flexibility to more pay.
Nicolas Nabokov: a life in pictures By Vincent Giroud Composer, cosmopolite, cultural force, Nicolas Nabokov (1903-1978), first cousin of Vladimir Nabokov (the author of Lolita), came to prominence in Paris in the late 1920s with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He then emigrated to America, returning to Europe in postwar Germany and subsequently as head of the Congress Cultural Freedom, for which he organized groundbreaking festivals. A tireless promoter of international cultural exchange, he was also remarkable for the range of his friendships, from Balanchine to Stravinsky and from Auden to Oppenheimer.
Employment and education for emerging adults Complaints about “boomerang kids” or the lack of work ethic for younger generations isn’t uncommon. Yet over 80% of high school seniors have held at least one part-time job. And balancing schoolwork with a dead-end job is essential, as career prospects dissolve for young adults without an education.
Can you match the quote to the philosopher? [quiz] By Joy Mizan Philosophy is one of the oldest fields of study in the world, branching out to various areas. How well do you know the writings of the most influential philosophers? Do you know the difference between sayings from Kant, Nietzsche, and Locke? Take the quiz below to see how well read you are in philosophy.
Monthly etymology gleanings for March 2015, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Many thanks for comments, questions, and reprimands, even though sometimes I am accused of the sins I have not committed. If I were a journalist, I would say that my remarks tend to be taken out of context. Of course I know what precession of the equinoxes is and italicized e, to point out that it is indeed the right form (precession, not procession).
The birth of the vampyre: Dracula and mythology in Early Modern Europe By Roger Luckhurst Although occultists like the antiquarian Montague Summers would like to claim that the belief in vampires is global and transhistorical (and therefore probably true), the vampire is a thoroughly modern being. Like the Gothic genre itself, stories of vampires emerge in the Age of Enlightenment, as instances of primitive superstition that help define the rational scepticism of northern, Protestant Europe.
Nasra Gathoni: an unsung hero Recently, Research4Life and its partners, including Oxford University Press, have embarked on a campaign, “Unsung Heroes: Stories from the Library,” to raise awareness about the heroic and life-saving work being done by librarians in the developing world. In this new video, we follow a day in the life of Nasra Gathoni, Head Librarian at the Aga Khan University hospital in Kenya.
Are inheritances really that bad? By Edward Wolff On the surface, inheritances are a source of moral repugnance. When we think of inheritances, we tend to think of families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts whose great fortunes were passed from one generation to the next. We also tend to think of “trust fund babies” – those rare individuals who have received enough money in inheritances or gifts (often in the form of a trust fund) so that they have no need to work over the course of their lifetime.
How does handwashing help prevent undernutrition? By Ann Burgess and Victoria Quinn Three-year old Asha died last night, her tiny body wracked with diarrhea. Two-month old Abu is vomiting. His mother is dead and his grandmother is finding it difficult to prepare safe artificial food for him. Asha and Abu are just two reasons why Food Safety is the theme of World Health Day 2015. Asha and Abu became ill because her porridge, and his milk, were contaminated with lethal bacteria.
The Civil War’s final battlefront Desperation set in among the Confederacy’s remaining troops throughout the final nine months of the Civil War, a state of despair that Union General Ulysses S. Grant manipulated to his advantage. From General William T. Sherman’s destructive “March to the Sea” that leveled Georgia to Phillip H. Sheridan’s bloody campaign in northern Virginia, the Union obliterated the Confederacy’s chance of recovery.
Religion in and beyond A Love Supreme By Jason C. Bivins John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, which the famed saxophonist performed live only once, has the distinction of being one of jazz’s most widely celebrated yet imperfectly understood recordings. At its half-century, the devotional piece is seen as the culmination of Coltrane’s “dark night of the soul,” the sound of his heroic overcoming, and his personal entreaty to the divine.
Do you know your Potter from your Paddington? By Kirsty Doole The last three decades have seen arguably the most fertile periods in the history of children’s literature, across the field. The phenomenon that is Harry Potter, the rise of YA, and books that tackle difficult subjects for younger readers are just a few examples of the material included in the new edition of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature by Daniel Hahn.
Indiana’s RFRA statute: a plea for civil discourse By Edward Zelinsky On one level, I admire the public furor now surrounding Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In an important sense, this discussion reflects the Founder’s vision of a republican citizenry robustly debating the meaning of important values like nondiscrimination and religious freedom. On the other hand, this public controversy has, at times, regrettably reflected failure on both sides to respect their fellow citizens and confront the merits of the issue in civil fashion.
We should celebrate the decline of large scale manufacturing By Peter Acton One of the most important and unremarked effects of the revolution in information technology is not to do with information services at all. It is the transformation of manufacturing. After a period of two or three hundred years in which manufacturing consolidated into larger and larger enterprises, technology is restoring opportunities for the lone craftsman making things at home.
Preparing for the 109th ASIL Annual Meeting By Jo Wojtkowski The 109th ASIL Annual Meeting is taking place from 8-11 April 2015, at the Hyatt Regency Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC. The ASIL Annual meeting is one of the most important events on the international law community calendar, and 2015 proves to be no exception.
International law in a changing world The American Society of International Law’s annual meeting (8 – 11 April 2015) will focus on the theme ‘Adapting to a Rapidly Changing World’. In preparation for this meeting, we have asked some key authors to share their thoughts on the ways in which their specific areas of international law have adapted to our rapidly changing world.
Who are the forgotten Shakespearean actors? By Stanley Wells Stanley Wells’ latest book, Great Shakespeare Actors, offers a series of beautifully written, illuminating, and entertaining accounts of many of the most famous stage performers of Shakespeare from his time to ours. In a video interview, Wells revealed some of the ‘lesser’ remembered actors of the past he would have loved to have seen perform live on stage. The edited transcript below offers an insight into three of these great Shakespeare actors.
Vote Jeremy Clarkson on 7 May! Celebrity politics and political reality By Matthew Flinders The news this week that Jeremy Clarkson’s contract with the BBC will not be renewed might be bad news for Top Gear fans but could it be good news for politics? Probably not… I wonder what Jeremy Clarkson is up to as you read this blog.
Is caffeine a gateway drug to cocaine? By Gary L. Wenk Caffeine is the world’s most commonly abused brain stimulant. Daily caffeine consumption by adolescents (ages 9-17 years) has been rapidly increasing most often in the form of soda, energy drinks, and coffee. A few years ago, a pair of studies documented that caffeine consumption in young adults directly correlated with increased illicit drug use and generally […]
Mixed Yablo Paradoxes By Roy T Cook The collection of infinite Yabloesque sequences that contain both infinitely many Y-all sentence and infinitely many Y-exists sentences, however, is a much larger collection. It is what is called continuum-sized, and a collection of this size is not only infinite, but strictly larger than any countably infinite collection. Thus, although the simplest cases of Yabloesque sequence – the Yablo Paradox itself and its Dual – are paradoxical, the vast majority of mixed Yabloesque sequences are not!
How has Venezuela’s foreign policy changed in the 21st century? By Miguel Tinker Salas With the recent uproar surrounding President Obama’s executive order declaring Venezuela a national security threat, it is worth reading up on how this Latin American country has changed since the end of the 20th century. This excerpt from Venezuela: What Everyone Needs to Know by Miguel Tinker Salas examines the impact of the election of Hugo Chávez on Venezuelan politics.
No cure for the diseases of American democracy? By Richard A. Clucas The American political system is a mess, but don’t expect that introducing reform and changing how the government is structured will cure all the diseases of American democracy. There is no magic bullet. No simple panacea. It would be difficult to argue that things are going well in Washington today.
The Erdos number By John J. Watkins and Robin Wilson The idea of six degrees of separation is now quite well known and posits the appealing idea that any two humans on earth are connected by a chain of at most six common acquaintances. In the movie world this idea has become known as the “Bacon number”; for example Elvis Presley has a Bacon number […]
The myth of the pacific woman By Jad Adams The flow of girls in particular from the safety of Britain into the war zones of the Middle East causes much hand-wringing. A report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue says one in six of foreigners going to Syria and Iraq are women or girls.
Thoughts on the crucifixion of Jesus By James Crossley As is well known, the death of Jesus was a problem. How do you explain that your elevated hero ended up dead on a Roman cross? Or, as Paul famously put it, “we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles.” Trying to reconstruct in any detail the historical realities which may (or may not) have generated the story of the Passion is extremely difficult.
Easter for a non-believer By Michael Ruse I have ambivalent feelings about Easter. I am sure I am not alone in this attitude towards the greatest of events on the Christian calendar, especially among people who grew up, as I did, in intensely religious (and loving) families but who have long put their Christian beliefs behind them. As it happens, my family were Quakers and that religion does not mark out the church festivals. But I went to a school that had a great musical tradition and each year there was a performance of one of the Bach Passions, alternating the St Matthew with the St John.
Oral histories of student veterans at Monmouth University By Melissa Ziobro In the Fall of 2012, I decided to offer to conduct oral history interviews of Monmouth University’s student veterans to donate to the Library of Congress Veterans History Project. I hadn’t conducted any oral histories since leaving government service the prior year. I missed the craft, and thought this a truly worthwhile endeavor.
Residency training and social justice By Kenneth M. Ludmerer It is axiomatic in medical education that an individual is not a mature physician until having learned to assume full responsibility for the care of patients. Thus, the defining educational principle of residency training is that house officers should assume the responsibility for the management of patients.
Anthony Trollope and ‘The Story of a Cheque for £20, and of the Mischief Which It Did’ By Helen Small One of the more affordable forms in which it is possible to acquire the manuscript signatures of Victorian writers today is the used cheque. Quantities of these minor, sometimes biographically revealing, documents left the archives of banks and went onto the open market in the 1990s; they now circulate through the catalogues of manuscript dealers and in the online pages of eBay, some of them leaving traceable e-narratives of their patterns of ownership.
Good Friday: divine abandonment or Trinitarian performance? By Matthew W. Bates There are scenes in the Bible that cause a visceral reaction for even the most disinterested reader. As we view the Garden of Gethsemane in our mind’s eye, we see one of Jesus’ closest companions, Judas Iscariot, leading a band of men. He smiles broadly, “Rabbi!,” greeting Jesus with a kiss. The kiss, that universal sign of intimacy and affection, lands on Jesus like a knife twisting in the back.
The origins of Easter By Leofranc Holford-Strevens Easter, commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is historically the most important of all Christian festivals, even though in some Western countries it has largely lost the religious significance it retains amongst the Orthodox; nevertheless it merits discussion in a broader context not only because it is often a public as well as a religious holiday, or indeed because even Christians may be baffled by its apparently capricious incidence, but because the history of its calculation illustrates many complexities of time-reckoning.
Ideas with Consequences – Episode 21 – The Oxford Comment How did the Federalist Society manage to revolutionize the jurisprudence for the most important issues of our time? The conservative legal establishment may claim 40,000 members, including four Supreme Court Justices, dozens of federal judges, and every Republican attorney general, but its strength extends beyond its numbers. From gun control to corporate political speech, the powerful organization has exerted its influence by legitimizing novel interpretations of the constitution and acting as a credentialing institution for conservative lawyers and judges.
When is it Fiddle time? How do you create a repertoire for all levels of learning in music education? Kathy and David Blackwell’s repertoire for beginner to intermediate string players covers a huge range of styles whilst introducing new technical points in a step by step way. Their Fiddle Time, Viola Time, and Cello Time series offer attractive tunes that are fun to learn and provide quality teaching material. Find out how and why they wrote their very first tunes for young string players:
Love and sex: perspectives from emerging adults Attitudes towards love, sex, sexuality, and gender have changed rapidly over the last decade. What role do emerging adults play in this phenomenon? Are they really more open-minded than the previous generations — or more at risk?
An Orthodox Passover By Lynn Davidman I remember the Passover Seder as a very special time. My brothers and I got new clothes that we had to save specially until that evening; this heightened our sense of anticipation and symbolized the special nature of this holiday. I can still envision preparing for Passover in the Orthodox home of my childhood: I remember the frenzied work of emptying out all our cabinets, packing up the food we ate for the other 357 days of the year and lining all the cabinets, the stove, and the refrigerator with extra thick aluminum foil.
April Fool’s Day with Nein Quarterly Yesterday, we invited Eric Jarosinski, aka Nein Quarterly, to guest tweet on the Oxford Academic Twitter account. Instead of our usual academic news and insights, followers were treated to #OxfordMisfortuneCookies and other wisdom. As a former professor, Eric is all too familiar with the many absurdities of academia, which he addresses with his trademark voice of “utopian negation”. Here’s a brief compilation of his tweets.
Monthly etymology gleanings for March 2015 By Anatoly Liberman One should not be too enthusiastic about anything. Wholly overwhelmed by the thought that winter is behind, I forgot to consult the calendar and did not realize that 25 March was the last Wednesday of the month and celebrated the spring equinox instead of providing our readership with the traditional monthly gleanings.
Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group Season 2: Dracula Tales of vampire-like creatures, demonic consumers of human flesh and blood, have permeated the mythology of almost every culture since the dawn of time. Yet while the vampire as we now know him became a popular source of folklore terror in Eastern Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, it was not until 1897 that Bram Stoker introduced the world to the most famous vampire of all.
The importance of antimicrobial stewardship By Michael J. Smith Antimicrobial stewardship refers to the judicious use of antibiotics. Since 2007, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has recommended that all hospitals implement formal antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs), which should consist of an infectious diseases physician and a pharmacist with training in infectious diseases.
Fool’s gold and the founding of the United States of America By David Rickard “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” the hard-bitten newspaperman, Maxwell Scott says to Ransom Stoddard in the classic western film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance. So many legends have been attached to the founding of the United States it is sometimes difficult to see through the haze of myths to the real beginnings.
DNA, colour perception, and ‘The Dress’ By Dawn Field Did you see ‘blue and black’ or ‘white and gold’? Or did you miss the ‘dress-capade’ that exploded the Internet last month? It was started by this post on Tumblr that went viral. Many people warned their heads risked exploding in disbelief. How could people see the same dress in different colours? It appears the variation lies in the way we judge how light reflects off objects of different colours, as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker explained in Forbes. A follow-on, calmer discussion started about whether this trait could be in our DNA.
Tax facts By Richard S. Grossman As long as rulers have needed money for the military, public works, or just to enrich themselves, they have relied on taxes. As Americans approach the dreaded April 15 income tax-filing deadline, it is worth considering some key facts about taxation. There are many different modes of taxation: individual income taxes, corporate profits taxes, capital gains taxes, property taxes, inheritance taxes, sales taxes, social insurance taxes, taxes on imports, and a whole host of government-levied fees that look and feel a lot like taxes.
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A matter of death and life By Jonathan L. Zecher It is something of a truism to say the “life-styles determine death-styles.” Not only do anthropologists and other scholars see the value of this point, no less an authority than Metallica incorporated it into “Frantic” on their 2006 album, St. Anger. Whatever Metallica meant, it is generally understood that if we want to understand a community’s treatment of and attitude toward the dead, we should look first to the values and priorities which shape their daily life.
A profile of Zelda Wynn Valdes: costume and fashion designer By Nancy Deihl In this interview with Professor Nancy Deihl, Master Teacher of Costume Studies at New York University, we look back in history to discuss and discover the life and accomplishments of Zelda Wynn Valdes, celebrity dressmaker and designer of the original Playboy bunny costume.
Cold War dance diplomacy Why did the US State Department sponsor international dance tours during the Cold War? An official government narrative was sanctioned and framed by the US State Department and its partner organization, the United States Information Agency (USIA—and USIS abroad). However, the tours countered that narrative.
Beyond immigration detention: The European Court of Human Rights on migrant rights By Marie-Bénédicte Dembour Over 30,000 migrants, including rape and torture victims, are detained in the UK in the course of a year, a third of them for over 28 days. Some detainees remain incarcerated for years, as Britain does not set a time limit to immigration detention (the only country in the European Union not to do so). No detainee is ever told how long his or her detention will last, for nobody knows. It can be days, it can be years.
APA Pacific 2015: A conference guide By Mohamed Sesay We hope to see you in Vancouver, British Columbia for the 2015 American Philosophical Association – Pacific meeting! OUP staff members have gathered together to discuss what we’re interested in seeing at the upcoming conference, as well as fun sights around Vancouver. Take time to visit the Oxford University Press Booth. Browse new and featured books which will include an exclusive 30% conference discount. Pick up complimentary copies of our philosophy journals which include Mind, Monist, Philosophical Quarterly, and more.
Vergil in Russia: milestones of identity By Zara Martirosova Torlone In 1979, one of the most prominent Russian classical scholars of the later part of the twentienth century, Mikhail Gasparov, stated: “Vergil did not have much luck in Russia: they neither knew nor loved him.” Gasparov mostly blamed this lack of interest on the absence of canonical Russian translations of Vergil, especially when it came to the Aeneid.
Women and restaurants in the 19th-century United States By Paul Freedman Delmonico’s in New York opened in the 1830s and is often thought of as the first restaurant in the United States. A restaurant differs from other forms of dining out such as inns or taverns and while there have always been take-out establishments and food vendors in cities, a restaurant is a place to sit down to a meal.
Meet the International Law marketing team We are pleased to introduce the marketing team for International Law at Oxford University Press. Cailin, Jo, Erin, Jeni, Kathleen, and Ciara work with journals, online reference, and books which are key resources for students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. The OUP portfolio in international law covers international criminal law, international human rights law, international economic […]
Cinderella science By Melanie Keene Imagine a plant that grew into a plum pudding, a cricket bat, or even a pair of trousers. Rather than being a magical transformation straight out of Cinderella, these ‘wonderful plants’ were instead to be found in Victorian Britain. Just one of the Fairy-Tales of Science introduced by chemist and journalist John Cargill Brough in his ‘book for youth’ of 1859, these real-world connections and metamorphoses that traced the origins of everyday objects were arguably even more impressive than the fabled conversion of pumpkin to carriage (and back again).
The Battle of Bayside, Queens: a Q&A By Joseph P. Laycock From 1970 to 1975, Bayside Hills—a pleasant and prosperous neighborhood in Northeastern Queens, a borough of New York City—was embroiled in controversy when a local woman named Veronica Lueken announced that the Virgin Mary was appearing to her at St. Robert Bellarmine’s Church. At first Lueken was regarded as a “local kook.” Then, in 1973, a traditionalist Catholic group from Canada called The Pilgrims of St. Michael declared her “the seer of the age” and pilgrims started to flock to Bayside Hills.
The causes and consequences of the 2011 London riots By Arne L. Kalleberg and Michael Biggs During the London riots in August 2011, the police lost control of parts of the city for four days, and thousands of people took part in destruction and looting that resulted in property damage estimated at least $50 million. A recent article in Social Forces examines the residential address of 1,620 rioters — who were arrested and charged in the London riots, to investigate potential explanations for rioting.
Is chocolate better than exercise for the brain? By Gary L. Wenk Everyone knows that aerobic exercise is good for the body, but is it always as good for brain? Furthermore, is exercise better than eating lots of chocolate for the aging brain? A recent study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience by a group of scientists from Columbia University and NYU gave a large daily dose […]
Women in Philosophy: A reading list By Joy Mizan To celebrate Women in Philosophy as part of Women’s History Month, we have created a reading list of books, journals, and online resources that explore significant female philosophers and feminist philosophy in general. Recommendations range from general interest books to biographies to advanced reader books and more.
Where does the word cyber come from? By Taylor Coe Does the word cyber sound dated to you? Like the phrases Information Superhighway and surfing the Web, something about the word calls one back to the early era of the Internet, not unlike when you ask a person for a URL and they start to read off, ‘H-t-t-p, colon, forward slash…’
Collecting and evaluating data on social programs By Wendy Zeitlin and Charles Auerbach On 31 December 2014, Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution wrote a compelling op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled, “Social Programs That Work.” Haskins shared the need for our nation to support evidence-based social programs and abandon those that show small or un-enduring effects – a wise idea.
What kind of Prime Minister would Miliband make? By Tim Bale Ed Miliband spent a year-and-a-half in the Cabinet between 2008 and 2010, and spent more than five years working as an advisor in the Treasury before he entered parliament in 2005. If he does become Prime Minister after May 7th, then, he will start the job with far more familiarity with government at the highest level than some of his recent predecessors, not least Tony Blair and David Cameron.
Fatherhood and mental health By Kevin Shafer When people think about depressed parents, it’s almost instinctive to think about post-partum moms. Certainly, post-partum depression is a serious issue, but my co-author Garrett Pace and I wanted to go one step further. We asked if moms and dads are at similar risk for depression based on the kinds of parental roles they take on (like a step-parent or residential biological parent).
Affirmative action for immigrant whites By Thomas A. Guglielmo In mid-February the Public Broadcasting Service aired a four-hour documentary entitled The Italian Americans, an absorbing chronicle of one immigrant group’s struggles and successes in America. It has received rave reviews across the country. For all its virtues, however, the film falls short in at least one important respect.
Looking back at Typhoid Mary 100 years later By Anne Hardy Typhoid Mary Mallon is one of the best known personalities in the popular history of medicine, the cook who was a healthy carrier of typhoid fever, who spread illness, death, and tragedy among the families she served with her cooking, and whose case alerted public health administrations across the world to this mechanism of disease transmission.
Heroes of Social Work Few professions aspire to improve the quality of life for people and communities around the globe in the same way as social work. Social workers strive to bring about positive changes in society and for individuals, often against great odds. And so it follows that the theme for this year’s National Social Work Month in the United States is “Social Work Paves the Way for Change.”
What is Corporate Social Responsibility? By Jeremy Moon What is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) all about? Companies appear to be adopting new attitudes and activities in the way they identify, evaluate and respond to social expectations. Society is no longer treated as a ‘given’, but as critical to business success. In some cases this is simply for the license to operate that social acceptability grants.
Beethoven’s diagnosis By Philip A. Mackowiak Since Beethoven’s death on this day 188 years ago, debate has raged as to the cause of his deafness, generating scores of diagnoses ranging from measles to Paget’s disease. If deafness had been his only problem, diagnosing the disorder might have been easier, although his ear problem was of a strange character no longer seen. It began ever so surreptitiously and took over two decades to complete its destruction of Beethoven’s hearing.
Purple Day: a day for thinking about people with epilepsy By Bernd Pohlmann-Eden Purple Day started with the curiosity and of a girl in eastern Canada, in the province of Nova Scotia, who had epilepsy. It soon became a world-wide success. Purple Day is now an international initiative and effort dedicated to increasing awareness about epilepsy around the globe. Why is it so important to create awareness around people with epilepsy?
Gaye vs. Thicke: How blurred are the lines of copyright infringement? By Matthew D. Morrison “Blurred Lines” and Thicke’s overwhelming success have been eclipsed by the popularity of the recent federal court case, in which a jury decided that its creators infringed upon the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s 1977 Billboard Hot 100 chart topper, “Got to Give It Up.”
Lament of an educator/parent By Molly Andrews My seventeen-year-old son has just completed fifteen examinations in the course of two weeks. They varied in length – some in excess of three hours, with a half hour break before the next exam – and we are still feeling the fallout from this veritable onslaught.
Dogs in digital cinema By Michael Lawrence Supplementing real dogs with digital animation produces performances that have benefits on many different levels. Firstly, they are much more effective dramatically because they can become more anthropomorphically expressive to suit the needs of the story. Economically they are less time-consuming and therefore less expensive because the performance is no longer determined by the unpredictable or intractable volition of real animals, however ‘well-trained’. The problems that arise even when working with ‘professional’ dog actors can be exasperating.
While dancing around a bonfire, beware of analogy By Anatoly Liberman This is the week of the spring equinox, but I decided not to wait until June and write a post about the solstice. For a change, bonfire is “a word of (fairly well-)known origin,” so don’t expect revelations. However, it is always instructive to observe people beating about the bush long after it has burned up. The image of beating about the bush suggested the title of this post.
Oxford Medicine Online The history of epilepsy: an interactive timeline By Joe Hitchcock Investigations into the nature of epilepsy, and its effects on those diagnosed with the disorder, can be traced back for almost 2,000 years. From associations with lunar cycles, to legislation preventing those with epilepsy to marry, the cultural and scientific record on epilepsy treatment is one of stigma and misunderstanding.
What’s the difference between artisanal and mass-produced cheese? By Michael H. Tunick American consumers have increased their purchases of artisanal foods in recent years. Grant McCracken, an anthropologist who reports on American culture and business, identifies ten concepts that the artisanal movement is composed of and driven by. These include preferences for things that are handmade, on the human scale, relatively raw and untransformed, unbranded, personalized […]
Jerome: a model scholar? By Christa Gray The Renaissance vision of Jerome (c. 347-420 AD), as depicted by Albrecht Dürer in a world-famous engraving of 1514, seems to represent an ideal type of the scholar: secluded in the desert, far removed from the bustle of ordinary life (with a lion to prove it), well-established in his institution (as shown by the cardinal’s hat), and devoted to his studies.
Wither independent audit? By Bob Tricker The limited liability company was one of the most significant inventions of the nineteenth century. The state permitted the incorporation of corporate entities, with many of the legal rights of a person, whilst limiting the liability of their owners for the companies’ debts. Elegantly simple, the limited liability company proved amazingly successful. Unfortunately, the idea was so successful that today the notion has become confused and immensely complex. The entire concept needs reinventing.
And unquiet flows the entropy By Kamran Behnia The business of condensed-matter physics is to explain why the world appears as it does to our naked eyes. This is a field lacking the glamour of high-energy physics or the poetry of astrophysics. The general public is quick to forget that smartphones owe much to the manipulation of electron herds in the Silicon Forest and the quantum theory of solids.
Comic books and censorship in the 1940s By David George Surdam Comic books have long purveyed action, action, and still more action. Their plot lines do not simply progress, they are raging torrents of emotion, violence, and drama. They were a part of the mass commercialization of leisure during the twentieth century.
Murky waters: partisanship and foreign policy By Lewis L. Gould The recent letter written by 47 Republican senators to the government of Iran about nuclear negotiations has revived talk about the classic phrase “politics stops at the water’s edge.” The tag line, arguing that partisanship should be put aside in foreign policy, is often attributed to Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-Michigan) who used it in endorsing some of the diplomatic initiatives of the Democratic Truman administration at the start of the Cold War.
Female composer Clara Ross’ overlooked success By Paul Sparks What were the first musical instruments to be regularly played in public concerts by entire orchestras of British women? The answer may surprise you. From the mid-1880s until the First World War, hundreds of “Ladies’ Guitar and Mandolin Bands” flourished throughout Britain, including several consisting entirely of female members of the aristocracy.
Who is your favourite character from children’s literature? By Dan Parker In order to celebrate the launch of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature in March, we invited OUP staff to dress up as their favourite characters from children’s books. The result was one surreal day during which our Oxford offices were overrun with children’s literature characters, ranging from the Cat in the Hat to Aslan, from Pippi Longstocking to the Tiger Who Came to Tea, and from Little Red Riding Hood to the Very Hungry Caterpillar. It was a brilliant and brave effort by all those who attended. Particularly those who commuted to and from work in their costumes!
A new philosophy of science By Eric Scerri One of the central concepts in chemistry consists in the electronic configuration of atoms. This is equally true of chemical education as it is in professional chemistry and research. If one knows how the electrons in an atom are arranged, especially in the outermost shells, one immediately understands many properties of an atom…
Sentencing terrorists: key principles By Susan Easton and Christine Piper In July 2014 Yusuf Sarwar and his associate, Mohammed Ahmed, both aged 22, pleaded guilty to conduct in preparation of terrorist acts, contrary to s5 of the Terrorism Act. Sarwar was given an extended sentence (for ‘dangerous’ offenders under s226A of the Criminal Justice Act 2013) comprising 12 years and eight months custody, plus a 5 year extension to his period of release on licence.
The death of a friend: Queen Elizabeth I, bereavement, and grief By Susan Doran On 25 February 1603, Queen Elizabeth I’ s cousin and friend – Katherine Howard, the countess of Nottingham – died. Although Katherine had been ill for some time, her death hit the queen very hard; indeed one observer wrote that she took the loss ‘muche more heavyly’ than did Katherine’s husband, the Charles, Earl of Nottingham. The queen’s grief was unsurprising, for Elizabeth had known the countess longer than almost anyone else alive at that time.
Leaving New York By Cathy Curtis In the 1940s and early 1950s, the avant-garde art world of New York was a small, clubby place, similar in many ways to the tight (and equally contentious) circle of the New York intelligentsia. Many artists rented cheap downtown Manhattan industrial loft spaces with rudimentary plumbing and heat.
Counting party members and why party members count By Susan E. Scarrow In mid-January 2015, British newspapers suddenly developed a keen interest in Green Party membership. A headline from The Independent proclaimed “Greens get new member every 10 seconds to surge past UKIP’s membership numbers ahead of general election”; other articles compared the membership sizes of the UK’s parties […]
Independent water providers in Kisumu and Addis Ababa In order to build the future we want, we must consider the part that water plays in our ecosystems, urbanization, industry, energy, and agriculture. In recognition of this challenge, the United Nations celebrates World Water Day on 22 March each year, including this year’s theme: ‘Water and Sustainable Development’.
Changing conceptions of rights to water? By Bettina Lange and Mark Shepheard What do we really mean when we talk about a right to water? A human right to water is a cornerstone of a democratic society. What form that right should take is hotly debated. Recently 1,884,790 European Union (EU) citizens have signed a petition that asks the EU institutions to pass legislation which recognizes a human right to water, and which declares water to be a public good not a commodity.
Thinking about how we think about morality By Jennifer Cole Wright Morality is a funny thing. On the one hand, it stands as a normative boundary – a barrier between us and the evils that threaten our lives and humanity. It protects us from the darkness, both outside and within ourselves. And it structures and guides our conception of what it is to be good (decent, honorable, honest, compassionate) and to live well.
From news journalism to academic publishing By Richard Woodall “I think I’ve just got an exclusive interview with the new Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester.” These were the words I told my editor after a couple of years in the newspaper game. He was obviously pleased. This is the kind of thing editors constantly want from reporters: an ability to dig out a story or to see something not everyone else will spot.
How false discoveries in chemistry led to progress in science By Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa, and Mary Virginia Orna In the popular imagination, science proceeds with great leaps of discovery — new planets, new cures, new elements. In reality, though, science is a long, grueling process of trial and error, in which tantalizing false discoveries constantly arise and vanish on further examination. These failures can teach us as much — or more — than its successes.
The crime is the fruit of the theology: Christian responses to 50 Shades of Grey By Kristin Kobes Du Mez The much anticipated Valentine’s Day release 50 Shades of Gray set off a flurry of activity on social media sites, with bloggers lining up to cajole, shame, reason or plead with women to resist temptation and abstain from viewing the film. In a case of strange bedfellows, if you will, conservative Christians and liberal feminists alike castigated the film for its packaging of abuse as mainstream entertainment.
How digital natives spend their time Who is an emerging adult? How often do young adults text? How long do they spend on the Internet everyday? Where do they watch television? Which social networks do they use? Ten years ago, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett published a groundbreaking examination of a new life stage: emerging adulthood, a distinct culture for people in their late teens and early twenties.
How policing in the UK has changed [infographic] By Dan Hall Policing in the United Kingdom is changing. Far from the traditionalism which defined the role of the police officer in the past, recent years have seen the force undergo wide-reaching alterations designed to shake off the Victoriana which entrenched UK policing in outdated practices, equipment, and organizational structure. In addition to policy-led modernization, extensive budgetary cuts in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis have had significant ramifications for the future of policing. But what can be said of UK policing today?
Oral history online: blogging to reach new audiences By Kate Brenner I am a child of the internet age. I have never not had a computer in my house. Being in Columbia’s Oral History Master’s Program (OHMA), I’ve read articles for class that describe how oral historians recorded and edited audio in the past. Every time I read one of those articles, I call my mom, who used to work editing tape in the 70s and 80s. “How did you do it?” I ask. “How did you edit with a razor, with no undo button? If it was still like that, I would never have entered this field.”
Early responses to Mendeleev’s periodic law [quiz] By Gábor Palló, Helge Kragh, and Masanori Kaji The periodic system, which Dmittri Ivanovich Mendeleev presented to the science community in the fall of 1870, is a well-established tool frequently used in both pedagogical and research settings today. However, early reception of Mendeleev’s periodic system, particularly from 1870 through 1930, was mixed.
Interpreting the laws of the US Congress The laws of US Congress—federal statutes—often contain ambiguous or even contradictory wording, creating a problem for the judges tasked with interpreting them. Should they only examine the text or can judges consult sources beyond the statutes themselves? Is it relevant to consider the purposes of lawmakers in writing law?
Is privacy dead? By Raymond Wacks In the 1960s British comedy radio show, Beyond Our Ken, an old codger would, in answer to various questions wheel out his catchphrase—in a weary, tremulous groan—‘Thirty Five Years!’ I was reminded of this today when I realized that it is exactly 35 years ago that my first book on privacy was published. And how the world has changed since then!
What are this year’s most notable cases in law? By Miranda Dobson As part of our online event, Unlock Oxford Law, we asked some of our expert authors to identify the most important case of the past year in their area of law. From child slavery to data privacy, we’ve highlighted some of the most groundbreaking and noteworthy cases below.
The street where she lived: My Fair Lady at 59 By Dominic McHugh Fifty-nine years ago this month, My Fair Lady made its debut on Broadway to a rapturous critical response. It became the longest-running musical to date, and was a landmark in the genre.
Morten Overgaard on consciousness By Morten Overgaard Why are we conscious? How can it be that physical processes in the brain seem to be accompanied with subjective experience? As technology has advanced, psychologists and neuroscientists have been able to observe brain activity. But with an explosion in experiments, methods, and measurements, there has also been great confusion.
Between terror and kitsch: fairies in fairy tales By Michael Newton This story may or may not be a fairy tale, though there are certainly fairies in it. However, unlike any of his Victorian forebears or most of his contemporaries, Machen manages to achieve, only a few years before the comfortably kitsch flower fairies of Cicely Mary Barker, the singular feat of rendering fairies terrifying. With James Hogg’s ‘Confessions of a Justified Sinner’, Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Thrawn Janet’ and several of M. R. James’s marvellous ghost stories, ‘The White People’ is one of only a handful of literary texts that have genuinely unnerved me.
Ossing is bossing By Anatoly Liberman If you know the saying ossing comes to bossing, rest assured that it does not mean the same as ossing is bossing. But you may never have heard either of those phrases, though the verb oss “to try, dare” is one of the favorites of English dialectology.
Virginia Woolf in the twenty-first century By Anna Snaith As we approach 26 March 2015, the centenary of the publication of Virginia Woolf’s first novel, The Voyage Out, it seems apposite to consider how her writing resonates in the twenty-first century. In the performing and filmic arts, there certainly seems to be something lupine in the air.
What were this decade’s most significant advances in law? By Miranda Dobson What was the most significant advance in law in the past ten years? As part of our exclusive Oxford law event, Unlock Oxford Law, we have asked some of our expert authors this very question. With constant changes and developments occurring across all the different areas of law, this is a subject that is very much up for debate. Read on to see what our authors said, and to see if you agree.
10 facts on China’s economy By Shenggen Fan China’s model of economic development has brought huge successes to the country in the last few decades. Alongside its achievements, however, are various implications to uneven growth: China’s nutrition transition displays changing diets that lean more toward unhealthy, less diversified diets; inequalities and rural-urban disparities are alarming; and environmental pollution together with food safety are raising concerns among consumers.
Why does entomology matter? By Jessica Shillingsford What makes entomology the most interesting profession in the world? If you ask an entomologist what makes their profession–the study of insects and related arthropods–interesting and important, you will get an answer. A surprisingly relatable, impassioned, and compelling answer.
Winter, weather, and witchcraft By Emerson W. Baker As I look out my office window in Salem, Massachusetts at the massive piles of snow left by blizzard after unrelenting blizzard during the worst winter in memory, I could not help but consider the thoughts a local would have thought in 1692: “what have we done to incur God’s wrath?” For New England Puritans living before the age of science, everything was a sign of God’s pleasure or displeasure including extremes of weather.
A Women’s History Month music playlist By Raquel Fernandes In honor of the countless phenomenal women who have shaped the music industry, we’ve pulled together a playlist highlighting our favorite boldest and brightest female voices who have made a lasting impression in music.
Unlock Oxford Law: The biggest challenges to law right now By Miranda Dobson What are the biggest challenges facing law right now? As part of our upcoming online event, Unlock Oxford Law, we asked some of our expert authors this very question. With constant changes and developments occurring across all the different areas of law, this is a subject that is very much up for debate.
X-rays: a century of discovery, diffraction, and dynamical theory By Andre Authier The International Year of Light provides a good opportunity to revisit the early studies on the optical properties of X-rays. X-rays were discovered by W. C. Röntgen on the evening of 8 November 1895 while he was redoing some of Hertz’s experiments on cathode rays. By the end of the year, even before informing the world of his discovery, he had observed the basic properties of X-rays: like light, they propagate as straight lines and are diffused by turbid media, but are not deflected by a prism, nor refracted or reflected by matter; they pass through bodies, as shown by the radiograph of his wife’s hand.
How much do you know about Wuthering Heights? [quiz] By Emily Brontë Centuries after its 1847 publication, Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s breathtaking literary classic, remains a seminal text to scholars, students, and readers around the world. Though best known for its depiction of romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, it is also largely multidimensional, grappling with themes such as religious hypocrisy, the precariousness of social class, and the collision of nature and culture. But how much do you know about this famous work of English literature?
Nonviolence, revolution, and the Arab Spring In 2011, the Middle East saw more people peacefully protesting long entrenched dictatorships than at any time in its history. The dictators of Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen were deposed in a matter of weeks by nonviolent marches. Described as ‘the Arab Spring’, the revolution has been convulsing the whole region ever since.
Ireland is on the way back By Antoin Murphy and Donal Donovan As we approach the annual St Patrick’s Day celebration, the story of the Irish economy in the last five years is worthy of reflection. In late 2010, the Irish Government, following in the footsteps of Greece, was forced to request a deeply humiliating emergency financial bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union (EU). Against the background of the recent controversy over the latest “Greek crisis”, what can be said about Ireland’s experience? Here are five relevant issues
The Review of English Studies cover Severed heads on the Elizabethan stage By Michael J. Hirrel On Tower Hill, 25 February 1601, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, was beheaded with three blows of an axe before some 150 spectators. The headsman held the head up for the spectators to see. He called out, “God save the Queen.” This beheading and others of that time color an important question for Shakespeare scholars. Severed heads populate many Elizabethan period plays. What objects represented those heads on stage?
The achievements of the European Court of Justice in post-war Europe By William Phelan The European Union’s legal system was created, so the story goes, by two astonishing decisions of the European Court of Justice (the ‘ECJ’) in the early 1960s. In the Van Gend en Loos decision of 1963, the European Court declared the ‘direct effect’ of European law […]
The visual, experiential, and research dimensions of police coercion By William Terrill Over the past year the number of questionable police use-of-force incidents has been ever present. The deaths of Eric Garner in New York, Michael Brown in Missouri, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Ohio, are but just a few tragic cases.
Publishing Philosophy: A staff Q&A By Eleanor Collins, Lucy Randall, and Sara McNamara This March, Oxford University Press is celebrating Women in Philosophy as part of Women’s History Month. We asked three of our female staff members who work on our distinguished list of philosophy books and journals to describe what it’s like to work on philosophy titles. Eleanor Collins is a Senior Assistant Commission Editor in philosophy who works in the Oxford office. Lucy Randall is a Philosophy Editor who works from our New York office. Sara McNamara is an Associate Editor who assists to manage our philosophy journals from our New York offices.
Putting two and two together By Simon Thomas As somebody who loves words and English literature, I have often been assumed to be a natural enemy of the mathematical mind. If we’re being honest, my days of calculus and the hypotenuse are behind me, but with those qualifications under my belt, I did learn that the worlds of words and numbers are not necessarily as separate as they seem. Quite a few expressions use numbers (sixes and sevens, six of one and half a dozen of the other, one of a kind, etc.) but a few are more closely related to mathematics than you’d expect.
Where do drugs come from? [quiz] The discovery and development of drugs was not always a straight path. Many times, the drugs that are well-known today — both hallucinogenic and medicinal — were discovered by mistake or originally developed for a much different purpose. How well do you know the history of some of the most common drugs? Take this quiz to find out if you can match the drug to its origin.
Spiders: the allure and fear of our eight-legged friends By Laurie Kerzicnik What’s your first reaction when you see this picture? Love? Fear? Repulsion? If you are like many Americans, when you come across a spider, especially a large, hairy one like this tarantula, the emotions you experience are most likely in the realm of fear or disgust. Your actions probably include screaming, trapping, swatting, or squashing of the spider.
How I stopped worrying and learned to love concrete By William Whyte Every campus has one, and sometimes more than more: the often unlovely and usually unloved concrete building put up at some point in the 1960s. Generally neglected and occasionally even unfinished, with steel reinforcing rods still poking out of it, the sixties building might be a hall of residence or a laboratory, a library or lecture room. It rarely features in prospectuses and is never – never ever – used to house the vice chancellor’s office.
Chlamydia: a global health question? By Servaas A. Morré A leading researcher in the field of immunogenetics, Servaas Morré has investigated women’s genetic susceptibilities to Chlamydia trachomatis, recently co-authoring “NOD1 in contrast to NOD2 functional polymorphism influence Chlamydia trachomatis infection and the risk of tubal factor infertility.” We sat down with Morré to discuss his findings about the most common sexually transmitted bacterial infection and the impact his research will have on treatment in the years to come.
Clinical placement in Nepal: an interview with Ruth Jones By Joe Hitchcock and Ruth Jones In May last year, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine, in partnership with Projects Abroad, offered one lucky medical student the chance to practice their clinical skills abroad in an international placement. The winner was Ruth Jones from the University of Nottingham, who impressed the judging panel with her sincerity, dedication, and willingness to become the best doctor she can be.
It’s never too late to change By Nancy Nason-Clark Ever wanted to change a behavior or habit in your own life? Most of us have tried. And failed. Or, we made modest gains at best. Here’s my story of a small change that made a big difference. Just over two years ago, I decided, at the ripe old age of 55, that it was time to begin exercising.
Unbossed, unbought, and unheralded By Susan Ware March is Women’s History Month and as the United States gears up for the 2016 election, I propose we salute a pathbreaking woman candidate for president. No, not Hillary Rodham Clinton, but Shirley Chisholm, who became the first woman and the first African American to seek the nomination of the Democratic Party for president. And yet far too often Shirley Chisholm is seen as just a footnote or a curiosity, rather than as a serious political contender who demonstrated that a candidate who was black or female or both belonged in the national spotlight.
Alhazen’s problem By Stephen R. Wilk One of the reasons that 2015 has been declared the International Year of Light is that it marks the 1000th year since the publication of Kitab al-Mana?ir, The Treasury of Optics, by the mathematician and physicist Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haitham, better known in Western cultural history as Alhazen. Born in Basra in present-day Iraq, he is acknowledged as the most important figure in optics between the time of Ptolemy and of Kepler, yet he is not known to most physicists and engineers.
Ten fun facts about the Irish Fiddle By Miki Onwudinjo Even though the harp is Ireland’s national symbol, the fiddle is the most commonly played instrument in traditional Irish music. Its ornamental melodies are more relaxed than the classical violin and improvisation is encouraged. The fiddle has survived generational changes from its start as a low-class instrument popular among the poor.
Citizenship and community mental health work By Michael Rowe My eureka moment with citizenship came one morning during the mid-1990s. The New Haven mental health outreach team that I ran was meeting for rounds. Ed, a peer outreach worker, meaning a person with his own history of mental health problems who’s made progress in his recovery and his now working with others, didn’t look happy.
Beyond Budapest: how science built bridges By Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai Fin de siècle Hungary was a progressive country. It had limited sovereignty as part of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy, but industry, trade, education, and social legislation were rapidly catching up with the Western World. The emancipation of Jews freed tremendous energies and opened the way for ambitious young people to the professions in law, health care, science, and engineering (though not politics, the military, and the judiciary). Excellent secular high schools appeared challenging the already established excellent denominational high schools.
Shooting one’s bolt from North to South By Anatoly Liberman I was twelve years old when I first read Jack London’s novel Martin Eden, and it remained my favorite book for years. Few people I know have heard about it, which is a pity. Jack London was a superb story teller, but his novels belong to what is called politely the history of literature—all or almost all except Martin Eden.
Preparing for the next Ebola By Meredith Minkler, Frederick Marais, Nancy Gibson, and Shaheen Mehtar As Ebola recedes from the headlines, amid long awaited declines in incidence in West Africa, a long overdue commitment to developing vaccines and adequate health care infrastructure is underway. The importance of these approaches should not to be minimized.
Losing control: radical reform of anti-terror laws By Andrew Staniforth The violent progress of the Islamic State (IS) through towns and villages in Iraq has been swift, aided by foreign fighters from Britain. IS has now taken control of large swathes of Iraq and there are growing concerns amongst senior security officials that the number of British men and women leaving their country to support and fight alongside the extremist group is rising.
How to make regulations a common good? By Laszlo Bruszt and Gerald A. McDermott Differences in regulatory norms are increasingly seen as the key barriers to the growth of regional and global markets, and regulatory disputes make up some of the most contentious issues in world politics. Negotiations among the most developed economies of the world about regulatory synchronization have made little progress in the last decade, and nearly all harmonization attempts failed when they had involved economies at lower levels of development.
Visualizing same-sex desire By Dominic Janes History is surfeited with examples of the interactions between society and individual sexuality. Same-sex desire in particular has been, up until the present moment, a topic largely shrouded in shame, secrecy, and silence. As a result, it is often visualized through the image of ‘the closet,’ conveying notions of entrapment, protection, and liberation. Dominic Janes, author of Picturing the Closet: Male Secrecy and Homosexual Visibility in Britain, recently sat down with us to talk about visualization of same-sex desire in eighteenth-century Britain to the present.
Thomas B. Reed: the wittiest Speaker of all By Lewis L. Gould Speaker of the House John Boehner is learning the enduring truth of Lyndon Johnson’s famous distinction between a cactus and a caucus. In a caucus, said LBJ, all the pricks are on the inside. Presumably Speaker Boehner seldom thinks about his Republican predecessors as leaders of the House.
Threats, harassment, and murder: being an abortion provider is a dangerous job By David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon Twenty-two years ago today, Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed outside the medical facility where he worked. This was no ordinary murder, though; Dr. Gunn was assassinated because of his profession. Dr. Gunn was an OB/GYN who provided abortion services.
Beethoven and the Revolution of 1830 By Katherine Kolb That Beethoven welcomed the French Revolution and admired Napoleon, its most flamboyant product, is common knowledge. So is the story of his outrage at the news that his hero, in flagrant disregard of liberté, égalité, fraternité, had had himself crowned emperor: striking the dedication to Napoleon of his “Eroica” symphony, he addressed it instead “to the memory of a great man.”
Bizarre elements: a timeline By Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa, and Mary Virginia Orna The periodic table has experienced many revisions over time as new elements have been discovered and the methods of organizing them have been solidified. Sometimes when scientists tried to fill in gaps where missing elements were predicted to reside in the periodic table, or when they made even the smallest of errors in their experiments, they came up with discoveries—often fabricated or misconstrued—that are so bizarre they could have never actually found a home in our current version of the periodic table.
The two faces of Leo Tolstoy By Andrew Kahn Imagine that your local pub had a weekly, book themed quiz, consisting of questions like this: ‘Which writer concerned himself with religious toleration, explored vegetarianism, was fascinated (and sometimes repelled by) sexuality, and fretted over widening social inequalities, experienced urban poverty first hand while at the same time understanding the causes of man made famine?’
Racial terror and the echoes of American lynchings By Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier In February, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery Alabama released a report, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. In researching for the report, EJI examined the practice of lynching in twelve southern states between Reconstruction and 1950. The report’s conclusions and recommendations provide important lessons about the past, present, and future of society.
The third parent By Rachel Bowlby The news that Britain is set to become the first country to authorize IVF using genetic material from three people—the so-called ‘three-parent baby’—has given rise to (very predictable) divisions of opinion. On the one hand are those who celebrate a national ‘first’, just as happened when Louise Brown, the first ever ‘test-tube baby’, was born in Oldham in 1978. Just as with IVF more broadly, the possibility for people who otherwise couldn’t to be come parents of healthy children is something to be welcomed.
Domestic violence: still a women’s issue? By Amanda Robinson and Sandra Walklate In 1878, Frances Power Cobbe had published in Contemporary Review an essay entitled ‘Wife Torture in England’. That essay is noted for the its influence on the Matrimonial Causes Act 1878 that, for the first time, allowed women living in violent relationships to apply for a separation order. In the intervening 150 years, concern about violence experienced by women at the hands of their husbands, boyfriends, ex-husbands, ex-boyfriends, and other family members has reached around the world.
Copenhagen and the European jihad By Robert S. Leiken The shooting spree in Copenhagen combines the old and the new of European jihadist phenomenon. Like virtually all European Holy Warriors, Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein is not an immigrant, but the son of immigrants, Palestinians who settled in Denmark before his birth.
What do you mean “woman problem”?! By Rainbow Murray They don’t like to admit it, but a lot of politicians have a “woman problem”. The phrase has become common parlance in British politics. David Cameron is widely considered to have a “woman problem” after patronising comments such as “calm down, dear”, and a raft of austerity policies made in the absence of women that have disproportionately hurt women voters.
The paradox of generalizations about generalizations By Roy T Cook A generalization is a claim of the form: (1) All A’s are B’s. A generalization about generalizations is thus a claim of the form: (2) All generalizations are B. Some generalizations about generalizations are true. For example: (3) All generalizations are generalizations. And some generalizations about generalizations are false. For example: (4) All generalizations are false. In order to see that (4) is false, we could just note that (3) is a counterexample to (4).
Understanding modern Greece: a Q&A By Stathis N. Kalyvas In arguing that Greece—or modern Greece—is, in fact, a “trailblazer” of sorts, Stathis N. Kalyvas, author of Modern Greece: What Everyone Needs to Know, gives us some very compelling answers for us to consider.
Religion and security after the Charlie Hebdo shootings By John Wolffe On 6 January 2015, I led a major event in the British Parliament at Westminster to launch and promote a recently completed survey of academic analysis and its policy implications, Religion, Security, and Global Uncertainties. The following day in Paris, the Houachi brothers shot dead twelve people in their attack on the magazine Charlie Hebdo, professedly to avenge its alleged insults to the Prophet Muhammad.
Remembering women sentenced to death on International Women’s Day By Carolyn Hoyle In May 2014, in Sudan, Meriam Ibrahim was sentenced to death for the ‘crime’ of ridda (apostacy) and to 100 lashes for the ‘offence’ of zena (sexual immorality). The case generated international outrage among those who care about women’s rights and religious freedom.
A quiz on the Nuns of Sant’Ambrogio By Hubert Wolf In 1858, German Princess Katharina von Hohenzollern entered the strict Franciscan convent of Sant’Ambrogio della Massima. Instead to finding the solitude and peace she was looking for she stumbled across a sex scandal of ecclesiastical proportions filled with poison, murder, and lesbian initiation rites. Based on Hubert Wolf’s vividly reconstructed telling of the scandal, we’ve created a short quiz where you can try your hand and unravel the secrets of the Sant’Ambrogio convent.
Reflections on the ‘urge to collect’ By Andrew Shaffer and Linda Shopes In the most recent issue of the Oral History Review, Linda Shopes started an important discussion about changes she has seen in the field of oral history in “‘Insights and Oversights’: Reflections on the Documentary Tradition and the Theoretical Turn in Oral History”. Linda’s article sparked many interesting arguments on curation versus collection, critical analysis versus volume, and framing individual experiences in wider contexts. Below, we bring to you a continuation of this conversation through an email interview.
Excellence in residency education By Kenneth M. Ludmerer A middle-aged man was recently admitted to a Midwest hospital for “refractory congestive heart failure.” He had been followed in the hospital’s out-patient clinic for two years with that diagnosis. Yet, he continued to retain fluid and gain weight, despite optimal treatment for congestive heart failure.
Behind-the-scenes at the UK Law Teacher of the Year Award Professor Jane Holder of University College London has been named Law Teacher of the Year 2015. The prestigious national teaching award, which is sponsored by Oxford University Press, was presented at a lunch event held on Friday, 27 February 2015.
How to win the 2015 General Election By Tony Wright If you want to win votes and get elected in Britain, at least in general elections, then you had better get a party. The occasional and isolated exceptions only prove the rule. Before the 2010 general election, in the wake of the parliamentary expenses scandal, there was speculation that independent candidates might do unusually well, but in the event this did not happen. Elected politicians have a wonderful capacity for persuading themselves that their electoral success is to be explained by their obvious personal qualities, but the evidence is all against them.
Living with the Stars – Episode 20 – The Oxford Comment Everything is connected. Animals and asteroids, bodies and stardust, heart valves and supernovas—all of these rise from the same origin to form the expanse of the universe, the fiber of our being. So say our guests of this month’s Oxford Comment, Karel Shrijver, an astronomer who studies the magnetic fields of stars, and Iris Schrijver, a physician and pathologist. We sat down for a captivating discussion with the co-authors of Living with the Stars: How the Human Body is Connected to the Life Cycles of the Earth, the Planets, and the Stars.
Country music and the press By Travis D. Stimeling At least a decade prior to the recording of the first “hillbilly” records in the 1920s, journalists were writing about rural music-making in the United States, often treating the music heard at barn dances, quilting bees, and other rural social events as curious markers of local color. Since the emergence of country music as a recorded popular music in the 1920s, though, the press’s fascination with the genre has not waned.
Starfruit and running dogs: celebrating the Lantern Festival with Chinese word games By William S-Y. Wang Even though much of the world has adopted the Gregorian calendar, which is based on movement of the sun, many traditional cultures still observe lunar calendars, which are based on movement of the moon. The beginning of the Chinese lunar year this time fell on 19 February of the Gregorian calendar.
Revisiting process recordings using videos By Carol Dorr I believe that video technology can improve how we as social work instructors provide feedback to students on their clinical skills, enhancing previous teaching methods that relied on more traditional process recordings. Over the years, there has been much debate over the use of process recordings of client interviews as a learning tool in social work education; some instructors have found the practice outdated.
What to do with a million (billion) genomes? Share them By Dawn Field A Practical Genomics Revolution is rolling out, owing to the dropping cost of DNA sequencing technology, accelerated DNA research, and the benefits of applying genetic knowledge in everyday life. We now have ‘million-ome’ genome sequencing projects and talk of ‘billion-omes’ is growing audible. Given the expense – even at only $1000 a genome, a million still costs $1 billion US dollars — it is only right to ask, “What will the impact be?”
Keys and bolts By Anatoly Liberman I received a question whether I was going to write about the word key in the series on our habitat. I didn’t have such an intention, but, since someone is interested in this matter, I’ll gladly change my plans and satisfy the curiosity of our friend.
The IOM’s effort to dislodge chronic fatigue syndrome By Leonard A. Jason The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently released their report regarding a new name (i.e., systemic exertion intolerance disease) and case definition for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). In brief, the IOM proposed that at least four symptoms needed to be present to be included in this new case definition […]
Abraham Lincoln, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and the Dred Scott Case By Frank J. Williams Dred Scott, an African-American slave, appealed to the Supreme Court for his freedom based on having been brought by his owners to live in a free territory. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, writing for the majority, wrote that persons of African descent could not be, nor were ever intended to be, citizens under the US Constitution, and thus the plaintiff Scott was without legal standing to file a suit.
A festival of colorful emotions By Kiyokazu Okita It is as if a massive color palette fell on earth from the hand of the Almighty. The whole atmosphere is painted with bright colors—red, pink, yellow, blue, green, and purple. Young and old, men and women—all are soaked in colored water, running around, laughing loudly, shouting, and throwing mud on each other. It is a war where a water gun is your weapon, colored water is your bullet, and colored powder is your smoke screen.
Are ultra-low interest rates dangerous? By Richard S. Grossman The industrialized world is currently moving through a period of ultra-low interest rates. The main benchmark interest rates of central banks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the euro-zone are all 0.50% or less. The US rate has been near zero since December 2008; the Japanese rate has been at or below 0.50% since 1995. Then there are the central banks that have gone negative: the benchmark rates in Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland are all below zero. Other short-term interest rates are similarly at rock-bottom levels, or below.
What can we learn from the lives of male feminists? By Max A. Greenberg In the span of one week at the beginning of February, two of the largest cultural events in the United States featured prominent messages about ending violence against women. The NFL gave away coveted air-time to run this ad from the NO MORE campaign.
Suffragist Lucy Stone in 10 facts By Sally G. McMillen Lucy Stone, a nineteenth-century abolitionist and suffragist, became by the 1850s one of the most famous women in America. She was a brilliant orator, played a leading role in organizing and participating in national women’s rights conventions, served as president of the American Equal Rights Association […]
An A – Z guide to Nicolas Nabokov By Vincent Giroud Who was Nicolas Nabokov? The Russian-born American composer had a huge impact on music and culture globally, but his name remains relatively unknown. He had friends and acquaintances in a variety of circles, whether his cousin the writer Vladimir, the poet Auden, or the choreographer Balanchine.
Does philosophy matter? By Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Philosophers love to complain about bad reasoning. How can those other people commit such silly fallacies? Don’t they see how arbitrary and inconsistent their positions are? Aren’t the counter examples obvious? After complaining, philosophers often turn to humor. Can you believe what they said! Ha, ha, ha. Let’s make fun of those stupid people. I also enjoy complaining and joking, but I worry that this widespread tendency among philosophers puts us out of touch with the rest of society.
Four questions for Boehner, Bibi, Barack, and Biden By Edward Zelinsky Tomorrow night’s appearance before a joint session of Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu raises four important questions, including the following: Should Speaker John Boehner have invited the Israeli Prime Minister to speak without first consulting with President Obama?
Let’s finally kick the habit: governance of addictions in Europe By Adrià Albareda and Tamyko Ysa More than a century ago, on 23 January 1912, the first international convention on drug control was signed in The Hague. A century later, despite efforts made at all levels and vast quantities of evidence, our societies still struggle to deal effectively with addictive substances and behaviours. Reaching a global consensus has proved harder than kicking the worst drug-taking habit. Nonetheless, the meeting of the Global Commission on Drug Policy held on 9 September 2014 in New York might be a turning point.
How do Russians see international law? By Lauri Mälksoo Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was a watershed in international relations because with this act, Moscow challenged the post-Cold War international order. Yet what has been fascinating is that over the last years, Russia’s President and Foreign Minister have repeatedly referred to ‘international law’ as one of Russia’s guiding foreign policy principles.
How do we protect ourselves from cybercrime? By David Pym and Tyler Moore Modern society requires a reliable and trustworthy Internet infrastructure. To achieve this goal, cybersecurity research has previously drawn from a multitude of disciplines, including engineering, mathematics, and social sciences, as well as the humanities. Cybersecurity is concerned with the study of the protection of information – stored and processed by computer-based systems – that might be vulnerable to unintended exposure and misuse.
Does marijuana produce an amotivational syndrome? By Gary L. Wenk Does marijuana produce an amotivational syndrome? Whether the amotivational syndrome exists or not is still controversial; there are still too few poorly controlled small studies that don’t allow a definitive answer. Most people who use marijuana don’t develop this syndrome.
Democracy is about more than a vote: politics and brand management By Matthew Flinders With a General Election rapidly approaching in the UK, it’s easy to get locked into a set of perennial debates concerning electoral registration, voter turnout and candidate selection. In the contemporary climate these are clearly important issues given the shift to individual voter registration, evidence of high levels of electoral disengagement and the general decline in party memberships (a trend bucked by UKIP, the Greens, and the Scottish National Party in recent months).
Creating a constructive cultural narrative for science By Tom McLeish How can we understand the relation between science and narrative? Should we even try to? Where can we find and deploy a constructive cultural narrative for science that might unlock some of the current misrepresentations and political tangles around science and technology in the public forum?
Nineteenth and twentieth century Scottish philosophy By Gordon Graham In the history of Britain, eighteenth century Scotland stands out as a period of remarkable intellectual energy and fertility. The Scottish Enlightenment, as it came to be known, is widely regarded as a crowning cultural achievement, with philosophy the jewel in the crown. Adam Smith, David Hume, William Robertson, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson are just the best known among an astonishing array of innovative thinkers, whose influence in philosophy, economics, history and sociology can still be found at work in the contemporary academy.
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Clarity about ‘the gay thing’ By Gary Nunn Sometimes, we say what we don’t really mean. ‘You look really tired’, for example, when we mean to be caring rather than disparaging of appearance. ‘I thought you were older than that!’ when we mean to applaud maturity rather than further disparage appearance. And so it is with the gay thing. The accidental difference between what people are saying or writing, and their intended meaning, is becoming perplexingly polarized.
Emily Brontë, narrative, and nature By Helen Small Catherine’s removal from the plot (other than as a haunting presence in the background, much less potent hereafter than the waif-like child ghost whose wrist Lockwood rubs back and forth across the broken window glass till the blood runs freely (p. 21)) has seemed to some readers to weaken the second half of the novel. One modern critic has suggested, indeed, that the whole of the second-generation narrative was an afterthought.
Five Biblical remixes from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. By Nyasha Junior Civil Rights icon Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was also a theologian and pastor, who used biblical texts and imagery extensively in his speeches and sermons. Here is a selection of five biblical quotations and allusions that you may not have noticed in his work (in chronological order).
Rebel Girl: Lesley Gore’s voice By Alexandra Apolloni In 2005, Ms magazine published a conversation between pop singer Lesley Gore and Kathleen Hanna of the bands Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hanna opened with a striking statement: “First time I heard your voice,” she said, “I went and bought everything of yours – trying to imitate you but find my own style.”
Wolf Hall: count up the bodies By Peter Marshall Historians should be banned from watching movies or TV set in their area of expertise. We usually bore and irritate friends and family with pedantic interjections about minor factual errors and chronological mix-ups. With Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, and the sumptuous BBC series based on them, this pleasure is denied us. The series is as ferociously well researched as it is superbly acted and directed. Cranmer probably didn’t have a beard in 1533, but, honestly, that’s about the best I can do.
Four remarkable figures in Black History By Steven J. Niven Given the scope and the length of time I’ve been working on the African American National Biography (over 13 years and counting), selecting just a few biographies that were somehow “representative” of the overall project would have been an impossible task. Instead, working with The Root’s managing editor, Lyne Pitts, I chose four entries that showcased some of the diversity of the collection, but focused on hidden or barely remembered figures in black history.
Are you as smart as a dolphin? [quiz] By Justin Gregg Dolphins are famous not only for their playful personalities, but also their striking level of intelligence. After half a century studying their minds, scientists have learned a lot about how dolphins think, and the nature of their intelligence. You’ve probably heard a lot about dolphins over the years, but how much do you know about the latest scientific research into dolphin cognition? Take the quiz and find out!
The sombre statistics of an entirely preventable disease By Liesl Zühlke Sore throats are an inevitable part of childhood, no matter where in the world one lives. However for those children living in poor, under-resourced and marginalised societies of the world, this could mean a childhood either cut short by crippling heart failure or the need for open-heart surgery.
Why we should read Dante as well as Shakespeare By Peter Hainsworth Dante can seem overwhelming. T.S. Eliot’s peremptory declaration that ‘Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them: there is no third’ is more likely to be off-putting these days than inspiring. Shakespeare’s plays are constantly being staged and filmed, and in all sorts of ways, with big names in the big parts, and when we see them we can connect with the characters and the issues with not too much effort.
Iggy (Azalea) pop: Is cultural appropriation inappropriate? By Matthew D. Morrison Popular music is much more than mere entertainment—it helps us make sense of who we are or who we hope to be. Although music is but one of pop culture’s media outlets, our tendency to embody and take ownership of sound—whether through our headphones, MP3 downloads, dancing, or singing—often makes it difficult to separate our personal connection to popular music from the cultural context in which it was created.
Understanding the psychology of eating disorders [infographic] ore than 30 million people in the United States suffer from an eating disorder. In acknowledgement of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, we’ve put together a detailed infographic with facts and statistics based on information from Oxford Clinical Psychology. Explore the infographic for a better understanding of what millions of Americans suffer through on a daily basis. For more information on eating disorders, such as bulimia nervosa, treatments for binge eating and purging, and the significance of body image, visit Oxford Clinical Psychology.
Are migrant farm workers disappearing? By Maoyong Fan, Susan Gabbard, Anita Alves Pena, and Jeffrey M. Perloff Migrant farmworkers plant and pick most of the fruits and vegetables that you eat. Seasonal crop farmers, who employ workers only a few weeks of the year, rely on workers who migrate from one job to another. However, farmers’ ability to rely on migrants to fill their seasonal labor needs is in danger. From 1989 through 1998, roughly half of all seasonal crop farmworkers migrated — traveled at least 75 miles for a US job. Since then, the share of workers who migrate has dropped by more than in half, hitting 18% in 2012.
Monthly etymology gleanings for February 2015 By Anatoly Liberman One month is unlike another. Sometimes I receive many letters and many comments; then lean months may follow. February produced a good harvest (“February fill the dyke,” as they used to say), and I can glean a bagful. Perhaps I should choose a special title for my gleanings: “I Am All Ears” or something like it.
Wilberforce University: a pioneering institution in African American education By Crystal R. Sanders What do opera singer Leontyne Price, activist Victoria Gray Adams, civil rights organizer Bayard Rustin, and Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson have in common? They all attended or graduated from Wilberforce University. Located outside of Dayton, Ohio, Wilberforce was the first institution of higher education to be owned and operated by African Americans.
The important role of palatable food in eating disorders By Nicole Avena When we hear the term “eating disorder,” we often think of the woman at our gym who looks unhealthily thin or maybe a friend who meticulously monitors each calorie he or she consumes. Though anorexia nervosa (marked by low weight and a strong fear of weight gain) is a serious and harmful mental illness with one of the highest mortality rates of any psychiatric illness, the reality is that the most common eating disorders are bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder, both of which involve (and in fact, require for their diagnosis) binge eating.
Inequality in democracies: interest groups and redistribution By Vuk Vukovic We are by now more or less aware that income inequality in the United States and in most of the rich OECD world is higher today than it was some 30 to 40 years ago. Despite varying interpretations of what led to this increase, the fact remains that inequality is exhibiting a persistent increase, which is robust to both expansionary and contractionary economic times. One might even say that it became a stylized fact of the developed world (amid some worthy exceptions).
Questions about India’s environment and economic growth Must economic growth be privileged over ecological security? Jairam Ramesh argues that this is the wrong question to ask; the two work in concert, not in opposition, and a bright economic and political future requires a safe, protected environment. As India grows as a global power, the nation has become a leader in progressive environmental policies.
Human Rights and European Law Surrogacy: how the law develops in response to social change By Lady Justice Arden In its recent decision in Mennesson v. France (App no. 65192/11), the Fifth Section of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled that surrogate children—in this case, born in the US and having US citizenship—should not be prevented from registering as French citizens, as this would be a violation of their right to respect for their private life. The Strasbourg court’s view, which is very understandable, is that nationality is an important part of a person’s identity.
Andrew Johnson: a little man in a big job By Lewis L. Gould If it were not for his impeachment on 24 February 1868, and the subsequent trial in the Senate that led to his acquittal, Andrew Johnson would probably reside among the faded nineteenth century presidents that only historical specialists now remember. Succeeding to the White House after the murder of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, Johnson proved to be a presidential failure […]
Mississippi hurting: lynching, murder, and the judge By Jason Morgan Ward Last week marked two important events in the unfinished story of southern racial violence. On February 10, the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative released Lynching in America, an unflinching report that documents 3,959 black victims of mob violence in twelve southern states between 1877 and 1950.
The art of musical arrangements By David Blackwell ‘I write arrangements, I’m sort of a wannabe composer’ – consciously or otherwise, these words from violinist Joshua Bell seem to give voice to the tension between these two interlocking musical activities. For arrangement and composition are interlocked, as composers throughout the ages have arranged, adapted, revised, and generally played free with musical compositions of all kinds (their own and other people’s) for reasons artistic, practical, or downright commercial.
International copyright: What the public doesn’t know By Jörg Reinbothe Copyright these days is very high up on the agenda of politicians and the public at large. Some see copyright as a stumbling stone for the development of digital services and think it is outdated. They want to make consumers believe that copyright protection is to be blamed, when music or other ‘content’ is not available online, preferably for free. From Brussels we hear that ‘national copyright silos’ should be broken up, that the EU Internal Market is fragmented when it comes to copyright.
Preparing for IBA and ICSID’s 18th Annual International Arbitration Day By Ciara O’Connor The 18th Annual International Arbitration Day will take place 26-27 February 2015 at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC. A joint conference presented by the International Bar Association (IBA) Arbitration Committee and the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), International Arbitration Day will gather lawyers and academics to look back on investment arbitration and discuss its future, a theme that coincides with ICSID’s 50th anniversary.
Why has France banned surrogate motherhood? By Claire Legras Shortly after it emerged in the 1980s, surrogate motherhood was dealt a severe blow in France by a decision of the Cour de Cassation, its highest civil court. In 1991, it ruled that an agreement entered into by a woman to conceive, bear a child, and relinquish it at birth, albeit for altruistic reasons, was contrary to the public policy principle of unavailability of both the human body and civil status.
Is Broadchurch a classic crime drama? By Ian Cummins, Marian Foley, and Martin King January saw the critically acclaimed and award winning Broadchurch return to our TV screens for a second series. There was a publicity blackout in an attempt to prevent spoilers or leaks; TV critics were not sent the usual preview DVDs. The opening episode sees Joe Miller plead not guilty to the murder of Danny Latimer, a shock as the previous season’s finale ended with his admission of guilt. The change of plea means that the programme shifts from police procedural to courtroom drama – both staples of the TV schedules. Witnesses have to give evidence, new information is revealed through cross-examination, and old scores settled by witnesses and barristers.
Trains of thought: Sarah By Timothy Williamson Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Sarah’s perspective.
The audience screams; people duck By David George Surdam Millions of Americans are eagerly anticipating this year’s Academy Awards ceremony. For over a century, motion pictures have been a dominant cultural and leisure medium. There are, however, two aspects worth highlighting: the sheer novelty of motion pictures and the medium’s initial democratic nature. Twenty-first century Americans have difficulty imagining the wonder and awe motion pictures inspired in the early 1900s.
The neuroscience of cinema Why do we flinch when Rocky takes a punch in Sylvester Stallone’s movies, duck when the jet careens towards the tower in Airplane, and tap our toes to the dance numbers in Chicago or Moulin Rouge? With this year’s Academy Awards upon us, we want to know what happens between your ears when you sit down in the theatre and the lights go out. Take a look at some of the ways our brains work when watching a movie—you may just find some of them to be all too familiar.
What Pakistan’s history means for its future By Syeda Abida Hussain The story of Pakistan is the story of missed opportunity. As I began to write about the history of this land, I could not help feeling a sense of an intertwining of personal and national destiny in what was necessarily an account of my own missed opportunities […]
An A-Z of the Academy Awards By Georgia Mierswa After what feels like a year’s worth of buzz, publicity, predictions, and celebrity gossip, the 87th Academy Award ceremony is upon us. I dug into the entries available in the alphabetized categories of The Dictionary of Film Studies— and added some of my own trivia — to highlight 26 key concepts in the elements of cinema and the history surrounding the Oscars.
Mood food: a brief look at addictive eating By Mark Griffiths Researchers have noted that some addictive behaviours may partly depend upon gender. For instance, men are more likely to be addicted to drugs, gambling, and sex whereas women are more likely to suffer from ‘mall disorders’ such as eating and shopping. Food is – of course – a primary reward as it is necessary for our survival.
The philosophy of perception By Mark Eli Kalderon Parmenides, in the Way of Mortal Opinion, envisions the sensible world to be governed by Fire and Night, understood as cosmic principles. As a consequence, Parmenides conceives of the colors as themselves mixtures of light and dark. Parmenides’ view, here, is in line with an ancient tradition dating back at least to Homeric times.
Celebrating linguistic diversity on International Mother Language Day By Kiyokazu Okita It’s Thursday evening in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. I am late for an appointment to see my friend Shimanto (lit. boundary [Sanskrit]). On the street I shout ‘ei mama jaben?’ (Hey uncle, will you go? [Bangla]) to catch an auto-rickshaw (auto [English] man-powered-wheeler [Japanese]). After striking the deal, I sit inside the three-wheeler. As the young driver speeds up almost hitting passers-by and curses ‘jyam khub kharap!’ (Traffic jam [English] is very bad! [Persian]), I recollect the writing at the back of the car: ‘alla? sarvasaktiman’ (God [Arabic] almighty [Sanskrit]).
Trust in the aftermath of terror By Gunnar Thomassen, Jon Strype, and Marit Egge In the days following the terrorist attack in Paris on 11 January, thousands of people took to the street in solidarity with the victims and in defense of free speech, and many declared ‘Je suis Charlie’ on social media around the world. The scene is familiar with what we have seen in several other countries in the aftermath of major terrorist attacks.
Does the MOOC spell the end for universities? By William Whyte The seemingly unassailable rise of the MOOC – the Massive Open On-Line Course – has many universities worried. Offering access to millions of potential students, it seems like the solution to so many of the problems that beset higher education. Fees are low, or even non-existent; anyone can sign up; staff time is strictly limited as even grading is done by peers or automated multiple-choice questionnaires. In an era of ever-rising tuition fees and of concerns about the barriers that stop the less well-off from applying to good universities, the MOOC can seem like a panacea.
The art of listening By Mark Larson A few months ago, we asked you to tell us about the work you’re doing. Many of you responded, so for the next few months, we’re going to be publishing reflections, stories, and difficulties faced by fellow oral historians. This week, we bring you the first post in this series, focusing on a multimedia project from Mark Larson. We encourage you to engage with these posts by leaving comments on the post or on social media, or by reaching out directly to the authors.
Speaking to the heart of what matters: a Q&A with Editor in Chief, Adam Timmis Meet Professor Adam Timmis, the Editor in Chief of the latest member of the European Society of Cardiology journal family, the European Heart Journal — Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes (EHJ-QCCO). We spoke to Timmis about how he became involved in cardiology, the challenges and developments in his field, and his plans for EHJ-QCCO.
Thoughts on teaching in prison on World Day of Social Justice By Samantha Zimbler On an overcast day in January 2013, with no criminal justice background and no real teaching experience, I entered the stark grounds of New Jersey’s only maximum-security women’s prison to co-teach a course on memoir writing. The youngest in a classroom of thirteen women, many of whom were serving life or double-life sentences, plus my two mentors and co-teachers, Courtney Polidori and Michele Tarter, my mind began spinning with concern and doubt.
Psychotherapy now and in the future By Tom Burns and Eva Burns-Lundgren The 20th century has been called ‘the century of psychiatry’, and in many ways one could read that as ‘the century of psychotherapy’. A hundred years ago, at the onset of World War I, psychotherapy had touched the lives of only a tiny number of people, and most of the population had simply never heard of it. Since then it has reached into almost every aspect of our lives—how we treat the mentally ill, how we understand our relationships, our appreciation of art and artists, and even how we manage our schools, prisons, and workplaces.
Chinese New Year and psychology [infographic] With China’s continued emergence as an economic and political superpower, there is a growing need for those in the West to understand the distinct way in which the Chinese people view the mind and its study. Although Chinese philosophy is steeped in considerations of the nature of the mind, psychology as it is understood in the West was not a discipline practiced in China until its introduction in the 19th Century.
Great man drumming: Birdman, Whiplash, and myth of the male artist By Jennifer Fleeger Among this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture were two films with drum scores: Whiplash, in which a highly regarded but abusive conductor molds an aspiring young jazz musician into the genius he was meant to be, and Birdman, in which an aging film actor who was never a genius at all stars in a play and possibly flies. In spite of their innovative soundtracks, neither film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Score.
Why are some residency programs better than others? By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Considerable variation in quality exists among residency programs in the United States, even among those in the same specialty, such as surgery, pediatrics, or internal medicine. Some are nationally and internationally renowned, others are known regionally, and still others are known only locally.
Transgender culture and community, now and then By Genny Beemyn Today, there are countless ways to identify as trans, with new ways being created all the time, mostly by younger trans people. Gender was never a binary, and that has become especially evident in recent years.
Fairy tales explained badly By Daniel Parker What are the strange undercurrents to fairy tales like ‘Hansel and Gretel’ or ‘Little Red Riding Hood’? In November 2014, we launched a #fairytalesexplainedbadly hashtag campaign that tied in to the release of Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time: A Short History of the Fairy Tale. Hundreds of people engaged with the #fairytalesexplainedbadly hashtag on Twitter, sparking a fun conversation on the different ways in which fairy tale stories could be perceived.
Crossing the threshold: Why “thresh ~ thrash”? By Anatoly Liberman The previous post dealt with the uneasy history of the word threshold, and throughout the text I wrote thresh~ thrash, as though those were two variants of the same word. Yet today they are two different words, and their relation poses a few questions. Old English had the strong verb þerscan (þ = th in Engl. thresh), with cognates everywhere in Germanic.
International Studies Association Convention 2015: a conference and city guide By Sinead O'Connor and Kate Guenther The International Studies Association Annual Convention will be held in New Orleans this week. The conference will be focusing on Global International Relations and Regional Worlds, A New Agenda for International Studies. If you’re attending, stop by booths 202, 204, and 206 to take advantage of our conference discount. Be sure to check out some of the panels and lectures our authors will be giving.
“You said I killed you — haunt me, then!” An extract from Wuthering Heights By Emily Brontë Are you part of the Oxford World’s Classics Readfing Group? The following is an extract from the current selection, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, taken from volume II, chapter II, pages 147-148 in the Oxford World’s Classics edition.
Stephen Hawking, The Theory of Everything, and cosmology By Mary-Teresa Madders Renowned English cosmologist Stephen Hawking has made his name through his work in theoretical physics as a bestselling author. His life – his pioneering research, his troubled relationship with his wife, and the challenges imposed by his disability – is the subject of a poignant biopic, The Theory of Everything. Directed by James Marsh, the film stars Eddie Redmayne, who has garnered widespread critical acclaim for his moving portrayal.
Is consumer credit growth worth worrying about? By Thomas A. Durkin A news release on 6 February 2015 from the Federal Reserve Board, together with a selection of dense numerical tables, showed once again that consumer credit in use has increased over the course of a year. This is the fourth year in a row and the 67th yearly increase in the 69 years since 1945. But does this mean that credit growth is a meaningful worry? Total consumer sector income and total assets have also increased in 67 of the 69 years since World War II.
That’s relativity By Keith Mansfield A couple of days after seeing Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, I bumped into Sir Roger Penrose. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t want spoilers, I’m sorry but you’d better stop reading now. Still with me? Excellent. Some of you may know that Sir Roger developed much of modern black hole theory with his collaborator, Stephen Hawking, and at the heart of Interstellar lies a very unusual black hole. Straightaway, I asked Sir Roger if he’d seen the film. What’s unusual about Gargantua, the black hole in Interstellar, is that it’s scientifically accurate.
Strife over strategy: shaping American foreign policy By Daniel J. Sargent Last month on Capitol Hill, a tedious slur on Henry Kissinger (“war criminal”) provoked an irate reaction (“low-life scum”). The clash between Senator McCain and the protesters of Code Pink garnered media coverage and YouTube clicks. The Senate’s hearings on national strategy not so much. This is unfortunate.
Another side of Yoko Ono By Brigid Cohen The scraps of an archive often speak in ways that standard histories cannot. In 2005, I spent my days at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, a leading archive for twentieth-century concert music, where I transcribed the papers of the German-Jewish émigré composer Stefan Wolpe (1902-1971).
The Grand Budapest Hotel and the mental capacity to make a will By Martyn Frost Picture this. A legendary hotel concierge and serial womaniser seduces a rich, elderly, widow who regularly stays in the hotel where he works. Just before her death, she has a new will prepared and leaves her vast fortune to him rather than her family. Wills have always provided the public with endless fascination, and are often the subject of great books and dramas.
How disease names can stigmatize By Leonard A. Jason On 10 February 2015, the long awaited report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) was released regarding a new name — Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease — and case definition for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Because I was quoted regarding this report in a New York Times article, in part due to having worked on these issues for many years, hundreds of patients contacted me over the next few days.
Education, metaphorically speaking By Susan Wallace What do we think education means? What do we believe are teaching’s purpose, status, and function in society? A useful way to reflect on our pre-conceptions and assumptions about anything is to step back and consider the metaphors we automatically apply when thinking or speaking of it. This is a particularly useful exercise for the trainee teacher, who, for obvious reasons, is likely to frame teaching primarily in terms of a performance – one that is observed, analysed, graded and, if all goes well, given the pedagogic equivalent of a five star review.
An interview with the Editors of Global Summitry Global Summitry is a new journal published by Oxford University Press in association with University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Rotman School of Management. The journal features articles on the organization and execution of global politics and policy.
Trains of thought: Roxana By Timothy Williamson Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Roxana’s perspective.
Getting to know Alan Goldberg, Demand Planner By Alan Goldberg From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into our offices around the globe. This week, we are excited to bring you an interview with Alan Goldberg on our Demand Planning team in the New York office. Alan started working at Oxford University Press in March 2014.
Choosing a president in a new democracy: lessons from Eastern and Central Europe By Csaba Nikolenyi In his famous statement about the perils of presidentialim, Juan Linz argued that newly emerging democracies ought to avoid adopting a presidential form of government. One of Linz’s reasons had to do with the winner-takes-all-nature of presidential elections.
The 10 best shows for music directors, in no particular order, for several reasons By Joseph Church Listing the ten best shows for a music director to work on is as subjective as choosing the ten greatest composers, or painters, or novelists, so it’s worthwhile to stipulate some qualities the winners must have, subjectively speaking. Yet these qualities can only reveal themselves by working through the reasoning of what makes a show a music director’s favorite.
Why green growth? By Jairam Ramesh There is universal acknowledgment of the fact that India needs to come back on the path of high economic growth quickly. Although GDP grew at an unprecedented annual average rate of growth of almost 7.7% during the past decade (the highest for any democracy in the world), the last two years have been disappointing.
Fresh Off the Boat and the language of the Asian-American experience By Sonia Tsuruoka Fresh Off the Boat, the newest addition to ABC’s primetime lineup, has garnered more than its share of attention in the lead-up to its recent debut: based on restaurateur Eddie Huang’s critically-acclaimed memoir, it’s the first sitcom in 20 years since Margaret Cho’s All-American Girl to feature an Asian-American family at its epicenter, assuming a place among the network’s recent crop of 21st-century family comedies, including Modern Family, Blackish, and Cristela.
5 Guys and a Girl pick their all-time favorite NBA All-Stars By Ayana Young As the city buzzes around us in preparation for the 2015 NBA All-Star Weekend, hosted jointly by the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets, we caught up with a few of our office’s basketball fans to reflect on their all-time favorite NBA All-Stars — and their entries in the Oxford African American Studies Center. Without further ado, Oxford University Press New York’s 5 Guys and a Girl weigh in
Love stories of America’s founding friends By Cassandra A. Good On Valentine’s Day, we usually think of romance and great love stories. But there is another type of love we often overlook: love between friends, particularly between men and women in a platonic friendship. This is not a new phenomenon: loving friendships were possible and even fairly common among elite men and women in America’s founding era.
10 fun facts about the harp By Miki Onwudinjo The Harp is a string instrument of very ancient lineage that is synonymous with classical music and cupid’s lyre. Over the years, the harp has morphed from its primitive hunting bow shape to its modern day use in corporate branding. Across the globe, each culture has its own variation of this whimsical soft-sounding instrument. Check out these ten fun facts about the harp.
Self-knowledge: what is it good for? By Quassim Cassam Marvin is a delusional dater. He somehow talked the gorgeous Maria into going on a date with him, and today is the day. Maria is way out of Marvin’s league but he lacks self-knowledge. He thinks he is better looking, better dressed, and more interesting than he really is. Yet his illusions about himself serve a purpose. They give him self-belief and as a result the date goes better than it would have done otherwise. Maria is still out of Marvin’s league, but is at least impressed by his nerve and self-confidence, if not by his conversation.
February is Heart Month February is Heart Month in both the United States and the United Kingdom. It is a time to raise awareness of heart and circulatory diseases. Heart Month highlights all forms of heart disease, from certain life-threatening heart conditions that individuals are born with, to heart attacks and heart failure in later life.
A toast to your unconscious mind By William B. Irvine We like to think that we can control the contents of our mind, but if we watch ourselves think, we will quickly realize that this isn’t so.If you don’t believe me, try this experiment. Sit in a quiet room for five minutes, during which time you stare at a blank wall and try to empty your mind of thoughts.
Antibody cancer therapy: a new age? By Anthony R. Rees In 1998 the biotech company Genentech launched Herceptin for the treatment of certain types of breast cancer. Herceptin was an example of a ‘therapeutic antibody’ and was the first of its type for cancer treatment. Antibodies are proteins in our immune system that can target abnormal cells (or bacteria, toxins, viruses, etc.) in the body, and on arriving at the target can set in motion a whole set of biological events that in principle can remove or degrade to a non-dangerous state the abnormal cells.
5,000 years of the music of romance, courtship, and sex How do you approach the history of love? Is it through psychology and the understanding of emotion? Is it through the great works of literature? Or is it through sound — from the chord that pulls the heart strings to the lyric that melts your heart? But this music has a strange history of its own. We can trace our ‘saccharine’ comments to Ancient Rome and the language of servitude to the Convivencia.
Can love really be addictive? By Mark Griffiths If evidence for love addiction was purely based on the lyrics of pop songs (Robert Palmer, Roxy Music), there would be little doubt that love addiction exists. For those in the academic community who believe in the concept of ‘love addiction’ unsurprisingly define it as the condition in which people become addicted to the feelings of being in love.
The King’s genes By Jonathan Slack On 25 March 2015, 530 years after his death, King Richard III of England will be interred in Leicester Cathedral. This remarkable ceremony is only taking place because of the success of DNA analysis in identifying his skeletal remains. So what sort of genes might a king be expected to have? Or, more prosaically, how do you identify a long dead corpse from its DNA?
Darwin’s dice [infographic] By Curtis Johnson Charles Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection changed the way scientists understand our evolutionary past, and is a concept with which most people are quite familiar. One often overlooked element of Natural Selection, however, is the role chance plays in guiding this process.
The love song and its complex gender history By Ted Gioia A recent study of commercial recordings finds that 90% are attributed to men—and most often men in their peak years of sexual activity. Perhaps this discrepancy is the result of bias in the music industry or among audiences, or maybe a little of both. Or perhaps we can conclude that Darwin was right about music.
What’s love got to do with it? By Kate Thompson The time of year approaches that has gaggles of teenage girls quivering anxiously in school corridors: outwardly bemoaning the late arrival of the postman; while inwardly breathing a huge sigh of relief.
Did you say millions of genomes? By Dawn Field Watching the field of genomics evolve over the past 20 years, it is intriguing to notice the word “genome” cozying up to the word ‘million’. Genomics is moving beyond 1k, 10k and 100k genome projects. A new courtship is blossoming. The Obama Administration has just announced a Million Genomes Project – and it’s not even the first. Now both Craig Venter and Francis Collins, leads of the private and public versions of the Human Genome Project, are working on their million-omes.
We’ll have Manhattan: 10 hits from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart By Dominic Symonds With the catchy melodies of Richard Rodgers’ music, and the cheeky wit of Lorenz Hart’s lyrics, the early collaborative songs of Rodgers-and-Hart are characteristic of 1920s jazz at its finest — and some of the best examples of early classics from the Great American Songbook. Most of the shows from this period have sunk into obscurity, but the songs have stood the test of time. You won’t be able to resist tapping your feet along to these ten great hits!
Our habitat: threshold By Anatoly Liberman One does not have to be a specialist to suggest that threshold is either a disguised compound or that it contains a root and some impenetrable suffix. Disguised compounds are words like bridal (originally, bride + ale but now not even a noun as in the past, because –al was taken for the suffix of an adjective) or barn, a blend of the words for “barley,” of which only b is extant, and Old Engl. earn “house.”
Discussion questions for Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights By Helen Small Last week we announced the launch of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group, and the first book, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Helen Small, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of the book, has put together some helpful discussion questions that will help you gain a deeper understanding of the text as you read it and when you finish it.
Warm father or real man? By Laura King In 1958, the prominent childcare advice writer and paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock told readers that ‘a man can be a warm father and a real man at the same time’. In this revised edition of the bestseller Baby and Child Care, the American author dedicated a whole section to ‘The Father’s Part’.
The economics of chocolate By Johan Swinnen and Mara P. Squicciarini Cocoa and chocolate have a long history in Central America but a relatively short history in the rest of the world. For thousands of years tribes and empires in Central America produced cocoa and consumed drinks based on it. It was only when the Spanish arrived in those regions that the rest of the world learned about it. Initially, cocoa production stayed in the original production regions, but with the local population decimated by war and imported diseases, slave labor was imported from Africa.
Five tips for women and girls pursuing STEM careers By Mariangiola Dezani Many attempts have been made to explain the historic and current lack of women working in STEM fields. During her two years of service as Director of Policy Planning for the U. S. State Department, from 2009 to 2011, Anne-Marie Slaughter suggested a range of strategies for corporate and political environments to help better support women at work. These spanned from social-psychological interventions to the introduction of role models and self-affirmation practices.
An African American in Imperial Russia: the story of Frederick Bruce Thomas By Vladimir Alexandrov Decades before P. Diddy, Jay-Z, and Russell Simmons, there was Frederick Bruce Thomas, known later in his life as Fyodor Fyodorovich Tomas — one of the most successful African-American musical impresarios and businessmen of his generation.
Breath is the basis of good singing By Donald George Giovanni Battista Lamperti (1839 – 1910), one of the first great vocal pedagogues, is quoted as saying in his Maxims that the breath is the basis of good singing. ”What is your approach to breath?” is a simple question, but the answers to this question are anything but simple. Master singers have varying ideas about breath control
Religion and the social determinants of health By Susan R. Holman Is religion a plus or minus when it comes to global health and the “right to health” in the twenty-first century? A little of both, I’d say, but what does that look like? For me the connection is seen most clearly in the “social determinants of health”; that is, “the everyday circumstances in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age.” This post considers a selection of photos that shape how I see social determinants intersecting with religion.
The bicentenary of the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815) By Randall Lesaffer The centenary of the Great War in 2014 has generated impressive public as well as scholarly attention. It has all but overshadowed some other major anniversaries in the history of international relations and law, such as the quarter-centenary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989) or the bicentenary of the Vienna Congress (1814–1815).
Trains of thought: Zac By Timothy Williamson Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Zac’s perspective.
A history of paleontology in China By Zhonghe Zhou Life is the most exquisite natural outcome on our planet and has arisen as an evolutionary experiment that has persisted for the 4.5 billion years since the formation of this planet. The enormous biodiversity we see today represents only a small fraction of life that has existed on earth.
Jonathan Nagler: writing good code By R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler Today’s data scientist must know how to write good code. Regardless of whether they are working with a commercial off-the-shelf statistical software package, R, Python, or Perl, all require the use of good coding practices. Large and complex datasets need lots of manipulation to wrangle them into shape for analytics, statistical estimation often is complex, and presentation of complicated results sometimes requires writing lots of code.
Fighting the threat within By Matthew P. Fitzpatrick The recent attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the siege in Sydney, and the Canadian parliament attack have heightened fears of the type of home-grown security threats that had been realised earlier in the July 2005 London bombings. Looking to the future, security agencies and governments have warned grimly of battle hardened jihadists returning home from Middle Eastern and North African theatres of war.
The impossibility of perfect forgeries? By Roy T Cook Imagine that Banksy, (or J.S.G. Boggs, or some other artist whose name starts with “B”, and who is known for making fake money) creates a perfectly accurate counterfeit dollar bill – that is, he creates a piece of paper that is indistinguishable from actual dollar bills visually, chemically, and in every other relevant physical way. Imagine, further, that our artist looks at his creation and realizes that he has succeeded in creating a perfect forgery. There doesn’t seem to be anything mysterious about such a scenario at first glance – creating a perfect forgery.
Don’t blame Sykes-Picot By James Gelvin What do Glenn Beck, Bashar al-Assad, the Islamic State, and Noam Chomsky have in common? They all place much of the blame for the current crisis in the Middle East on the so-called “Sykes-Picot Agreement,” a plan for the postwar partition of Ottoman territories drawn up during World War I.
Avarice in the late French Renaissance By Jonathan Patterson Greed (avarice, avaritia) has never gone out of fashion. In every age, we find no shortage of candidates for the unenviable epithet, “avaricious.” Nowadays, investment bankers and tax-dodging multinationals head the list. In the past, money-lenders, tax collectors, and lawyers were routinely denounced, although there was a strong feeling that any person, male or female, […]
Why are missionaries in America? By Rebecca Y. Kim Why are there missionaries in America? This is a Christian country!” “We send missionaries out. We don’t bring them in.” “Missionaries in America… I’ve never heard of such a thing.” These were some of the comments I encountered as I conducted research on the phenomena of missionaries in America. Despite these protests, missionaries from outside of the west do come to the United States, seeking to revitalize and evangelize Americans.
On the dark side of devoutness By Elisabeth-Marie Richter and Hubert Wolf The unbelievable story of the Roman convent of Sant’Ambrogio in Rome is about crime and murder, feigned holiness, forbidden sexuality, and the abuse of power over others. Does this controversial story, which casts high dignitaries of the 19th century Catholic Church in a less than flattering light, need to be retold for the 21st century?
Listening on the edge By Mark Cave, Stephen M. Sloan, and Troy Reeves This week, we’re excited to bring you another podcast, featuring Mark Cave, Stephen M. Sloan, and Managing Editor Troy Reeves. Cave and Sloan are the editors of a recently published book, Listening on the Edge: Oral History in the Aftermath of Crisis, which includes stories of practicing oral history in traumatic situations from around the world.
Ethical issues in developing scales for biomedical research By David L. Streiner When we think of ethical issues in bio-medical research (if we think of them at all), what usually comes to mind are either egregious breaches, such as the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, in which treatment was kept from rural black men in order to investigate the natural history of this treatable disease, or questions such as whether it is proper to use prisoners as subjects in early drug testing trials.
Using religious repression to preserve nondemocratic rule By Ani Sarkissian Religious repression—the nonviolent suppression of civil and political rights associated with religion—is a growing and global phenomenon. Though it is most often practiced in authoritarian countries, it nevertheless varies greatly across nondemocratic regimes. In my work, I’ve collected data from more than 100 nondemocratic states to explore the varieties of repression that they impose on religious expression, association, and political activities, describing the obstacles these actions present for democratization, pluralism, and the development of an independent civil society.
Conscience in the contemporary world By Paul Strohm Debates about conscience arise constantly in national and international news. Appropriately so, because these debates provide a vital continuing forum about issues of ethical conduct in our time. A recent and heated debate in the United States concerns the killing of an unarmed African American youth named Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.
Sugar and Sweets – Episode 19 – The Oxford Comment After a long hiatus, we’re excited to announce the re-launch of The Oxford Comment, a podcast originally created by OUP’s very own Lauren Appelwick and Michelle Rafferty in September 2010. In this month’s episode, Max Sinsheimer, a Trade & Reference Editor at the New York office, chats with a few authors to discuss their work on The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets.
Salamone Rossi and the pressure to convert By Don Harrán Near to Salamone Rossi’s time, and working at the Mantuan court, is the harpist Abramino dall’Arpa. His story illustrates the unrelenting pressure brought on Jews to convert and, at the same time, Abramino’s refusal to do so.
Pussy Riot’s real crime was feminism By Valerie Sperling In February 2012 a group of young women wearing balaclavas went into Moscow’s most grandiose Russian Orthodox cathedral and sang about 40 seconds of an anti-Putin song they’d written, before being bodily removed from the premises. Pussy Riot quickly became a household name. The chorus of their “Punk Prayer” prevailed upon the Virgin Mary to kick Putin out of power, and included the line: “Shit, shit, holy shit.”
Teen dating violence: myths vs. facts By Carly Hanks, Amanda Fanniff, and Bruce Bongar Teen dating violence is a major public health concern, with about 1 in 10 teens experiencing physical violence or sexual coercion, and even higher rates of psychological abuse. Some progress toward awareness, prevention, and intervention with these youth has been made.
A timeline of the Reformation By Peter Marshall Whether we like it or not, we are all children of the Reformation. It was a seismic event in history, whose consequences are still working themselves out in Europe and across the world. The protests against the marketing of indulgences staged by the German monk Martin Luther in 1517 belonged to a long-standing pattern of calls for internal reform and renewal in the Christian Church. But they rapidly took a radical and unexpected turn, engulfing first Germany and then Europe as a whole in furious arguments about how God’s will was to be discerned.
Our habitat: one more etymology brought “home” By Anatoly Liberman When it comes to origins, we know as little about the word home as about the word house. Distinguished American linguist Winfred P. Lehmann noted that no Indo-European terminology for even small settlements has been preserved in Germanic. And here an important distinction should be made.
Reading on-screen versus on paper By Naomi S. Baron If over the holidays you received a book, was it digital or printed on paper? E-books (and devices on which to read them) are multiplying like rabbits, as are the numbers of eReading devotees. It’s easy to assume, particularly in the United States, with the highest level of eBook sales worldwide, that the only way this trend can go is up. Yes, there was triple-digit eBook growth in 2009, 2010, and 2011, though by 2014 those figures had settled down into the single digits.
Freedom of the press and global jihad By Jocelyne Cesari Since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo on January 7, the saying (wrongly attributed to Voltaire), “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” has become the motto against radicalism. Unfortunately, this virtuous defense of freedom of speech is not only inefficient but is backfiring.
Quantitative easing comes to Europe By Richard S. Grossman Last month, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced its plans to commence a €60 billion (nearly $70 billion) of quantitative easing (QE) through September 2016. In doing so, it is following in the footsteps of American, British, and Japanese central banks all of which have undertaken QE in recent years. Given the ECB’s actions, now is a good time to review quantitative easing. What is it?
Revising the expectations argument By James Forder The way most economists organize their ideas about the development of macroeconomics says that 1968 was a crucial year in the demise of old-fashioned Keynesianism. That was the year of the publication of Milton Friedman’s Presidential Address for the American Economic Association.
A vision of New York City’s transit system, from 1940-1968 [slideshow] By Andrew J. Sparberg Streetcars “are as dead as sailing ships,” said Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in a radio speech, two days before Madison Avenue’s streetcars yielded to buses. Throughout history, New York City’s mayors have devoted much time and energy to making the transit system as efficient as possible, and able to sustain the City’s growing population.
Announcing the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group We’re excited to announce the launch of the Oxford World’s Classics Reading Group, an online group for everyone who is interested in reading and discussing the classics. The Oxford World’s Classics social media channels will provide a forum for conversation around the chosen book, and every three months we will choose a new work of classic literature for the group to read.
Ballet in black and white: the ‘piano reduction’ By Simon Wright For ballet rehearsals in theatres around the world the piano has long been the musical instrument of choice. To engage orchestras to do the detailed, volatile work required in routine rehearsals would be impractical and prohibitively costly, and only at the dress rehearsal will dancers and the orchestra finally come together. The music at all earlier rehearsals is provided through a specially written version of the score called a ‘piano reduction’.
Selma and re-writing history: Is it a copyright problem? By Eleonora Rosati A few days ago The Hollywood Reporter featured another interesting story concerning Martin Luther King or – to be more precise – his pretty litigious estate. This time the fuss is about already critically acclaimed (The New York Times critic in residence, AO Scott, called it “a triumph of efficient, emphatic cinematic storytelling”) biopic Selma, starring David Oyelowo as the Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.
An estate tax increase some Republicans might support By Edward Zelinsky In his State of the Union address, President Obama proposed several tax increases aimed at affluent taxpayers. The President did not suggest one such increase which some Republicans might be persuaded to support: limit the estate tax deduction for bequests to private foundations.
Groundhogs are more than just prognosticators By Liza Lehrer February 2nd marks Groundhog Day, an annual tradition in which we rouse a sleepy, burrowing rodent to give us winter-weary humans the forecast for spring. Many know little about the true life of a wild groundhog beyond its penchant for vegetable gardens and large burrow entrances.
State responsibility and the downing of MH17 By Mark Gibney Two hundred and ninety-eight passengers aboard Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 were killed when Ukrainian rebels shot down the commercial airliner in July 2014. Because of the rebels’ close ties with the Russian Republic, the international community immediately condemned the Putin regime for this tragedy. Yet, while Russia is certainly deserving of moral and political blame, what is less clear is Russian responsibility under international law.
Trains of thought: Bob By Timothy Williamson Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in. During February, we will be posting a series of extracts that cover the viewpoints of all four characters in Tetralogue. What follows is an extract exploring Bob’s perspective.
A lifetime in the library By Rachel Brook From regular after school browsing trips throughout primary school to attending Leamington Library’s book club as their youngest member, libraries have always provided me with a home away from home. In honour of National Libraries Day, I took a trip down memory lane to play tribute to them.
Let the people speak! Devolution, decentralization, deliberation By Matthew Flinders In the wake of the Scottish referendum on independence the UK is undergoing a rapid period of constitutional reflection and reform. The Smith Commission has set out a raft of new powers for the Scottish Parliament, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has signed a new devolution agreement with Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the Deputy Prime Minister has signed an agreement with Sheffield City Council, and the Cabinet Committee on Devolved Powers has reported on options for change in Westminster.
Thomas Aquinas and God By Gaven Kerr One of the benefits of contemporary atheism is that it has brought to the forefront of modern consciousness the demand that believers offer some reason for the belief that they have. Of course, this demand is nothing new, and it even has scriptural support behind it, with St. Peter insisting that Christians ought always be prepared to give a reason for their hope (1 Peter 3:15).
Free will, libertarianism, and luck By David Palmer Do we have free will? Free will is one of the central topics in philosophy, both historically and in the present. The basic puzzles of this topic are easily felt. For instance, it’s easy to wonder whether factors beyond our control — our genetic constitution, the environment in which we were brought up, and so on — might be among the causes of our behavior. In the light of this, we might wonder whether it’s really possible for us to act freely or, instead, whether everything we do is ultimately shaped by these factors in such a way that undermines our free will.
January 2015 (117))
Catching up with Sara Levine, Multimedia Producer By Sara Levine Another week, another great staff member to get to know. When you think of the world of publishing, the work of videos, podcasts, and animated GIFs doesn’t immediately come to mind. But here at Oxford University Press we have Sara Levine, who joined the Social Media team as a Multimedia Producer just last year.
College Arts Association 2015 Annual Meeting Conference Guide By Joy Mizan The Oxford University Press staff is happy that the College Arts Association 2015 Annual Conference (11-14 February 2015) will be held in our backyard: New York City! So we gathered together to discuss what we’re interested in seeing at this year’s conference, as well as some suggestions for those visiting our city.
Essential considerations for leadership in policing (and beyond) By Bryan Boon There are problems with defining the term ‘leadership’. Leadership often gets confused with the management function because, generally, managers are expected to exhibit some leadership qualities. In essence, leaders are instruments of change, responsible for laying plans both for the moment and for the medium and long-term futures. Managers are more concerned with executing plans on a daily basis, achieving objectives and producing results.
Judicial resistance? War crime trials after World War I By Mark Lewis There was a great change in peace settlements after World War I. Not only were the Central Powers supposed to pay reparations, cede territory, and submit to new rules concerning the citizenship of their former subjects, they were also required to deliver nationals accused of legal violations to the Allies.
Fluorescent proteins and medicine By Marc Zimmer Fluorescent proteins are changing the world. Page through any modern scientific journal and it’s impossible to miss the vibrant images of fluorescent proteins. Bright, colorful photographs not only liven-up scholarly journals, but they also serve as invaluable tools to track HIV, to design chickens that are resistant to bird flu and to confirm the existence of cancerous stem cells.
Rotten fish and Belfast confetti By Guy Woodward Winston Churchill’s Victory broadcast of 13 May 1945, in which he claimed that but for Northern Ireland’s “loyalty and friendship” the British people “should have been confronted with slavery or death”, is perhaps the most emphatic assertion that the Second World War entrenched partition from the southern state and strengthened the political bond between Britain and Northern Ireland.
The 11 explorers you need to know By Stewart A. Weaver The list of explorers that changed the way we see the world is vast, so we asked Stewart A. Weaver, author of Exploration: A Very Short Introduction to highlight some of the most interesting explorers everyone should know more about.
Kin selection, group selection and altruism: a controversy without end? By Samir Okasha I recall a dinner conversation at a symposium in Paris that I organized in 2010, at which a number of eminent evolutionary biologists, economists and philosophers were present. Whenever the topic of “group selection” was brought up, a ferocious argument always seemed to ensue.
Sospiri’s Jenny Forsyth on voice and song By Helena Palmer and Jenny Forsyth Throughout the month, we’ve examining the myriad aspects of the human voice. But who better to discuss it than a singer herself? We asked Jenny Forsyth, member of the Sospiri choir in Oxford, what it takes to be part of a successful choir.
Are the mysterious cycles of sunspots dangerous for us? By Arnab Rai Choudhuri Galileo and some of his contemporaries left careful records of their telescopic observations of sunspots – dark patches on the surface of the sun, the largest of which can be larger than the whole earth. Then in 1844 a German apothecary reported the unexpected discovery that the number of sunspots seen on the sun waxes and wanes with a period of about 11 years. Initially nobody considered sunspots as anything more than an odd curiosity.
Monthly gleanings for January 2015 By Anatoly Liberman I am pleased to report that A Happy New Year is moving along its warlike path at the predicted speed of one day in twenty-four hours and that it is already the end of January. Spring will come before you can say Jack Robinson, as Kipling’s bicolored python would put it, and soon there will be snowdrops to glean. Etymology and spelling are the topics today. Some other questions will be answered in February.
The influence of economists on public policy By Daniel Hirschman and Elizabeth Popp Berman There’s a puzzle around economics. On the one hand, economists have the most policy influence of any group of social scientists. In the United States, for example, economics is the only social science that controls a major branch of government policy (through the Federal Reserve), or has an office in the White House (the Council of Economic Advisers). And though they don’t rank up there with lawyers, economists make a fairly strong showing among prime ministers and presidents, as well.
Their blood cries out to God By George Faithful Not long after the beginning, Genesis tells us that there were two brothers. One killed the other. “And the Lord said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground’” (Gen. 4:10).
Holocaust consciousness must not blind us By Arlene Stein While nascent talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in New York City, we did not learn about it in school, even in lessons about World War II or the waves of immigration to America’s shores. There were no public memorials or museums to the murdered millions, and the genocide of European Jewry was subsumed under talk of “the war.”
The lost stories of Muslims in the Holocaust By Mehnaz M. Afridi On the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and death camp at Auschwitz, I hope we can keep telling the stories of survival and miracles that the victims experienced. But never shall we forget the six million Jews that were murdered. There are many stories of the Shoah (Holocaust) that are told over and over again by survivors, witnesses, and children of survivors.
The inspiration of Alice in Wonderland: 150 years on By Laura Jones This Christmas, London’s Royal Opera House played host to Christopher Wheeldon’s critically acclaimed Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, performed by the Royal Ballet and with a score by Joby Talbot. Indeed, Lewis Carroll’s seminal work Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) has long inspired classical compositions, in forms as diverse as ballet, opera, chamber music, song, as well as, of course, film scores.
A brief history of Data Privacy Law in Asia By Graham Greenleaf This timeline shows the development of data privacy laws across numerous different Asian territories over the past 35 years. In each case it maps the year a data privacy law or equivalent was created, as well as providing some further information about each. It also maps the major guidelines and pieces of legislation from various global bodies, including those mentioned above.
Is London the world’s legal capital? By Richard Fentiman 2015 may be a watershed year for one part of the UK economy—the market for legal services. Much is made of London’s status as the world’s legal capital. This has nothing to do with the legal issues that most people encounter, involving crime, or wills, or houses, or divorce.
Oxford Medicine Online Public health in 2014: a year in review With the Ebola virus outbreak, great debate surrounding electronic cigarettes, and other public health topics in the media headlines, 2014 was a very eventful year for public health. The year also brought many great research articles, blogs, and publications addressing these and other important issues.
Which health messages work? By Brian Wansink Is it better to be positive or negative? Many of the most vivid public health appeals have been negative – “Smoking Kills” or “Drive, Drive, and Die” – but do these negative messages work when it comes to changing eating behavior?
Thoughts in the necropolis By George Pattison Christian and pagan symbols, obelisks, urns, broken columns and overgrown mortuary chapels in classical, Gothic and Byzantine styles record the determination that those who are buried there—the great and the good of 19th century Glasgow—will not be forgotten.
Have we become what we hate? By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel In 1971, William Irvin Thompson, a professor at York University in Toronto, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, “We Become What We Hate,” describing the way in which “thoughts can become inverted when they are reflected in actions.” He cited several scientific, sociocultural, economic, and political situations where the maxim appeared to be true. The physician who believed he was inventing a pill to help women become pregnant had actually invented the oral contraceptive.
Four reasons for ISIS’s success By Robert A. Pape and Sarah Morell ISIS has been successful for four primary reasons. First, the group has tapped into the marginalization of the Sunni population in Iraq to gain territory and local support. Second, ISIS fighters are battle-hardened strategists fighting against an unmotivated Iraqi army.
The myth-eaten corpse of Robert Burns By Gerard Carruthers ‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,’ so wrote the other bard, Shakespeare. Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns, has had a surfeit of biographical attention: upwards of three hundred biographical treatments, and as if many of these were not fanciful enough hundreds of novels, short stories, theatrical, television, and film treatments that often strain well beyond credulity.
Immoral philosophy By Fiona Woollard I call myself a moral philosopher. However, I sometimes worry that I might actually be an immoral philosopher. I worry that there might be something morally wrong with making the arguments I make. Let me explain. When it comes to preventing poverty related deaths, it is almost universally agreed that Peter Singer is one of the good guys. His landmark 1971 article, “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, not only launched a rich new area of philosophical discussion, but also led to millions in donations to famine relief.
Clues, code-breaking, and cruciverbalists: the language of crosswords By Simon Horobin The recent release of The Imitation Game has revealed the important role crosswords played in the recruitment of code-breakers at Bletchley Park. The Daily Telegraph organised a contest in which entrants attempted to solve a puzzle in less than 12 minutes.
Textbook of Post-ICU Medicine Working in the intensive care unit: an interview with Dr. Robert Stevens By Joe Hitchcock and Robert D. Stevens When patients are discharged from the intensive care unit it’s great news for everyone. However, it doesn’t necessarily mean the road to recovery is straight. As breakthroughs and new technology increase the survival rate for highly critical patients, the number of possible further complications rises, meaning life after the ICU can be complex.
The death of Sir Winston Churchill, 24 January 1965 By David Cannadine As anyone knows who has looked at the newspapers over the festive season, 2015 is a bumper year for anniversaries: among them Magna Carta (800 years), Agincourt (600 years), and Waterloo (200 years). But it is January which sees the first of 2015’s major commemorations, for it is fifty years since Sir Winston Churchill died (on the 24th) and received a magnificent state funeral (on the 30th).
The works of Walter Savage Landor By Adam Roberts Though he’s largely forgotten today, Walter Savage Landor was one of the major authors of his time—of both his times, in fact, for he was long-lived enough to produce major writing during both the Romantic and the Victorian eras. He kept writing and publishing promiscuously through his long life (he died in his ninetieth year) which puts him in a unique category. Maybe the problem is that he outlived his own reputation. Byron, Shelly and Keats all died in their twenties, and this fact somehow seals-in their importance as poets.
Building community and ecoliteracy through oral history By Andrew Shaffer For our second blog post of 2015, we’re looking back at a great article from Katie Kuszmar in OHR 41.2, “From Boat to Throat: How Oral Histories Immerse Students in Ecoliteracy and Community Building.” In the article, Katie discussed a research trip she and her students used to record the oral histories of local fishing practices and to learn about sustainable fishing and consumption. We followed up with her over email to see what we could learn from high school oral historians, and what she has been up to since the article came out.
An interactive timeline of the history of anaesthesia The field of anaesthesia is a subtle discipline, when properly applied the patient falls gently asleep, miraculously waking-up with one less kidney or even a whole new nose. Today, anaesthesiologists have perfected measuring the depth and risk of anaesthesia, but these breakthroughs were hard-won.
The Vegetarian Plant By Alun Salt Meet Utricularia. It’s a bladderwort, an aquatic carnivorous plant, and one of the fastest things on the planet. It can catch its prey in a millisecond, accelerating it up to 600g.
Immigration in the American west By Stephen Aron The headline reads: “Border State Governor Issues Dire Warning about Flood of Undocumented Immigrants.” And here’s the gist of the story: In a letter to national officials, the governor of a border state sounded another alarm about unchecked immigration across a porous boundary with a neighboring country. In the message, one of several from border state officials, the governor acknowledged that his/her nation had once welcomed immigrants from its neighbor, but recent events taught how unwise that policy was.
Insecticide, the fall armyworm, and maize in Mexico By Carlos A. Blanco From the comfort of a desk, looking at a computer screen or the printed page of a newspaper, it is very easy to ignore the fact that thousands of tons of insecticide are sprayed annually. Consider the problem of the fall armyworm in Mexico. As scientists and crop advisors, we’ve worked for the past two decades trying to curb its impact on corn yield.
The quintessential human instrument By Jessica Barbour The neat thing about the voice is that, while we don’t usually change the material, the shape is very flexible, and we can manipulate it to change our timbre. Overtone singing like Hefele’s takes an element of vocal sound and turns it into a new sort of instrument, inverting the typical relationship between instrument and timbre.
Mental contamination in obsessive-compulsive disorder By Anna Coughtrey and Emily Booker When we think of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short, lots of examples spring to mind. For example, someone who won’t shake your hand, touch a door handle, or borrow your pen without being compelled to wash their hands, all because of a fear of germs.
Celebrating women in STEM By Charley James It is becoming widely accepted that women have, historically, been underrepresented and often completely written out of work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Explanations for the gender gap in STEM fields range from genetically-determined interests, structural and territorial segregation, discrimination, and historic stereotypes. With free Oxford University Press content, we tell the stories and share the research of both famous and forgotten women.
Our habitat: house By Anatoly Liberman It is astounding how mysterious the origin of such simple words as man, wife, son, god, house, and others like them is. They are old, even ancient, and over time their form has changed very little, sometimes not at all, so that we do not have to break through a thicket of sound laws to restitute their initial form.
Just one of the millions of victims of his World Communist Revolution By Philip A. Mackowiak Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) died on this day 90 years ago with cerebral vessels so calcified that when tapped with tweezers, they sounded like stone. He was only 53. He hadn’t smoked and, in fact, had prohibited smoking in his presence.
Oppress Muslims in the West. Extremists are counting on it. By Justin Gest In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, the Islamophobia pervading Western democracies is the best recruitment tool for violent extremists. Reports abound about anti-Islam protests, assaults of Muslim civilians, and movements to impose greater surveillance on Western Muslim communities […]
Gender inequality in the labour market in the UK By Giovanni Razzu The analysis of gender inequality in labour market outcomes has received substantial attention from academics of various disciplines. The distinct literatures have explored, often from differing perspectives and approaches, the various forms of inequality women experience in the labour market.
The economics behind detecting terror plots By Edward H. Kaplan How many good guys are needed to catch the bad guys? This is the staffing question faced by counterterrorism agencies the world over. While government officials are quick to proclaim “zero tolerance” for terrorism, unlimited resources are not made available to prevent terror attacks, nor should that be the case. Indeed, as with most public policy decisions, the appropriate staffing level depends upon both the benefits and costs of fielding counterterrorism agents.
Does the class come out of the person after the person comes out of the class? By Jessi Streib Does the class come out of the person after the person comes out of the class? This question asks us to think about social class inequality in a new way. It asks us to think not only of how much inequality exists in the United States, but how long inequality affects individuals.
Salamone Rossi as a Jew among Gentiles By Don Harrán As a Jewish musician working for the Mantuan court, and competing for the favors that its Christian musicians and composers hoped to gain, it was only inevitable for Rossi to have been considered an intruder.
Top 10 commercial law cases of 2014 By Miranda Dobson 2014 was an eventful year in commercial law, but what were the top most significant cases? Read our run-down of the biggest cases from the past 12 months. For example, in December 2014, Apple won a long-running class action that was brought against them in 2005.
Martin Luther King, Jr. on courage, equality, and justice By Elizabeth Knowles Each January, Americans commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., reflecting on the enduring legacy of the legendary civil rights activist. From his iconic speech at the Civil Rights March of 1963, to his final oration in Memphis, Tennessee, King is remembered not only as a masterful rhetorician, but a luminary for his generation and many generations to come. These quotes, compiled from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, demonstrate the reverberating impact of this work, particularly in a time of great social, political, and economic upheaval.
Replication redux and Facebook data By Nathaniel Beck Introduction, from Michael Alvarez, co-editor of Political Analysis Recently I asked Nathaniel Beck to write about his experiences with research replication. His essay, published on 24 August 2014 on the OUPblog, concluded with a brief discussion of a recent experience of his when he tried to obtain replication data from the authors of a recent […]
Sovereign equality today By Umut Özsu To speak of sovereign equality today is to invite disdain, even outright dismissal. In an age that has become accustomed to compiling “indicators“ of “state failure”, revalorizing nineteenth-century rhetoric about “great powers”, and circumventing established models of statehood with a nebulous “responsibility to protect”, sovereign equality seems little more than a throwback to a simpler, less complicated era.
Of black holes, naked singularities, and quantum gravity By Pankaj S. Joshi Modern science has introduced us to many strange ideas on the universe, but one of the strangest is the ultimate fate of massive stars in the Universe that reached the end of their life cycles. Having exhausted the fuel that sustained it for millions of years of shining life in the skies, the star is no longer able to hold itself up under its own weight, and it then shrinks and collapses catastrophically unders its own gravity. Modest stars like the Sun also collapse at the end of their life, but they stabilize at a smaller size.
Seeing things the way they are By John R. Searle A few really disastrous mistakes have dominated Western philosophy for the past several centuries. The worst mistake of all is the idea that the universe divides into two kinds of entities, the mental and the physical (mind and body, soul and matter). A related mistake, almost as bad, is in our philosophy of perception. All of the great philosophers of the present era, beginning with Descartes, made the same mistake, and it colored their account of knowledge and indeed their account of pretty much everything.
ISIS’s unpredictable revolution By Charles Kurzman Revolutions have been surprising experts for generations. After the Iranian Revolution of 1979, for example, the CIA commissioned a report into why it had predicted, 100 days before the fall of the monarchy, that the Shah’s regime would ride out the protests. During the “Arab Spring” uprisings in 2011, President Obama reportedly chastized the intelligence community for not having warned him in advance.
World Religion Day 2015 By Alex Guyver Today, 18 January 2015 marks World Religion Day across the globe. The day was created by the Baha’i faith in 1950 to foster dialogue and to and improve understanding of religions worldwide and is now in its 64th year. The aim of World Religion Day is to unite everyone, whatever their faith, by showing us all that there are common foundations to all religions and that together we can help humanity and live in harmony. The day often includes activities and events calling the attention of the followers of world faiths.
Why causality now? By Frederica Russo and Phyllis Illari Head hits cause brain damage, but not always. Should we ban sport to protect athletes? Exposure to electromagnetic fields is strongly associated with cancer development. Should we ban mobile phones and encourage old-fashioned wired communication? The sciences are getting more and more specialized and it is difficult to judge whether, say, we should trust homeopathy, fund a mission to Mars, or install solar panels on our roofs.
Hey everybody! Meet Sonia! By Sonia Tsuruoka Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Sonia Tsuruoka, who joined the gang in January 2015 as an OUPblog Editor and Social Media Marketing Assistant! She has been working at OUP since June 2014.
What is it like to be depressed? By Matthew Ratcliffe How are we to understand experiences of depression? First of all, it is important to be clear about what the problem consists of. If we don’t know what depression is like, why can’t we just ask someone who’s depressed?
Fear vs terror: signal crimes, counter-terrorism, and the Charlie Hebdo killings By Martin Innes Signal crimes change how we think, feel, and act — altering perceptions of the distribution of risks and threats in the world. Sometimes, as with the recent assassinations and mass shootings in France, sending a message is the intention of the criminal act.
Are wolves endangered with extinction in Alaska? By Matt Cronin Wolves in the panhandle of southeast Alaska are currently being considered as an endangered species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in response to a petition by environmental groups. These groups are proposing that the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) subspecies that inhabits the entire region and a distinct population segment of wolves on Prince of Wales Island are threatened or endangered with extinction.
Is yoga Hindu? By Andrea Jain Given that we see yoga practically everywhere we turn, from strip-mall yoga studios to advertisements for the Gap, one might assume a blanket acceptance of yoga as an acceptable consumer choice. Yet, a growing movement courts fear of the popularization of yoga, warning that yoga is essentially Hindu.
A Motown music playlist More than half a century after its founding, Motown is still remembered by fans, musicians, and historians as the mover and shaker of its generation. From The Temptations’ “My Girl” to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” its reverberating influence is recognized even today, echoed in modern hits like Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ wildly popular “Uptown Funk.”
Introducing Anaesthesia “Sorry mate, I didn’t see you”: perceptual errors and inattentional blindness By Paul Greig “Sorry mate, I didn’t see you”. It’s a common refrain heard after many a road-traffic collision, describing the frequent type of motorbike accident when a car pulls out at an intersection. It turns out that these sorts of events might be more complicated than they first appear. These sorts of situational awareness failures may in fact result from a well-described, but not well-known, psychological phenomenon called inattentional blindness.
‘Persia’ and the western imagination By A M Ansari Iran has long had a difficult relationship with the West. Ever since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 overthrew the monarchy and established an Islamic Republic, Iran has been associated in the popular consciousness with militant Islam and radical anti-Westernism. ‘Persia’ by contrast has long been a source of fascination in the Western imagination eliciting both awe and contempt that only familiarity can bring.
Gait disturbances can help to predict dementia in older adults By Manuel Montero Odasso About 500,000 Canadians are living with Alzheimer’s disease or a related dementia. This number is expected to soar to 1.1 million within 25 years. To date, there is no definitive way for health care professionals to forecast the onset of dementia in a patient with memory complaints.
Women’s contributions to the making of Motown: Solo artists By Larvester Gaither Starting in the early 1960s, female artists embarked upon solo careers with the Motown label. The first to be signed to the label was Mable John, a blues vocalist born in Bastrop, Louisiana. Slow melodic songs like “No Love” and “Who Wouldn’t Love a Man Like That” stood firmly in the blues genre yet only appealed to a limited, mature audience and did not translate into commercial success.
Our favourite brews for Hot Tea Month By Joe Couling Tea, tea glorious tea! When hot water hits the leaves of the tea plant, an alchemical reaction takes place producing an invigorating and refreshing cupful of pure bliss. Originating in the East, for thousands of years tea was a bitter medicinal draft. Finally, in the 17th century tea came of age with the historic addition of milk and sugar. This match-made-in-heaven oiled the wheels of the British Empire and it developed more than just a passing fancy for the beverage, swilling down its heavenly hot-and-wetness by the drum-load!
Tensions in French Muslim identities By Arne L. Kalleberg, Erik Bleich, and Rahsaan Daniel Maxwell The recent tragedies in France have reminded us of the tensions that are often associated with the relations between religious groups and the larger society. A recent article in Social Forces, explores whether Islam fundamentally conflicts with mainstream French society, and whether Muslims are more attached to their religion than they are to their French identity.
Our habitat: dwelling By Anatoly Liberman A dwelling is, obviously, a place in which someone dwells. Although the word is transparent , the verb dwell is not. Only its derivation poses no problems. Some verbs belong to the so-called causative group. They mean “to make do or to cause to do.”
The Ku Klux Klan in history and today By David Cunningham Before discussing the most pressing questions people tend to have about the KKK, let me add some background for basic context. The Ku Klux Klan was first formed in 1866, through the efforts of a small band of Confederate veterans in Tennessee. Quickly expanding from a localized membership, the KKK has become perhaps the most resonant representation of white supremacy and racial terror in the U.S.
Women’s contributions to the making of Motown: Girl Groups By Larvester Gaither The Marvelettes, a girl group consisting of Gladys Horton, Katherine Anderson, Georgeanna Tillman, Juanita Cowart and Wanda Young, recorded Motown’s first number one pop hit, “Please Mr. Postman.” The upbeat song topped both the pop and R&B charts, making the Marvelettes one of the first all-girl groups in the industry to achieve such a feat.
Career horizons for women By Laurie Cohen When back in the 1990s I started doing research into women’s careers I was struck by how many respondents apologized for not having had a ‘career plan’ or indeed for not having a career at all. When I returned to these respondents seventeen years later I was curious about what had happened to their dreams, and wondered if they had been fulfilled, or somehow shattered.
Time as a representation in physics By A. R. P. Rau A previous piece (“Patterns in Physics”) discussed alternative “representations” in physics as akin to languages, an underlying quantum reality described in either a position or a momentum representation. Both are equally capable of a complete description, the underlying reality itself residing in a complex space with the very concepts of position/momentum or wave/particle only relevant in a “classical limit”. The history of physics has progressively separated such incidentals of our description from what is essential to the physics itself.
British lives by the numbers January 2015 sees the addition of 226 biographies to the Oxford DNB, offering the lives of those who have played their part in shaping British history between the late 20th and early 21st century. The sectors and professions each of these individuals influenced range from medicine to film, including Nobel Prize and Oscar winners.
The Civil Rights era and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan In the 1960s, the South, was rife with racial tension. The Supreme Court had just declared, in its landmark case Brown vs. Board of Education, that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, and the country was in the midst of a growing Civil Rights Movement.
In memoriam: Lawrence Gushee By Adam Cohen Oxford University Press is saddened to report the passing of noted jazz scholar Lawrence Gushee on 6 January 2015. A Professor of Music at the University of Illinois for over 20 years, he held the title of Emeritus Professor of Music at Illinois since 1997.
Women’s contributions to the making of Motown: The Duets By Larvester Gaither Perhaps no other record label in America’s music history performed a more significant role in fashioning Rhythm and Blues’ assimilation into the country’s popular culture than Motown Records. Founded by Detroit songwriter Berry Gordy, Jr. in 1959, Motown (originally named Tamla Records) began producing hit records almost from its inception and continued to do so throughout the sixties.
35 years CISG and beyond By Christopher Wogan The University of Basel, the Swiss Association for International Law (SVIR/SSDI) and UNCITRAL are hosting a special conference which will mark 35 years of the Convention on the International Sale of Goods (CISG), from 29th-30th January 2015. In this conference, special focus will be given to open issues in regard to the CISG’s application and any possible further harmonization and unification of contract law.
Charlie Hebdo and the end of the French exception By Christopher Hill Today many are asking why Parisians have been attacked in their own city, and by their own people. But for many years the question for those following the issues of foreign policy and religion was why France had suffered so little terrorism in comparison to other European states.
Transforming the police through science By David Weisburd and Peter Neyroud Amidst the images of burning vehicles and riots in Ferguson, Missouri, the US President, Barack Obama, has responded to growing concerns about policing by pledging to spend $75 million to equip his nation’s police with 50,000 Body Worn Videos. His initiative will give added impetus to an international movement to make street policing more transparent and accountable. But is this just another example of a political and technical quick fix or a sign of a different relationship between the police and science?
An Interview with Motown the Musical Director Charles Randolph-Wright On 12 January 1959, Berry Gordy, Jr. founded Tamla Records in Detroit, Michigan. A year later it would be incorporated with a new name that became synonymous with a sound, style, and generation of music: Motown. All this week we’re looking the great artists and tracks that emerged from those recording studios.
Ominous synergies: Iran’s nuclear weapons and a Palestinian state By Louis René Beres For Israel, long beleaguered on many fronts, Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood are progressing at approximately the same pace. Although this simultaneous emergence is proceeding without any coordinated intent, the combined security impact on Israel will still be considerable.
New lives added to the Oxford DNB include Amy Winehouse, Elizabeth Taylor, and Claude Choules By Sir David Cannadine The New Year brings with it a new instalment of Oxford DNB biographies which, as every January, extend the Dictionary’s coverage of people who shaped British life in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. This January we add biographies of 226 men and women who died during 2011. These new biographies were commissioned by my predecessor as editor, Lawrence Goldman, but having recently assumed the editor’s chair, I take full and appreciative responsibility for introducing them.
Words of 2014 Round-up By Alice Northover Word of the Year season closed this weekend with the annual meeting of the American Dialect Society. As usual, major news stories dominated selections, but there has been a notable uptick in social media-related choices. It is interesting to note how hashtags are becoming more prevalent with #IndyRef as a common runner-up, and #dirtypolitics and #blacklivesmatter winning the title.
Ideology and a conducive political environment By Shadi Hamid ISIS is a “revolutionary” organization in a way that al-Qaeda and other like-minded extremist groups never were, and never really wanted to be. The “caliphate” — the historical political entity governed by Islamic law and tradition — might have been an inspiration as well as an aspiration, but it wasn’t actually going to happen in real life.
Accusation breeds guilt By Roy T Cook One of the central tasks when reading a mystery novel (or sitting on a jury, etc.) is figuring out which of the characters are trustworthy. Someone guilty will of course say they aren’t guilty, just like the innocent – the real question in these situations is whether we believe them. The guilty party – let’s call her Annette – can try to convince us of her trustworthiness by only saying things that are true, insofar as such truthfulness doesn’t incriminate her.
Credulity and credibility in police work By P.A.J. Waddington ‘Never waste a good crisis’, or so Rahm Emanuel (President Obama’s former Chief of Staff and now Mayor of Chicago) is reputed to have said. Well, whether Prince Andrew allegedly had sex with an underage girl at some time in the distant past looks like a crisis for the Royal Household. May be it’s an opportunity not to be wasted.
Walking in a winter wonderland . . . of words By Christine A. Lindberg Where I live in New York State, about two hours north of the Pennsylvania border, the transition from one season to the next is rarely (if ever) coincidental with the astronomical designation applied to it. Of the four annual calendar dates of seasonal shift, none is more laughable to us in the Leatherstocking Region than the winter solstice.
What’s it like to be a PCSO? By Steven England It’s important to preface any examination of a ‘typical day’ as a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) with the reminder that the role responsibilities are remarkably varied. The role is interpreted, empowered, and utilised in different ways across each individual constabulary, which is reflected in a number of ways, from the different powers invested with PCSOs by a Chief Constable, to the uniforms that they wear during the course of duty.
Using voice recognition software in oral history transcription By Andrew Shaffer and Samantha Snyder I sat down with Samantha Snyder, a Student Assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, to talk about her work. From time to time, the UW Archives has students test various voice recognition programs, and for the last few months Samantha has been testing the software program Dragon NaturallySpeaking. This is an innovative way of processing oral histories, so we were excited to hear how it was going.
On the notion of a “creator” of modern yoga By Andrea Jain Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) was a nineteenth-century Hindu reformer, missionary to the United States, and Indian nationalist who constructed and disseminated a system of modern yoga, which he called raja yoga. Yoga insiders and certain scholars of the history of yoga have frequently identified him as the “creator” or “father” of modern yoga, but that is just not accurate.
Making the case for history in medical education By David Jones, Jacalyn Duffin, Jeremy Greene, and John Harley Warner Teachers at medical schools have struggled with a basic problem for decades: they want their students not just to be competent doctors, but to be excellent ones. If you understand a little history, you can see why this is such a challenge.
Minerals, molecules, and microbes By David Vaughan The study of minerals is the most fundamental aspect of the Earth and environmental sciences. Minerals existed long before any forms of life. They have played an important role in the origin and evolution of life and interact with biological systems in ways we are only now beginning to understand. One of the most rapidly developing areas in what is now called ‘geobiology’ concerns the role of microbes in processes both of mineral formation and destruction.
Elvis: a life in pictures Today 8 January, would have been Elvis Presley’s 80th birthday. In remembrance of his fascinating life we’re sharing a slideshow from the beautiful images in Elvis Presley: A Southern Life by Joel Williamson.
Vernon and Gladys By Joel Williamson Today, 8 January, is the 80th birthday of Elvis Presley. Born to Vernon Elvis Presley and Gladys Love Presley (née Smith) in 1935, the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ left an indelible mark on American popular culture. In celebration, we present a brief extract from Elvis Presley: A Southern Life by Joel Williamson.
Physics Project Lab: How to create the domino effect By Paul Gluck Many dominoes may be stacked in a row separated by a fixed distance, in all sorts of interesting formations. A slight push to the first domino in the row results in the falling of the whole stack. This is the domino effect, a term also used in figuratively in a political context. You can use this amusing phenomenon to carry out a little project in physics.
Monthly gleanings for December 2014, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Although I am still in 2014, as the title of this post indicates, in the early January one succumbs to the desire to say something memorable that will set the tone to the rest of the year. So I would like to remind everybody that in 1915 James Murray, the first and greatest editor of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) or New English Dictionary (NED), died.
Exploring the best of Portland, Oregon during LSA 2015 Conference By Carrie Napolitano and Jenny Catchings The Linguistics Society of America’s Annual Conference takes place from Thursday, January 8th – Sunday, January 11th at the Hilton Portland & Executive Tower in Portland, Oregon. This meeting will bring together linguists from all over the world for a weekend filled with presentations, films, mini-courses, panels, and more.
One regulation too few By Richard S. Grossman Burdensome, costly, and—let’s face it—just plain stupid government regulation is all around us. And even well-meaning, reasonably well-designed regulations can impose costs all out of proportion with their benefits.
Rip it up and start again By Matthew Flinders ‘London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down; London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady’. ‘Oh no it’s not!’ I hear you all scream with oodles of post-Christmas pantomime cheer but Parliament is apparently falling down. A number of restoration and renewal studies of the Palace of Westminster have provided the evidence with increasingly urgency. The cost of rebuilding the House? A mere two billion pounds! If it was any other building in the world its owners would be advised to demolish and rebuild.
#Force2015 – back to the future of scholarly communications By Richard O’Beirne This year marks the 350th anniversary of the scholarly journal, as recorded by the first publication of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions in 1665. In a dedicatory epistle to the Society’s Fellows and the Introduction, editor Henry Oldenburg set forth its purpose to inform the scientific community of the latest and most valuable discoveries.
Cold War air hijackers and US-Cuban relations By Teishan Latner In 1968, as the world convulsed in an era of social upheaval, Cuba unexpectedly became a destination for airplane hijackers. The hijackers were primarily United States citizens or residents. Commandeering aircraft from the United States to Cuba over ninety times between 1968 and 1973, Americans committed more air hijackings during this period than all other global incidents combined.
The top five tips for making a difference (and some money) as a classical singer in 2015 By Susan Mohini Kane If you are a singer who has a degree in vocal performance, then you are ready to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life by singing in the world now. If you are a voice teacher or coach, you will recognize the need for your students to make a difference in the world with their singing and even make some money.
Why must we pay attention to the law of pension trusts? By David Pollard Little has been written on the subject of pension trusts, and the ways in which pension laws and trust laws interact. As academic subjects, the issues of the purpose of a pension trust, employer duties, and the duties of directors of trustee companies have long been under-represented. However, pension trust law is a technical area that requires more attention, and is also considered to be an exciting area of law that has been ignored in academia for too long.
Congress should amend and enact the Marketplace Fairness Act By Edward Zelinsky The “lame duck” session of the 113th Congress managed to avoid a shutdown of the federal government, but did not accomplish much else. Among the unfinished business left for the new, 114th Congress assembling this month is the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA). The MFA would permit states to require out-of-state Internet and mail order sellers […]
Stardust making homes in space By Iris Schrijver and Karel Schrijver Although we rarely stop to think about the origin of the elements of our bodies, we are directly connected to the greater universe. In fact, we are literally made of stardust that was liberated from the interiors of dying stars in gigantic explosions, and then collected to form our Earth as the solar system took shape some 4.5 billion years ago.
The shape of our galaxy By Alex R. Pettitt Many of you have likely seen the beautiful grand spiral galaxies captured by the likes of the Hubble space telescope. Images such as those below of the Pinwheel and Whirlpool galaxies display long striking spiral arms that wind into their centres.
ISIS is an outcome of a much bigger problem By Hanin Ghaddar To answer this question, one has to go back to the roots of this organization. ISIS did not come from a vacuum, and it is not this shadowy bunch of militants that mysteriously managed to control large areas of Iraq and Syria. ISIS has been around for a very long time, and its roots go deeper than its current military achievements.
A very short trivia quiz By Daniel Parker and Hannah Charters In order to celebrate Trivia Day, we have put together a quiz with questions chosen at random from Very Short Introductions online. This is the perfect quiz for those who know a little about a lot. The topics range from Geopolitics to Happiness, and from French Literature to Mathematics. Do you have what it takes to take on this very short trivia quiz and become a trivia master? Take the quiz to find out.
Speak of the Devil: Satan in imaginative literature By Greg Garrett Al Pacino is John Milton. Not John Milton the writer of Paradise Lost, although that is the obvious in-joke of the movie The Devil’s Advocate (1997). No, this John Milton is an attorney and — in what thus might be another obvious in-joke — he is also Satan, the Prince of Darkness. In the movie, he hires a fine young defense attorney, Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves), and offers him an escalating set of heinous — and high-profile — cases to try, a set of ever-growing temptations if you will. What will happen to Kevin in the trials to come?
Atheism: Above all a moral issue By Michael Ruse The New Atheists – Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens – are not particularly comfortable people. The fallacies in their arguments beg to be used in classes on informal reasoning. The narrowness of their perspectives are remarkable even by the standards of modern academia. The prejudices against those of other cultures would be breathtaking even in the era when Britannia ruled the waves. But there is a moral fervor unknown outside the pages of the Old Testament. And for this, we can forgive much.
Meet Ellen Carey, Senior Marketing Executive for Social Sciences By Eleanor Jackson From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into work in our offices around the globe, so we are excited to bring you an interview with Ellen Carey, Senior Marketing Executive for Social Sciences books. Ellen started working at Oxford University Press in February 2013 in Law Marketing, before moving to the Academic Marketing team.
The afterlife of the Roman Senate By Catherine Steel When the Senate of the Free City of Krakow oversaw the renovation of the main gate to the Royal Castle in 1827, it commemorated its action with an inscription: SENATUS POPULUSQUE CRACOVIENSIS RESTITUIT MDCCCXXVII. The phrase ‘Senatus Populusque Cracoviensis’ [the Senate and People of Krakow], and its abbreviation SPQC, clearly and consciously invoked comparison with ancient Rome and its structures of government.
Getting to know Reference Editor Robert Repino In an effort to introduce readers to our global staff and life here at Oxford University Press, we are excited to bring you an interview with Robert Repino, an editor in the reference department. His debut novel, Mort(e), will publish in January with Soho Press.
The commodification and anti-commodification of yoga By Andrea Jain Nearly all of us who live in urban areas across the world know someone who “does yoga” as it is colloquially put. And should we choose to do it ourselves, we need not travel farther than a neighborhood strip mall to purchase a yoga mat or attend a yoga class.
Residency training and specialty mis-match By Kenneth M. Ludmerer The country has long had too many specialists and subspecialists, so the common wisdom holds. And, the common wisdom continues, the fault lies with the residency system, which overemphasizes specialty medicine and devalues primary care, in flagrant disregard of the nation’s needs.
Misunderstanding World War II By Gerhard L. Weinberg The Second World War affected me quite directly, when along with the other students of the boarding school in Swanage on the south coast of England I spent lots of time in the air raid shelter in the summer of 1940. A large German bomb dropped into the school grounds fortunately did not explode so that we survived.
Top ten OUPblog posts of 2014 by the numbers By Alice Northover We’re kicking off the new year with a retrospective on our previous one. What was drawing readers to the OUPblog in 2014? Apparently, a passion for philosophy and a passion for lists. Here’s our top posts published in the last year, in descending order, as judged by the total number of pageviews they attracted.
Bob Hope, North Korea, and film censorship By Charles S. Young Seth Rogen isn’t the only actor to have a film about North Korea nixed: A script helmed by Bob Hope met a similar fate in 1954. If US government sources are correct, North Korea cowed Sony Pictures into withholding a bawdy comedy about assassinating supreme leader Kim Jong-un.
The practical genomics revolution By Dawn Field NHS England is creating 11 Genomic Medicine Centres designed to deliver its ambitious 100,000 Genomes Project. In the broader sense it is an undeniable sign that genomics is poised to transform human medicine by improving the efficacy of medical diagnosis and personalized treatment. This is a major step in the implementation of the Genomics England […]
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Monthly etymology gleanings for December 2014, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman My post on laughing attracted two comments: an alleged counterexample from an Icelandic saga and a veritable flood of vituperation. The second writer was so disgusted that he could not even make himself finish reading the essay.
Nine pieces of thought-provoking philosophy By Connie Ngo Despite what some may believe, philosophy is prevalent and holds a great level of importance in today’s society. It allows us to examine the most fundamental issues that we face as self-aware beings and apply them to a variety of different topics, from free-will to politics to interpretation.
Making choices between policies and real lives By Barbara Hobson Wrapping up 2014, the EU year of Workplace Reinvention, once again brings Worklife Balance (WLB) policies into focus. These policies, including parental leave, rights to reduced hours, and flexible work hours, are now part of European law and national laws inside and outside of Europe. For example, Japan has similar WLB policies in place.
Physics Project Lab: How to investigate the phenomena surrounding rubber bands By Paul Gluck Rubber bands are unusual objects, and behave in a manner which is counterintuitive. Their properties are reflected in characteristic mechanical, thermal and acoustic phenomena. Such behavior is sufficiently unusual to warrant quantitative investigation in an experimental project. A well-known phenomenon is the following. When you stretch a rubber band suddenly and immediately touch your lips with it, it feels warm, the rubber band gives off heat.
The “comfort women” and Japan’s honor By Peipei Qiu Tan Yuhua was sixteen when the Imperial Japanese Army raided her hometown in Hunan Province in 1944. Her father, unable to move quickly because of a disabled leg, was easy prey. Forcing him to kneel, the soldiers threatened to kill him with a sword. Tan Yuhua couldn’t help crying out from her hiding place, so she too was caught.
AHA 2015: Kicking off the new year with the American Historical Association and OUP To kick off 2015, the American Historical Association’s 129th Annual Meeting will take place in New York City from January 2-January 5. We’re thrilled to ring in the new year with 5000 historians in the city we are proud to call our USA headquarters. As you finish packing your bags, we’ve put together an OUP guide to the conference.
How the US government invented and exploited the “patent troll” hold-up myth By John Howells and Ron D. Katznelson A patent like other property rights is a right to exclude others and not a right or an obligation to make the patented invention. Yet today there is a growing campaign by certain industry sectors and the government against patent holders that do not make any products but enforce their patent rights for licensing revenues, often pejoratively called patent “trolls.”
Adderall and desperation By Rob Goodman “Butler Library smells like Adderall and desperation.” That note from a blogger at Columbia University isn’t exactly scientific. But it speaks to the atmosphere that settles in around exam time here, and at other competitive universities.
Defining the humanities By Scott A. Trudell In December 2014, OxfordDictionaries.com added numerous new words and definitions to their database, and we invited experts to comment on the new entries. Below, Scott A. Trudell, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park, discusses digital humanities.
International Law at Oxford in 2014 International law has faced profound challenges in 2014 and the coming year promises further complex changes. For better or worse, it’s an exciting time to be working in international law at Oxford University Press. Before 2014 comes to a close, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect on the highlights of another year gone by.
Ventriloquists, female impersonators, the genuine article? By Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner Among the earliest, most challenging inventors of troubadour lyric, Marcabru composed songs for the courts of southwestern France during the second quarter of the twelfth century, calling knights to crusade, castigating false lovers, defining and refining courtly values…
Techno-magic: Cinema and fairy tale By Marina Warner Movie producers have altered the way fairy tales are told, but in what ways have they been able to present an illusion that once existed only in the pages of a story? Below is an excerpt from Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time that explores the magic that movies bring to the tales.
Group belief By Jennifer Lackey Groups are often said to believe things. For instance, we talk about PETA believing that factory farms should be abolished, the Catholic Church believing that the Pope is infallible, and the US government believing that people have the right to free speech. But how can we make sense of a group believing something?
Alternative access models in academic publishing By Brian Hughes Disseminating scholarship is at the heart of the Oxford University Press mission and much of academic publishing. It drives every part of publishing strategy—from content acquisition to sales. What happens, though, when a student, researcher, or general reader discovers content that they don’t have access to?
Orphants to foster kids: a century of Annie By Jessie Strasbaugh One of the best-known musicals of the 20th century is Annie, which tells the story of a plucky orphan girl who warms the hearts of all around her, and eventually finds a loving family of her own.
Embark on six classic literary adventures By Connie Ngo Despite fierce winds, piles of snow, and the biting cold, winter is the best season for some cozy reading (and drinking hot chocolate). If you’re inclined to stay in today, check out these favorite classics of ours that will take you on wild adventures, all while huddled underneath your sheets.
Is yoga religious? By Andrea Jain Many outsiders to contemporary popularized yoga profoundly trivialize it by reducing it to a mere commodity of global market capitalism and to impotent borrowings from or “rebrandings” of traditional, authentic religious products. In other words, according to this account, popularized yoga can be reduced to mere commodities meant to fulfill utilitarian needs or meet hedonistic desires.
What do nurses really do? Nurses play a huge role in hospitals, clinics, and various care facilities throughout the world. But, there are some misconceptions about what responsibilities nurses have. Nurses are saving lives and making a difference every day in health care with little recognition from the media or the world at large. Test your knowledge and see how much you really know about what goes into the job of being a nurse.
Discovering microbiology By Nicholas P. Money Microbiology should be part of everyone’s educational experience. European students deserve to know something about the influence of microscopic forms of life on their existence, as it is at least as important as the study of the Roman Empire or the Second World War. Knowledge of viruses should be as prominent in American high school curricula as the origin of the Declaration of Independence.
Seasonal spirit in OUP offices across the globe This holiday season, we asked staff in the Oxford University Press offices around the globe to send in photos of cheer and good spirit for the end of 2014.
Seven facts about American Christmas Music By Michael Smith With that familiar chill in the air signaling winter’s imminent arrival, it’s time again to indulge our craving for Christmas music by singers ranging from Frank Sinatra to Mariah Carey. But first, let’s take a step back and explore the history of Christmas music with the following facts.
A smorgasbord of Christmas foods By Connie Ngo In many parts of the world, Christmas does not lack in spirit or rich flavors. Though sweets are a major highlight to this festive holiday, there are quite a few notable savory foods to consider. As you are sitting down to your third helping of turkey, take a look through just some of the Christmas foods people will be eating this year.
Season’s greetings, or “That’s the cheese” By Anatoly Liberman As every student of etymology knows, today, after at least five centuries of European historical linguistics, it is hard and often impossible to discover what has been said about the origin of any word of such well-researched languages as Classical Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, German, or English. Hence my fight for updated analytic etymological dictionaries […]
What did the Treaty of Ghent do? A look at the end of the War of 1812 By Troy Bickham Two hundred years ago American and British delegates signed a treaty in the Flemish town of Ghent to end a two-and-a-half-year conflict between the former colonies and mother country. Overshadowed by the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in the two nations’ historical memories, the War of 1812 has been somewhat rehabilitated during its bicentennial.
Understanding the local economic impacts of projects and policies By J. Edward Taylor and Mateusz J. Filipski In central Africa, the World Food Program is shifting from aid in kind to cash and vouchers in the refugee camps that it runs. The hope is to create benefits for the surrounding host-country economies as well as for the refugees, themselves.
Once upon a quiz By Penny Freedman From Little Red Riding Hood to Frozen, the contemporary fairy tales we know today have their beginnings in classic versions that may seem less familiar at first glance. Inspired by Once Upon a Time by Marine Warner, we’re testing your knowledge of well-known favorites with the quiz below. Try your hand at the questions to see if you have what it takes to be King or Queen of fairy tale lore.
A festive Festivus music playlist By Victoria Davis As the holiday season is upon us, we thought we would recognize a tradition often lost in the hustle and bustle: Festivus. We’ve compiled our favorite, slightly more obscure seasonal tunes to wish you all a very merry Festivus season.
Sherman’s March to the Sea This week marks the 150th anniversary of the final leg of General William T. Sherman’s victorious “March to the Sea,” which concluded with the Union army’s capture of the all-important port city, Savannah, on 21 December 1864. Sherman’s troops tore across the deep South, ravaging cities from Atlanta to Savannah and overhwhelming Southern soldiers and civilians.
The Lerner Letters: Part 3 – the unknown collaborators By Dominic McHugh This final post on my collection of the lyricist Alan Jay Lerner focuses on another exciting series of letters: correspondence with famous composers with whom Lerner hoped to work, but never completed a musical. Some of these letters reveal how certain figures – such as Hoagy Carmichael – wrote to Lerner but were politely declined.
Parody and copyright: Laughing out loud? By Eleonora Rosati \What is a parody? Does a parody have to be actually funny or is it sufficient that its author intended it to be funny? Are there any limits to one’s own right to parody? These are all questions that will have most surely crossed your mind at some point, perhaps while watching something like the Chatroulette version of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” video.
A holiday food tour With the holiday season upon us, many of us are busy in our kitchens cooking secret family recipes and the season’s favorite delicacies. Looking at the delicious options in The Oxford Companion to Food, we compiled a list of various holiday specialties and treats from around the world that you may want to incorporate in your next holiday feast.
Black Israelites and the meaning of Chanukah By Jacob S. Dorman The story that most Jewish children learn about the holiday of Chanukah is that it commemorates the Jews’ victory over foreign invaders and their sullying cultural influences. Around 200 B.C.E., Judea was the rope in a tug of war between two stronger powers: the Ptolemic dynasty of Egypt and the Seleucid Empire of Syria. The Seleucids, led by the kings Antiochus III & IV, won when Antiochus invaded Judea in 175 B.C.E.
An enigma: the codes, the machine, the man By Roberta Seret Prometheus, a Titan god, was exiled from Mount Olympus by Zeus because he stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. He was condemned, punished and chained to a rock while eagles ate at his liver. His name, in ancient Greek, means “forethinker “and literary history lauds him as a prophetic hero who rebels against his society to help man progress.
Physics Project Lab: How to make your own drinking bird By Paul Gluck You may have seen the drinking bird toy in action. It dips its beak into a full glass of water in front of it, after which it swings to and fro for a while, returns to drink some more, and so on, seemingly forever. You can buy one on the internet for a few dollars, and perform with it a fascinating physics project. But how does it work?
The longest night of the year By Catherine Fehre The winter solstice settles on 21 December this year, which means it’s the day with the least amount of sunlight. It’s the official first day of winter, although people have been braving the cold for weeks, huddled in coats and scarves and probably wool socks.
Making light regulation work By Peter Acton A permanent problem of political and economic management – and one on which many people hold very strong opinions – is how to ensure commercial enterprises comply with society’s sense of fairness and justice without strangling them in red tape.
Reflections on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum By D. H. Berry Scotland has remained in the media spotlight throughout 2014 for one reason: the referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. This was the most significant event to have taken place in Scotland since the creation of the Union in 1707.
Preparing for APA Eastern Meeting 2014 By Mohamed Sesay Look out Philadelphia!Oxford University Press has been attending the American Philosophical Association-East conferences for decades. The conference has been held in various cities including Baltimore, MD, Newark, DE, New York, NY, and Boston, MA. This year, we’re gearing up to travel to Philadelphia, we’ve asked our staff across various divisions to see what they are looking forward to.
Almost paradise: heaven in imaginative literature By Greg Garrett Paradise, a 1982 knock-off of the movie Blue Lagoon, stars Phoebe Cates and Willie Aames as teenagers who find themselves alone in a place of natural beauty and experiencing the ultimate joy together. Ann Wilson of Heart and Mike Reno of Loverboy can see forever in each other’s eyes in “Almost Paradise,” their Top Ten hit from the Footloose soundtrack (“Almost paradise / We’re knocking on Heaven’s door”). Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000) references the Elysian Fields, a paradise beyond this one where the blessed go when they die.
Annie and girl culture By Jacqueline Warwick The musical version of little orphan Annie – as distinct from her original, cartoon incarnation – was born a fully formed ten-year-old in 1977, and she quickly became an icon of girlhood.
Catching up with Charlotte Green, Psychology Editor By Ella Sharp How exactly does one become a book editor? I sat down with Charlotte Green, the Senior Assistant Commissioning Editor for all Psychology and Social Work titles, to discuss some common questions about her role, her interest in publishing, and her time at Oxford University Press.
Constitutional shock and awe By Alvin Jackson Scotland has of course dominated the television and newsprint headlines over the last year, and has now emerged as the Oxford Atlas Place of the Year for 2014. This accolade is a fair reflection of the immense volume of recent discussion about Scotland’s constitutional future, and that of the United Kingdom.
Climate shocks, dynastic cycles, and nomadic conquests By Qiang Chen Nomadic conquests have helped shape world history. We may indulge ourselves for a moment to imagine the following counterfactuals: What if Western Europe did not fall to seminomadic Germanic tribes, or Western Europe was conquered by the Huns, Arabs, or Mongols, or Kievan Rus did not succumb to Mongolian invaders, or Ming China did not give way to the Manchu Qing?
Calling oral history bloggers – again! By Andrew Shaffer Last April, we asked you to help us out with ideas for the Oral History Review’s blog. We got some great responses, and now we’re back to beg for more! We want to use our social media platforms to encourage discussion within the broad community oral historians, from professional historians to hobbyists.
Santa Claus breaks the law every year By Joe Couling Each year when the nights start growing longer, everyone’s favourite rotund old man emerges from his wintry hideaway in the fastness of the North Pole and dashes around the globe in a red and white blur, delivering presents and generally spreading goodwill to the people of the world.
The Battle of the Bulge By Peter Caddick-Adams Each year on 16 December, in the little Belgian town of Bastogne, a celebrity arrives to throw bags of nuts at the townsfolk. This year, it will be Belgium’s King Philippe and Queen Mathilde who observe the tradition. It dates from Christmas 1944, when attacking Germans overwhelmed and surrounded the small town and demanded that the US forces defending Bastogne to surrender.
10 medically-trained authors whose books all doctors should read By Arpan K. Banerjee Sir William Osler, the great physician and bibliophile, recommended that his students should have a non-medical bedside library that could be dipped in and out of profitably to create the well rounded physician. Some of the works mentioned by him, for example Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne is unlikely to be on most people’s reading lists today.
Druids and nature By Barry Cunliffe How far back in time European communities began to recognize and chart the movements of the sun, moon, and stars it is impossible to say, but for the mobile hunting bands of the Palaeolithic period, following large herds through the forests of Europe and returning to base camps when the hunt was over, the ability to navigate using the stars would have been vital to existence.
Behind Korematsu v. United States By amanda hollis-brusky Seventy years ago today, in Korematsu v United States, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Japanese-American internment program authorized by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066. The Korematsu decision and the internment program that forcibly removed over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes […]
10 fun facts about sleigh bells By Miki Onwudinjo The ringing sound of sleigh bells is all too familiar around this time of the year. It’s the official siren signaling in the winter season. While a well-known signature staple on sleighs, Santa suits and reindeer, jingle bells haven’t always been associated with Christmas. They do much more than just ring in holiday cheer.
Oxford’s top 10 carols of 2014 By Freya Startup Christmas is the busiest time of year by far for the Oxford hire library. Oxford University Press publishes most of the carols the world knows and loves – the one that has just popped into your head is probably one of ours – with newly-composed Christmas titles added every year.
Five tips for music directors during the holiday season By Joseph Church Christmas is a time for music, and music directors’ calendars typically fill up in December. In academic circles, there are Christmas pageants, holiday musicals, end-of-term recitals, and Christmas music concerts. On the professional scene, performers take advantage of both the celebratory and melancholy sides of the season to present concerts, charity events, and special performances (full-length or one-off).
Dependent variables: a brief look at online gaming addictions By Mark Griffiths Over the last 15 years, research into various online addictions has greatly increased. Prior to the 2013 publication of the American Psychiatric Association’s fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), there had been some debate as to whether ‘internet addiction’ should be introduced into the text as a separate disorder.
Why do politicians break their promises on migration? By Alan Gamlen Immigration policies in the US and UK look very different right now. Barack Obama is painting immigration as part of the American dream, and forcing executive action to protect five million unauthorized immigrants from deportation. Meanwhile, David Cameron’s government is treating immigration “like a disease”, vowing to cut net migration “to the tens of thousands” and sending around posters saying “go home”. US immigration policies appear radically open while UK policies appear radically closed.
Scorpion Bombs: the rest of the story By Jeffrey A. Lockwood The world recently learned that the Islamic State in Iraq (ISIS) has resurrected a biological weapon from the second century. Scorpion bombs are being lobbed into towns and villages to terrorize the inhabitants.
Moping on a broomstick By Anatoly Liberman One of the dialogues in Jonathan Swift’s work titled A complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation (1738) runs as follows
Giving the gift of well-being By Michael A. Bishop In the film A Christmas Story, Ralphie desperately wants “an official Red Ryder, carbine action, 200 shot range model air rifle.” His mom resists because she reckons it will damage his well-being. (“You’ll shoot your eye out!”) In the end, though, Ralphie gets the air rifle and deems it “the greatest Christmas gift I ever received, or would ever receive.”
Heart-stopped: Fiction and the rewards of discomfort By Sarah Tindal Kareem Recently I was talking to a younger colleague, a recent PhD, about what we and our peers read for pleasure. He noted that the only fiction that most of his friends read is young adult fiction: The Hunger Games, Twilight, that kind of thing. Although the subject matter of these series is often dark, the appeal, hypothesized my colleague, lies elsewhere: in the reassuringly formulaic and predictable narrative arc of the plots.
Excusing torture By Paul Woodruff We have plenty of excuses for torture. Most of them are bad. Evaluating these bad excuses, as ethical philosophers are able to do, should disarm them. We can hope that clear thinking about excuses will prevent future generations–for the sake of their moral health–from falling into the trap.
Where is the global economy headed and what’s in store for its citizens? By Shahrokh Fardoust The Great Recession of 2008–09 badly shook the global market, changing the landscape for finance, trade, and economic growth in some important respects and imposing tremendous costs on average citizens throughout the world. The legacies of the crisis—high unemployment levels, massive excess capacities, low investment and high debt levels, increased income and wealth inequality—reduced the standard of living of millions of people.
The Christmas truce: A sentimental dream By Peter Hart By December 1914 the Great War had been raging for nearly five months. If anyone had really believed that it would be ‘all over by Christmas’ then it was clear that they had been cruelly mistaken. Soldiers in the trenches had gained a grudging respect for their opposite numbers, after all, they had managed to fight each other to a standstill.
The other torture report By Rebecca Gordon At long last – despite the attempts at sabotage by, and over the protests of the CIA, and notwithstanding the dilatory efforts of the State Department – the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally issued the executive summary of its 6,300-page report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. We should celebrate its publication as a genuine victory for opponents of torture.
10 quotes to inspire a love of winter By Connie Ngo Winter encourages a certain kind of idiosyncratic imagery not found during any other season: white, powdery snow, puffs of warm breath, be-scarfed holiday crowds. The following slideshow presents a lovely compilation of quotes from the eighth edition of our Oxford Dictionary of Quotations that will inspire a newfound love for winter, whether you’ve ever experienced snow or not!
Doing development differently By Brian Levy It is common that the pendulum of economic development scholarship and practice swings back and forth from one set of (faddish) ideas to another. But beneath this back-and-forth cycling is another, longer cycle the tension between a search for grand, seemingly scientifically-grounded solutions, and an approach to problem-solving which self-consciously is more pragmatic and incremental.
Magical Scotland: the Orkneys By Jad Adams The light in the Orkneys is so clear, so bright, so lucid, it feels like you are on top of the world looking though thin clouds into heaven. It doesn’t even feel part of the UK: when you sail off the edge of Scotland by the Scrabster to Stromness ferry, you feel you are departing the real world to land in a magical realm.
Lifetime’s Women of the Bible and conservative Christian theology By Julia M. O’Brien On the surface, the Lifetime channel’s special Women of the Bible tells a very different story than The Red Tent. The two-hour program which aired just prior to the miniseries premiere claims to read with the Bible rather than against it, suggesting that the text itself depicts strong and faithful women—no retelling necessary.
The Lerner Letters: Part 2 – Lerner and Loewe By Dominic McHugh Amongst the many famous people Lerner corresponded with, Frederick Loewe is naturally the most important in terms of musical collaborators. Yet sadly, correspondence between Lerner and Loewe is quite rare. I found only a few letters between them during the course of the research for the book, and was particularly disappointed by the lack of letters from their early years.
Digital evidence gathering during inspections By Ingeborg Simonsson On the subject of competition law inspections and similar procedures, tensions have been building between the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and the Court of Justice of the European Union (EUCJ). The latest case-law appears like a step in the direction of
On the future of environmental and natural hazard science By Ellen Wohl and W. Tad Pfeffer The American Geophysical Union 2014 begins on 15 December 2014 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center with nearly 24,000 scholars, scientists, and researchers predicted to attend. The AGU Fall Meeting brings together the entire Earth and space sciences community for discussions of emerging trends and the latest research.
Merry Elvis Christmas recollections By Christian Purdy In celebration of the recently published biography, Elvis Presley: A Southern Life by Joel Williamson, I thought I would share some memories of Christmas past. In the 1970s we listened to Elvis on vinyl. Every December when it was time to decorate the tree you could hear the deep dulcet warbling of Elvis coming from the hi-fi.
Scottish OUP staff reflect on Scotland as Place of the Year 2014 With the announcement of Scotland as Place of the Year 2014, we asked a few of our staff members who hail from Scotland to share their thoughts about home. They responded with heartfelt opinions, patriotism, nostalgia, and a little homesickness. Here’s their reasons why Scotland is their Place of the Year.
Biblical women and Lifetime’s The Red Tent By Julia M. O’Brien The Red Tent was perfect for the Lifetime channel. The network’s four-hour miniseries closely followed Anita Diamont’s 1997 novel, which gave voice—and agency—to the biblical character of Dinah.
Is international law just? By Steven Ratner For almost a hundred years, international law has been on the receiving end of relentless criticism from the policy and academic worlds. That law, sometimes called the law of nations, consists of the web of rules developed by states around the world over many centuries through treaties and customary practices, some bilateral, some regional, and some global.
Physics Project Lab: How to build a cycloid tracker By Paul Gluck If you are a student or an instructor, whether in a high school or at university, you may want to depart from the routine of lectures, tutorials, and short lab sessions. An extended experimental investigation of some physical phenomenon will provide an exciting channel for that wish. The payoff for the student is a taste of how physics research is done. This holds also for the instructor guiding a project if the guide’s time is completely taken up with teaching. For researchers it seems natural to initiate interested students into research early on in their studies.
Traveling patients, traveling disease: Ebola is just the tip of the iceberg By I. Glenn Cohen Many in the media and academia (myself included) have been discussing the Ebola crisis, and more specifically, the issues that arise as Ebola has travelled with infected patients and health care workers to the United States and infected other US citizens.
1914: The Battle for Basra By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen The centenary of the capture of Basra offers an opportunity to reflect on the nature and impact of the first Western military intervention in Iraq, nine decades before the city once again became the focal point of British activity in the country between 2003 and 2009.
The English question: a Burkean response? By Michael Kenny The prospective award of substantial new powers to the Scottish Parliament, which is currently being debated by the Smith Commission, has engendered a growing unease about the constitutional position of many different parts of the UK. This issue is causing concern in Wales, still reeling at the rushed and unfortunate decision to rule the Barnett formula […]
A few things to know about monkeys By Catherine Fehre December 14th is Monkey Day. The origin behind Monkey Day varies depending on who you ask, but regardless, it is internationally celebrated today, especially to raise awareness for primates and everything primate-related. So in honor of Monkey Day, here are some facts you may or may not know about these creatures.
Selfies and model bottoms: monkeying around with intellectual property rights By Jeremy Phillips When the “Case of the Black Macaque” scooped media headlines this summer, copyright was suddenly big news.Here was photographer David Slater fighting Wikipedia over the right to disseminate online a portrait photo of a monkey which had, contrary to all expectations and the law of averages, managed within just a few jabs of a curious finger, to take a plausible, indeed publishable “selfie”.
Parenting during the holidays By Berit Brogaard The holiday season can be an insanely stressful time. Looking for presents, wrapping them, cooking, getting the house ready for visitors, cleaning before and after. Nothing like a normal Saturday night on the couch in front of the TV or with a couple of close friends. The holidays demand perfection. You see it all around you, friends are talking about how stressed out they are, how much they still have to do in just a couple of days. Hyper-decorated stores are talking in their own way.
Ebola: the epidemic’s next phase By Annie Wilkinson Although the number of Ebola cases and deaths has jumped dramatically in the short time since we wrote our December Briefing on the epidemic, there are signs of hope. Ebola is slowing down in areas where there was previously high transmission, in Liberia and in Eastern Sierra Leone for example.
The advantage of ‘trans’ By Reid Vanderburgh In the late 1990s, I attended a conference focused on “those who identify at the male end of the gender spectrum.” At the end of the conference, organizers asked each participant to fill out an exit poll, intended to capture demographic information about conference attendees.
Moses the liberator: Exodus politics from Eusebius to Martin Luther King Jr. By John Coffey Moses and Pharaoh are returning to the big screen in Ridley Scott’s seasonal blockbuster, Exodus: Gods and Kings. With a $200m budget and Christian Bale in the leading role, the British director will hope to replicate the success of Gladiator […]
Population ecologists scale up By David Gibson The concept of looking at nature through multiple lenses to see different things is not new and has been long recognized. As always, the devil is in the details. Recent developments in analytical tools and the embracement of an integrative metapopulation concept and the newly emergent field of functional biogeography, are allowing exciting new insights to be made by population ecologists that have direct bearing on our understanding of the effects of environmental change on biodiversity patterns.
Top 5 reasons why young professionals love the OHA Annual Meeting By Jessica Taylor You may have seen representatives of the University of Florida’s Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at the OHA Annual Meeting this year. We rumbled down hallways in a pack six strong, all twenty-five years old and younger, all smiles, all ears, and all left feet.
Top five Robert Altman films by sound By Gayle Sherwood Magee Director Robert Altman made more than thirty feature films and dozens of television episodes over the course of his career. The Altman retrospective currently showing at MoMA is a treasure trove for rediscovering Altman’s best known films (M*A*S*H, Nashville, Gosford Park) as well as introducing unreleased shorts and his little-known early work as a writer.
It’s not just about treating the cancer By Matti Aapro Receiving a cancer diagnosis is emotional and overwhelming for patients. While initially patients may appropriately focus on understanding their disease and what their treatment options are, supportive care should begin at diagnosis and is a vital part of care across the continuum of the cancer experience.
Carols and Catholicism By Gerald O'Collins Carols bring Christians together around the Christ Child lying in the manger. During Advent and at Christmas, Christians everywhere sing more or less the same repertoire. Through our carols we share the same deep delight at the birth of a poor child who was to become the Saviour of all human beings.
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and the country house By Michael H. Whitworth A ‘slobbering valentine to a member of the upper classes’, ‘an orgy of snobbery’, and ‘the apotheosis of brown-nosing’: Angela Carter’s excoriating dismissal of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (1928), delivered in Tom Paulin’s notorious televisual polemic, J’accuse Virginia Woolf (1991), serves as a reminder that this work has as much potential as any of her novels to provoke heated disagreements.
Holiday traditions from around the world Here at Oxford University Press, we’re getting ready for the holiday season, and we were inspired by the new, twenty-first edition of the Atlas of the World to explore holiday traditions from around the world, including our 2014 Place of the Year, Scotland. Take a look at the map below to learn and see a little bit about the food, decorations, and other traditions of holiday celebrations taking place around the world at this time of year.
Frozen and the Disney Princess Song By Jennfier Fleeger There are plenty of operas about teenage girls—love-sick, obsessed, hysterical teenage girls who dance, scheme, and murder in a frenzy of musical passion. Disney Princess films are also about teenage girls—lonely, skinny, logical teenage girls who follow their hearts because the plot gives them no other option. The music Disney Princesses sing can be divided into three periods that correspond to distinct animation styles
A perfume for loneliness By Cretien van Campen As Christmas draws near, and the dark cold evenings become longer, a number of people will have a foreboding about being alone, creating a sense of loneliness. Is loneliness something to anticipate with anxiety? Or even fear?
Relax, inhale, and think of Horace Wells By Andrew Brodsky Many students, when asked by a teacher or professor to volunteer in front of the class, shy away, avoid eye contact, and try to seem as plain and unremarkable as possible. The same is true in dental school – unless it comes to laughing gas. As a fourth year dental student, I’ve had times where I’ve tried to avoid professors’ questions about anatomical variants of nerves, or the correct way to drill a cavity, or what type of tooth infection has symptoms of hot and cold sensitivity.
A laughing etymologist in a humorless crowd By Anatoly Liberman I have noticed that many of my acquaintances misuse the phrases a dry sense of humor and a quiet sense of humor. Some people can tell a joke with a straight face, but, as a rule, they do it intentionally; their performance is studied and has little to do with “dryness.”
Human Rights Awareness Month case map By John Louth To mark Human Rights Day, we have produced a map of 50 landmark human rights cases, each with a brief description and a link to a free article or report on the case. The cases were chosen … to showcase the variety of international, regional, and national mechanisms and fora for adjudicating human rights claims, and the range of rights that have been recognized.
Kenneth Roth on human rights By Kenneth Roth The modern state can be a source of both good and evil. It can do much good – protecting our security, ensuring our basic necessities, nurturing an environment in which people can flourish to the best of their abilities.
Across the spectrum of human rights What are the ties that bind us together? How can we as a global community share the same ideals and values? In celebration of Human Rights Day, we have asked some key thinkers in human rights law to share stories about their experiences of working in this field, and the ways in which they determined their specific focuses.
Why are structural reforms so difficult? By Patrick Emmenegger In times of economic crisis, politicians and analysts alike are typically quick to call for structural reforms to stimulate economic growth. Job security regulations are often identified as a policy area in need of such reforms. These regulations restrict the managerial capacity to dismiss employees to allow for downsizing or to replace workers and use new forms of employment such as fixed-term contracts when hiring new workers.
Christmas crime films By Dan Hall In order to spread some festive cheer, Blackstone’s Policing has compiled a watchlist of some of the best criminal Christmas films. From a child inadvertently left home alone to a cop with a vested interest, and from a vigilante superhero to a degenerate pair of blaggers, it seems that (in Hollywood at least) there’s something about this time of year that calls for a special kind of policing. So let’s take a look at some of Tinseltown’s most arresting Christmas films.
The Death Penalty Human Rights Day: abolishing the death penalty By Carolyn Hoyle and Roger Hood This year’s Human Rights Day slogan – Human Rights 365 – encompasses the idea that every day is Human Rights Day. It celebrates the fundamental proposition in the Universal Declaration that each one of us, everywhere, at all times is entitled to the full range of human rights, that human rights belong equally to each of us and bind us together as a global community with the same ideals and values.
John Boyd and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War By Derek M. C. Yuen Renowned US military strategist John Boyd is famous for his signature OODA (Observe-Orientation-Decision-Action) loop, which significantly affected the way that the West approached combat operations and has since been appropriated for use in the business world and even in sports.
Scoring loss across the multimedia universe By Scott Murphy Well known is music’s power to stir the emotions; less well known is that the stirring of specific emotions can result from the use of very simple but still characteristic music. Consider the music that accompanies this sweet, sorrowful conclusion of pop culture’s latest cinematic saga.
The Lerner Letters: Part 1 – The Stars By Dominic McHugh One of the joys of editing the correspondence of Alan Jay Lerner has been discovering his letters to and from the major stars with whom he worked. As the lyricist, librettist, and screenwriter of Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, An American in Paris, My Fair Lady, Gigi, Camelot, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and many more, he worked with the finest performers of his time.
Parental consent, the EU, and children as “digital natives” By Lina Jasmontaite and Paul De Hert Children have become heavy new media users. Empirical data shows that a number of children accessing the internet – contrary to the age of users – is constantly increasing. It is estimated that about 60% of European children are daily or almost daily internet users, and therefore, by many they are considered to be “digital natives”.
Why Republican governors embrace Obamacare By Lawrence Jacobs and Timothy Callaghan The national headlines following the 2014 Midterm elections trumpeted the Republican success in seizing the majority in the US Senate and expanding its strength in the US House to record numbers since 1929. These wins were striking but hardly surprising given the tsunami of polls. The big news that continues to elude commentators are the […]
Soldiers, sources, and serendipity By Matthew McCormack Like much historical research, my chapter in the Britain’s Soldiers collection came about more or less by accident. It relates to an incident that I discovered in the War Office papers at in 2007. I was taking a group of History students from Northampton University to The National Archives in Kew, to help them with their undergraduate dissertations.
The lake ecosystems of the Antarctic By Johanna Laybourn-Parry Antarctica is a polar desert almost entirely covered by a vast ice sheet up to 4 km in thickness. The great white continent is a very apt description. The ice free areas, often referred to as oases, carry obvious life in lakes and occasional small patches of lichen and mosses where there is sufficient seasonal melt water to support them.
AAR/SBL 2014 annual meeting wrap-up By Alyssa Bender Thanks to everyone who visited our booth at the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting this year! We had a great time in San Diego. One of our favorite parts of the meeting was seeing many of our authors (and for many of us, meeting them for the first time!).
Gary King: an update on Dataverse By Gary King and R. Michael Alvarez At the American Political Science Association meetings earlier this year, Gary King (Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor at Harvard University) gave a presentation on Dataverse (here are his slides). Dataverse is an important tool that many researchers use to archive and share their research materials; as many readers of this blog may already know, the journal that I co-edit, Political Analysis, uses Dataverse to archive and disseminate the replication materials for the articles we publish in our journal.
The Jerk Store called…and called and called By Mark Peters Seinfeld famously added a ton of terms to English, such as low talker, high talker, spongeworthy, and unshushables. It also made obscure terms into household words.
Christmas for a nonbeliever By Michael Ruse As a small boy in the 1920s, my father sang in the choir of the parish church, St Matthews, in Walsall in the British Midlands. Twenty years later, he was married with a couple of children and our small, tight family belonged to the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers. Friends do not have church services. There is no hymn singing. But every Christmas Eve, religiously as one might say, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the family gathered around the radio to listen to the broadcast of carols and lessons from King’s College, Cambridge.
Music from Scotland: a playlist By Connie Ngo When one thinks of traditional Scottish music, one instrument usually comes to mind: the bagpipe. Although bagpipes are prominent in traditional music from Scotland, Scottish music branches far out beyond that. In light of Scotland receiving the title of Place of the Year for 2014, we’ve put together a brief playlist of music from Scotland, from chamber music to modern classical.
The food we eat: A Q&A on agricultural and food controversies The world is more interested in issues surrounding agriculture and food than ever before. Questions swirl around the safety of our food, how it’s made, and what we can do to ensure we eat the best food. We asked F. Bailey Norwood, one of the authors of Agricultural and Food Controversies: What Everyone Needs to Know, to answer some of today’s most pressing queries.
Wilderness and redemption in Cheryl Strayed’s Wild By Belden C. Lane Walking It Off was the title Doug Peacock gave to his 2005 book about returning home from the trauma of the Vietnam War. The only solace the broken Army medic could find was hiking the Montana wilderness in the company of grizzly bears. Wild places proved strangely healing — echoing a wounded wilderness within.
Touchy-feely politics By Joe Moshenska In April 2009, Barack and Michelle Obama met Queen Elizabeth I during their first state visit to England. At one point during their encounter, Michelle Obama put her arm around the Queen’s lower back and rubbed her shoulder, and the Queen reciprocated. It was the kind of gesture that might seem quite unremarkable when exchanged by friends, or even casual acquaintances: but, given the participants on this particular occasion, it unsurprisingly attracted a great deal more attention.
Does absence make the heart grow fonder? By Daniel Gooch Increasing numbers of people are forced to live their lives away from the ones they love, be they partners, parents, or friends. Having been a member of a long-distance relationship, I can attest to the strain that separation places on a relationship. Over the last few decades communication technologies have been increasingly marketed as solutions to the problem of strain, separation, and isolation. But how far do they go in actually addressing these issues?
In memoriam: Juan Flores By Suzanne Ryan Oxford University Press is deeply saddened to report the passing of Juan Flores on 2 December 2014. Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis and director of Latino Studies at New York University, he was one of the foremost voices in Latino Studies and an exceptionally inspiring and generous writer, teacher, and colleague.
Implications of the past for Scotland’s future By Rab Houston What are the implications of the past for Scotland’s future? First, Scots retain a deeply embedded sense of history, albeit a selective one. Like others in the Anglo-Saxon world, they understandably seek identity, empathy, and meaning for their private present by researching family or local history and they want to know about wars and history’s celebrities.
Laying to rest a 224 year-old controversy By Philip A. Mackowiak The disease that carried Mozart off 224 years ago today was as sudden as it was mysterious. It struck during a year in which he was uncommonly healthy and also spectacularly productive.
The hand and the machine By Jonathan Senchyne Two hundred years ago last Friday the owner of the London Times, John Walter II, is said to have surprised a room full of printers who were preparing hand presses for the production of that day’s paper. He showed them an already completed copy of the paper and announced, “The Times is already printed – by steam.”
“Happy Birthday, Mr. Putin!”: celebrating political masculinity in Russia By Valerie Sperling A key element of Vladimir Putin’s legitimation strategy has been the cultivation of a macho image. His various public relations stunts subduing wild animals, playing rough sports, and displaying his muscular torso, drew on widely familiar ideas about masculinity.
The development of peace By Oliver P. Richmond The story of peace is as old as the story of humanity itself, and certainly as old as war. It is a story of progress, often in very difficult circumstances. Historically, peace has often been taken, to imply an absence of overt violence or war between or sometimes within states- in other words, a negative peace. War is often thought to be the natural state of humanity, peace of any sort being fragile and fleeting. I would challenges this view.
Scotland is a different place now By James Mitchell One of the ironies of the Scottish independence referendum is that Scotland is widely recognised to be a changed place despite the majority voting in favour of the union. It became clear during the course of 2014 that something significant was happening.
Prophecy, demonology, and the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family By Joseph P. Laycock From 5-19 October 2014, Pope Francis held the Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family in Rome. The purpose of the synod was to discuss the Church’s stance on such issues as divorce, birth control, and especially, the legalization of gay marriage.
Is it really over for RG3? It’s too soon to tell. By Adam Grossman, Ben Shields, and Irving Rein In a recent article for Huffington Post, numberFire.com CEO Nik Bonaddio stated: “RG3: It’s Over”. Bonaddio is asserting that it is unlikely that Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III (RG3) will ever be able to return to the form that enabled him to win the 2012 Rookie of the Year Award and made him one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL that year.
On the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C By Robert Carl Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C. The date was 4 November 1964 at the San Francisco Tape Center. Having written a book on the topic, it’s a time of reflection for me as well.
What is psychology’s greatest achievement? By Leonard A. Jason I am sure that there are some who still proclaim that psychology’s greatest achievement is buried somewhere in Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic papers, whereas others will reject the focus on early childhood memories in favor of present day Skinnerian contingencies of prediction and control.
SIPRI Yearbook Online Charting events in international security in 2013 By Barney Cox The world today is a very complex place. Events such as the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the devastating conflict erupting in Syria, and the often-fraught relations between the world’s superpowers highlight an intricate and interconnecting web of international relations and national interests.
Anna Freud’s life By Ella Sharp In celebration of would would have been Anna Freud’s 119th birthday, we have compiled a timeline of important events, her influences and her most celebrated publications. From her education and love of learning, to her role as a teacher, children and child psychoanalysis always played a large part in the life of Anna Freud.
Yes? Yeah…. By Anatoly Liberman Two weeks ago, I discussed the troubled origin of the word aye “yes,” as in the ayes have it, and promised to return to this word in connection with some other formulas of affirmation. The main of them is yes.
How Malcolm X’s visit to the Oxford Union is relevant today By Saladin Ambar and Stephen Tuck Fifty years ago today, a most unlikely figure was called to speak at the Oxford Union Debating Society: Mr. Malcolm X. The Union, with its historic chamber modeled on the House of Commons, was the political training ground for the scions of the British establishment. Malcolm X, by contrast, had become a global icon of black militancy, with a reputation as a dangerous Black Muslim.
Is your commute normal? Ever wonder how Americans are getting to work? In this short video, Andrew Beveridge, Co-Founder and CEO of census data mapping program Social Explorer, discusses the demographics of American commuting patterns for workers ages sixteen and above.
A different kind of swindle By Richard S. Grossman In the weeks and months following the subprime crisis, a number of financial swindles have come to light. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Bernie Madoff scandal. Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme, in which he attracted money from individuals (and institutions) who were hoping that he would provide sound investment management and a healthy return on the funds entrusted to him. Instead, the money ended up in his pocket. The small number of “investors” who did withdraw their funds from Madoff were paid with money from new investors.
Looking beyond the Scottish referendum By Matthew Flinders In British constitutional history, 2014 will undoubtedly be remembered for one thing and one thing only — the Scottish independence referendum. ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ was the deceptively simple question that veiled a far more complex reality. This complexity was revealed in the pre-election build-up as the three main parties offered concession upon […]
Looking back at Scotland in 2014 With the announcement of Scotland as Place of the Year for 2014, we’re looking back at some of the key events that put Scotland in the news this year. News of the Scottish Independence Referendum dominated the headlines, and politicians, economists, and analysts discussed and debated Scotland’s role both in Europe and on the global market.
Do you have what it takes to be extreme? [quiz] Whether it’s for the thrill of an extreme sport like climbing Mount Everest or sky diving from a plane high above the ground, or for the allure of a job that involves the likes of exploring space or traveling the seas, some people naturally have what it takes to face the challenges of life in the extreme. Take this quiz to see if you have what it takes to be the next Amelia Earhart or Buzz Aldrin.
How has World War I impacted United States immigration trends? Where did the first Chinatown originate, and how many exist across the country? Where do the majority of the country’s immigrant populations currently reside? Andrew Beveridge, Co-Founder and CEO of census data mapping program Social Explorer, discusses the effects of the First World War on American nativity demographics.
Remembering the original On the Town during World War II A stunning new production of On the Town, directed by John Rando, opened in October at the Lyric Theatre on Broadway. It transports a viewer back to the golden age of American musical theater, when highly skilled orchestras delivered a robust sound while extended segments of dance were central to telling the story.
Up in the air over taxing frequent flyer benefits By Lawrence Zelenak Imagine you’ve been on an out-of-town business trip. Your employer paid for your airfare, but allowed you to keep the frequent flyer points generated by the trip. Some time later, you redeem the points (perhaps along with additional points generated by other business trips) for a free flight to a vacation destination.
The parsonage allowance and standing in the state courts By Edward Zelinsky In Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Lew, the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently dismissed a constitutional challenge to the parsonage allowance provisions of the Internal Revenue Code (Code). Under Section 107(2) of the Code, a “minister of the gospel” need not pay income taxes on the housing allowance received by the minister as part of his or her compensation.
The Oxford Place of the Year 2014 is… By Connie Ngo As voting for the shortlist came to a close, Scotland took home the title of Oxford’s Place of the Year 2014. This region of the United Kingdom came into spotlight when nearly half its citizens fought to pass the Scottish independence referendum, which would have allowed Scotland to declare itself as an independent country.
One second in the life of an artist By Roberta Seret The riveting film, The Artist and the Model (L’Artiste et son Modèle) from Spain’s leading director, Fernando Trueba, focuses on a series of “one seconds” in the life of French sculptor Marc Cross.
World AIDS Day reading list By Simon Turley World AIDS Day is a global campaign that raises awareness and funds for the estimated 34 million people living with HIV, and also commemorates the 35 million people who have died of the virus. The first one was held in 1988 and, as such, it is the longest running health day. Despite many medical advances, HIV remains one of the most devastating epidemics in human history.
Shakespeare folio number 233 By Emma Smith News that a previously unknown copy of the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays has been discovered in a French library has been excitedly picked up by the worldwide press. But apart from the treasure-hunt appeal of this story, does it really matter that instead of the 232 copies of this book listed by Eric Rasmussen and Anthony West in their The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), there are now, apparently, 233? A book that was never particularly rare is now just a little bit less rare.
November 2014 (144))
What to expect on your 19th century Indus river steamer journey By Clive Dewey Congratulations on your new posting in the Punjab. Rather riding eight-hours a day on horseback, suffering motion-sickness on a camel’s heaving back, or breaking your back sitting on hard wooden boards in a mail-cart, you’ll be travelling on the Bombay Government Flotilla, one of four flotillas that carry thousands of Europeans and Indians up and down the Indus.
Income inequality in the United States How has the average American income shifted since the US Census bureau began collecting data in the 1950s? Are median wages rising or falling? Andrew Beveridge, Co-Founder and CEO of census data mapping program Social Explorer, discusses income inequality in the United States in the short video below.
Nature in motion: migration and its implications By Hugh Dingle For those of us living in the northern hemisphere one of the great annual events of nature is winding down. This is the autumn migration of numerous species from summer breeding grounds to wintering areas farther south.
The impossible painting By Roy T. Cook Early twentieth century packaging for Quaker Oats depicted the eponymous Quaker holding a package of the oats, which, in turn, depicted the Quaker holding a package of the oats, which itself depicted the Quaker holding a package of the oats, ad infinitum. It inspired a generation of philosophers.
Lest we forget By David Stevens One hundred years ago, in September 1914, Australia began its first ever joint military operation. The occupation of German New Guinea, taking place more than seven months before the Anzac landings, will always be overshadowed by the larger and more violent event at Gallipoli, but in its own regional context it was at least equally significant.
OUP staff discuss their favorite independent bookstores In support of Indies First, a campaign run by the American Booksellers Association that supports independent bookstores, we asked Oxford University Press USA staff what their favorite independent bookstores were.
A Q&A with a Keytar player By Raquel Fernandes and V.J. Manzo I sat down with V.J. Manzo, author of Max/MSP/Jitter for Music: A Practical Guide to Developing Interactive Music Systems for Education and More and real-live Keytar player to get the inside scoop on one of the coolest electronic instruments on stage — the Keytar.
Thanks, teacher: musicians reflect on special ways a teacher helped them learn their craft By Amy Nathan “I was lucky all the time in having great teachers,” says clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. When I asked him about special ways his early teachers helped him, he mentioned his elementary school band director who was “enthusiastic and cheerful, no matter what,” and also a private teacher he had in high school who taught him how to practice with purpose.
What we’re thankful for By Andrew Shaffer and Troy Reeves Since we’re still recovering from eating way too much yesterday, Managing Editor Troy Reeves and I would like to sit back and just share a few of the things we’re thankful for.
Slavery, rooted in America’s early history By Heather Andrea Williams No one can discuss American history without talking about the prevalence of slavery. When the Europeans attempted to colonize America in its early days, Indians and Africans were enslaved because they were “different from them”. The excerpt below from American Slavery: A Very Short Introduction follows the dark past of colonial America and how slavery proceeded to root itself deeply into history.
Thank you: musicians recall special ways their parents helped them blossom By Amy Nathan “My thanks to my parents is vast,” says Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboist with the Imani Winds woodwind quintet. “Without their help, I would never have become a musician.” Many professional musicians I’ve interviewed have responded as Ms. Spellman-Diaz did, saying that their parents helped in so many ways: from locating good music teachers, schools, and summer programs, to getting them to lessons, rehearsals and performances on time, while also figuring out how to pay for it all.
Leonard Cohen and smoking in old age By Jimmie Holland Leonard Cohen’s decision to take up cigarettes again at 80 reveals a well kept secret about older age: you can finally live it up and stop worrying about the consequences shortening your life by much.
The history of the newspaper By Hannah Charters On 28th November 1814 The Times in London was printed by automatic, steam powered presses for the first time. These presses, built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, meant that newspapers were now available to a new mass audience, and by 1815 The Times had a circulation of approximately 5,000 people.
A look at Thanksgiving favorites By Connie Ngo What started as a simple festival celebrating the year’s bountiful harvest has turned into an archetypal American holiday, with grand dinners featuring savory and sweet dishes alike. Thanksgiving foods have changed over the years, but there are still some iconic favorites that have withstood time.
Monthly etymology gleanings for November 2014 By Anatoly Liberman As always, I want to thank those who have commented on the posts and written me letters bypassing the “official channels” (though nothing can be more in- or unofficial than this blog; I distinguish between inofficial and unofficial, to the disapproval of the spellchecker and some editors). I only wish there were more comments and letters.
The Classical World from A to Z By Antony Spawforth, Esther Eidinow, and Simon Hornblower For over 2,000 years the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome have captivated our collective imagination and provided inspiration for many aspects of our lives, from culture, literature, drama, cinema, and television to society, education, and politics.
AMS/SMT 2014: Highlights from the OUP booth By Raquel Fernandes Just can’t get enough AMS/SMT? Take a tour with us through the eyes of OUP marketing, and check out some booth highlights from this year’s joint meeting. We can’t wait for next year!
Band Aid (an infographic) By Rachel Fenwick On this day in 1984 musical aficionados from the worlds of pop and rock came together to record the iconic ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ single for Band Aid. The single has gone down in history as an example of the power of music to help right the wrongs in the world.
The not so thin blue line: policing economic crime By Dean Blackbourn, Mark Button, and Martin Tunley Fraud is one of the most costly crimes to society, with the last estimate produced by the now disbanded National Fraud Authority suggesting that in 2012 this figure was £52 billion. Yet the response from the Government, from the criminal justice system, and – most importantly – law enforcement, does not match the magnitude of the problem.
Peanut butter: the vegetarian conspiracy By Andrew F. Smith There is something quintessentially American about peanut butter. While people in other parts of the world eat it, nowhere is it devoured with the same gusto as in the United States, where peanut butter is ensconced in an estimated 85% of home kitchens. Who exactly invented peanut butter is unknown.
Keytar Appreciation 101 By Meghann Wilhoite What is a keytar, anyway? Well, along with being (to me) the coolest electronic instrument ever, it’s a midi controller-sometimes-synthesizer that you can wear over your shoulder like a guitar.
The past, present, and future of overlapping intellectual property rights By Neil Wilkof How does the law operate when intellectual property rights overlap? When a creative output, be it a photograph, a piece of music, or any artistic work, is protected by multiple intellectual property rights such as trademark and copyright, or a patent and data protection, it can be challenging to manoeuvre through the overlapping rights. Intellectual property law seeks to defend the rights of the artistic creator, and protects the expression of ideas.
Thanksgiving with Benjamin Franklin By Rachel Hope Cleves “A Full Belly is the Mother of all Evil,” Benjamin Franklin counseled the readers of Poor Richard’s Almanack. For some mysterious reason this aphorism hasn’t had the sticking power of some of the inventor’s more famous sayings, like “he who lies down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.” Most of us are more inclined to see a full belly as one of life’s blessings.
Place of the Year 2014 nominee spotlight: Ukraine With only one more week left in the Place of the Year 2014 contest, we’d like to spotlight another one of the places on our shortlist – Ukraine. The country entered the news early in 2014 when a referendum held in Crimea resulted in the peninsula uniting with Russia.
Top 10 Turkey-Dumping Day breakup songs By Berit Brogaard The last Thursday of November freshmen are returning home to reunite with their high school sweethearts. Except not all are as sweet as they once were. Your old flame may show up with a new admirer or give you trouble because you didn’t spend enough time on Skype on Saturday nights while away at college.
Joseph Smith and polygamous marriage By Paula Kelly Harline A number of historians of Mormon history have tried to explain the rationale and motivation behind Joseph Smith’s teachings about “plural marriage.” Although it’s not unreasonable to assume a sexual motivation, Smith’s primary motivation may have been his expansive theology–a theology, in this specific case, that his wife would not accept.
Who is your favourite fairy-tale character? From wicked step-mothers to fairy god-mothers, from stock phrases such as “once upon a time” to “happily ever after”, fairy-tales permeate our culture. Disney blockbusters have recently added another chapter to the history of the fairy-tale, sitting alongside the 19th century, saccharine tales published by the Brothers Grimm and the 17th century stories written by Charles Perrault. Inspired by Marina Warner’s Once Upon a Time, we asked OUP staff members to channel their inner witches, trolls, and princesses, and reveal who their favourite fairy-tale character is and why.
Religion and the paranormal By Diana Walsh Pasulka and Jeffrey J. Kripal OUP author Diana Walsh Pasulka recently caught up with fellow scholar of religion and fellow OUP author, Jeffrey J. Kripal, to discuss the study of the supernatural and the paranormal within the university.
The importance of mentoring By Brett Ashley Leeds, Leslie Schwindt-Bayer, R. Michael Alvarez, and Tiffany D. Barnes Throughout my career, there have been many times when advice, support, and criticism were critical for my own professional development. Sometimes that assistance came from people who were formally tasked with providing advice; a good example is a Ph.D. advisor (in my case, John Aldrich of Duke University, who has been a fantastic advisor and mentor to a long list of very successful students).
Leaving Orthodox Judaism: A Q&A with Lynn Davidman By Lynn Davidman Lynn Davidman, author of Becoming Un-Orthodox: Stories of Ex-Hasidic Jews, not only interviewed former Orthodox Jews for her book; she was a former Modern Orthodox herself. Davidman answered some questions for us about her experience leaving Orthodox Judaism and how it informed her research.
Vampires and life decisions By L.A. Paul Imagine that you have a one-time-only chance to become a vampire. With one swift, painless bite, you’ll be permanently transformed into an elegant and fabulous creature of the night. As a member of the Undead, your life will be completely different. You’ll experience a range of intense new sense experiences, you’ll gain immortal strength, speed and power, and you’ll look fantastic in everything you wear. You’ll also need to drink the blood of humanely farmed animals (but not human blood), avoid sunlight, and sleep in a coffin.
Intersections of documentary and avant-garde filmmaking By Scott MacDonald One of the more interesting recent developments in film studies is the recognition that what have seemed to be separate histories—documentary filmmaking and avant-garde filmmaking—are, once again, converging.
Representations of purgatory and limbo in popular culture By Diana Walsh Pasulka In the Catholic tradition, purgatory is an afterlife destination reserved for souls who are ultimately bound for heaven. It is still a doctrine of the Catholic Church, despite confusion about its status.
Tiberius on Capri: in pursuit of vice or just avoiding mother? By Catharine Edwards In AD 14, two thousand years ago this summer, the emperor Augustus, having dominated Rome for over forty years, finally breathed his last. The new emperor was his step-son Tiberius. While Augustus’ achievement in ending civil war and discreetly transforming a republic into one-man rule provokes grudging admiration even from those who aren’t keen on autocracy, Tiberius has very few fans.
Windows on the past: how places get their names By John Everett-Heath Standing underneath the monstrous Soviet statue of “Motherland Calls” looking out over the mighty Volga River, I could understand why the city should have been renamed, rather unimaginatively, Volgograd “City on the Volga”. Between 1925 and 1961 it had been called Stalingrad, and was site of one of the most ferocious battles in the Second World War.
The literature and history of Chaucer By Stephen Rigby To read Chaucer today is, in some measure, to read him historically. For instance, when the poet tells us in the ‘General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales that the Knight’s crusading experiences include service with the Teutonic Order in ‘Lettow’ (i.e. Lithuania), comprehension of the literal sense or denotation of the text requires some knowledge of fourteenth-century institutions, ideas and events.
Six questions with Amy DeRogatis By Amy DeRogatis In her new book, Amy DeRogatis explores a bit of an untouched topic: evangelicals and sexuality. While many may think that evangelicals are anti-sex, DeRogatis argues that this could not be further from the truth. We sat down with the author of Saving Sex: Sexuality and Salvation in American Evangelicalism to learn more about her research into the topic.
A brief history of the e-cigarette By Catherine Fehre Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity around the world. With the announcement of vape as our Word of the Year, we have put together a timeline of the history of e-cigarettes.
Ivan Pavlov in 22 surprising facts By Daniel P. Todes An iconic figure of 20th century science and culture, Ivan Pavlov is best known as a founding figure of behaviorism who trained dogs to salivate at the sound of a bell and offered a scientific approach to psychology that ignored the “subjective” world of the psyche itself. While researching Ivan Pavlov: A Russian Life in Science, I discovered that these and other elements of the common images of Pavlov are incorrect.
Understanding placebo effects: how rituals affect the brain and the body By Fabrizio Benedetti In a typical prehistoric scene, say in 4000 BC, a wounded warrior is dragged to the shaman tent. The respected shaman takes a look at the wound and assures the warrior that he will be healed with the proper prayers and ritual dances.
Should we let them play? By Mike Cronin Ched Evans was convicted at Caernarfon Crown Court in April 2012 of raping a 19 year old woman, and sentenced to five years in prison. He was released from prison in October 2014. Shortly after his release Evans protested his innocence and suggested that his worst offence had been cheating on his fiancée. He also looked to restart his career as a professional soccer player in the third tier of the English league with his former club Sheffield United.
Violence and diverse forms of oppression By Sherry Hamby The theme of the American Society of Criminology meeting this November is “Criminology at the Intersections of Oppression.” The burden of violence and victimization remains markedly unequal. The prevalence rates, risk factors, and consequences of violence are not equally distributed across society.
Scholarly reflections on ‘bae’ What do you call your loved one? Babe and baby have been used for centuries to discuss small children, and eventually a significant other. With the inclusion of bae on Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist, we asked a number of scholars for their thoughts on this new word and emerging phenomenon.
Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Bae’ sonnets By Alice Northover In continuation of our Word of the Year celebrations, I’m presenting my annual butchering of Shakespeare (previous victims include MacBeth and Hamlet). Of the many terms of endearment the Bard used — from lambkin to mouse — babe was not among them.
Bae in hip hop lyrics By Meghann Wilhoite Today we’re here to talk about the word “bae” and the ways in which it’s used in hip hop lyrics. “Bae” is another way of saying babe or baby (though some say it can also function as an acronym for the phrase “before anyone else”). Here are some examples.
Ten facts about cumbia, Colombia’s principal musical style By Michael Smith In celebration of tonight’s Latin Grammy Awards, I delved into Grove Music Online to learn more about distinct musical styles and traditions of Latin American countries. Colombia’s principal musical style is the cumbia, with its related genres porro and vallenato.
Anxiety in non-human primates By Kristine Coleman and Peter J. Pierre Anxiety disorders adversely affect millions of people and account for substantial morbidity in the United States. Anxiety disrupts an individual’s ability to effectively engage and interact in social and non-social situations. The onset of anxiety disorders may begin at an early age or occur in response to life events.
World Philosophy Day reading list By Mohamed Sesay World Philosophy Day was created by UNESCO in 2005 in order to “win recognition for and give strong impetus to philosophy and, in particular, to the teaching of philosophy in the world”. To celebrate World Philosophy Day, we have compiled a list of what we consider to be the most essential philosophy titles. We are also providing free access to several key journal articles and online products in philosophy so that you can explore this discipline in more depth. Happy reading!
Luciano Floridi responds to NYROB review of The Fourth Revolution By Luciano Floridi John Searle’s review of The Fourth Revolution – How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality (OUP 2014) is astonishingly shallow and misguided. The silver lining is that, if its factual errors and conceptual confusions are removed, the opportunity for an informed and insightful reading can still be enjoyed.
The other side of El Sistema: Music education, discipline, and profit By Geoffrey Baker The Venezuelan youth orchestra scheme El Sistema is perhaps the world’s most famous music education program today. It’s lauded as a revolutionary social program that has rescued hundreds of thousands of Venezuela’s poorest children. Simon Rattle has called it “the most important thing happening in music anywhere in the world.” Classical music education is back in vogue, now aligned with the rhetoric of social justice.
Scholarly reflections on ‘slacktivism’ Whether its the use of Facebook in the 2008 US Presidential election or the Ice Bucket Challenge in 2014, there are new forms of activism emerging online. But are all these forms of activism equal? With the inclusion of slacktivism on Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year shortlist, we asked a number of scholars for […]
The ayes have it By Anatoly Liberman The ayes may have it, but we, poor naysayers, remain in ignorance about the derivation of ay(e) “yes.” I hope to discuss the various forms of assent in December, and we’ll see that that the origin of some synonyms of ay(e) is also enigmatic.
Put the debate about slacktivism to rest By Hahrie Han The term slacktivism is based on a question that should never have been asked: are digital activists doing anything worthwhile, or are they mere “slacktivists,” activists who are slacking off?
Slacktivism as optical illusion By David Karpf Slacktivism is a portmanteau, bridging slacker and activism. It is usually not intended as a compliment. The term is born out of frustration with the current state of public discourse: signing an e-petition, retweeting a message, or “liking” something on Facebook seems too easy.
Slacktivism, clicktivism, and “real” social change By M.I. Franklin Like its corollary clicktivism, slacktivism is a term that unites entrenched technosceptics and romantic revolutionaries from a pre-Internet or, more precisely, a pre-social media age as they admonish younger generations for their lack of commitment to “real” social change or willingness to do “what it takes” to make the world around them a better place.
Does workplace stress play a role in retirement drinking? By Kathleen Briggs and Peter A. Bamberger Alcohol misuse among the retired population is a phenomenon that has been long recognized by scholars and practitioners. The retirement process is complex, and researchers posit that the pre-retirement workplace can either protect against—or contribute to—alcohol misuse among retirees.
Give thanks for Chelmsford, the birthplace of the USA By Malcolm Gaskill Autumn is here again – in England, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, in the US also the season of Thanksgiving. On the fourth Thursday in November, schoolchildren across the country will stage pageants, some playing black-suited Puritans, others Native Americans bedecked with feathers. By tradition, Barack Obama will ‘pardon’ a turkey, but 46 million others will be eaten in a feast complete with corncobs and pumpkin pie. The holiday has a long history: Lincoln fixed the date (amended by Roosevelt in 1941).
The legitimate fear that months of civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri will end in rioting By Brenda E. Stevenson On 9 August 2014, Officer Darren Wilson of the Ferguson, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis) Police Department, shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old. Officer Wilson is white and Michael Brown was black, sparking allegations from wide swaths of the local and national black community that Wilson’s shooting of Brown, and the Ferguson Police Department’s reluctance to arrest the officer, are both racially motivated events that smack of an historic trend of black inequality within the US criminal justice system.
Vaping and the data on e-cigarettes By Robert West Vaping is the term for using an electronic cigarette (e-cigarette). Since e-cigarettes involve inhaling vapour rather than smoke, it is distinct from smoking. The vapour looks a somewhat like cigarette smoke but dissipates much more quickly and has very little odour since it mostly consist of water droplets.
Vaping in the old tobacco and new marijuana industries By Jonathan P. Caulkins The fascinating thing about vape being word of the year is that not only is the word new and important, but so is the actual activity; this is not merely the coining a bon mot for a longstanding practice.
The rise of electronic cigarettes and their impact on public health By Nicholas Freudenberg A new report from the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention shows that use of e-cigarettes among high schools students has tripled in two years. The finding raises the question is vaping—the use of tobacco-free electronic cigarettes—an important tool for helping smokers quit or a ploy by Big Tobacco to addict another generation of young people to nicotine?
What do we love about new words? By Edwin Battistella The lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries keep watch on our collective neology and select a word—or words–of the year: a word that is both forward-looking and reflects the culture of the current year. From 2004 we’ve had chav, podcast, carbon-neutral, locavore, unfriend, refudiate, squeezed middle, the verb GIF, and selfie.
Place of the Year 2014 nominee spotlight: Scotland [quiz] As voting on the Place of the Year shortlist continues, we’d like to spotlight a second contender in the race – Scotland. Scotland drew the world’s attention this year as a referendum was held for the country’s independence in September 2014.
Reflections on the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of The Death of Klinghoffer By David Ostwald The question is not whether it was appropriate for the Metropolitan Opera to stage this important and controversial piece, but rather, did they do it right? Did they mount it so that its poetic, dramatic and musical potential was well realized?
A guide to European cartels By Rachel Fenwick and Simon Jared On Tuesday 25th and Wednesday 26th November we are looking forward to returning to Brussels for the IBC Advanced EU Competition Law. The conference will see some of the leading competition lawyers, regulators, competition authorities, economists, legal advisors, and academics come together to discuss cartels, private enforcement, vertical restraints, state aid, mergers, and more. To find out what you can expect from the conference watch the video highlights from last year, including a clip of our very own Francesca Halstead.
How did we get from snuff to vaping? By Melissa Mohr Oxford Dictionaries has selected vape as Word of the Year 2014, so we asked several experts to comment on language and the words that defined this past year. Vaping is having an interesting cultural moment. Use of the word is increasing rapidly, as the Oxford Dictionaries editors note, although many people are still unfamiliar with […]
Scholarly reflections on ‘vape’ Electronic cigarettes are growing in popularity around the world. With the announcement of vape as our Word of the Year, we asked a number of scholars for their thoughts on this new word and emerging phenomenon.
The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is… vape As 2014 draws to a close, it’s time to look back and see which words have been significant throughout the past twelve months, and to announce the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. Without further ado, we can exclusively reveal that the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2014 is…vape.
The future of systems neuroscience By Larry Swanson How does the brain work? It’s a question on a lot of people’s minds these days, especially with the launch of massive new research efforts like the American BRAIN Initiative and the European Human Brain Project.
Chemical warfare in terrestrial flatworms By Oné R. Pagán Biologically-produced toxins include some of the most interesting substances in nature. As advanced as the chemical sciences are, nothing beats nature in terms of the wide variety of structures with specific biochemical properties.
A reading list for European Antibiotic Awareness Day By Alan P. Johnson Held every 18 November, European Antibiotic Awareness Day (EAAD) is a European public health initiative that promotes responsible use of antibiotics. The day raises awareness of the threat to public health of antibiotic resistance and encourages prudent antibiotic use.
Anthony Trollope on literary criticism Literary criticism in the present day has become a profession,—but it has ceased to be an art. Its object is no longer that of proving that certain literary work is good and other literary work is bad, in accordance with rules which the critic is able to define. English criticism at present rarely even pretends to go so far as this.
After the elections: Thanksgiving, consumerism, and the American soul By Louis René Beres The elections, thankfully, are finally over, but America’s search for security and prosperity continues to center on ordinary politics and raw commerce. This ongoing focus is perilous and misconceived. Recalling the ineffably core origins of American philosophy, what we should really be asking these days is the broadly antecedent question: “How can we make the souls of our citizens better?”
How to naturalize God By Fiona Ellis A former colleague of mine once said that the problem with theology is that it has no subject-matter. I was reminded of Nietzsche’s (unwittingly self-damning) claim that those who have theologians’ blood in their veins see all things in a distorted and dishonest perspective.
Back to the future with the ASC’s new Division of Policing By Cody Telep On 31 December 1941, August Vollmer hosted the first meeting of the National Association of College Police Training Officials at his home. The organization initially focused on developing standardized curricula for university-based policing programs, but soon expanded its scope to include the more general field of criminology.
San Diego, here we come By Alyssa Bender Ever since last year’s American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature meeting in Baltimore, the Religion and Bibles team at Oxford University Press has eagerly awaited San Diego in 2014. As we gear up to travel to the west coast, we asked our staff across divisions and offices: What is on your to-do list while in San Diego?
The Republican view on bipartisanship By Lewis L. Gould Anyone who expects bipartisanship in the wake of last Tuesday’s elections has not been paying attention. The Republican Party does not believe in a two-party system that includes the Democrats, and it never has. Ever since the Civil War when the Republicans were convinced that their Democratic opposition was in treacherous league with the Confederacy, the Grand Old Party in season and out has doubted the legitimacy of the Democrats to hold power.
Global solidarity and Cuba’s response to the Ebola outbreak By Robert Huish How did the international community get the response to the Ebola outbreak so wrong? We closed borders. We created panic. We left the moribund without access to health care. When governments in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Guinea, Mali and Nigeria called out to the world for help, the global response went to mostly protect the citizens of wealthy nations before strengthening health systems on the ground.
Who should be shamefaced? By Robert Walker Jose Nuñez lives in a homeless shelter in Queens with his wife and two children. He remembers arriving at the shelter: ‘It’s literally like you are walking into prison. The kids have to take their shoes off, you have to remove your belt, you have to go through a metal detector. Even the kids do. We are not going into a prison, I don’t need to be stripped and searched. I’m with my family. I’m just trying to find a home.’
Academics as activists: an interview with Jeffrey W. Pickron By Jeffrey W. Pickron This week, we bring you an interview with activist and historian Jeffrey W. Pickron. He and three other scholars spoke about their experiences as academics and activists on a riveting panel at the recent Oral History Association Annual Meeting. In this podcast, Pickron talks to managing editor Troy Reeves about his introduction to both oral history and activism, and the risks and rewards of speaking out.
On World Diabetes Day, a guide to managing diabetes during the holidays By Joe Hitchcock Christmas and all the accompanying celebrations can prove a big disruption to the task of keeping diabetes firmly in the background. Take a look at this list of tips, facts and advice to help you stay in control and happy throughout the festive months.
Celebrating Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (1912-1954) was a mathematician and computer scientist, remembered for his revolutionary Automatic Computing Engine, on which the first personal computer was based, and his crucial role in breaking the ENIGMA code during the Second World War. He continues to be regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.
Immigration and emigration: taking the long-term perspective for our better health By Raj S. Bhopal Immigration is an inflammatory matter and probably always has been. Immigrant groups, with few exceptions, have to endure the brickbats of prejudice of the recipient population. Emigration, by contrast, hardly troubles people — but the departure of one’s people is not a trifling matter. I wonder why these differential responses occur.
Bioethics and the hidden curriculum By Jason Adam Wasserman The inherent significance of bioethics and social science in medicine is now widely accepted… at least on the surface. Despite an assortment of practical problems—limited curricular time compounded by increased concern for “whitespace”—few today deny outright that ethical practice and humanistic patient engagement are important and need to be taught.
Why be rational (or payday in Wonderland)? By Michael Allingham This little fable illustrates three points. The first is that rationality is a property of patterns of choice rather than of individual choices. As Hume famously noted in 1738, ‘it is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger; it is not contrary to reason for me to chuse [sic] my total ruin to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian’. However, it seems irrational to choose chocolate when the menu comprises coffee, tea, and chocolate; and to choose tea when it comprises just tea and chocolate.
The Civil War in five senses By Abbey Lovell Historians are tasked with recreating days past, setting vivid scenes that bring the past to the present. Mark M. Smith, author of The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War, engages all five senses to recall the roar of canon fire at Vicksburg, the stench of rotting corpses in Gettysburg, and many more of the sights and sounds of battle. In doing so, Smith creates a multi-dimensional vision of the Civil War and captures the human experience during wartime.
Composer Michael Finnissy in eight questions By Michael Finnissy Each month we will bring you a series of questions and answers from our OUP composers, providing an insight into their music and personalities. Today, we are speaking with Michael Finnissy, about the music he’s listening to, influences, instruments, and the first piece of music he ever wrote.
Evidence-based interventions in pediatric psychology By Bryan D. Carter and Tonya M. Palermo The field of pediatric psychology has been changing rapidly over the last decade with both researchers and practitioners working to keep up with the latest innovations. To address the latest evidence-based interventions and methodological improvements, the editors of the Journal of Pediatric Psychology and Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology decided to join efforts.
Patterns in physics By A. R. P. Rau The aim of physics is to understand the world we live in. Given its myriad of objects and phenomena, understanding means to see connections and relations between what may seem unrelated and very different. Thus, a falling apple and the Moon in its orbit around the Earth. In this way, many things “fall into place” in terms of a few basic ideas, principles (laws of physics) and patterns.
Jawaharlal Nehru, moral intellectual By Mushirul Hasan In his famous essay, French philosopher Julien Benda indicted intellectuals for treason to their destiny, and blamed them for betraying the very moral principles that made their existence possible. Nehru was not one of them.
On idioms in general and on “God’s-Acre” in particular By Anatoly Liberman From time to time I receive letters encouraging me to discuss not only words but also idioms. I would be happy to do so if I were better equipped. The origin of proverbial sayings (unless they go back to so-called familiar quotations) and idioms is usually lost beyond recovery.
Test your knowledge of neuroanatomical terminology Neuroanatomical Terminology by Larry Swanson supplies the first global, historically documented, hierarchically organized human nervous system parts list. This defined vocabulary accurately and systematically describes every human nervous system structural feature […]
A new benchmark model for estimating expected stock returns By Chen Xue, Kewei Hou, and Lu Zhang For investors and asset managers, expected stock returns are the rates of return over a period of time in the future that they require to earn in exchange for holding the stocks today. Expected returns are a central input in their decision process of allocating wealth across stocks, and are essential in determining their welfare. For corporate managers, expected returns on the stocks of their companies, or the costs of equity, are the rates of returns over a period of time in the future.
Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler on the Hebrew Bible Winner of the 2004 National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship, The Jewish Study Bible is a landmark, one-volume resource tailored especially for the needs of students of the Hebrew Bible. We sat down with co-editors Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler to talk about the revisions in the Second Edition of The Jewish Study Bible, and the Biblical Studies field as a whole.
Seven common misconceptions about the Hebrew Bible By Marc Zvi Brettler Everyone talks about the Bible, though few have read it cover to cover. This is not surprising—some sections of the Bible are difficult to understand without a commentary, others are tedious, and still others are boring. That is why annotated Bibles were created—to help orient readers as they read through the Bible or look into what parts of it mean.
Making leaders By Dora L. Costa Dwight D. Eisenhower described leadership as “the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.” Eisenhower was a successful wartime general and president. What made him successful? It was not a full head of hair and a fit physique, two of the physical traits of a CEO.
Remembrance Day By Daniel Parker Remembrance Day is a memorial day observed in Commonwealth of Nations member states since the end of the First World War to remember those who have died in the line of duty. It is observed by a two-minute silence on the ’11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month’, in accordance with the armistice signed by representatives of Germany and the Entente on 11 November, 1918. The First World War officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28 June 1919.
Armistice Day: an interactive bibliography Today is Armistice Day, which commemorates the ceasefire between the Allies and Germany on the Western Front during the First World War. Though battle continued on other fronts after the armistice was signed “on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” of 1918, we remember 11 November as the official end of “the war to end all wars.”
Top four high profile cases in Intellectual Property law By Miranda Dobson Thomas Jefferson is often quoted as remarking; “he who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” His sentiments, while romantic, do not necessarily express a view that many companies, authors and artists would agree with when it comes to protecting their intellectual property today. For businesses and individuals alike, it has become of increasing importance to defend expressions of creative ideas with trademarks, patents and copyrighting.
Meeting and mating with our ancient cousins By Eugene E. Harris Two of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in paleoanthropology occurred in 2010. Not only had we determined a draft genome of an extinct Neandertal from bones that lay in the Earth for tens of thousands of years, but the genome from another heretofore unknown ancient human relative, dubbed the Denisovans, was also announced. A one-hundred-year-old conundrum was finally answered: did we mate with Neandertals?
Place of the Year 2014 nominee spotlight: Brazil [Infographic] By Connie Ngo With the recent announcement of our Place of the Year 2014 shortlist, we are spotlighting each of the contenders. First up is Brazil.Brazil brought the world’s soccer fans together this year, as it hosted the 2014 FIFA World Cup in 12 different cities across the country. Learn more about this lively country in this infographic.
The peace of Utrecht and the balance of power By Randall Lesaffer The years 2013 and 2014 mark the tercentenary of the peace settlement that put an end to one of the major and most devastating wars in early-modern European history, the War of the Spanish Succession (1700–1713/1714). The war erupted after the death without issue of the last Habsburg king of Spain, Charles II (1665–1700). Charles’s death triggered a violent conflagration of the European diplomatic system, which the major rulers of Europe had anticipated with dread but had proven incapable of averting.
Innovation and safety in high-risk organizations By Scott Gallagher The construction or recertification of a nuclear power plant often draws considerable attention from activists concerned about safety. However, nuclear powered US Navy (USN) ships routinely dock in the most heavily populated areas without creating any controversy at all. How has the USN managed to maintain such an impressive safety record? The USN is not alone, many organizations, such as nuclear public utilities, confront the need to maintain perfect reliability or face catastrophe.
The evolution of life Molecular biology continues to inform science on a daily basis and reveal what it means to be human beings as we discover our place in the universe. With the ability to engage science in ways that were unimaginable only a few decades ago, we can obtain the genetic profile of a germ, discover the roots of unicellular life and uncover the mysteries of now extinct Neanderthals.
Replication, data access, and transparency in social science By R. Michael Alvarez Improving the transparency of the research published in Political Analysis has been an important priority for Jonathan Katz and I as co-editors of the journal. We spent a great deal of time over the past two years developing and implementing policies and procedures to insure that all studies published in Political Analysis have replication data available through the journal’s Dataverse.
Reading up on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall On 9 November 1989, at midnight, the East German government opened its borders to West Germany for the first time in almost thirty years: a city divided, families and friends separated for a generation, reunited again. For much of its existence, attempting to cross the wall meant almost certain death, and around 80 East Germans were killed in the attempt, shot down by the border guards as they tried to make their escape. With this announcement, however, the gates were thrown open.
Big state or small state? By Hester Vaizey For 40 years, Germans living behind the Iron Curtain in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had first-hand experience of a big state, with full near-full employment and heavily subsidized rent and basic necessities. Then, when the Berlin Wall fell, and East Germany was effectively taken over by West Germany in the reunification process, they were plunged into a new capitalist reality.
Beethoven and the Berlin Wall By Elaine Kelly The collapse of the Berlin Wall twenty-five years ago this month prompted a diverse range of musical responses. While Mstislav Rostropovich celebrated the momentous event by giving a very personal, impromptu performance of Bach’s Cello Suites in front of the Wall two days after it had been breached, David Hasselhoff regaled Berliners from atop of what remained of the Wall on New Year’s Eve of 1989 with a glitter-studded rendition of his chart hit “Looking for Freedom.”
Jawaharlal Nehru and his troubled legacy By Dipankar Gupta From breaking the Congress organization in 1969, to the declaration of Emergency, to the initiation of caste wars, to the encouragement of Sikh militancy, to the decision on Shah Bano, to the opening of the Babri Masjid, and the list goes on, it was Nehru’s bloodline that most effectively downgraded his memory.
Furphies and Whizz-bangs By Amanda Laugesen In 2015, Australia will mark the centenary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at what came to be known as Anzac Cove (Gaba Tepe). For Australia, this event has been a significant marker of nationhood, and the legacy of Anzac plays an important role in Australian cultural and political life.
A reading list of Roman classics By Judith Luna Roman literature often derived from Greek sources, but took Greek models and made them its own. It includes some of the best known classical authors such as Ovid and Virgil, as well as a Roman emperor who found time to write down his philosophical reflections.
What could be the global impact of the UK’s Legal Services Act? By Bruce MacEwen In 2007, the UK Parliament passed the Legal Services Act, with the goal of liberalizing the market for legal services in England and Wales and encouraging more competition—in response to the governmentally commissioned “Clementi” report finding the British legal market opaque, inflexible, overly complex, and insulated from innovation and competition.
Death of a Democrat By Gyanesh Kudaisya On 17 and 18 December 1961, on Nehru’s orders, Indian troops marched into Goa, an area of about 1,500 square miles on the country’s western coast, to ‘liberate’ it from the Portuguese, who had ruled the territory since 1510. Condemnation was swift, both from critics at home and abroad.
Trapped in the House of Unity By Patrick Major I emerged after a long day in the soundproofed cabins at the back of the reading room in the onetime Institute of Marxism-Leninism, which pieces of black sticky tape now proclaimed as the ‘Institute of the Labour Movement’. It was spring 1990 and I was in East Berlin, as one of the first western researchers into the German Democratic Republic.
Eleanor Roosevelt’s last days By Philip A. Mackowiak When Eleanor Roosevelt died on this day (7 November) in 1962, she was widely regarded as “the greatest woman in the world.” Not only was she the longest-tenured First Lady of the United States, but also a teacher, author, journalist, diplomat, and talk-show host.
The origin of work-hour regulations for house officers By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Interns and residents have always worked long hours in hospitals, and there has always been much to admire about this. Beyond the educational benefits that accrue from observing the natural history of disease and therapy, long hours help instill a sense of commitment to the patient. House officers learn that becoming a doctor means learning to meet the needs of others.
International Day of Radiology and brain imaging By Arpan K. Banerjee Tomorrow, 8 November, will mark the third anniversary of the now established International Day of Radiology, an event organised by the European Society of Radiology and Radiological Society of North America: a day in which health care workers worldwide mark their debt of gratitude to Wilhelm Roentgen’s great discovery of x- rays, and its subsequent applications in the field of medical practice, today known as radiology or medical imaging.
Looking for Tutankhamun By Christina Riggs Poor old king Tut has made the news again – for all the wrong reasons, again. In a documentary that aired on the BBC two weeks ago, scientists based at the EURAC-Institute for Mummies and the Iceman unveiled a frankly hideous reconstruction of Tutankhamun’s mummy, complete with buck teeth, a sway back, Kardashian-style hips, and a club foot.
The economic consequences of Nehru By Pulapre Balakrishnan As Nehru was India’s longest serving prime minister, and both triumph as well as tragedy had accompanied his tenure, this is a fit occasion for a public debate on what had been attempted in the Nehru era and the extent of its success.
A reading list of Ancient Greek classics By Judith Luna This selection of ancient Greek literature includes philosophy, poetry, drama, and history. It introduces some of the great classical thinkers, whose ideas have had a profound influence on Western civilization.
Ancient voices for today [infographic] The ancient writers of Greece and Rome are familiar to many, but what do their voices really tell us about who they were and what they believed? In Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome, Christopher Pelling and Maria Wyke provide a vibrant and distinctive introduction to twelve of the greatest authors from ancient Greece and Rome, writers whose voices still resonate strongly across the centuries.
Salamone Rossi as a Jew among Jews By Don Harrán By introducing “art music” into the synagogue Rossi was asking for trouble. He is said by Leon Modena (d. 1648), the person who encouraged him to write his Hebrew songs, to have “worked and labored to add from his secular to his sacred works”; “secular” meaning Gentile compositions.
The Road to Ypres By Peter Hart Time passes quickly. As we track the progression of events hundred years ago on the Western Front, the dramas flash by. In the time it takes to answer an e-mail the anniversary of another battle has come and gone.
Forgiveness makes late-life sweeter By Jessie Dezutter, Loren Toussaint, and Mia Leijssen “Forgiveness,” does the word still exist in the vocabulary of modern-day individuals? Does this moral virtue guide people’s intentions, beliefs, and behaviors? Or has forgiveness died a silent death between the brick walls of centuries-old convents and monasteries? The word is steeped in religious traditions and is indeed central in several world religions and spiritual traditions. But is forgiveness relevant today, how so, and for whom?
1989 revolutions, 25 years on By Paul Betts This season marks the silver anniversary of the wildfire revolutions that swept across Eastern Europe in the summer and autumn of 1989. The upheavals led to the liberation of Eastern Europe from Soviet control, the Reunification of Germany and the demise of the Soviet Union itself two years later. Its dizzying speed and domino effect caught everyone by surprise, be it the confused communist elites, veteran Kremlinologists and even the participants themselves.
Monthly etymology gleanings for October 2014, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman As I mentioned last time, one of our correspondents asked me whether anything is known about this idiom. My database has very little on brown study, but I may refer to an editorial comment from the indispensable Notes and Queries (1862, 3rd Series/I, p. 190). The writer brings brown study in connection with French humeur brune, literally “brown humor, or disposition,” said about a somber or melancholy temperament.
Does chronic occupational stress cause brain damage? By Ivanka Savic During the last decade, Western societies have been facing increasing reports about a new, work related phenomenon. It affects healthy, productive, and highly functional individuals typically working long hours for many years without a normal weekend recovery.
A history of Bonfire Night and the Gunpowder Plot By Hannah Charters The fifth of November is not just an excuse to marvel at sparklers, fireworks, and effigies; it is part of a national tradition that is based on one of the most famous moments in British political history. The Gunpowder Plot itself was actually foiled on the night of Monday 4 November, 1605. However, throughout the following day, Londoners were asked to light bonfires in order to celebrate the failure of the assassination attempt on King James I of England.
I miss Intrade By Richard S. Grossman Although the media hype is usually most frenetic during presidential election years, this season’s mid-term elections are generating a great deal of heat, if not much light. By October 13, contestants in 36 gubernatorial races had spent an estimated $379 million on television ads, while hopefuls in the 36 Senate races underway had spent a total of $321 million. For those addicted to politics, newspapers and magazines have long provided abundant, sometimes even insightful coverage.
Learning to love democracy: A note to William Hague By Matthew Flinders British politics is currently located in the eye of a constitutional storm. The Scottish independence referendum shook the political system and William Hague has been tasked with somehow re-connecting the pieces of a constitutional jigsaw that – if we are honest – have not fitted together for some time. I have written an open letter, encouraging the Leader of the House to think the unthinkable and to put ‘the demos’ back into democracy when thinking about how to breath new life into politics.
Corruption, crime, and scandal in Turkey By Ryan Gingeras In December 2013, Turkish authorities arrested the sons of several prominent cabinet ministers on bribery, embezzlement and smuggling charges. Investigators claimed that the men were contributing members in a conspiracy to illicitly trade Turkish gold for Iranian oil gas (an act which, among other things, violates the spirit of United Nations’ sanctions targeting Tehran). The scheme purportedly netted a vast fortune in proceeds in the form of dividends and bribes.
Nuclear strategy and proliferation after the Cold War By Christopher McKnight Nichols On 4 November 1994, the United Nations Security Council formally endorsed the so-called “Agreed Framework,” a nuclear accord discussed for years but negotiated intensively from September to October 1994 between The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) and the United States.
Mapping historic US elections Today is Election Day in the United States, and we combed our archives for the stories behind historic American elections. Explore America’s presidential and Congressional history, from Abraham Lincoln’s first Senatorial race in 1858 to George W. Bush’s hotly-contested victory against Al Gore in 2000.
Music teachers on Facebook: separating the wheat from the chaff By Deborah Rambo Sinn I just reviewed yet another “hot off the press” piano composition. It was posted on Facebook by someone I do not know – either as a person or by reputation. It looks good, but that is only because note-writing software has become so easy-to-use that anyone with the most basic knowledge can quickly crank out a “could-have-been-published” looking piece.
Umbrellas and yellow ribbons: The language of the 2014 Hong Kong protests By Jennifer Eagleton Late September and October 2014 saw Hong Kong experience its most significant political protests since itThis ongoing event shows the inherent creativity of language, how it succinctly incorporates history, and the importance of context in making meaning. Language is thus a “time capsule” of a place. China, which resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong after it stopped being a British colony in 1997, promised universal suffrage in its Basic Law as the ‘ultimate aim’ of its political development.
“Lame Duck” session of Congress should pass Multi-State Worker Tax Fairness Act By Edward Zelinsky There is a reason that Congress’s post-election meetings are called “lame duck” sessions. They often aren’t pretty. Senators and representatives not returning to Congress (because they retired or were defeated for re-election) may not have strong incentives to legislate responsibly. Senators and representatives who will be part of the new Congress starting in January may […]
Announcing the Place of the Year 2014 shortlist: Vote for your pick Thanks for all of your input over the last month as we considered our 2014 Place of the Year longlist in conjunction with the publication of the twenty-first Atlas of the World. Now that the votes are in, we’ve narrowed the nominees down to a shortlist of five, and we’d love your thoughts on those as well.
What do rumors, diseases, and memes have in common? By Mason A. Porter Are you worried about catching the flu, or perhaps even Ebola? Just how worried should you be? Well, that depends on how fast a disease will spread over social and transportation networks, so it’s obviously important to obtain good estimates of the speed of disease transmission and to figure out good containment strategies to combat disease spread.
Full-circle in the Middle East? By Richard Youngs In response to the arc of crisis burning across the Middle East, European governments seem to have reverted to traditional perspectives on stability and counter-terrorism. Their policies now exhibit many salient features from the pre-Arab spring period.
The ethics of a mercenary By James Pattison In July 2014, the Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, claimed that Ukraine wasn’t fighting a civil war in the East of the country but rather was “defending its territory from foreign mercenaries.” Conversely, rumours abounded earlier in the year that Academi, the firm formerly known as Blackwater, were operating in support of the Ukrainian government (which Academi strongly denied).
Seven things you should know about marine pollution By Judith Weis Marine pollution has long been a topic of concern, but what do you really know about the pollutants affecting the world’s waters? We asked Judith Weis, author of Marine Pollution: What Everyone Needs to Know to delve into the various forms of pollutants, and the many ways they can harm our environment and bodies.
Doris Lessing: another world of words By Victoria Best Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was an astonishing wordsmith, as any reader of her many novels, stories, plays, and poems would attest — and the genesis of this talent can be seen in her upbringing and surroundings.
Of wing dams, tyrannous bureaucrats, and the rule of law By Daniel Ernst But just when I was ready to conclude that the Tea Party movement had run its course, another candidate, who identified himself as a lawyer and an expert in constitutional history, used his time to develop the claim that bureaucracy was unAmerican and that as it grew so did liberty diminish. I may have seen fewer approving nods than followed the other candidate’s tale of the wing dam, but most in the audience appeared to agree with him. Several historians have already engaged the popular antistatism I encountered that evening.
Gentlemen, Samurai, and Germans in China By Oleg Benesch One hundred years ago today, far from the erupting battlefields of Europe, a small German force in the city of Tsingtau (Qingdao), Germany’s most important possession in China, was preparing for an impending siege. The small fishing village of Qingdao and the surrounding area had been reluctantly leased to the German Empire by the Chinese government for 99 years in 1898, and German colonists soon set about transforming this minor outpost into a vibrant city boasting many of the comforts of home, including the forerunner of the now-famous Tsingtao Brewery.
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Sharecropper’s Troubadour: songs and stories from the 2014 OHA Annual Meeting By Michael Honey and Pat Krueger The 2014 Oral History Association Annual Meeting featured an exciting musical plenary session led by Michael Honey and Pat Krueger. They presented the songs and stories of John Handcox, the “poet laureate” of the interracial Southern Tenant Farmers Union, linking generations of struggle in the South through African American song and oral poetry traditions.
A Halloween horror story: What was it? Part 5 By Fitz-James O'Brien Every Friday this October we’ve unveiled a part of Fitz-James O’Brien’s tale of an unusual entity in What Was It?, a story from the spine-tingling collection of works in Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson, edited by Darryl Jones. Today we’re wrapping up the story with the final installment. Last we left off the narrator, Harry, and his friend, Hammond, tied up an invisible entity, shocking the boarders of the haunted home where they had been staying. Will they learn more about the mysterious creature?
Oxytocin and emotion recognition By Hidenori Yamasue Imagine you are in class and your friend has just made a fool of the teacher. How do you feel? Although this will depend on the personalities of those involved, you might well find yourself laughing along with your classmates at the teacher’s expense.
Stem cell therapy for diabetes By Jonathan Slack This month, it was reported that scientists at Harvard University have successfully made insulin-secreting beta cells from human pluripotent stem cells. This is an important milestone towards a “stem cell therapy” for diabetes, which will have huge effects on human medicine. Diabetes is a group of diseases in which the blood glucose is too high. In type 1 diabetes, the patients have an autoimmune disease that causes destruction of their insulin-producing cells (the beta cells of the pancreas).
Another Gaza war: what if the settlers were right? By Joyce Dalsheim Before they were evicted from their homes and forcibly removed from their communities by the Israeli government in 2005, Jewish settlers in the Gaza Strip warned that their removal would only make things worse. They warned that the front line of violence between Israelis and Palestinians would move closer to those Israelis who lived inside the Green Line. They claimed their presence provided a buffer. They said God promised this Land to the Jewish people and that they should not abandon it.
Eight facts about the waterphone By Raquel Fernandes What in this galaxy is waterphone? You’ve might have not seen one, but if you’ve watched a horror or science fiction movie, chances are you’ve heard the eerie sounds of the waterphone. With Halloween around the corner and a spooky soundtrack required, I toured through Grove Music Online to learn more about the monolithic, acoustic instrument.
Stress before birth By Jerrold S. Meyer Stress seems to be everywhere we turn. Much of the daily news is stressful, whether it pertains to the recent Ebola outbreak in western Africa (and its subsequent entry into the United States), beheadings by the radical Islamic group called ISIS, or the economic doldrums that continue to plague much of the developed world.
A taxonomy of kisses By Kate Thompson Where kissing is concerned, there is an entire categorization of this most human of impulses that necessitates taking into account setting, relationship health, and the emotional context in which the kiss occurs. A relationship’s condition might be predicted and its trajectory timeline plotted by observing and understanding how the couple kiss. For instance, viewed through the lens of a couple’s dynamic, a peck on the cheek can convey cold, hard rejection or simply signify that a loving couple are pressed for time.
Monthly etymology gleanings for October 2014, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman It so happened that at the end of this past summer I was out of town and responded to the questions and comments that had accumulated in August and September in two posts. We have the adjectives biennial and biannual but no such Latinized luxury for the word month.
The Catholic Supernatural By Carey Hayes, Chad Hayes, and Diana Walsh Pasulka From eighteenth century Gothic novels to contemporary popular culture, the tropes and sacred culture of Catholicism endure as themes in entertainment. OUP author Diana Walsh Pasulka sat down with The Conjuring (2013) screenwriters Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes to discuss their cinematic focus on “the Catholic Supernatural” and the enduring appeal of Catholic culture to moviegoers.
Food insecurity and the Great Recession By Craig Gundersen While food insecurity in America is by no means a new problem, it has been made worse by the Great Recession. And, despite the end of the Great Recession, food insecurity rates remain high. Currently, about 49 million people in the U.S. are living in food insecure households. In a recently-released article in Applied Economics Policy and Perspectives my co-authors, Elaine Waxman and Emily Engelhard, and I provide an overview of Map the Meal Gap, a tool that is used to establish food insecurity rates at the local level for Feeding America.
Five lessons from extreme places By Emma Barrett and Paul Martin Throughout history, some people have chosen to take huge risks. What can we learn from their experiences? Extreme activities, such as polar exploration, deep-sea diving, mountaineering, space faring, and long-distance sailing, create extraordinary physical and psychological demands. The physical risks, such as freezing, drowning, suffocating or starving, are usually obvious. But the psychological pressures are what make extreme environments truly daunting.
Six classic tales of horror for Halloween By Connie Ngo People have enjoyed the horror genre for centuries, reveling in the spooky, toe-curling, hair-raising feelings this genre elicits—perfect for Halloween! Whether you’re trick-or-treating, attending a costume party, or staying home, we’ve put together a list of Oxford World’s Classics that will put you in the mood for this eerie night.
How well do you know the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984? By Dan Hall The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and its Codes of Practice entrench the legal basis for police powers in England and Wales. A thorough and practicable knowledge of PACE is therefore essential to an understanding of policing – but how well do you know it?
A composer’s thoughts on re-presentation and transformation By Alan Bullard My father, Paul Bullard, was a landscape and portrait painter, and on family holidays he would sit and sketch, sometimes with me by his side, filling my music manuscript paper. As a child, I used to think that his task was easier than mine: all he had to do was to put on paper what he could see in front of him, whereas on the other hand I had to imagine a whole sound world, hearing music in my head, and then put it down on paper.
Meet the Commercial Law marketing team at Oxford University Press! By Miranda Dobson We are pleased to introduce the marketing team for the Commercial Law department at OUP. Chris, Simon, and Miranda work with journals, online resources, and books published on a variety of subjects which relate to the rights and practice of people in business. The resources they work with are used by practicing lawyers, academics and students, and cover a range of topics including competition law, energy, arbitration, and financial law. Get to know more about them below.
Place of the Year 2014: the longlist, then and now As voting continues on the longlist for Place of the Year 2014, we decided to take a look at the past and present of each of the nominees. Check out the images in the slideshow to see.
A map of the world’s cuisine By Connie Ngo With nearly 200 countries in the world, the vast number and variety of dishes is staggering, which goes to show just how diverse your food can get. Which countries’ foods do you enjoy? Is there a particular characteristic of your favorite food that can’t be found anywhere else? Explore (just some) of the world’s different cuisines discussed in The Oxford Companion to Food, from Afghanistan to Yemen, with our interactive map.
Celebrating Dylan Thomas’s centenary By Philip Carter Today, 27 October sees the centenary of the birth of the poet, Dylan Marlais Thomas. Born on Cwmdonkin Drive, Swansea, and brought up in the genteel district of Uplands, Thomas’s childhood was suburban and orthodox — his father an aspirational but disappointed English teacher at the local grammar school.
Timbuktu and a future no one wants to see By Roberta Seret What is jihad? What do fundamentalists want? How will moderate Islamists react? These are questions that should be discussed. We may not have easy answers, but if we do not start a dialogue, we may miss an opportunity to curtail horror.
The 100th anniversary of Dylan Thomas’s birth On 27th October 1914 Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, South Wales. He is widely regarded as one the most significant Welsh writers of the 20th century.Thomas’s popular reputation has continued to grow after his death on 9th November, 1953, despite some critics describing his work as too ‘florid’. He wrote prolifically throughout his lifetime but is arguably best known for his poetry. His poem The hand that signed the paper is taken from Jon Stallworthy’s edited collection The Oxford Book of War Poetry.
Religious organizations in the public health paradigm By Ellen Idler If you think about big public health challenges of our day — the Ebola virus in Africa, the rising rates of suicide among the middle-aged in the United States, the HIV epidemic everywhere — religions are playing a role. When I speak, I ask audiences, “What was the first thing you heard about the Ebola crisis?”, and they always say “The missionaries who got it were taken to Emory.”
Race relations in America and the case of Ferguson By Arne L. Kalleberg, Lisa Broidy, and Wayne Santoro The fatal shooting of African-American teenager Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri during a police altercation in Augusts 2014, resulted in massive civil unrest and protests that received considerable attention from the United States and abroad.
Organizing in time By Tor Hernes Organizing and organizations have largely been seen as spatial constructs. Organizing has been seen as the connecting of individuals and technologies through various mechanisms, whereas organizations have been construed as semi-stable entities circumscribed by boundaries that separate them from their external environments.
Lessons from the heart: listening after Ebola By Mark Cave and Stephen M. Sloan Like many this past week, our attention has been fixated on the media coverage of the Ebola outbreak: images of experts showing off the proper way to put on and take off protective gloves to avoid exposure to the virus; political pundits quarrelling over the appropriateness of travel restrictions; reassuring press conferences by the director of the Centers for Disease Control. It is an event that has received immediate and intense attention and generated compelling journalism, for sure, but does it really give us an emotional understanding of the impact of the event?
Short stories from the Danish capital From the narrow twisting streets of the old town centre to the shady docklands, Copenhagen Tales captures the essence of Copenhagen and its many faces. Through seventeen tales by some of the very best of Denmark’s writers past and present, we travel the length and breadth of the Danish capital examining famous sights from unique perspectives. A guide book usefully informs a new visitor to Copenhagen but these stories allow the reader to experience the city and its history from the inside.
Once upon a time, part 2 By Marina Warner There is a quarrel inside me about fairies, and the form of literature their presence helps to define. I have never tried to see a fairy, or at least not since I was five years old. The interest of Casimiro Piccolo reveals how attitudes to folklore belong to their time: he was affected by the scientific inquiry into the paranormal which flourished – in highly intellectual circles – from the late l9th century and into the twentieth. But he also presents a test case, I feel, for the questions that hang around fairies and fairy tales in the twenty-first century .What is the point of them?
Preparing for the 2014 FDI International Arbitration Moot By Ciara O’Connor The annual Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) International Arbitration Moot gathers academics and practitioners from around the world to discuss developments and gain a greater understanding of growing international investment, the creation of international investment treaties, domestic legislation, and international investment contracts.
A Halloween horror story : What was it? Part 4 By Fitz-James O'Brien We’re getting ready for Halloween this month by reading the classic horror stories that set the stage for the creepy movies and books we love today. Every Friday this October we’ve unveiled a part of Fitz-James O’Brien’s tale of an unusual entity in What Was It?, a story from the spine-tingling collection of works in Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson, edited by Darryl Jones. Last we left off the narrator, Harry, tried to fight off a mysterious creature fighting him in his bed. His friend Hammond had just come to his rescue.
Coded letters reveal an illicit affair and a woman of substance By Sara Day When an old friend told me he had saved the former Edward Everett Hale house in Matunuck, Rhode Island, from demolition and gifted it to a local historical society, I remembered there was a significant collection of E. E. Hale letters at the Library of Congress that might throw light on the house.
Navanethem Pillay on what human rights are for By Navanethem Pillay I was born a non-white in apartheid South Africa. My ancestors were sugarcane cutters. My father was a bus driver. We were poor. At age 16 I wrote an essay which dealt with the role of South African women in educating children on human rights and which, as it turned out, was indeed fateful.
Understanding viruses By Melvin Santer The reemergence of the Ebola epidemic provokes the kind of primal fear that has always gripped humans in the face of contagious disease, even though we now know more about how viruses work than ever before. Viruses, like all living organisms, are constantly evolving. This ensures that new viruses and their diseases will always be with us.
Ripe for retirement? By Jussi Hanhimäki In 1958, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the US ambassador to the United Nations, summarized the role of the world organization: “The primary, the fundamental, the essential purpose of the United Nations is to keep peace. Everything which does not further that goal, either directly or indirectly, is at best superfluous.” Some 30 years later another ambassador expressed a different view
Rita Angus in Grove Art Online By Edward Hanfling and Michael Dunn Angus studied at the Canterbury School of Art, Christchurch (1927–33). In 1930 she married the artist Alfred Cook (1907–70) and used the signature Rita Cook until 1946; they had separated in 1934. Her painting Cass (1936; Christchurch, NZ, A.G.) is representative of the regionalist school that emerged in Canterbury during the late 1920s, with the small railway station visualizing both the isolation and the sense of human progress in rural New Zealand.
Watching the watch people By James Nye A time-traveler, visiting from 1970s Britain, would be surprised by pretty much everything on the modern high street. While prestige brands such as Rolls Royce and Berry Bros. & Rudd have formed part of a much older landscape, the discriminating buyer of the Wilson and Heath eras would be astounded by the topsy-like growth of the modern luxury market.
An inside look at music therapy By Scott Huntington We have all experienced the effect music can have on our emotions and state of mind. We have felt our spirit lift when a happy song comes on the radio, or a pinging sense of nostalgia when we hear the songs of our childhood. While this link between music and emotion has long been a part of human life, only in recent decades have we had the technology and foundational knowledge to understand music’s effect on our brains in concrete terms.
Once upon a time, part 1 By Marina Warner I’m writing from Palermo where I’ve been teaching a course on the legacy of Troy. Myths and fairy tales lie on all sides in this old island. It’s a landscape of stories and the past here runs a live wire into the present day. Within the same hour, I saw an amulet from Egypt from nearly 3000 years ago, and passed a young, passionate balladeer giving full voice in the street to a ballad about a young woman – la baronessa Laura di Carini – who was killed by her father in 1538. He and her husband had come upon her alone with a man whom they suspected to be her lover.
Has open access failed? By Matthew Cockerill At the Conference on Open Access Scholarly Publishing in Paris last month, Claudio Aspesi, Senior Analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, raised an uncomfortable question. Did the continuing financial health of traditional publishers like Elsevier indicate that open access had “failed”?
How much are nurses worth? By Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers If you ask many people about nurses, they will tell you how caring and kind nurses are. The word “angel” might even appear. Nursing consistently tops the annual Gallup poll comparing the ethics and honesty of different professions.
A Study in Brown and in a Brown Study, Part 3 By Anatoly Liberman If you have read the previous parts of this “study,” you may remember that brown is defined as a color between orange and black, but lexicographical sources often abstain from definitions and refer to the color of familiar objects. They say that brown is the color of mud, dirt, coffee, chocolate, hazel, or chestnut.
What we’ve learned and what we missed By Niko Pfund A ten-year anniversary seems an opportune time to take stock. Much has been said already about Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO) as it moves into its second decade, and let’s cast the net a bit wider and focus not on OSO, per se, but on what the academic publishing industry has gotten right and what we’ve missed since OSO was in its infancy.
Marital transfers and the welfare of women By William Chan Throughout history and across cultures, marriage has often been accompanied by substantial exchange of wealth. However, the practice has mostly died out in western societies, which is perhaps why the meanings of these marital transfers are often not well understood. In anthropological terms, a dowry can be seen as a form of pre-mortem bequest to the bride from her parents, while bride-price or groom-price is a transaction between the kin of the groom and the kin of the bride.
In defence of horror By Darryl Jones A human eyeball shoots out of its socket, and rolls into a gutter. A child returns from the dead and tears the beating heart from his tormentor’s chest. A young man has horrifying visions of his mother’s decomposing corpse. A baby is ripped from its living mother’s womb. A mother tears her son to pieces, and parades around with his head on a stick.
What’s new in oral history? By Donald A. Ritchie Preparing a new edition of an oral history manual, a decade after the last appeared, highlighted dramatic changes that have swept through the field. Technological development made previous references to equipment sound quaint. The use of oral history for exhibits and heritage touring, for instance, leaped from cassettes and compact disks to QR codes and smartphone apps. As oral historians grew more comfortable with new equipment, they expanded into video and discovered the endless possibilities of posting interviews, transcripts, and recordings on the Internet.
The Salem Witch Trials [infographic] By Emerson W. Baker The Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693 were by far the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft hysteria in American history. Yet Salem was just one of many incidents during the Great Age of Witch Hunts which took place throughout Europe and her colonies over many centuries. Indeed, by European standards, Salem was not even a large outbreak. But what exactly were the factors that made Salem stand out?
Early blues and country music By Nicholas Stoia Beginning in the early 1920s, and continuing through the mid 1940s, record companies separated vernacular music of the American South into two categories, divided along racial lines: the “race” series, aimed at a black audience, and the “hillbilly” series, aimed at a white audience. These series were the precursors to the also racially separated Rhythm & Blues and Country & Western charts.
Corporate short-termism, the media, and the self-fulfilling prophecy By Jaakko Aspara The business press and general media often lament that firm executives are exhibiting “short-termism”, succumbing to the pressure by stock market investors to maximize quarterly earnings while sacrificing long-term investments and innovation. In our new article in the Socio-Economic Review, we suggest that this complaint is partly accurate, but partly not.
Questions surrounding open access licensing By Rhodri Jackson Open access (OA) publishing stands at something of a crossroads. OA is now part of the mainstream. But with increasing success and increasing volume come increasing complexity, scrutiny, and demand. There are many facets of OA which will prove to be significant challenges for publishers over the next few years
Place of the Year 2014: behind the longlist Voting for the 2014 Atlas Place of the Year is now underway. However, you still be curious about the nominees. What makes them so special? Each year, we put the spotlight on the top locations in the world that make us go, “wow”. For good or for bad, this year’s longlist is quite the round-up. Just hover over the place-markers on the map to learn a bit more about this year’s nominations.
Race, sex, and colonialism By Carina Ray As an Africanist historian who has long been committed to reaching broader publics, I was thrilled when the research team for the BBC’s popular genealogy program Who Do You Think You Are? contacted me late last February about an episode they were working on that involved mixed race relationships in colonial Ghana.
Preparing for the International Law Weekend 2014 By Jo Wojtkowski The 2014 International Law Weekend Annual Meeting is taking place this month at Fordham Law School, in New York City (24-25 October 2014). The theme of this year’s meeting is “International Law in a Time of Chaos”, exploring the role of international law in conflict mitigation.
Neurology and psychiatry in Babylon By Edward Reynolds and James Kinnier Wilson How rapidly does medical knowledge advance? Very quickly if you read modern newspapers, but rather slowly if you study history. Nowhere is this more true than in the fields of neurology and psychiatry. It was believed that studies of common disorders of the nervous system began with Greco-Roman Medicine, for example, epilepsy, “The sacred disease” (Hippocrates) or “melancholia”, now called depression.
Five key moments in the Open Access movement in the last ten years By Rhodri Jackson In 2014 Oxford University Press celebrates ten years of open access (OA) publishing. In that time open access has grown massively as a movement and an industry. Here we look back at five key moments which have marked that growth.
2014 AES Convention: shrinking opportunities in music audio By Steve Savage Checking the website for the upcoming Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in Los Angeles, I took note of the swipes promoting the event. Each heading was framed as follows: If it’s about ____________ it’s at AES. The slide show contained nine headings that are to be a part of the upcoming convention (in no particular order because you start at whatever point in the slide show you happened to log-in to the site).
Political Analysis Letters: a new way to publish innovative research By Jens Hainmueller, Justin Grimmer, and R. Michael Alvarez There’s a lot of interesting social science research these days. Conference programs are packed, journals are flooded with submissions, and authors are looking for innovative new ways to publish their work. This is why we have started up a new type of research publication at Political Analysis, Letters.
Linguistic necromancy: a guide for the uninitiated By George Walkden It’s fairly common knowledge that languages, like people, have families. English, for instance, is a member of the Germanic family, with sister languages including Dutch, German, and the Scandinavian languages. Germanic, in turn, is a branch of a larger family, Indo-European, whose other members include the Romance languages (French, Italian, Spanish, and more), Russian, Greek, and Persian.
Efficient causation: Our debt to Aristotle and Hume By Tad M. Schmaltz Causation is now commonly supposed to involve a succession that instantiates some lawlike regularity. This understanding of causality has a history that includes various interrelated conceptions of efficient causation that date from ancient Greek philosophy and that extend to discussions of causation in contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. Yet the fact that we now often speak only of causation, as opposed to efficient causation, serves to highlight the distance of our thought on this issue from its ancient origins.
Is American higher education in crisis? American higher education is at a crossroads. The cost of a college education has made people question the benefits of receiving one. To better understand the issues surrounding the supposed crisis, we asked Goldie Blumenstyk, author of American Higher Education: What Everyone Needs to Know to comment on some of the most hot button topics today.
Illuminating the drama of DNA: creating a stage for inquiry By Lynn Wein Bush Many bioethical challenges surround the promise of genomic technology and the power of genomic information — providing a rich context for critically exploring underlying bioethical traditions and foundations, as well as the practice of multidisciplinary advisory committees and collaborations.
Battels and subfusc: the language of Oxford By Simon Horobin Now that Noughth Week has come to an end and the university Full Term is upon us, I thought it might be an appropriate time to investigate the arcane world of Oxford jargon — the University of Oxford, that is. New students, or freshers, do not arrive in Oxford but come up; at the end of term they go down (irrespective of where they live).
Biologists that changed the world By Suzie Eves Biology Week is an annual celebration of the biological sciences that aims to inspire and engage the public in the wonders of biology. The Society of Biology created this awareness day in 2012 to give everyone the chance to learn and appreciate biology, the science of the 21st century, through varied, nationwide events. Our belief that access to education and research changes lives for the better naturally supports the values behind Biology Week, and we are excited to be involved in it year on year.
The chimera of anti-politics By Michael Freeden Anti-politics is in the air. There is a prevalent feeling in many societies that politicians are up to no good, that establishment politics are at best irrelevant and at worst corrupt and power-hungry, and that the centralization of power in national parliaments and governments denies the public a voice.
What will it take to reduce infections in the hospital? By Sanjay Saint The outbreak of Ebola, in Africa and in the United States, is a stark reminder of the clear and present danger that infection represents in all our lives, and we need reminding.
Recap of the 2014 OHA Annual Meeting By Andrew Shaffer Last weekend we were thrilled to see so many of you at the 2014 Oral History Association (OHA) Annual Meeting, “Oral History in Motion: Movements, Transformations, and the Power of Story.” The panels and roundtables were full of lively discussions, and the social gatherings provided a great chance to meet fellow oral historians.
A Halloween horror story : What was it? Part 3 By Fitz-James O'Brien We’re getting ready for Halloween this month by reading the classic horror stories that set the stage for the creepy movies and books we love today. Check in every Friday this October as we tell Fitz-James O’Brien’s tale of an unusual entity in What Was It?, a story from the spine-tingling collection of works in Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson, edited by Darryl Jones. Last we left off the narrator was headed to bed after a night of opium and philosophical conversation with Dr. Hammond, a friend and fellow boarded at the supposed haunted house where they are staying.
Going inside to get a taste of nature By Jill McSweeney For many of us, nature is defined as an outdoor space, untouched by human hands, and a place we escape to for refuge. We often spend time away from our daily routines to be in nature, such as taking a backwoods camping trip, going for a long hike in an urban park, or gardening in our backyard. Think about the last time you were out in nature, what comes to mind?
The deconstruction of paradoxes in epidemiology By Miquel Porta If a “revolution” in our field or area of knowledge was ongoing, would we feel it and recognize it? And if so, how? I think a methodological “revolution” is probably going on in the science of epidemiology, but I’m not totally sure. Of course, in science not being sure is part of our normal state. And we mostly like it.
What is African American religion? By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. What is African American religion? Scholars have written a lot about the difficulties in the study of religion generally. Those difficulties become even messier when we use the words black or African American to describe religion. The adjectives bear the burden of a difficult history that colors the way religion is practiced and understood in the United States. They register the horror of slavery and the terror of Jim Crow as well as the richly textured experiences of a captured people, for whom sorrow stands alongside joy.
Celebrating World Anaesthesia Day 2014 By Amy Walker World Anaesthesia Day commemorates the first successful demonstration of ether anaesthesia at the Massachusetts General Hospital on 16 October 1846. This was one of the most significant events in medical history, enabling patients to undergo surgical treatments without the associated pain of an operation. To celebrate this important day, we are highlighting a selection of British Journal of Anaesthesia podcasts so you can learn more about anaesthesia practices today.
An interview with Tracey Laird In honor of the 40th anniversary of Austin City Limits, the longest running live music show on television, we spoke to author Tracey E. W. Laird, author of Austin City Limits: A History, about the challenges the show has faced, the ways that it has adapted to a rapidly changing music industry, and what makes ACL perennially appealing to viewers.
Trauma and emotional healing By Johanna Slivinske Author of the book Night, Elie Wiesel, in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech stated, “I remember: it happened yesterday, or eternities ago” (1986, p. 118). This quote holds true for many who have survived terrible tragedies or traumatic events in their lives. Often, survivorship and healing after trauma are long and personalized journeys, individualized paths of learning how to live a meaningful life after surviving trauma or tragedy.
The Oxford DNB at 10: biography and contemporary history By Alex May When it was first published in September 2004, the Oxford DNB included biographies of people who had died (all in the ODNB are deceased) on or before 31 December 2001. In the subsequent ten years we have continued to extend the Dictionary’s coverage into the twenty-first century—with regular updates recording those who have died since 2001. Of the 4300 people whose biographies have been added to the online ODNB in this decade, 2172 died between 1 January 2001 and 31 December 2010.
A Study in Brown and in a Brown Study, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Color names have been investigated in almost overwhelming detail, but it is not the etymology but usage that tends to “throw us off the scent.”
A conversation with Dr. Steven Nelson, Grove Art Online guest editor As an undergraduate at Yale, after flirting with theater, music, and sociology, I majored in studio art and focused on bookmaking, graphic design, printmaking, and photography. Majors were required to take three art history classes. By the end of my college career, I had taken eight and had seriously thought about changing my major.
Political economy in Africa By Andrew Coulson Political Economy is back on the centre stage of development studies. The ultimate test of its respectability is that the World Bank has realised that it is not possible to separate social and political issues such as corruption and democracy from other factors that influence the effectiveness of its investments, and started using the concept.
The life of a bubble By James Bird and Lydia Bourouiba They might be short-lived — but between the time a bubble is born (Fig 1 and Fig 2a) and pops (Fig 2d-f), the bubble can interact with surrounding particles and microorganisms. The consequence of this interaction not only influences the performance of bioreactors, but also can disseminate the particles, minerals, and microorganisms throughout the atmosphere. The interaction between microorganism and bubbles has been appreciated in our civilizations for millennia, most notably in fermentation.
Analyzing the advancement of sports analytics By Adam Grossman, Ben Shields, and Irving Rein The biggest story heading into the 2014-15 National Hockey League (NHL) season appears to not be what is happening with players on the ice. Rather, it is the people working off the ice who evaluate players’ performance on the ice that have a leading role in the NHL’s narrative. The analytics movement has come full force to professional hockey.
Life in New Orleans during the Reconstruction Era [infographic] Reconstruction was a time of great change in the city of New Orleans. The Civil War had just ended, and the South was devastated. Although Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had done much for racial equality, racial tension and conflict was ubiquitous in New Orleans. In June 1870, at the height of Reconstruction, 17-month-old Irish-American Mollie […]
In person online: the human touch By Judith Bowman What is the human touch in online learning? How do you know if it’s there? What does it look and feel like? My epiphany on this topic occurred when a student told me “I thought I would have done better if I had a real teacher.”
The role of grammar for the teaching of Latin By Renato Oniga The development of linguistics as a scientific discipline is one of the greatest achievements of contemporary thought, as it has led to the discovery of some fundamental principles about the functioning of language. However, most of its recent discoveries have not yet reached the general audience of educated people beyond the specialists. Scholars of classics, in particular, have found it difficult to become involved in the debate, since many recent studies in linguistics have been driven by the necessity to free themselves from the subordination to Latin grammar.
Announcing Place of the Year 2014 longlist: Vote for your pick With the end of 2014 approaching and the publication of the twenty-first edition of Oxford’s Atlas of the World, we’re considering the most noteworthy places from the past year with our annual Oxford Place of the Year (POTY) campaign.
Reading Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations with a modern perspective By Christopher Gill Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations is a remarkable phenomenon, a philosophical diary written by a Roman emperor, probably in 168-80 AD, and intended simply for his own use. It offers exceptional insights into the private thoughts of someone who had a very weighty public role, and may well have been composed when he was leading a military campaign in Germany.
From Imperial Presidency to Double Government By Michael J. Glennon In the wake of US attacks on ISIS elements in Syria, the continuity in US national security policy has become ever more apparent. American presidents, whatever their politics or campaign rhetoric, over and over stick with essentially the same security programs as their predecessors.
Nine types of meat you may have never tried By Connie Ngo Sometimes what is considered edible is subject to a given culture or region of the world; what someone from Nicaragua would consider “local grub” could be entirely different than what someone in Paris would eat. How many different types of meat have you experienced? Are there some types of meat you would never eat? Below are nine different types of meat, listed in The Oxford Companion to Food, that you may not have considered trying.
What exactly is intelligence? By Anthony Trewavas Ask anybody that question and you will probably get a different answer every time. Most would argue that intelligence is limited to mankind and give examples of brainy people like Einstein or Newton. Others might identify it as being clever, good in exams or being smart, having a high IQ. But was Einstein particularly intelligent or Newton?
Does political development involve inherent tradeoffs? By Ryan Saylor For years, social scientists have wondered about what causes political development and what can be done to stimulate it in the developing world. By political development, they mean the creation of democratic governments and public bureaucracies that can effectively respond to citizens’ demands.
When tragedy strikes, should theists expect to know why? By Justin P. McBrayer and Trent Dougherty My uncle used to believe in God. But that was before he served in Iraq. Now he’s an atheist. How could a God of perfect power and perfect love allow the innocent to suffer and the wicked to flourish? Philosophers call this the problem of evil. It’s the problem of trying to reconcile two things that at first glance seem incompatible: God and evil. If the world were really governed by a being like God, shouldn’t we expect the world to be a whole lot better off than it is?
Plato and contemporary bioethics By Susan B. Levin Since its advent in the early 1970s, bioethics has exploded, with practitioners’ thinking expressed not only in still-expanding scholarly venues but also in the gamut of popular media. Not surprisingly, bioethicists’ disputes are often linked with technological advances of relatively recent vintage, including organ transplantation and artificial-reproductive measures like preimplantation genetic diagnosis and prenatal genetic testing.
Gangs: the real ‘humanitarian crisis’ driving Central American children to the US By David James Cantor The spectacular arrival of thousands of unaccompanied Central American children at the southern frontier of the United States over the last three years has provoked a frenzied response. President Obama calls the situation a “humanitarian crisis” on the United States’ borders.
Recurring decimals, proof, and ice floes By Brian McMaster Why do we teach students how to prove things we all know already, such as 0.9999••• =1? Partly, of course, so they develop thinking skills to use on questions whose truth-status they won’t know in advance. Another part, however, concerns the dialogue nature of proof.
Rheumatology through the ages Today rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases affect more than 120 million people across Europe, but evidence shows that people have been suffering for many thousands of years. In this whistle-stop tour of rheumatology through the ages we look at how understanding and beliefs about the diseases developed.
The need to reform whistleblowing laws By John Sprack “Why didn’t anyone in the know say something about it?” That’s the natural reaction of the public when some shocking new scandal – financial wrongdoing, patient neglect, child abuse – comes to light. The question highlights the role of the whistleblower.
The Second Vatican Council and John Henry Newman By Ian Ker The fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council fell two years ago in October 2012. In December next year it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the Council. There is bound to be much discussion in the coming months of the meaning and significance of the Council, its failures, its successes, its misinterpretations, its distortion and exaggerations, its key seminal texts, its future developments.
Domestic violence and the NFL. Are players at greater risk for committing the act? By Arne L. Kalleberg, Greta Friedemann-Sánchez, and Rodrigo Lovatón As the domestic violence controversy in the NFL has captured the attention of fans and global media, it seems it has become the No. 1 off-field issue for the league. To gain further perspective into the matter of domestic violence and the current NFL situation, I spoke with Greta Friedemann-Sánchez, PhD and Rodrigo Lovatón
The history of Christian art and architecture Although basilisks, griffins, and phoenixes summon ideas of myth and lore, they are three of several fantastic beings displayed in a Christian context. From the anti-Christian Roman emperor Diocletian to the legendary Knights of the Templar, a variety of unexpected subjects, movements, themes, and artists emerge in the history of Christian art and architecture.
Fire in the night By Belden C. Lane Wilderness backpacking is full of surprises. Out in the wilds, the margin between relentless desire and abject terror is sometimes very thin. One night last fall, I lay in a hammock listening to water tumbling over rocks in the Castor River in southern Missouri. I’d camped at a point where the creek plunges through a boulder field of pink rhyolite. These granite rocks are the hardened magma of volcanic explosions a billion and a half years old…
A Halloween horror story : What was it? Part 2 By Fitz-James O'Brien Last we left off the narrator had moved into a reported haunted boarding house. After a month of waiting for something eerie to happen, the boarders were beginning to believe there was nothing supernatural at all in the residence…
The anti-urban tradition in America: why Americans dislike their cities By Steven Conn Another election season is upon us, and so it is time for another lesson in electoral geography. Americans are accustomed to color-coding our politics red and blue, and we shade those handful of states that swing both ways purple. These Crayola choices, of course, vastly simplify the political dynamic of the country. Look more closely at those maps, and you’ll see that the real political divide is between metropolitan America and everywhere else.
How much do you know about Alexander the Great? By Michael Smith Alexander the Great died more than two-thousand years ago, yet his name lives on as a reminder of his innumerable conquests and incredible leadership. Born in 356 bc, Alexander was tutored in his early years by Aristotle before succeeding his father Philip as King of Macedonia and the mainland of Greece. How much do you know about one of history’s greatest leaders?
Contagious disease throughout the ages Contagious disease is as much a part of our lives as the air we breathe and the earth we walk on. Throughout history, humankind’s understanding of disease has shifted dramatically as different cultures developed unique philosophic, religious and scientific beliefs.
An inside look at AMS/SMT Meeting By Robert Judd In about a month, the American Musicological Society will again gather to confer, listen, perform, and celebrate. Our Annual Meeting this year will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city. We meet from Thursday to Sunday, 6-9 November, downtown at the Wisconsin Center and the Hilton Hotel. This year we are joined by the Society for Music Theory in what promises to be a very special meeting.
A spike in “compassion erosion” By Robert J. Wicks For over thirty years my primary specialty has been the prevention of secondary stress (the pressures experienced in reaching out to others.) During these three decades, I have experienced periods during which the situation has become more difficult for those in the healing and helping professions.
Monastic silence and a visual dialogue By Abbie Reese Recently, a journalist asked me how I convinced the Poor Clare Colettine nuns, back in 2005, to let me write a book about their lives, and how I convinced them to help me in that endeavor. I explained that was not my approach. I asked the Mother Abbess if I could undertake a long-term project about their lives; I said that although I did not know the outcome, I would keep the community apprised.
The Oxford DNB at 10: what we know now By Philip Carter When it was first published in September 2004, the Oxford DNB brought together the work of more than 10,000 humanities scholars charting the lives of nearly 55,000 historical individuals. Collectively it captured a generation’s understanding and perception of the British past and Britons’ reach worldwide.
Blue LED lighting and the Nobel Prize for Physics By Christopher Hall When I wrote Materials: A Very Short Introduction (published later this month) I made a list of all the Nobel Prizes that had been awarded for work on materials. There are lots. The first was the 1905 Chemistry prize to Alfred von Baeyer for dyestuffs (think indigo and denim). Now we can add another, as the 2014 Physics prize has been awarded to the three Japanese scientists who discovered how to make blue light-emitting diodes.
Bimonthly etymology gleanings for August and September 2014. Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Dangerous derivations and chance coincidences
Classical mythology comes to Hollywood By George Kovacs This summer saw the release of Hercules (Radical Studios, dir. Brett Ratner). Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took his place in the long line of strongmen to portray Greece’s most enduring icon. It was a lot of fun, and you should go see it. But, as one might expect from a Hollywood piece, the film takes a revisionist approach to the world of Greek myth, especially to its titular hero.
Falling out of love and down the housing ladder? By Philipp M. Lersch and Sergi Vidal Since World War II, homeownership has developed into the major tenure in almost all European countries. This democratization of homeownership has turned own homes from luxury items available to a lucky few into inherent and attainable life goals for many.
The divine colour blue By Ann Conway-Jones In Rublev’s icon of the Trinity, all three figures have blue in their clothing: a bright azure blue which stands out from the predominant warm golden yellows. Commentaries on the icon refer to this as the blue of the sky, representing divinity.
Preventing and surviving crises: the modern approach By Tony Jaques Why do organisations that know a crisis can cause intense damage to reputation and value take so few steps to prevent crises from happening in the first place? This is one of the perplexing questions of contemporary management.
“A Bright But Unsteady Light” By Philip A. Mackowiak Edgar Allan Poe died 165 years ago today in the early morning of 7 October 1849. Only a few details of the illness that extinguished his “bright but unsteady light”4 are known because his physician, Dr. John Joseph Moran, used the illness to promote his own celebrity and in the process denied posterity an accurate clinical description.
International Bar Association Annual Meeting 2014 By Christopher Wogan The first annual meeting held in Asia for seven years, IBA 2014 presents a unique opportunity for colleagues, practitioners and law specialists to meet each other and make personal contact, face to face, many for the first time. Below, we aim to provide some useful information for both new attendees and seasoned delegates to the IBA Annual Meeting. Over 5,000 delegates from more than 100 jurisdictions over the globe will convene at the Tokyo International Forum from 19-24 October at the International Bar Association’s Annual Meeting.
Mr. President: Nominate Another Ed Levi as Attorney General By Edward Zelinsky As President Obama ponders whom he will nominate as Eric Holder’s successor as attorney general, he should consider President Ford’s appointment in 1975 of Edward Levi to head the nation’s Department of Justice.
The non-Westphalian peace By Randall Lesaffer In the Preface to volume 1 of The Consolidated Treaty Series, Clive Parry explained that his collection purported to make the historical treaties antedating the League of Nations Treaty Series available to the modern reader. By this, the date ad quem, 1919, of his work was made self-explanatory. To justify his choice of the date post quem, 1648, he succinctly stated that this was ‘classically regarded as the date of the foundation of the modern system of States’.
What’s your gut feeling? There is an unquantifiable amount of different types of food across the world, ranging from lesser known edibles like elephant garlic and ship’s biscuit to more familiar foods like chocolate and oranges. In the newly updated Oxford Companion to Food, readers will discover more than 3,000 comprehensive entries on every type of food imaginable, and a richly descriptive account of food culture around the world.
International arbitration: a global good or a global bad? By Thomas Dietz and Walter Mattli States are failing to adjust their legal systems to satisfy urgent needs of operators in the global economy. The territoriality of state law, for example, renders cross-border enforcement of court decisions exceedingly difficult and costly.
Why Britain should stay in the European Union In the second of our posts focusing on the Conservative’s proposed European Union ‘In/Out’ referendum, key legal figures and political commentators share their views on why Britain should stay in the European Union.
Temperamental artists, unexpected hits, and Bond By Jon Burlingame Today, 5 October, we celebrate James Bond Day, and this year has been a great one for 007. In January, both song and score for Skyfall won Grammys, and 18 September marked the 50th anniversary of the general release of the film Goldfinger in UK cinemas. Shirley Bassey’s extraordinary rendition of the title song played a key role in its success.
Examining 25 years of public opinion data on gay rights and marriage By Amy B. Becker Over the past decade, the debate over same-sex marriage has dominated the news cycle in the United States and other nations around the world. As public opinion polls have shown, a majority of Americans now support gay marriage.
Childhood obesity and maternal employment By James Chowhan and Jennifer Stewart It is well known that obesity rates have been increasing around the Western world. The American obesity prevalence was less than 20% in 1994. By 2010, the obesity prevalence was greater than 20% in all states and 12 states had an obesity prevalence of 30%. For American children aged 2 – 19, approximately 17% are obese in 2011-2012. In the UK, the rifeness of obesity was similar to the US numbers.
Hey everybody! Meet Dan! By Daniel Parker Please welcome another newbie to the Social Media team at Oxford University Press, Dan Parker, who joined the gang in May 2014 as the new UK OUPblog editor and Social Media Marketing Executive. He has been working at OUP since February 2012. You can learn more about Dan below
Should Britain intervene militarily to stop Islamic State? By Nigel Biggar Britain and the United States have been suffering from intervention fatigue. The reason is obvious: our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan have proven far more costly and their results far more mixed and uncertain than we had hoped. This fatigue manifested itself in almost exactly a year ago, when Britain’s Parliament refused to let the Government offer military support to the U.S. and France in threatening punitive strikes against Syria’s Assad regime for its use of chemical weapons.
The power of oral history as a history-making practice By Andrew Shaffer This week, we have a special podcast with managing editor Troy Reeves and Oral History Review 41.2 contributor Amy Starecheski. Her article, “Squatting History: The Power of Oral History as a History-Making Practice,” explores the ways in which an in intergenerational group of activists have used oral history to pass on knowledge through public discussions about the past
A Halloween horror story : What was it? By Fitz-James O'Brien We’re getting ready for Halloween this month by reading the classic horror stories that set the stage for the creepy movies and books we love today. Check in every Friday this October as we tell Fitz-James O’Brien’s tale of an unusual entity in What Was It?, a story from the spine-tingling collection of works in Horror Stories: Classic Tales from Hoffmann to Hodgson, edited by Darryl Jones.
“There is no escape.” Horace Walpole and the terrifying rise of the Gothic By Nick Groom This year is the 250th anniversary of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, first published on Christmas Eve 1764 as a seasonal ghost story. The Castle of Otranto is often dubbed the “first Gothic novel” due to Walpole describing it as a “Gothic story,” but for him the Gothic meant very different things from what it might do today.
Achieving patient safety by supervising residents By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Residency training has always had — and always will have — a dual mission: ensuring the safety of patients treated today by doctors-in-training, and ensuring the safety of patients treated in the future by current trainees once they have entered independent practice.
Are we alone in the Universe? By David A. Rothery World Space Week has prompted myself and colleagues at the Open University to discuss the question: ‘Is there life beyond Earth?’ The bottom line is that we are now certain that there are many places in our Solar System and around other stars where simple microbial life could exist, of kinds that we know from various settings, both mundane and exotic, on Earth. What we don’t know is whether any life DOES exist in any of those places.
Do you have a vulgar tongue? Slang is in a constant state of reinvention. The evolution of language is a testament to our world’s vast and complex history; words and their meanings undergo transformations that reflect a changing environment such as urbanization.
What is the most important issue in music education today? Fall is upon us. The temperature is falling, the leaves are turning, and students are making their way back at school. To get a glimpse into the new school year, we asked some key music educators share their thoughts on the most important issues in music education today.
Youth suicide and bullying: what’s the connection? By Dorothy Espelage and Peter Goldblum The role of bullying in suicide among our young people has been intensely scrutinized in both media and research. As the deleterious impacts on mental and physical health for both perpetrators and targets—suicide being the most severe—become more evident, calls for framing of the problem from a public health framework have increased.
A welcome from David Cannadine, the new editor of the Oxford DNB By Sir David Cannadine Here at Princeton, the new academic year is very much upon us, and I shall soon begin teaching a junior seminar on ‘Winston Churchill, Anglo-America, and the “Special Relationship”’, which is always enormously enjoyable, not least because one of the essential books on the undergraduate reading list is Paul Addison’s marvellous brief biography, published by OUP, which he developed from the outstanding entry on Churchill that he wrote for the Oxford DNB.
Bimonthly etymology gleanings for August and September 2014. Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman I was out of town at the end of this past August and have a sizable backlog of unanswered questions and comments. It may take me two or even three weeks to catch up with them. I am not complaining: on the contrary, I am delighted to have correspondents from Sweden to Taiwan.
Can Cameron capture women’s votes? By Claire Annesley and Francesca Gains After the Scottish Independence Referendum, the journalist Cathy Newman wrote of the irony that Cameron – the man with the much reported ‘problem’ with women – in part owes his job to the female electorate in Scotland.
On the importance of independent, objective policy analysis By Richard S. Grossman I have written about the dangers of making economic policy on the basis of ideology rather than cold, hard economic analysis. Ideologically based economic policy has laid the groundwork for many of the worst economic disasters of the last 200 years.
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Setting the scene of New Orleans during Reconstruction The Reconstruction era was a critical moment in the history of American race relations. Though Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation made great strides towards equality, the aftermath was a not-quited newly integrated society, greatly conflicted and rife with racial tension.
Austin City Limits through the years Austin City Limits is the longest running musical showcase in the history of television, spanning over four decades and showcasing the talents of musicians from Willie Nelson and Ray Charles to Arcade Fire and Eminem. The show is a testament to the evolution of media and popular music and the audience’s relationship to that music, and to the city of Austin, Texas.
Keeping caffeinated for International Coffee Day By Alice Northover Of all the beverages favored by Oxford University Press staff, coffee may be the life blood of our organization. From the coffee bar in the Fairway of our Oxford office to the coffee pots on every floor of the New York office, we’re wired for work.
CERN: glorious past, exciting future By Gianfranco Bertone Today, 60 years ago, the visionary convention establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research — better known with its French acronym, CERN — entered into force, marking the beginning of an extraordinary scientific adventure that has profoundly changed science, technology, and society, and that is still far from over.
Celebrating 60 years of CERN By Frank Close 2014 marks not just the centenary of the start of World War I, and the 75th anniversary of World War II, but on 29 September it is 60 years since the establishment of CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research or, in its modern form, Particle Physics.
Why Britain should leave the European Union With the next General Election on the horizon, the Conservative’s proposed European Union ‘In/Out’ referendum, slated for 2017, has become a central issue. Scotland chose to stay part of a larger union – would the same decision be taken by the United Kingdom? In the first of a pair of posts, some key legal figures share their views on why Britain should leave the European Union.
Who decides ISIS is a terrorist group? By Arne L. Kalleberg and Colin Beck Recent surmounting media coverage of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has evoked fear of impending terrorist threats in the minds of many. I spoke with Colin Beck, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Pomona College, to gain his thoughts on the group, as well as the designations and motivations of terrorism.
The pros and cons of research preregistration By R. Michael Alvarez Research transparency is a hot topic these days in academia, especially with respect to the replication or reproduction of published results. There are many initiatives that have recently sprung into operation to help improve transparency, and in this regard political scientists are taking the lead.
Cinematic tragedies for the intractable issues of our times By Sandra Shapshay and Steven Wagschal Tragedies certainly aren’t the most popular types of performances these days. When you hear a film is a tragedy, you might think “outdated Ancient Greek genre, no thanks!”
World War I in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations By Elizabeth Knowles Coverage of the centenary of the outbreak of World War One has made us freshly familiar with many memorable sayings, from Edward Grey’s ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe’, to Wilfred Owen’s ‘My subject is War, and the pity of war/ The Poetry is in the pity’, and Lena Guilbert Horne’s exhortation to ‘Keep the Home-fires burning’.
Why do you love the VSIs? The 400th Very Short Introduction, ‘Knowledge’, was published this week. In order to celebrate this remarkable series, we asked various colleagues at Oxford University Press to explain why they love the VSIs.
Do health apps really matter? By Andrew Larkin Apps are all the rage nowadays, including apps to help fight rage. That’s right, the iTunes app store contains several dozen apps designed to manage anger or reduce stress. Smartphones have become such a prevalent component of everyday life, it’s no surprise that a demand has risen for phone programs (also known as apps) that help us manage some of life’s most important elements, including personal health.
Plagiarism and patriotism By Russ Castronovo Thou shall not plagiarize. Warnings of this sort are delivered to students each fall, and by spring at least a few have violated this academic commandment. The recent scandal involving Senator John Walsh of Montana shows how plagiarism can come back to haunt.
Do children make you happier? By Sofia Gameiro A new study shows that women who have difficulty accepting the fact that they can’t have children following unsuccessful fertility treatment, have worse long-term mental health than women who are able to let go of their desire for children.
What’s so great about being the VSI commissioning editor? By Andrea Keegan With the 400th Very Short Introduction on the topic of ‘Knowledge’ publishing this month, I’ve been thinking about how long this series has been around, and how long I have been a commissioning editor for the series, from before the 200th VSI published (number 163 – Human Rights in fact), through number 300 and 400, and how undoubtedly I’ll still be here for the 500th VSI!
Q&A with Jake Bowers, co-author of 2014 Miller Prize Paper By R. Michael Alvarez Despite what many of my colleagues think, being a journal editor is usually a pretty interesting job. The best part about being a journal editor is working with authors to help frame, shape, and improve their research. We also have many chances to honor specific authors and their work for being of particular importance.
Seven fun facts about the ukulele By Sarah Rahman The ukulele, a small four-stringed instrument of Portuguese origin, was patented in Hawaii in 1917, deriving its name from the Hawaiian word for “leaping flea”. Immigrants from the island of Madeira first brought to Hawaii a pair of Portuguese instruments in the late 1870s from which the ukuleles eventually developed.
The Oxford DNB at 10: new perspectives on medieval biography By Henry Summerson Today’s publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’s September 2014 update—marking the Dictionary’s tenth anniversary—contains a chronological bombshell. The ODNB covers the history of Britons worldwide ‘from the earliest times’, a phrase which until now has meant since the fourth century BC, as represented by Pytheas, the Marseilles merchant whose account of the British Isles is the earliest known to survive
A Study in Brown and in a Brown Study, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Color words are among the most mysterious ones to a historian of language and culture, and brown is perhaps the most mysterious of them all. At first blush (and we will see that it can have a brownish tint), everything is clear. Brown is produced by mixing red, yellow, and black.
Intergenerational perspectives on psychology, aging, and well-being Why are people afraid to get old? Research shows that having a bad attitude toward aging at a young age is only detrimental to the young person’s health and well-being in the long-run. Contrary to common wisdom, our sense of well-being actually increases with our age–often even in the presence of illness or disability.
The Hunger Games and a dystopian Eurozone economy By C.W.M. Naastepad and Servaas Storm The latest resounding dystopian success is The Hunger Games—a box-office hit located in a nation known as Panem, which consists of 12 poor districts, starved for resources, under the absolute control of a wealthy centre called the Capitol. In the story, competitive struggle is carried to its brutal extreme, as poor young adults in a reality TV show must fight to death in an outdoor arena controlled by an authoritarian Gamemaker, until only one individual remains.
Atheism and feminism By Marta Trzebiatowska At first glance atheism and feminism are two sides of the same coin. After all, the most passionate criticism of patriarchy has come from religious (or formerly religious) female scholars. First-hand experience of male domination in such contexts has led many to translate their views into direct political activism. As a result, the fight for women’s rights has often been inseparable from the critique of organised religion.
The lure of sounds By David Crystal There’s something about the idea of ‘original pronunciation’ (OP) that gets the pulse racing. I’ve been amazed by the public interest shown in this unusual application of a little-known branch of linguistics — historical phonology, a subject that explores how the sounds of a language change over time.
From “Checkers” to Watergate By Edwin Battistella Forty years ago, President Richard M. Nixon faced certain impeachment by the Congress for the Watergate scandal. He resigned the presidency, expressing a sort of conditional regret.
On the Town, flashpoint for racial distress By Carol J. Oja When the first production of On the Town in 1944 featured the Japanese American ballerina Sono Osato as its star, as part of a cast that also included whites and blacks, it aimed for a realistic depiction of the diversity among US citizens during World War II.
Facebook, the gender binary, and third-person pronouns By Lal Zimman The death rattle of the gender binary has been ringing for decades now, leaving us to wonder when it will take its last gasp. In this third decade of third wave feminism and the queer critique, dismantling the binary remains a critical task in the gender revolution.
Caught in Satan’s Storm By Emerson W. Baker On 22 September 1692 eight more victims of the Salem witch trials were executed on Gallows Hill. After watching the executions of Martha Cory, Margaret Scott, Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Willmott Redd, Samuel Wardwell, and Mary Parker, Salem’s junior minister Nicholas Noyes exclaimed […]
The impact of law on families Strong, stable relationships are essential for both individuals and societies to flourish, but, from transportation policy to the criminal justice system, and from divorce rules to the child welfare system, the legal system makes it harder for parents to provide children with these kinds of relationships.
The Responsibility to Protect in the Ebola outbreak By Jennifer Moore When the UN General Assembly endorsed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2005, the members of the United Nations recognized the responsibility of states to protect the basic human and humanitarian rights of the world’s citizens.
Learning with body participation through motion-sensing technologies By I-Chun Hung and Nian-Shing Chen Have you ever thought that your body movements can be transformed into learning stimuli and help to deal with abstract concepts? Subjects in natural science contain plenty of abstract concepts which are difficult to understand through reading-based materials, in particular for younger learners who are at the stage of developing their cognitive ability.
Why you should never trust a pro By Arturo E. Hernandez A few years ago a friend of mine and I were intent on learning German. We were both taking an adult beginning German class together and were trying to make sense of what the teacher was telling us. As time progressed I began to use CDs in my car to practice the language everyday. I could repeat a lot of the phrases and slowly built up my ability to speak.
Thinking about Islam and Islamism after the Arab Spring With turmoil in the Middle East, from Egypt’s changing government to the emergence of the Isalmic State, we recently sat down with Shadi Hamid, author of Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East, to discuss about his research before and during the Arab Spring, working with Islamists across the Middle East, and his thoughts on the future of the region.
Peace treaties that changed the world By Randall Lesaffer From their remotest origins, treaties have fulfilled numerous different functions. Their contents are as diverse as the substance of human contacts across borders themselves. From pre-classical Antiquity to the present, they have not only been used to govern relations between governments, but also to regulate the position of foreigners or to organise relations between citizens of different polities.
The problem with moral knowledge By Erik Wielenberg Traveling through Scotland, one is struck by the number of memorials devoted to those who lost their lives in World War I. Nearly every town seems to have at least one memorial listing the names of local boys and men killed in the Great War (St. Andrews, where I am spending the year, has more than one).
A visual history of the Roosevelts The Roosevelts: Two exceptionally influential Presidents of the United States; 5th cousins from two different political parties; and key players in the United States’ involvement in both World Wars. Theodore Roosevelt negotiated an end to the Russo-Japanese War and won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize.
True or False: facts and myths on American higher education By Goldie Blumenstyk American higher education is at a crossroads. The cost of a college education has made people question the benefits of receiving one. We asked Goldie Blumenstyk, author of American Higher Education in Crisis? What Everyone Needs to Know to help us separate fact from fiction.
Catching up with Gemma Barratt, Marketing Manager From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into work in our office around the globe, so we are excited to bring you an interview with Gemma Barratt, a Marketing Manager for Clinical Medical Journals. We spoke to Gemma about her life here at Oxford University Press.
‘This is my word’: Jesus, the Eucharist, and the Bible By Matthew R. Crawford It is a well known fact that the Christian church has, in the course of its 2,000-year long history, often been torn with controversy over how to understand those four simple words, ‘This is my body.’ The Orthodox have never been entirely comfortable with the label ‘transubstantiation.
So Long, Farewell By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Dearest readers, I am sorry to say that the time has come for me to say goodbye. I have had a wonderful time meeting you all, not to mention learning more than I ever thought I would know about the fantastic field of oral history.
Eight myths about Fair Rosamund By Emilie Amt Most of what we hear and read about twelfth-century hottie Rosamund Clifford, aka “Fair Rosamund,” just wasn’t so. True, she was Henry II’s mistress. But that’s about it. Like so many other medieval myths, Rosamund’s legendary life and death are a later invention.
Life’s uncertain voyage By Catherine Proot and Michael Yorke Uncertainty is everywhere. There can hardly be a person alive who has not experienced it at some time. Indeed, as Shakespeare indicates in his play The Tempest (Act I) we are all submitted to “life’s uncertain voyage.” We may well find ourselves asking “What shall I do?” or “How should I react?”, familiar questions as we continue our voyage.
What commuters know about knowing By Jennifer Nagel If your morning commute involves crowded public transportation, you definitely want to find yourself standing next to someone who is saying something like, “I know he’s stabbed people, but has he ever killed one?” . It’s of course best to enjoy moments like this in the wild, but I am not above patrolling Overheard in London for its little gems (“Shall I give you a ring when my penguins are available?”), or, on an especially desperate day, going all the way back to the London-Lund Corpus of Spoken English, a treasury of oddly informative conversations.
Understanding Immigration Detention By Mary Bosworth As the British government holds its first public inquiry into the conditions and nature of immigration detention, it is a good time to take stock of what we know about these controversial institutions.
10 ways to survive being a psychology student By Jake McBride How do you survive as a psychology student? It might be a daunting prospect, but we here at OUP are here to give you a helping hand through three years of cognitive overload. Here are our top tips: 1. Do some essential reading before you start your degree! Psychology is a very broad subject, so build some strong foundations with a wide reading base, especially if you’re new to the subject. Check out our Essential Book List to get you started.
The Oxford DNB at 10: new research opportunities in the humanities By David Hill Radcliffe The publication of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography in September 2004 was a milestone in the history of scholarship, not least for crossing from print to digital publication. Prior to this moment a small army of biographers, myself among them, had worked almost entirely from paper sources, including the stately volumes of the first, Victorian ‘DNB’ and its 20th-century print supplement volumes. But the Oxford DNB of 2004 was conceived from the outset as a database and published online as web pages, not paper pages reproduced in facsimile.
Kissing from a strictly etymological point of view By Anatoly Liberman Like every other custom in life, kissing has been studied from the historical, cultural, anthropological, and linguistic point of view. Most people care more for the thing than for the word, but mine is an etymological blog.
A role model for black feminism: Harriet Ross Tubman By Wilma Peebles-Wilkins Harriet Ross Tubman’s heroic rescue effort on behalf of slaves before and during the Civil War was a lifetime fight against social injustice and oppression. Most people are aware of her role as what historian John Hope Franklin considered the greatest conductor for the Underground Railroad.
World Water Monitoring Day 2014 World Water Monitoring Day is an annual celebration reaching out to the global community to build awareness and increase involvement in the protection of water resources around the world. The hope is that individuals will feel motivated and empowered to investigate basic water monitoring in their local area.
Scots wha play: an English Shakespikedian Scottish independence referendum mashup By Robert Crawford THE DATE: 18 September 2014, Fateful Day of Scotland’s Independence Referendum THE PLACE: A Sceptred Isle DRAMATIS PERSONAE: Alexander the Great, First Minister of Scotland; Daveheart, Prime Minister of the Britons […]
China’s economic foes By Brian Pinto China has all but overtaken the US based on GDP at newly-computed PPP exchange rates, twenty years after Paul Krugman predicted: “Although China is still a very poor country, its population is so huge that it will become a major economic power if it achieves even a fraction of Western productivity levels.” But will it eclipse the US, as Arvind Subramanian has claimed, with the yuan eventually vying with the dollar for international reserve currency status?
African encounters in Roman Britain By Ian Haynes Hadrian’s Wall has been in the news again recently for all the wrong reasons. Occasional wits have pondered on its significance in the Scottish Referendum, neglecting the fact that it has never marked the Anglo-Scottish border, and was certainly not constructed to keep the Scots out. Others have mistakenly insinuated that it is closed for business, following the widely reported demise of the Hadrian’s Wall Trust.
Beyond #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft By Sherry Hamby #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft are great steps toward an improved public response to domestic violence. There are many, many risks and obstacles that make “Why didn’t she just leave?” at best an ignorant question and at worst the beginning of a victim-blaming spiral that can be as traumatizing as the violence. Sympathy is a good start […]
Scottish Women and the Vote By Jad Adams Scottish women are said to hold the key to independence, as they predominate in the ‘no’ camp. Men have been repeatedly estimated from poll data to be around 50:50 for and against, while those women who were sure of their intentions were 60% against.
RestUK, international law, and the Scottish referendum By Anthony Carty and Mairianna Clyde With Scotland voting on independence on 18 September 2014, the UK coalition government sought advice on the relevant law from two leading international lawyers, James Crawford and Alan Boyle. Their subsequent report has a central argument. An independent Scotland would be separatist, breaking away from the remainder of the UK. Therefore, the latter (known as restUK or rUK) would be the continuator state – enjoying all the rights and duties of the existing UK.
Coffee tasting with Aristotle By Anna Marmodoro Imagine a possible world where you are having coffee with … Aristotle! You begin exchanging views on how you like the coffee; you examine its qualities – it is bitter, hot, aromatic etc. It tastes to you this way or this other way. But how do you make these perceptual judgments? It might seem obvious to say that it is via the senses we are endowed with. Which senses though? How many senses are involved in coffee tasting? And how many senses do we have in all?
Shamrock and Saltire: Irish Home Rule and the Scottish Referendum, 1914-2014 By Alvin Jackson This is the centenary year of the enactment of the third Home Rule Bill, as well (of course) as the year of the Scottish referendum on independence. Yet the centenary conversation in Ireland and the somewhat more vigorous debate upon Scots independence, have been conducted — for the most part — quite separately.
The construction of the Cartesian System as a rival to the Scholastic Summa By Roger Ariew René Descartes wrote his third book, Principles of Philosophy, as something of a rival to scholastic textbooks. He prided himself in “that those who have not yet learned the philosophy of the schools will learn it more easily from this book than from their teachers, because by the same means they will learn to scorn it, and even the most mediocre teachers will be capable of teaching my philosophy by means of this book alone” (Descartes to Marin Mersenne, December 1640).
The Scots and the Union of 1707: surly then, uncertain now By Christopher A. Whatley The Union of 1707 – which by uniting the English and Scottish parliaments created the new state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain – was enthusiastically sought by some Scots and grudgingly accepted by many more, even if most people would have been happier with a federal union. What until recently most historians had missed was the identification with the Union of Scottish politicians and their supporters who had suffered under the later Stuart regime.
Who was Saxo Grammaticus? By Peter Fisher Saxo, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, was probably a canon of Lund Cathedral (then Danish). He was secretary to Archbishop Abslon, who encouraged his gifted protégé to write a history of his own country to emulate those of other nations, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People.
What would an independent Scotland look like? By Stephen Tierney The UK Government will no doubt be shocked if the referendum on 18 September results in a Yes vote. However, it has agreed to respect the outcome of the referendum and so we must assume that David Cameron will accept the Scottish Government’s invitation to open negotiations towards independence.
Out with the old? By Alon Eizenberg Innovation is a primary driver of economic growth and of the rise in living standards, and a substantial body of research has been devoted to documenting the welfare benefits from it (an example being Trajtenberg’s 1989 study). Few areas have experienced more rapid innovation than the Personal Computers (PC) industry, with much of this progress being associated with a particular component, the Central Processing Unit (CPU). The past few decades had seen a consistent process of CPU innovation, in line with Moore’s Law.
Is Arabic really a single language? By Michael Erdman All language-learners face the difficulties of regional variations or dialects. Usually, it takes the form of an odd word or turn of phrase or a peculiar pronunciation. For most languages, incomprehension is only momentary, and the similarity — what linguists often refer to as the mutual intelligibility — between the standard language taught to foreigners and the regional speech pattern is maintained.
Eight facts on the history of pain management September is Pain Awareness Month. In order to raise awareness of the issues surrounding pain and pain management in the world today, we’ve taken a look back at pain throughout history and compiled a list of the eight most interesting things we learned about pain from The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers by Joanna Bourke.
Should Scotland be an independent country? By James Mitchell On 18 September 2014 Scots will vote on the question, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ Campaigners for independence and campaigners for the union agree that this is an historic referendum.
Playing Man: some modern consequences of Ancient sport By Thomas F. Scanlon Playing Man (Homo Ludens), the trail-blazing work by Johan Huizinga, took sport seriously and showed how it was essential in the formation of civilizations. Adult playtime for many pre-industrial cultures served as the crucible in which conventions and boundaries were written for a culture. Actions were censured for being “beyond the pale”, a sports metaphor for being “out of bounds”.
Why Scotland should get the government it votes for By Robert Crawford I want an independent Scotland that is true to the ideals of egalitarianism articulated in some of the best poetry of Robert Burns. I want a pluralist, cosmopolitan Scotland accountable to its own parliament and allied to the European Union. My vote goes to Borgen, not to Braveheart. I want change.
Addressing the true enemies of humankind By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel One hundred years ago, World War I began — the “Great War,” the war “to end all wars.” A war that arose from a series of miscalculations after the assassination of two people. A war that eventually killed 8 million people, wounded 21 million, and disabled millions more — both physically and mentally.
The truth about evidence By Mona Gupta Rated by the British Medical Journal as one of the top 15 breakthroughs in medicine over the last 150 years evidence-based medicine (EBM) is an idea that has become highly influential in both clinical practice and health policy-making. EBM promotes a seemingly irrefutable principle: that decision-making in medical practice should be based, as much as possible, on the most up-to-date research findings.
The vision of Confucius By Daniel K. Gardner To understand China, it is essential to understand Confucianism. There are many teachings of Confucianist tradition, but before we can truly understand them, it is important to look at the vision Confucius himself had. In this excerpt below from Confucianism: A Very Short Introduction, Daniel K. Gardner discusses the future the teacher behind the ideas imagined.
Earthquake at the lightning huaca of San Catequilla de Pichincha By John E. Staller On 12 August 2014 at precisely 2:58 a.m., a 5.1 earthquake struck, centered at the hilltop lightning huaca San Catequilla de Pichincha. Since this initial earthquake, there were fifty-seven aftershocks, all centered at or close to this hill. Cerro Catequilla is situated where the Río Monjas empties into the Río Guayllabamba, approximately 15 km north of Quito in the Pomasqui Valley directly east of the town of San Antonio.
“Young girl, I declare you are not like most men”: retranslating The Poetic Edda By Carolyne Larrington Not every scholar of medieval English has the privilege of translating a major poetic text, and fewer still have the chance to do it all over again, eighteen years later. My first edition of the Poetic Edda was published in 1996 and about two years ago, I was invited to think about a second edition, one which would expand the number of poems and which could be brought up to date in other ways.
On the Town and the long march for civil rights in performance By Carol J. Oja As we celebrate the golden anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a significant aspect of the struggle for racial equality often gets ignored: racial activism in performance. Actors, singers, and dancers mobilized over the decades, pushing back against racial restrictions that shifted over time, and On the Town of 1944 marked an auspicious but little-recognized moment in that history.
The Scottish referendum: where is Cicero? By D. H. Berry In a week’s time, the residents of Scotland (not the Scottish people: Scots resident south of the border are ineligible to vote) will decide whether or not to destroy the UK as currently constituted. The polls are on a knife edge; and Alex Salmond, the leader of the separatists, has a track record as a strong finisher. If he gets his way, the UK will lose 8% of its citizens and a third of its land mass; and Scotland, cut off, at least initially, from every international body (the UN Security Council, NATO, the EU) and every UK institution (the Bank of England, the pound sterling, the BBC, the security services), will face a bleak and uncertain future.
The victory of “misgender” – why it’s not a bad word By Reid Vanderburgh Misunderstand. Misidentify. Mistaken. Misogyny. Miscegenation. Miscreant. Misadventure. Misalign. The list goes on and on. A two-second search turned up a long list of words beginning with the prefix ‘mis.’ None seem very positive. Now we have a new word to add to the lexicon: misgender.
Whose muse mews? By Hannah Charters What could be more fun than an internet quiz about cats? We sat down with Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, and fired up the search, looking for cats stalking the pages of literature. We found some lovely stuff, and something more – a literary reflection of the cat’s unstoppable gambol up the social ladder: a mouser and rat-catcher in the seventeenth century, he springs up the stairs in the eighteenth century to become the plaything of smart young ladies and companion of literary lions such as Cowper, Dr Johnson, and Horace Walpole.
Post 450, descriptive of how the Oxford Etymologist spent part of this past August By Anatoly Liberman Yes, this is Post 450. The present blog was launched on March 1, 2006 and has appeared every Wednesday ever since, rain or shine. Another short year, and the jubilant world will celebrate the great number 500.
Changes in digital publishing: a marketer’s perspective By Beth McAllister We all have a great deal of resources at our disposal most of the time, we look things up on our tablets and phones immediately, and are able to retrieve information on almost any topic at any time, almost anywhere. We’ve never been so connected globally. As a marketer, I’m intrigued and excited by engaging with this global community […]
Increasing income inequality By Stefan Thewissen Quite abruptly income inequality has returned to the political agenda as a prominent societal issue. At least part of this can be attributed to Piketty’s provoking premise of rising concentration at the top end of the income and wealth distribution in Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014), providing some academic ground for the ‘We are the 99 percent’ Occupy movement slogan. Yet, this revitalisation of inequality is based on broader concerns than the concentration at the very top alone.
Questioning the question: religion and rationality By Andrew Steane We all know that asking questions is important. Asking the right questions is at the heart of most intellectual activity. Questions must be encouraged. We all know this. But are there any questions which may not be asked? Questions which should not be asked?
10 reasons why it is good to be good By Paul Bloomfield The first question of moral philosophy, going back to Plato, is “how ought I to live my life?”. Perhaps the second, following close on the heels of the first, can be taken to be “ought I to live morally or not?”, assuming that one can “get away with” being immoral.
Nick Bostrom on artificial intelligence From mechanical turks to science fiction novels, our mobile phones to The Terminator, we’ve long been fascinated by machine intelligence and its potential — both good and bad. We spoke to philosopher Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, about a number of pressing questions surrounding artificial intelligence and its potential impact on society.
Catching up with Matthew Humphrys Katherine Marshall sat down with her law department colleague to discuss life in the Oxford office, what’s on the bookshelf, and becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Biocultural community protocols and the future of conservation By Kabir Sanjay Bavikatte On 17 July 2014, the Namibian, a local daily in Namibia, reported a rather momentous event: the development of a biocultural community protocol of the Khoe community of the Bwabwata National Park — the first of its kind in Namibia.
What constitutes a “real” refugee? By Katy Long Refugee identity is often shrouded in suspicion, speculation and rumour. Of course everyone wants to protect “real” refugees, but it often seems – upon reading the papers – that the real challenge is to find them among the interlopers: the “bogus asylum seekers”, the “queue jumpers”, the “illegals”. Yet these distinctions and definitions shatter the moment we subject them to critical scrutiny.
Moving from protest to power By Hahrie Han Now that the National Guard and the national media have left, Ferguson, Missouri is faced with questions about how to heal the sharp power inequities that the tragic death of Michael Brown has made so visible. How can the majority black protestors translate their protests into political power in a town that currently has a virtually all-white power structure?
Clerical celibacy By Hugh Thomas A set of related satirical poems, probably written in the early thirteenth century, described an imaginary church council of English priests reacting to the news that they must henceforth be celibate. In this fictional universe the council erupted in outrage as priest after priest stood to denounce the new papal policy. Not surprisingly, the protests of many focused on sex, with one speaker, for instance, indignantly protesting that virile English clerics should be able to sleep with women, not livestock. However, other protests were focused on family.
Why study paradoxes? By Roy T. Cook Why study paradoxes? The easiest way to answer this question is with a story: In 2002 I was attending a conference on self-reference in Copenhagen, Denmark. During one of the breaks I spoke with Raymond Smullyan; a mathematical logician and renowned author of ‘Knights and Knaves’ (K&K) puzzles.
What good is photography? By Sophie Goldsworthy We’re bombarded with images today as never before. Whether you’re an avid mealtime Instagrammer, snapchatting your risqué images, being photobombed by your pets, capturing appealing colour schemes for your Pinterest moodboard, or simply contributing to the 250,000 or so images added to Facebook every minute, chances are you have a camera about your person most of the time, and use it almost without thinking to document your day.
Catesby’s American Dream: religious persecution in Elizabethan England By Jessie Childs Over the summer of 1582 a group of English Catholic gentlemen met to hammer out their plans for a colony in North America — not Roanoke Island, Sir Walter Raleigh’s settlement of 1585, but Norumbega in present-day New England. The scheme was promoted by two knights of the realm, Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerard, and it attracted several wealthy backers, including a gentleman from the midlands called Sir William Catesby.
Royal teeth and smiles By Colin Jones Much of the comment on the official photographic portrait of the Queen released in April this year to celebrate her 88th birthday focussed on her celebrity photographer, David Bailey, who seemed to have ‘infiltrated’ (his word) the bosom of the establishment. Less remarked on, but equally of note, is that the very informal pose that the queen adopted showed her smiling, and not only smiling but also showing her teeth.
Migratory patterns: H-OralHist finds a new home on H-Net Commons By Steven Sielaff It is hard to believe that it has been nearly one year now since I was approached with a very unique opportunity. I was working as a newly appointed staff member of the Baylor University Institute for Oral History (BUIOH) when then-Senior Editor Elinor Maze asked if I would be interested in joining the ranks of H-OralHist and guiding the listserv’s transition to a new web-based format, the H-Net Commons.
Dallas Cowboys: seven strategies that will guarantee a successful 2014 season By Adam Grossman, Ben Shields, and Irving Rein As a football team, the Dallas Cowboys are mired in mediocrity. In the 19 years since they last won the Super Bowl, their regular season record is a middling 146-142. The team made the playoffs seven times during that span, with only two wins to show for its efforts. The prognosis for the 2014 season is more of the same.
Education and service in residency training By Kenneth M. Ludmerer America’s system of residency training — the multi-year period of intensive clinical study physicians undergo after medical school and before independent practice — has dual roots. It arose in part from the revolution in scientific medicine in the late nineteenth century and the infatuation of American educators of the period with the ideal of the German university.
The ubiquity of structure By David Blockley Everything in the natural world has structure – from the very small, like the carbon 60 molecule, to the very large such as mountains and indeed the whole Universe. Structure is the connecting of parts to make a whole – and it occurs at many different levels. Atoms have structure. Structures of atoms make molecules, structures of molecules make tissue and materials, structures of materials make organs and equipment and so on up a hierarchy of different levels as shown in the figure. Within this hierarchy of structure, man-made objects vary from the very small, like a silicon chip to the very large like a jumbo jet.
Understanding Ebola By Alexander van Tulleken Ebola is a widely known, but poorly understood, virus. Even in West Africa, in the middle of the 2014 West African Ebola Epidemic, the vast majority of patients with a differential diagnosis of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) will in fact be suffering with something else serious and potentially fatal.
The story of pain in pictures Pain is a universal experience. Throughout time, everyone knows what it feels like to be in pain — whether it’s a scraped knee, toothache, migraine, or heart attack. Although the feeling of pain may remain the same, the ways in which it was described, treated, and interpreted in the 18th and 19th centuries varies greatly from the ways we regard pain today. The below slideshow of images from The Story of Pain by Joanna Burke will take you on a journey of pain throughout history.
Policing by the book By Caitie-Jane Cook Entry to the UK police force is changing. With Policing degrees are now available at over 20 universities and colleges across the UK – and the introduction of the direct entry scheme in a number of forces – fewer police officers are taking the traditional route into the force.
A wrapping rhapsody By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (ODEE) says about the verb wrap (with the abbreviations expanded): “…of unknown origin, similar in form and sense are North Frisian wrappe stop up, Danish dialectal vrappe stuff; and cf. Middle Engl. bewrappe, beside wlappe (XIV), LAP3.”
The crossroads of sports concussions and aging By Louis De Beaumont and Sébastien Tremblay The consequences of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are sizable in both human and economic terms. In the USA alone, about 1.7 million new injuries happen annually, making TBI the leading cause of death and disability in people younger than 35 years of age. Survivors usually exhibit lifelong disabilities involving both motor and cognitive domains, leading to an estimated annual cost of $76.5 billion in direct medical services and loss of productivity in the USA.
A First World War reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole As the first year of the World War I centenary continues, here is a selection of classic literature inspired by the conflict. Some of it was written in the years after the war, while some of it was completed as the conflict was in progress.
The economics of Scottish Independence By Richard S. Grossman On September 18, Scots will go to the polls to vote on the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” A “yes” vote would end the political union between England and Scotland that was enacted in 1707. The main economic reasons for independence, according to the “Yes Scotland” campaign, is that an independent Scotland would have more affordable daycare, free university tuition, more generous retirement and health benefits, less burdensome regulation, and a more sensible tax system.
The Dis-United Kingdom By Matthew Flinders Is the UK really in danger of dis-uniting? The answer is ‘no’. But the more interesting answer is that the independence referendum is, to some extent, a red herring. The nationalists may well ‘lose’ the referendum but they have already ‘won’ the bigger political battle over power and money. All the main political parties in the UK have agreed give Scotland more powers and more financial competencies – or what is called ‘devo-max’ irrespective of what happens on 18 September.
The real story of Saint Patrick By Philip Freeman Everyone knows about Saint Patrick — the man who drove the snakes out of Ireland, defeated fierce Druids in contests of magic, and used the shamrock to explain the Christian Trinity to the pagan Irish.
The Wilderness Act of 1964 in historical perspective By Nancy C. Unger Signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on 3 September 1964, the Wilderness Act defined wilderness “as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” It not only put 1.9 million acres under federal protection, it created an entire preservation system that today includes nearly 110 million acres across forty-four states and Puerto Rico—some 5 percent of the land in the United States.
The US Supreme Court should reverse Wynne – narrowly By Edward Zelinsky Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Brian Wynne requires the US Supreme Court to decide whether the US Constitution compels a state to grant an income tax credit to its residents for the out-of-state income taxes such residents pay on out-of-state income.
Stop and search, and the UK police By P.A.J. Waddington The recent announcement made jointly by the Home Office and College of Policing is a vacuous document that will do little or nothing to change police practice or promote better police-public relations.
How does color affect our way of seeing the world? By John H. McWhorter There is a study of color perception that has gotten around enough that I would like to devote this post to how I see it, according to my take on whether, and how, language “shapes” thought and creates a “worldview.” The experiment involved the Himba people, and is deliciously tempting for those seeking to show how language creates a way of seeing the world.
August 2014 (135))
Why learn Arabic? By Tressy Arts To celebrate the launch of our new Oxford Arabic Dictionary (in print and online), the Chief Editor, Tressy Arts, explains why she decided to become an Arabist…When I tell people I’m an Arabist, they often look at me like they’re waiting for the punchline. Some confuse it with aerobics and look at me dubiously […]
Does industry sponsorship restrict the disclosure of academic research? By Andrew A. Toole, Christoph Grimpe, and Dirk Czarnitzki Long-run trends suggest a broad shift is taking place in the institutional financing structure that supports academic research. According to data compiled by the OECD reported in Figure 1, industry sources are financing a growing share of academic research while “core” public funding is generally shrinking. This ongoing shift from public to private sponsorship is a cause for concern because these sponsorship relationships are fundamentally different.
The burden of guilt and German politics in Europe By William Mulligan Since the outbreak of the First World War just over one hundred years ago, the debate concerning the conflict’s causes has been shaped by political preoccupations as well as historical research. Wartime mobilization of societies required governments to explain the justice of their cause.
Time to see the end By Gabriella Citroni Imagine that you’re watching a movie. You’re fully enjoying the thrill of different emotions, unexpected changes, and promising developments in the plot. All of a sudden, the projection is abruptly halted with no explanation whatsoever.
War poetry across the centuries ‘Poetry’, Wordsworth reminds us, ‘is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’, and there can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. Below is an extract of two poems from The New Oxford Book of War Poetry.
A preview of the 2014 OHA Annual Meeting By Caitlin Tyler-Richards In a few months, Troy and I hope to welcome you all to the 2014 Oral History Association (OHA) Annual Meeting, “Oral History in Motion: Movements, Transformations, and the Power of Story.” This year’s meeting will take place in our lovely, often frozen hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, from 8-12 October 2014.
The unfinished fable of the sparrows By Nick Bostrom It was the nest-building season, but after days of long hard work, the sparrows sat in the evening glow, relaxing and chirping away.
A back-to-school reading list of classic literature With carefree summer winding to a close, we’ve pulled together some reading recommendations to put you in a studious mood. Check out these Oxford World’s Classics suggestions to get ready for another season of books and papers. Even if you’re no longer a student, there’s something on this list for every literary enthusiast.
Viking reinventions By Julian Richards The Vikings are having a good year. In March a blockbuster exhibition opened in the new BP Gallery at the British Museum and tens of thousands have flocked to see the largest collection of Viking treasure ever to be displayed in the British Isles. The centrepiece of the exhibition is the Viking longship known as Roskilde 6. This was excavated from the edge of the Roskilde fjord in Denmark in 1997, during construction of an extension of the Ship Museum, being built to house the previous ships to be found.
Ethics of social networking in social work By Allan Barsky Facebook celebrated its tenth anniversary in February. It has over 1.2 billion active users — equating to one user for every seven people worldwide. This social networking phenomenon has not only given our society a new way of sharing information with others; it’s changed the way we think about “liking” and “friending.”
United Airlines and Rhapsody in Blue By Ryan Raul Bañagale As anyone who has flown United in the past quarter-century knows, the company has a long-standing history with George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. The piece appears in its television advertisements, its airport terminals, and even its pre-flight announcements. However, the history of United’s use of the piece is far from straight forward.
Tell me a story By Elaine Reese We all know that reading books to our young children is good for them. Teachers, pediatricians, and former First Ladies all tout the value of reading to kids. Contrary to conventional wisdom, however, reading books to children does not help them learn to read.
What is the future of international law? With the 10th European Society of International Law (ESIL) Anniversary Conference just around the corner some key thinkers share their thoughts on what they think the future of international law looks like.
Doing things with verve By Anatoly Liberman It occurred to me to write a short essay about the word verve by chance. As a general rule, I try to stick to my last and stay away from Romance etymology, even though the logic of research occasionally makes me meddle with it.
Aspirin the wonder drug: some food for thought By David O. Kennedy So far it has been an unusually warm and sunny summer in the United Kingdom, but unfortunately this clement weather has not been matched by the news coverage of world events, which for months has been overcast and stormy as war and tragedy have stalked Europe and the Middle East. But there was a break […]
What can old Europe learn from new Europe’s transition? By Brian Pinto I was not that young when New Europe’s transition began in 1989, but I was there: in Poland at the start of the 1990s and in Russia during its 1998 crisis and after, in both cases as the resident economist for the World Bank. This year is the 25th anniversary of New Europe’s transition and the sixth year of Old Europe’s growth-cum-sovereign debt crisis.
Special events and the dynamical statistics of Twitter By Christian Kuehn, Daniel M. Romero, and Erik A. Martens A large variety of complex systems in ecology, climate science, biomedicine, and engineering have been observed to exhibit so-called tipping points, where the dynamical state of the system abruptly changes. Typical examples are the rapid transition in lakes from clear to turbid conditions or the sudden extinction of species after a slightly change of environmental conditions. Data and models suggest that detectable warning signs may precede some, though clearly not all, of these drastic events. This view is also corroborated by recently developed abstract mathematical theory for systems, where processes evolve at different rates and are subject to internal and/or external stochastic perturbations.
Alice Paul, suffragist and activist, in 10 facts By J. D. Zahniser Ninety-four years ago today, the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States took effect, enshrining American women’s right to vote. Fifty years later, in the midst of a new wave of feminist activism, Congress designated 26 August as Women’s Equality Day in the United States.
Celebrating Julie Andrews This month marks the 50th anniversary of Disney’s beloved film Mary Poppins, starring the legendary Julie Andrews. Although Andrews was only twenty-nine at the time of the film’s release, she had already established herself as a formidable star with numerous credits to her name and performances opposite Richard Burton, Rex Harrison, and other leading actors […]
Is America generous? [infographic] Being a generous person and donating a part of one’s income is something many people—and many religions—believe is important. In their Science of Generosity Survey, Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson took a closer look at this practice, particularly concerning Americans, to find not only how much of their income they donated, but how much they said they donated, as illustrated in this infographic.
The road to hell is mapped with good intentions By Kathryn Gin Lum Antebellum Americans were enamored of maps. In addition to mapping the United States’ land hunger, they also plotted weather patterns, epidemics, the spread of slavery, and events from the nation’s past. And the afterlife.
A Woman’s Iliad? By Rosamund Bartlett Browsing my parents’ bookshelves recently, in the dog days that followed sending Anna Karenina off to press, I found myself staring at a row of small hardback volumes all the same size. One in particular, with the words Romola and George Eliot embossed in gold on the dark green spine, caught my attention.
Five facts about women’s involvement in organized crime By Bill McCarthy and Rosemary Gartner Most organized crime falls into one of two distinct types: illegal industries and mafias. Both types of activity have been dominated by men, but there are many historical examples where women also participated, particularly in illegal industries.
Research replication in social science: reflections from Nathaniel Beck By Nathaniel Beck Questions about data access, research transparency and study replication have recently become heated in the social sciences. Professional societies and research journals have been scrambling to respond; for example, the American Political Science Association established the Data Access and Research Transparency committee to study these issues and to issue guidelines and recommendations for political science.
Song of Amiens The horror of the First World War produced an extraordinary amount of poetry, both during the conflict and in reflection afterwards. Professor Tim Kendall’s anthology, Poetry of the First World War, brings together work by many of the well-known poets of the time, along with lesser-known writing by civilian and women poets and music hall and trench songs.
Moral pluralism and the dismay of Amy Kane By Michael B. Gill There’s a scene in the movie High Noon that seems to me to capture an essential feature of our moral lives. Actually, it’s not the entire scene. It’s one moment really, two shots — a facial expression and a movement of the head of Grace Kelly.
Dispatches from the Front: German Feldpostkarten in World War I By Shannon Connelly In the first autumn of World War I, a German infantryman from the 25th Reserve Division sent this pithy greeting to his children in Schwarzenberg, Saxony. He scrawled the message in looping script on the back of a Feldpostkarte, or field postcard, one that had been designed for the Bahlsen cookie company by the German artist and illustrator Änne Koken.
Translating untranslatable words By Caroline James For most language learners and lovers, translation is a hot topic. Should I translate new vocabulary into my first language? How can I say x in Japanese? Is this translated novel as good as the original? I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been told that Pushkin isn’t Pushkin unless he’s read in Russian.
Remembering the slave trade and its abolition On August 23rd the United Nations observes the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. In honor of this day, we have examined the history of slavery and its abolition, and have worked to shed light on contemporary slavery practices.
Reading demeanor in the courtroom By M. Catherine Gruber When it comes to assessing someone’s sincerity, we pay close attention to what people say and how they say it. This is because the emotion-based elements of communication are understood as partially controllable and partially uncontrollable.
New words, new dialogues By Janet R. Gilsdorf It’s beautiful, our English language — fluid and expressive, colorful and lively. And it’s changeable. New words appear all the time. Consider “selfie” (a noun), “problematical” (an adjective), and “Google” (a noun that turned into verbs.) Now we have two more: “anti-vax” and “anti-vaxxer.”
An Oxford Companion to being the Doctor By Daniel Parker If you share my jealousy of Peter Capaldi and his new guise as Doctor Who, then read on to discover how you could become the next Doctor. However, be warned: you can’t just pick up Matt Smith’s bow-tie from the floor, don Tom Baker’s scarf and expect to save planet Earth every Saturday at peak viewing time. You’re going to need training. This is where Oxford’s online products can help you. Think of us as your very own Tardis guiding you through the dimensions of time, only with a bit more sass.
Radiology and Egyptology: insights from ancient lives at the British Museum By Arpan K. Banerjee Egyptian mummies continue to fascinate us due to the remarkable insights they provide into ancient civilizations. Flinders Petrie, the first UK chair in Egyptology did not have the luxury of X-ray techniques in his era of archaeological analysis in the late nineteenth century. However, twentieth century Egyptologists have benefited from Roentgen’s legacy.
The biggest threat to the world is still ourselves By Bill McGuire At a time when the press and broadcast media are overwhelmed by accounts and images of humankind’s violence and stupidity, the fact that our race survives purely as a consequence of Nature’s consent, may seem irrelevant.
Early Modern Porn Wars By Hal Gladfelder One day in 1668, the English diarist Samuel Pepys went shopping for a book to give his young French-speaking wife. He saw a book he thought she might enjoy, L’École des femmes or The School of Women, “but when I came to look into it, it is the most bawdy, lewd book that ever I saw,” he wrote, “so that I was ashamed of reading in it.”
Getting to know Anna-Lise Santella, Editor of Grove Music Online Meet the woman behind Grove Music Online, Anna-Lise Santella. We snagged a bit of Anna-Lise’s time to sit down with her and find out more about her own musical passions and research.
Understanding Vision: Theory, Models and Data Are we too “smart” to understand how we see? By Li Zhaoping About half a century ago, an MIT professor set up a summer project for students to write a computer programme that can “see” or interpret objects in photographs. Why not!
The real story of allied nursing during the First World War By Christine Hallett The anniversaries of conflicts seem to be more likely to capture the public’s attention than any other significant commemorations. When I first began researching the nurses of the First World War in 2004, I was vaguely aware of an increase in media attention.
An etymological journey paved with excellent intentions By Anatoly Liberman As can be guessed from the above title, my today’s subject is the derivation of the word road. The history of road has some interest not only because a word that looks so easy for analysis has an involved and, one can say, unsolved etymology.
The 150th anniversary of Newlands’ discovery of the periodic system By Eric Scerri The discovery of the periodic system of the elements and the associated periodic table is generally attributed to the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. Many authors have indulged in the game of debating just how much credit should be attributed to Mendeleev and how much to the other discoverers of this unifying theme of modern chemistry.
Dmitri Mendeleev’s lost elements By Marco Fontani, Mariagrazia Costa, and Mary Virginia Orna Dmitri Mendeleev believed he was a great scientist and indeed he was. He was not actually recognized as such until his periodic table achieved worldwide diffusion and began to appear in textbooks of general chemistry and in other major publications.
Changing legal education By Martin Partington Martin Partington discussed a range of careers in his podcasts yesterday. Today, he tackles how new legal issues and developments in the professional environment have in turn changed organizational structures, rules and regulations, and aspects of legal education.
The road to egalitaria By Kevin Milligan In 1985, Nobel Laureate Gary Becker observed that the gap in employment between mothers and fathers of young children had been shrinking since the 1960s in OECD countries. This led Becker to predict that such sex differences “may only be a legacy of powerful forces from the past and may disappear or be greatly attenuated in the near future.”
Pigment profile in the photosynthetic sea slug Elysia viridis By Sónia Cruz How can sacoglossan sea slugs perform photosynthesis – a process usually associated with plants? Kleptoplasty describes a special type of endosymbiosis where a host organism retain photosynthetic organelles from their algal prey. Kleptoplasty is widespread in ciliates and foraminifera; however, within Metazoa animals (animals having the body composed of cells differentiated into tissues and organs, and usually a digestive cavity lined with specialized cells), sacoglossan sea slugs are the only known species to harbour functional plastids.
Why referendum campaigns are crucial By Jane Suiter and Theresa Reidy As we enter the potentially crucial phase of the Scottish independence referendum campaign, it is worth remembering more broadly that political campaigns always matter, but they often matter most at referendums.
George Burroughs: Salem’s perfect witch By Emerson W. Baker On 19 August 1692, George Burroughs stood on the ladder and calmly made a perfect recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Some in the large crowd of observers were moved to tears, so much so that it seemed the proceedings might come to a halt. But Reverend Burroughs had uttered his last words. He was soon “turned off” the ladder, hanged to death for the high crime of witchcraft.
Salamone Rossi, Jewish musician in Renaissance Mantua By Don Harrán What do we know of Salamone Rossi’s family? His father was named Bonaiuto Azaria de’ Rossi (d. 1578): he composed Me’or einayim (Light of the Eyes). Rossi had a brother, Emanuele (Mena?em), and a sister, Europe, who, like him, was a musician.
Law careers from restorative justice, to legal ombudsman, to media By Martin Partington What range of career options are out there for those attending law school? In this series of podcasts, Martin Partington talks to influential figures in the law about topics ranging from restorative justice to legal journalism.
Introducing the new OUPblog By Alice Northover Loyal readers will have noticed a few changes to the OUPblog over the past week. Every few years, we redesign the OUPblog as technology changes and the needs of our editors and readers evolve. We have retired the design we have been using since 2010 and updated the OUPblog to a fresh look and feel.
10 questions for Garnette Cadogan On Tuesday 19 August 2014, Garnette Cadogan, freelance writer and co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Harlem Renaissance, leads a discussion on Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading Word for Word Book Club.
Can changing how prosecutors do their work improve public safety? By Thomas J. Miles In the 1990s, policing in major US cities was transformed. Some cities embraced the strategy of “community policing” under which officers developed working relationships with members of their local communities on the belief that doing so would change the neighborhood conditions that give rise to crime.
Challenges facing UK law students Making the leap between school and university can be a stretch at the best of times, but for UK law students it can be a real struggle. As there is no requirement to study law at school before beginning an undergraduate programme, many new law students have a very limited knowledge of how the law works and what they can expect from their studies.
The First World War and the development of international law On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated in Sarajevo, setting off a six week diplomatic battle that resulted in the start of the First World War. The horrors of that war, from chemical weapons to civilian casualties, led to the first forays into modern international law. The League of Nations was established to prevent future international crises and a Permanent Court of International Justice created to settle disputes between nations.
A Fields Medal reading list One of the highest points of the International Congress of Mathematicians, currently underway in Seoul, Korea, has got to be the announcement of the Fields Medal prize winners. The prize is awarded every four years to up to four mathematicians under the age of 40, and is viewed as one of the highest honours a mathematician can receive
Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue By Jeremy Yudkin What is a classic album? Not a classical album – a classic album. One definition would be a recording that is both of superb quality and of enduring significance. I would suggest that Miles Davis’s 1959 recording Kind of Blue is indubitably a classic.
Publishing tips from a journal editor: selecting the right journal By R. Michael Alvarez One of the most common questions that scholars confront is trying to find the right journal for their research papers. When I go to conferences, often I am asked, “how do I know if Political Analysis is the right journal for my work?” This is an important question, in particular for junior scholars who don’t have a lot of publishing experience — and for scholars who are nearing important milestones (like contract renewal, tenure, and promotion).
The OUP and BPP National Mooting Competition Oxford University Press and BPP Law School are proud to co-sponsor this national mooting competition which provides law students from around the country with the opportunity to practise and hone their advocacy skills.
The French burqa ban By Hilal Elver On July 1, 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) announced its latest judgment affirming France’s ban on full-face veil (burqa law) in public (SAS v. France). Almost a decade after the 2005 controversial decision by the Grand Chamber to uphold Turkey’s headscarf ban in Universities (Leyla Sahin v. Turkey), the ECHR made it clear that Muslim women’s individual rights of religious freedom (Article 9) will not be protected.
Remembering 100 years: Fashion and the outbreak of the Great War By Hannah Crump In August 2014 the world marks the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. A time of great upheaval for countless aspects of society, social, economic and sexual to name a few, the onset of war punctured the sartorial mold of the early 20th century and resulted in perhaps one of the biggest strides to clothing reform that women had ever seen.
Getting to know Exhibits Coordinator Erin Hathaway From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into work in our offices around the globe, so we are excited to bring you an interview with Erin Hathaway, a Marketing and Exhibits Coordinator at Oxford University Press. We spoke to Erin about her life here at OUP — which includes organizing over 250 conferences that our marketers attend each year.
Defining intransigence and recognizing its merits By Richard H. Weisberg On any given day, a Google search finds the word “intransigent” deployed as though it automatically destroyed an opponent’s position. Charles Blow of the New York Times and Jacob Weisberg (no relation to the present writer) of Slate are only two of many, especially on the political left, who label Republicans “intransigent” and thereby assume they have won the argument against them.
An appreciation of air conditioning By Salvatore Basile This week—August 15, to be exact—celebrates the climax of Air Conditioning Appreciation Days, a month-long tribute to the wonderful technology that has made summer heat a little more bearable for millions of people.
Engaged Buddhism and community ecology By David P. Barash For the most part, Buddhists have historically been less concerned with explaining the world than with generating personal peace and enlightenment. However, the emergence of “engaged Buddhism” – especially in the West, has emphasized a powerful commitment to environmental protection based in no small part on a fundamental ecological awareness that lies at the heart of Buddhist thought and practice.
Job: A Masque for Dancing by Ralph Vaughan Williams By Hugh Cobbe Michael Kennedy has described Job as one of Vaughan Williams’s mightiest achievements. It is a work which, in a full production, combines painting (the inspiration for the work came from a scenario drawn up by Geoffrey Keynes based on William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job), literature (the King James Bible), music, and dance.
Cancer immunology and immunotherapy By Robert C. Rees My career began in the 1970s in the field of cancer immunology, a subject, which nowadays is at the forefront of cancer research, holding the promise of delivering new therapies for treating patients suffering from a wide range of cancers. Many scientists working in the field are not readily aware that the very first research papers documenting immunity against cancer were published in 1955 in the British Journal of Cancer by Robert (Bob) Baldwin, working in Nottingham, England.
Biting, whipping, tickling By Matthew Bevis ‘Laughter is men’s way of biting,’ Baudelaire proclaimed. The sociologist Norbert Elias offered a rejoinder: ‘He who laughs cannot bite.’ So does laughter embody or diffuse aggression? One theory, offered by the neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran, is that the laugh may be an aborted cry of concern, a way of announcing to a group that there has been a false alarm.
The terror metanarrative and the Rabaa massacre By Abdullah Al-Arian Just after dawn prayers on the morning of August 14, 2013, Egyptian security forces raided a large sit-in based at Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiyya Square and another at al-Nahda Square. Six weeks earlier, military leader and Minister of Defense Abdel Fattah al-Sisi staged a coup to remove Egypt’s first democratically elected president, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, from office.
Ethical issues in managing the current Ebola crisis By Leslie Francis Until the current epidemic, Ebola was largely regarded as not a Western problem. Although fearsome, Ebola seemed contained to remote corners of Africa, far from major international airports. We are now learning the hard way that Ebola is not—and indeed was never—just someone else’s problem.
Book thumbnail image Living in the dark By David C. Culver It is well known that many of the permanent inhabitants of caves have evolved a bizarre, convergent morphology, including loss of eyes and pigment, elongation and thinning of appendages, and other adaptations to conditions of complete darkness and scarce food.
Book thumbnail image The rise of choral jazz By Laura Jones The genre of ‘choral jazz’ has become increasingly prevalent among choirs, with the jazz mass the ultimate form. Settings of the Latin mass by Lalo Schifrin and Scott Stroman have enjoyed popular following, while more recently Bob Chilcott’s A Little Jazz Mass and Nidaros Jazz Mass have established the genre in the wider choral tradition, reaching choirs from across the choral spectrum and audiences young and old.
Book thumbnail image What goes up must come down By Aleksandra Birn-Jeffery Biomechanics is the study of how animals move. It’s a very broad field, including concepts such as how muscles are used, and even how the timing of respiration is associated with moving. Biomechanics can date its beginnings back to the 1600s, when Giovanni Alfonso Borelli first began investigating animal movements. More detailed analyses by pioneers such as Etienne Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, in around the late 1800s started examining the individual frames of videos of moving animals.
The history of the word “qualm” By Anatoly Liberman Once John Cowan suggested that I touch on the murky history of the noun qualm and try to shed light on it. To the extent that I can trust my database, this word, which is, naturally, featured in all dictionaries, hardly ever appears in the special scholarly literature.
Book thumbnail image The environmental case for nuclear power By Michael H. Fox Time is running short. When the IPCC published its first scientific report in 1990 on the possibility of human-caused global warming, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) was 354 ppm. It is now 397 ppm and rising. In spite of Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, Durban, and Doha, atmospheric CO2 continues its inexorable upward path.
Book thumbnail image The gender gap in pay in Spanish company boards By Inmaculada Bel-Oms and María Consuelo Pucheta-Martínez Is there gender gap in pay on the boards of listed Spanish firms? If there is, what are the factors behind the gender gap in pay? We sought to find the answers to these questions. Over the last few decades, payments for men have been consistently higher than those for women, even when they hold the same post and have been educated to the same level.
Book thumbnail image Anthropology and Christianity By Timothy Larsen The relationship between anthropologists and Christian identity and belief is a riddle. I first became interested in it by studying the intellectual reasons for the loss of faith given by figures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There are an obvious set of such intellectual triggers.
The life of oceans: a history of marine discovery By Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams It pays to be nice. One of the most absolutely, emphatically wrong hypotheses about the oceans was coined by one of the most carefree and amiable people in nineteenth century science. It should have sunk his reputation without trace. Yet, it did not.
The teenage exploits of a future celebrity By Carol J. Oja Rising to prominence at lightning speed during World War II, Leonard Bernstein quickly became one of the most famous musicians of all time, gaining notice as a conductor and composer of both classical works and musical theater. One day he was a recent Harvard graduate, struggling to earn a living in the music world.
Aleister Crowley and Thelema By Alyssa Bender The twelfth of August marks the Feast of the Prophet and his Bride, a holiday that commemorates the marriage of Aleister Crowley and his first wife Rose Edith Crowley in the religion he created, Thelema. Born in 1875, Crowley traveled the world, living in Cambridge, Mexico, Cairo, China, America, Sicily, and Berlin. Here, using Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism as our trusted guide, we take a closer look at the man and his religion.
Book thumbnail image If it’s 2014, this must be Sacramento By Frank S. Gilliam It is likely that most ecologists have their own stories regarding the annual meetings of the Ecological Society of America (ESA), the world’s largest organization of professional ecologists. Some revere it, whereas others may criticize it. There is, however, truth in numbers—growth in attendance has been seemingly exponential since my first meeting in the early 1980’s.
Hiroshi Motomura on unauthorized migrants and immigration outside the law By Hiroshi Motomura From news stories about unaccompanied minors from Central America to invisible workers without legal standing, immigration continues to stir debate in the United States. We sat down with Hiroshi Motomura, the author of Immigration Outside the Law, to discuss this contentious topic.
Why study trust? By Geoffrey Hosking In many countries, including Britain, the Euro-elections in May showed that a substantial minority of voters are disillusioned with mainstream parties of both government and opposition. This result was widely anticipated, and all over Europe media commentators have been proclaiming that the public is losing trust in established politicians.
Technologies of sexiness By Adrienne Evans What does it mean for a woman to “feel sexy”? In our current consumer culture, the idea of achieving sexiness is all-pervasive: an expectation of contemporary femininity, wrapped up in objects ranging from underwear, shoes, sex toys, and erotic novels. Particular celebrities and “sex symbol” icons, ranging throughout the decades, are said to embody it…
Nicholson’s wrong theories and the advancement of chemistry By Eric Scerri The past couple of years have seen the celebration of a number of key developments in the history of physics. In 1913 Niels Bohr, perhaps the second most famous physicist of the 20th century after Einstein, published is iconic theory of the atom.
The health benefits of cheese By Michael H. Tunick Lipids (fats and oils) have historically been thought to elevate weight and blood cholesterol and have therefore been considered to have a negative influence on the body. Foods such as full-fat milk and cheese have been avoided by many consumers for this reason. This attitude has been changing in recent years.
The Fair Toxophilites and Daniel Deronda By K. M. Newton In the England of the past archery was the basis of military and political power, most famously enabling the English to defeat the French at Agincourt. In the later nineteenth century it is now a leisure pursuit for upper-class women.
My client’s online presence By Jan Willer Social media and other technologies have changed how we communicate. Consider how we coordinate events and contact our friends and family members today, versus how we did it 20 or 30 years ago. Today, we often text, email or communicate through social media more frequently than we phone or get together in person.
Quebec French and the question of identity By Anne-Laure Jousse The French language came to North America with the first French settlers in the 17th century. French and British forces had long been at war before the final victory of Britain in the mid 18th century; after the loss of New France, France lost contact with its settlers and Quebec French became isolated from European French.
Improving survey methodology: a Q&A with Lonna Atkeson By R. Michael Alvarez I recently had the opportunity to talk with Lonna Atkeson, Professor of Political Science and Regents’ Lecturer at the University of New Mexico. We discussed her opinions about improving survey methodology and her thoughts about how surveys are being used to study important applied questions
Extending patent protections to discover the next life-saving drugs By Jie Jack Li At the end of last year, Eli Lilly’s mega-blockbuster antidepressant Cymbalta went off patent. And Cymbalta’s generic version, known as duloxetine, rushes in the market and drives down the price, making it more affordable.
Gaming the system By Robert M. Geraci 2014 is the year of role-playing…November marks the 10th anniversary of World of Warcraft, the first truly global online game, and in January gamers celebrated the 40th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, the fantasy game of elves and dwarves, heroes and villains, that changed the world.
Hate crime and community dynamics By Mark Austin Walters Hate crimes are offences that are motivated by hostility, or where some form of demonstration of hostility is made, against the victim’s identity. Such crimes can have devastating impacts, both on those directly victimised and on other community members who fear they too may be targeted. While much has been written about the impacts of hate crime victimisation, there has been little which has focused on how the criminal justice system can effectively address the consequences of hate.
Oral history, historical memory, and social change in West Mount Airy By Caitlin Tyler-Richards There are many exciting things coming down the Oral History Review pipeline, including OHR volume 41, issue 2, the Oral History Association annual meeting and a new staff member.
Youth and the new media: what next? By Daniel Romer Now that the Internet has been with us for over 25 years, what are we to make of all the concerns about how this new medium is affecting us, especially the young digital natives who know more about how to maneuver in this space than most adults.
Why hope still matters By Valerie Maholmes Someone asked me at a recent book talk why I chose to write about hope and children in poverty. They asked whether it was frivolous to write about such a topic at a time when children are experiencing the challenges associated with poverty and economic disadvantage at high rates.
Book thumbnail image Michael Jackson, 10,000 hours, and the roots of creative genius By Arturo E. Hernandez That any person could become an expert in something if they simply spend about 3 hours per day for ten years is an appealing concept. This idea, first championed by Ericsson and brought to prominence by Gladwell, has now taken root in the popular media. It attempts to discuss these differences in terms of the environment. The idea is that practice with the purpose of constantly gathering feedback and improving can lead any person to become an expert.
Book thumbnail image How medical publishing can drive research and care By Béla Büki Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is a very frequent cause of harmless but unpleasant vertigo and dizziness complaints. It is caused by dislodged otoconia floating into the semicircular canals, which measure angular accelerations of the head and initiate corrective eye movements during fast head movements. Otoconia are calcium-carbonate crystals functioning as weights in the miniature acceleration sensors in the inner ear, informing us about gravity and linear accelerations.
1914: The opening campaigns To mark the outbreak of the First World War, this week’s Very Short Introductions blog post is an extract from The First World War: A Very Short Introduction, by Michael Howard. The extract below describes the public reaction to the outbreak of war, the government propaganda in the opening months, and the reasons behind each nation going to war.
Book thumbnail image Gods and mythological creatures of the Odyssey in art The gods and various mythological creatures — from minor gods to nymphs to monsters — play an integral role in Odysseus’s adventures. They may act as puppeteers, guiding or diverting Odysseus’s course; they may act as anchors, keeping Odysseus from journeying home; or they may act as obstacles, such as Cyclops, Scylla and Charbidis, or the Sirens.
Book thumbnail image Supporting and educating unaccompanied students from Central America By Robert Hull and Eric Rossen Since 1 October 2013, the United States has detained over 57,000 unaccompanied minors from Central America crossing the border from in an attempt to escape severe violence. Makeshift immigration shelters emerged, with emergency responders providing medical attention and care.
Book thumbnail image Boxes and paradoxes By Marjorie Senechal It was eerie, a gift from the grave. But I thank serendipity, not spooks. The gift, it turns out, was given forty years ago.
The British are coming: the Summer of 1964 (part two) By Gordon R. Thompson In the opening months of 1964, The Beatles turned the American popular music world on its head, racking up hits and opening the door for other British musicians. Lennon and McCartney demonstrated that—in the footsteps of Americans like Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry—British performers could be successful songwriters too.
Book thumbnail image Paul Otlet, Google, Wikipedia, and cataloging the world As soon as humanity began its quest for knowledge, people have also attempted to organize that knowledge. From the invention of writing to the abacus, from medieval manuscripts to modern paperbacks, from microfiche to the Internet, our attempt to understand the world — and catalog it in an orderly fashion with dictionaries, encyclopedias, libraries, and databases — has evolved with new technologies.
Book thumbnail image Why you can’t take a pigeon to the movies By Siu-Lan Tan Films trick our senses in many ways. Most fundamentally, there’s the illusion of motion as “moving pictures” don’t really move at all. Static images shown at a rate of 24 frames per second can give the semblance of motion. Slower frame rates tend to make movements appear choppy or jittery. But film advancing at about 24 frames per second gives us a sufficient impression of fluid motion.
Book thumbnail image Why are sex differences frequently overlooked in biomedical research? By Katie L. Flanagan Despite the huge body of evidence that males and females have very different immune systems and responses, few biomedical studies consider sex in their analyses. Sex refers to the intrinsic characteristics that distinguish males from females, whereas gender refers to the socially determined behaviour, roles, or activities that males and females adopt.
There are more ways than one to be thunderstruck By Anatoly Liberman On 20 November 2013, I discussed the verbs astonish, astound, and stun. Whatever the value of that discussion, it had a truly wonderful picture of a stunned cat and an ironic comment by Peter Maher on the use of the word stunning.
Book thumbnail image Children learning English: an educational revolution By Fiona Copland and Sue Garton Did you know that the introduction of languages into primary schools has been dubbed the world’s biggest development in education? And, of course, overwhelmingly, the language taught is English. Already the world’s most popular second language, the desire for English continues apace, at least in the short term, and with this desire has come a rapid decrease in the age at which early language learning (ELL) starts.
Book thumbnail image The British are coming: the Summer of 1964 (part one) By Gordon R. Thompson By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago, a wave of British performers began showing up on The Ed Sullivan Show following the dramatic and game-changing appearances by The Beatles.
Book thumbnail image Why do prison gangs exist? By David Skarbek On 11 April 2013, inmate Calvin Lee stabbed and beat inmate Javaughn Young to death in a Maryland prison. They were both members of the Bloods, a notorious gang active in the facility. The day before Lee killed Young, Young and an accomplice had stabbed Lee three times in the head and neck.
Transparency at the Fed By Richard S. Grossman As an early-stage graduate student in the 1980s, I took a summer off from academia to work at an investment bank. One of my most eye-opening experiences was discovering just how much effort Wall Street devoted to “Fed watching”, that is, trying to figure out the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy plans. If you spend any time following the financial news today, you will not find that surprising. Economic growth, inflation, stock market returns, and exchange rates, among many other things, depend crucially on the course of monetary policy.
Book thumbnail image Sharks, asylum seekers, and Australian politics By Matthew Flinders We all know that the sea is a dangerous place and should be treated with respect but it seems that Australian politicians have taken things a step (possibly even a leap) further. From sharks to asylum seekers the political response appears way out of line with the scale of the risk. Put simply, Australian politics is all at sea.
Book thumbnail image How threatened are we by Ebola virus? By Peter C. Doherty The Ebola outbreak affecting Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and now Liberia is the worst since this disease was first discovered more than 30 years back. Between 1976 and 2013 there were less than 1,000 known infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and prevention (CDC), March to 23 July 2014 saw 1201 likely cases and 672 deaths.
Book thumbnail image Political map of Who’s Who in World War I [infographic] Over the last few weeks, historian Gordon Martel, author of The Month That Changed The World: July 1914, has been blogging regularly for us, giving a week-by-week and day-by-day account of the events leading up to the First World War. July 1914 was the month that changed the world, but who were the people that contributed to that change?
Monsters in the library: Karl August Eckhardt and Felix Liebermann By Andrew Rabin On a shelf by my desk rests a pale, cloth-bound octavo volume entitled Leges Anglo-Saxonum, 601-925, published in 1958 by the German philologist Karl August Eckhardt. Inside, the volume’s dedication reads, “Dem andenken Felix Liebermanns” (“In memory of Felix Liebermann”).
Book thumbnail image The long journey to Stonewall By Nancy C. Unger When I was invited by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco to participate in its month-long program “The LGBT Journey,” I was a bit overwhelmed by all the possibilities. I’ve been teaching “Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.” since 2002, and my enthusiasm for the subject grows every time the course is offered. It’s a passion shared by my students. They never sigh and say, “Gay and lesbian history again?” But what to present in only forty-five minutes? My most recent scholarship examines lesbian alternative environments in the 1970s and 1980s. In the end, though, I decided to make a larger point. For many people, LGBTQ American history begins with the Stonewall Riots in 1969, so I determined to use this opportunity to talk about the history of same-sex desire that is as old as this nation.
Book thumbnail image Holocaust fatigue and the will to remember By Arlene Stein If talk of the Holocaust was in the air when I was growing up in the 1970s I was barely aware of it, even in New York City which was home to a large Jewish population, many of whom were Holocaust survivors.
Book thumbnail image Musicians with homonymic names By Matthew Hough There are many cases of musicians with homonymic names, including jazz performers Bill Evans (pianist, 1929-1980) and Bill Evans (saxophonist, 1958-), and composers John Adams and John Luther Adams. In the following paragraphs, I discuss musical examples by artists comprising three such pairs.
Is Islamic history in danger of becoming irrelevant? By Paul Cobb Recently the jihadist insurgent group formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) underwent a re-branding of sorts when one of its leaders, known by the sobriquet Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was proclaimed caliph by the group’s members. In keeping with the horizonless pretentions that such a title theoretically conveys, the group dropped their geographical focus and embraced a more universalist outlook, settling for the name of the ‘Islamic State’.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Ammon Shea On Tuesday 5 August 2014, Ammon Shea, author of Reading the OED and Bad English, leads a discussion on Shakespeare’s King Lear. Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club.
Book thumbnail image The HSA/HRA response to Hobby Lobby By Edward Zelinsky Few recent decisions of the US Supreme Court have engendered as much controversy as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. In that case, the Court decided that a closely-held corporation’s employer-sponsored medical plan need not provide contraception if the shareholders of such corporation object to contraception on religious grounds.
A decade of change: producing books in a digital world By Kathleen Fearn It may be hard for some of us here at Oxford University Press to imagine a life without Oxford Scholarship Online (OSO), but even though it has reached the grand old age of 10 years old, it is still only a baby in comparison with some of our other venerable institutions.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Tuesday, 4 August 1914 By Gordon Martel At 6 a.m. in Brussels the Belgian government was informed that German troops would be entering Belgian territory. Later that morning the German minister assured them that Germany remained ready to offer them ‘the hand of a brother’ and to negotiate a modus vivendi.
Did Napoleon cause his own downfall? By Munro Price On 9 April 1813, only four months after his disastrous retreat from Moscow, Napoleon received the Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, at the Tuileries palace in Paris. It was a critical juncture. In the snows of Russia, Napoleon had just lost the greatest army he had ever assembled – of his invasion force of 600,000, at most 120,000 had returned. Now Austria, France’s main ally, was offering to broker a deal – a compromise peace – between Napoleon and his triumphant enemies Russia and England. Schwarzenberg’s visit to the Tuileries was to start the negotiations.
Book thumbnail image Transforming conflict into peace By Valentina Baú My research has focused on the use of participatory media in conflict-affected communities. The aim has been to demonstrate that involving community members in a media production provides them with a platform to tell their story about the violence they have experienced and the causes they believe led to it.
Book thumbnail image Five myths about the “surge” of Central American immigrant minors By Robert Brenneman By Robert Brenneman Both the President and Senate Republicans have recently weighed in on what to do about the “surge” in undocumented minors arriving at the US border. Many of these undocumented youth come from the northern countries of Central America: Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Monday, 3 August 1914 By Gordon Martel At 7 a.m. Monday morning the reply of the Belgian government was handed to the German minister in Brussels. The German note had made ‘a deep and painful impression’ on the government. France had given them a formal declaration that it would not violate Belgian neutrality, and, if it were to do so, ‘the Belgian army would offer the most vigorous resistance to the invader’.
A Q&A with Professor Stefan Agewall As the European Society of Cardiology gets ready to welcome a new journal to its prestigious family, we meet the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Stefan Agewall, to find out how he came to specialise in this field and what he has in store for the European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.
Why metaphor matters By James Grant Plato famously said that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. But with respect to one aspect of poetry, namely metaphor, many contemporary philosophers have made peace with the poets. In their view, we need metaphor. Without it, many truths would be inexpressible and unknowable.
Book thumbnail image Limiting the possibility of a dangerous pandemic While pandemics are by their nature unpredictable, there are some things worth considering when it comes to the issue of personal safety and responsibility. The first point is to be a safe international traveler so that you don’t bring some nasty infection home with you. Protect yourself and you protect others. Though taking the available vaccines won’t prevent infection with some novel pathogen, it will contribute toward ensuring that you enjoy a successful vacation or business trip, and it should also put you in a “think bugs” mind-set.
A Q&A with John Ferling on the American Revolution John Ferling is one of the premier historians on the American Revolution. He has written numerous books on the battles, historical figures, and events that led to American independence, most recently with contributions to The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook. Here, he answers questions and discusses some of the lesser-known aspects of the American Revolution.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Sunday, 2 August 1914 By Gordon Martel Confusion was still widespread on the morning of 2 August 1914. On Saturday Germany and France had joined Austria-Hungary and Russia in announcing their general mobilization; by 7 p.m. Germany appeared to be at war with Russia. Still, the only shots fired in anger consisted of the bombs that the Austrians continued to shower on Belgrade.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Saturday, 1 August 1914 By Gordon Martel The choice between war and peace hung in the balance on Saturday, 1 August 1914. Austria-Hungary and Russia were proceeding with full mobilization: Austria-Hungary was preparing to mobilize along the Russian frontier in Galicia; Russia was preparing to mobilize along the German frontier in Poland.
Book thumbnail image How Georg Ludwig became George I By Andrew C. Thompson On 1 August 1714, Queen Anne died. Her last days were marked by political turmoil that saw Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, struggle to assert their authority. However, on her deathbed Anne appointed the moderate Charles Talbot, duke of Shrewsbury, as the last ever lord treasurer.
Book thumbnail image The Queen whose Soul was Harmony By James Anderson Winn In 1701, one year before Princess Anne succeeded to the throne, musicians from London traveled to Windsor to perform a special ode composed for her birthday by the gifted young composer Jeremiah Clarke. The anonymous poet addressed part of his poem to the performers, taking note of Anne’s keen interest in music.
Book thumbnail image Independence, supervision, and patient safety in residency training By Kenneth M. Ludmerer Since the late nineteenth century, medical educators have believed that there is one best way to produce outstanding physicians: put interns, residents, and specialty fellows to work in learning their fields. After an appropriate scientific preparation during medical school, house officers (the generic term for interns, residents, and specialty fellows) need to jump into the clinical setting and begin caring for patients themselves.
Book thumbnail image Colostrum, performance, and sports doping By Martin Luck A recent edition of BBC Radio 4’s On Your Farm programme spoke to a dairy farmer who supplies colostrum to athletes as a food supplement. Colostrum is the first milk secreted by a mother. Cow colostrum is quite different from normal cow’s milk: it has about four times as much protein, twice as much fat and half as much lactose (sugar).
July 2014 (139))
The month that changed the world: Friday, 31 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Although Austria had declared war, begun the bombardment of Belgrade and announced the mobilization of its army in the south, negotiations to reach a diplomatic solution continued.
Book thumbnail image Barry, Bond, and music on film Twenty-seven years ago, on 31 July 1987, James Bond returned to the screen in The Living Daylights, with Timothy Dalton as the new Bond. The film also has a notable departure in the style of music, as composer John Barry decided that the film needed a new sound to match this reinvented Bond, and his love interest — a musician with dangerous ties. To celebrate the anniversary, here is a brief extract from The Music of James Bond by John Burlingame.
Book thumbnail image The Odyssey in culture, ancient and modern Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey recounts the 10-year journey of Odysseus from the fall of Troy to his return home to Ithaca. The story has continued to draw people in since its beginning in an oral tradition, through the first Greek writing and integration into the ancient education system, the numerous translations over the ages, and modern retellings.
Book thumbnail image Pseudoscience surplus By Sergio Della Sala We are besieged by misinformation on all sides; when this misinformation masquerades as science, we call it pseudoscience. The scientific tradition has methods which offer a way to get accurate evidence, and decrease the chance of misinformation persisting for long.
Book thumbnail image What are the costs and impacts of telecare for people who need social care? By Catherine Henderson In these times of budgetary constraints and demographic change, we need to find new ways of supporting people to live longer in their own homes. Telecare has been suggested as a useful way forward. Some examples of this technology, such as pull-cord or pendant alarms, have been around for years, but these ‘first-generation’ products have given way to more extensive and sophisticated systems.
Monthly etymology gleanings for July 2014 By Anatoly Liberman Since I’ll be out of town at the end of July, I was not sure I would be able to write these “gleanings.” But the questions have been many, and I could answer some of them ahead of time.
Book thumbnail image On the 95th anniversary of the Chicago Race Riots By Elaine Lewinnek On 27 July 1919, a black boy swam across an invisible line in the water. “By common consent and custom,” an imaginary line extending out across Lake Michigan from Chicago’s 29th Street separated the area where blacks were permitted to swim from where whites swam. Seventeen-year-old Eugene Williams crossed that line.
Book thumbnail image Humanitarian protection for unaccompanied children from Central America By Jennifer Moore We are approaching World Humanitarian Day, an occasion to honor the talents, struggles, and sacrifices of tens of thousands of humanitarian workers serving around the world in situations of armed conflict, political repression, and natural disaster.
Book thumbnail image Education and crime over the life cycle By Giulio Fella and Giovanni Gallipoli Crime is a hot issue on the policy agenda in the United States. Despite a significant fall in crime levels during the 1990s, the costs to taxpayers have soared together with the prison population. The U.S. prison population has doubled since the early 1980s and currently stands at over 2 million inmates. According to the latest World Prison Population List (ICPS, 2013), the prison population rate in 2012 stood at 716 inmates per 100,000 inhabitants, against about 480 in the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Thursday, 30 July 1914 By Gordon Martel<.strong> As the day began a diplomatic solution to the crisis appeared to be within sight at last. The German chancellor had insisted that Austria agree to negotiate directly with Russia. While Germany was prepared to fulfill the obligations of its alliance with Austria, it would decline ‘to be drawn wantonly into a world conflagration by Vienna’.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about early Hollywood’s leading ladies? By Sarah Rahman Clara Bow, whose birthday falls on 29 July, was the “it” girl of her time, making fifty-two films between 1922 and 1930. “Of all the lovely young ladies I’ve met in Hollywood, Clara Bow has ‘It,'” noted novelist Elinor Glyn. According to her entry in American National Biography, “With Cupid’s bow lips, a hoydenish red bob, and nervous, speedy movement, Bow became a national rage, America’s flapper. At the end of 1927 she was making $250,000 a year.”
Book thumbnail image Memory and the Great War In honor of the 100th anniversary of World War I, we’re sharing an excerpt of Sir Hew Strachan’s The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War. Get a sense of what it was like to live through this historic event and how its global effects still impact the world today.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Wednesday, 29 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Before the sun rose on Wednesday morning a new hope for a negotiated settlement of the crisis was initiated. The Kaiser, acting on the advice of his chancellor, wrote directly to the tsar.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Tuesday, 28 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Kaiser Wilhelm received a copy of the Serbian reply to the Austrian demands in the morning. Reading it over, he concluded that the Habsburg monarchy had achieved its aims and that the few points Serbia objected to could be settled by negotiation.
Book thumbnail image World Hepatitis Day: reason to celebrate By Paul Sax After years of intense basic and clinical research, hepatitis C is now curable for the vast majority of the millions of people who have it. The major barrier is access (diagnosis, getting care, and paying for it), because the scientific problem has been solved.
Book thumbnail image Does pain have a history? It’s easy to assume that we know what pain is. We’ve all experienced pain, from scraped knees and toothaches to migraines and heart attacks. When people suffer around us, or we witness a loved one in pain, we can also begin to ‘feel’ with them. But is this the end of the story?
The month that changed the world: Monday, 27 July 1914 By Gordon Martel By the time the diplomats, politicians and officials arrived at their offices in the morning more than 36 hours had elapsed since the Austrian deadline to Serbia had expired.
Book thumbnail image A revolution in trauma patient care By Simon Howell Major trauma impacts on the lives of young and old alike. Most of us know or are aware of somebody who has suffered serious injury. In the United Kingdom over five-thousand people die from trauma each year. It is the most common cause of death in people under forty. Many of the fifteen-thousand people who survive major trauma suffer life-changing injuries and some will never fully recover and require life-long care.
Book thumbnail image Are schools teaching British values? By Stephanie Olsen In June, Education Secretary Michael Gove announced that all primary and secondary schools should promote “British values.” David Cameron said that the plans for values education are likely to have the “overwhelming support” of citizens throughout the UK. Cameron defined these values as “freedom, tolerance, respect for the rule of law, belief in personal and social responsibility and respect for British institutions.” ?
Confidence and courage in mentoring By Mary Pender Greene Mentorship is one of the most compelling assets for professional success. The mentor-mentee relationship offers one of the most priceless of all human qualities — transparency. The mentor offers the mentee hope for the future by sharing both wisdom and past challenges. Mentors help mentees be their best selves by helping them overcome their fears of failure and apprehension of taking risks.
Book thumbnail image How I created the languages of Dothraki and Valyrian for Game of Thrones By David J. Peterson My name is David Peterson, and I’m a conlanger. “What’s a conlanger,” you may ask? Thanks to the recent addition of the word “conlang” to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), I can now say, “Look it up!” But to save you the trouble, a conlanger is a constructed language (or conlang) maker—i.e. one who creates languages.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Sunday, 26 July 1914 By Gordon Martel When day dawned on Sunday, 26 July, the sky did not fall. Shells did not rain down on Belgrade. There was no Austrian declaration of war. The morning remained peaceful, if not calm. Most Europeans attended their churches and prepared to enjoy their day of rest. Few said prayers for peace; few believed divine intervention was necessary.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Saturday, 25 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Would there be war by the end of the day? It certainly seemed possible: the Serbs had only until 6 p.m. to accept the Austrian demands. Berchtold had instructed the Austrian representative in Belgrade that nothing less than full acceptance of all ten points contained in the ultimatum would be regarded as satisfactory. And no one expected the Serbs to comply with the demands in their entirety – least of all the Austrians.
Book thumbnail image Re-thinking the role of the regional oral history organization By Jason Steinhauer What is the role of a regional oral history organization? The Board of Officers of Oral History in the Mid-Atlantic Region (OHMAR) recently wrestled with this question over the course of a year-long strategic planning process. Our organization had reached an inflection point. New technologies, shifting member expectations and changing demographics compelled […]
Book thumbnail image Microbes matter By John Archibald We humans have a love-hate relationship with bugs. I’m not talking about insects — although many of us cringe at the thought of them too — but rather the bugs we can’t see, the ones that make us sick. Sure, microorganisms give us beer, wine, cheese, and yoghurt; hardly a day goes by without most people consuming food or drink produced by microbial fermentation.
Book thumbnail image Occupational epidemiology: a truly global discipline By Katherine M. Venables Occupational epidemiology is one of those fascinating areas which spans important areas of human life: health, disease, work, law, public policy, the economy. Work is fundamental to any society and the importance society attaches to the health of its workers varies over time and between countries.
Book thumbnail image The vote for women bishops By Linda Woodhead There are two kinds of churches. The ‘church type’, as the great sociologist Ernst Troeltsch called it, has fuzzy boundaries and embraces the whole of society. The ‘sect type’ has hard boundaries and tries to keep its distance. Until recently, the Church of England has been the former – a church ‘by law established’ for the whole nation. Since the 1980s, however, the Church has veered towards sectarianism. It’s within this context that we have to understand the significance of the recent vote for women bishops.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Friday, 24 July 1914 By Gordon Martel By mid-day Friday heads of state, heads of government, foreign ministers and ambassadors learned the terms of the Austrian ultimatum. A preamble to the demands asserted that a ‘subversive movement’ to ‘disjoin’ parts of Austria-Hungary had grown ‘under the eyes’ of the Serbian government.
Book thumbnail image Polygamous wives who helped settle the west By Paula Kelly Harline Happy Pioneer Day! The morning of 24 July in downtown Salt Lake City, thousands of Westerners watch the “Days of ’47” parade celebrating the 1847 arrival of Mormon pioneers; in the afternoon, they attend a rodeo or take picnics to the canyons; at night they launch as many fireworks as they did for Fourth of July.
Book thumbnail image Echoes of Billie Holiday in Fancy Free When Leonard Bernstein first arrived in New York, he was unknown, much like the artists he worked with at the time, who would also gain international recognition. Bernstein Meets Broadway: Collaborative Art in a Time of War looks at the early days of Bernstein’s career during World War II, and is centered around the debut in 1944 of the Broadway musical On the Town and the ballet Fancy Free.
If you’re so smart, why aren’t you happy? By Howard Rachlin ‘I know these will kill me, I’m just not convinced that this particular one will kill me.’ –Jonathan Miller to Dick Cavett on his lit cigarette, backstage at the 92nd Street Y in New York Miller’s problem is actually a practical form of the central problem of ancient Greek philosophy.
Book thumbnail image The Great War letters of an Oxford family Living memory of the First World War is rapidly slipping away. During this centenary year, letters uniquely offer a glimpse into what life was really like at the time. In this collection of extracts from letters written by the Slater family, they deal with the pressures of separation, rationing, deaths of friends, and a growing fear that their eldest son would grow to fight on the Western Front.
Which witch? By Anatoly Liberman To some people which and witch are homophones. Others, who differentiate between w and wh, distinguish them. This rather insignificant phenomenon is tackled in all books on English pronunciation and occasionally rises to the surface of “political discourse.”
Book thumbnail image Roll over, Rimbaud: P. F. Kluge, Walt Whitman, and Eddie and the Cruisers By Kirk Curnutt Ask someone who came of age in the 1980s what they remember about the movie Eddie and the Cruisers and one of the following responses is likely: it spawned the great rock-radio staple “On the Dark Side” and briefly made MTV stars of the improbably named John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band…
Book thumbnail image What is the role of governments in climate change adaptation? By Kai A. Konrad and Marcel Thum Adaptation to climate change is currently high on the agenda of EU bureaucrats exploring the regulatory scope of the topic. Climate change may potentially bring about changes in the frequency of extreme weather events such as heat waves, flooding or thunder storms, which in turn may require adaptation to changes in our living conditions. Adaptation to these conditions cannot stop climate change, but it can reduce the cost of climate change.
Book thumbnail image Why are women still paid less than men? Forrest Briscoe and Andrew von Nordenflycht The recent firing of Jill Abramson, the first female executive editor of the New York Times, after less than three years on the job focused the news cycle on gender inequity, with discussions of glass cliffs (women get shorter leashes even when they get the top jobs) and reports showing the persistence of glass ceilings and pay disparities (e.g. Abramson was paid less than her male predecessor).
Book thumbnail image The downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 By Sascha-Dominik Bachmann The downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on 17 July 2014 sent shockwaves around the world. The airliner was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down over Eastern Ukraine by an surface to air missile, killing all people on board, 283 passengers including 80 children, and 15 crew members. The victims were nationals of at least 10 different states, with the Netherlands losing 192 of its citizens.
Book thumbnail image The exaltation of Christ By Christopher Bryan Every Good Friday the Christian church asks the world to contemplate a Christ so helpless, so in thrall to the powers of this age, that one might easily forget the Christian belief that through it all, God was with him and in him. And therein lies the danger of serious misunderstanding
Book thumbnail image Antislavery history and antislavery activism converge in Philadelphia By W. Caleb McDaniel This past weekend, the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic held its thirty-sixth annual meeting in Philadelphia. Members attended conference sessions, browsed the book exhibit, and met up with colleagues old and new.
Book thumbnail image Mindful Sex By Jeff Wilson Mindfulness seems to be everywhere in North American society today. One of the more interesting developments of this phenomenon is the emergence of mindful sex—the ability to let go of mental strain and intrusive thoughts so once can fully tap into sexual intercourse.
Book thumbnail image Debussy and the Great War By Eric Frederick Jensen When war was declared in the summer of 1914, Claude Debussy was fifty-one. Widely regarded as the greatest living French composer, he lived in Paris in a fashionable, elegant neighborhood near the Bois de Boulogne.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about investment arbitration? Investment arbitration is a growing and important area of law, in which states and companies often find themselves involved in. In recognition of the one year anniversary of Investment Claims moving to a new platform, we have created a quiz we hope will test your knowledge of arbitration law and multilateral treaties. Good luck!
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Jenny Davidson On Tuesday 22 July 2014, Jenny Davidson, Professor of English at Columbia University, leads a discussion on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club.
Book thumbnail image Bioscience, flies, and the future of teleportation By William Hoffman In pondering how rapidly animal, plant, microbial, viral, and human genetic and regulatory sequences travel around the world over wireless and fiber optic networks, I’m transported back to the sci-fi movie The Fly I watched as a boy. Released in 1958, the film was based on a story George Langelaan published in Playboy.
Book thumbnail image “How absurd!” The Occupation of Paris 1940-1944 By David Ball In the Epilogue to his penetrating, well-documented study, Nazi Paris, Allan Mitchell writes “Parisians had endured the trying, humiliating, and essentially absurd experience of a German Occupation.” Odd as it may sound, “absurd” is exactly right. Both the word and the sense of absurdity come up again and again in the diary kept by a remarkable French intellectual during those “dark years,” as he called them.
Book thumbnail image When simple is no longer simple By Lawla Law Cognitive impairment is a common problem in older adults, and one which increases in prevalence with age with or without the presence of pathology. Persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) have difficulties in daily functioning, especially in complex everyday tasks that rely heavily on memory and reasoning.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Monday, 20 July to Thursday, 23 July 1914 By Gordon Martel The French delegation, led by President Raymond Poincaré and the premier/foreign minister René Viviani, finally arrived in Russia. They boarded the imperial yacht, the Alexandria, while a Russian band played the ‘Marseillaise’ – that revolutionary ode to the destruction of royal and aristocratic privilege.
Book thumbnail image Hobby Lobby and the First Amendment By Richard H. Weisberg The recent Hobby Lobby decision, which ruled that corporations with certain religious beliefs were no longer required to provide contraception for their female employees — as mandated by Obamacare — hinged on a curious piece of legislation from 1993. In a law that was unanimously passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) stated that “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion.”
Why we don’t go to the moon anymore By Matthew D. Tribbe Today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. To understand Apollo’s place in history, it might be helpful to go back forty-four rather than forty-five years, to the very first anniversary of the event in 1970. That July, several newspapers conducted informal surveys that revealed large majorities of Americans could no longer remember the name of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.
Book thumbnail image What is consciousness? Ted Honderich The philosopher Descartes set out to escape doubt and to find certainties. From the premise that he was thinking, even if falsely, he argued to what he took to be the certain conclusion that he existed. Cogito ergo sum. He is as well known for concluding that consciousness is not physical.
Book thumbnail image What is the Islamic state and its prospects? By James Gelvin ISIS—now just the “Islamic State” (IS)–is the latest incarnation of the jihadi movement in Iraq. The first incarnation of that movement, Tawhid wal-Jihad, was founded in 2003-4 by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Al-Zarqawi was not an Iraqi: as his name denotes, he came from Zarqa in Jordan. He was responsible for establishing a group affiliated with al-Qaeda in response to the American invasion of Iraq.
Contested sites on India’s Deccan Plateau By Phillip B. Wagoner and Richard M. Eaton Combining the methodologies of history, art history, and archaeology, we explore how power and memory combined to produce the Deccan Plateau’s built landscape. Rather than focussing on the regions capital cities, such as Bijapur, Vijayanagara, or Golconda, we examine the culture of smaller, fortified strongholds both on the plains and in the hills.
Book thumbnail image Getting to know Product Marketer Erin McAuliffe From time to time, we try to give you a glimpse into work in our offices around the globe, so we are excited to bring you an interview with Erin McAuliffe, a Product Marketing Coordinator for Oxford’s online products. We spoke to Erin about her life here at Oxford University Press — which includes marketing a range of digital resources from Oxford Bibliographies, to Oxford Islamic Studies Online, Oxford Competition Law, and more.
Book thumbnail image Animals could help reveal why humans fall for illusions By Laura Kelley and Jennifer Kelley Visual illusions, such as the rabbit-duck (shown below) and café wall are fascinating because they remind us of the discrepancy between perception and reality. But our knowledge of such illusions has been largely limited to studying humans.
Book thumbnail image In remembrance of Elaine Stritch Oxford University Press is saddened to hear of the passing of Broadway legend Elaine Stritch. We’d like to present a brief extract from Eddie Shapiro’s interview with Elaine Stritch in November/December 2008 in Nothing Like a Dame.
Book thumbnail image Is the past a foreign country? By Eugene Milne My card-carrying North London media brother, Ben, describes himself on his Twitter feed as a ‘recovering Northerner’. In my case the disease is almost certainly incurable. Despite spending a good deal of last year in cosmopolitan London – beautiful, exciting and diverse as it is – I found myself on occasions near tears of joy as my feet hit the platform at King’s Cross.
Book thumbnail image Radical faith answers radical doubt By John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Do Christians need the kind of radical faith that Thomas Reid, in the Scottish Enlightenment, and Alvin Plantinga, in our own time, offer as the best response to the pervasive skepticism of modernity?
Book thumbnail image Living in the shadows of health By Brian L. Odlaug, Samuel R. Chamberlain, and Jon E. Grant Surprisingly, many of the common mental health conditions in the world also happen to be the least well known. While Obsessive Compulsive Disorder garners attention from international media, with celebrities talking openly about their experiences with the condition, Obsessive Compulsive Related Disorders are far less recognized and receive scant attention.
Book thumbnail image Cameron’s reshuffle By Simon Usherwood Tuesday’s Cabinet reshuffle by David Cameron has been trailed for some time now, but until the last moment it was not expected to be of the scale it has assumed. As a result, it sets up the government to present a rather different complexion in the run-up to the general election.
Book thumbnail image On the anniversary of air conditioning By Salvatore Basile Those who love celebrations, take note — July 17 marks the birthday of air conditioning. To recap the story, it was 112 years ago today that young engineer Willis Carrier unveiled the plans for his “Apparatus for Treating Air,” a contraption that was designed to lower the humidity in a Brooklyn printing plant.
Characters of the Odyssey in Ancient Art Every Ancient Greek knew their names: Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachas, Nestor, Helen, Menelaos, Ajax, Kalypso, Nausicaä, Polyphemos, Ailos… The trials and tribulations of these characters occupied the Greek mind so much that they found their way into ancient art, whether mosaics or ceramics, mirrors or sculpture.
Book thumbnail image Approaching peak skepticism By John G. Stackhouse, Jr. We are near, it seems, “peak skepticism.” We all know that the sweetest character in the movie we’re watching will turn out to be the serial killer. We all know that the stranger in the good suit and the great hair is up to something sinister.
Book thumbnail image Frailty and creativity By Cretien van Campen By Cretien van Campen Frail older people are more oftentimes considered a burden for society, than not. They are perceived to require intensive care that can be expensive while producing nothing contributory to society. The collective image is that frail older people are ‘useless’; in my opinion, we do not endeavor to ‘use’ them or know how to release productivity in them.
Book thumbnail image So you think you know Jane Austen? How much do you know about the works of one of our best-loved classic authors? What really motivates the characters, and what is going on beneath the surface of the story? Using So You Think You Know Jane Austen? A Literary Quizbook by John Sutherland and Deirdre La Faye, we’ve selected twelve questions covering all six of Austen’s major novels for you to pit your wits against.
What are the most important issues in international criminal justice today? While human history is not without crime and slaughter, it is only in the twentieth century, especially following the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, that people sought justice in the name of all humanity. To mark the World Day for International Justice we invited our authors and editors to answer the question: What do you consider to be the most important issue in international criminal justice today?
Living in a buzzworld By Anatoly Liberman A few weeks ago, I talked about euphemisms on Minnesota Public Radio. The comments were many and varied. Not unexpectedly, some callers also mentioned clichés, and I realized once again that in my resentment of unbridled political correctness, the overuse of buzzwords, and the ineradicable habit to suppress the truth by putting on it a coating of sugary euphemisms I am not alone.
Book thumbnail image Electronic publications in a Mexican university By Margarita Lugo Hubp From a librarian’s perspective, there has been a huge change in the types of electronic publications that academics, students, and researchers use. In Mexico, as in other developing countries, journals, e-books, and other electronic works make it possible to offer greater access to scholarship in increasingly large university populations.
Book thumbnail image Certainty and authority By John G. Stackhouse, Jr. We might have reason to doubt some or even much of our day-to-day apprehension of things. We’re all in a hurry, all having to learn and discern and decide on the fly. Surely in the realm of medical research, however, the most important research we conduct, expert knowledge is sure and sound?
Book thumbnail image Why measurement matters Morten Jerven In most studies of economic growth the downloaded data from international databases is treated as primary evidence, although in fact it is not. The data available from the international series has been obtained from governments and statistical bureaus and has then been modified to fit the purpose of the data retailer and its customers
Book thumbnail image Inequalities in life satisfaction in early old age By Claire Niedzwiedz How satisfied are you with your life? The answer is undoubtedly shaped by many factors and one key influence is the country in which you live. Governments across the world are increasingly interested in measuring happiness and wellbeing to understand how societies are changing, as indicators such as GDP (gross domestic product) do not seem to measure what makes life meaningful.
Book thumbnail image Akbar Jehan and the dialectic of resistance and accommodation By Nyla Ali Khan To analyze the personal, political, and intellectual trajectory of Akbar Jehan—the woman, the wife, the mother, and the Kashmiri nationalist, not simply an iconic and often misunderstood political figure—has been an emotionally tempestuous journey for me. The Kashmiri political and social activist is my maternal grandmother.
Book thumbnail image Same-sex marriage now and then By Rachel Hope Cleves Same-sex marriage is having a moment. The accelerating legalization of same-sex marriage at the state level since the Supreme Court’s June 2013 United States v. Windsor decision, striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, has truly been astonishing. Who is not dumbstruck by the spectacle of legal same-sex marriages performed in a state such as Utah, which criminalized same-sex sexual behavior until 2003?
Book thumbnail image The butterfly and the matrix By John G. Stackhouse, Jr. Right now I’m bored. And I can’t be wrong about that. I truly am yawningly, dazedly bored. And epistemologists assure me that about my mental states, such as this present one of stupefaction, I can claim certainty.
Book thumbnail image A reading list on the French Revolution for Bastille Day The Bastille once stood in the heart of Paris — a hulking, heavily-fortified medieval fortress, which was used as a state prison. During the 18th century, it played a key role in enforcing the government censorship, and had become increasingly unpopular, symbolizing the oppressiveness and the costly inefficiency of the reigning monarchy and the ruling classes.
Book thumbnail image Summer reading recommendations Whether your version of the perfect summer read gives your cerebrum a much needed breather or demands contemplation you don’t have time for in everyday life, here is a mix of both to consider for your summer reading this year.
Book thumbnail image Ralph Zacklin: a personal perspective on international law What does international law truly mean in the world today? For the publication of Malcom Evans’s International Law, Fourth edition, we asked several leading figures that question. Ralph Zacklin, the former UN Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs, provides his personal perspective on international in the edited essay below.
Book thumbnail image Tracking down a slow loris By Mary Blair Slow lorises are enigmatic nocturnal primates that are notoriously difficult to find in the wild. The five species of slow loris that have been evaluated by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species are classified as threatened or critically endangered with extinction. So, how did one end up recently on the set of Lady Gaga’s music video?
Book thumbnail image Fútbol and faith: the World Cup and Ramadan By Melanie Trexler As 16 teams reached the knockout stage of the World Cup, the blasts of canons sounded to signal the beginning of Ramadan, the holy month in the Islamic lunar calendar in which Muslims are to abstain from food, drink, smoking, sex, and gossiping from sunrise to sunset.
Book thumbnail image Donor behaviour and the future of humanitarian action By Anne Hammerstad After a short lull in the late 2000s, global refugee numbers have risen dramatically. In 2013, a daily average of 32,200 people (up from 14,200 in 2011) fled conflict and persecution to seek protection elsewhere, within or outside the borders of their own country. On the current trajectory, 2014 will be even worse.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Monday, 13 July to Sunday, 19 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Two weeks after the assassination, by Monday, 13 July, Austria’s hopes of pinning the guilt directly on the Serbian government had evaporated. The judge sent to investigate reported that he had been unable to discover any evidence proving its complicity in the plot.
Countries of the World Cup: Germany Today is the conclusion of the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and our highlights about the final four competing nations with information pulled right from the pages of the latest edition of Oxford’s Atlas of the World. The final two teams, Germany and Argentina, go head-to-head on Sunday, 13 July to determine the champion.
Book thumbnail image Veils and the choice of society By Can Yeginsu and Jessica Elliott On 1 July 2014, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights held that France’s ban on wearing full-face veils in public pursued a legitimate aim because it reflected a “choice of society”. Although the Court found that the blanket prohibition amounted to an interference with the religious rights of the minority in France that wore the full-face veil, it was justified because it protected the rights of others to have the option of facial interaction with that minority.
Book thumbnail image Countries of the World Cup: Netherlands As we gear up for the third place finalist match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup today — the Netherlands face the host country Brazil — we’re highlighting some interesting facts about one of the competing nations with information pulled right from the pages of the latest edition of Oxford’s Atlas of the World.
Book thumbnail image Songs for the Games By Mark Curthoys Behind the victory anthems to be used by the competing teams at the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games, which open on 23 July, lie stories both of nationality and authorship. The coronation of Edward VII in 1902 prompted the music antiquary William Hayman Cummings (1831-1915) to investigate the origin and history of ‘God Save the King’.
Book thumbnail image Rebooting Philosophy By Luciano Floridi Philosophy is a bit like a computer with a memory leak. It starts well, dealing with significant and serious issues that matter to anyone. Yet, in time, its very success slows it down. Philosophy begins to care more about philosophers’ questions than philosophical ones, consuming increasing amount of intellectual attention.
Book thumbnail image Schizophrenia and oral history By Caitlin Tyler-Richards It’s been awhile, but the Oral History Review on OUPblog podcast is back! Today’s episode features OHR contributors Drs. Linda Crane and Tracy McDonough answering OHR Managing Editor Troy Reeves’s questions about the Schizophrenia Oral History Project and their article, “Living with Schizophrenia: Coping, Resilience, and Purpose,” which appears in the most recent Oral History Review.
Countries of the World Cup: Argentina In preparation for the finale of the FIFA World Cup 2014, we’re highlighting some little-known facts about the competing nations. For instance, did you know that Argentina is the fourth largest Spanish-speaking nation in the world? Or, that ninety-two percent of its population is Roman Catholic?
Book thumbnail image Mormon women “bloggers”: a long tradition By Paula Kelly Harline Mormon bloggers have been in the news lately, with two bloggers recently being excommunicated from the church. It was Ordain Women founder Kate Kelly’s call-to-action writings, meant to recruit Mormon women to her cause, that recently led to her excommunication from the Mormon Church.
Book thumbnail image Catching up with Mark Johnson, pain science specialist We spoke to Mark Johnson, Professor of Pain and Analgesia at Leeds Metropolitan University, about his research into pain medicine, the future of the field, and most importantly, how he almost considered becoming a professional footballer.
Book thumbnail image Practical wisdom and why we need to value it By David Blockley Aristotle saw five ways of arriving at the truth – he called them art (ars, techne), science (episteme), intuition (nous), wisdom (sophia) and practical wisdom – sometimes translated as prudence (phronesis). Ars or techne (from which we get the words art and technical, technique and technology) was concerned with production but not action. Art had a productive state, truly reasoned, with an end (i.e. a product) other than itself (e.g. a building).
Scenes from the Odyssey in Ancient Art The Ancient Greeks were incredibly imaginative and innovative in their depictions of scenes from The Odyssey which were usually painted onto vases, kylikes, wine jugs, or mixing bowls.
Book thumbnail image William Mathias (1934-92) by his daughter, Rhiannon By Rhiannon Mathias My father was a man of exceptional energy. Warm and generous in character, he lived several different kinds of musical lives. First and foremost, of course, as a composer, but also conductor, pianist, public figure, Professor of Music at Bangor University (1970-88) and Artistic Director of the North Wales Music Festival (1972-92).
Countries of the World Cup: Brazil The Federative Republic of Brazil, also known by the spelling ‘Brasil’, is the world’s fifth largest country with a population of over 199 million. It has the honour and distinction of hosting the World Cup this year, a fact that had this fútbol-centric nation even more hyped than usual.
Book thumbnail image OK Go: Is the Writing on the Wall? By Siu-Lan Tan When I saw OK Go’s ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ video a few days ago, I was stunned. If you aren’t one of the over eight million people that has seen this viral music video yet, you’re in for a visual treat. OK Go is known for creative videos, but this is the band’s richest musical collage of optical illusions so far.
Book thumbnail image Free speech, reputation, and the Defamation Act 2013 Freedom of expression is a central tenet of almost every modern society. This freedom however often comes into conflict with other rights, and can be misused and exploited. New media – especially on the internet – and new forms of media intrusion bring added complexity to old tensions between the individual’s rights to reputation and privacy on the one hand, and freedom of expression and the freedom of the press on the other.
Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2014, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman The terrible word slough Some time ago, in my discussion of English spelling, I touched on the group ough, this enfant terrible of our orthography; slough figured prominently in it.
Book thumbnail image John Calvin’s prophetic calling and the memory By Jon Balserak What is the self, and how is it formed? In the case of Calvin, we might be given a glimpse at an answer if we consider the context from which he came. Calvin was part of a society that was still profoundly memorial in character; he lived with the vestiges of that medieval culture that’s discussed so brilliantly by Frances Yates and Mary Carruthers — a society which committed classical and Christian corpora to remembrance and whose self-identity was, in a large part, shaped and informed by memory.
Book thumbnail image Capitalism doesn’t fall apart By Adam D. Dixon In early April 2014 Greece returned to the sovereign bond market raising 3 billion Euros, following a four-year hiatus. This marked a turning point in the global financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 with the collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States and the advanced-economy recessions that ensued.
Book thumbnail image World Cup puts spotlight on rights of migrant workers in Qatar By Susan Kneebone As recent demonstrations in Brazil around the staging of the FIFA 2014 World Soccer Cup show, major sporting events put the spotlight on human rights issues in host countries. In the case of Qatar the preparations to host the FIFA 2022 World Cup are focussing worldwide attention on the plight of migrant workers.
Book thumbnail image The trouble with military occupations: lessons from Latin America By Alan McPherson Recent talk of declining US influence in the Middle East has emphasized the Obama administration’s diplomatic blunders. Its poor security in Benghazi, its failure to predict events in Egypt, its difficulty in reaching a deal on withdrawal in Afghanistan, and its powerlessness before sectarian violence in Iraq, to be sure, all are symptoms of this loss of influence.
Book thumbnail image George Antheil, the bad boy of early twentieth century music By Meghann Wilhoite American composer and self-proclaimed “bad boy of music” George Antheil was born today 114 years ago in Trenton, New Jersey. His most well-known piece is Ballet mècanique, which was premiered in Paris in 1926
Book thumbnail image Preparing for BSC 2014 By Caitie-Jane Cook Tomorrow sees the start of the British Society of Criminology annual conference, this year held at the University of Liverpool. The three-day conference (10th-12th July, preceded by a postgraduate conference on the 9th) will see academics from across the globe come together to discuss an expansive range of topics, from prisons and policing to hate crime and community justice, and I, for one, cannot wait to attend.
Book thumbnail image The #BringBackOurGirls rallying point By Isaac Terwase Sampson The Boko Haram (BH) terrorist group, responsible for the abduction of over 200 school girls in north-eastern Nigeria, has been Nigeria’s prime security threat since 2009.
Book thumbnail image Five questions for Rebecca Mead On Tuesday 8 July 2014, Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch, leads a discussion on George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club.
Book thumbnail image Casey Kasem and end-of-life planning By Edward Zelinsky The sad story of Casey Kasem’s last illness is now over. Casey Kasem was an American pop culture icon. Among his other roles, Mr. Kasen was the disc jockey host on the legendary radio program, American Top 40. He was also the voice of Shaggy Rogers of Scooby-Doo.
Book thumbnail image Theodicy in dialogue By Mark S. M. Scott By Mark S. M. Scott Imagine for a moment that through a special act of divine providence God assembled the greatest theologians throughout time to sit around a theological round table to solve the problem of evil. You would have many of the usual suspects: Athanasius, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Karl Barth. You would have the mystics: Gregory of Nyssa, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Sienna, Teresa of Ávila, and Thomas Merton.
Book thumbnail image Poetic justice in The German Doctor By Roberta Seret One can say that Dr. Josef Mengele was the first survivor of Auschwitz, for he slipped away undetected in the middle of the night on 17 January 1945, several days before the concentration camp was liberated. Weeks later, he continued his escape despite being detained in two different Prisoner of War detention camps.
Book thumbnail image You can save lives and money By Paul Harriman There is a truism in the world that quality costs, financially. There is a grain of truth in this statement especially if you think in a linear way. In healthcare this has become embedded thinking and any request for increasing quality is met with a counter-request for more money.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Monday, 6 July to Sunday, 12 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Having assured the Austrians of his support on Sunday, the kaiser on Monday departed on his yacht, the Hohenzollern, for his annual summer cruise of the Baltic. When his chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, met with Count Hoyos and the Austrian ambassador in Berlin that afternoon, he confirmed that Germany would stand by them ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’.
Book thumbnail image The significance of gender representation in domestic violence units By Norma M. Riccucci and Gregg G. Van Ryzin Does increased representation of women in government agencies result in policy outcomes that are beneficial to women? Does it increase women’s confidence in those government agencies? These questions are at the core of democratic accountability: the ability of government to represent and serve all members of its citizenry.
Book thumbnail image Five important facts about honor killings ‘Honor killings’ consistently make the headlines, from a Brooklyn cab driver convicted of conspiracy to a recent decapitation in Pakistan. However, it’s become increasingly difficult to sort fact from fiction in these cases. We asked Rosemary Gartner and Bill McCarthy, editors of The Oxford Handbook on Gender, Sex, and Crime, to pull together an essential grounding for this muddled subject matter. Here they’ve adapted some information from “Honor Killings” by Dietrich Oberwittler and Julia Kasselt (Chapter 33).
True or false? Ten myths about Isaac Newton By Sarah Dry Nearly three hundred years since his death, Isaac Newton is as much a myth as a man. The mythical Newton abounds in contradictions; he is a semi-divine genius and a mad alchemist, a somber and solitary thinker and a passionate religious heretic.
Book thumbnail image The unseen cost of policing in austerity By Megan O’Neill It will not come as news to say that the public police are working under challenging conditions. Since the coalition government came to power in 2010, there have been wide-ranging and deep cuts to the funding of public services, the police included.
Book thumbnail image The first rule of football is… don’t call it soccer By Fiona McPherson The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language – a phrase commonly attributed to Shaw sometime in the 1940s, although apparently not to be found in any of his published works. Perhaps another way of looking at it is to say that they are two countries separated by a different ball – a sentiment that is particularly apt when football’s World Cup comes around.
Book thumbnail image Catching up with Alyssa Bender In an effort to get to know our Oxford University Press staff better, we’re featuring interviews with our staff in different offices. Read on for our Q&A with Alyssa Bender, marketing coordinator for our religion and theology Academic/Trade books and Bibles in New York.
Book thumbnail image What test should the family courts use to resolve pet custody disputes? By Deborah Rook This is my dog Charlie. Like many pet owners in England and Wales I see my dog as a member of my family. He shares the ups and downs of my family life and is always there for me. But what many people don’t realise is that Charlie, like all pets, is a legal ‘thing’.
Book thumbnail image Rhetorical fireworks for the Fourth of July By Russ Castronovo Ever since 4 July 1777 when citizens of Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary of American independence with a fireworks display, the “rockets’ red glare” has lent a military tinge to this national holiday. But the explosive aspect of the patriots’ resistance was the incendiary propaganda that they spread across the thirteen colonies.
Book thumbnail image 1776, the First Founding, and America’s past in the present By Elvin Lim When a nation chooses to celebrate the date of its birth is a decision of paramount significance. Indeed, it is a decision of unparalleled importance for the world’s “First New Nation,” the United States, because it was the first nation to self-consciously write itself into existence with a written Constitution.
Book thumbnail image Calvin Coolidge, unlikely US President By Michael Gerhardt The Fourth of July is a special day for Americans, even for our presidents. Three presidents — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe — died on the Fourth of July, but only one — Calvin Coolidge — was born on that day (in 1872). Interestingly, Coolidge was perhaps the least likely of any of these to have attained the nation’s highest elective office.
Book thumbnail image What if the Fourth of July were dry? By Kyle Volk In 1855, the good citizens of the state of New York faced this very prospect. Since the birth of the republic, alcohol and Independence Day have gone hand in hand, and in the early nineteenth century alcohol went hand in hand with every day. Americans living then downed an average 7 gallons of alcohol per year, more than twice what Americans drink now. In homes and workshops, churches and taverns; at barn-raisings, funerals, the ballot box; and even while giving birth—they lubricated their lives with ardent spirits morning, noon, and night. If there was an annual apex in this prolonged cultural bender, it was the Fourth of July, when many commemorated the glories of independence with drunken revelry.
Book thumbnail image The July effect By Kenneth M. Ludmerer “Don’t get sick in July.” So the old adage goes. For generations medical educators have uttered this exhortation, based on a perceived increase in the incidence of medical and surgical errors and complications occurring at this time of year, owing to the influx of new medical graduates (interns) into residency programs at teaching hospitals.
Book thumbnail image Killing me softly: rethinking lethal injection By Aidan O’Donnell How hard is it to execute someone humanely? Much harder than you might think. In the US, lethal injection is the commonest method. It is considered humane because it is painless, and the obvious violence and brutality inherent in alternative methods (electrocution, hanging, firing squad) is absent. But when convicted murderer Clayton Lockett was put to death by lethal injection in the evening of 29th April 2014 by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, just about everything went wrong.
Book thumbnail image Gods and men in The Iliad and The Odyssey The Ancient Greek gods are all the things that humans are — full of emotions, constantly making mistakes — with the exception of their immortality. It makes their lives and actions often comical or superficial — a sharp contrast to the humans that are often at their mercy. The gods can show their favor, or displeasure; men and women are puppets in their world.
Book thumbnail image 10 fun facts about the banjo By Sarah Rahman The four-, five-, six- stringed instrument that we call a ‘banjo’ today has a fascinating history tracing back to as early as the 1600s, while precursors to the banjo appeared in West Africa long before it was in use in America. Explore these fun facts about the banjo through a journey back in time.
Book thumbnail image July 4th and the American Dream in a season of uncertainty By Jim Cullen There’s not much history in our holidays these days. For most Americans, they’re vehicles of leisure more than remembrance. Labor Day means barbeques; Washington’s Birthday (lumped together with Lincoln’s) is observed as a presidential Day of Shopping. The origins of Memorial Day in Confederate grave decoration or Veterans Day in the First World War are far less relevant than the prospect of a day off from work or school.
Book thumbnail image Improve organizational well-being and prevent workplace abuse By Maureen Duffy What do we mean when talk about workplace health and well-being these days? How well are we doing in achieving it? Traditionally, the notion of employee health and well-being was about protecting workers from hazards in the workplace and insuring physical safety.
Book thumbnail image What can poetry teach us about war? There can be no area of human experience that has generated a wider range of powerful feelings than war. Jon Stallworthy’s celebrated anthology The New Oxford Book of War Poetry spans from Homer’s Iliad, through the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, and the wars fought since. The new edition, published to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, includes a new introduction and additional poems from David Harsent and Peter Wyton amongst others.
Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2014, part one By Anatoly Liberman Baron, mark, and concise. I am always glad to hear from our readers. This time I noted with pleasure that both comments on baron (see them posted where they belong) were not new to me.
Book thumbnail image Mapping the American Revolution By Frances H. Kennedy The American Revolution: A Historical Guidebook takes readers to 147 sites and landmarks connected with the American Revolution. From Bunker Hill and Valley Forge to Blackstock’s Plantation and Bryan’s Station, these locations are integral to learning about where and how American independence was fought for, and eventually secured.
Book thumbnail image For social good, for political interest: the case of Edward Snowden By M. Cherif Bassiouni When Edward Snowden obtained documents as an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton and made them public, the information disclosed was covered by secrecy under US law. That obligation was part of his employment contract, and such disclosure constituted a crime.
Book thumbnail image The danger of ideology By Richard S. Grossman What do the Irish famine and the euro crisis have in common? The famine, which afflicted Ireland during 1845-1852, was a humanitarian tragedy of massive proportions. It left roughly one million people—or about 12 percent of Ireland’s population—dead and led an even larger number to emigrate. The euro crisis, which erupted during the autumn of 2009, has resulted in a virtual standstill in economic growth throughout the Eurozone in the years since then.
Book thumbnail image Do we have too much democracy? By Matthew Flinders It’s finally happened! After years of watching and (hopeful) waiting, tomorrow is the day that I finally step into the TEDx arena alongside an amazing array of speakers to give a short talk about ‘an idea worth spreading’. The theme is ‘Representation and Democracy’ but what can I say that has not already been said? How can I tackle a big issue in just a few minutes?
Does the “serving-first advantage” actually exist? By Franc Klaassen and Jan R. Magnus Suppose you are watching a tennis match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. The commentator says: “Djokovic serves first in the set, so he has an advantage.” Why would this be the case? Perhaps because he is then ‘always’ one game ahead, thus serving under less pressure. But does it actually influence him and, if so, how?
Book thumbnail image A Canada Day reading list By Tara Kahn This Canada Day, we thought this would be an excellent opportunity to look back on some historical and fundamental books from the Canadian literary corpus.
Book thumbnail image What is the American Dream? By Mark Rank In celebrating the founding of this country, many things come to mind when asked to describe the essence of America — its energy and innovation; the various liberties that Americans enjoy; the racial and ethnic mix of its people. But perhaps fundamental to the essence of America has been the concept of the American Dream.
Book thumbnail image Cultural memory and Canada Day: remembering and forgetting By Eleanor Ty Canada Day (Fête du Canada) is the holiday that suggests summer in all its glory for most Canadians — fireworks, parades, free outdoor concerts, camping, cottage getaways, beer, barbeques, and a few speeches by majors or prime ministers. For children, it is the end of a school year and the beginning of two months of summer vacation.
Book thumbnail image Getting to know Grove Music Associate Editor Meghann Wilhoite Since joining the Grove Music editorial team, Meghann Wilhoite has been a consistent contributor to the OUPblog. Over the years she has shared her knowledge and insights on topics ranging from football and opera to Monteverdi and Bob Dylan, so we thought it was about time to get to know her a bit better.
Book thumbnail image Sovereign debt in the light of eternity From Greece to the United States, across Europe and in South America – sovereign debt and the shadow of sovereign debt crisis have loomed over states across the world in recent decades. Why is sovereign debt such a pressing problem for modern democracies? And what are the alternatives? In this video Lee Buchheit discusses the emergence of sovereign debt as a global economic reality.
June 2014 (113))
The Book of Common Prayer Quiz By Alyssa Bender We print many different types of bibles here at Oxford University Press, one popular line being our Book of Common Prayer. While this text is used worldwide, you may not know about its interesting history. Take our quiz below to learn more.
Book thumbnail image The top 10 historic places from the American Revolution By Frances Kennedy In 1996, Congress commissioned the National Park Service to compile a list of sites and landmarks that played a part in the American Revolution. From battlefields to encampments, meeting houses to museums, these places offer us a chance to rediscover the remarkable men and women who founded this nation and to recognize the relevance of not just what they did, but where they did it.
Book thumbnail image The Lady: One woman against a military dictatorship By Roberta Seret When Luc Besson finished filming The Lady in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from being under house arrest since 1989. He visited her at her home in Yagoon with a dvd of his film as a gift. She smiled and thanked him, responding, “I have shown courage in my life, but I do not have enough courage to watch a film about myself.”
Book thumbnail image Margot Asquith’s Great War diary Margot Asquith was the opinionated and irrepressible wife of Herbert Henry Asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister who led Britain into war on 4 August 1914. With the airs, if not the lineage, of an aristocrat, Margot knew everyone, and spoke as if she knew everything, and with her sharp tongue and strong views could be a political asset, or a liability, almost in the same breath.
Book thumbnail image Discovering digital libraries By Ian Anstice English public librarians don’t get out much. Sure, we’re often dealing with the public every open hour or talking with our teams but, well, we normally just don’t meet librarians from neighbouring authorities, let alone from around the country. Most branch staff stay in their own building and may never talk to anyone from another authority other than on the phone arranging for a book for a customer.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Monday, 29 June to Sunday, 5 July 1914 By Gordon Martel Although it was Sunday, news of the assassination rocketed around the capitals of Europe. By evening Princip and Cabrinovic had been arrested, charged, taken to the military prison and put in chains. All of Cabrinovic’s family had been rounded up and arrested, along with those they employed in the family café; Ilic was arrested that afternoon.
Book thumbnail image The role of communication at work By François Cooren, Eero Vaara, Ann Langley, and Haridimos Tsoukas Communication matters in organizations! We all know this catchphrase, which refers to problems both employees and managers experience daily when coordination issues take place, and when news (good or bad) is released about their organization. There is, however, a different way of studying communication at work, a way that does not merely reduce it to the transfer of information, but also explores its constitutive aspects; how communicative events literally constitute what organizations are all about.
Book thumbnail image Wars and the lies we tell about them By Jessica H. Clark Just east of downtown Tallahassee, Florida, there is a small city park known as “Old Fort.” It contains precisely that – a square of softly eroding earthworks (all that’s left of the fort) along with a few benches placed benignly in the shade of nearby oak and pine trees.
Book thumbnail image The Man in the Monkeynut Coat and the men in the yellow jerseys By Kersten Hall It is a safe bet that the name of Pierre Rolland rings very few bells among the British public. In 2012, Rolland, riding for Team Europcar finished in eighth place in the overall final classifications of the Tour de France whilst Sir Bradley Wiggins has since become a household name following his fantastic achievement of being the first British person ever to win the most famous cycle race in the world.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Sunday, 28 June 1914 By Gordon Martel At 10 a.m. that morning the royal party arrived at the railway station. A motorcade consisting of six automobiles was to proceed from there along the Appel Quay to the city hall.The first automobile was to be manned by four special security detectives assigned to guard the archduke, but only one of them managed to take his place; local policemen substituted for the others.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: Saturday, 27 June 1914 By Gordon Martel The next day was to be a brilliant one, a splendid occasion that would glorify the achievements of Austrian rule in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Habsburg heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, had been eagerly anticipating it for months.
Book thumbnail image Is there an American culture of Ramadan? By Abdullahi An-Na‘im Immigrant Muslims continue to rely on the Ramadan culture of their regional origins (whether African, Middle East, South Asian, etc.). What is the culture of Ramadan for American Muslims? Is that culture already present, or do American Muslims have to invent it? Whether pre-existing or to be invented, where does that culture come from?
Book thumbnail image Oral history through Google Glass By Juliana Nykolaiszyn It was late in the day when a nondescript package arrived at my office. After carefully opening the box and lifting off the lid, there it was: Google Glass. And yes, it was awesome. Initially, the technology geek in me was overjoyed, but the oral historian soon took over as I raced through potential uses for this wearable technology in my daily work.
Book thumbnail image Unravelling the enigma of chronic pain and its treatment By Mark Johnson The prevalence of chronic pain in the general adult population worldwide may be as high as 30 per cent. Yet pain is not seen as a major health care problem by politicians, probably because people do not die of pain, although many people die in pain. Chronic pain challenges our traditional beliefs about the process of diagnosis, treatment, and cure, with over 40 per cent of individuals reporting inadequate management of chronic pain.
Book thumbnail image Coral reef stresses By Charles Sheppard Coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystem in the sea. In some ways they are very robust marine ecosystems, but in other ways, perhaps because of their huge numbers of species, they are very delicate and susceptible to being damaged or killed. On the one hand, healthy reefs are glorious riots of life, and marine scientists have spent several decades unravelling the complicated ways in which they work. On the other hand, at least one third of the world’s reefs have already died – gone for ever in terms of human lifetimes at least – even when the cause of their demise is lifted.
A map of Odysseus’s journey Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey is a classic adventure filled with shipwrecks, feuds, obstacles, mythical creatures, and divine interventions. But how to visualize the thrilling voyage? The map below traces Odysseus’s travel as recounted to the Phaeacians near the end of his wandering across the Mediterranean.
Scoring independent film music Ever wondered what goes into scoring film music? Is the music written during filming? Or is it all added after the film is finished? Regular OUPblog contributor Scott Huntington recently spoke with film composer Joe Kraemer about his compositional process, providing an inside look at what it’s like to score music for an independent film.
Book thumbnail image LGBT Pride Month Reading List Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month (LGBT Pride Month) is celebrated each year in the month of June to honour the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. This commemorative month recognizes the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally.
Book thumbnail image Girls who kill By Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D. There has been a resurgence of interest in girls who kill, following the report of two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls who stabbed another girl of the same age 19 times on May 31, 2014. The girls reportedly had planned to kill their friend following a birthday sleepover to demonstrate their allegiance to a fictionalized internet character known as Slender Man.
Book thumbnail image The month that changed the world: a timeline to war In honor of the centennial of World War I, we’re remembering the momentous period of history that forever changed the world as we know it. July 1914 was the month that changed the world. On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, and just five weeks later the Great Powers of Europe were at war. But how did it all happen?
Marquises and other important people keeping up to the mark By Anatoly Liberman The names of titles have curious sources and often become international words. The history of some of them graces student textbooks. Marshal, for instance, is an English borrowing from French, though it came to French from Germanic, where it meant “mare servant” (skalkaz “servant, slave”). Constable meant “the count of the stable.”
Book thumbnail image Undermining society – the Immigration Act 2014 By Gina Clayton Immigration it seems is always in the headlines. While UKIP and others make political waves with their opposition to European free movement, immigration is said to be one of the biggest issues of voter concern. However, the issues that make the headlines are only a tiny part of the picture.
Book thumbnail image Econogenic harm, economists, and the tragedy of economics By George F. DeMartino In a recent editorial in the New York Times Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw acknowledged that economists have: “only a basic understanding of how most policies work. The economy is complex, and economic science is still a primitive body of knowledge. Because unintended consequences are the norm, what seems like a utility maximizing policy can often backfire.”
Book thumbnail image How to prevent workplace cancer By John Cherrie Each year there are 1,800 people killed on the roads in Britain, but over the same period there are around four times as many deaths from cancers that were caused by hazardous agents at work, and many more cases of occupational cancer where the person is cured. There are similar statistics on workplace cancer from most countries; this is a global problem.
Book thumbnail image Common questions about shared reading time By Anne Cunningham, Chelsea Schubart, and Jamie Zibulsky By Jamie Zibulsky, Anne Cunningham, and Chelsea Schubart Throughout the process of reading development, it is important to read with your child frequently and to make the experience fun, whether your child is a newborn or thirteen. This may not sound like news to many parents, but the American Academy of Pediatrics is just announcing their new recommendation that parents read with their children daily from infancy on.
Book thumbnail image New questions about Gustav Mahler For many years, scholarship on composer Gustav Mahler’s life and work has relied heavily on Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s diary. However, a recently discovered letter, introduced, translated, and annotated by Morten Solvik and Stephen E. Hefling, and published for the first time in the journal The Musical Quarterly, sheds new light on the private life of the great composer.
Book thumbnail image Historical memory, woman suffrage, and Alice Paul By J.D. Zahniser I saw a t-shirt the other day which brilliantly illustrated the ever-present contest over historical memory in America. The t-shirt featured the famous 1886 image of Geronimo with a few of his Apache followers, all holding weapons. The legend on the t-shirt? “HOMELAND SECURITY: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492.”
Book thumbnail image Music parenting’s unexpected, positive benefits By Amy Nathan When parents sign up kids for music lessons, probably first on the list of anticipated outcomes is that their youngsters’ lives will be enhanced and enriched by their involvement with music, possibly even leading to a lifelong love of music.
Book thumbnail image Class arbitration at home and abroad By S.I. Strong To paraphrase the Bard, the course of class arbitration never did run smooth. Ever since its inception in the early 1980s and 1990s, the development of class arbitration has been both complicated and controversial. For example, in 2003, the US Supreme Court decision in Green Tree Financial Corp. v. Bazzle, was read as providing implicit approval of class arbitration and resulted in the massive expansion of the procedure across the country.
Book thumbnail image On Great Expectations By Maura Kelly Great Expectations is arguably Charles Dickens’s finest novel – it has a more cogent, concise plot and a more authentic narrator than the other contender for that title, the sprawling masterpiece Bleak House. It may also enjoy another special distinction – Best Title for Any Novel Ever. Certainly, it might have served as the name for any of Dickens’s other novels, as the critic G. K. Chesterson has noted before me.
Book thumbnail image Not learning from history: unwinnable wars and nation building, two millennia ago By Ian Worthington Recent events in Iraq, as the militant group ISIS (or ISIL) strives to establish an Islamic state in the country that threatens to undo everything that western involvement achieved there after 9/11, illustrates well the volatility of the entire region and the interplay of religion and politics.
Book thumbnail image Fixing the world after Iraq By Louis René Beres Seldom do our national leaders take time to look meaningfully behind the news. As we now see with considerable clarity, watching the spasms of growing sectarian violence in Iraq, the results can be grievously unfortunate, or even genuinely catastrophic.
Hannah Arendt and crimes against humanity By Roberta Seret The powerful biographical film, Hannah Arendt, focuses on Arendt’s historical coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s trial in 1961 and the genocide of six million Jews. But sharing center stage is Arendt’s philosophical concept: what is thinking?
Book thumbnail image Investing for feline futures By Rachael A. Bay For tigers, visiting your neighbor is just not as easy as it used to be. Centuries ago, tigers roamed freely across the landscape from India to Indonesia and even as far north as Russia. Today, tigers inhabit is just 7% of that historical range. And that 7% is distributed in tiny patches across thousands of kilometers.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about The Three Musketeers ? The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas, celebrates its 170th birthday this year. The classic story of friendship and adventure has been read and enjoyed by many generations all over the world, and there have been dozens of adaptations, including the classic silent 1921 film, directed by Fred Niblo, and the recent BBC series. Take our quiz to find out how much you know about the book, its author, and the time at which it was written.
Book thumbnail image Scotland’s return to the state of nature? By David A. Rezvani Some observers may immediately recoil at the thought that an entity that is partially independent would have advantages over an entity with a full measure of sovereignty. This indeed seems to be the view of the minority of Scottish voters who intend on voting in favor of Scotland’s secession from the United Kingdom during the September 2014 independence referendum.
Does learning a second language lead to a new identity? By Arturo E. Hernandez Everyday I get asked why second language learning is so hard and what can be done to make it easier. One day a student came up to me after class and asked me how his mother could learn to speak English better. She did not seem to be able to break through and start speaking.
Book thumbnail image Books by design By Maggie Belnap Despite the old saying, a book’s cover is perhaps the strongest factor in why we pick up a book off the shelf or pause during our online web shopping. Of course, we all like to think that we are above such a judgmental mentality, but the truth is that a cover design can make — or break — a book’s fortunes.
Book thumbnail image How social media is changing language By Jon Reed From unfriend to selfie, social media is clearly having an impact on language. As someone who writes about social media I’m aware of not only how fast these online platforms change, but also of how they influence the language in which I write. The words that surround us every day influence the words we use.
Book thumbnail image Obama’s predicament in his final years as President By Daniel J. Sargent The arc of a presidency is long, but it bends towards failure. So, to paraphrase Barack Obama, seems to be the implication of recent events. Set aside our domestic travails, for which Congress bears primary responsibility, and focus on foreign policy, where the president plays a freer hand.
Book thumbnail image A Q&A with Peipei Qiu on Chinese comfort women Issues concerning Imperial Japan’s wartime “comfort women” have ignited international debates in the past two decades, and a number of personal accounts of “comfort women” have been published in English since the 1990s. Until recently, however, there has been a notable lack of information about the women drafted from Mainland China. Chinese Comfort Women is the first book in English to record the first-hand experiences of twelve Chinese women who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese Imperial forces during the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945).
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about the First World War? From Haig to Kitchener, and Vera Lynn to Wilfred Owen, how well you know the figures of the First World War? Who’s Who highlights the individuals who had an impact on the events of the Great War. Looking through Who’s Who, we are able to gain a snapshot of the talents and achievements of these individuals, and how they went on to influence World War One history.
Book thumbnail image Welcome to the OHR, Stephanie Gilmore By Caitlin Tyler-Richards This summer, our editor-in-chief Kathy Nasstrom is taking a well-deserved break, and leaving the Oral History Review and related cat-herding in the hands of the extremely capable Stephanie Gilmore. As some may have read in the Oral History Association’s most recent newsletter, Stephanie is a multitalented historian who works to combat sexual assault on university campuses.
Book thumbnail image World Refugee Day Reading List World Refugee Day is held every year on 20 June to recognise the resilience of forcibly displaced people across the world. For more than six decades, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been tracking and assisting refugees worldwide.
Book thumbnail image Making World Refugee Day count Khalid Koser There seems to be an international day for almost every issue these days, and today, 20 June, is the turn of refugees. When the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) releases its annual statistics on refugees today, these are likely to make for gloomy reading.
Book thumbnail image The legacy of critical care By Richard D. Griffiths Over the last half century, critical care has made great advances towards preventing the premature deaths of many severely ill patients. The urgency, immediacy, and involved intimacy of the critical care team striving to correct acutely disturbed organ dysfunction meant that, for many years, physiological correction and ultimate patient survival alone was considered the unique measure of success.
Book thumbnail image What has changed in geopolitics? By Klaus Dodds If a week is a long time in politics then goodness knows what seven years represents in geopolitical terms. The publication of the second edition of the VSI to Geopolitics was a welcome opportunity to update and reflect on what has changed since its initial publication in 2007.
Book thumbnail image Political apparatus of rape in India By Pratiksha Baxi In the wake of the Delhi gang rape protests in 2013-2014, a section of the western media was critiqued for representing sexual violence as a form of cultural violence. For instance, a white woman reporter said to a friend, ‘we are filming Indian women of all kinds. You look modern.
Telemachos in Ithaca How do you hear the call of the poet to the Muse that opens every epic poem? The following is extract from Barry B. Powell’s new free verse translation of The Odyssey by Homer. It is accompanied by two recordings: one of the first 105 lines in Ancient Greek, the other of the first 155 lines in the new translation. How does your understanding change in each of the different versions?
Book thumbnail image A 2014 summer songs playlist Compiled by Taylor Coe Now that summer is finally here — dog-eared paperbacks and sunglasses dusted off and put to good use — it’s also time to figure out what we should be listening to as we loll about in the sun.
Book thumbnail image Putting an end to war By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel War is hell. War kills people, mainly non-combatant civilians, and injures and maims many more — both physically and psychologically. War destroys the health-supporting infrastructure of society, including systems of medical care and public health services, food and water supply, sanitation and sewage treatment, transportation, communication, and power generation.
Celebrating Trans Bodies, Trans Selves We kicked-off Pride Month early this year, celebrating the publication of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community in late May. Taking Our Bodies, Our Selves as its model, Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is an all-encompassing resource for the transgender community and any one looking for information.
Book thumbnail image Faith and science in the natural world By Tom McLeish There is a pressing need to re-establish a cultural narrative for science. At present we lack a public understanding of the purpose of this deeply human endeavour to understand the natural world. In debate around scientific issues, and even in the education and presentation of science itself, we tend to overemphasise the most recent findings, and project a culture of expertise.
Book thumbnail image Felipe VI, Spain’s new king: viva el rey By William Chislett Spain has a new king, following the abdication of King Juan Carlos earlier this month in favour of his son, Felipe VI. The move comes at a time when Spain is emerging from a long period of recession with an unemployment rate of 26%, a tarnished monarchy, a widely discredited political class, and a pro-independence movement in the region of Catalonia.
Book thumbnail image World Cup plays to empty seats By Irving Rein and Adam Grossman Stunning upsets. Dramatic finishes. Individual brilliance. Goals galore. The 2014 World Cup has started off with a bang. Yet, not as many people as expected are on hand to hear and see the excitement in venues throughout Brazil. Outside of the home country’s matches, there have been thousands of empty seats in stadiums throughout the tournament.
A globalized history of “baron,” part 2 By Anatoly Liberman I will begin with a short summary of the previous post. In English texts, the noun baron surfaced in 1200, which means that it became current not much earlier than the end of the twelfth century. It has been traced to Semitic (a fanciful derivation), Celtic, Latin (a variety of proposals), and Germanic. The Old English words beorn “man; fighter, warrior” and bearn “child; bairn” are unlikely sources of baron.
Book thumbnail image The long, hard slog out of military occupation By Alan McPherson In 2003, former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld infamously foresaw victory in Afghanistan and Iraq as demanding a “long, hard slog” and listed a multitude of unanswered questions. Over a decade later, as President Obama (slowly) fulfills his promise to pull all US troops from Afghanistan, a different set of questions emerges: Which Afghans can coalition troops trust to replace them? Will withdrawal lead to even more corruption in the Hamid Karzai government or that of his successor? Has the return of sectarian violence in Iraq been inevitable?
Book thumbnail image Media bias and the climate issue By Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao How do individuals manipulate the information they privately have in strategic interactions? The economics of information is a classic topic, and mass media often features in its analysis. The international mass media play an important role in forming people’s perception of the climate problem. However, media coverage on the climate problem is often biased.
Book thumbnail image Definitions and dividing lines in the Employment Tribunals Rules of Procedure By John Macmillan The current series of Judicial Pension Scheme claims have raised two interesting points under the most recent Employment Tribunals Rules, introduced in July 2013. Although ultimately neither required determination, the issues highlighted are worth exploring.
Book thumbnail image Torture: what’s race got to do with it? By Rebecca Gordon June is Torture Awareness Month, so this seems like a good time to consider some difficult aspects of torture people in the United States might need to be aware of. Sadly, this country has a long history of involvement with torture, both in its military adventures abroad and within its borders.
Book thumbnail image This empire of suffering By Mary L. Dudziak On 6 June 2014 at Normandy, President Barack Obama spoke movingly of the day that “blood soaked the water, bombs broke the sky,” and “entire companies’ worth of men fell in minutes.” The 70th anniversary of D-Day was a moment to remember the heroes and commemorate the fallen.
Composer and cellist Aaron Minsky in twelve questions By Aaron Minsky Each month we will bring you an interview with one of our OUP composers, providing an insight into their music and personalities. Today, we are speaking with the cellist Aaron Minsky about his proudest moment, the challenges of staying relevant, desert-island playlists, and his debt to J. S. Bach.
Book thumbnail image A thought on poets, death, and Clive James. And heroism. By Andrew Taylor Whatever else we think of poets, we don’t tend to see them as heroes. There are exceptions, of course – Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon famously won the Military Cross, and some three hundred years earlier, Sir Philip Sidney was praised for his dash and gallantry at the Battle of Zutphen.
Book thumbnail image Racial diversity and government funding of nonprofit human services By Eve E. Garrow Does the government fund nonprofit human service organizations that serve and locate in the neighborhoods with the greatest needs? This is an important question, as much of the safety net now takes the form of human services delivered, for the most part, by nonprofit organizations. Access to government benefits therefore relies increasingly on the location of nonprofits that are awarded government funds to provide human services.
Psychodrama, cinema, and Indonesia’s untold genocide By Roberta Seret American director, Joshua Oppenheimer, has merged theatre, psychology and film in his innovative documentary, The Act of Killing, Jagal in Indonesian, meaning Butcher. (BAFTA Award for Best Documentary of 2013.)
Book thumbnail image The appeal of primitivism in British Georgia By Geordan Hammond The ideal of primitivism was common feature in eighteenth-century British society whether in architecture, art, economics, landscape gardening, literature, music, or religion. Nicholas Hawksmoor’s six London neo-classical churches are one example of the primivitist ideal in architecture and religion.
Book thumbnail image The decline of evangelical politics By Steven P. Miller Has the evangelical era of American politics run its course? Two terms into the Obama administration, and nearly four decades since George Gallup Jr. declared 1976 the “Year of the Evangelical,” it is tempting to say yes.
Book thumbnail image Puzzling about political leadership By R. A. W. Rhodes and Paul ‘t Hart Since Machiavelli, political leadership has been seen as the exercise of practical wisdom. We can gain insights through direct personal experience and sustained reflection. The core intangibles of leadership – empathy, intuition, creativity, courage, morality, judgement – are largely beyond the grasp of ‘scientific’ inquiry.
Book thumbnail image When is a book a tree? By Philip Durkin The obvious answer to ‘when is a book a tree?’ is ‘before it’s been made into a book’ – it doesn’t take a scientist to know that (most) paper comes from trees – but things get more complex when we turn our attention to etymology.
Book thumbnail image Martyrdom and terrorism: a Q&A By Alex Houen and Dominic Janes By Dominic Janes and Alex Houen Martyrdom and terrorism are not new ideas, and in fact have been around for thousands of years, often closely tied to religion. We sat down with Jolyon Mitchell to discuss the topic of martyrdom and how it relates to terrorism in the past and today.
Book thumbnail image English convent lives in exile, 1540-1800 By Victoria Van Hyning In the two and a half centuries following the dissolution of the monasteries in England in the 1530s, women who wanted to become nuns first needed to become exiles. The practice of Catholicism in England was illegal, as was undertaking exile for the sake of religious freedom.
Book thumbnail image Post-Hay Festival blues By Kate Farquhar-Thomson Despite the wet and muddy conditions that met me at Hay, and stayed with me throughout the week, the enthusiasm of the crowd never dwindled. Nothing, it seems, keeps a book lover away from their passion to hear, meet, and have their book signed by their favourite author.
Climate change and our evolutionary weaknesses By Dale Jamieson In the reality-based community outside of Washington D.C. there is a growing fear and increasing disbelief about the failure to take climate change seriously. Many who once put their faith in science and reason have come to the depressing conclusion that we will only take action if nature slaps us silly; they increasingly see hurricanes and droughts as the only hope.
Book thumbnail image Eight facts about the gun debate in the United States By Philip J. Cook and Kristin A. Goss The debate over gun control generates more heat than light. But no matter how vigorously the claims and counterclaims are asserted, the basic facts are not just a matter of personal opinion. Here are our conclusions about some of the factual issues that are at the heart of the gun debate.
Book thumbnail image In praise of Sir William Osler By Arpan K. Banerjee In May this year, the American Osler Society held a joint meeting with the London Osler Society and the Japanese Osler Society in Oxford at the Randolph Hotel. The Societies exist to perpetuate the memory of arguably one the most influential physicians of the early twentieth century, and to discuss topics related to Sir William Osler’s interests.
Book thumbnail image Derrida on the madness of our time By Simon Glendinning In 1994 Jacques Derrida participated in a seminar in Capri under the title “Religion”. Derrida himself thought “religion” might be a good word, perhaps the best word for thinking about our time, our “today”. It belongs, Derrida suggested, to the “absolute anachrony” of our time. Religion? Isn’t it that old thing that we moderns had thought had gone away, the thing that really does not belong in our time? And yet, so it seems, it is still alive and well.
Behind-the-scenes tour of film musical history By Richard Barrios As Richard Barrios sees it, movie musicals can go one way or the other — some of them end up as cultural touchstones, and others as train wrecks. In his book Dangerous Rhythm: Why Movie Musicals Matter, Barrios goes behind-the-scenes to uncover the backstories of these fabulous hits and problematic (if not exactly forgettable) flops.
Book thumbnail image Three objections to the concept of family optimality By Carlos A. Ball Those who defend same-sex marriage bans in the United States continue to insist that households led by married mothers and fathers who are biologically related to their children constitute the optimal family structure for children.
Book thumbnail image Eighteenth-century soldiers’ slang: “Hot Stuff” and the British Army By Jennine Hurl-Eamon Britain’s soldiers were singing about “hot stuff” more than 200 years before Donna Summer released her hit song of the same name in 1979. The true origins of martial ballads are often difficult to ascertain, but a song entitled “Hot Stuff” can be found in print by 1774.
A globalized history of “baron,” part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Once again we are torn between Rome, the Romance-speaking world, and England. The word baron appeared in English texts in 1200, and it probably became current shortly before that time, for such an important military title would hardly have escaped written tradition for too long.
Finding opportunities in risk management By Torben Juul Andersen, Maxine Garvey, and Oliviero Roggi For decades, the press has been full of fascinating and colorful stories about prominent and heralded enterprises ending up in scandal and bankruptcy. These include the diversion of corporate funds in the Maxwell Group in the early 1990s, the trading losses that made Barings Bank extinct in the mid-1990s, the accounting frauds at WorldCom in the late 1990s, and the spectacular collapse of Enron in the early 2000s.
Book thumbnail image Professionals’ implication in corporate corruption By Claudia Gabbioneta, Rajshree Prakash, and Royston Greenwood Professional service firms have been implicated in numerous cases of corporate fraud. Enron is probably the most striking – albeit by no means the only – example of this involvement. Arthur Andersen (who audited Enron’s financial statements) was accused of helping the company ‘design accounting techniques or models’ that Enron used to boost its performance.
Book thumbnail image Philippines pork barrel scam and contending ideologies of accountability By Garry Rodan When Benigno Aquino III was elected Philippine President in 2010, combating entrenched corruption was uppermost on his projected reform agenda. Hitherto, it has been unclear what the full extent and nature of reform ambitions of his administration might be.
McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists – diamond anniversary In 1954, “hacking” meant horse riding or a coughing fit, “twitter” was what birds did, and Lord Justice Leveson was in short trousers. And the first edition of Essential Law for Journalists by Leonard McNae published, costing 10s 6d.
Book thumbnail image Life in occupied Paris during World War II By David Ball If you were a fifty-year-old intellectual, a well-known writer of left-wing articles and literary essays, and your country was occupied by the Nazis and its more-or-less legal government collaborated with them — and now the editor of the leading literary magazine of the time pressed you to contribute an essay to his review, would you do so?
Book thumbnail image “Stretch” Johnson, my father By Wendy Johnson In the grim period of McCarthyism during the 50s, Howard “Stretch” Johnson, my father, fought for freedom of thought and speech, protesting the persecution of artists and intellectuals. Despite the fact that he had grown away from the Communist Party, with the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party and the revelations of Stalin’s bloody deeds, Stretch stood trial and refused to denounce his comrades.
Book thumbnail image Songs of the Alaskan Inuit Music today is usually categorized by the genre to which it most stylistically relates. A quick scroll through the iTunes genres sections reveals the familiar categories, among them Rock, Pop, R&B/Soul, Country, Classical, and Alternative. Songs or musical compilations today seem to have a readily apparent identity.
Book thumbnail image Russia’s ‘spring’ of 2014 By Sascha-Dominik Bachmann Russia’s offensive policy of territorial annexation (of the Crimea), the threat of using military force and the actual support of separatist groups on the territory of Ukraine has left the West and NATO practically helpless to respond. NATO seems to be unwilling to agree on a more robust response, thus revealing a political division among its member states.
Book thumbnail image Feynman diagrams and the fly in the ointment By Tom Lancaster and Stephen J. Blundell Sometimes it’s the fly in the ointment, the thing that spoils the purity of the whole picture, which leads to the big advances in science. That’s exactly what happened at a conference in Shelter Island, New York in 1947 when a group of physicists gathered to discuss the latest breakthroughs in their field which seemed at first sight to make everything more complicated.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for BIALL 2014 By Katherine Marshall and Isabel Jones On 12 June 2014, hundreds of librarians and resource co-ordinators will gather in the historic spa town of Harrogate to attend the annual British and Irish Association of Law Librarians Conference (BIALL). The meeting provides an opportunity for delegates to convene and discuss the pressing issues in their field.
Book thumbnail image May 2014: a ‘political earthquake’? By David Denver and Mark Garnett The latest European Parliament and local council elections, held on Thursday 22 May, has shown, once again, that it would be foolish to make any predictions about political future contests in Britain. The two most striking aspects of the results were the advances made by UKIP and the collapse of Liberal Democrat support.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about the Law of the Sea? Of the many things in our world that require protection, we sometimes forget the vast expanses of the oceans. However, they are also vulnerable and deserve our protection, including under the law. In recognition of World Oceans Day, we pulled together a collection of international law questions on the Law of the Sea from our books, journals, and online products. Test your knowledge of the law of the sea!
Book thumbnail image What is a book? (humour edition) As the Amazon-Hachette debate has escalated this week, taking a notably funny turn on the Colbert Report, we’d like to share some funnier reflections on books and the purposes they serve. Here are some selections from the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, Fifth Edition.
Book thumbnail image What kind of Lena Younger would Diahann Carroll have been? By Ruth Feldstein In February, fans learned that Diahann Carroll had withdrawn from “A Raisin in the Sun.” The most recent revival of Lorraine Hansberry’s award-winning 1959 drama opened in April, and is now nominated for five Tony awards.
Book thumbnail image 1914-1918: the paradox of semi-modern war By Dennis Showalter The looming centennial of the Great War has inspired a predicable abundance of conferences, books, articles, and blog posts. Most are built on a familiar meme: the war as a symbol of futility. Soldiers and societies alike are presented as victims of flawed intentions and defective methods, which in turn reflected inability or unwillingness to adapt to the spectrum of innovations (material, intellectual, and emotional), that made the Great War the first modern conflict.
Book thumbnail image Which book changed your life? We’re continuing our examination of what a book is this week, following the cultural debate that the Amazon-Hachette dispute has set off, with something a little closer to our hearts. We’ve compiled a brief list of books that changed the lives of Oxford University Press staff. Please share your books in the comments below.
Reflecting on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings In the early morning of 6 June 1944, thousands of men stood in Higgins boats off the coast of Normandy. They could not see around them until the bow ramp was lowered — when it was time for them to storm the Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha beaches. Over 10,000 of them would die in the next 24 hours.
Book thumbnail image Apples and carrots count as well By David Bender The food pyramid shows fruits and vegetables as the second most important group of foods in terms of the amount to be eaten each day: 3-5 servings of vegetables and 2-4 servings of fruit. This, and the associated public health message to consume at least 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day, is based on many years of nutritional research.
Book thumbnail image How did writing begin? We’re continuing our discussion of what is a book today with some historical perspective. The excerpt below by Andrew Robinson from The Book: A Global History gives some interesting insight into how the art of writing began.
Book thumbnail image The point of view of the universe By Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer We are constantly making decisions about what we ought to do. We have to make up our own minds, but does that mean that whatever we choose is right? Often we make decisions from a limited or biased perspective.
Book thumbnail image Why we watch the Tony Awards By Liz Wollman Awards season bring out everyone’s inner analyst. The moment that nominations are announced, everyone starts trying to figure out what the list of nominees says about the state of whatever medium is being lauded.
Book thumbnail image Ballmer overbids by one billion By Adam Grossman On Sunday, the NBA approved the sale of the Los Angeles Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for $2 billion. From a brand management and crisis perspective, it is easy to see why the NBA wanted to approve this sale as quickly as possible.
Book thumbnail image What is a book? In recent weeks, a trade dispute between Amazon and Hachette has been making headlines across the world. But discussion at our book-laden coffee tables and computer screens has not been limited to contract terms and inventory, but what books mean to us as publishers, booksellers, authors, and readers.
Fishing in the “roiling” waters of etymology By Anatoly Liberman Those who will look up the etymology of roil and rile will have to choose between two answers: “from Old French” or “of uncertain origin.” Judging by my rather extensive and constantly growing database, roil and rile have attracted little attention
Book thumbnail image Politics and cities: looking at the roots of suburban sprawl Our modern-day suburban sprawl is much more than bad architecture and sloppy planning, yet there might be a simple solution. Benjamin Ross, author of Dead End: Suburban Sprawl and the Rebirth of American Urbanism, argues that the expansion of rail transit would help us to create better places to live.
Book thumbnail image Changing focus By Richard S. Grossman For the past half dozen years or so, the first Friday of the month has brought fear and dread to large portions of the United States. This heightened anxiety has nothing to do with the phases of the moon, the expiration of multiple financial derivatives, or concerns about not having a date for the weekend.
Book thumbnail image After the storm: failure, fallout, and Farage By Matthew Flinders The earthquake has happened, the tremors have been felt, party leaders are dealing with the aftershocks and a number of fault-lines in contemporary British and European politics have been exposed. Or have they? Were last month’s European elections really as momentous as many social and political commentators seem to believe?
Book thumbnail image Mormon pioneer polygamous wives [infographic] Polygamy is a major part of Mormon history, dating back to the 1800s when Mormon leaders first encouraged it. While it is now a taboo subject, it had an undeniable impact on Mormon life, as illustrated in this infographic.
Book thumbnail image Josephine Baker, the most sensational woman anybody ever saw By Melanie Zeck By Melanie Zeck Perhaps Ernest Hemingway knew best when he claimed that Josephine Baker was the “most sensational woman anybody ever saw. Or ever will.” Indeed, Josephine Baker was sensational–as an African American coming of age in the 1920s, she took Paris by storm in La Revue Nègre and relished a career in entertainment that spanned fifty years. On what would be her 108th birthday, Baker’s fans on both sides of the Atlantic still celebrate her legendary charisma.
Book thumbnail image The Noto decision and double state income taxation of dual residents By Edward Zelinsky Lucio Noto worked for Mobil and ExxonMobil in Virginia and Texas before retiring in 2001. In his retirement, Mr. Noto and his wife Joan maintain homes in Greenwich, Connecticut and in East Hampton, New York. For state income tax purposes, the Notos are residents of both Connecticut where they are domiciled and New York where they spend at least 183 days annually at their second home.
Book thumbnail image Discussing gay and lesbian adults’ relationships with their parents By Corinne Reczek The growing support for same-sex marriage rights represents an important shift in the everyday lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the United States today. However, the continued focus on same-sex marriage in the media, by states, and by local governments, and by scholars and researchers leaves other arenas of the family lives of gay and lesbian adults relatively unexplored.
Book thumbnail image Football arrives in Brazil By Matthew Brown Charles Miller claimed to have brought the first footballs to Brazil, stepping off the boat in the port of Santos with a serious expression, his boots, balls and a copy of the FA regulations, ready to change the course of Brazilian history. There are no documents to record the event, only Miller’s own account of a conversation, in which historians have picked numerous holes.
The in-depth selfie: discussing selfies through an academic lens Looking at oneself is a timeless concept. We are constantly trying to figure out how to represent ourselves in our own brains . . . confusing certainly. In honor of Oxford Dictionaries’s 2013 word of the year — “selfie” — University of Southern California professors pay homage by discussing selfies through the lens of letters, arts, and sciences. They analyse the selfie trend through the perspectives of sociology, gender studies, religion, anthropology, and more. Watch their video below and learn how profound a camera flash and puckered mouth can be.
May 2014 (100))
How well do you know short stories? By Maggie Belnap Short stories populate many childhoods, trying to instill morals and virtues in undeveloped and wandering minds. Whether it’s the tale of Rumpelstiltskin or the boy who cried wolf, these tales make a powerful impression. Check out the short story quiz and see if you really know your short stories.
Book thumbnail image History strikes back: Ukraine’s past and the current crisis By Serhy Yekelchyk As Ukrainian voters go to the polls this weekend to elect the new president, their country remains stalled at a historical crossroads. A revolution sparked by the previous government’s turn away from Europe, Russia’s flagrant annexation of the Crimea, and the continuing fighting in eastern Ukraine–all these events of recent months can only be understood in their proper historical context.
Book thumbnail image World No Tobacco Day 2014: Raise taxes on tobacco By Gary E. Swan According to the WHO’s fact sheet on tobacco, chronic tobacco use caused 100 million deaths in the 20th century. If current trends continue, it may cause one billion deaths in the 21st century. The global tobacco epidemic kills nearly 6 million people each year, of which more than 600,000 are non-smokers dying from breathing second-hand smoke.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Malcolm MacDonald By Suzanne Ryan With great sadness, Oxford reports the passing of esteemed music author and critic Malcolm MacDonald, who died on 27 May 2014. MacDonald was until December 2013 Editor of the modern-music journal Tempo, and reviewed regularly for BBC Music Magazine and the International Record Review. He wrote both under his given name and as Calum MacDonald (to avoid confusion with the composer also named Malcolm MacDonald).
Book thumbnail image Cybersecurity and the cyber-awareness gap “‘There’s probably no issue that’s become more crucial, more rapidly, but is less understood, than cybersecurity,’ warns cyber expert P.W. Singer, co-author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know. Cybersecurity has quickly become one of the most defining challenges of our generation, and yet, as the threat of cyber-terrorism looms, there remains an alarming “cyber-awareness gap” that renders the many of us vulnerable.
The fall of Rome to the rise of the Catholic Church, in pictures By Peter Heather By Peter Heather After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Western world went through a turbulent and dramatic period during which a succession of kingdoms rose, grew, and crumbled in spans of only a few generations. The wars and personalities of the dark ages are the stuff of legend, and all led toward the eventual reunification of Europe under a different kind of Roman rule — this time, that of the Church. Below, historian Peter Heather selects ten moments from the period upon which the fate of Europe hinged.
Book thumbnail image Ten landscape designers who changed the world By Ian Thompson It comes as a surprise to many people that landscapes can be designed. The assumption is that landscapes just happen; they emerge, by accident almost, from the countless activities and uses that occur on the land. But this ignores innumerable instances where people have intervened in landscape with aesthetic intent, where the landscape isn’t just happenstance, but the outcome of considered planning and design. Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux coined a name for this activity in 1857 when they described themselves as ‘landscape architects’ on their winning competition entry for New York’s Central Park; but ‘landscape architecture’ had been going on for centuries under different designations, including master-gardening’, ‘place-making’, and ‘landscape gardening’. To avoid anachronism, I’m going to call the entire field ‘landscape design’. The ‘top ten’ designers that follow are those I think have been the most influential. These people have shaped your everyday world.
Book thumbnail image Ascension and atonement in the New Testament By Grant Macaskill In the Christian calendar, today is Ascension, the day that marks the translation of Jesus from earth to heaven. While Christmas and Easter are widely celebrated, not just by those actively involved with the church, Ascension will pass unnoticed for most.
Book thumbnail image Q&A with James Keller, author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide James Keller, longtime Program Annotator of the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony, was awarded the prestigious ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for feature writing about music in Chamber Music magazine, where he has been Contributing Editor for more than a decade. He is the author of Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide.
Ten moments that shook the Roman world, in pictures By Peter Heather By Peter Heather The Roman Empire at its peak was the first great hemispherical power in human history. Over the years, though, this mighty society was torn apart by internal strife and attacks by rival powers. Below, the renowned historian Peter Heather describes the ten most critical turning points which led to the fall of the Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages.
Book thumbnail image Splash! What kids discover in a puddle By Siu-Lan Tan It’s spring and about this time each year, a little ritual takes place. After the winter melt, many children encounter their first puddle with the zeal of an explorer discovering a new land.
Book thumbnail image Gene flow between wolves and dogs By David Tarkhnishvili Rapid development of molecular genetics in recent decades has revolutionized our understanding of life and the natural world. Scientists in the 1970s suggested that the grey wolf might be the sole ancestor of domestic dogs, but it was only in 1997 that Carles Vilà, Peter Savolainen, Robert Wayne, and their co-authors provided the conclusive evidence on this based on the analysis of molecular genetic markers.
The Roman conquest of Greece, in pictures By Robin Waterfield This sequence of photos roughly outlines the progress of the Roman takeover of Greece, from the first beginnings in Illyris (modern Albania) in 230 BCE to the infamous “destruction” of Corinth in 146 BCE. The critical figures of this swift takeover were two Macedonian kings, Philip V and Perseus, who were determined to resist Roman aggression.
Monthly etymology gleanings for May 2014 By Anatoly Liberman Anatoly Liberman responds to this month’s letters. He discusses the hotly contested issue of spelling reform, historical semantics, why words change meaning, the modern usage of the words ‘unique’ and ‘decimate’, ‘agreement the American way’, and explains how university administrators write.
Book thumbnail image Memorial Day and the 9/11 museum in American civil religion By Peter Gardella Unlike the 4th of July with its fireworks or Thanksgiving with its turkeys, Memorial Day has no special object. But the new 9/11 Museum near the World Trade Center in New York has thousands of objects. Some complain that its objects are for sale, in a gift shop and because of the admission fee.
Book thumbnail image How to change behaviour By Adam Ferrier So, recently there was another report from the scientists of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) telling us that climate change (what used to be called global warming) is upon us and there are real changes happening now. The scientists urged us to heed their warning and change our behaviours, and we ignored them in droves.
Mary Lou Williams, jazz legend Wednesday, 28 May marks the 33rd anniversary of Mary Lou William’s death. Mary Lou Williams, an African-American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and contemporary of both Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne, is often overlooked as a key contributor to the jazz movement of the 20th century.
Book thumbnail image Pulling together or tearing apart By Bruce Currie-Alder Is thinking on international development pulling itself together or tearing itself apart? The phrase ‘international development’ can be problematic, embracing multiple meanings to those inside the business, but often meaningless to those outside of it. On the surface, the Millennium Development Goals and debates towards a post-2015 agenda imply a move towards […]
Book thumbnail image Tourism and the 2010 World Cup By Thomas Peeters, Victor Matheson, and Stefan Szymanski The World Cup, the Olympics and other mega sporting events give cities and countries the opportunity to be in the world’s spotlight for several weeks, and the competition among them to host these events can be as fierce as the competition among the athletes themselves. Bids that had traditionally gone to wealthier countries have recently become a prize to be won by prospective hosts in the developing world.
Book thumbnail image Five reasons why Spain has a stubbornly high unemployment rate of 26% By William Chislett The Spanish economy roared along like a high-speed train for a decade until it slowed down dramatically in 2008. Only recently has it emerged from a five-year recession. But the jobless rate has tripled to 26% (four times the US level) and will not return to its pre-crisis level for up to a decade. Why is this?
The rise and fall of the Macedonian Empire By Ian Worthington Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE), King of Macedonia, ruled an empire that stretched from Greece in the west to India in the east and as far south as Egypt. The Macedonian Empire he forged was the largest in antiquity until the Roman, but unlike the Romans, Alexander established his vast empire in a mere decade.
Book thumbnail image John Calvin’s authority as a prophet By Jon Balserak For some, it was no surprise to see a book claiming that John Calvin believed he was a prophet. This reaction arose from the fact that they had already thought he was crazy and this just served to further prove the point. One thing to say in favor of their reaction is that at least they are taking the claim seriously; they perceive correctly its gravity: Calvin believed that he spoke for God; that to disagree with him was to disagree with the Almighty ipso facto.
Book thumbnail image What is English? What is English? Ask any speaker of English, and the answer you get may be “it’s what the dictionary says it is.” Or, “it’s what I speak.” Answers like these work well enough up to a point, but the words that make it in the dictionary are not always the words we hear being used around us.
Book thumbnail image Does the mafia ever die? By Gavin Slade By Gavin Slade The mafia never dies; the state can destroy mafiosi but not the mafia – such proclamations are common, especially among mafiosi, who believe the Thing, the Organization, is always out there ready to sanction them. Few law enforcement officials or criminologists are prepared to declare any mafia dead either.
Book thumbnail image Psychology, veterans, war, and remembrance By Michael D. Matthews My daily walk to work takes me through West Point’s cemetery. Founded in 1817, the cemetery includes the graves of soldiers who fought in the American Revolution, and in all of the wars our country has fought since. I often stop and reflect on the lives of these men and women who are interred here.
Book thumbnail image The Normal Heart and the resilience of the AIDS generation By Perry N. Halkitis On 25 May 2014 and nearly 30 years after first appearing on the stage, Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart will be aired as a film on HBO. This project, which has evolved over the course of the last three decades, documents those first few harrowing years of the AIDS epidemic in New York City.
Book thumbnail image Kotodama: the multi-faced Japanese myth of the spirit of language By Naoko Hosokawa In Japan, there is a common myth of the spirit of language called kotodama (??, ????); a belief that some divine power resides in the Japanese language. This belief originates in ancient times as part of Shintoist ritual but the idea has survived through Japanese history and the term kotodama is still frequently mentioned in public discourse.
Book thumbnail image Verdun: the longest battle of the Great War The battle of Verdun began on 21 February 1916. It did not end until December of that year. It was a place of no advance and no retreat, where national resources continued to pour in, extending the slaughter indefinitely. Paul Jankowski, leading French historian and author of Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War, examines Verdun in a new, unique way, using both French and German sources with equal weight.
Book thumbnail image ‘Storytelling’ in oral history: an exchange, part 2 On 25 April, we shared an excerpt from the conversation between OHR 41.1 contributor Alexander Freund and OHR board member Erin Jessee regarding Freund’s article, “Confessing Animals: Towards a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview”. Below, Freund and Jessee continue their exchange, tackling storytelling in non-Western arenas.
Book thumbnail image Morality, science, and Belgium’s child euthanasia law By Tony Hope Science and morality are often seen as poles apart. Doesn’t science deal with facts, and morality with, well, opinions? Isn’t science about empirical evidence, and morality about philosophy? In my view this is wrong. Science and morality are neighbours. Both are rational enterprises. Both require a combination of conceptual analysis, and empirical evidence. Many, perhaps most moral disagreements hinge on disagreements over evidence and facts, rather than disagreements over moral principle.
Book thumbnail image Restoring our innovation “vision” What are the optimal conditions for commercializing technology breakthroughs? How can we develop a common framework among universities, government, and businesses for generating fundamentally fresh insights? How can the government maximize the public’s return on research and development investments? Innovation is a important topic in both the public and the private sectors, yet no one can agree the best path forward for it.
Book thumbnail image Make your own percussion instruments By Scott Huntington You’d probably be lying if you said that you didn’t spend at least a moderate amount of time during your childhood banging on various and sundry items that happened to be within reach. If we’re being honest, this particular sort of self-expression doesn’t seem to lessen with age; thankfully, our methods tend to get more sophisticated over time.
Consequences of the Truman Doctrine By Christopher McKnight Nichols On 22 May 1947, President Harry Truman signed the formal “Agreements on Aid to Greece and Turkey,” the central pillars of what became known as the “Truman Doctrine.” Though the principles of the policy were first articulated in a speech to a joint session of Congress on 12 March 1947, it took two months for Truman to line up the funding for Greece and Turkey and get the legislation passed through Congress.
Book thumbnail image What role does symmetry play in the perception of 3D objects? By Zygmunt Pizlo, Yunfeng Li, Tadamasa Sawada, and Robert M. Steinman The most general definition of symmetry is self-similarity: that one part of an object, pattern, signal, or process is similar, or more-or-less identical to another. According to this definition, the complete absence of symmetry is equivalent to perfect randomness, so symmetry is another name for redundancy.
Book thumbnail image All (European) politics is national By Jean Pisani-Ferry At the end of May, 400 million EU citizens will be called to participate in the second-largest direct election in the world (the first being held in India). Since they last went to the polls to elect their parliament, in 2009, Europe has gone through an acute crisis that precipitated several countries deeper into recession than any peacetime shock they had suffered for a century.
Small triumphs of etymology: “oof” By Anatoly Liberman There is an almost incomprehensible number of English words for money and various coins. Some of them, like shilling, are very old. We know (or we think that we know) where they came from. Other words (the majority) surfaced as slang, and our record of them seldom goes beyond the early modern period.
Book thumbnail image The politics of political science By Christopher Hood, Desmond King, and Gillian Peele Why are there now more salaried academic political scientists than salaried politicians in Britain today? There are well over 2,000 academic members listed in the current directory of the UK’s main political-science association (the PSA) – more than twice the number of elected members of the Westminster, devolved and European parliaments put together.
Book thumbnail image Can we end poverty? Define poverty as living with two dollars a day or less. Now imagine that governments could put those two dollars and one cent in every poor person’s pocket with little effort and minimal waste. Poverty is finished. Of course, things are more complicated than that. But you get a sense of where modern social policy is going—and what will soon be possible.
Book thumbnail image Tracking the evidence for a ‘mythical number’ By Heather Strang, Peter Neyroud, and Lawrence Sherman There is a widely-repeated claim that victims of domestic abuse suffer an average of 35 incidents before the first call to the police. The claim is frequently repeated by senior police officers, by Ministers, by government reports, by academics and by domestic abuse victim advocates.
Book thumbnail image Unauthorized transfer or assignment of interests or shares in investor-state arbitration By Borzu Sabahi and Diora Ziyaeva Contracts for exploitation of natural resources are usually awarded to foreign investors following demanding bidding processes during which the host government carefully vets qualifications of foreign investors. The process is designed to ensure that the investor has, among other things, sufficient expertise and resources to work on the project.
Book thumbnail image Charting Amelia Earhart’s first transatlantic solo flight By Susan Ware In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean, a feat which made her an instant celebrity even though she was only a passenger, or in her self-deprecating description, “a sack of potatoes.”
Book thumbnail image 10 things you may not know about the Police Federation The 90th annual conference of the Police Federation of England and Wales (commonly known as POLFED) starts today in Bournemouth. Running from 20-22 May, the event will see police officers from England, Wales, and further afield join with representatives from policing agencies, the legal profession, and the government to discuss pressing issues from the world of policing and within the Police Federation itself.
Book thumbnail image Why we should all care about ‘dying’ musics By Catherine Grant By Catherine Grant As you’ve no doubt heard by now, it’s not just plants and animals that are becoming extinct at alarming rates. The world’s languages and cultures are disappearing too, and the pace is even worse.
Book thumbnail image Why we love libraries: the Aussie way This week is National Library and Information Week in Australia — a week-long celebration of library and information professionals across the country. To celebrate the wonderful work of Australian libraries and librarians, here are a few thoughts on why libraries are so important, from those at the very heart of them.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Victoria Day Monday, 19 May is Victoria Day in Canada, which celebrates the 195th birthday of Queen Victoria on 24 May 1819. On 20 June 1837, at the age of 18, Queen Victoria took the throne as Monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as the Empire was called at that point.
Book thumbnail image We’re all data now By Fleur Johns Public international lawyers are forever in catch-up mode, or so it seems. The international legal appetite for ‘raw’ data of global life is seemingly inexhaustible and worry about the discipline lagging behind technology is perennial. There has, accordingly, been considerable energy devoted to ‘cybernating’ international law, in one way or another, or adapting the discipline to new possibilities posed by digital technology.
An illustrated history of the First World War A hundred years on, the First World War still shapes the world in which we live. Its legacy survives in poetry, in prose, in collective memory, and in political culture. By the time the war ended in 1918, millions had died. Three major empires – Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans – lay shattered by defeat. A fourth, Russia, was in the throes of a revolution that helped define the rest of the century.
Book thumbnail image A different Noah, but the same God By Y. S. Chen By Y. S. Chen Aronofsky’s Noah Movie has aroused many criticisms for the ways it has rewritten the biblical story of the Flood. It is observed that not only has the movie added extra materials to, as well as removed original elements from, the biblical account, but more seriously it has also modified and darkened the character of Noah and even of God.
Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin’s strategy in World War II Today, 17 May, is Armed Forces Day in the United States, celebrating the service of military members to their country. To mark the occasion, we present a brief excerpt from Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History.
Book thumbnail image Ros Bandt, Grove Music Online The Biography of Ros Brandt, from Grove Music Online. An interest in experimental music is apparent from her earliest compositions, many of which involve performance in specific places, improvisation, electronics, graphic notation, and the use of self-built and specially built instruments. These include Improvisations in Acoustic Chambers, 1981, and Soft and Fragile: Music in Glass and Clay, 1982.
Book thumbnail image Ricky Swallow, Grove Art Online Ricky Swallow from Grove Art Online. Australian conceptual artist, active also in the USA. Swallow came to prominence only a few years after completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, by winning the prestigious Contempora 5 art prize in 1999
Book thumbnail image Photography and social change in the Central American civil wars By Erina Duganne Many hope, even count on, photography to function as an agent of social change. In his 1998 book, Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Icons of Outrage in International Crises, communications scholar David Perlmutter argues, however, that while photographs “may stir controversy, accolades, and emotion,” they “achieve absolutely nothing.”
Book thumbnail image 15 facts on African religions African religions cover a diverse landscape of ethnic groups, languages, cultures, and worldviews. Here, Jacob K. Olupona, author of African Religions: A Very Short Introduction shares an interesting list of 15 facts on African religions.
Book thumbnail image A tale of two fables: Aesop vs. La Fontaine Jean de La Fontaine’s verse fables turned traditional folktales into some of the greatest, and best-loved, poetic works in the French language. His versions of stories such as The Shepherd and the Sea” and “The Hen that Laid the Eggs of Gold” are witty and sophisticated, satirizing human nature in miniature dramas in which the outcome is unpredictable. Here we compare La Fontaine’s versions of the popular tales, to the enduring tradition of Aesop’s fables from the Oxford World’s Classics edition.
Book thumbnail image Brian Eno, the influential “non-musician” at 66 By Cecilia Sun By Cecilia Sun Brian Eno turns 66 today. It has become a cliché to start every profile of Eno by noting the eclecticism and longevity of his musical career. After all, here is a man who made his performance debut smashing a piece of wood against an open piano frame (La Monte Young, X (Any Integer) for Henry Flynt) and went on to produce award-winning albums for chart-topping bands.
Book thumbnail image The financial consequences of terrorism By Andrew Staniforth Within moments of the terrorist attacks in London on the morning of 7 July 2005, news of the unfolding crisis on public transport had reached traders in the City. The London Stock Exchange index, the FTSE 100, lost 3.5 per cent of its total value within just 90 minutes of the trading session that day as a direct result of the bombings – equivalent to a total de-capitalisation of around £44,000,000,000.
Little triumphs of etymology: “pedigree” By Anatoly Liberman If I find enough material, I may tell several stories about how after multiple failures the ultimate origin of a common English word has been found to (almost) everybody’s satisfaction. The opening chapter in my prospective Decameron will deal with pedigree, which surfaced in English texts in the early fifteenth century.
Book thumbnail image Sam sells By Adam Grossman It is rare for a seventh round National Football League (NFL) draft pick to be at the center of the sports world. Then again, Michael Sam is not an average draft pick. Sam is trying to become the first openly gay player to compete for a NFL team.
Book thumbnail image Development theories and economic miracles By Vladimir Popov Development thinking in the second half of the twentieth century can hardly be credited for “manufacturing” development success stories. It is difficult, if not impossible, to claim that either the early structuralist models of the Big Push (financing gap and basic needs of the 1950-70s), or neo-liberal ideas of Washington consensus (that dominated the field since the 1980s) have provided crucial inputs to economic miracles in East Asia or elsewhere.
Book thumbnail image Looking forward to the Hay Festival 2014 By Kate Farquhar-Thomson Every year since I can remember, I find myself in England’s famous book town for the excellent Hay Festival. Now in its 27th year the eponymous book festival can be found nestling under canvass for 11 days in the Black Mountains of the Brecon Beacons National Park.
Book thumbnail image A conversation on economic democracy with Tom Malleson How do we address the problem of inequality in capitalist societies? Tom Malleson, the author of After Occupy: Economic Democracy for the 21st Century, argues that by making sure that democracy exists in both our economy and in our government, we may be able to achieve meaningful equality throughout society.
Book thumbnail image Announcing the winners of the street photography competition By Victoria Davis This year, in honor of World Art Day, Oxford invited photographers of all levels to submit their best street photography. Thank you to all of you who submitted! We received many thought-provoking, original entries, and are now happy to announce the winners.
Book thumbnail image “There Is Hope for Europe” – The ESC 2014 and the return to Europe By Philip V. Bohlman 4–10 May 2014. The annual Eurovision week offers Europeans a chance to put aside their differences and celebrate, nation against nation, the many ways in which music unites them. Each nation has the same opportunity—a “Eurosong” of exactly three minutes, performed by no more than six musicians or dancers, in the language of their choice, national or international—to represent Europe for a year.
Book thumbnail image Improving the quality of surveys: a Q&A with Daniel Oberski By R. Michael Alvarez Empirical work in political science must be based on strong scientifically-accurate measurements. However, the problem of measurement error hasn’t been sufficiently addressed. Recently, Willem Saris and Daniel Oberski’s Survey Quality Prediction software wasdeveloped to better predict reliability and method variance, and is receiving the 2014 Warren J. Mitofsky Innovators Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Rethinking domestic violence: learning to see past the stereotypes By Sherry Hamby The common stereotypes about battered women are wrong and not based on up-to-date science. Here are five common myths about battered women and the real truths about the realities and complexities of domestic violence.
Book thumbnail image Multiculturalism and international human rights law By Federico Lenzerini When, in 1935, the Permanent Court of International Justice was requested by the Council of the League of Nations to provide an advisory opinion on the Minority Schools in Albania, it emphasized that “the application of the same regime to a majority as to a minority, whose needs are quite different, would only create an apparent equality.” The Court also added that the rationale of the protection of minorities is to allow them to “preserving the characteristics which distinguish them from the majority, and satisfying the ensuing special needs” (ibid., at 48).
Book thumbnail image The best and worst things about journalists By Tony Harcup Journalists are heroes to some and scumbags to others but the truth is that most are somewhere in the middle, trying to do as good a job as they can, often in difficult circumstances. That, at least, is the view of Tony Harcup, author of A Dictionary of Journalism. We asked him to tell us about some of the good – and not so good – things that journalists do.
Book thumbnail image Unknown facts about five great Hollywood directors Today, 11 May, marks the anniversary of the founding of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. It wouldn’t be until 1928 until the award selection and nomination process was established, but this elite group of actors, directors, writers, technicians, and producers were leaders in the early film industry.
Book thumbnail image Helping yourself to emotional health By Sarah Perini The concept of psychological self-help, whether it is online, the traditional book, or the newer smartphone app, is one that elicits divided reactions. On the one hand, self-help is often the butt of jokes.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on World War I As we approach the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I, we’re taking a look back at the momentous event that forever changed the course of world history. Here Sir Hew Strachan, editor of The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War, examines the various important issues we can learn from commemorating the Great War and how perspectives on the war have shifted and changed over the last 100 years.
Book thumbnail image Crowdfunding for oral history projects By Shanna Farrell The cocktail is an American invention and was defined in 1806 as “a stimulating liquor composed of spirits of any kind, sugar, water, and bitters.” Cocktail culture took root on the West Coast around the Gold Rush; access to a specific set of spirits and ingredients dictated by trade roots, geography, and agriculture helped shape the West Coast cocktail in particular.
Book thumbnail image Five tips for getting into clinical psychology training By David Murphy Clinical psychologists help a huge range of people, of all ages, with an increasing number of mental health problems. Here are my top tips for getting into clinical psychology training.
Book thumbnail image Tinderbox drenched in vodka: alcohol and revolution in Ukraine By Mark Lawrence Schrad If Ukraine is a volatile tinderbox of political instability, the situation in its Russian-speaking east is even more dangerous: a tinderbox drenched in vodka.
Book thumbnail image Why literary genres matter By William Allan One of the most striking aspects of classical literature is its highly developed sense of genre. Of course, a literary work’s genre remains an important factor today: we too distinguish broad categories of poetry, prose, and drama, but also sub-genres (especially within the novel, now the most popular literary form) such as crime, romantic or historical fiction. And we do the same in other creative media, such as film, with thrillers, horrors, westerns, and so on. But classical authors were arguably even more aware than writers of genre fiction are today what forms and conventions applied to the genre they were writing in.
Book thumbnail image My democracy, which democracy? By Jad Adams I support democracy. I like to think I do so to the extent of willingness to fight and perhaps die for it. This is not so extravagant a claim, within living memory the men in my family were called upon to do exactly that. Universal suffrage is consequently my birth-right, but what is it that I am being permitted to do with my vote, when the political parties have so adjusted the system to suit themselves?
Book thumbnail image Five facts about Dame Ethel Smyth By Christopher Wiley The 8th May marks the seventieth anniversary of the death of Dame Ethel Smyth, the pioneering composer and writer, at her home in Hook Heath, near Woking. In the course of her long and varied career, she composed six operas and an array of chamber, orchestral, and vocal works, challenging traditional notions of the place of women within music composition.
Book thumbnail image Q&A with Susan Llewelyn and David Murphy With the British Psychological Society Annual Conference underway, we checked in with Susan Llewelyn, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, and David Murphy, Joint Course Director for Oxford Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology. We spoke to the co-editors of What is Clinical Psychology? about psychosis, provision of care, and careers in clinical psychology.
Book thumbnail image A Mother’s Day reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole As Mother’s Day approaches in the United States, we decided to reflect on some of the mothers to be found between the pages of some of our classic books.
Casting a last spell: After Skeat and Bradley By Anatoly Liberman I think some sort of closure is needed after we have heard the arguments for and against spelling reform by two outstanding scholars. Should we do something about English spelling, and, if the answer is yes, what should we do? Conversely, if no, why no?
Book thumbnail image Writing a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew By Ronald Schechter Let me begin with a confession. I used to be a snob when it came to comics. I learned to read circa 1970 and even though my first books were illustrated, there was something about the comic format – the words confined to speech and thought bubbles and the scenes subdivided into frames – that felt less than serious. The only time I remember being allowed to buy comic books was when I had just been to the doctor’s office.
Some highlights of the BPS conference 2014 Birmingham By David Murphy and Susan Llewelyn Psychology must be one of the most diverse disciplines there is; it encompasses understanding language development in infants, techniques to help sports competitors improve performance, the psychology of conflicts, therapy for mental health disorders, and selection techniques for business amongst many others. The BPS Annual Conference is probably the best chance to witness the breadth of the discipline each year in the United Kingdom.
Book thumbnail image Can we finally stop worrying about Europe? By Richard S. Grossman Because Europe accounts for nearly a quarter of the world’s economic output, this question is important not only to Europeans, but to Africans, Asians, Americans (both North and South), and Australians as well. Those who forecast that the United States’s relatively anemic five-year-old recovery is poised to become stronger almost always include the caveat “unless, of course, Europe implodes.”
Book thumbnail image Dante and the spin doctors By Matthew Flinders First it was football, now its politics. The transfer window seems to have opened and all the main political parties have recruited hard-hitting spin-doctors – or should I say ‘election gurus’ – in the hope of transforming their performance in the 2015 General Election. While some bemoan the influence of foreign hands on British politics and others ask why we aren’t producing our own world-class spin-doctors I can’t help but feel that the future of British politics looks bleak. The future is likely to be dominated by too much shouting, not enough listening.
Book thumbnail image Nursing: a life or death matter By Mary Jo Kreitzer Since 2005, more than 80% of Americans have rated nurses on a Gallup poll as having “high” or “very high” honesty and ethical standards. In fact, nurses have topped the list since 1999, the first year Gallup asked about them with the exception of 2001. (That year, Gallup included firefighters on a one-time basis, given their prominent role in 9/11 rescue efforts.)
Book thumbnail image Superstition and self-governance By Peter T. Leeson Government is conventionally considered the source of citizens’ property security. And in the contemporary developed world, at least, often it is. In the historical world, however, often it was not. In eras bygone, in societies across the globe, governments didn’t exist—or weren’t strong enough to provide effective governance.
Book thumbnail image The Oracle of Omaha warns about public pension underfunding By Edward Zelinsky As the American public debated the legislation ultimately enacted into law as the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, no person was more influential than the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. Much attention was given to billionaire Buffett’s complaint that his federal income tax bracket was lower than his secretary’s tax rate. President Obama invoked “the Buffett Rule” to bolster the President’s successful effort for the Act to raise income tax brackets for high income taxpayers.
Book thumbnail image Catechetical session comparisons [infographic] In his study, sociologist David Yamane found an interesting correlation between the type of catechetical sessions used in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults process (which an adult who wants to enter the Catholic Church undergoes) and the socioeconomic standing (SES).
Book thumbnail image Whaling in the Antarctic Australia v. Japan (New Zealand intervening) By Malgosia Fitzmaurice After four years of anticipation the International Court of Justice delivered a Judgment in the whaling case. The Judgment raises many issues of ecological nature. It also analyses and interprets the provisions of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) thus enriching the law of treaties.
Book thumbnail image Do immigrant immigration researchers know more? By Magdalena Nowicka The political controversies over immigration intensify across Europe. Commonly, the arguments centre around its economic costs and benefits, and they reduce the public perception of immigrants to cheap workforce. Yet, increasingly, these workers are highly skilled professionals, international students and academics.
Book thumbnail image Is the planet full? Is the planet full? Can the world continue to support a growing population estimated to reach 10 billion people by the middle of the century? And how can we harness the benefits of a healthier, wealthier and longer-living population?
Book thumbnail image What do Otis Redding and Roberto Carlos have in common? By Arturo E. Hernandez Soul’s latest incarnation comes in the guise of St. Paul and the Broken Bones. St. Paul is not really a saint. He is Paul Janeway of a new band that is hot on the rise. When you listen to him sing it evokes memories of a time past.
Book thumbnail image Ukraine and the fall of the UN system By John Yoo By John Yoo Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and its continuing military pressure on Ukraine demonstrates that the United Nations-centered system of international law has failed. The pressing question is not whether Russia has violated norms against aggression – it has – but how the United States and its allies should respond in a way that will strengthen the international system.
Book thumbnail image Justice, revenge, and the law after Osama bin Laden By David Jenkins On 2 May 2011, as news spread that a US Navy SEAL team had killed Osama bin Laden, Americans across the country erupted in spontaneous celebrations. Cameras showed the world images of jubilant crowds in Washington, DC and at New York City’s Ground Zero, reveling in the long-awaited payback against America’s nemesis.
Book thumbnail image The 9/11 memorial and the Aeneid: misappropriation or sincere sentiment? By J. C. McKeown The National September 11 Memorial Museum will be opened in a few weeks. On the otherwise starkly bare wall at the entrance is a 60-foot-long inscription in 15-inch letters made from steel salvaged from the twin towers: NO DAY SHALL ERASE YOU FROM THE MEMORY OF TIME. This noble sentiment is a quotation from Virgil’s Aeneid, one of mankind’s highest literary achievements, but its appropriateness has been questioned.
Book thumbnail image Statistics and big data David J. Hand Nowadays it appears impossible to open a newspaper or switch on the television without hearing about “big data”. Big data, it sometimes seems, will provide answers to all the world’s problems. Management consulting company McKinsey, for example, promises “a tremendous wave of innovation, productivity, and growth … all driven by big data”.
Window into the last unknown place in New York City New York City, five boroughs boasting nine million people occupying an ever-expanding concrete jungle. The industrial hand has touched almost every inch of the city, leaving even the parks over manicured and uncomfortably structured.
Pauline Hall recalls her early years and how her teaching career began By Pauline Hall By Pauline Hall I spent my first seven years living in Amen Court in the City of London, 100 metres from the northwest corner of St Paul’s Cathedral. I still have vivid memories of this time including recollections of lavish children’s parties given by Dean Inge (the so-called Gloomy Dean) for the cathedral choristers, hearing the call of the cats’ meat man who fed the rat-catching office cats, and the daily round of the lamplighter who tolerated the ‘help’ of a seven year-old assistant.
Book thumbnail image The ‘internal’ enlargement of the European Union – is it possible? By Phoebus Athanassiou and Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou European Union (EU) enlargement is both a policy and a process describing the expansion of the EU to neighbouring countries. The process of EU enlargement, first with the creation of the European Economic Community and, later, with that of the European Union, has resulted in today’s EU membership of 28 member states.
Book thumbnail image Banning Sterling makes a lot of cents for the NBA By Adam Grossman Donald Sterling’s lifetime National Basketball Association (NBA) ban, $2.5 million dollar fine, and potentially forced sale of the Clippers may seem fit in the category of previous owners who received a comparable punishment. Marge Schott was forced to sell the Cincinnati Reds for her anti-Semitic and racist comment while owner of the team.
Book thumbnail image The Illyrian bid for legitimacy By Robin Waterfield The region known as Illyris (Albania and Dalmatia, in today’s terms) was regarded at the time as a barbarian place, only semi-civilized by contact with its Greek and Macedonian neighbours. It was occupied by a number of different tribes, linked by a common culture and language (a cousin of Thracian). From time to time, one of these tribes gained a degree of dominance over some or most of the rest, but never over all of them at once. Contact with the Greek world had led to a degree of urbanization, especially in the south and along the coast, but the region still essentially consisted of many minor tribal dynasts with networks of loyalty. At the time in question, the Ardiaei were the leading tribe, and in the 230s their king, Agron, had forged a kind of union, the chief plank of which was alliances with other local magnates from central Illyris, such as Demetrius, Greek lord of the wealthy island of Pharos, and Scerdilaidas, chief of the Illyrian Labeatae.
April 2014 (123))
Monthly etymology gleanings for April 2014 By Anatoly Liberman Anatoly Liberman’s etymological thoughts and correspondences for April; regarding ‘old languages and complexity’, the origins of the word ‘brothel’, why ‘selfie’ is not such a new term after all, ‘to whom it may concern’, unintentional wolf puns, and the amusing revenges of time.
Book thumbnail image The Ebola virus and the spread of pandemics By Peter C. Doherty A recent New York Times editorial by author David Quammen highlighted the seriousness of the current Ebola outbreak in Guinea, but made the point that there is no great risk of any global pandemic. That’s been generally true of the viruses that, like Ebola, cause exudative diathesis, or bleeding into the tissues, and present with horrific symptoms.
Book thumbnail image Why everyone does better when employees have a say in the workplace By William Lazonick and Tony Huzzard In manufacturing plants all over the world, both managers and workers have discovered that when employees are involved in workplace decision-making, productivity rises. So in the United States, it made national news when on 14 February 2014 workers at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee rejected representation by the United Automobile Workers by a vote 712 to 626.
Book thumbnail image Why do frogs slough their skin? By Rebecca Cramp In recent decades, the extraordinarily rapid disappearance of frogs, toads, and salamanders has grabbed the attention of both the scientific community and concerned citizens the world over. Although the causes of some of these losses remain unresolved, the novel disease chytridiomycosis caused by the skin-based fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), has been identified as the causative agent in many of the declines and extinctions worldwide.
10 facts about the saxophone and its players By Maggie Belnap The saxophone has long been a star instrument in jazz, big bands, and solo performances. But when exactly did this grand instrument come about? Who invented it? Not many people know that when the saxophone first appeared in jazz, many performers turned up their noses to it, preferring the clarinet.
Book thumbnail image Illustrating a graphic history: Mendoza the Jew By Liz Clarke The illustration of a graphic history begins with the author’s script. There are two aspects to turning that script into artwork. It’s both a story, calling for decisions to be made about the best way to present the narrative visually, and a history, rooted in fact and raising questions about what the places and people (and their furniture and transportation and utensils) would actually have looked like.
Book thumbnail image Felon disfranchisement preserves slavery’s legacy By Pippa Holloway Nearly six million Americans are prohibited from voting in the United States today due to felony convictions. Six states stand out: Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia. These six states disfranchise seven percent of the total adult population – compared to two and a half percent nationwide. African Americans are particularly affected in these states.
Book thumbnail image Getting to know Sir Philip Sidney By Roger Kuin What does Sir Philip Sidney’s correspondence teach us about the man and his world? You have to realise what letters were, what they were like, and what they were for. Some of them were like our e-mails: brief and to the point. Other letters are long and more like a personal form of news media: meant to inform the recipient (often Sidney himself) about what is happening in the world of politics.
ASIL/ILA 2014 retrospective In early April, the American Society of International Law and the International Law Association held a joint conference around the theme “The Effectiveness of International Law.” We may not have been able to do everything on our wishlist, but there are plenty of round-ups to catch up on all the news and events.
Book thumbnail image Discussing proprietary estoppel: promises and principles By Ben McFarlane What is the legal strength of a spoken promise? This thorny terrain is one of the major concerns of proprietary estoppel, a branch of land law that governs the rights to land without valid methods of transfer, such as a trust or a will.
Book thumbnail image The viability of Transcendence: the science behind the film In the trailer of Transcendence, an authoritative professor embodied by Johnny Depp says that “the path to building superintelligence requires us to unlock the most fundamental secrets of the universe.” It’s difficult to wrap our minds around the possibility of artificial intelligence and how it will affect society.
Book thumbnail image Emerging adult Catholic types [infographic] In their National Study of Youth and Religion, Christian Smith, Kyle Longest, Jonathan Hill, and Kari Christoffersen studied a sample of young people for five years, starting when they were 13 to 17 years old and completing the study when they were 18 to 23, a stage called “emerging adulthood.”
Book thumbnail image Inferring the unconfirmed: the no alternatives argument By Richard Dawid “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Thus Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes describe a crucial part of his method of solving detective cases. Sherlock Holmes often takes pride in adhering to principles of scientific reasoning.
Oxford University Press during WWI By Lizzie Shannon-Little and Martin Maw By Lizzie Shannon-Little and Martin Maw The very settled life of Oxford University Press was turned upside down at the outbreak of the First World War; 356 of the approximately 700 men that worked for the Press were conscribed, the majority in the first few months. The reduction of half of the workforce and the ever-present uncertainty of the return of friends and colleagues must have made the Press a very difficult place to work.
Book thumbnail image 18 facts you never knew about cheese By Daniel Parker Have you often lain awake at night, wishing that you knew more about cheese? Fear not! Your prayers have been answered; here you will find 18 of the most delicious cheese facts, all taken from Michael Tunick’s The Science of Cheese. Bon Appétit.
Book thumbnail image Five facts on canonization for saint watchers and atheists who believe in miracles By Jacalyn Duffin On 27 April 2014, Pope Francis will canonize two of his predecessors, John XXIII and John Paul II. As the rules require, devotees have long been preparing for their recognition as saints, gathering biographical materials and evidence of miracles. This act brings the number of canonizations in his papacy to ten.
‘Storytelling’ in oral history: an exchange Silence, interrogation, confession, chronology, and stories. The Oral History Review (OHR) Volume 41, Issue 1 is now online and coming to mailboxes soon, and along with it Alexander Freund’s article, “Confessing Animals”: Toward a Longue Durée History of the Oral History Interview.”OHR Editorial Board Member Erin Jessee spoke with the University of Winnipeg professor over his novel approach to the oral history interview.
Book thumbnail image How to write a classic By Mark Davie Torquato Tasso desperately wanted to write a classic. The son of a successful court poet who had been brought up on the Latin classics, he had a lifelong ambition to write the epic poem which would do for counter-reformation Italy what Virgil’s Aeneid had done for imperial Rome.
Book thumbnail image Arbor Day: an ecosystem perspective By Frank S. Gilliam I would like to suggest that as we, as responsible citizens, observe Arbor Day 2014, we also begin looking at forests as more than simply numerous trees growing in stands. Rather, we need to look at forests as ecosystems that are not only important in and of themselves, but also provide essential functions—so-called ecosystem services—to sustain the quality of human life.
Book thumbnail image What is ‘lean psychiatry’? By Joseph P. Merlino, MD, MPA In 1987, Esmin Green, a patient on the psychiatry ER floor of Kings County Hospital Center, died. International news coverage, lawsuits, and a US Department of Justice investigation ensued. The Behavioral Health department was to ensure the full and timely compliance with the resultant court decrees for drastic improvements in the care of the mentally ill at the hospital.
Book thumbnail image Kerry On? What does the future hold for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? By Martin Bunton It may be premature to completely write off the recent round of the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The talks faltered earlier this month when Israel failed to release a batch of prisoners, part of the initial basis for holding the negotiations launched last July. The rapidly disintegrating diplomacy may yet be salvaged. But the three main actors have already made it known they will pursue their own initiatives. It may be premature to completely write off the recent round of the US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The talks faltered earlier this month when Israel failed to release a batch of prisoners, part of the initial basis for holding the negotiations launched last July. The rapidly disintegrating diplomacy may yet be salvaged. But the three main actors have already made it known they will pursue their own initiatives.
Book thumbnail image Vaccines: thoughts in spring By Janet R. Gilsdorf Every April, when the robins sing and the trees erupt in leaves, I think of Brad — of the curtain wafting through his open window, of the sounds of his iron lung from within, of the heartache of his family. Brad and I grew up at a time when worried mothers barred their children from swimming pools, the circus, and the Fourth of July parade for fear of paralysis.
Book thumbnail image An intriguing, utterly incomplete history of Louis Armstrong April is Jazz Appreciation Month, honoring an original American art form. Across the United States and the world, jazz lovers are introducing people to the history and heritage of jazz as well as extraordinary contemporary acts. To celebrate, here are eight songs from renowned jazz singer and trumpeter Louis Armstrong’s catalog, along with some lesser-known facts about the artist.
Book thumbnail image New perspectives on the history of publishing There is a subtle shift occurring in the examination of the history of the book and publishing. Historians are moving away from a history of individuals towards a new perspective grounded in social and corporate history. From A History of Cambridge University Press to The Stationers’ Company: A History to the new History of Oxford University Press, the development of material texts is set in a new context of institutions.
Book thumbnail image Mini maestro mystifies me By Siu-Lan Tan Sometimes you think you can explain something, and then it turns out you really can’t. This remarkable video was posted last year but only went viral in the US in the last few weeks, approaching 5 million hits in a short time. When I first saw it, I was immediately enchanted.
Book thumbnail image The amoeba in the room By Nicholas P. Money The small picture is the big picture and biologists keep missing it. The diversity and functioning of animals and plants has been the meat and potatoes of most natural historians since Aristotle, and we continue to neglect the vast microbial majority.
Walter W. Skeat (1835-1912) and spelling reform By Anatoly Liberman Henry Bradley, while writing his paper (see the previous post), must have looked upon Skeat as his main opponent. This becomes immediately clear from the details. For instance, Skeat lamented the use of the letter c in scissors and Bradley defended it.
Book thumbnail image Developing a module for Oxford Scholarship Online By Nicola Wilson When I was invited to develop two lists for Oxford Scholarship Online, I jumped at the chance. From the perspective of a commissioning editor, digital publishing has extended the ‘life’ of our copyrights indefinitely, and we no longer need to hold a book in physical print for it to continue to be available to our readers.
Book thumbnail image Searching for more legal certainty in bitcoins and mobile payments By Niels Vandezande In the last few months, international media have reported extensively on the latest developments in the online economy. These reports have focused mostly on the rise of so-called cryptocurrencies, with bitcoin being the most well-known example. Such cryptocurrencies are characterized by their decentralized nature, meaning that they aren’t controlled by a central government.
Book thumbnail image Why are money market funds safer than the Bitcoin? Few realise that Brazil was the birthplace of the money market fund. Since their inception money market funds have grown and spread globally. However, they have often eluded a firm definition. In this series of podcasts Viktoria Baklanova, Chief Credit Officer of Acacia Capital (New York), describes the genesis of money market funds, explains what they are, and gives insight to the size of the industry and the major players within it.
Book thumbnail image New sodium intake research and the response of health organizations The American Journal of Hypertension recently published the findings of a comprehensive meta-analysis monitoring health outcomes for individuals based on their daily sodium intake. The results were controversial, seemingly confirming what many notable hypertension experts have begun to suspect in recent years: that levels of daily sodium intake recommended by governmental agencies like the CDC are far too low, perhaps dangerously so.
Book thumbnail image Earth Day, 44 years on By Ellen Wohl The 1960s are famous for many reasons: the civil rights movement, the first moon walk, the Cuban missile crisis, rock and roll. The 1960s were also a period when awareness of environmental degradation spread to society at large.
The Compleat Earth Day First published by Izaak Walton in 1653, The Compleat Angler remains one of the most original and influential books about the environment ever written in the English language. Walton’s narrative depicts a group of urbanites whose appreciation of the natural world deepens as they go fishing in the countryside north of London. In honor of Earth Day, here are some interesting facts about The Compleat Angler as an environmental text.
Book thumbnail image The politics of green shopping By Thomas Jundt On this day forty-four years ago, some 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and lecture halls for an event billed as a national environmental teach-in—Earth Day.
Book thumbnail image Global responsibility, differentiation, and an environmental rule of law? By Duncan French and Lavanya Rajamani As we celebrate Earth Day this year, it is timely to reflect on the international community’s commitment to halting serious environmental harm. The idea that all States have a ‘common interest’ in promoting global environmental responsibility — as evidenced most clearly through their active participation in multilateral environmental agreements — has been a cornerstone of international environmental policy for the last few decades.
Book thumbnail image Shakespeare and the music of William Walton By Bethan Greenaway By Bethan Greenaway On 23 April 2014 we celebrate the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. Nearly 400 years after his death he is still a source of inspiration for countless authors, composers, and artists all over the world. His plays are performed again and again in hundreds of languages, and have been the inspiration for numerous operas, ballets, and films.
Book thumbnail image Putin in the mirror of history: Crimea, Russia, empire By Mark D. Steinberg Contrary to those who believe that Vladimir Putin’s political world is a Machiavellian one of cynical “masks and poses, colorful but empty, with little at its core but power for power’s sake and the accumulation of vast wealth,” Putin often speaks quite openly of his motives and values—and opinion polls suggest he is strongly in sync with widespread popular sentiments.
Book thumbnail image The contours and conceptual position of jus post bellum By Carsten Stahn, Jennifer S. Easterday, and Jens Iverson In our previous post, “Jus post bellum and the ethics of peace,” we introduced the concept of jus post bellum, including its history, functions, and varied definitions. Because jus post bellum can operate simultaneously with related but distinguishable concepts, it is important to keep the goals of related concepts clear.
Book thumbnail image A religion reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole Religion has provided the world with some of the most influential and important written works ever known. This reading list is made up of just a small selection of the texts we carry in the series, covering religions across the globe
Book thumbnail image Easter rites of initiation bring good news for American Catholics By David Yamane For many Catholics in America, waking up in the morning to find no news about the church is a relief. They won’t have to deal with stories about the lingering stench of the priest sexual abuse scandal, the consolidation of parishes and closing of schools, controversy over Catholic hospitals and the loss of Catholic youth, fewer and older nuns and more and younger “nones.”
Book thumbnail image Is CBD better than THC?: exploring compounds in marijuana By Gary Wenk Marijuana is the leafy material from Cannabis indica plant that is generally smoked. By weight, it typically contains 2%-5% delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the primary psychoactive agent. However the plant also contains about fifty other cannabinoid-based compounds, including cannabidiol (CBD).
Book thumbnail image The 4/20 update By Mitch Earleywine A lot has changed this year in cannabis prohibition. Science and policy march on. Legendary legalization laws in Colorado and Washington have generated astounding news coverage. Maryland is the latest state to change policies. A look at these states can reveal a lot about the research on relevant topics, too.
Book thumbnail image Trauma happens, so what can we do about it? By Carolyn Lunsford Mears, Ph.D. Fifteen years ago, 20 April 1999, it happened in my community… at my son’s school. Two heavily armed seniors launched a deadly attack on fellow students, teachers, and staff at Columbine High School in Jefferson County, Colorado.
Book thumbnail image The continuing threat of nuclear weapons By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Out of sight. Out of mind. Nine countries, mainly the United States and Russia, possess 17,000 nuclear weapons, many of which are hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki almost 70 years ago.
Book thumbnail image Henry James, or, on the business of being a thing By Jeff Sherwood It is virtually impossible for an English-language lexicographer to ignore the long shadow cast by Henry James, that late nineteenth-century writer of fiction, criticism, and travelogues. We can attribute this in the first place to the sheer cosmopolitanism of his prose.
Book thumbnail image Reinventing rites of passage in contemporary America By David Yamane Contemporary ritual studies luminary Ronald Grimes highlights a unique and contradictory aspect of Western industrialized societies when it comes to initiation, one perhaps implied by Eliade.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for INTA 2014, the first annual meeting in Asia By Christopher Wogan & Ruth Anderson In their new book A Practical Guide to Trade Mark Law, authors Amanda Michaels and Andrew Norris observe that: In the past, products and services would have been purchased over the counter or by a personal transaction, but today purchases may be made in a plethora of ways, many […]
Book thumbnail image Top five hip hop references in poetry By David Caplan Hip hop has influenced a generation of poets coming to prominence, poets I call “The Inheritors of Hip Hop.” Signaling how the music serves as a shared experience and inspiration, they mention performers and songs as well as anecdotes from the genre’s development and the artists’ lives, while epigraphs and titles quote songs.
Initiation into America’s original megachurch By David Yamane The American religious landscape is ever changing. The rise of religious nones, the spiritual not religious, thoughtful spirituality, the emerging church, online religion, megachurches, and on and on.
Book thumbnail image Identifying unexpected strengths in adolescents By Johanna Slivinske Think for a moment, back to when you were a teenager. What were you like? What did you enjoy doing? In what did you excel? The positive activities in which we partake in adolescence shape our adult lives. In my case, playing the clarinet in band and competing in extemporaneous speaking on the speech team molded me the most, and became my personal strengths.
Very short talks By Chloe Foster We have seen an abundance of Very Short Introductions (VSI) authors appearing at UK festivals this year. Appearances so far have included at Words by the Water festival in Keswick, Oxford Literary Festival, and Edinburgh Science festival. The versitility of the series and its subjects means our author talks are popular at a variety of different types of festivals
Book thumbnail image A conversation with Craig Panner, Associate Editorial Director of Medicine Books Few fields develop as rapidly as medicine, with new breakthroughs in research, tools, and techniques happening everyday. This presents an interesting challenge for many medical publishers — trying to get the latest information to students, practitioners, and researchers as quickly and accurately as possible. So we are delighted to present a Q&A with Associate Editorial Director of Medicine Books, Craig Panner.
Book thumbnail image Creative ways to perform your music: tips for music students By Scott Huntington Many music students have difficulty finding new venues in which to perform. A lot of the time it’s because we let our school schedule our performances for us. We’ll start the semester and circle the dates on the calendars that include our concerts and recitals, and that will be it. That’s fine, and can keep you pretty busy, but I’m here to tell you to get out there and plan on your own.
Book thumbnail image What’s the secret to high scores on video games? By Siu-Lan Tan When playing video games, do you play better with the sound on or off? Every gamer may have an opinion—but what has research shown? Some studies suggest that music and sound effects enhance performance. For instance, Tafalla (2007) found that male gamers scored almost twice as many points while playing the first-person shooter game DOOM with the sound on (chilling music, weaponfire, screams, and labored breathing) compared to those playing with the sound off.
Book thumbnail image Prime Minister’s Questions By Andrew Dobson “Noisy and aggressive,” “childish,” “over the top,” “pointless.” These are just a few recent descriptions of Prime Minister’s Questions – the most watched event in the Parliamentary week. Public dismay at PMQs has led the Speaker, John Bercow, to consult with party leaders over reform.
Henry Bradley on spelling reform By Anatoly Liberman Last week I wrote about Henry Bradley’s role in making the OED what it is: a mine of information, an incomparable authority on the English language, and a source of inspiration to lexicographers all over the world
Book thumbnail image Breastfeeding and infant sleep By David Haig A woman who gives birth to six children each with a 75% chance of survival has the same expected number of surviving offspring as a woman who gives birth to five children each with a 90% chance of survival. In both cases, 4.5 offspring are expected to survive.
Book thumbnail image Money matters By Valerie Minogue Money is a tricky subject for a novel, as Zola in 1890 acknowledged: “It’s difficult to write a novel about money. It’s cold, icy, lacking in interest…” But his Rougon-Macquart novels, the “natural and social history” of a family in the Second Empire, were meant to cover every significant aspect of the age, from railways and coal-mines to the first department stores.
A conversation with Alodie Larson, Editor of Grove Art Online We are delighted to present a Q&A with the Editor of Grove Art Online, Alodie Larson. In the below interview, you’ll get to know Alodie as Editor, and also learn her thoughts on art history research and publishing. You can also find her Letter from the Editor on Oxford Art Online.
Book thumbnail image Leonardo da Vinci myths, explained By Kandice Rawlings Leonardo da Vinci was born 562 years ago today, and we’re still fascinated with his life and work. It’s no real mystery why – he was an extraordinary person, a genius and a celebrity in his own lifetime. He left behind some remarkable artifacts in the form of paintings and writings and drawings on all manner of subjects.
Book thumbnail image Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan from Grove Art Online In celebration of World Art Day, we invite you to read the biography of Ludovico Sforza, patron of Leonardo Da Vinci among other artists, as it is presented in Grove Art Online.
Book thumbnail image Are you a tax expert? Today is 15 April or Tax Day in the United States. In recognition of this day we compiled a free virtual issue on taxation bringing together content from books, online products, and journals. The material covers a wide range of specific tax-related topics including income tax, austerity, tax structure, tax reform, and more. The collection is not US-centered, but includes information on economies across the globe.
Leonardo da Vinci from the Benezit Dictionary of Artists Leonardo da Vinci was the illegitimate son of the Florentine notary Ser Piero da Vinci, who married Albiera di Giovanni Amadori, the daughter of a patrician family, in the year Leonardo was born. Little is known about the artist’s natural mother, Caterina, other than that five years after Leonardo’s birth she married an artisan from Vinci named Chartabriga di Piero del Veccha.
25 recent jazz albums you really ought to hear By Ted Gioia Jazz Appreciation Month gives us an opportunity to celebrate musical milestones of the past. But it also ought to serve as a reminder that jazz is a vibrant art form in the current day. Here are 25 recordings, selected by Ted Gioia, released during the last few months that are well worth hearing.
Passover in Jewish Eastern Europe By Glenn Dynner Today, observant Jews the world over are selling off their leavened foodstuffs (chametz) in preparation for the Passover holiday, which begins with a seder this evening and is followed by eight days of eating matzah, macaroons, and other unleavened products.
Book thumbnail image Jus post bellum and the ethics of peace By Carsten Stahn, Jennifer S. Easterday, and Jens Iverson Whenever there is armed conflict, international lawyers inevitably discuss the legality of the use of armed force and the conduct of the warring parties. Less common is a comprehensive legal analysis, informed by ethics and policy concerns, of the transition from armed conflict to peace.
A bookish slideshow From ancient times to the creation of eBooks, books have a long and vast history that spans the globe. Although a book may only seem like a collection of pages with words, they are also an art form that have survived for centuries. In honor of National Library Week, we couldn’t think of a more fitting book to share than The Book: A Global History. The slideshow below highlights the fascinating evolution of the book.
Shakespeare’s 450th birthday quiz William Shakespeare was born 450 years ago this month, in April 1564, and to celebrate Oxford Scholarly Editions Online is testing your knowledge on Shakespeare quotes. Do you know your sonnets from your speeches? Find out…
Book thumbnail image An interview with Brian Hughes, digital strategist This week is National Library Week in the United States. Oxford University Press is celebrating the contributions of these institutions to communities around the world in a variety of ways, including granting free access to online products in the United States and Canada.
Book thumbnail image The Defamation Act 2013: reflections and reforms How can a society balance both the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press, with the individual’s right to reputation? Defamation law seeks to address precisely this delicate equation.
Book thumbnail image The quest for ‘real’ protection for indigenous intangible property rights By Keri Johnston and Marion Heathcote Intellectual property rights (IPRs) and the regimes of protection and enforcement surrounding them have often been the subject of debate, a debate fuelled in the past year by the increased emphasis on free-trade negotiations and multi-lateral treaties including the now-rejected Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and its Goliath cousin, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
Book thumbnail image Parent practices: change to develop successful, motivated readers By Jamie Zibulsky and Anne E. Cunningham Being literate involves much more than the ability to sound out the words on a page, but acquiring that skill requires years of development and exposure to the world of words. And once children possess the ability to sound out words, read fluently, and comprehend the words on a page, they have limitless opportunities to learn about new concepts, places, and people.
Book thumbnail image What is clinical reasoning? By Lloyd A. Wells It is easy to delineate what clinical decision making is not; it is not evidence-based medicine, it is not critical thinking, it is not eminence-based medicine, it is not one of many other of its many attributes, and it stands alone, with many contributions from all these fields. It is far more difficult to characterize what clinical reasoning is and very difficult to define.
Book thumbnail image The Mexican-American War and the making of American identity By John C. Pinheiro Few Americans today would have difficulty imagining a United States where the citizens disagree over the wisdom of immigration, question the degree to which Mexicans can be fully American, and dispute about the value of religious pluralism. But what if the America in question was not that of 2014 but rather the 1830s and 1840s?
Book thumbnail image Does torture really (still) matter? By Rebecca Gordon The US military involvement in Iraq has more or less ended, and the war in Afghanistan is limping to a conclusion. Don’t the problems of torture really belong to the bad old days of an earlier administration? Why bring it up again? Why keep harping on something that is over and done with? Because it’s not over, and it’s not done with.
Book thumbnail image Overcoming everyday violence [infographic] The struggle for food, water, and shelter are problems commonly associated with the poor. Not as widely addressed is the violence that surrounds poor communities. Corrupt law enforcement, rape, and slavery (to name a few), separate families, destroys homes, ruins lives, and imprisons the poor in their current situations.
Book thumbnail image A publisher before wartime This year marks the centenary of the start of the First World War. This cataclysmic event in world history has been examined by many scholars with different angles over the intervening years, but the academic community hopes to gain fresh insight into the struggles of war on this anniversary.
Book thumbnail image Street Photography from Grove Art Online In honor of World Art Day on 15 April 2014, Oxford is hosting a street photography competition. But what exactly is street photography? The below article from Grove Art Online by Lisa Hostetler explores the history of street photography, as well as its relationship to contemporary art. As Dr. Hostetler explains, this type of art includes “photographs exposed in and of an urban environment and made with artistic intent.”
Book thumbnail image A call for oral history bloggers By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Over the past few months, the Oral History Review has become rather demanding. In February, we asked readers to experiment with the short form article. A few weeks ago, our upcoming interim editor Dr. Stephanie Gilmore sent out a call for papers for our special Winter/Spring 2016 issue, “Listening to and for LGBTQ Lives.” Now, we’d like you to also take over our OUPBlog posting duties.
Book thumbnail image “The Mouth that roared”: Peter Benchley’s Jaws at 40 By Kirk Curnutt The novel that scared a generation out of the ocean and inspired everything from Shark Week to Sharknado recently turned forty. Commemorations of Peter Benchley’s Jaws have been as rare as megalodon sightings, however.
BICEP2 finds gravitational waves from near the dawn of time By Andrew Liddle The cosmology community is abuzz with news from the BICEP2 experiment of the discovery of primordial gravitational waves, through their signature in the cosmic microwave background. If verified, this will be a clear indication that the very young Universe underwent a period of acceleration, known as cosmic inflation.
Book thumbnail image Writing as technology In honor of the beginning of National Library Week this Sunday, 13 April 2014, we’re sharing this interesting excerpt from Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. As technology continues to evolve, the way we access books and information is changing, and libraries are continuously working to keep up-to-date with the latest resources available. In this excerpt, Robert Eaglestone presents the idea of the seemingly simple act of writing as a form of technology.
Book thumbnail image Disposable captives By Lori Gruen The decision by the administrators of the Copenhagen Zoo to kill a 2-year-old giraffe named Marius by shooting him in the head on February 2014, then autopsy his body in public and feed Marius’ body parts to the lions held captive at the zoo created quite an uproar. When the same zoo then killed the lions (an adult pair and their two cubs) a month later to make room for a more genetically worthy captive, the uproar become more ferocious.
Book thumbnail image The early history of the guitar By Christopher Page I am struck by the way the recent issue of Early Music devoted to the early romantic guitar provides a timely reminder of how little is known about even the recent history of what is to day today the most popular musical instrument in existence.
Book thumbnail image A conversation with Alberto Gallace From Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR Inc. to the latest medical developments, technology is driving new explorations of the perception, reality, and neuroscience. How do we perceive reality through the sense of touch? Alberto Gallace is a researcher in touch and multisensory integration at the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, and co-author of In touch with the future: The sense of touch from cognitive neuroscience to virtual reality. We spoke to him about touch, personal boundaries and being human.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for the Vis Moot 2014 By Isabel Jones This weekend will see the oral arguments for the 21st Annual Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot begin in the Law Faculty of the University of Vienna, an exciting event for students, coaches, arbitrators, and publishers. This yearly event is a highlight in the arbitration event calendar and a chance for lawyers and students from all over the world to meet.
Unsung heroes of English etymology: Henry Bradley (1845-1923) By Anatoly Liberman At one time I intended to write a series of posts about the scholars who made significant contributions to English etymology but whose names are little known to the general public. Not that any etymologists can vie with politicians, actors, or athletes when it comes to funding and fame, but some of them wrote books and dictionaries and for a while stayed in the public eye.
Pagán’s planarians: the extraordinary world of flatworms The earth is filled with many types of worms, and the term “planarian” can represent a variety of worms within this diverse bunch of organisms. The slideshow below highlights fun facts about planarians from Oné Pagán’s book, The First Brain: The Neuroscience of Planarians, and provides a glimpse of why scientists like Pagán choose to study these fascinating creatures.
Book thumbnail image The political economy of skills and inequality By Marius R. Busemeyer and Torben Iversen Inequality has been on the rise in all the advanced democracies in the past three or four decades; in some cases dramatically. Economists already know a great deal about the proximate causes.
Book thumbnail image Voluntary movement shown in complete paralysis By Sam Maddox Scientists, using epidural stimulation over the lumbar spinal cord, have enabled four completely paralyzed men to voluntarily move their legs.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for OAH 2014 Each year the Organization of American Historians gathers for a few days of networking and education, and this year the annual meeting will be held in Atlanta from 10-13 April 2014. This year’s conference theme is “Crossing Borders,” highlighting the impact of migration on the history of the United States. Organizers are encouraging attendees to cross a few professional borders as well — from career level to specialties.
Book thumbnail image Roberto Bolaño and the New York School of poetry By Andrew Epstein The late Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño is of course best-known as a novelist, the author of ambitious, sprawling novels like The Savage Detectives and 2666. But before turning to prose, Bolaño started out as a poet; in fact, he often said he valued poetry more highly than fiction and sometimes claimed he was a better poet than novelist.
Book thumbnail image Happy 450th birthday William Shakespeare! April 2014 sees Shakespeare mature to the ripe old age of 450, and to celebrate we have collected a multitude of quotes from the famous bard in the below graphic, crafting his features with his own words.
Book thumbnail image Twenty years after the Rwandan Genocide By Scott Straus We are now entering the month of April 2014—a time for reflection, empathy, and understanding for anyone in or involved with Rwanda. Twenty years ago, Rwandan political and military leaders initiated a series of actions that quickly turned into one of the 20th century’s greatest mass violations of human rights. As we commemorate the genocide, our empathy needs to extend first to survivors and victims. Many families were destroyed in the genocide.
Book thumbnail image World Art Day photography contest By Victoria Davis World Art Day is coming up on 15 April. We’re celebrating with some forthcoming blog posts, select free journal and online product articles, and a photography competition. We also invite you to celebrate with us by submitting your own art to our Street Photography Contest.
Book thumbnail image Five jazz concerts I wish I had been at By Gabriel Solis Most people who have listened to jazz for very long have a list in their minds of the best live performances they’ve ever been to. I know I do. I remember with particular fondness a performance by Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson that I saw in the early 1980s in Modesto, California that was a benefit for local jazz musician and DJ Mel Williams’s Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation. It wasn’t so much that it was a groundbreaking concert as such—though I still remember how tight and in-the-pocket his band swung—but it was one of the first I ever went to.
10 things you didn’t know about Parkinson’s Disease By Charley James Did you know that 7-13 April is Parkinson’s Awareness Week 2014? To mark the occasion, here are 10 facts you might not have known about Parkinson’s Disease. Go on, improve your awareness!
Book thumbnail image Make the tax system safe for interstate telecommuting: pass H.R. 4085 By Edward Zelinsky Telecommuting benefits employers, employees, and society at large. Telecommuting expands work opportunities for the disabled, for those who live far from major metropolitan areas, and for the parents of young children who value the ability to work at home.
Book thumbnail image A brief history of ethnic violence in Rwanda and Africa’s Great Lakes region By J. J. Carney Although the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has garnered the most scholarly and popular attention – and rightfully so – it did not emerge out of a vacuum. As the world commemorates the 20th anniversary of the genocide, it is important to locate this epochal humanitarian tragedy within a broader historical and regional perspective.
Book thumbnail image Challenges to the effectiveness of international law For the first time in its history, the American Society of International Law (ASIL) is partnering with the American Branch of the International Law Association (ILA) to combine each organization’s major conference into an extraordinary joint event. Oxford University Press is looking forward to exhibiting at the conference taking place in Washington on 7-12 April 2014.
Book thumbnail image Two difficult roads from empire By Martin Thomas Britain’s impending withdrawal from Afghanistan and France’s recent dispatch of troops to the troubled Central African Republic are but the latest indicators of a long-standing pattern. Since 1945 most British and French overseas security operations have taken place in places with current or past empire connections.
Book thumbnail image Persecution in medicine By Arpan Banerjee Recently I had the good fortune to see an excellent production of Bertolt Brecht’s play The Life of Galileo at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Brecht has a tenuous connection with the medical profession: he registered in 1917 to attend a medical course in Munich and found himself drafted into the army, serving in a military VD clinic for a short while before the end of the war.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for International Council for Commercial Arbitration 2014 By Rachel Holt and Jo Wojtkowski Oxford University Press is extremely excited to be attending the twenty-second International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA) conference, to be held at the InterContinental Miami, Florida, on 6-9 April 2014. This year’s theme, Legitimacy: Myths, Realities, Challenges gives opportunity for practitioners, scholars and judges to explore the issues surrounding, what has been dubbed by some, the legitimacy crisis.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for the 2014 ASIL/ILA annual meeting By Jo Wojtkowski This year’s joint ASIL/ILA Annual Meeting is of historic importance for the international law community. It is the first time that ASIL and the International Law Association (ILA) have joined forces to create a single combined conference of epic proportions. According to ASIL it is “expected to be one of the largest in international law history.”
Book thumbnail image The American Noah: neolithic superhero By William D. Romanowski Reports suggest that Hollywood’s sudden interest in Bible movies is driven by economics. Comic book superheroes may be losing their luster and the studios can mine the Bible’s “action-packed material” without having to pay licensing fees to Marvel Entertainment. Maybe this explains why director Darren Aronofsky’s pitch to studio executives was […]
Book thumbnail image Word histories: conscious uncoupling By Simon Thomas Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin (better known as an Oscar-winning actress and the Grammy-winning lead singer of Coldplay respectively) recently announced that they would be separating. While the news of any separation is sad, we can’t deny that the report also carried some linguistic interest.
Book thumbnail image A doctrine of ‘market sovereignty’ to solve international law issues on the Internet? By Dan Jerker B. Svantesson One of the most prominent features of jurisdictional rules is a focus on the location of actions. For example, the extraterritorial reach of data privacy law may be decided by reference to whether there was the offering of goods or services to EU residents, in the EU.
Is Amanda Knox extraditable from the United States to Italy? By Cherif Bassiouni The Amanda Knox case is complex in view of Italy’s complicated procedure in matters involving serious crimes. These crimes are tried before a special court called the Court of Assizes. These courts have two professional judges and six lay judges, much like a jury in Anglo-American cases.
Philosophy and its history By Graham Priest If you go into a mathematics class of any university, it’s unlikely that you will find students reading Euclid. If you go into any physics class, it’s unlikely you’ll find students reading Newton. If you go into any economics class, you will probably not find students reading Keynes.
Book thumbnail image A question of consciousness By Susan Blackmore The problem of consciousness is real, deep and confronts us any time we care to look. Ask yourself this question ‘Am I conscious now?’ and you will reply ‘Yes’. Then, I suggest, you are lured into delusion – the delusion that you are conscious all the time, even when you are not asking about it.
Book thumbnail image Western (and other) perspectives on Ukraine By Robert Pyrah Untangling recent and still-unfolding events in Ukraine is not a simple task. The western news media has been reasonably successful in acquainting its consumers with events, from the fall of Yanukovich on the back of intensive protests in Kiev, by those angry at his venality and signing a pact with Russia over one with the EU, to the very recent moves by Russia to annex Crimea.
Book thumbnail image China’s exchange rate conundrum Ronald McKinnon In late February, the slow appreciation of China’s currency was interrupted by a discrete depreciation from 6.06 to 6.12 yuan per dollar. Despite making front page headlines in the Western financial press, this 1% depreciation was too small to significantly affect trade in goods and services—and hardly anything compared to how floating exchange rates change among other currencies.
Dementia on the beach By Cretien van Campen If you think it makes little sense to take persons with dementia to the beach, it will surprise you that a nursing home in Amsterdam has built a Beach room. In this room, residents can enjoy the feeling of sitting in the sun with their bare feet in the sand. The room is designed to improve the well-being of these residents. The garden room at the centre of the home has recently been converted into a true ‘beach room’, complete with sand and a ‘sun’ which can be adjusted in intensity and heat output.
Book thumbnail image When science stopped being literature By Jim Secord We tend to think of ‘science’ and ‘literature’ in radically different ways. The distinction isn’t just about genre – since ancient times writing has had a variety of aims and styles, expressed in different generic forms: epics, textbooks, lyrics, recipes, epigraphs, and so forth.
Etymology as a profession By Anatoly Liberman Two or three times a year I receive questions about what the profession of an etymologist entails. I usually answer them briefly in my “gleanings,” and once I even devoted a post to this subject. Perhaps it won’t hurt if I return to the often-asked question again.
Book thumbnail image Monuments Men and the Frick By Stephen Bury At rare moments in time a library can have a singular impact on history. The recent release of George Clooney’s film Monuments Men (2014) has triggered an interest in the role that the Frick Art Reference Library played in the preparation of maps identifying works of art at risk in Nazi-occupied Europe. For the first time in history a belligerent was taking care of cultural treasures in a war zone.
Book thumbnail image The economics of sanctions By Richard S. Grossman Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine has left its neighbors—particularly those with sizable Russian-speaking populations such as Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, and what is left of Ukraine—looking over their shoulder wondering if they are next on Vladimir Putin’s list of territorial acquisitions. The seizure has also left Europe and United States looking for a coherent response.
Book thumbnail image Politics to reconnect communities By Matthew Flinders Why does art and culture matter in the twenty-first century? What does it actually deliver in terms of social benefits? An innovative new participatory arts project in South Yorkshire is examining the ‘politics of art’ and the ‘art of politics’ from a number of new angles.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Harm de Blij Oxford University Press is saddened to hear of the passing of Harm de Blij on Thursday, 27 March 2014. De Blij was a giant in geography and had an illustrious career as a teacher, researcher, writer, public speaker, and TV personality. He was passionate and he was one of those people who brought out the best in those around him.
Book thumbnail image Sherlock Holmes’ beginnings Here at Oxford University Press we occasionally get the chance to discover a new and exciting piece of literary history. We’re excited to share the newest short story addition to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories. Never before published, our editorial team has acquired The Mystery of the Green Garden, now believed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first use of the Sherlock Holmes’ character in his writing. Written during Doyle’s time at Stonyhurst College before entering medical school, the short story displays an early, amateur style of writing not seen in his later published works.
Book thumbnail image OUP to publish Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction The popular Very Short Introductions series is due to publish the latest in their ever increasing list of titles. Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction is to be written by Professor John Onions and will publish in October this year.
Book thumbnail image Georges Pierre des Clozets: the 17th century conman By Daniel Parker However embarrassingly you may have been hoodwinked on April Fool’s Day in the past, it is incredibly unlikely that you’ll have ever been swindled by French confidence trickster Georges Pierre des Clozets, who represented a completely fictional secret Alchemy society called ‘The Asterism’. That dubious honour fell to Robert Boyle, philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, who was duped in the latter part of the 17th century.
Book thumbnail image April Fool’s! Announcing winner of the second annual Grove Music spoof contest By the Grove Music Online editorial team Just in time for April Fool’s Day we are pleased to announce the results of this year’s Grove Music Online Spoof Article contest. This year’s submissions were all biographies, perhaps because Grove’s stylistic prescriptions for biographies lend themselves well to parody.
March 2014 (105))
Elinor and Vincent Ostrom: federalists for all seasons By John Kincaid When Elinor Ostrom visited Lafayette College in 2010, the number of my non-political science colleagues who announced familiarity with her work astonished me. Anthropologists, biologists, economists, engineers, environmentalists, historians, philosophers, sociologists, and others flocked to see her.
Book thumbnail image Sex and the ancient teenager By Jane Alison Jane Fonda spoke passionately about teenage sexuality this week on the Diane Rehm Show. (Her new book is Being A Teen: Everything Teen Girls & Boys Should Know About Relationships, Sex, Love, Health, Identity & More.) Fonda’s book and words are very much of our age, yet some of her most moving points evoke the ghost of Ovid and his mythic stories of young sexuality that are over two thousand years old.
Book thumbnail image Is there a “cyber war” between Ukraine and Russia? By Marco Roscini Alarming headlines have recently started to appear in the media (see, for example, the CNN’s “Cyberwar hits Ukraine”). This, however, is sensationalism. What has actually happened so far is limited disruption of mobile communications through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Book thumbnail image “A peaceful sun gilded her evening” On 31 March 1855 – Easter Sunday – Charlotte Brontë died at Haworth Parsonage. She was 38 years old, and the last surviving Brontë child. In this deeply moving letter to her literary advisor W. S. Williams, written on 4 June 1849, she reflects on the deaths of her sisters Anne and Emily.
Book thumbnail image The political economy of policy transitions By Michael Trebilcock The long fight to end slavery, led by William Wilberforce, among many others, culminated in Britain with the enactment of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. This Act made provision for a payment of £20 million (almost 40% of the British budget at the time) in compensation to plantation owners in many British colonies — about US$21 billion in present day value.
Book thumbnail image Dopamine, Twitter, and the bilingual brain By Arturo E. Hernandez Before I wrote my last blog entry, I got a Twitter account to start tracking reactions to that entry. I was surprised to see that people that I had never met favorited my post. Some even retweeted it.
Book thumbnail image Eight facts about the synthesizer and electronic music By Maggie Belnap The invention of the synthesizer in the mid-20th century inspired composers and redesigned electronic music. The synthesizer sped up the creation process by combining hundreds of different sounds and composers were inspired to delve deeper into the possibilities of electronic music.
Book thumbnail image What is academic history for? By Paula A. Michaels Writing on Saturday in The Age, popular historian Paul Ham launched a frontal assault on “academic history” produced by university-based historians primarily for consumption by their professional peers.
Book thumbnail image Five interesting facts about John Tyler By Michael Gerhardt John Tyler remains one of the most interesting, active, and constitutionally significant presidents we have ever had. To begin with, he is the first vice president to be elevated to the presidency because of the death of the incumbent, William Henry Harrison. Harrison died 31 days after his inauguration in 1841.
Book thumbnail image The American Red Cross in World War I By Julia F. Irwin President Barack Obama has proclaimed March 2014 as “American Red Cross Month,” following a tradition started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1943. 2014 also marks the 100-year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War in Europe. Although the United States would not officially enter the war until 1917, the American Red Cross (ARC) became deeply involved in the conflict from its earliest days.
Oral history, collective memory, and community among cloistered nuns By Abbie Reese and By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards This week, managing editor Troy Reeves speaks with scholar and artist Abbie Reese about her recently published book, Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns. Through an exquisite blend of oral and visual narratives, Reese shares the stories of the Poor Clare Colettine Order, a multigenerational group of cloistered contemplative nuns living in Rockford, Illinois.
Book thumbnail image Entitling early modern women writers By Andrew Zurcher As Women’s History Month draws to a close in the United Kingdom, it is a good moment to reflect on the history of women’s writing in Oxford’s scholarly editions. In particular, as one of the two editors responsible for early modern writers in the sprawling collections of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO), I have been going through the edited texts of women writers included in the OSEO project.
Book thumbnail image The never-ending assault by microbes By William Firshein It is almost impossible to read a daily newspaper or listen to news reports from television and radio without hearing about an outbreak of an infectious disease. On 13 March 2014, the New York City Department of Health investigated a measles outbreak. Sixteen cases including nine pediatric cases were detected, probably caused by a failure to vaccinate the victims.
Book thumbnail image Is our language too masculine? As Women’s History month comes to a close, we wanted to share an important debate that Simon Blackburn, author of Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, participated in for IAITV. Joined by Scottish feminist linguist Deborah Cameron and feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan, they look at what we can do to build a more feminist language.
Book thumbnail image Mark Vail remembers synth pioneer Bob Moog By Mark Vail While I wasn’t born early enough to know Antonio Stradivari, Henry E. Steinway, or Adolphe Sax personally, I did see 95-year-old Leon Theremin from afar at an outdoor Stanford University concert on September 29, 1991. Not many people have the opportunity to meet in person, or speak with on the phone, a person who designed and built a special musical instrument.
Book thumbnail image Expressing ourselves about expressiveness in music By Dorottya Fabian, Emery Schubert, and Renee Timmers Picture the scene. You’re sitting in a box at the Royal Albert Hall, or the Vienna Musikverein. You have purchased tickets to hear Beethoven’s Ninth symphony performed by an internationally renowned orchestra, and they are playing it in a way that sounds wonderful. But what makes this such a powerful performance?
Global Opioid Access: WHO accelerates the pace, but we still need to do more By Nathan Cherny I hate pain. I am appalled by the global scope of untreated and unrelieved cancer pain. At the initiative of its Palliative Care Working Group, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) has taken this on board as a global priority issue.
Monthly etymology gleanings for March 2014 By Anatoly Liberman Beguines. The origin of Beguine is bound to remain unknown, if “unknown” means that no answer exists that makes further discussion useless. No doubt, the color gray could give rise to the name. If it were not so, this etymology would not have been offered and defended by many scholars.
‘You can’t wear that here’ By Andrew Hambler and Ian Leigh When a religious believer wears a religious symbol to work can their employer object? The question brings corporate dress codes and expressions of religious belief into sharp conflict. The employee can marshal discrimination and human rights law on the one side, whereas the employer may argue that conspicuous religion makes for bad business.
Book thumbnail image Who signed the death warrant for the British Empire? By W. David McIntyre The rapid dissolution of the European colonial empires in the middle decades of the 20th-Century were key formative events in the background to the contemporary global scene. As the British Empire was the greatest of the imperial structures to go, it is worth considering who signed the death warrant. I suggest there are five candidates.
Book thumbnail image Victims of slavery, past and present By Jenny S. Martinez Today, 25 March, is International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. But unfortunately, the victims of slavery were not all in the distant past. Contemporary forms of slavery and forced labor remain serious problems and some reputable human rights organizations estimate that there are some 21-30 million people living in slavery today.
Book thumbnail image What does the economic future hold for Spain? By William Chislett The good news is that Spain has finally come out of a five-year recession that was triggered by the bursting of its property bubble. The bad news is that the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high at a whopping 26%, double the European Union average.
Book thumbnail image Discussing Josephine Baker with Anne Cheng By Tim Allen Josephine Baker, the mid-20th century performance artist, provocatrix, and muse, led a fascinating transatlantic life. I recently had the opportunity to pose a few questions to Anne A. Cheng, Professor of English and African American Literature at Princeton University and author of the book Second Skin: Josephine Baker & the Modern Surface, about her research into Baker’s life, work, influence, and legacy.
Book thumbnail image Plausible fictions and irrational coherence By Joseph Harris One of the most intriguing developments in recent psychology, I feel, has been the recognition of the role played by irrationality in human thought. Recent works by Richard Wiseman, Dan Ariely, Daniel Kahneman, and others have highlighted the irrationality that can inform and shape our judgements, decision-making, and thought more generally. But, as the title of Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational reminds us, our ‘irrationality’ is not necessarily random for all that.
Book thumbnail image One billion dogs? What does that mean? By Matthew E. Gompper As part of my recent research on the ecology of dogs and their interactions with wildlife I took the necessary first step of attempting to answer a seemingly simple question: Just how many dogs are there on the planet? Yet just because a question is simple does not mean we can confidently answer it. Previous estimates of 500-700 million dogs were rough calculations.
Book thumbnail image An international law reading list for the situation in Crimea With the situation in Crimea moving rapidly, our law editors recently put together a debate map on the potential use of force in international law. To further support the background reading that many students and scholars of international law need, we’ve compiled a brief reading list to better understand the context and application of international law, including concepts of sovereignty, international responsibility, the laws of war, self-determination, secession, and statehood.
Book thumbnail image World TB Day 2014: Reach the three million By Timothy D. McHugh Tuberculosis (TB) is a disease of poverty and social exclusion with a global impact. It is these underlying truths that are captured in the theme of World TB Day 2014 ‘Reach the three million: a TB test, treatment and cure for all’.
Reflections on Son of God By William D. Romanowski 2014 is being heralded Hollywood’s “Year of the Bible.” The first film to reach theaters is Son of God, a remix of material by the same producers of the History Channel’s successful miniseries, The Bible. It seems hardly a coincidence that Son of God opened on Ash Wednesday, ten years to the day after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was released.
Book thumbnail image The Ukraine crisis and the rules great powers play by By Michael H. Hunt Amidst all the commentary occasioned by Russia fishing in troubled Ukrainian waters, one fundamental point tends to get lost from sight. Like many other recent points of international tension, this one raises the question of what are the rules great powers play by.
Book thumbnail image 35 years: the best of C-SPAN By Kate Pais The Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, better known as C-SPAN, has been airing the day-to-day activities of Congress since 1979, for thirty-five years as of this week. Now across three different channels, C-SPAN has provided the American public easy access to politics in action, and created a new level of transparency in public life.
Book thumbnail image Rab Houston on bride ales and penny weddings While each couple believes their wedding to be unique, they are in fact building on centuries of social traditions, often reflecting their region and culture. Throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, these celebrations served not only the families but their communities. We sat down with Rab Houston, author of Bride Ales and Penny Weddings: Recreations, Reciprocity, and Regions in Britain from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries, to discuss the creation of modern marriage ceremonies.
Book thumbnail image The Normans and empire By David Bates That peoples from a region of northern France should become conquerors is one of the apparently inexplicable paradoxes of the subject. The other one is how the conquering Normans apparently faded away, absorbed into the societies they had conquered or within the kingdom of France.
What Coke’s cocaine problem can tell us about Coca-Cola Capitalism By Bart Elmore In the 1960s, Coca-Cola had a cocaine problem. This might seem odd, since the company removed cocaine from its formula around 1903, bowing to Jim Crow fears that the drug was contributing to black crime in the South. But even though Coke went cocaine-free in the Progressive Era, it continued to purchase coca leaves from Peru, removing the cocaine from the leaves but keeping what was left over as a flavoring extract.
Book thumbnail image Can the Académie française stop the rise of Anglicisms in French? By Joanna Rubery You may not be aware that 2014 has been dedicated to the “reconquête de la langue française” by the Académie française, that esteemed assembly of academics who can trace their custody of the French language back almost four centuries to pre-revolutionary France.
Book thumbnail image Ice time By Jamie Woodward On 23 September 1840 the wonderfully eccentric Oxford geologist William Buckland (1784–1856) and the Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz (1809–1873) left Glasgow by stagecoach on a tour of the Scottish Highlands.
Book thumbnail image Will caloric restriction help you live longer? By Dmytro Gospodaryov and Oleh Lushchak The idea of extending life expectancy by modifying diet originated in the mid-20th century when the effects of caloric restriction were found. It was first demonstrated on rats and then confirmed on other model organisms. Fasting activists like Paul Bragg or Roy Walford attempted to show in practice that caloric restriction also helps to prolong life in humans.
Book thumbnail image Grand Piano: the key to virtuosity By Ivan Raykoff “Play one wrong note and you die!” The recently-released feature film Grand Piano, directed by Eugenio Mira and starring Elijah Wood, is an artsy and rather convoluted thriller about classical music and murder.
Book thumbnail image From art to autism: a Q&A with Uta Frith Dame Uta Frith was the neuroscientist who first recognised autism as a condition of the brain rather than the result of cold parenting. Here she takes Lance Workman on a journey through her collection of memories.
Book thumbnail image Bumblebees in English gardens By Michael Hanley Urban gardens are increasingly recognised for their potential to maintain or even enhance biodiversity. In particular the presence of large densities and varieties of flowering plants is thought to support a number of pollinating insects whose range and abundance has declined as a consequence of agricultural intensification and habitat loss.
Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 4 By Anatoly Liberman Apart from realizing that each of the three words in question (beggar, bugger, and bigot) needs an individual etymology, we should keep in mind that all of them arose as terms of abuse and sound somewhat alike. The Beguines,Beghards, and Albigensians have already been dealt with.
Book thumbnail image Ovid the naturalist By Jane Alison Ovid was born on the 20th of March (two thousand and fifty-some years ago): born on the cusp of spring, as frozen streams in the woods of his Sulmo cracked and melted to runnels of water, as coral-hard buds beaded black stalks of shrubs, as tips of green nudged at clods of earth and rose, and rose, and released tumbles of blooms.
Book thumbnail image Monetary policy, asset prices, and inflation targeting By David Cobham The standard arguments against monetary policy responding to asset prices are the claims that it is not feasible to identify asset price bubbles in real time, and that the use of interest rates to restrain asset prices would have big adverse effects on real economic activity. So what happened with central banks and house prices prior to the financial crisis of 2007-8?
Book thumbnail image Gloomy terrors or the most intense pleasure? By Philip Schofield In 1814, just two hundred years ago, the radical philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) began to write on the subject of religion and sex, and thereby produced the first systematic defence of sexual liberty in the history of modern European thought.
Social Work Kathleen J. Pottick on Superstorm Sandy and social work resources By Kathleen J. Pottick In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, one group of dedicated social work scholars at Rutgers University explored options to offer funding and training programs to assist clients who were hit hard. One of their more recent initiatives provided subscriptions to the Encyclopedia of Social Work Online to seven agency directors who needed access to scholarly research to guide their work in the field. We spoke to Kathleen Pottick, professor in Rutgers University’s School of Social Work, who spearheaded this endeavor to hear the story behind their work.
Book thumbnail image Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom By Joy Hakim Surprisingly, in a country that cares about its founding history, few Americans know of Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, a document that Harvard’s distinguished (emeritus) history professor, Bernard Bailyn called, “the most important document in American history, bar none.” Yet that document is not found in most school standards, so it’s rarely taught. How come?
Book thumbnail image Composer Hilary Tann in eight questions Here, we interviewed composer Hilary Tann. Praised for its lyricism and formal balance, Hilary Tann’s music is influenced by her love of Wales and a strong identification with the natural world. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China.
Book thumbnail image An Irish literature reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole With today being St Patrick’s Day, we’ve taken the opportunity to recommend a few classic works of Irish literature to dip into while you’re enjoying a pint (or two) of Guinness.
Book thumbnail image Iraq, detainee abuse, and the danger of humanitarian double standards By Geoffrey S. Corn Eleven years ago this month the US-led military coalition crossed the ‘line of departure’ from Kuwait into Iraq. The full spectrum dominance of these forces produced a rapid victory over the Iraqi armed forces. Unfortunately, winning the peace turned out to be far more complex than winning the war (although for the Americans who bore the burden of securing that initial victory there was certainly nothing ‘easy’ about it).
Britain, France, and their roads from empire After the Second World War ended in 1945, Britain and France still controlled the world’s two largest colonial empires, even after the destruction of the war. Their imperial territories extended over four continents. And what’s more, both countries seemed to be absolutely determined to hold on their empires: the roll-call of British and French politicians, soldiers, settlers and writers who promised to defend their colonial possessions at all costs is a long one. But despite that, within just twenty years, both empires had vanished.
Book thumbnail image Shirley Temple Black: not a personality to be bunked By Gaylyn Studlar How does one talk about a child star without lapsing into clichés? Shirley Temple was “the biggest little star,” the “kid who saved the studio,” and as she was called in the 1930s, “the baby who conquered the world.” Temple, who died 10 February 2014, at the age of eighty-five, was not […]
Book thumbnail image Harry Nilsson and the Monkees By Alyn Shipton Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson worked in the computer department of a California bank throughout the early 1960s. For much of that time, he managed the night shift, clocking on in the early evening and finishing around 1 a.m. Then, instead of going to sleep, he wrote songs all night. Being a man of considerable energy, he spent the daytime hawking his songs around publishers.
Book thumbnail image Leaning in By Katie Day I am one of the last professional women I know to read Lean In by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (Knopf, 2013). If you are also among the laggards, it is an inspiring call to women to lean into leadership. Too often, Sandberg shows through research and life story, women are not considered “leadership material,” and not just by men.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Women’s History Month This March we celebrate Women’s History Month, commemorating the lives, legacies, and contributions of women around the world. We’ve compiled a brief reading list that demonstrates the diversity of women’s lives and achievements.
Book thumbnail image America and the politics of identity in Britain By David Ellwood ‘The Americanisation of British politics has been striking this conference season,’ declared The Economist last autumn. ‘British politicians and civil servants love freebies to the US “to see how they do things,”’ reported Simon Jenkins in The Guardian in November.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Tony Benn By Jad Adams Tony Benn has left as an enduring monument: one of the great diaries of the twentieth century, lasting from 1940, when he was fifteen, to 2009 when illness forced him to stop.
Book thumbnail image Threshold Collaborative: a lesson in engaged story work By Alisa Del Tufo Stories are powerful ways to bring the voice and ideas of marginalized people into endeavors to restore justice and enact change. Beginning in the early 1990s, I started using oral history to bring the stories and experiences of abused women into efforts to make policy changes in New York City.
Book thumbnail image An interview with I. Glenn Cohen on law and bioscience There are huge changes taking place in the world of biosciences, and whether it’s new discoveries in stem cell research, new reproductive technologies, or genetics being used to make predictions about health and behavior, there are legal ramifications for everything. Journal of Law and the Biosciences is a new journal published by Oxford University Press in association Duke University, Harvard University Law School, and Stanford University, focused on the legal implications of the scientific revolutions in the biosciences.
Book thumbnail image Cancer therapy: now it’s getting personal By Miranda Payne Oncologists have long known that one patient is not the same as another. Indeed one patient’s cancer is not the same as another’s. Regardless of apparent clinical similarities, doctors witness huge variations in rates of cancer progression and patients’ response to treatment.
Thinking more about our teeth By Peter S. Ungar Most of us only think about teeth when something’s wrong with them — when they come in crooked, break, or begin to rot. But take a minute to consider your teeth as the extraordinary feat of engineering they are. They concentrate and transmit the forces needed to break food, again and again, up to millions of times over a lifetime. And they do it without themselves being broken in the process — with the very same raw materials used to make the plants and animals being eaten.
Colorful spiders? By Rainer Foelix By Rainer Foelix Spiders are not exactly renowned for being colorful animals. Admittedly, most of the more than 40,000 spider species are rather drab looking. However, there are certainly several hundred species which are lively colored, e. g. bright red or bright green, and some are very colorful indeed.
Book thumbnail image Women of 20th century music Women musicians push societal boundaries around the world, while hitting all the right notes. In honor of Women’s History Month, Oxford University Press is testing your knowledge about women musicians. Take the quiz and see if you’re a shower singer or an international composer!
Book thumbnail image Kitty Genovese and the bystander effect: 50 years on By Alfred Mele A famous experiment on the behavior of bystanders was inspired by an electrifying episode in New York City in 1964 when Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in the middle of a street. According to newspaper reports, although many people witnessed the early morning attack from their apartment windows when they heard screams, no one tried to stop the assault, and no one even called the police.
Book thumbnail image Memories of Andy Calder By Susan Gathercole Andy Calder, dearly loved by his family and his many friends and colleagues from all over the world, died unexpectedly on 29 October 2013. Born in Edinburgh in 1965, he was a loving brother to his sisters Kath and Clare and brothers-in-law Gary and Tony, and a devoted uncle to his nieces and nephews.
Book thumbnail image Selected fables about wolves and fishermen Jean de La Fontaine’s verse fables turned traditional folktales into some of the greatest, and best-loved, poetic works in the French language. His versions of stories such as ‘The Wolf in Shepherd’s Clothing’ and ‘The Lion and the Fly’ are witty and sophisticated, satirizing human nature in miniature dramas in which the outcome is unpredictable.
Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 3 By Anatoly Liberman Unlike so many words featured in this blog, bugger has a well-ascertained origin, but it belongs with the rest of this series because it sheds light on its companions beggar and bigot.
Book thumbnail image The ADHD explosion: How much do you know about the disorder? The push for performance has never been higher. Students today are faced with a grueling course load, extra-curriculars, and standardized tests. In the wake of this competitive atmosphere, the United States has seen a spike in both ADHD diagnoses and increased demand for prescription medicine. But who’s to blame?
Academic publishing gets a close-up By Alice Northover A recent Publishers Weekly story highlighted some of the innovative work that many university presses are undertaking: video marketing.
Book thumbnail image A hidden pillar of the modern world economy By David Gugerli and Tobias Straumann In September 1965, Hurricane Betsy devastated parts of Florida and the central United States Gulf Coast. The damage was estimated at $1 billion – so far the costliest natural disaster in US history.
Book thumbnail image Why the lobbying bill is a threat to the meaning of charity By Matthew Hilton On 30 January 2014 the UK government’s lobbying bill received the Royal Assent. Know more formally known as the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act, it seeks to curb the excesses in election campaign expenditure, as well as restricting the influence of the trade unions.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for ASEH 2014 in San Francisco By Elyse Turr San Francisco, here we come. Oxford is excited for the upcoming annual conference of the American Society for Environmental History in San Francisco this week: 12-16 March 2014. The theme of the conference is “Crossing Divides,” reflecting the mixed history of the discipline and California itself.
Book thumbnail image Research in the digital age By Adrastos Omissi As someone who has lived out his entire academic career in a research environment augmented by digital resources, it can be easy to allow familiarity to breed contempt where the Internet is concerned. When I began my undergraduate degree in the autumn of 2005, Oxford’s Bodleian Library, as well as every faculty and college library, had already digitised their search functions…
Book thumbnail image Librarian voices from the other side of the world By Annabel Coles After months of planning, preparation and final presentation run-throughs, I stood at the front of Seminar Room 3 within the State Library of Victoria, looking across the tables carefully decorated with our OUP goody bags and name placards. It was 8:30 in the morning and I was ready to meet my first librarians from “Down Under”.
Book thumbnail image Female artists and politics in the civil rights movement In the battle for equal rights, many Americans who supported the civil rights movement did not march or publicly protest. They instead engaged with the debates of the day through art and culture. Ruth Feldstein, author of How it Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, joined us in our New York offices to discuss the ways in which culture became a battleground and to share the stories of the female performers who played important but sometimes subtle roles in the civil rights movement.
Book thumbnail image Changes in the DSM-5: what social workers need to know By Cynthia Franklin Social workers that provide therapeutic and other services to children and adolescents can expect to find some major changes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition: in their placement within the DSM-5, the conceptualization of the disorders, the criteria for the disorders, the elimination of disorders, and the inclusion of some new diagnoses.
Book thumbnail image When art coaxed the soul of America back to life By Sheila D. Collins Writing in the New York Times recently, art critic Holland Cotter lamented the fact that the current billionaire-dominated market system, “is shaping every aspect of art in the city; not just how artists live, but also what kind of art is made, and how art is presented in the media and in museums.”
Book thumbnail image Sovereignty disputes in the South and East China Sea By Merel Alstein Tensions in the South and East China Seas are high and likely to keep on rising for some time, driven by two powerful factors: power (in the form of sovereignty over and influence in the region) and money (from the rich mineral deposits that lurk beneath the disputed waters). Incidents, such as the outcry over China’s recently announced Air Defence Identification Zone, have come thick and fast the last few years.
Book thumbnail image Declaration of independence By Stephen Foster Somehow the renascence of interest in the British Empire has managed to coincide with a decline in commitment in the American academy to the history of Great Britain itself. The paradox is more apparent than real, but dissolving it simply uncovers further paradoxes nested within each other like so many homunculi.
Jane Austen and the art of letter writing By Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade Letter writing manuals were popular throughout Jane Austen’s lifetime, and it’s possible then that Jane Austen might have had access to one. Letter writing manuals contained “familiar letters on the most common occasions in life”, and showed examples of what a letter might look like to people who needed to learn the art of letter writing.
Book thumbnail image How do British and American attitudes to dictionaries differ? By Lynne Murphy For 20 years, 14 of those in England, I’ve been giving lectures about the social power afforded to dictionaries, exhorting my students to discard the belief that dictionaries are infallible authorities. The students laugh at my stories about nuns who told me that ain’t couldn’t be a word because it wasn’t in the (school) dictionary and about people who talk about the Dictionary in the same way that they talk about the Bible.
Book thumbnail image Minority women chemists yesterday and today By Jeannette Brown As far as we know, the first African American woman PhD was Dr. Marie Daly in 1947. I am still searching for an earlier one. Women chemists, especially minority women chemists, have always been the underdogs in science and chemistry.
8 ????? 1979: Women’s Day in the Soviet Union By Marjorie Senechal “March 8 is Women’s Day, a legal holiday,” I wrote to my mother from Moscow. “This is one of the many cute cards that is on sale now, all with flowers somewhere on them. We hope March 8 finds you well and happy, and enjoying an early spring! Alas, here it is -30° C again.”
Book thumbnail image International Women’s Day: a time for action By Janet Veitch On Saturday, 8 March, we celebrate International Women’s Day. But is there really anything to celebrate? Last year, the United Nations declared its theme for International Women’s Day to be: “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.”
Five things 300: Rise of an Empire gets wrong By Paul Cartledge Let’s be clear of one thing right from the word go: this is not in any useful sense a historical movie. It references a couple of major historical events but is not interested in ‘getting them right’. It uses historical characters but abuses them for its own dramatic, largely techno-visual ends.
Book thumbnail image A record-breaking lunar impact By Jose M. Madiedo On 11 September 2013, an unusually long and bright impact flash was observed on the Moon. Its peak luminosity was equivalent to a stellar magnitude of around 2.9. What happened? A meteorite with a mass of around 400 kg hit the lunar surface at a speed of over 61,000 kilometres per hour.
Book thumbnail image Law and the quest for justice By Raymond Wacks The law is always news. It plays a central role of law in our social, political, moral, and economic life. But what is this thing called law? Does it consist of a set of universal moral principles in accordance with nature? Or is it merely a collection of largely man-made rules, commands, or norms? Does the law have a specific purpose, such as the protection of individual rights, the attainment of justice, or economic, political, and sexual equality? Can the law change society as it has done in South Africa?
Book thumbnail image Have you heard? Oxford DNB releases 200th episode in biography podcast By Philip Carter Way back in 2007, when Twittering truly was for the birds, a far-sighted editor at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography piped up: maybe people would like to listen as well as read? So was devised the Oxford DNB‘s biography podcast which this week released its 200th episode—the waggerly tale of Charles Cruft (1852-1938), founder of the eponymous dog show held annually in early March.
Book thumbnail image Beyond Ed Sullivan: The Beatles on American television By Ron Rodman Sunday, February 9, 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the American television broadcast of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. For many writers on pop music, the appearance on the Sullivan show not only marked the debut of the Beatles in the United States, but also launched their career as international pop music superstars.
Book thumbnail image How much could 19th century nonfiction authors earn? By Simon Eliot and John Feather In the 1860s, the introduction of its first named series of education books, the ‘Clarendon Press Series’ (CPS), encouraged the Press to standardize its payments to authors. Most of them were offered a very generous deal: 50 or 60% of net profits. These payments were made annually and were recorded in the minutes of the Press’ newly-established Finance Committee. The list of payments lengthened every year, as new titles were published and very few were ever allowed to go out of print.
Book thumbnail image Collective emotions and the European crisis By Mikko Salmela and Christian von Scheve Nationalist, conservative, and anti-immigration parties as well as political movements have risen or become stronger all over Europe in the aftermath of EU’s financial crisis and its alleged solution, the politics of austerity. This development has been similar in countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain where radical cuts to public services such as social security and health care have been implemented as a precondition for the bail out loans arranged by the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund and countries such as Finland, France, and the Netherlands that have contributed to the bailout while struggling with the crisis themselves.
Book thumbnail image Fluoridation of drinking water supplies: tapping into the debate By Karen Blakey and Richard J. Q. McNally Since their introduction in the United States in the 1940s, artificial fluoridation programmes have been credited with reducing tooth decay, particularly in deprived areas. They are acknowledged by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the ten great public health achievements of the 20th century (alongside vaccination and the recognition of tobacco use as a health hazard).
Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman The final sentence in the essay posted in January was not a statement but a question. We had looked at several hypotheses on the origin of the verb beg and found that none of them carried conviction. It also remained unclear whether beg was a back formation on beggar or whether beggar arose as a noun agent from the verb.
Book thumbnail image Steve McQueen’s low-tech triumph: Looking at this year’s Oscar winners By James Tweedie The annual Academy Awards ceremony draws weeks of media attention, hours of live television coverage beginning with stars strolling down the red carpet, and around 40 million viewers nationwide on Oscar night. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences relegates the awards for technical achievement to a separate ceremony a couple of weeks before, a sedate affair in a hotel ballroom rather the spectacular setting of the Dolby Theater.
Book thumbnail image Something to like about bitcoin By Richard S. Grossman Within months of being introduced in 2009, enthusiasts were hailing bitcoin, the digital currency and peer-to-peer payment system, as the successor to the dollar, euro, and yen as the world’s most important currency. The collapse of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange last month has dulled some of the enthusiasm for the online currency.
Book thumbnail image Look beneath the vote By Matthew Flinders Hands up if you’ve heard of National Voter Registration Day? And in the somewhat unlikely event that you have, did you realise that it took place last month? If this momentous milestone passed you by, you’re not alone. Whatever 5 February means to the people of the UK, it’s safe to assume that electoral participation doesn’t figure prominently. This is not a surprise.
Book thumbnail image Why America must organize innovation “Organized” and “innovation” are words rarely heard together. But an organized approach to innovation is precisely what America needs today, argue Steve Currall, Ed Frauenheim, Sara Jansen Perry, and Emily Hunter. We sat down with the authors of Organized Innovation: A Blueprint for Renewing America’s Prosperity to discuss why American ought to organize its innovation efforts.
Book thumbnail image “You’ll be mine forever”: A reading of Ovid’s Amores Amores was Ovid’s first complete work of poetry, and is one of his most famous. The poems in Amores document the shifting passions and emotions of a narrator who shares Ovid’s name, and who is in love with a woman he calls Corinna. In these excerpts, we see two sides of the affair — a declaration of love, and a hot afternoon spent with Corinna. Our poet here is Jane Alison, author of Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation from Ovid, a new translation of Ovid’s love poetry.
A crisis of European democracy? By Sara B Hobolt and James Tilley During November 2012 hundreds of thousands of people across Europe took to the streets. The protesters were, by and large, complaining about government policies that increased taxes and lowered government spending. This initially sounds like a familiar story of popular protests against government austerity programmes, but there is […]
Book thumbnail image A day with Carol Channing in Disneyland by Eddie Shapiro When I began work on my book, I knew I would be fortunate enough to experience a few moments of “Pinch me. This can’t really be happening.” There were, as it turned out, so many that I’d be black and blue if there was actual pinching going on. But of all of those moments, I think the highlight would have to be spending a day at Disneyland with Carol Channing and her late husband, Harry, who were then 90 and 91 respectively.
Book thumbnail image The Gaied Decision: a rare victory for tax sanity in New York By Edward Zelinsky In a unanimous decision, New York’s Court of Appeals, the Empire State’s highest court, recently held that John Gaied was not a New York resident for income tax purposes because he had no New York home. Mr. Gaied was domiciled in New Jersey and had a business on Staten Island to which he commuted daily.
Book thumbnail image William Godwin’s birthday By Mark Philp Do people at the end of the eighteenth century celebrate their birthdays? More precisely, what did William Godwin (1756-1836) – philosopher, novelist, husband of feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) and father of Mary Shelly (1797-1851) – do on his birthday, which falls on 3 March?
Book thumbnail image Transparency in investor-state arbitration By Ian A. Laird The recent adoption in July 2013 by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) of the Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration marks an important milestone in the development of international investor-state arbitration.
Neanderthals may have helped East Asians adapting to sunlight By Qiliang Ding and Ya Hu Hominins and their closest living relative, chimpanzees, diverged approximately 6.5 million years ago on the African continent. Fossil evidence suggests hominins have migrated away from Africa at least twice since then. Crania of the first wave of migrants, such as Neanderthals in Europe and Peking Man in East Asia, show distinct morphological features that are different from contemporary humans (also known as Homo sapiens sapiens).
Book thumbnail image Whole life imprisonment reconsidered By Dirk van Zyl Smit The sentences of those who murder more than one person, or who kill in particularly gruesome circumstances are naturally the stuff of headlines. So it was again on 18 February when a specially constituted bench of the Court of Appeal, headed by the Lord Chief Justice, ruled that there is no legal bar on whole life orders for particularly heinous offences.
Book thumbnail image Spiritual but not religious: knowing the types, avoiding the traps By Linda Mercadante, Ph.D. Many religious people think—or hope—that all those who self-identify as “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR) are “seekers” looking for a spiritual home. And many non-religious people assume that SBNRs are routinely hostile to religion and probably have been hurt by it. In fact, after speaking with hundreds of SBNRs all across North America over a five-year period, I have found neither of these assumptions to be accurate or widely representative.
Book thumbnail image Conservation physiology of plants By Mark van Kleunen Conservation physiology was first identified as an emerging discipline in a landmark paper by Wikelski and Cooke, published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution in 2006. They defined it as “the study of physiological responses of organisms to human alteration of the environment that might cause or contribute to population decline”.
February 2014 (112))
The Oral History Review at the OHA Midwinter Meeting By Troy Reeves I had the pleasure of participating in certain parts of the Oral History Association’s Midwinter Meeting, held 14-16 February 2014 in Madison, Wisconsin. Let’s get this question answered right off the bat: Why Wisconsin in February? Because the organization meets in the winter (or early spring) at the location of the upcoming meeting.
Book thumbnail image Best Original Score: Who will win (and who should!) By Kathryn Kalinak By Kathryn Kalinak This year’s slate of contenders includes established pros (John Williams, Thomas Newman, Alexandre Desplat) along with some newcomers (William Butler and Owen Pallett, Steven Price). This used to be a category where you had to pay your dues, but no longer.
Book thumbnail image African American demography [infographic] In celebration of Black History Month, Social Explorer has put together an interactive infographic with statistics from the most recent Census and American Community Survey. Dig into the data to find out about current African American household ownership, employment rates, per capita income, and more demographic information.
Book thumbnail image Art and industry in film With the Oscars round the corner, we’re delving into Film: A Very Short Introduction. Here’s an extract from Chapter 3 of Michael Wood’s book. In this extract he looks at the industry and the role of the moviegoer.
Book thumbnail image The Plantation Church: a Q&A with Noel Erskine In honor of Black History Month, we sat down with Noel Erskine to learn more about the Plantation Church—the religions that formed on plantations during slavery—and its roots in the Caribbean.
Book thumbnail image Spies and the burning Reichstag It is well known that someone set fire to the Reichstag in Berlin on the evening of February 27, 1933 – eighty-one years ago. It is also well known that Hitler’s new government took this opportunity to pass the Reichstag Fire Decree, gutting the Weimar constitution and effectively initiating a 12-year dictatorship. Many readers will know that ever since 1933 controversy has raged about who actually set fire to the Reichstag – was it the first step in a Communist coup, was it a Nazi conspiracy to supply a justification for their Decree, or was the rather confused young Dutch stonemason Marinus van der Lubbe telling the truth when he claimed he had set the fire himself?
Book thumbnail image The rise of music therapy By Scott Huntington Music therapy involves the use of clinical, evidence-supported musical interventions to meet a patient’s specific goals for healing (a useful fact sheet). The music therapist should have the proper credentials and be licensed in the field of music therapy.
Book thumbnail image The Press stands firm against the French Revolution and Napoleon By Simon Eliot With the French Revolution creating a wave of exiles the Press responded with a very uncharacteristic publication. This was a ‘Latin Testament of the Vulgate Translation’ for emigrant French clergy living in England after the Revolution. In 1796, the Learned (not the Bible) side of the Press issued Novum Testamentum Vulgatae Editionis: Juxta Exemplum Parisiis Editum apud Fratres Barbou.
Book thumbnail image Terror By Yair Amichai-Hamburger On the Internet, terrorists can find a wide-open playground for particularly sophisticated violence. I have no doubt that the people at the American Department of Defense, when they brought about the inception of the Internet, never thought in their worst nightmares that come 2013, every terrorist splinter group would boast a website and that all the advantages of the Internet would be at the service of terrorists for organizing, planning, and executing their attacks on innocent people.
Book thumbnail image Proving Polybius wrong about elephants By Adam L. Brandt and Alfred L. Roca Do conservation genetics and ancient Greek history ever cross paths? Recently, a genetic study of a remnant population of elephants in Eritrea has also addressed an ancient mystery surrounding a battle in the Hellenistic world.
Book thumbnail image Dirty South hip hop and societal ills in the former Confederacy Dirty South hip hop refers to a gritty rap culture first developed in the southern United States during the 1980s and the 1990s. Goodie Mob, an eccentric quartet from Atlanta, Georgia, titled a 1995 single “Dirty South” in order to shed light on myriad societal ills in the former Confederacy, where ethnic prejudice and racism seemed to be perennial sicknesses.
Monthly gleanings for February 2014 By Anatoly Liberman I am impressed. Not long ago I asked two riddles. Who coined the phrase indefatigable assiduity and who said that inspiration does not come to the indolent? The phrase with assiduity turns up on the Internet at once (it occurs in the first chapter of The Pickwick Papers), but John Cowan pointed out that Dickens may have used (parodied?) a popular cliché of that time.
Book thumbnail image Interpreting theories in international relations The basic problem for anyone wanting to understand contemporary world politics is the amount of material that is out there. Where on earth would you start if you wanted to explain the most important political processes? How, for example, would you explain 9/11, or the War in Iraq, or the recent global financial crisis, or the ongoing Syrian Civil War?
Book thumbnail image Did Russia really spend ‘$50 billion’ on the Sochi Olympics? By Michael Alexeev and Shlomo Weber Much of the world is now watching the Winter Olympics in Sochi. While most people are primarily interested in the athletic achievements, the fact that the Games are taking place in Russia has also brought the Russian political system, economy, human rights, etc., into focus, inadvertently highlighting the interaction of the still pervasive Soviet legacy and the momentous changes since the collapse of the USSR.
The great Oxford World’s Classics debate By Kirsty Doole By Kirsty Doole Last week the Oxford World’s Classics team were at Blackwell Bookshop in Oxford to witness the first Oxford World’s Classics debate. Over three days we invited seven academics who had each edited and written introductions and notes for books in the series to given a short, free talk in the shop. This then culminated in an evening event in Blackwell’s famous Norrington Room where we held a balloon debated, chaired by writer and academic Alexandra Harris.
Book thumbnail image Family photos and the spectre of global leadership By Michael Foley The ‘family photograph’ is the visual climax of each G8 summit. Each is designed to portray world leaders earnestly engaged with global problems on behalf of a presumptive international constituency. These pictures have a high symbolic value in that they are designed not only to demonstrate that individual leaders can operate in conjunction with one another but also to infer the existence of an upward trajectory of global governance.
Hey everybody! Meet Julia! With our blog audience growing, so is our team! Julia Callaway joined the OUPblog family in November 2013 as our New York-based Deputy Editor and Social Media Coordinator here at Oxford University Press.
Book thumbnail image Martin Luther, music, and the Seven Liberal Arts By The Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe It was the German reformer Martin Luther who famously said that ‘music was next to theology’. Why did Luther claim that music was ‘next’ to theology, and what did he mean? In the past, scholars have explained that music had a unique capacity to touch the human heart in a way that the spoken word, or other sounds may not do.
Book thumbnail image Frank Close on the Higgs boson In 2013, the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs for their work on what is now commonly known as the Higgs field and the Higgs boson. The existence of this fundamental particle, responsible for the creation of mass, was confirmed by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in 2012.
Book thumbnail image Cocktail party conversation from Oxford Compiled by Jonathan Kroberger Our publicity department spends all week long talking about our books and occasionally they find it hard to stop talking about them when out and about. Here on the blog we’re going to be featuring some of the facts they can be heard recounting outside of the office from some of our current books.
Book thumbnail image The case law of the ICJ in investment arbitration By Alain Pellet The dialogue between the International Court of Justice and investment tribunals is, at first sight, mainly a one-way dialogue: investment tribunals often refer to the case law of the World Court in their reasoning, the Court, on the other hand, has always ignored the awards of these tribunals.
Book thumbnail image Cancer virus: the eureka moment By Dorothy Crawford On 24 February 1964 a young research virologist at the Middlesex Hospital in London peered at the screen of an electron microscope and saw a new virus. It turned out to be a human cancer virus – the first ever discovered.
Book thumbnail image Farmily album: the rise of the felfie By Jonathan Dent Words are patient things. They need to be: language change is often a slow process, measured, for the most part, in centuries and not months. A new word (a neologism), whether it enters English as a loanword, a borrowing from another language, or whether it is formed within English from pre-existing words and affixes, usually has to wait until a decent interval has elapsed before it settles down and starts a lexical family of its own, becoming the parent (or etymon) to new words for which it provides one of the building blocks.
Book thumbnail image Pascal Pichonnaz on set-off and commercial arbitration What is set-off and how does it relate to commercial arbitration? We sat down with Pascal Pichonnaz, co-author of Set-Off in Arbitration and Commercial Transactions, to discuss the concept and talk about how this field of law is developing.
Book thumbnail image The Black Book: Phillis Wheatley and the information revolution By Richard Newman The noble ideal of Black History Month is that by extracting and examining key people and moments in the African American grain, we learn much about black achievement. But it is equally powerful to set black history in the grand swirl of events to see the many ways that African-Americans have impacted the nation’s political and cultural development.
Book thumbnail image Predicting who will publish or perish as career academics By Bill Laurance, Carolina Useche, Corey Bradshaw, and Susan Laurance It doesn’t matter whether or not you think it’s fair: if you’re an academic, your publishing record will have a crucial impact on your career. It can profoundly affect your prospects for employment, for winning research grants, for climbing the academic ladder, for having a teaching load that doesn’t absorb all your time, for winning academic prizes and fellowships, and for gaining the respect of your peers.
Book thumbnail image Book vs movie: Thérèse Raquin and In Secret In Secret, the new movie adaption of Zola’s Thérèse Raquin starring Jessica Lange, Tom Felton, and Elizabeth Olsen premieres today. The novel tells the scandalous story of adultery in 19th century France. When Thérèse is forced into a loveless marriage, her world is turned upside down upon meeting her husband’s friend. The two enter into an affair that has shocking results.
Book thumbnail image The world’s revolutions [infographic] How many revolutions have there been in the world’s history? Are they all violent? As revolutions around the world continue to make front page news, we asked Jack Goldstone, author of Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction, to help us pull together a timeline of the revolutions that have shaped the world.
Book thumbnail image Common Core Standards, universal pre-K, and educating young readers Parents and educators everywhere want to introduce children to the world of reading, but the task of helping a child become an independent reader is increasingly difficult and daunting. How can you create a love for reading and learning with stories, lessons, and activities while also supporting reading development? Book Smart: How to Develop and Support Successful, Motivated Readers, written by Anne E. Cunningham, PhD and Jamie Zibulsky, PhD, serves as a how-to guide for parents as they navigate through the uncertainties of teaching their children to read.
At the launch of Nothing Like a Dame On Monday, 27 January 2014, the lobby of Oxford University Press’s New York City office was filled with Broadway fans, and a few stars, drinking champagne in celebration of the publication of Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations With the Great Women of Musical Theater by Eddie Shapiro.
Book thumbnail image What price books? By Simon Eliot For most readers at most times, books were not essential. They were to be bought, if they were to be bought at all, out of disposable income. For most families in the nineteenth century, if they were lucky enough to have any disposable income, it would be a matter of two (10p) or three shillings (15p) a week at best.
What does he mean by ‘I love you?’ By Cristina Soriano Have you ever had difficulty expressing your emotions in words? Have people misinterpreted what you feel even if you name it? If you speak more than one language, you’re almost certain to have answered “yes”.
Can metaphors make better laws? By Ben McFarlane Lawyers have a lot of explaining to do. It’s the nature of their job, as their most important task is to communicate, clearly and concisely, the content of the law. It should therefore be no surprise to find that many of the most masterful users of language, from Cicero to Clinton, from Lincoln to Lenin, were lawyers.
Beggars, buggers, and bigots, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Bigot will wait until the end of this miniseries, because some time ago (26 October 2011) I published a special post on this word and now have only a short remark to add to it. But beggars and buggers cry out for recognition and should not be denied it.
Book thumbnail image A new concept of medical textbook By Demosthenes G. Katritsis As Charles Darwin elegantly demonstrated, survival depends on the ability for adaptation. This principle, however, can be conceptualized beyond species evolution. By reference to contingent or contextual considerations, adaptation is also relevant to the need of human activity, in general, to correlate with the speed of scientific progress, and technological innovation.
Book thumbnail image ‘Before he lived it, he wrote it’? Final thoughts on Fleming By Nicholas Rankin The real Ian Fleming died on 12 August 1964, just two weeks before the release of the second Bond film, From Russia With Love. Ian’s thrillers, and the films based on them, were already rising towards their phenomenal world-wide success, although they were still sniffed at by the snootier members of his wife Ann’s circle.
Book thumbnail image Is small farm led development still a relevant strategy? By Peter Hazell and Atiqur Rahman The case for smallholder development as a win-win strategy for achieving agricultural growth, poverty reduction, and food insecurity is less clear than it was during the green revolution era. The gathering forces of rapid urbanization, a reverse farm size transition towards ever smaller and more diversified farms, and an emerging corporate-driven business agenda in response to higher agricultural and energy prices, is creating a situation where policy makers need to differentiate more sharply between the needs of different types of small farms, and between growth, poverty, and food security goals.
Book thumbnail image How we all kill whales By Michael Moore My first job after veterinary school in 1983 was for the International Whaling Commission examining the efficacy of explosive harpoons for killing fin whales on an Icelandic whaling vessel. Later, I encountered a very different way of killing whales.
Book thumbnail image Who shapes the history of the British Isles? From politicians to psychiatrists, novelists to biologists, and actors to entrepreneurs, the January 2014 update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography adds a further 219 biographies of men and women who’ve made their mark on British history.
Book thumbnail image Madness, rationality, and epistemic innocence Lisa Bartolotti Madness and irrationality may seem inextricably related. “You are crazy!” we say, when someone tells us about their risk-taking behaviour or their self-defeating actions). The International Classification of Diseases (ICD 10) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM 5) describe people with depression, autism, schizophrenia, dementia, and personality disorders as people who infringe norms of rationality.
Book thumbnail image Osagie K. Obasogie speaks with Skip Gates about colorblindness and race Osagie K. Obasogie, J.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Law at the University of California, Hastings with a joint appointment at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. His first book, Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race Through the Eyes of the Blind, was recently published by Stanford University Press and his second book on the past, present, and future of bioethics is under contract with the University of California Press.
Book thumbnail image Pete Seeger: the power of singing to promote social justice By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel “That song really sticks with you!” The speaker was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1957, on his way to a speaking engagement in Kentucky. The song was “We Shall Overcome.” He had heard it the day before from Pete Seeger at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. There Seeger had, a decade before, learned the song – most likely derived from an old gospel song that became a labor-union song by the early 1900s.
Book thumbnail image Why nobody dreams of being a professor By Arturo E. Hernandez By now the reactions to Nicholas Kristof’s piece at the New York Times are circulating the Internet. There are good arguments in favor and against blaming professors or the public or both. Rather than take one side or the other I thought it would make sense to give a couple of anecdotes that provide insight into this issue.
Book thumbnail image Five facts you need to know in 2014 At the end of each year, people around the world look back on what’s passed and what they’ve accomplished — including the books they’ve read and the knowledge they’ve learned. And then in January, the rest of us try to catch up and figure out what we need to know in the new year. Several Oxford University Press titles landed on prestigious Book of the Year lists in 2013, covering everything from the history of strategy, the dissection of austerity policies, to the ascendance of China in the global political arena. So we pulled together a quick list of illuminating facts to give you a jump start on 2014.
Book thumbnail image Enhancing transparency at ICSID By Antonio R. Parra Among arbitral institutions, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) has long been a leader in promoting the transparency of its operation. Through its case registers, ICSID has always published information on the institution, conduct, and disposition of proceedings administered by the Centre.
How the Humanities changed the world By Rens Bod Have insights from the humanities ever led to breakthroughs, or is any interpretation of a text, painting, musical piece, or historical event as good as any other? I have long been fascinated with this question. To be sure, insights from the humanities have had an impact on society.
Book thumbnail image Thinking about the mind: an anti-linguistic turn By Bence Nanay Contemporary philosophy of mind is an offshoot of philosophy of language. Most formative figures of modern philosophy of mind started out as philosophers of language. This is hardly surprising – almost everyone in that generation started out as a philosopher of language. But this focus on language left its mark on the way we now think about the mind – and this is not necessarily a good thing.
Book thumbnail image A classic love story reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole If Valentine’s Day has got you in the mood for reading a love story then here are a few suggestions of some classic examples from the Oxford World’s Classics series.
Floods, storms, and climate change: the need for a longer-term perspective By Robert Van de Noort The United Kingdom is experiencing a period of extreme rainfall and an onslaught of Atlantic storms. This has resulted in extensive and prolonged flooding of the Somerset Levels and a rise in the levels of the River Thames not seen for over 60 years, flooding many homes for the first time since these were built.
Portraying scientists: Galileo and perceptual portraiture By Nicholas Wade By Nicholas Wade Perceptual portraits represent people in an unconventional style. The portraits themselves are not always easy to discern – the viewer needs to apply the power of perception in order to extract the facial features from the design which carries them. The aim is both artistic and historical.
Soldiers’ experiences of World War I in photographs The confident grin of an ace fighter pilot, the thousand yard stare of a young soldier taking a smoke break in a subterranean shelter, a howitzer glowing in an open field, sailors framed in moonlight off the deck of a submarine pointed towards an empty horizon — The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War by Peter Hart resurrects in language and photographs the soldiers’ experiences of World War I.
Book thumbnail image Contradictions in Cold War-era higher education By Caitlin Tyler-Richards This week, managing editor Troy Reeves wears his Badgers pride proudly in an interview with historian Matthew Levin. Levin, who received his PhD in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of Cold War University: Madison and the New Left in the Sixties (UW Press, 2013).
Book thumbnail image An anti-Valentine’s Day playlist Complied by Taylor Coe Feeling angsty about Valentine’s Day? The OUP staff is here to help! We have pulled together a wide-ranging list of “anti-Valentine’s Day” music – exactly opposite the treacly, mincing pop that you may encounter otherwise on this most-exclusive of holidays.
Book thumbnail image Love: First sights in Ovid By Jane Alison Among the myriad transformations in Ovid’s Metamorphoses—transformations of girls to trees or stars, boys to flowers or newts, women to rivers, rocks to men—the most powerful can be those wrought by erotic desire. Woods, beaches, and glades in Ovid’s poem are ecologies of desire and repulsion: one character spots another through the trees, and you can almost see the currents of desire flow as one figure instantly wants what he sees—and the other starts running away.
Historical fashions we’d love to see make a comeback Fashion weeks became the standard trade fair for the industry in the late 20th century, and the tradition continues biannually. New York Fashion Week has waltzed its way down the runway, and the fashion world is packing up their garment bags to head to Paris to fête the Fall/Winter 2014-2015 Ready to Wear collections.
Book thumbnail image Advancing the field of cardiovascular medicine Each year cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes over 4 million deaths in Europe and 1.9 million deaths in the European Union (EU). Although the rates of death attributed to CVD have declined over the years, the burden of the disease remains high and on-going research into cardiovascular medicine remains vital. Through clinical and scientific research, we […]
Book thumbnail image Is love real? In honor of Valentine’s Day today, the holiday that celebrates love, we’re sharing an excerpt from Emotion: A Very Short Introduction by Dylan Evans. Evans presents us with the differing opinions on romantic love. Some believe it to be an invention, while others classify it as a universal emotion hardwired into the brain. As we open heart-shaped boxes of candy today, is it possible that the romantic love we feel is something we learned from the romantic stories we read and saw in our life?
Book thumbnail image Books for loved ones on Valentine’s Day What does your bookshelf say about you? When you work in publishing, you tend to bypass the traditional gifts of chocolate and flowers and aim an arrow straight for the heart — with books. Here are a few staff recommendations on books for the people you love.
Book thumbnail image Performing for profit: 100 years of music performance rights By Gary Rosen This February marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers. Though little known outside the music industry today, its creation set in motion a series of events that still reverberates in the popular music of our time.
Lucy in the scientific method By Tim Kasser Humans seem to love attempting to understand the meaning of songs. Back in my college days, I spent many hours talking with friends about what this or that song must mean. Nowadays, numerous websites are devoted to providing space for fans to dissect and share their interpretations of their favorite songs (e.g. Song Meanings, Song Facts, and Lyric Interpretations). There is even a webpage with a six-step program for understanding a song’s meaning.
Book thumbnail image Oxford University Press faces up to the Nazis By Simon Eliot Ever since the end of the First World War Oxford University Press had been keen to re-establish some sort of presence in the German book trade. Germany had been a significant market for its academic books in the nineteenth century, and a number of German scholars had edited Greek and Roman texts for the Press. Nevertheless the depressed state of the German economy and the uncertainty of its currency had made this impossible in the first few years after 1918.
Book thumbnail image Evolutionary psychology: an affront to feminism? By Anne Campbell Getting ready for work the other morning, I was diverted from pouring my coffee by the television news. A comet was about to pass near the sun and might, if it survived, become visible on earth. The professor of astrophysics who had been brought on to explain the details was engaging, enthusiastic and clear. She was a woman. I wondered how many school girls had heard her and been inspired. Fifty years ago, the idea of a woman gaining recognition in such an arcane area of science would have been astounding.
Book thumbnail image Fishing with Izaak Walton By Marjorie Swann The Compleat Angler opens with a man seeking companionship on a journey. “You are well overtaken, Gentlemen,” Izaak Walton’s alter-ego Piscator (Fisherman) exclaims as he catches up with Venator (Hunter) and Auceps (Falconer) north of London. “I have stretched my legs up Tottenham-hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion you towards Ware whither I am going this fine, fresh May morning.”
Book thumbnail image Mating intelligence for Valentine’s Day By Glenn Geher and Gökçe Sancak When it comes to the psychology of long-term mating, there are important differences and similarities that characterize the wants and desires of males and females. Based on extensive past research on the nature of human mating, it turns out that the sexes are more similar than portrayals of the recent research in this area often suggests.
Genius and etymology: Henry William Fox Talbot By Anatoly Liberman What does it take to be a successful etymologist? Obviously, an ability to put two and two together. But all scholarly work, every deduction needs this ability. The more words and forms one knows, the greater is the chance that the result will be reasonably convincing.
Book thumbnail image Founding the NAACP By Susan D. Carle The story of the NAACP’s founding 105 years ago has traditionally focused on the gathering of a small group of whites outraged by the Springfield, Illinois, race riots of the summer of 1908. In January 1909, they gathered in a small New York City apartment to discuss founding a new biracial organization.
Book thumbnail image “Before he lived it, he wrote it”? Fleming Episodes 2, 3 By Nick Rankin As a production, Fleming is still looking great but sounding terrible, with a plonking script mired in Second World War clichés (‘This is WAR, Fleming!’). The second episode begins in 1940. Commander Ian Fleming (Dominic Cooper) is away in neutral Lisbon, where he squanders Naval Intelligence petty cash gambling at cards against uniformed Germans in the casino.
Book thumbnail image Peak shopping and the decline of traditional retail By David M. Levinson Shopping trips now comprise fewer than 9% of all trips, down from 12.5% in 2000, according to our analysis of the Twin Cities Travel Behavior Inventories. This is consistent with other results from the American Time Use Survey. They are down by about one-third in a decade.
Book thumbnail image Second childhood By Jamie Davies Embryologists who study the beginning of life, and gerontologists who study its end, interact rather little. This is hardly surprising: the former work with growth, construction and preparation for the long life ahead, while the latter work with loss, decline, and the inevitable journey to oblivion.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Charles Darwin’s birthday February 12th has been coined Darwin Day because it marks the anniversary of the birthday of Charles Darwin. One could come up with several creative ways to celebrate the life of such an influential and revered scientist—baking a cake with 73 candles in honor of Darwin’s 73 years of life, or taking a walk through a local park or nature reserve in an attempt to make observations about wild animals, to name a few.
Book thumbnail image How electronic publishing is changing academia for the better By Hannah Skoda When I started in my current post, one of my students, off to a nightclub, very cheekily asked me whether when I was young, they were still called discos. The same sorts of feelings are coming to characterize attitudes towards books – our students find it hard to imagine a time when nothing was available electronically.
A virtual journey in the footsteps of Zebulon Pike By Jared Orsi By Jared Orsi Somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains in November 1806, the explorer Zebulon Pike worried that the lateness of the season jeopardized the completion of his expedition. A contemporary of Lewis and Clark, Pike commanded a US military party that was exploring the southwestern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase.
Book thumbnail image Dona nobis pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams By Hugh Cobbe By Hugh Cobbe The cantata Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams was written at a time when the country was slowly awakening to the possibility of a second European conflict. When invited to provide a work for the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society in October 1936, Vaughan Williams remembered that he had in his drawer an unpublished setting of Walt Whitman’s ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’.
Treasures from Old Holland in New Amsterdam By Kandice Rawlings The Frick Collection in New York recently closed its Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis exhibition of fifteen seventeenth-century Dutch paintings on loan from the Hague museum, which is currently closed for remodeling. The show (which has already been to San Francisco, Atlanta, and Tokyo, and opens next in Bologna) was a blockbuster.
Book thumbnail image 250 years since the contract that changed American history Just over 250 years have passed since the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 10 February 1763. To look back at this influential contract and a turning point in the history of the United States, we present an excerpt from one of Oxford’s Pivotal Moments in American History series — Colin G. Calloway’s The Scratch of the Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America.
Book thumbnail image Importance of venue selection in international arbitration By Michael Ostrove, Claudia Salomon, and Bette Shifman The choice of where an arbitration is venued, known as the seat or the place of arbitration, has important implications and should not be made lightly. The venue of an arbitration impacts the role of local courts in relation to the arbitration, the conduct of the arbitration, and ultimately the enforceability of the award.
An Oxford Companion to Valentine’s Day By Daniel Parker It’s big, it’s red, and it’s here. Valentine’s Day strikes fear into the hearts of men and women around the Western world like nothing else can. But you needn’t run scared of the Hallmark branded teddy bears. Oh no. Follow the sprinkling of rose petals, the sweet aroma of scented candles, and the dulcet tones of Phil Collins up the stairs to the luxury boudoir that is Oxford University Press.
Book thumbnail image Super Bowl ads and American civil religion By Peter Gardella The two most controversial, apparently contradictory Super Bowl ads—Bob Dylan’s protectionist, “American Import” Chrysler ad and Coca-Cola’s multilingual rendition of “America the Beautiful”—show the breadth of American civil religion. As religion scholars have long observed, it belongs to the nature of religious language to self-destruct.
Book thumbnail image The new DSM-5: changes in the diagnosis of autism and intellectual disability By Martin J. Lubetsky, M.D. What are the primary changes made by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) in May 2013 in the new DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability?
Book thumbnail image Autism Sunday 2014: controversies and resolutions By Mary Coleman Finally, in 2014, we are beginning to resolve some of the long-standing controversies in autism and move research is a more fruitful direction.
Going local: understanding regional library needs By Anne Ziebart As a marketer you spend a lot of time hidden behind your screen. At least it feels like that sometimes. Conferences and the occasional external meeting offer a welcome excuse to step into the picture and finally meet the people you market to. So I was excited when there was talk of setting up regionally focussed “library advisory councils”, and a German-speaking was one under consideration.
Book thumbnail image A day in the life of the Music Hire Library By Miriam Higgins My friends always ask me: what do you do all day?! Well, every day Bethan, new manager Guy, and I make sure orders for music are present and correct to be sent around the world. We also update the website, look at which titles need re-engraving next, work with our agents (who are worldwide), and answer customer enquiries either over the phone or by email.
Book thumbnail image UK National Libraries Day 2014: “Why we love libraries” Today is National Libraries Day in the United Kingdom, and hundreds of activities and events are taking place in public libraries of all shapes and sizes — from the multi-million pound Library of Birmingham, to the tiniest local libraries run by volunteers — in order to celebrate our wonderful librarians, and the libraries they run. To celebrate National Libraries Day, we asked a few of our staff what they love about public libraries.
Book thumbnail image The genesis of computer science By Subrata Dasgupta Politically, socially, and culturally, the 1960s were tumultuous times. But tucked away amidst the folds of the Cold War, civil rights activism, anti-war demonstrations, the feminist movement, revolts of students and workers, flower power, sit-ins, Marxist and Maoist revolutions – almost unnoticed — a new science was born in university campuses across North America, Britain, Europe and even, albeit tentatively, certain non-Western parts of the world.
Book thumbnail image Homophobia as extremism: the cost to freedom of choice By Amos N. Guiora As has been repeatedly and thoroughly documented, Russian President Vladimir Putin is, for lack of a better word, a homophobe. Putin’s incessant drum beating targeting homosexuals and lesbians led President Obama, Chancellor Merkel, and President Hollande to publicly announce they will not attend next month’s Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Book thumbnail image Nations and liberalism? By Steven Grosby Nationalism and nations have understandably been associated with the most illiberal treatment of human beings. History is replete with well-known examples of the murder of innocents in the cause of some nation. It continues today, for example, in Syria, Kurdistan, the Kashmir, and other places.
Book thumbnail image Ronald Reagan Day By Gil Troy When running for president in 2008, Barack Obama infuriated both Bill and Hillary Clinton by saying he dreamed of being a transformational leader like Ronald Reagan – and unlike Bill Clinton. Insulted by this challenge to their legacy, the Clintons accused their opponent of endorsing Reagan’s policies, when Obama was assessing impact not ideology.
Book thumbnail image The relationship between poverty and everyday violence How do we see poverty? Most people envision global poverty as dirty shacks, hungry children, a lack of schools, and rampant disease. But as Gary A. Haugen, founder and president of International Justice Mission, explains there is another phenomenon hidden beneath the surface. Rather than catastrophic forms of violence in civil war, unrest, or even genocide, insidious forms of violence in everyday life make the poor even more vulnerable.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on war, past and present By Michael D. Matthews I am posting this article on February 6th. My father was born on this date in 1914, just months before the outbreak of World War I. In many ways the state of the world 100 years ago was not so different from today. Political instability plagued Europe, social change driven by advances in technology was sweeping the world, and yet most people felt a sense of security that the world as they knew it was stable.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and New York, February 1964 By Gordon R. Thompson When Pan Am flight 101, the “Jet Clipper Defiance,” touched down at the recently renamed John F. Kennedy Airport on 7 February 1964, the grieving angst that had gripped the Western world lifted, if just a little. What emerged from the darkness of the Boeing 707’s doorway was something so joyful, so deliciously irreverent that we forgot for a moment the tensions of the Berlin wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and the assassination of a young president. The sigh that North America released felt so deep that it sounded as one big exuberant scream of delight.
Book thumbnail image Letters, telegrams, steam, and speed By Simon Eliot Oxford was finally linked to the rail network in June 1844. Within a decade or so the railway had become part of the way in which Oxford University Press at all levels conducted its business and its pleasure. One such pleasure was a wayzgoose.
Book thumbnail image Is smell for the dogs? By Barbara Malt Dogs are the noses of modern society. They not only track the scent of prey across a meadow but find lost children, sniff out bombs and drugs, and conduct medical diagnosis. Pigs are good, too; we rely on them to hunt down rare and expensive truffles. Domestic cats can turn in an impressive performance, pawing out the last crumb of tuna sandwich at the bottom of a workbag. But humans?
Book thumbnail image Monarchy and the end of the Commonwealth By Philip Murphy In November 2013, the Commonwealth was preparing for a highly controversial Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Sri Lanka, which the Canadian prime minister had already threatened to boycott on the grounds of the abysmal human rights record of the host state. In an article I published at the time, I touched on the contrast between the pre-eminent position the Queen had obtained within the Commonwealth since the 1990s, and the organization’s own lackluster performance over that period:
Book thumbnail image Grove announces its Second Annual Spoof Article Contest By Anna-Lise Santella It may be the middle of winter, but April Fool’s Day is only two months away, and that means it’s time to start planning your entry for the Second Annual Grove Music Spoof Article Contest! Spoof articles have been part of Grove’s history for several decades—it seems that our authors have always had an inclination toward humor.
Bickering and bitching By Anatoly Liberman Respectability in etymology is determined by age: the older, the better. The verb to bicker has been known since the fourteenth century, while the verb to bitch “complain; spoil” is a nineteenth-century invention. On the other hand, the noun bitch occurred already in Old English, so that it is not quite clear which of the two words—bitch or bicker—should be awarded the first place.
Scenes of Ovid’s love stories in art By Jane Alison The poet Ovid plays a central role in Roman literary history and culture. Best known for his Metamorphoses, a 15-book mythological epic, and his collections of love poetry, particularly Amores and Ars Amatoria, Ovid’s poetry has greatly influenced Western art, and his works remain some of the most important sources of classical mythology.
“Before he lived it, he wrote it”? Fleming Episode 1 By Nicholas Rankin The first thing you see on the screen in the new TV mini-series Fleming is Ian Fleming’s own claim that his James Bond novels were based on reality: “Everything I write has a precedent in truth.” Just before the credits we get the drama’s own slightly different claim: “Based on a true story. Some names, places and incidents are fictitious and have been changed for dramatic effect.”
Book thumbnail image Five myths about the gold standard By Richard S. Grossman Although the dollar has had no legal connection to gold since 1973, the gold standard continues to hold an almost mystical appeal for many politicians and commentators. The 2012 Republican Platform called for the creation of a commission to study the possible restoration of the link between the dollar and gold. When asked about the gold standard this summer, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), a potential 2016 Republican presidential nominee, replied: “We need to think about our currency that once upon a time had a link to a commodity, and I think we should study it.”
Book thumbnail image Mad politics By Matthew Flinders If you are reading this blog then you’ve obviously survived ‘Blue Monday’. That is, the day in the third week of January when suicide levels tend to peak and demands for counseling rocket as a result of post-Christmas debt, dashed New Year resolutions, and the inevitable sense that this year is actually unlikely to be much different to the last.
Book thumbnail image Facebook turns ten: teenager or (grand)parent? By José van Dijck Last November, technology reporter Jenna Wortham of the New York Times observed: “Just a few years ago, most of my online social activity revolved around Facebook … But lately, my formerly hyperactive Facebook life has slowed to a crawl. … I rarely add photographs or post updates about what I’ve been doing… Is it just me, or is Facebook fading?”
Book thumbnail image Revisiting reasons to ‘unfriend’ on Facebook’s 10th anniversary On 4 February 2004, a website named Facebook was launched. Since then it has grown to become a global force affecting many aspects of our lives. Five years ago, Oxford Dictionaries selected ‘unfriend’ as Word of the Year. At the time, we also shared reasons why people unfriend someone on Facebook. On this occasion, we asked once again, why you would — or should — unfriend.
Book thumbnail image Why we should change the way we look at chronic pain Is undiagnosed and untreated chronic pain a nationwide epidemic? Does the American legal system’s treatment of the pharmaceutical and medical fields impedes citizens’ struggles to heal themselves? Has the media egregiously focused on the abuses of pain medication rather than extolling its virtues?
Book thumbnail image Michael Cherlin on music theory Music Theory Spectrum, the official publication of the Society for Music Theory, was first published in the spring of 1979 — the same year that the Society was founded. We’re thrilled that 35 years later, the journal has joined Oxford University Press. To learn more about the journal and its fascinating subject, we sat down with the Editor, Michael Cherlin. The University of Minnesota professor discusses his experience in publishing, the field of music theory, and what to expect in future.
Book thumbnail image What could you read over and over and over again? Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow once more, which leaves us with 6 more weeks of winter. As card-carrying bibliophiles we know the only to get through this is to cozy up with a warm blanket, a hot beverage, and your favorite book to read over and over and over again. Some Oxford history authors were kind enough to share the book that is going to get them through the rest of this cold, cold winter.
Book thumbnail image The First Amendment and parsonage allowances By Edward Zelinsky Confronting an important constitutional question about religion and taxation, the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin, in Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Lew, held that Section 107(2) of the Internal Revenue Code violates the First Amendment.
Was Alexander the Great poisoned? By Philip A. Mackowiak By Philip A. Mackowiak In the January issue of the journal Clinical Toxicology, investigators at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand and the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom offer yet another theory as to the cause of the untimely death of Alexander the Great just prior to his 33rd birthday.
Book thumbnail image Invoking the language of ‘savagery’ and ‘barbarism’ in international law debates By Catriona Drew A decade after Iraq, the chemical weapons attacks against Syrian civilians in Eastern Damascus on 21 August 2013 sparked a political and public debate in the United Kingdom about the legality of military intervention. For international-law veterans of Kosovo and Iraq, the central question was familiar.
Book thumbnail image Is cosmetic plastic surgery on the increase? By Hank Giele In its article ‘UK plastic surgery statistics 2012: brows up, breasts down’, The Guardian reported that 39,000 women underwent cosmetic plastic surgery in 2012: nearly 10,000 breast augments, 4,000 reductions, 5,000 facelifts, 3,000 nose jobs and 3,000 tummy tucks.
Book thumbnail image De-extinction: could technology save nature? By Gregory E. Kaebnick This past November, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature declared the western black rhinoceros of Africa, last seen in 2006, officially extinct. It also concluded that most other rhino species are in danger, even “teetering.” Yet at the same time, over the past year, some scientists and others have been declaring that the woolly rhino – last seen, oh, 10,000 years or so ago – could soon NOT be extinct.
Book thumbnail image Sinitic script and the American experience By Margaret Hillenbrand In recent years, American studies have taken a decisively transnational turn. The origins of this shift lie in a distaste for the notion of “American exceptionalism”, in a revolt against the disjuncture between cherished ideas of the United States as the special homeland of all the democratic virtues, and the persistent realities of discrimination over race, gender, faith, and sexuality.
Book thumbnail image Seeing the ball: The view from Seattle to the Super Bowl By Viki McCabe, PhD How did the Seattle Seahawks, “the best collection of leftovers this side of the day after Thanksgiving” according to sports writer John Boyle and the “guys who have kind of been thrown aside by other teams, guys with chips on the shoulders” pointed out fondly by former Seahawk wide receiver Brandon Stokely punch the ticket to the 2014 Super Bowl?
Book thumbnail image Wrecked on a desert island When I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm abated, so that the sea did not rage and swell as before. But that which surprised me most was, that the ship was lifted off in the night from the sand where she lay by the swelling of the tide, and was driven up almost as far as the rock which I at first mentioned, where I had been so bruised by the wave dashing me against it.
January 2014 (103))
Happy Birthday, Carol Channing! In recognition of the inimitable Carol Channing’s 93rd birthday, we have excerpted a portion of her interview from Eddie Shapiro’s forthcoming book of interviews with the leading ladies of Broadway, Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations with the Great Women of Musical Theater.
Book thumbnail image Oral History Review’s Short Form Initiative By Caitlin Tyler-Richards On behalf of the Oral History Review editorial staff, I am excited to publicly announce the journal’s latest project: the short form initiative. What is this? (I imagine everyone wondering aloud with feigned nonchalance.) Well, while the typical OHR article tends to fall between 8,000 to 12,000 words, we are now actively seeking substantially shorter submissions — approximately 3,000-4,000 words in length.
Book thumbnail image A short history of Polish Jewish tavernkeeping By Glenn Dynner By the middle of the nineteenth century, Polish Jewish tavernkeeping was banned. However, newly discovered archival sources demonstrate that Jewish tavernkeepers often evaded fees, bans, and expulsions by installing Christians as “fronts” for their taverns and carrying on business as usual, all with the knowledge and complicity of nobles and other local Christians.
Book thumbnail image A goddess’s long life By Amanda Podany As an undergraduate, long before I chose to become an ancient historian, I took a course on ancient art history. I remember sitting in the darkened auditorium in the first weeks of the term, looking at images of prehistoric art and scribbling down notes as the professor paced the stage and pointed out features of each slide. Then came an image that took my breath away: a white marble face of a woman, almost life-size (though blown up to about six feet tall on the screen).
Have you ever wondered how snakes work? Have you ever wondered how a snake slithers up a tree, captures prey far larger than the size of its jaw, or sheds all of its skin? Not many people give these reptiles a second thought.
Book thumbnail image What does opera have to do with football? More than you’d expect By Meghann Wilhoite Perhaps you saw that Dr. Pepper ad in which Ravens kicker Justin Tucker shows off his opera chops, singing in a quite lovely bass-baritone voice. Well, we saw it, and it got us thinking: have there been other opera-singing American football players?
Book thumbnail image Half the cost of a book Simon Eliot For most of the history of the printed book, from Gutenberg in 1455 onwards, the most expensive part of the material book was paper. Until the mid-nineteenth century, by which time paper was being made by steam-driven machines using esparto grass and wood pulp rather than traditional linen rag as raw material, paper commonly represented at least half the cost of a book’s production.
Book thumbnail image In the ‘mind’s eye’: two visual systems in one brain By Mel Goodale and David Milner Vision, more than any other sense, dominates our mental life. Our visual experience is so rich and detailed that we can scarcely distinguish that subjective world from the real thing. Even when we are just thinking about the world with our eyes closed, we can’t help imagining what it looks like.
Book thumbnail image Locating in a ‘Silicon Valley’ does not guarantee success for tech firms By Harald Bathelt and Peng-Fei Li In China and Canada, Shenzhen and Waterloo share the same nickname. Both are frequently viewed as their country’s “Silicon Valley”. Despite this shared name, there are fundamental differences between the two, which can be illustrated by the development of their leading firms. Let’s use the local weather of the two cities as a metaphor to describe the current situation.
Monthly gleanings for January 2014 By Anatoly Liberman Reference works: I received three questions. (1) Our correspondent would like to buy a good etymological dictionary of English. Which one can be recommended?
Book thumbnail image “Before he wrote it, he lived it”? By Nicholas Rankin The James Bond brand has awesome power. When Agent 007 helped Queen Elizabeth II to parachute into the opening of the 2012 London Olympics, the world gasped (and then laughed) at the witty conjunction of two instantly recognizable icons of Britishness.
Book thumbnail image A world in fear [infographic] For billions around the world, poverty translates not only into a struggle for food, shelter, health, and education. No, poverty exposes them to a vast spectrum of human rights abuses on a daily basis. Safety and freedom from fear do not exist for those living in underdeveloped areas. Ill-equipped judicial systems, under-trained and corrupt law enforcement agencies, and despotic housing complexes are just a few of the challenges the impoverished face.
Book thumbnail image Hal Gladfelder on The Beggar’s Opera and Polly With The Beggar’s Opera, Gay invented a new form, the ballad opera, and the daring mixture of caustic political satire, well-loved popular tunes, and a story of crime and betrayal set in the urban underworld of prostitutes and thieves was an overnight sensation.
Book thumbnail image A postcard from Pete Seeger By Ronald Cohen I am saddened to learn of the passing of American folk musician Pete Seeger and am not sure how to sum up his life in a short space. I am just thinking: the world weeps. So I’d like to share the postcard I just got from him. It sums up his life, always caring and studying and thinking.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Pete Seeger By Allan M. Winkler Pete Seeger, the father of American folk music, died on Monday evening at the age of 94. Wiry and spry, he still played his long-necked banjo with the same exuberance he’d shown for decades until the very end. Pilloried in the past, he was part of the celebratory concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the day before Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Book thumbnail image Why do polar bear cubs (and babies) crawl backwards? By Siu-Lan Tan This YouTube video of a three-month-old polar bear taking his first wobbly steps at the Toronto Zoo was viewed over 4.5 million times in the first four days of it being posted, and is sprouting all over the internet. Something I noticed immediately is that the baby polar bear is mostly crawling backwards. Many (human) infants do the same – crawling backwards for a few weeks before they crawl forwards.
Rethinking European data protection law By Dr Christopher Kuner On the occasion of international Data Protection Day on the 28th of January, I would like to explore how European data protection law can become more efficient and effective, and better tailored to the needs of individuals.
Book thumbnail image Composer Martin Butler in 10 questions We asked our composers a series of questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, challenges, and various other things on the theme of music and their careers. Each month we will bring you answers from an Oxford University Press composer, giving you an insight into their music and personalities.
Book thumbnail image Getting back in Blackstone’s game By Steve Sheppard In a recent post on Volokh Conspiracy, George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr writes that we have passed the “Golden Age of Treatises.” Considering an obituary of a law professor who had written a law treatise, Securities Regulation, Kerr observed how its author, Louis Loss, had been seen as giving shape and direction to a whole field of law.
Book thumbnail image International Holocaust Remembrance Day reading list To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present a reading list of books and articles that look at all aspects of Holocaust scholarship, including remarkable stories those who risked their lives to save Jews, post-Holocaust Jewish theological responses, and the challenges of recording oral histories.
Book thumbnail image Protecting children from hardcore adult content online By Julia H?rnle In the offline world the distribution of pornography has been strictly controlled. Age-verification and rating stems ensure that minors cannot access hardcore pornography. The British Board of Film Classification rates cinema and DVD content; content rated as R18 can only be shown in specialised cinemas with strict age-verification standards and certain pornographic content will not be rated for cinema or DVD distribution.
Book thumbnail image Commemorating the Holocaust in Europe By Rebecca Clifford Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Britain is certainly not the only country that observes this commemorative day; since the turn of the twenty-first century, countries across Europe have made 27 January an official day of remembrance of the Holocaust, and even supra-national entities such as the UN have official obligations to hold commemorative ceremonies on this day.
Book thumbnail image Long-term causes versus explanatory contexts of the English Civil War By Tim Harris Historians have been arguing over how far back to trace the origins of the civil war that broke out in England in 1642 ever since the war itself.
Book thumbnail image Robert Burns, digital whistle-blowing, and Scottish independence By Robert Crawford For the first time since 1707 (more than half a century before Burns was born), the population of Scotland is being given the chance to vote in a referendum that asks the question, ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ The referendum won’t be held until 18 September, but already people are arguing about which side Robert Burns would have been on.
Book thumbnail image Rebecca Lane on publishing By Rebecca Lane As an English graduate, publishing seemed a natural choice when I started my job hunt. However, I little thought I would one day be commissioning Oxford Companions and Oxford Paperback Reference books — two series that helped me immensely during my studies.
Book thumbnail image Paul Sax, MD on infectious diseases and journal publishing The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine Association (hivma) are launching a new peer-reviewed, open access journal, Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID), providing a global forum for the rapid publication of clinical, translational, and basic research findings.
Book thumbnail image It’s time to rethink unemployment policy By Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg Lifeline benefits for millions of jobless workers still hang in the balance. The current debate over whether to maintain benefits for long-term unemployment underscores limitations in unemployment insurance that have plagued this program throughout its history.
Book thumbnail image Anti-microbial resistance and changing the future By Phil Ambery It’s good to see the problem of anti-microbial resistance revisited by Professor Farrar — a timely reminder to us all of the potential dangers ahead. Memories are short, few will remember the days of the early 90s, when anti-HIV therapies were limited, as were the lives of patients with AIDS. Others will assume that the days of death by “consumption” have long since passed.
Book thumbnail image A crossroads for antisemitism? By Steven Beller In the conclusion to Antisemitism VSI (2007) I saw antisemitism as an almost completely spent force. Events since then give one pause for thought. Israel appears no more accepted as a “good citizen” by much of the international community, and Jews continue to be attacked for their supposed support of the “Jewish state”.
Book thumbnail image Were there armed conflicts in Mexico in 2012? By Stuart Casey-Maslen More than 9,500 people were killed in Mexico in 2012 as a result of armed violence, primarily as the result of conflict between the Sinaloa cartel, the Las Zetas gang, and the state. Tens of thousands of Mexican troops and police were involved in these conflicts, and more than 400 were killed during the year.
Book thumbnail image The Banks O’ Doon Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759 in Alloway, a small village near the river Doon just south of the town of Ayr, in the south-west of Scotland. As Scots and Scotophiles to world over prepare to celebrate Burns Night tomorrow, here’s an excerpt from the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of his Selected Poems and Songs, dedicated to that river near which he grew up.
Book thumbnail image Damp paper and difficult conditions By Simon Eliot Oxford University was a large mass-producer of books by the 1820s. Despite this, it was still occupying a very elegant but modest-sized neo-classical building in the centre of Oxford designed for it in 1713 by Nicholas Hawksmoor. By the mid-1820s this building was bursting at the seams.
Be Book Smart on National Reading Day By Anne Cunningham and Jamie Zibulsky If you want to help a child get ahead in school and in life, there is no better value you can impart to him or her than a love of reading. The skills that early and avid reading builds are the skills that older readers need in order to make sense of sophisticated and complex texts.
Book thumbnail image Bernstein’s disturbing vision By Jeremy Begbie On my office wall I keep two photos together in a single frame. They show two teachers who inspired me more than any others—my first theology teacher, James Torrance (1923–2003), and next to him the American conductor, composer and pianist, Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990).
Whoa, or “the road we rode” By Anatoly Liberman The world has solved its gravest problems, but a few minor ones have remained. Judging by the Internet, the spelling of whoa is among them. Some people clamor for woah, which is a perversion of whoa and hence “cool”; only bores, it appears, don’t understand it. I understand the rebels but wonder.
Book thumbnail image What Kerry and Obama could learn from FDR on the environment By Sheila D. Collins Recent reports that Secretary of State John Kerry is pushing to create an agency-wide focus on global warming with the goal of leading the effort to obtain a new global climate change treaty are welcome, but long overdue.
Book thumbnail image Five important facts about the Italian economy Though the Eurozone crisis left many European countries struggling in its wake, Italy suffered one of the most crippling hits to its economy. As Gianni Toniolo notes in his edited volume, The Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy Since Unification, between 2007-2009, there was a “loss of more than 5 percentage points in GDP per person, a decline comparable with that of the Italian Great depression of the early 1930s.”
Book thumbnail image What the ovaries of dinosaurs can tell us By Dr. Jingmai O’Connor Understanding the internal organs of extinct animals over 100 million years old used to belong in the realm of impossibility. However, during recent decades exceptional discoveries from all over the world have revealed elusive details such as fossilized feathers, skin, and muscle.
Diseases can stigmatize By Leonard A. Jason By Leonard A. Jason Names of diseases have never required scientific accuracy (e.g. malaria means bad air, lyme is a town, and ebola is a river). But some disease names are offensive, victim-blaming, and stigmatizing. Multiple sclerosis was once called hysterical paralysis when people believed that this disease was caused by stress linked with oedipal fixations.
Book thumbnail image Writing historical fiction in New Kingdom Egypt By Colleen Manassa The origins of Egyptian literary fiction can be found in the rollicking adventure tales and sober instructional texts of the early second millennium BCE. Tales such as the Story of Sinuhe, one of the classics of Egyptian literature, enjoyed a robust readership throughout the second millennium BCE as Egypt transitioned politically from the strongly centralized state of the Middle Kingdom…
Book thumbnail image Encore! Encore! Encore! Encore! By Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis How much repetition is too much repetition? How high would the number of plays of your favorite track on iTunes have to climb before you found it embarrassing? How many times could a song repeat the chorus before you stopped singing along and starting eyeing the radio suspiciously? And why does musical repetition often lead to bliss instead of exhaustion? How high would the number of plays of your favorite track on iTunes have to climb before you found it embarrassing? How many times could a song repeat the chorus before you stopped singing along and starting eyeing the radio suspiciously?
Book thumbnail image Black American political thought On Martin Luther King, Jr Day, we present an adapted extract from The Time is Always Now: Black Thought and the Transformation of US Democracy by Nick Bromell.
A brief and incomplete history of astronomy By Ayana Young and Georgia Mierswa NASA posted an update in the last week of December that the international space station would be visible from the New York City area—and therefore the Oxford New York office—on the night of 28 December 2013. While there were certainly a vast number of NASA super fans rushed outside that particularly clear night (this writer included), it’s difficult for recent generations to recall a time when space observations and achievements like this contributed significantly to the cultural zeitgeist.
Book thumbnail image Gus Van Harten on investor-state arbitration What is investor-state arbitration? And how does it impact upon people’s lives? Today, we present a Q&A with Gus Van Harten, author of Sovereign Choices and Sovereign Constraints, where he explains the fundamentals of investor-state arbitration and its place in international law.
Book thumbnail image “Law Matters” for money market funds By Viktoria Baklanova and Joseph Tanega In the name of financial stability, institutional and product regulations since the 2008 financial crisis have forced banks and non-bank banks (the so-called “shadow banks”) to create insatiable compliance regimes. But the juggernaut does not stop here.
Book thumbnail image How secure are you? The internet has come a long way since the first “electronic mail” was sent back in 1971… but with its rapid advancement come challenges to cybersecurity and the increasing threat of cyberterrorism, both on an individual level as well as on a larger global scale. In their new book, Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, experts P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman warn us that we may not be as secure online as we think we are.
Book thumbnail image Protecting yourself from the threat of cyberwarfare With over 30,000 media reports and academic studies on the dangers of cyberterrorism, surely the threat today could not be greater? But as P.W. Singer, author of the bestselling Wired for War and co-author of Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, points out — not a single person has died in a cyberterror attack.
Teaching oral history in the digital age By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Happy 2014, everyone! To kick off the new year, we have a podcast with managing editor Troy Reeves and 40.2 contributor Ken Woodard. Woodard is the author of “The Digital Revolution and Pre-Collegiate Oral History: Meditations on the Challenge of Teaching Oral History in the Digital Age.” In this podcast, Woodard talks about confronting the digital native stereotype, building the oral history program at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, and the importance of collaboration. Enjoy!
How meaningful are public attitudes towards stem cell research? By Nick Dragojlovic When scientists in Scotland announced the successful cloning of Dolly the Sheep in 1997, it triggered a frenzy of speculation in the global media about the possibility of human cloning, and elevated ethical questions to the fore of public discussions about biotechnology. This debate had far-reaching consequences, with citizens’ perceived moral objections to human cloning contributing to the imposition of restrictive policies on stem cell research that involves the cloning of embryos.
Fractal shapes and the natural world By Kenneth Falconer By Kenneth Falconer Fractal shapes, as visualizations of mathematical equations, are astounding to look at. But fractals look even more amazing in their natural element—and that happens to be in more places than you might think.
Book thumbnail image The real Llewyn Davis By David King Dunaway In the late 1950s, Dave Van Ronk was walking through Washington Square Park in New York’s Greenwich Village on a Sunday afternoon. This Trotskyist-leaning jazz enthusiast from Queens thought the crowds huddled around guitars and banjos “irredeemably square.”
Book thumbnail image What (if anything) is wrong with infant circumcision? By Eldar Sarajlic Public controversies over non-therapeutic infant circumcision have become frequent occurrences in our time. Recently, an Israeli religious court fined a mother of a one-year-old for refusing to circumcise her son. We all remember last year’s circumcision controversy in Germany.
Book thumbnail image Cybersecurity and cyberwar playlist After writing Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, P.W. Singer compiled a list filled with songs to help readers get into the vibe of the book, which explores the emerging security challenges that continue to arise in the new digital age.
Book thumbnail image Printing and the heat death of the universe By Simon Eliot In 1901 it was calculated that Oxford University Press took in more than twice the tonnage of material that it sent out, much of the difference being accounted for by coal and machinery. The efficiency of coal was not a new concern in the printing industry. In 1880, Edward Pickard Hall, then responsible for printing Bibles at the Press, had compiled a list of the ‘Evaporative power of Different Coals’ in a notebook and had concluded that ‘Nixon’s Steam Navigation’ at 13.45 was distinctly more efficient than ‘Wyekam’ coal at 11.42.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Daniel Stern By Colwyn Trevarthen Daniel N. Stern, a New Yorker, died in November 2012 after a long illness. He was a distinguished child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a world-famous developmental psychologist who transformed ideas of human nature in infancy, and he made wonderful contributions to his last days.
Book thumbnail image How to stop looking for a French Michelangelo By Phillip John Usher British comedian Eddie Izzard — known for his Francophilia and for performing standup in French and in France — once made a quip during a show in New York that at first seemed rather Franco-sceptic: why, he asked, do we talk about the “Renaissance” using a word of French origin when France itself had no such moment of Re-birth?
Front page news: the Oxford Etymologist harrows an international brothel By Anatoly Liberman Why brothel? We will begin with the customer. Broþel surfaced in Middle English and meant “a worthless person; prostitute.” The letters –el are a dead or, to use a technical term, unproductive suffix, but even in the days of its efflorescence it was rarely used to form so-called nomina agentis (agent nouns), the way –er is today added to read and work and yields reader and worker.
Book thumbnail image A voyage in letters [infographic] The 17th century saw great, heroic voyages of discovery — voyages into the unknown, voyages potentially into the abyss. The 18th century saw a slow transformation in travel — if for no other reason than the incremental improvement and progress in the methods of travel.
Book thumbnail image 2013: A Year in International Law Compiled by Katherine Marshall We asked a number of experts to share their most important international law moment or development with us.
Book thumbnail image Growing up in a recession By Paola Giuliano and Antonio Spilimbergo Economic crises have a traumatic effect on peoples’ psychology and attitudes, as superbly illustrated by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, both written in the middle of the Great Depression. The experience of the dramatic years during the Great Depression had a large impact on people and, ultimately, helped forge the social beliefs and attitudes that sustained a political system for many years.
Book thumbnail image My dearest Xandra… Hugh Trevor-Roper was born 100 years ago today on 15 January 1914. The following is a letter from Hugh Trevor-Roper to Xandra Howard-Johnston from One Hundred Letters From Hugh Trevor-Roper, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines and Adam Sisman.
Book thumbnail image The real unsolved problems of mathematics By Jason Rosenhouse With the arrival of the new year, you can be certain that the annual extravaganza known as the Joint Mathematics Meetings cannot be far behind. This year’s conference is taking place in Baltimore, Maryland. It is perhaps more accurate to say that it is a conference of conferences, since much of the business to be transacted will take place in smaller sessions devoted to this or that branch of mathematics
Book thumbnail image What is important about shininess in design? By Tom Fisher and Nicolas P. Maffei What attracts us to objects? Why does ‘bling’ catch our eye, albeit superficially? Why do we value the glow of patina? While all of our senses aid our first contact with material and form, arguably, it is the visual qualities of an object’s surface that first draws us in.
What the bilingual brain tells us about language learning By Arturo E. Hernandez One of the most common questions people ask revolves around when and how to learn a second language. One common view is that earlier is better. There is good evidence for this view. A number of studies have found that the earlier a person learns a second language, the better they perform on a number of tests.
Why we should dive deep into studying music history By Scott Huntington Why should people bother to study music history or, for that matter, go on to major in it? What could you possibly gain from studying music history? The answer to these questions might surprise you.
Book thumbnail image The legacy of the Superconducting Super Collider By Stephen Blyth Almost exactly twenty years ago, on 19 October 1993, the US House of Representatives voted 264 to 159 to reject further financing for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), the particle accelerator being built under Texas. $2bn had already been spent on the Collider, and its estimated total cost had grown from $4.4bn to $11bn; a budget saving of $9bn beckoned. Later that month President Clinton signed the bill officially terminating the project.
Book thumbnail image Nine facts you may not know about the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine By Kelly Hewinson To mark the publication of the ninth edition of the Oxford Handbook of Clinical Medicine (OHCM), here are nine facts you may not know about the cheese and onion.
Book thumbnail image The EU and ‘anti anti-fascism’ By Dan Stone On 1 January 2014 Latvia joined the Eurozone and Romanians and Bulgarians became free to travel and settle in most of the European Union. Twenty years ago these statements would have sounded like fantasy; the EU has reshaped Europe so that the divisions of the Cold War now seem like a bad dream. Yet the sense of wonder that such facts engender is tempered by the realisation that most people in Latvia do not want to join the euro and that most Europeans – at least, if their political leaders and tabloid press are to be believed – do not support the free movement of peoples. What has happened to make the aspirations of the EEC’s founding fathers like Monnet, Schuman and Spinelli seem so unattractive to today’s Europeans?
Book thumbnail image Escape Plans: Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave By Daniel Donaghy During the movie awards season, Steve McQueen’s new film 12 Years a Slave will inspire discussions about its realistic depiction of slavery’s atrocities (Henry Louis Gates Jr. has already called it, “most certainly one of the most vivid and authentic portrayals of slavery ever captured in a feature film.”) and the points at which the film most clearly reflects and departs from Solomon Northup’s original narrative.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Ariel Sharon By Gil Troy Ariel Sharon, Israel’s former prime minister who died recently at 85, after being in a vegetative state for eight years, helped save Israel at least twice. The first time, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, won him worldwide acclaim. The second time, against Yasir Arafat’s terror war three decades later, earned him broad denunciations. That shift reflects the change in tactics in the decades-long war against Israel’s existence, and the resulting plunge in Israel’s popularity.
Book thumbnail image Catching up with Stuart Roberts In an effort to get to know our Oxford University Press staff better, we are featuring Q&A’s filled out by our staff in different offices. Read on for our Q&A with Stuart Roberts, editorial assistant for our religion and theology Academic/Trade books in New York.
Book thumbnail image Words of 2013 round-up By Alice Northover Word of the Year season in the English-speaking world has come to a close. Oxford Dictionaries kicked off the annual reflection (and often infuriation) regarding words that were particularly relevant this past year. Here’s a brief round-up of the various words singled out by dictionaries, linguists, and enthusiasts.
Book thumbnail image Volume, variety, and online scholarly publishing By John Louth One of the questions we are asked most frequently as university press editors is whether and how our work has changed to accommodate digital publishing. That can be taken to refer to a wide range of changes, but if we mean the digital publication of scholarly monographs, the answer, thankfully, is “not much”.
Book thumbnail image The current crisis in American legal education By G. Edward White There has been a good deal of recent commentary about a perceived “crisis” in American legal education. A combination of rising tuition rates for law schools and a decline in the number of entry-level jobs in the legal profession has resulted in reduced numbers of applicants to law schools, and a corresponding reduction in entering law school class sizes.
Book thumbnail image Disquiet at the Mark Duggan inquest jury’s conclusion By P.A.J. Waddington Many of those who have commented on the Mark Duggan inquest jury verdict have expressed disquiet at the jury’s conclusion that whilst the killing by police officers was lawful, Duggan was not holding the gun at the time he was shot. This is not as bizarre as it might first appear.
Book thumbnail image Landfill Harmonic: lessons in improvisation By Siu-Lan Tan On the first day of class in my ‘Psychology of Music’ course, I often ask students to create their own musical instruments. The catch is… they have to make them out of whatever they happen to have in their backpacks and pockets that day!
Book thumbnail image What comes after do-re-mi? Ten musicals that could be adapted for TV By Matthew Kennedy The 5 December 2013 live broadcast of The Sound of Music became a ratings giant despite withering reviews from armchair critics everywhere. “Hate watchers” Twittered their derision with relish, while NBC laughed all the way to the bank. What was the draw?
Book thumbnail image Are we there yet? By Elizabeth Knowles Dictionary projects can famously, and sometimes fatally, overrun. In the nineteenth century especially, dictionaries for the more recondite foreign languages of past and present (from Coptic to Sanskrit) were compiled by independent scholars, enthusiasts who were ready to dedicate their lives to a particular project.
Book thumbnail image ‘Soft power’ and the politics of influence By David Ellwood As the use of military force to resolve disputes between nations becomes less plausible in most regions of the world, the struggle for influence intensifies.
The color gray in full bloom By Anatoly Liberman At the end of the nineteenth century, while working on the issue of the OED (then known as NED: New English Dictionary) that was to feature the word gray, James A. H. Murray sent letters to various people, asking their opinion about the differences between the variants gray and grey.
The legacy of the War on Poverty, 50 years later By Michael B. Katz On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government’s War on Poverty during his State of the Union address. Seven months later, Congress passed the Economic Opportunity Act. Time has not been kind to its reputation.
Book thumbnail image Launching a war on poverty By Michael L. Gillette Fifty years ago on the eighth of January, President Lyndon Johnson declared unconditional war on poverty. In his first State of the Union Address, LBJ outlined his offensive, a sweeping domestic agenda that would become known as the Great Society: Medicare, federal aid to education, an expanded food stamp program, extended minimum wage coverage…
Book thumbnail image In case you missed it … six notable economic stories from 2013 By Richard S. Grossman 2013 was an eventful year from the perspective of economics. The US government was shut down for 16 days as ideologically-driven Republicans held the budget hostage in an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Japan’s new nationalistic government embarked on a bold, and so far largely successful attempt to revive the country’s anemic economy.
Book thumbnail image Down and out in Bloemfontein By Matthew Flinders My New Year message is simple: we can change the world in 2014 but only if we recognise that we have an economy based upon exclusion and inequality. Some people are ‘down and out’ in Bloemfontein or Rio de Janeiro, or even London, because they were born into a system that entrenched certain inequalities that would shape their life chances. They are not animals in a zoo to be gawped at or mimicked.
Book thumbnail image Scheduling an Eastern Orthodox Christmas By D. Oliver Herbel When most of us think of religious discussions surrounding Christmas, we likely think of debates about the “real meaning,” warnings against materialism, or to what extent the holiday is “pagan.” For Orthodox Christians, the question of when to celebrate Christmas is also a hot topic. This is especially the case in America.
AHA 2014 in review By Elyse Turr Oxford had a great time at American Historical Association Annual Meeting this past weekend — even the storm couldn’t slow us down! We had an especially wonderful time meeting so many of our authors. Take a look at our slideshow to see who stopped by the booth.
Book thumbnail image 13 things you need to know about the 27 Club As of 1 January 2014, 27 years have passed since the first edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music was published. In those 27 years, The Beatles sold 2 billion albums, Michael Jackson died, and Simon Cowell had the excellent foresight to create One Direction.
Book thumbnail image The Epiphany: the original celebration of Christ’s coming into the world By Philip Pfatteicher Some would say the Church has lost the battle over Christmas. Continued insistence that we “put Christ back into Christmas” is futile, and instead of wasting time on that campaign it would be much more useful to emphasize the original celebration of Christ’s coming into the world: the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6th.
Book thumbnail image The Sister Wives make the case for abolishing civil marriage By Edward Zelinsky Judge Clark Waddoups of the US District Court for the District of Utah has declared unconstitutional parts of Utah’s statute outlawing polygamy. Utah’s statute was challenged in Judge Waddoups’ courtroom by the Brown family of the television show Sister Wives. Days later, Judge Robert J. Shelby, also of the US District Court for the District of Utah, declared unconstitutional Utah’s Amendment 3 which restricts Utah’s definition of marriage to a man and a woman.
Book thumbnail image A New Year’s Resolution: to think hard about environmental issues By Liz Fisher I sit here writing this on New Year’s Day. Looking back at 2013 it has been a year in which there has been a growing disjunction between academic discourse and political discourse over environmental issues. On the one hand academic and scholarly discourses have become more sophisticated.
Book thumbnail image Catch statistics are fishy By Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak Despite their wide usage, global fisheries catch data compiled by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are questionable.
Book thumbnail image What can we learn from economic policy disasters? Is it morbid or therapeutic to analyze the economic catastrophes of the past? What critical strategies can be imported from the realms of medicine and military history to the study of the current state of the economy? Richard Grossman, author of Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn From Them, skillfully dissects the cadavers of economic policies.
Book thumbnail image Celebrate National Trivia Day with Oxford trivia Today, Saturday the 4th of January, is National Trivia Day. We may employ a few competitive pub quiz champs in our offices, so we gathered together a few trivia questions from our resources to play a game. Why not bring these puzzlers to your next Trivia Night and let us know how it goes?
Book thumbnail image Public debt, GDP growth, and austerity: why Reinhart and Rogoff are wrong By Robert Pollin In 2010, the Harvard University economics professors Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff published a paper in the American Economic Review, “Growth in a Time of Debt,” that spoke to the world’s biggest policy question: should we cut public spending to control the deficit or use the state to rekindle economic growth?
Book thumbnail image The many meanings of the Haitian declaration of independence By Philippe R. Girard Two hundred and ten years ago, on 1 January 1804, Haiti formally declared its independence from France at the end of a bitter war against forces sent by Napoléon Bonaparte. This was only the second time, after the United States in 1776, that an American colony had declared independence, so the event called for pomp and circumstance.
Book thumbnail image Everybody has a story: the role of storytelling in therapy By Johanna Slivinske When was the last time you told or heard a good story? Was it happy, sad, or funny? Was it meaningful? What message did the story convey? People have been telling stories throughout history. They tell stories to teach lessons, to share messages, and to motivate others.
Globalization: Q&A with Manfred Steger How has globalization changed in the last ten years? We asked Manfred Steger, author of Globalization: A Very Short Introduction, how he felt it has been affected by world events in the decade since the first edition of his Very Short Introduction was published.
Book thumbnail image Eponymous Instrument Makers By Meghann Wilhoite The 6th of November is Saxophone Day, a.k.a. the birthday of Adolphe Sax, which inspired us to think about instruments that take their name in some way from their inventors (sidenote: for the correct use of eponymous see this informative diatribe in the New York Times).
Book thumbnail image What was inside the first Canadian branch building? By Thorin Tritter I wrote before about the picture that serves as the cover for the chapter on Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in Volume 3 of the newly published History of Oxford University Press. I personally enjoy looking at this type of picture and trying to imagine what went on inside.
Book thumbnail image I spy, you spy By Kenneth R. Johnson Jonathan Freedland wonders, “Why Surveillance Doesn’t Faze Britain”? Comparing his fellow British subjects to Americans, he finds them “curiously complacent” about their civil liberties when it comes to the massive invasions of privacy implied by Edward Snowden’s revelations of the U.S. National Security Agency’s “big data” scoops of information from digital communication sources.
Gray matter, part 3, or, going from dogs to cats and ghosts By Anatoly Liberman The shades of gray multiply (as promised in December 2013). Now that we know that greyhounds are not gray, we have to look at our other character, grimalkin. What bothers me is not so much the cat’s color or the witch’s disposition as the unsatisfactory state of etymology.
Book thumbnail image What to do at ASSA 2014 >By Carolyn Napolitano The 2014 Allied Social Science Associations meeting will be held from 3-5 January at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. More than 50 associations nationwide will come together for three days of engaging lectures, thought-provoking sessions, and networking with some of the top figures in the field.
Book thumbnail image Penal reform in the UK Martin Partington talks to Frances Crook, Chief Executive of the Howard League. Does penal policy in the UK operate in a more ‘punitive’ way than other European countries (including the former Eastern-bloc)? Frances makes a passionate defence of the current probation service and deplores the current Government’s approach to reform of the service.
December 2013 (124))
Dialect and identity: Pittsburghese goes to the opera By Barbara Johnstone On a Sunday afternoon in November I am at the Benedum Center with hundreds of fellow Pittsburghers watching a performance of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. It’s the second act, and Papageno the bird-man has just found his true love. The English super-titles help us decipher what he is saying as he starts to exit the stage.
Book thumbnail image Extreme makeover: England’s new defamation law By Matthew Collins Britain’s complicated and claimant-friendly defamation laws, honed in important respects in the Star Chamber, have rightly attracted worldwide criticism. In 2008, the New York State legislature condemned their deployment against American nationals as ‘libel terrorism’. In 2010, the US Congress passed a law with the express purpose of preventing British defamation judgments from being recognized and enforced in the land of the First Amendment.
Book thumbnail image A New Year’s Eve playlist Compiled by Taylor Coe After reflecting on music that they were thankful for a few weeks ago, we have now asked Oxford University Press staffers to share music that reminds them of the New Year.
Book thumbnail image Top 10 OUPblog posts of 2013 by the numbers By Alice Northover What have you, the OUPblog reader, been looking for this year? Let’s find out with our top ten posts published this year, according the pageviews, in descending order.
Book thumbnail image Your Place of the Year As we wrap up the Oxford Atlas Place of the Year project for 2013, we thought we’d open the floor for some personal Places of the Year — that is, locations which have made a significant impact in our individual lives in 2013. Below are year-end picks from some OUP USA staffers.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for AALS 2014 By Sinead O’Connor As 2013 draws to a close, we take the time to ask ourselves, “What does the coming year hold?” At this year’s Annual Meeting, the Association of American Law Schools asks attendees a similar question, “What does the future hold for legal education?”
Book thumbnail image Is science inconsistent? By Peter Vickers An important part of life is judging when to be sceptical about scientific claims, and when to trust in those claims and take actions accordingly. Often this comes down to the task of weighing up evidence. But we might think that when the science in question is internally inconsistent, or self-contradictory, we have an easy decision.
Book thumbnail image A year of reading with OUP authors We surveyed a few of Oxford University Press’s authors to see what they thought were the best books of 2013…
Book thumbnail image Top OUPblog posts of 2013: Editor’s picks By Alice Northover As editor of the OUPblog, I’m probably one of only a handful who read everything we publish over the course of the year. Even those posts which are coded and edited by our Deputy Editors I carefully read through in the hopes of catching any errors (some always make it through). So it’s wonderful to reflect on the amazing work that our authors, editors, and staff have created in 2013. Without further ado, here are a few of my favorites from the past year…
Book thumbnail image Ellie Collins’ top books of 2013 By Ellie Collins Thomas Pynchon may have a reputation for writing dense and difficult novels, but Bleeding Edge is something of a page-turner: a thought-provoking thriller. The novel follows Maxine Tarnow, a smart-talking, rogue fraud investigator with a pistol in her purse, and is set somewhere between New York in 2001, leading up to the events of 9/11, and the Deep Web – the dark, buried underworld of the internet, teeming with hackers, code-writers, criminals, and lost souls. Maxine’s investigations lead her into a series of fraught and disorienting encounters with a billionaire CEO, secret agents, drug-dealers, a man with a supernatural sense of smell, and a foot fetishist (amongst others), against a backdrop of weird parties, karaoke joints, a haunted hotel, an offshore waste disposal depot with its ‘luminous canyon walls of garbage’, and the unnerving virtual reality of DeepArcher – an online world, or program. Bleeding Edge melds strange coincidence, conspiracy, and the obtusely unexplained into a brilliant and far-reaching narrative that has stayed with me long after reading.
Book thumbnail image A year of reading with the OUP Publicity team ‘Tis the season for gift guides and round-ups, so our US Publicity team took a quick break from pitching the OUP front list to reflect on their year in reading…
Book thumbnail image Reflections on a year in OUP New York By Chris Reid One year. It sounds like a long time, but it feels so much less. Just over a year ago, during the buzz of the Olympics, I packed my bags to move from traditional Oxford to the metropolis that is New York.
Book thumbnail image Benazir Bhutto’s mixed legacy By T.V. Paul Benazir Bhutto, the daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, had been prime minister of Pakistan twice: first in December 1988, and a second time in October 1993 after the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) managed to win two elections under her leadership. Both times the presidents (heads of state) dismissed Bhutto before she completed her full term.
Book thumbnail image Buddhism and biology: a not-so-odd couple By David P. Barash Science and religion don’t generally get along very well, from the Catholic Church’s denunciation of the heliocentric solar system to vigorous denials — mostly from fundamentalist Protestantism this time — of evolution by natural selection.
Book thumbnail image Let them eat theorems! By Kenneth Falconer “This is not maths – maths is about doing calculations, not proving theorems!” So wrote a disaffected student at the end of my recent pure maths lecture course. Theorems, along with their proofs, have gotten a bad name.
Book thumbnail image The Erie Canal: a tour By Kate Pais Before Bill and Hilary, DeWitt Clinton was one of the most famous Clintons that New York could lay claim to. His legacy, mocked at the time as “DeWitt’s ditch”, is the famous Erie Canal. Connecting New York City to the Great Lakes through Lake Erie, this notable trade route cost seven million dollars and cut the expense of shipping to the Midwest significantly.
Exploring the seven principles of Kwanzaa: a playlist By Meghann Wilhoite and Tim Allen Beginning the 26th of December, a globe-spanning group of millions of people of African descent will celebrate Kwanzaa, the seven-day festival of communitarian values created by scholar Maulana Karenga in 1966. The name of the festival is adapted from a Swahili phrase that refers to “the first fruits,” and is meant to recall ancient African harvest celebrations.
Book thumbnail image Looking for clues about OUP Canada in an early photograph By Thorin Tritter I had the pleasure of writing the chapter about Oxford University Press’s early operations in Canada, Australia and New Zealand for volume three of the new History of Oxford University Press. A photo editor added an early photograph of the first home to the Canadian branch as the cover image for my chapter. It is a photograph I have seen before, but to be honest, I had previously not looked at it very closely.
Book thumbnail image “This strange fête”, an extract from The Lost Domain Alain-Fournier’s lyrical novel, The Lost Domain, captures the painful transition from adolescence to adulthood without sentimentality, and with heart-wrenching yearning. Romantic and fantastical, it is the story’s ultimate truthfulness about human experience that has captivated readers for a hundred years. The following is an extract from chapter 15 and describes the moment when Meaulnes sees Yvonne de Galais for the first time.
Monthly gleanings for December 2013 By Anatoly Liberman At the end of December people are overwhelmed by calendar feelings: one more year has merged with history, and its successor promises new joys and woes (but thinking of future woes is bad taste). I usually keep multifarious scraps and cuttings to dispose of on the last Wednesday of the year: insoluble questions come and never go away.
Oxford University Press holiday trimmings around the globe Season’s Greetings from Oxford University Press! Here’s some holiday decorations from our different offices around the world, including a great book ‘Christmas tree’ from our Australian colleagues, some ‘green’ decorations in the South Africa branch (all hand made!), and some festive trimmings in Oxford and New York.
Book thumbnail image Christmas quotations from Oxford World’s Classics Some festive quotations courtesy of Oxford World’s Classics
Book thumbnail image Speaking of India… By S. Subramanian In one way or another, the question ‘How is India Doing?’ has been one of great interest down the decades, and not only from the mid-1980s when Amartya Sen wrote an article, with that title, in the New York Review of Books.
Book thumbnail image Translation and subjectivity: the classical model by Josephine Balmer At a British Centre for Literary Translation Seminar held jointly with Northampton Library Services some years ago, one of the participating librarians recounted his first encounter with the vagaries of translation; having fallen in love with a black Penguin version of Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot as a student, he had eagerly purchased a new version when it had recently been republished. But dipping in to the book, he quickly became perplexed.
Book thumbnail image Bill Bratton on both coasts Inspired by a chapter on policing by leading criminologists Jeffrey Fagan (Columbia University) and John McDonald (University of Pennsylvania), the editors of the recently published volume New York and Los Angeles: The Uncertain Future, David Halle and Andrew A. Beveridge, along with Sydney Beveridge, take a closer look at the consequences of the recent New York mayoral race.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Music in 2013: A look back Compiled by Victoria Davis It’s been a busy year at OUP Music! Before 2013 comes to a close, we thought we would take a look back at the highlights of another year gone by.
Book thumbnail image Imagination and reason By Molly Andrews “By reason and logic we die hourly, by imagination we live!” wrote W.B. Yeats, thus resurrecting an age-old dichotomy between our ability to make sense of the world around us and our ability to see beyond what meets the eye. A belief in this dualism informs much thinking on imagination, which is often pitted against what is real. Jean Paul Sartre had a different way of seeing things.
Book thumbnail image Earth’s forgotten places By Eun Yeom Since we have spent the last several months examining the places which have made the biggest impact in recent years, we decided to take a look at some of the locations on Earth which humans have left behind.
Book thumbnail image Best international law books of 2013 We invited our authors and editors to share their picks for the best books in international law in 2013. Here are their choices.
Book thumbnail image Google Books is fair use By Maurizio Borghi and Stavroula Karapapa After almost a decade of litigation, on 14 November the Southern District Court of New York has ruled on the class action Authors Guild v Google. Judge Chin, who had rejected in March 2011 the agreement proposing to settle the case, found that the activities carried out in the context of the Google Books project do not infringe copyright.
Book thumbnail image AHA 2014: You’ve been to Washington before, but… The American Historical Association’s 128th Annual Meeting is being held in Washington, D.C., 2-5 January 2014. For those of you attending, we’ve gathered advice about what to see and do in the Capital from author and DC resident Don Ritchie as well as members of Oxford University Press staff. And be sure to stop by Oxford’s booth #901-907.
Book thumbnail image A Nelson Mandela reading list Here we celebrate the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. From his early days as an activist, to his trial and imprisonment, to his presidency, this reading list covers all aspects of his life, and looks beyond the work he did to see how he influenced South Africa and the world.
The speciousness of “fetal pain” What is “fetal personhood”? What role does poverty and welfare policy play in shaping reproductive rights? Questions about reproductive rights are just as complex–and controversial–as they were in the Roe v. Wade-era. The following is adapted from Rickie Solinger’s Reproductive Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know
Q&A with Claire Payton on Haiti, spirituality, and oral history By Caitlin Tyler-Richards and Claire Payton About a month ago, when we celebrated the release of the Oral History Review Volume 40.2, we mentioned that one of the goals in putting together the issue was to expand the journal’s geographical scope. Towards that end, we were excited to publish Claire Payton’s “Vodou and Protestantism, Faith and Survival: The Contest over Spiritual Meaning of the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti.” The following, is an interview with the author.
Book thumbnail image From radio to YouTube By Cynthia B. Meyers AT&T has produced a teen reality program, @summerbreak—seen not on TV but on social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Tumblr. General Electric is sponsoring articles in the magazine The Economist. And Pepsico has a blog site, Green- Label, devoted to skateboarding, rap music, and other interests of “millennial males.”
Book thumbnail image The new lipid guidelines and an age-old principle By Michael Hochman, MD, MPH With the issuing of its updated report on the management of lipids, the American Heart Association (AHA) hoped to provide a clear message to health care providers and consumers about how to use lipid-lowering medications. Instead, the new recommendations have been mired in controversy due to concerns about the validity of the data used in the report.
Book thumbnail image A year in Very Short Introductions: 2013 By Chloe Foster 2013 has been a busy year for the Very Short Introductions (VSIs). Keeping our authors busy with weekly VSI blog posts is not the only thing we’ve been up to. Here’s a reminder of just some of the highlights from our VSI year.
Book thumbnail image Reading the tea leaves: a Q&A with Costas Panagopoulos By R. Michael Alvarez In a matter of months, federal elections in the United States will enter full-swing. I recently asked Costas Panagopoulos, a professor at Fordham University and an expert on political campaigns, a few questions about the important elections recently conducted in the United States and what we might learn from those recent campaigns.
Book thumbnail image Oxford’s top 10 carols of 2013 Christmas is big at Oxford University Press and carol-related tasks continue virtually all year. We publish most of the festive music that the world knows and loves, and our editors started working on carols for this Christmas in the summer of 2012. We’re all carolled out every year by August! October, November, and December are particularly frantic for our Music Hire Library.
Book thumbnail image Robert Morison’s Plantarum historiae universalis Oxoniensis By Scott Mandelbrote On 9 November 1683, Robert Morison was knocked down by a coach in the Strand. He died the following day. At the time, Morison was both botanist to King Charles II and Professor of Botany in the University of Oxford, where he lectured regularly in the Botanic Garden.
Book thumbnail image Brave new world of foundations By Johanna Niegel By Johanna Niegel Private foundations are attracting a lot of attention as far as international asset protection and estate planning are concerned.
Gray matter, part 2, or, going to the dogs again By Anatoly Liberman I am returning to greyhound, a word whose origin has been discussed with rare dedication and relatively meager results. The component –hound is the generic word for “dog” everywhere in Germanic, except English. I am aware of only one attempt to identify –hound with hunter (so in in the 1688 dictionary by Rúnolfur Jónsson).
Book thumbnail image The Thirteenth Amendment By Richard Striner On 18 December 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, thus ending the epochal struggle to kill American slavery. But the long struggle to achieve full equality regardless of race was just beginning. When Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, he knew very well that it might eventually be overturned in court as unconstitutional.
Book thumbnail image Ten things to understand about the Molly Maguires By Kevin Kenny On this day 135 years ago, John Kehoe was hanged. Convicted in 1877 of murdering a Pennsylvania mine boss 15 years earlier, he was almost certainly innocent of that crime. But Kehoe also stood accused of being the mastermind in a nefarious secret society called the Molly Maguires.
Book thumbnail image Performance pay and ethnic earnings By Colin P. Green, John S. Heywood, and Nikolaos Theodoropoulos The British labour market shares two important trends with that in the US. Wage inequality has increased dramatically since the 1980s and there has been increased use of performance pay, earnings that vary with worker job performance.
Book thumbnail image The migration-displacement nexus By Khalid Koser International Migrants Day is intended to celebrate the enormous contribution that migrants make to economic growth and development, social innovation, and cultural diversity, worldwide. It also reminds us of the importance of protecting the human rights of migrants.
The G20: policies, politics, and power By Mike Berry Five years after the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the world waits for recovery. Last time it took a world war and forty million deaths to achieve. In 2008, a domino — Lehman Brothers — fell over, sparking a financial crisis that quickly threatened to bring the developed economies of the world crashing down. “This sucker could go down” was President George W. Bush’s pithy summary.
Book thumbnail image I’m dreaming of an OSEO Christmas By Daniel Parker Snow is falling and your bulging stocking is being hung up above a roaring log fire. The turkey is burning in the oven as you eat your body weight in novelty chocolate. And now your weird, slightly sinister Uncle Frank is coming towards you brandishing mistletoe. This can mean only one thing. In the wise (and slightly altered) words of Noddy Holder: It’s OSEO Christmas!
Wrap contracts: the online scourge Nancy S. Kim Can you enter into a contract without knowing it? According to many judges, the answer is yes. “Wrap contracts” are contracts that can be entered into by clicking on a link or on an “accept” icon and they govern nearly all online activity. Most of us enter into them several times a day and few of us think twice about it.
Book thumbnail image Sir John Tavener, saintly and controversial composer By Emma Greenstein The recent death of renowned British composer Sir John Tavener (1944-2013) precipitated mourning and reflection on an international scale. By the time of his death, the visionary composer had received numerous honors, including the 2003 Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition, the 2005 Ivor Novello Classical Music Award, and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II.
Book thumbnail image Non-belief as a moral obligation By Michael Ruse In 1981, a professor from a small university in Canada, I found myself headed south to the state of Arkansas, to appear as an expert witness for the American Civil Liberties Union, in its attack on a new law that mandated the “balanced treatment” of the teaching of evolution and something known as “Creation Science” (aka Genesis read literally) in the science classrooms of that state.
Book thumbnail image Around the world in eighty mouse clicks Are you a geography buff? Are the facts and figures of the world your forte? Make the new year’s resolution to learn something new about the world we live in. We’ve have drawn up a quiz culled from the wealth of geographic knowledge contained within the borders of the beautiful Atlas of the World. Broaden the horizons of your global perspective, levitate above the labyrinthine veins of London, or study the wake of a sailboat as it cuts through the deep, cerulean waters off the coast of Sydney. But, first, put your knowledge to the test below.
Book thumbnail image International Law at Oxford in 2013 By Lizzie Shannon-Little Throughout 2013 the dimensions and reach of international law have continued to change at a fast pace, and Oxford University Press have been honoured to play a role in some of its scholarly highlights. Like the discipline, this has been an exciting year for our team at OUP. We’ve taken a step back to review all that has unfolded this year below.
Book thumbnail image Three reasons why we’re drawn to faces in film By Siu-Lan Tan If we were to measure looking time (for instance, with an eye-tracking device), we would probably find that most people would scan all the pictures, but focus mostly on the frames with the faces. Even though the exterior shots and full-figure frames are more complex and colorful, our gaze would tend to fix on the faces.
Book thumbnail image Orwell in America By Robert Colls The man wants to admit his rebellious thoughts and reveal the deception but knows that by doing so he is going to make the rest of his life difficult, not to say short, and there will be no going back. He does it all the same. He has no accomplices, except his girlfriend. The world has yet to decide what will happen to him. I am of course talking about Edward Snowden.
Book thumbnail image Our kids are safer than you might think By Eric Rossen PhD, NCSP “Our society has run amok.” ; “What is happening in our schools?” ; “You aren’t safe anywhere these days.” Whether through conversation with my family, friends at dinner, or concerned parents talking to me as a mental health professional, I have heard these statements with growing frequency.
Book thumbnail image An interview with Dan W. Clanton, Jr. Dan W. Clanton, Jr., a Professor of Religious Studies at Doane College, has devoted much of his academic career to the intersection of religion and culture, lecturing and publishing on topics as diverse as the depictions of Hanukkah on the television show South Park and the overlap between the book of Jonah and the comic book Jonah Hex.
Book thumbnail image Thinking of applying to medical school? By Kelly Hewinson Applying for medical school becomes harder every year. Many would-be doctors are discouraged by mounting competition for places, achieving A* grades, spiraling student fees, and negative headlines about the NHS.
Scenes from The Iliad in ancient art By Barry B. Powell Given its central role in Ancient Greek culture, various poignant moments in Homer’s The Iliad can be found on the drinking cups, water jars, mixing bowls, vases, plates, jugs, friezes, mosaics, and frescoes of ancient art. Each depiction dramatizes an event in the epic poem in a different way (sometimes inaccurately).
Book thumbnail image An uncertain future: Human, plant, and animal survival in the Arctic By R.M.M. Crawford The Arctic is changing. How it will change is uncertain. In contemplating the future in the far north a distinction has to be made between the maritime and the terrestrial Arctic. The Arctic Ocean is a relatively monotonous region, whether it be frozen or unfrozen.
Book thumbnail image Who started the Reichstag Fire? In February 1933, upon the ashes of the Reichstag, Adolf Hitler swiftly consolidated the political power of the Nazi Party. He wielded the suspect, 23-year-old Marinus van der Lubbe, a Dutch Communist stonemason, as irrefutable evidence for an impending subversive uprising. By appearing to legitimize the sociopolitical paranoia of the Nazi party, the Reichstag fire fueled […]
Book thumbnail image Catching up with Sarah Brett By Katherine Stileman While we regularly bring you the thoughts and insights of Oxford University Press (OUP) authors and editors, we rarely reveal the people who work behind the scenes. I sat down with Oxford University Press Digital Development Editor, Sarah Brett, to find out more about her history with OUP.
Book thumbnail image Mapping disease: the development of a multidisciplinary field By Andrew Cliff and Matthew Smallman-Raynor For over two centuries, the landscape that lies on the marchland of two very ancient subjects – geography and medicine – has been explored from several directions.
Book thumbnail image Going on retreat to Middle-earth By Brian Attebery When I first read The Lord of the Rings, I came away feeling I had just spent a week in another world. I liked the characters, loved the epic scale, and was moved by the story of endurance and sacrifice, but it was the place that really got me. I wanted to go back. As soon as possible.
Logic and Buddhist metaphysics By Graham Priest Buddhist metaphysics and modern symbolic logic might seem strange bedfellows. Indeed they are. The thinkers who developed the systems of Buddhist metaphysics knew nothing of modern logic; and the logicians who developed the panoply of techniques which are modern logic knew nothing–for the most part–of Buddhism.
Book thumbnail image One drug for all to cure Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s? By Murat Emre Recently researchers from the MRC Toxicology Unit based at the University Of Leicester provided “food for hope”: Moreno et al reported in Science Translational Medicine, that an oral treatment targeting the “unfolded protein response” prevented neurodegeneration and clinical disease in an animal model, in “prion-infected mice”, a model of prion diseases which occur also in humans
Book thumbnail image Sounds of justice: black female entertainers of the Civil Rights era By Ruth Feldstein They spoke to listeners across generations from the early 1940s through the 1980s. They were influential women who faced tremendous risks both personally and professionally. They sang and performed for gender equality and racial liberation. They had names such as Lena Horne, Nina Simone, and Gladys Knight. They were the most powerful black female entertainers of the Civil Rights era.
Book thumbnail image ‘Paul Pry’ at midnight By Simon Eliot Until the 1840s time in Oxford, and therefore at the University Press, was five minutes behind that of London. With no uniform national time until the coming of the railways and the telegraph, the sealed clocks carried by mail coaches would have to be adjusted to Oxford or London time as they were shuttled between the two cities.
Book thumbnail image Kenya’s government 50 years after independence By Justin Willis Like many large and diverse countries, Kenya has long debated the value of introducing a form of devolved government. That debate seems to have come full circle. The majimbo, ‘regional’, constitution of 1963 was intended to devolve authority away from the centre. It lasted less than a year.
Book thumbnail image Why is pain in children ignored? By Patrick McGrath It is hard to believe that in the mid 1980s it was standard care, even in many academic health centres, for infants to have open heart surgery with no anaesthesia but just a drug to keep the infant still.
Book thumbnail image Nelson Mandela’s leadership: born or made? By Julian Barling Retrospectively understanding the leadership of anyone who has achieved iconic status is made difficult because we ascribe to them our own needs, dreams and fears. When we try and understand the leadership of Nelson Mandela, it’s natural to think that leadership must be something you are born to do. As but one example, organizational scholar Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed that “There are very few people in the world who could have done what he did.
Book thumbnail image Who is Pope Francis? By Alyssa Bender Pope Francis hasn’t been the Pope for even a year, and he has been selected as Time magazine’s Person of the Year. How well do you know this news-making Pope? Take our quiz to test your knowledge.
Book thumbnail image Holiday party conversation starters from OUP The time for holiday dinner parties is approaching. Bring more than a smile and a sweater to your next soiree. Offer your family and friends the most powerful libation: knowledge. Here are some gems that you can drop to keep the conversation sparkling.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford World’s Classics American literature reading list There’s something about the frenzied vigor of snowflakes, shopping outings, and journeys back home, that make us want to take a break and curl up with a good book. The classics are always a perfect pick for a good read during the holiday season. We compiled some of the best books from American literature to read when you’re looking to escape into a story. Which is your favorite?
Gray matter, or many more shades of grey/gray, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman One day the great god Thor was traveling and found himself in a remote kingdom whose ruler humiliated him and his companions in every possible way. Much to his surprise and irritation, Thor discovered that he was a poor drinker, a poor wrestler, and too weak to pick up a cat from the floor. To be sure, his host, a cunning illusionist, tricked him.
Book thumbnail image University libraries and the e-books revolution By Luke Swindler At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) Libraries, it took well over a century, from the university’s founding in 1789, to reach a collection of one million volumes. In the last five years alone, the campus has added nearly one million “volume-equivalents”, mainly due to massive e-book acquisitions.
Book thumbnail image Why evolution wouldn’t favour Homo economicus By Peter E. Earl Economists traditionally have assumed that all decisions are taken by weighing up costs and benefits of alternative courses of action. In reality, people seem to make their choices in at least three ways, and which way they use depends on the kind of context in which they are choosing.
Book thumbnail image Economic migration may not lead to happiness By David Bartram People who move to wealthier countries surely expect that migration will lead them to a better life – but new research suggests that economic migrants are unlikely to achieve greater happiness in their adopted country.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela, continuing the quest for social justice By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Once or twice in a generation a global champion for social justice emerges. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mahatma Gandhi. Nelson Mandela.
Book thumbnail image Oxford University Press Southern Africa Tribute to Nelson Mandela How does one begin to describe Nelson Mandela? As a leader that fought for civil rights, freedom, equality, socioeconomic development, health awareness, and peace in South Africa. A true revolutionary. One who fought for what he believed was right, despite the consequences. One whose purpose was far greater than his fears. One who sacrificed his freedom for a cause much bigger than himself. One whose actions were so great that the world now mourns the loss of a true global ambassador of peace and progressive change.
Nelson Mandela, champion of public health By Yogan Pillay Our late former President Mandela has passed on but his legacy will live on and should live on for generations to come. He inspired millions across the world to do good, to forgive, to work for the common good. This also inspired me – from my youth in university when he was in prison and as a government official since he became the President of our country and today as we mourn his passing.
Book thumbnail image Mental health and human rights By Michael Dudley and Fran Gale On 29 November, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Soviet dissident poet and translator, died in Paris. In August 1968, this mother of two was arrested, “diagnosed” with schizophrenia and underwent five years’ forcible psychiatric treatment at Moscow’s then- infamous Serbsky Institute. She famously protested in Moscow’s Red Square against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Book thumbnail image The right to health: realizing a 65-year-old global commitment By José M. Zuniga A strong case can be made, based upon modern human rights concepts and international law, that the right to health, as well as health-related services, is a human right. However, this right has been far from fully realized in any country of the world, including those most affluent (e.g. the United States), even 65 years after the right to health was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), whose adoption we annually commemorate on Human Rights Day.
Book thumbnail image The dawn of animal personhood by Justin Gregg Like furniture, animals are considered property in the eyes of the law; things that can be bought, sold, or disposed of when no longer wanted. Unlike a human (or a corporation), an animal is not recognized as a person under US law, and could never serve as a plaintiff in a court case.
Book thumbnail image An interview with marimbist Kai Stensgaard By Scott Huntington By Scott Huntington I was studying percussion at Western Illinois University in 2006, my life was forever changed by a guest musician named Kai Stensgaard. He entered the stage with confidence and began performing some of the most impressive and beautiful marimba pieces I had ever heard. Then he paused, attached a shaker to his leg, and picked up not two, not four, but six mallets.
Book thumbnail image Human Rights protection at the European Court By Jonas Christoffersen Let´s reform the European Court of Human Rights. Very few supporters of European human rights protection agree that we need to urgently reform the European Court. I am one of them.
Maps of the world With Google maps and GPS instructions at the ready, it isn’t often that we step back to look at maps of the wider world. Long gone are the days when you had to flip open a physical map on your cross-country trip, to say nothing of the wealth of maps that exist today, from satellite imagery to geographic surveys, cityscapes to political maps.
Book thumbnail image US accountability for post-9/11 human rights abuses By Dr. Robert H. Wagstaff December is Human Rights month and the 10th of December is Human Rights Day. What better time for President Obama to fulfill his promise of actually closing Guantanamo Bay and to initiate an investigation of violations of human rights by the US government post-9/11?
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Human Rights Day By Frances Astbury On 10 December 1948, world leaders congregated at the United Nations General Assembly to affirm the principles which have remained at the very heart of the human rights movement for over six decades.
Book thumbnail image Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik, Anton Chekhov, and Moscow Tales By Sasha Dugdale Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik was a friend of the Chekhov family and a frequent visitor to Melikhovo, Anton Chekhov’s house just outside Moscow.
Book thumbnail image Taking stock: Human rights after the end of the Cold War By Mark Goodale To mark the date on which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, World Human Rights Day is celebrated each year on 10 December. The first Human Rights Day celebration was held in 1950 following a General Assembly resolution that “[i]nvites all States and interested organizations” to recognize the historical importance of the UDHR as a “distinct forward step in the march of human progress.”
Book thumbnail image Innovation in the water industry By Andy Balmer Questions about rising prices in the water industry often play out according to the same issues of climate change and poverty. But things have been relatively quiet of late for the water companies, which might, in part, be that the average cost of water per household is relatively small compared to gas and electricity, costing £388 compared to £1279.
Gods and mythological creatures in The Iliad in ancient art By Barry B. Powell Homer’s The Iliad is filled with references to the gods and other creatures in Greek mythology. The gods regularly interfere with the Trojan War and the fate of various Achaean and Trojan warriors. In the following slideshow, images from Barry B. Powell’s new free verse translation of The Iliad by Homer illustrate the gods’ various appearances and roles throughout the epic poem.
Book thumbnail image Syria’s civil war: historical forces behind regional realities By Michael Hunt Critics of the Obama administration’s Syrian policy have lamented its failure to take into account regional realities. With surprising speed those realities have put the brakes on US intervention. The anti-regime forces in Syria have remained deeply divided — indeed turned violently against each other — and resistant to outside guidance.
Book thumbnail image Coherence in photosynthesis By Jessica M. Anna, Gregory D. Scholes, and Rienk van Grondelle Photosynthesis is responsible for life on our planet, from supplying the oxygen we breathe to the food that we eat. The process of photosynthesis is complex, involving many protein complexes and enzymes that work together in a concerted effort to convert solar energy to chemical bonds.
Book thumbnail image Oral histories of Chicago youth violence By Caitlin Tyler-Richards I’m not sure my introduction will do justice to this week’s interview between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and DePaul University Professor Miles Harvey
Mandela, icon By Elleke Boehmer The name Nelson Mandela and the word icon are once again on people’s lips, as if spoken in the same breath.
Book thumbnail image Between ‘warfare’ and ‘lawfare’ By Carsten Stahn The Syria crisis has challenged the boundaries of international law. The concept of the ‘red line’ was used to justify military intervention in response to the use of chemical weapons. This phenomenon reflects a trend to use law as a strategic asset or instrument of warfare (‘lawfare’).
Book thumbnail image Requiring local storage of Internet data will not protect privacy By Christopher Kuner Widespread Internet surveillance by governments, whether carried out directly or by accessing private-sector databases, is a major threat to the data protection and privacy rights of individuals. It seems that in some countries (such as the United States), the national security state is out of control.
Book thumbnail image Putting Syria in its place By Klaus Dodds Where exactly is Syria, and how is Syria represented as a place? The first part of the question might appear to be fairly straight forward. Syria is an independent state in Western Asia and borders Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Israel. It occupies an area of approximately 70, 000 square miles, which is similar in size to the state of North Dakota. Before the civil war (March 2011 onwards), the population was estimated to be around 23 million but millions of people have been displaced by the crisis.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Nelson Mandela By Kenneth S. Broun Nelson Mandela began his 27-year prison term in 1962, when he was convicted of illegally leaving the country and inciting workers to strike. He was brought back from his Robben Island imprisonment to face far more serious charges in 1963 under South Africa’s Sabotage Act.
Book thumbnail image Ancient Syria: trouble-prone and politically volatile By Trevor Bryce I have long been fascinated with Syria. Like other Middle Eastern regions, it has many layers of civilization and has seen many conquerors and raiders tramp and gallop through its lands over the centuries. That of course has been the fate of lots of countries, ancient and modern.
Book thumbnail image And the Grammy goes to… Every year, musicians, artists, and producers come together to be recognized and honored for their work at the Grammy Awards. The Grammy awards began as an effort to recognize the musical talent neglected by shows like the Oscar’s and Emmy’s and has since transformed into the music industry’s most anticipated event.
Book thumbnail image Ink, stink, and sweetmeats By Simon Eliot All powered printing machines needed an effective means of inking type at speed. In most cases this was done by the use of rollers. The earliest prototypes had been covered with leather but, as a sheet of leather had to be joined to create covering for a cylinder, there was always a sewn seam that did not distribute the ink evenly.
Book thumbnail image Do economists ever get it right? By George Economides and Thomas Moutos According to popular belief, economists rarely manage to predict correctly the consequences of important policy actions. Nevertheless, the case of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is one of those instances which economists did get it right.
Book thumbnail image Beer, a perennial potion What do you really know about beer, the third most popular drink in the world (after water and tea)? We all know whether we like it or not, and which brand is our favorite brew, but do you know all there is to know about the drink? Try your luck with our quiz below from facts and figures pulled from The Oxford Companion to Beer!
From the infancy of etymology By Anatoly Liberman Someone who today seeks reliable information on the origin of English words will, naturally, consult some recent dictionary. However, not too rarely this information is insufficient and even wrong (rejected opinions may be presented there as reliable).
Book thumbnail image Seven facts of Syria’s displacement crisis By Khalid Koser Conflicts and crises regularly force people to flee their homes; and the plight of the displaced is often overlooked. In the case of Syria, however, displacement is not simply an unfortunate side-effect. Its massive volume threatens to render the country unsustainable for generations.
Book thumbnail image The movies and biblical epics of Cecil B. DeMille By William D. Romanowski The 4th of December marks the 90th anniversary of the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1923). A silent film, this was the first in a trilogy by the famed director that established the conventions for Bible-themed movies: religion, sex, violence, and cinematic spectacle (and not necessarily in that order).
Book thumbnail image The gold standard and the world economy [infographic] By Richard S. Grossman Britain operated under the gold standard for nearly 100 years before World War I forced Britain — and many other countries — to abandon it. During that century, Britain was the world’s military, financial, and industrial superpower.
Book thumbnail image Election 2015: ‘Don’t vote, it just encourages the b**tards’ By Matthew Flinders Without a whistle or a bang from a starter’s gun, the 2015 general election campaign is now well under way. Labour’s proposed freeze on energy prices marks a first tentative attempt to seize the pre-election agenda, while the Chancellor’s autumn statement next month looks set to respond by including measures aimed at cutting the cost of living.
Book thumbnail image Lost writings of Latin literature By Peter Knox and J.C. McKeown Once upon a time, the Greek city of Cyrene on the coast of Libya grew prosperous through the export of silphium, a plant much used in cookery and medicine. But then the farmers learned that there was more money to be made through rearing goats.
Syria and the social netwar 2011-2013 Syria is Oxford University Press’s Place of the Year, and to call attention to the sociopolitical turmoil in the country, we present a brief excerpt from Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla by David Kilcullen. This is a powerful study of the important role technology, particularly social media, plays in the war zone in Syria.
Book thumbnail image Who’s Who in 2014 [infographics] December sees the annual update of Who’s Who, the essential directory of the noteworthy and influential in all walks of life, in the United Kingdom and worldwide. This year, over 1,000 new lives have been added to the resource. Who’s made it in in 2014? From actors to authors, and presenters to politicians, discover the entries of a vast selection of past and present influential figures, written by the individual themselves.
Book thumbnail image A day in Eyeth By Jeannette D. Jones By Jeannette D. Jones There’s a legendary world in Deaf culture lore. It’s like Earth but it’s for people of the eye, so they call it Eyeth (get it? EARth, EYEth). In this world, people listen with their eyes with the comfort of being typical, just the way life is, unlike the existence of a Deaf person on Earth, heavily mediated through hearing devices, pads of paper, interpreters, lip reading, and gestures.
Book thumbnail image Q&A with T.V. Paul on the 25th anniversary of Benazir Bhutto’s election Twenty-five years ago today, Benazir Bhutto became the first female Prime Minister of Pakistan and the first female head of government in a Muslim country. T.V. Paul, author of The Warrior State: Pakistan in the Contemporary World, joins us to discuss her legacy, the role of women in Pakistani politics today, and the changing shape of political parties in Pakistan.
Book thumbnail image The Hobby Lobby problem and the HSA/HRA solution By Edward Zelinsky Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. and Mardel, Inc. are owned by the Green family. The Greens oppose on religious grounds “morning after” forms of contraception.
Book thumbnail image The Oxford Atlas Place of the Year 2013 is… Despite a strong field of contenders for the Oxford Atlas Place of the Year 2013, Syria emerged as the clear winner, owing to its central role in global events this year.
Book thumbnail image US Supreme Court weighs in on BG Group v. Argentina By Frédéric G. Sourgens On Monday, 2 December 2013, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a significant appeal for investor-state arbitration conducted in the United States. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit set aside an award rendered by a UNCITRAL tribunal seated in Washington DC and constituted pursuant to the United Kingdom-Argentina BIT in BG Group PLC v Republic of Argentina.
Book thumbnail image Enforced disappearance: time to open up the exclusive club? By Irena Giorgou For over five decades, enforced disappearance has been the symbol of state terror and the absence of justice. Pursuant to this heinous practice, people are arrested or kidnapped, detained in secret, and subsequently ‘disappear’. All traces of the victims are deliberately wiped out: no record, no information, no body.
Book thumbnail image The neural mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation By Zaira Cattaneo and Marcos Nadal Humans are apparently the only species to aesthetically enjoy the world around them. What is it that allows us to admire the elegance of a ballet dancer, or to enjoy the beauty of the sun’s reflection on the sea as it sets under the horizon?
Radiology training and education By Alexander C. Mamourian By Alex Mamouria The entire structure of the Radiology professional board exam, the last but crucial hurtle after eight years of post-graduate training, changed this year. The old exam, that in place for decades, had two discrete elements. First, a written exam that included imaging physics followed by an oral exam that reviewed only diagnostic imaging that was taken at the end of training.
Book thumbnail image Echoing John the Baptist at Advent By Philip H. Pfatteicher The Christian Church, at its best, is remarkably honest. That characteristic is especially clear in the season of Advent, which calls Christians to look ahead toward the second coming of Christ the Lord of glory (what the New Testament calls his Appearing). In this expectation, the Church identifies with John the Baptist, who prepared the way for the first coming.
Book thumbnail image HIV/AIDS: How to stop the unstoppable? By Dorothy H. Crawford It is over 100 years since HIV, the AIDS virus, began spreading in humans. It all started in West Central Africa where, scientists calculate, HIV jumped from chimpanzees to humans around 1900. Then in 1964 the virus made its first trans-continental flight. In one move it leaped from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Here it established a foot-hold in Haiti before travelling on to the US in 1969. So began a journey that took HIV to virtually every country in the world, eventually infecting 65 million people, a figure that is rising by around three million annually.
November 2013 (155))
Echoes of The Iliad through history By Barry B. Powell The Iliad was largely believed to belong to myth and legend until Heinrich Schliemann set out to prove the true history behind Homer’s epic poem and find the remnants of the Trojan War. The businessman turned archaeologist excavated a number of sites in Greece and Turkey, and caused an international sensation.
Book thumbnail image An interview with Mohsin Hamid By Robert Repino Mohsin Hamid is the author of the novels Moth Smoke, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia. His award-winning fiction has been featured on bestseller lists, adapted for the cinema, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and translated into over 30 languages.
Book thumbnail image A Scottish reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole This month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list celebrates St Andrew’s Day by highlighting some of the great Scottish classics we have in the series. From the gothic tale of Jekyll and Hyde to Burns, and the philosophy of David Hume, there is hopefully something for everyone here. But have we missed out your favourite?
Book thumbnail image Editing the classics, past and present By Judith Luna Actually, editing classics is just what I don’t do. My job can be a bit of a mystery to people who wonder whether I rephrase the occasional Jane Austen sentence, or improve Virginia Woolf’s punctuation. Most days I am looking for living authors, not dead ones: the editors and translators who are responsible for the introductions and notes, and who actually do make decisions about how best to present the texts for modern readers.
Book thumbnail image Ten fun facts about Claudio Monteverdi By Meghann Wilhoite Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi died 370 years ago today, so what better way to remember him than with the following fun facts.
American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature 2013 wrap up We had a great time in Baltimore this past weekend at the 2013 American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference. In addition to searching for the best crab cake in Baltimore, one of our favorite parts was seeing our authors and having them show off their books.
Book thumbnail image A Q&A with Ingi Iusmen on international adoption In recognition of Adoption Month, we interviewed two scholars, Peter Hayes and Ingi Iusmen, about intercountry adoption (ICA) to raise awareness of some of the complexities presented by intercountry adoption. Today, we present a brief Q&A with Dr. Ingi Iusmen, Lecturer in Governance and Policy at the University of Southampton.
Book thumbnail image Plato’s mistake By Norman Solomon It started innocently enough at a lunch-time event with some friends at the Randolph Hotel in the centre of Oxford. ‘The trouble with Islam …’ began some self-opinioned pundit, and I knew where he was going.
Book thumbnail image Music we’re thankful for in 2013 By Taylor Coe With Thanksgiving as a time of the year to reflect on what brings us joy and …, we thought it would be a good time to reflect on the music that we’re thankful for having in our lives.
Book thumbnail image The Richardsons: the worst of times at Oxford University Press? By John Feather From 1715 to 1758, Stephen and Zaccheus Richardson were successively the ‘Warehouse Keepers’ for Oxford University Press. The seemingly innocuous title conceals more than it reveals and yet is telling. In William Laud’s original vision of a university press at Oxford in the 1630s at the heart of the enterprise was to be an individual known as the ‘Architypographus’.
Book thumbnail image A Q&A with Peter Hayes on international adoption In recognition of Adoption Month, we interviewed two scholars, Peter Hayes and Ingi Iusmen, about intercountry adoption (ICA) to raise awareness of some of the complexities presented by intercountry adoption. Today, we present a brief Q&A with Peter Hayes, Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Sunderland.
Book thumbnail image The Crab Nebula By Professor Sir Francis Graham-Smith The Crab Nebula and the pulsar at its centre are endlessly fascinating. The pulsar is a neutron star, with the same mass as our Sun but only the size of a city.
Etymology gleanings for November 2013 By Anatoly Liberman Brave and its aftermath. During the month of November, the main event in the uneventful life of the Oxford Etymologist (in this roundabout way I refer to myself) has been the controversy around the origin of bravus, the etymon of bravo ~ brave.
Book thumbnail image Thanksgiving? The deprivations and atrocities that followed By Stephen L. Pevar Every schoolchild is taught that the holiday of Thanksgiving commemorates the feast the Pilgrims arranged to thank the Indians for their friendship, for sharing their land, and for showing them how to grow, harvest, and store food. Accounts say that the generosity of the Indians saved the colonists from starvation during the harsh New England winter of 1620.
Book thumbnail image The gamelan and Indonesian music in America By Andrew Clay McGraw Earlier this month I collaborated with the Indonesian Embassy and the Smithsonian Institute to organize a four-day festival of Indonesian performing arts in Washington, DC. Hundreds of performers of gamelan descended on the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler galleries.
Book thumbnail image Five important facts about the Indian economy By Chetan Ghate India’s remarkable economic growth in the last three decades has made it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. While India’s economic growth has been impressive, rapid growth has been accompanied by a slow decline in poverty, persistently high inflation, jobless growth, widening regional disparities, continuing socio-political instability, and vulnerability to balance of payment crises.
The indiscipline of discipline, or, whose ‘English’ is it anyway? By Susan Bruce It is a great educational paradox that the nature of one of the UK’s key subjects is both ill-defined and poorly understood. What counts as ‘English’ is contested at all levels, from arguments about the literacy hour at primary level, through the relative importance of English Language and English Literature at GCSE level, to the introduction of a new A Level in Creative Writing, and the ‘confirmatory consultations’ recently conducted over the reform of AL and GCSE English syllabi.
Book thumbnail image R v Hughes and death while at the wheel By John Watson In their judgement in the case of R v Hughes [2013] UKSC 56, the UK Supreme Court has issued guidance which, arguably, negates the offence of s. 3ZB of the Road Traffic Act 1988 of causing death by being unlicensed, uninsured or disqualified from driving. In a case since this judgement the CPS stated they considered this offence as written ‘no longer existed’ due to the Hughes decision.
Book thumbnail image A journey through 500 years of African American history By Leslie Asako Gladsjo This fall, my colleagues and I completed work on Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s documentary series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, which began airing on national PBS in October. In six one-hour episodes, the series traces the history of the African American people, from the 16th century to today.
Book thumbnail image National Bible Week: Learning with Don Kraus, OUP Bible editor To celebrate National Bible Week, we sat down with our long-time Bibles editor, Don Kraus, to find out more about his experience with publishing bibles at Oxford University Press.
Raising the Thanksgiving turkey By Neil Prendergast By Neil Prendergast A century ago, the turkey was in truly poor shape. Its numbers had dropped considerably during the late nineteenth century, largely due to overhunting, habitat loss, and disease. In 1920, there were about 3.5 million turkeys in the United States, down from an estimated 10 million when Europeans first arrived in North America.
Book thumbnail image Penderecki, then and now By Meghann Wilhoite Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (pronunciation here) celebrated his 80th birthday over the weekend. As Tom Service has pointed out in the past, you’ve probably already heard some of Penderecki’s famous pieces from the 1960s, which feature in several films from directors such as David Lynch, Stanley Kubrick, and Martin Scorsese.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: M. Therese Southgate Marie Therese Southgate, MD, a senior editor at JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association for nearly five decades, died at her home in Chicago on November 22 after a short illness. She was 85.
Book thumbnail image The bin of plenty By Travis McDade In a desk donated to the Vermont thrift store at which he worked, Tim Bernaby was pleasantly surprised to find several letters and cards written by Robert Frost. He took these missives and sold them for $25,000. When asked about it, he said he found the items not in the desk, but in the trash.
Book thumbnail image Seven selfies for the serious-minded By Alice Northover Self-portraits are as old as their medium, from stone carvings and oil paintings, to the first daguerrotypes and instant Polaroids. Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013 – selfie – indicates the latest medium: a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website.
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year 2013: Then and Now Thanksgiving is a time for reflection on the past, present, and future. In our final week of voting for Place of the Year, here’s a look at some of the many changes undergone by the nominees. Which of these will steal the crown from Mars, the 2012 Place of the Year?
Book thumbnail image Transitional justice and international criminal justice: a fraught relationship? By Naomi Roht-Arriaza What is the key, and often fraught, relationship between transitional justice (TJ) and international criminal justice (ICJ)? How, if at all, do the two fields fit together: do they coexist, create synergies, occupy the whole space, or simply inhabit parallel universes?
Book thumbnail image The unknown financial crisis of 1914 By Richard Roberts The mounting diplomatic crisis in the last week of July 1914 triggered a major financial crisis in London, the world’s foremost international centre, and around the world. In fact, it was the City’s gravest-ever financial crisis featuring a comprehensive breakdown of its financial markets. But it is virtually unknown.
Book thumbnail image Buzzword shaming By Mark Peters I recently wrote about the proliferation of the lexical formula “X-shaming,” launched by slut-shaming and body-shaming and taken to preposterous extremes by words such as filter-shaming and fedora-shaming. Everywhere you look, someone is talking about shaming. The hyphen is optional, but the topic is increasingly mandatory.
Book thumbnail image Polling accuracy: a Q&A with Kai Arzheimer and Jocelyn Evans By R. Michael Alvarez Polling data is ubiquitous in today’s world, but it is is often difficult to easily understand the accuracy of polls. In a recent paper published in Political Analysis, Kai Arzheimer and Jocelyn Evans developed a new methodology for assessing the accuracy of polls in multiparty and multi-candidate elections.
Book thumbnail image A conversation with Dr. Andrea Farbman on music therapy For nearly four decades, Dr. Andrea Farbman has worked in disability and arts advocacy, legislative policy analysis, and non-profit management. Her career with the American Music Therapy Association (National Association for Music Therapy at the time) began in 1988 and this year she is celebrating 25 years with the association.
Book thumbnail image Nose to nose with Laurence Sterne and Tristram Shandy By Karen Harvey Venturing into new areas of research can be exhilarating. But it can be incredibly daunting when the subject boasts a concentration of great scholarship and formidable expertise. In my case, the decision to embark on the subject of Laurence Sterne and Tristram Shandy, meant taking a step not just into a new subject but a new discipline: from history to literature.
An interview with Barry B. Powell on his translation of The Iliad Every generation and culture needs its own version of The Iliad — one that capture the spirit of the original for a contemporary audience, whether Alexander Pope’s rhymed verse of the 18th century or dense Dickensian prose of 19th-century translations. Barry B. Powell’s new free verse translation of The Iliad was written with the modern English speaker in mind, and with the idea that the language Homer uses was colloquial and accessible to his contemporaries.
Book thumbnail image Five things you didn’t know about Franklin Pierce By Michael Gerhardt There are few presidents more forgotten – and perhaps worth forgetting than – Franklin Pierce. To the extent he is remembered at all, historians and others dismiss him as a weak president who allowed strong-willed senators sympathetic to slavery interests to force him to take actions, which helped to provoke a near civil war in Kansas and bring the nation itself closer to the Civil War that formally broke out in 1861.
Book thumbnail image Music therapy research and evidence-based practice By Dr. Sheri Robb There is a saying in American English when a home is attractive to view from the sidewalk or edge of the road. That is, we say it has “curb appeal”. As an integral part of everyday life, music has great curb appeal.
Book thumbnail image Doctor Who at fifty Doctor Who was first broadcast by BBC Television at 5.16pm on Saturday 23 November 1963. This weekend the BBC marks the fiftieth anniversary with several commemorative programmes on television, radio, and online—as well as a ‘global simulcast’ of the anniversary adventure, which places the two actors who’ve most recently played ‘the Doctor’…
Book thumbnail image The evolution of music therapy research By Dr. Anthony Meadows I have been a music therapist for nearly 30 years. During this time, I have been struck over and over again by the many diverse ways there are to practice music therapy. Music therapists, myself included, have been present with our clients as they grapple with the various ways cancer affects their lives.
Book thumbnail image Brave new world? By Richard J. Miller Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of the author Aldous Huxley. Huxley was celebrated for many things and his involvement with the culture of psychotropic drugs was certainly one his most famous, or perhaps infamous, associations.
Book thumbnail image Oral history goes transnational By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Barring something unforeseen circumstances — looking at you, USPS — all subscribers should have received their copy of the Oral History Review Volume 40, Issue 2. We’re quite proud of this round of articles, which in the words of our editor-in-chief Kathy Nasstrom, “extends our editorial mission in two key areas — the internationalization of the journal and our multimedia initiative.”
Book thumbnail image Is this a selfie which I see before me By Alice Northover A further celebration of Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year ‘selfie’ with a variation of MacBeth’s famous ‘dagger’ monologue. I’ve bolded the new words to make it easier to scan for the changes.
Book thumbnail image Benjamin Britten’s centenary By Philip Carter The 22nd of November is the feast day of St Cecilia, patron saint of musicians and church music, and the 22nd of November 1913 was the birthdate, in Lowestoft, Suffolk, of Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). The young Britten displayed an extraordinary musical talent and his mother had high hopes for her son: young Benjamin, it was said, was to be the fourth ‘B’ after Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms.
Book thumbnail image Thoughts on the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination As we recall the “crime of the century” in Dallas a half century ago, it seems appropriate to ponder some thoughts perhaps relevant to that terrible event. I make no claims to having inside information on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but I am aware of several theories that range from the lone gunman to any number of conspiracies involving any number of conspirators.
Book thumbnail image Rowan Williams on C.S. Lewis and the point of Narnia C.S. Lewis, the beloved author of The Chronicles of Narnia among other books, died 50 years ago today. Overshadowed by the assassination of President Kennedy and the death of Aldous Huxley, his death went largely unnoticed in the media, but his work continues to be debated.
Book thumbnail image Promoting a sensible debate on migration Khalid Koser Migration has had a rough ride in recent years. During times of recession, anti-immigrant sentiments often increase. Minor political parties around the world have taken full advantage and gained political capital from xenophobic policies. In many countries the media has followed suit, systematically reporting on migrants in negative terms. And political leaders are finding it hard to swim against this rising tide.
Book thumbnail image Edwin Battistella’s Word of the Year Fantasy League By Edwin Battistella By Edwin Battistella Oxford Dictionaries have been collecting lexicographic material and updating dictionaries for over a century now, though its Word of the Year award is still relatively recent. Only since 2004 Oxford Dictionaries have been selecting a word that captures the mood of the previous year. Thinking about the possible contenders for 2013 (twerk? fail? drone? shutdown? bitcoin?) got me to wondering about the past.
Book thumbnail image Bad behavior overshadows more subtle systemic exclusions in academia By Katrina Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins Much has been made in the media of Professor Colin McGinn’s resignation amid claims that he sexually harassed a female graduate student. The story has headline-grabbing ingredients.
Book thumbnail image Woody Allen, P.D. James, and Bernard Williams walk into a philosophy book… Our ability to lead good lives right now is more dependent upon the survival of future generations than we usually recognize. Our motivations, values, and desires depend upon those who will follow us – and not even our children and grandchildren — but future generations of human beings we will never meet or know.
Book thumbnail image Detective’s Casebook: Unearthing the Piltdown Man By Ellie Gregory It is regarded as one of the most baffling scientific hoaxes of the past few hundred years. The mystery of the Piltdown Man, a skull believed to be an ancient ‘missing link’ in human evolution, blindsided the expert eyes of some of the greatest scientists of the 20th century.
Selfies and the history of self-portrait photography By Kandice Rawlings Selfie – the Oxford Word of the Year for 2013 – is a neologism defined as “a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and uploaded to a social media website”.
Book thumbnail image Benjamin Britten, revisited By Heather Wiebe By Heather Wiebe When I was charged with the task of updating the article on Benjamin Britten in Grove Music Online, I thought it would be a relatively simple matter. As Britten’s centenary year approached, it seemed an opportune moment, and the article was one I admired.
Book thumbnail image The vanished printing houses By Martyn Ould Someone on even the most cursory visit to Oxford must surely see two fine buildings that once housed the University Press: the Sheldonian Theatre and the Clarendon Building, close to each other on today’s Broad Street. If they venture further afield, perhaps heading for the restaurants and bars along Walton Street, they also can’t fail to notice the neo-classical building that has been the Press’s current home since 1832. What they’ll never see however is the Press’s second home.
Book thumbnail image Violet-blue chrysanthemums By Naonobu Noda and Yoshikazu Tanaka Chrysanthemums (Chrysanthemum morifolium) are the second best-selling flowers after roses in worldwide. In Japan they are by far the most popular and the 16 petal chrysanthemum with sixteen tips is the imperial crest. Cultivated chrysanthemums have been generated by hybridization breeding of many wild species for hundreds or possibly thousands of years.
Book thumbnail image Enlightened blogging? Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne By Anne Secord White’s classic text can be read as a shrewd exercise to encourage readers to follow a startlingly novel approach to studying the natural world. Most naturalists at that time based their natural systems and classifications of all living beings on the study of dead specimens in collections.
Book thumbnail image Language history leading to ‘selfie’ By Melissa Mohr To celebrate selfie’s tenure as Word of the Year, here are some WOTYs from the past, which may shed some light on its development.
Book thumbnail image A perfect ten? By Stuart George On 10 July 2013, a potential 50 playing days of Test cricket – ten consecutive Test matches of up to five days each – between England and Australia began. Try explaining to an American how two national teams can play each other for 50 days (or even five days). Or how a match can be ended by “ bad light” in a floodlit stadium.
“Stunning” success is still round the corner By Anatoly Liberman There are many ways to be surprised (confounded, dumbfounded, stupefied, flummoxed, and even flabbergasted). While recently discussing this topic, I half-promised to return to it, and, although the origin of astonish ~ astound ~ stun is less exciting than that of amaze, it is perhaps worthy of a brief note.
Book thumbnail image The year in words: 2013 By Katherine Connor Martin Oxford’s lexicographers use the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), a 2-billion-word corpus of contemporary English usage gathered since 2000, to provide accurate descriptions of how English is used around the world in real life. A corpus is simply a collection of texts that are richly tagged so that they can be analyzed using software (we use the Sketch Engine).
Book thumbnail image Ten obscure facts about jazz The harsh restrictions that North American slaves faced between the sixteenth and nineteenth century led to the innovative ways to communicate through music. Many slaves sang songs and used their surrounding resources to create homemade instruments.
Book thumbnail image Executive compensation practices hijacked, distorted by narrow economic theories By Eric W. Orts “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Keynes’ warning applies to debates about skyrocketing levels of executive compensation in the United States and elsewhere.
Book thumbnail image Greeks and Romans: literary influence across languages and ethnicities By G. O. Hutchinson How could you have one novel, poem, children’s book, that wasn’t influenced by others? But people haven’t much considered what distinguishes literary interaction that jumps across languages and countries.
Book thumbnail image Edwin Battistella’s words By Edwin Battistella By Edwin Battistella The annual Word of the Year selection by Oxford Dictionaries and others inspired me to an odd personal challenge last year. In November of 2011, about the time that Oxford Dictionaries were settling on squeezed middle as both the UK and US word of the year, I made a New Year’s Resolution for 2012.
Book thumbnail image Why is wrongdoing in and by organizations so common? By Donald Palmer Wrongdoing in and by organizations is a common occurrence. Ronald Clement tracked firms listed among the Fortune 100 in 1999 and found that 40% had engaged in misconduct significant enough to be reported in the national media between 2000 and 2005.
Scholarly reflections on the ‘selfie’ When Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘selfie’ as their Word of the Year for 2013, we invited several scholars from different fields to share their thoughts on this emerging phenomenon.
Book thumbnail image Looking back: ten years of Oxford Scholarship Online By Sophie Goldsworthy Back in 2001, there was a whole host of reference products online, and journals were well down that digital road. But books? Who on earth would want to read a whole book online? When the idea that grew into Oxford Scholarship Online was first mooted, it faced a lot of scepticism, in-house as well as out.
Lincoln’s rhetoric in the Gettysburg Address By Jeanne Fahnestock Perhaps no speech in the canon of American oratory is as famous as the “Dedicatory Remarks” delivered in a few minutes, one hundred and fifty years ago, by President Abraham Lincoln. And though school children may no longer memorize the conveniently brief 272 words of “The Gettysburg Address,” most American can still recall its opening and closing phrases.
Book thumbnail image What makes music sacred? By Laura Davis I’ve spent a lot of time in churches throughout my life. I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, raised Methodist, and am a converted Catholic. I’ve worked in Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, and Methodist churches and spent a summer in Eastern Europe singing in a Romanian Orthodox church.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2013: ‘selfie’ It’s that time of the year again. With a fanfare and a drum roll, it’s time to announce the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year. The votes have been counted and verified, and I can exclusively reveal that the winner is…. ‘Selfie’
Book thumbnail image Helping smokers quit during Lung Cancer Awareness Month Smoking causes the majority of lung cancers – both in smokers and in people exposed to secondhand smoke. To mark Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Nicotine & Tobacco Research Editor David J. K. Balfour, D.Sc., has selected a few related articles, which can be read in full and for free on the journal’s website. He also invited Elyse R. Park, PhD, MPH, to share what really helps smokers quit.
Book thumbnail image Place of the year 2013: Spotlight on Syria As we continue to tally the votes for Place of the Year 2013, Joshua Hagen, co-author of Borders: A Very Short Introduction, shares some background information on the history of Syria. After you’ve read the reasons surrounding why Syria made the shortlist, cast your vote for what you think the place of the year should be. We’ll announce the winner on Monday, 2 December 2013.
Book thumbnail image Does Mexican immigration lead to more crime in US cities? By Aaron Chalfin Since 1980, the share of the US population that is foreign born has doubled, rising from just over 6% in 1980 to over 12% in 2010. Compounding this demographic shift, the share of the foreign born population of Mexican origin also doubled, leading to a quadrupling of the fraction of US residents who are immigrants from Mexico
Book thumbnail image Top five buildings of Empire By Ashley Jackson All around the world the British built urban infrastructures that still dominate towns and cities, as well as developing complex transport networks and the ports and railway stations that gave access to them. The Empire’s creation of cityscapes and lines of communication is easy to overlook, so much has it become part of the fabric of the world in which we live that it has been rendered unremarkable.
Book thumbnail image Looking forward to AAR/SBL 2013 By Alyssa Bender With a little over one week until American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature 2013, a lot of us at the Oxford University Press office are getting excited to head to Baltimore. As to what we’re all looking forward to, that varies, from new products, to meeting authors, to food we can’t wait to try.
Stan Lee on what is a superhero By Stan Lee What is a superhero? What is a supervillain? What are the traits that define and separate these two? What cultural contexts do we find them in? And why we need them? Editors Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and Peter Coogan, PhD collected a series of essays examining these questions from both major comic book writers and editors, such as Stan Lee and Danny Fingeroth, and leading academics in psychology and cultural studies, such as Will Brooker and John Jennings.
Book thumbnail image Elinor Ostrom and institutional diversity By Paul Dragos Aligica The issue of institutional diversity, a key theme in the work of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics co-recipient, Elinor Ostrom, is one of the major challenges confronting national states and global governance in our time.
Book thumbnail image Worn out wonder drugs By Dr Donna Lecky It is undeniable that the discovery of antibiotics changed modern medicine. However, from their mass production in 1943, antibiotics have gone from being dubbed the wonder drug to being an issue of serious global concern.
Characters from The Iliad in ancient art By Barry B. Powell The ancient Greeks were enormously innovative in many respects, including art and architecture. They produced elaborate illustrations on everything from the glory of the Parthenon to a simple wine cup. Given its epic nature and crucial role in Greek education, many of the characters in the Iliad can be found in ancient art. From the hero Achilles to Hector’s charioteer, these depictions provide great insight into Greek culture and art.
Book thumbnail image Five most influential economic philosophers By Tomas Sedlacek Descartes’s scientific approach to perceiving the world unquestionably represented a huge breakthrough, and this is doubly true for economists. We have seen that the notion of the invisible hand of the market existed long before Smith.
Book thumbnail image International Day for Tolerance: A Q&A with Amos N. Guiora The United Nations International Day for Tolerance is observed every year on the 16th of November in order to raise awareness of the need for tolerance in today’s society and to promote understanding of the negative effects of intolerance.
Is it a dog’s world? By Steven Heine By Steven Heine Like a number of other traditional East Asian cultural phenomenon, such as kabuki, kimono, kimchee, and kung fu—just sticking to terms that start with the letter “k”—the koan as the main form of literature in Zen Buddhist monastic training has been widely disseminated and popularized in modern American society.
Book thumbnail image Catching up with Marcela Maxfield By Alyssa Bender The publishing industry can be a little mysterious for those of us who don’t work inside it. I sat down with Religion & Theology Editorial Assistant Marcela Maxfield to discover the daily grind of one of the many people at Oxford University Press (OUP) who shepherd books from idea to crisp bound paper.
Climbing Pikes Peak 200 years ago By Jared Orsi By Jared Orsi Today marks the anniversary of an event little remembered but well worth noting. On 15 November 1806, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike paused on the high plains in what is now Colorado, peered through his spyglass, and saw the mountain that would later bear his name, Pikes Peak.
Book thumbnail image Rihanna takes on Topshop: Get my face off that t-shirt! By Darren Meale Robyn Fenty – Rihanna to most of us – enjoyed victory in the English High Court earlier this year when she succeeded in stopping High Street fashion retailer Topshop from selling an unauthorised t-shirt bearing her image.
A brief history of Oxford University Press in pictures Oxford University has been involved with the printing trade since the 15th century and our Archive holds the records of the University’s printing and publishing activities from the 17th century to date. This week our archivists have generously unearthed some pictures to share with you.
Book thumbnail image The uncanny Stephen Crane By Fiona Robertson and Anthony Mellors Closely associated with a group of writers dedicated to refashioning American fictional style, and with his roots in journalism and popular entertainment, Crane produced in his Civil-War tale The Red Badge of Courage an uncompromisingly spare modern account of the first-hand experience of battle.
Book thumbnail image Correlation is not causation Stephen Mumford and Rani Lill Anjum A famous slogan in statistics is that correlation does not imply causation. We know that there is a statistical correlation between eating ice cream and drowning incidents, for instance, but ice cream consumption does not cause drowning. Where any two factors – A and B – are correlated, there are four possibilities: 1. A is a cause of B, 2. B is a cause of A, 3. the correlation is pure coincidence and 4., as in the ice cream case, A and B are connected by a common cause. Increased ice cream consumption and drowning rates both have a common cause in warm summer weather.
Illuminating the Mediterranean’s pre-history By Cyprian Broodbank It’s no wonder that the Mediterranean basin—centered on the world’s largest inland sea, blessed by a subtropical climate, and host to nurturing rivers—gave birth to several ancient civilizations. What many don’t realize, however, is that the Mediterranean’s pre-classical history was just as rich as its geography, and just as instrumental in priming the region for success.
Book thumbnail image Jazz, the original cool Jazz is a genre of music that is rich in history and cultural influences. When you think of jazz music, a massive list of other phenomenal artists may come to mind including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday. In the nineteenth century, the music was birthed from ragtime and evolved into the blues, followed by swing Music and jazz, creating genres of music influenced by a myriad of styles and sounds.
Book thumbnail image Picturing printing By Ian Gadd No visit to the Sheldonian Theatre would be complete without craning your neck to admire Robert Streater’s painted ceiling. Entitled Truth Descending upon the Arts and Sciences and comprising thirty-two panels, the painting was completed in Whitehall in 1668–9 and shipped to Oxford by barge. We don’t know the terms of the commission but Streater’s personification of Truth triumphing over Envy, Rapine, and Ignorance fitted well with a University looking to reassert its cultural ambitions in the aftermath of the Civil Wars and Interregnum.
Book thumbnail image Israel’s strategic nuclear doctrine: ambiguity versus openness By Louis René Beres Israel’s nuclear posture is always closely held. This cautious stance would appear to make perfect sense. But is such secrecy actually in the long-term survival interests of the Jewish State? The answer should be based upon a very carefully reasoned assessment of all available options.
Book thumbnail image Seamus Heaney: The last word By Denis Sampson Noli temere, Seamus Heaney texted to his wife in his last hours of life, ‘Have no fear’.
The “brave” old etymology By Anatoly Liberman One of the minor questions addressed in my latest “gleanings” concerned the origin of the adjective brave. My comment brought forward a counter-comment by Peter Maher and resulted in an exchange of many letters between us, so that this post owes its appearance to him. Today I am returning to brave, a better-informed and more cautious man.
Book thumbnail image Q&A on Saint Augustine with Miles Hollingworth After meeting this summer, the OUP Blog suggested Miles Hollingworth, author of Saint Augustine of Hippo: An Intellectual Biography, catch up with fellow Augustinian scholar Todd Breyfogle about the timeliness and relevance of Augustine in order to celebrate the saint’s birthday, 1,659 years to the day later.
Book thumbnail image When did Oxford University Press begin? By Ian Gadd Determining the precise beginning of Oxford University Press is not as easy a question as it may seem. It’s not enough to brandish triumphantly the first book printed in Oxford, Expositio in symbolum apostolorum, as all that proves is that there was a printing press in Oxford in 1478…
Book thumbnail image Foreign direct investment, aid, and terrorism By Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Todd Sandler, and Javed Younas In recent years, developing nations have been major venues of terrorism. One significant problem caused by terrorism in developing nations is the reduction of foreign direct investment (FDI) into these nations as potential investors seek safer locations.
Book thumbnail image The playing place By David Constantine In Cornish towns and villages you may find a street or a district called Plain-an-Gwarry. The name (in the old tongue plân-an-guare), means ‘a playing place’, and it commemorates the former existence of a round, or small amphitheatre, in which entertainments of one sort and another – including the miracle plays – were staged and public meetings held.
Book thumbnail image Shanghai rising By Kandice Rawlings The port city of Shanghai is poised to become another major center of the global art world, possibly even displacing Beijing as China’s artistic capital. Since founding a biennial and art fair in 1996 and 1997, respectively, major institutions supporting the visual arts have sprung up or expanded.
A gentleman’s tour of Regency London prisons By Nicola Phillips In eighteenth and early nineteenth-century England prisons were popular tourist sites for wealthy visitors. They were also effectively run as private businesses by the Wardens, who charged the inmates for the privilege of being incarcerated there. Indeed prisoners from the higher ranks of society, who had the means to pay for better accommodation, routinely expected to be treated better than lower class or “common” criminals.
Book thumbnail image Before Caxton? Claiming Oxford as England’s first printing city By Ian Gadd ‘This Lane is commonly called Pie Lane, but I will call it Winking Lane’. So noted the Christ Church canon, Leonard Hutten, in his perambulatory Antiquities of Oxford, written at some point in the early seventeenth century.
Book thumbnail image Johann van Beethoven’s last hurrah By Ian Woodfield Fathers do not always receive the kindest press, but any man who unwittingly produces an icon of western culture will find his parental techniques under an especially harsh spotlight. Such was the fate of Johann van Beethoven, a singer of modest achievements, who ended up dividing his time unequally between the Bonn Hofkapelle and the local taverns.
Book thumbnail image Depression in older adults: a q&a with Dr. Brad Karlin On Veterans Day, the Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences published “Comparison of the Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Depression among Older Versus Younger Veterans: Results of a National Evaluation” co-author Bradley E. Karlin joins us to discuss the evaluation’s promising results. Why do older adults utilize mental health services at […]
Book thumbnail image The many “-cides” of Dostoevsky By Michael R. Katz In his classic study Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929), the literary theorist, scholar, and philosopher of language, Mikhail Bakhtin included a brilliant “exercise” in literary “what-ifs.” In the chapter entitled “The Hero in Dostoevsky’s Art,” Bakhtin analyzes as a characteristic example of the Leo Tolstoy’s “monologic manner” and poses the following question
Book thumbnail image Reflections on Disko Bay By Patricia Seed Miniature icebergs that would fit in the palm of my hand float along the water’s edge, but the air is cold enough to resist the impulse to crouch down and remove my gloves to pick them up. Looking up across the glass-like surface, I spot hundreds of similar chunks like pieces of frozen vanilla popsicle that have fallen just out of reach.
Book thumbnail image The Vietnam Veterans Memorial By Steven Casey Just over forty years ago, President Richard M. Nixon ran a successful reelection campaign based partly on a simple insight. Americans, he believed, were not opposed to the Vietnam War as such; they were simply opposed to their boys dying in Vietnam.
Book thumbnail image The science of consciousness must escape the religious dark ages Michael S. A. Graziano Each one of us has an inner feeling, an experience that is private. Consciousness, awareness, qualia, mind, call it what you will, it is the subtle distinction between merely computing information and feeling.
Book thumbnail image Oxford University Press and the Making of a Book To celebrate the publication of the first three volumes of The History of Oxford University Press on Thursday and University Press Week, we’re sharing various materials from our Archive and brief scholarly highlights from the work’s editors and contributors. To begin, we’d like to introduce a silent film made in 1925 by the Federation of British Industry.
Book thumbnail image The concept of ‘international community’ and the International Court of Justice By Gleider I Hernández Despite its constant invocation in doctrine, rhetoric and countless international documents, international lawyers still struggle with arriving at a well-defined understanding of the concept of an ‘international community’, whether in identifying the members that compose it, the values and norms that it represents, or the processes which underlie its functioning.
Book thumbnail image Alcohol marketing, football, and self-regulation By Jean Adams When we set out to quantify the volume of alcohol marketing in televised English football, I knew there would be some, but I was caught off guard by quite how much there was.
Book thumbnail image Léger’s The City and neuroaesthetics By Anjan Chatterjee Facing The City painted by Léger in 1919 can be an overwhelming experience. Geometry of bright colors, bits of human figures, mechanical structures, columns, stairs, lettering all crowd the painting and beyond into an immersive experience.
Mapping world history By Patricia Seed Porcelain, sealskin, powder-horn, buckskin, silk, and parchment: these are what history is made of. Celestial histories — subway, radio, or Internet histories. Histories found in stick charts and ordnance surveys. From the Paleolithic Period to digital age, maps have illustrated and recorded history and culture: detailing everything from wars and colonization, to religious and jingoistic worldviews, to the textures of the heavens and the earth.
Book thumbnail image “God Bless America” in war and peace By Sheryl Kaskowitz If you watched the World Series this year, you may have noticed a trend in the nightly renditions of “God Bless America” during the seventh inning stretch: all five performances were by soldiers in uniform.
Book thumbnail image The ups and downs of weight loss By Bill Bogart On 15 October 2013, the New York Times carried an article on President Taft’s struggle with his corpulence many decades ago. This “massively obese” man pursued weight loss into his old age. But long term shedding of pounds eluded him.
Book thumbnail image Hope and health By Robert Perlman Socioeconomic disparities in health are among the most troublesome and refractory problems in medicine. Health disparities begin before birth and are lifelong. Babies born to poor, disadvantaged, or marginalized parents have an increased incidence of prematurity and low birth weight, a greater burden of disease and disability throughout life, and a shorter life expectancy than people of higher socioeconomic status.
ADHD: time to change course ADHD: Time to Change Course In March 2013 we learned that 11% of US children and teens have received an ADHD diagnosis, an increase of 41% in 10 years. Diagnoses among adults have sharply increased as well. Some ADHD experts welcome this change.
Book thumbnail image Cajal´s butterflies of the soul By Javier DeFelipe Most scientific figures presented in the nineteenth century and first third of the twentieth century were the drawings of early neuroanatomists, such as Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) whose studies and theories had a profound impact on the researchers of his era.
Book thumbnail image A call to the goddess In the first book of The Iliad, Homer calls for a muse to help him recount the story of Achilles, the epic Greek hero of the Trojan War. The poet begins his account nine years after the start of Trojan war, with the capture of two maidens, Chryseis by Agamemnon, the commander of the Achaean Army, and Briseis by the hero Achilles.
The world of the wounded By Emily Mayhew By Emily Mayhew I work regularly with wounded veterans and medics from Britain’s wars of the 21st century. Their stories have extraordinary resonance with those from a century earlier. Casualties feel the same fear and dread.
Book thumbnail image Footloose jobs, rootless machines By Ashok Bardhan Five years after the onset of the global financial crisis and the recession that followed, jobless growth seems to be the buzz-phrase for describing the economic landscape today; and even that ambiguously happy phrase refers to those economies that are growing.
Book thumbnail image Poverty and health in the United States By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel We live in the richest nation on earth. Yet 15% of the US population (about 46 million people) live below the poverty line — about $23,000 for a family of four. Almost 25% of children live in poverty. The number of American households living on $2 or less grew by 130% between 1996 and 2011.
Book thumbnail image The usable past: an interview with Robert P. Wettemann Jr. By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards In celebration of Veterans Day, we’re pleased to share a conversation between OHR managing editor Troy Reeves and Dr. Robert P. Wettemann Jr., director of the U.S. Air Force Academy Center for Oral History.
Book thumbnail image Health care in need of repair By Mary A. M. Rogers Sometimes I think that Click and Clack – you know, the Car Talk™ experts – could give us a lesson on repair. They are pretty good at diagnosis; have plenty of experience in knowing how to test things out; are great listeners to the concerns of people who have a problem; and they really know subtyping – the characteristics specific to certain makes and models of different cars.
Book thumbnail image Common Core: lesson planning with the Oxford African American Studies Center By Sarah Thomson In 2012, 45 US states, as well as the District of Columbia, adopted and began implementing the new Common Core State Standards in K-12 public schools. In history and social studies classes, the Common Core Standards emphasize critical thinking and analytical reading and writing skills.
Book thumbnail image The Battle of Thermopylae and 300 By Paul Cartledge By Paul Cartledge In 2006 the Frank Miller-Zack Snyder bluescreen epic ‘300’ was a box office smash. The Battle of Thermopylae – fought between a massive Persian invading army and a very much smaller Greek force led by King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans in a narrow pass at the height of summer 480 BC – had never been visualised quite like that before.
Book thumbnail image The African Camus By Tim Allen Albert Camus, author of those high school World Literature course staples The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus, would have been 100 years old today.
Book thumbnail image New tricks with old music? By Nick Wilson As a musician myself I have certainly received my fair share of warranted (and un-warranted) criticism over the years. There is nowhere to hide on the concert platform. Performing music necessarily requires being open to others, exposing more of the self than is demanded in most other walks of life. It is perhaps only natural, therefore, that the controversial subject of authenticity should remain so stubbornly relevant to our understanding and pleasure of (musical) performance.
Book thumbnail image Why read radiology history? By Arpan K Banerjee Does history matter? Professional historians will not hesitate to answer in the affirmative for a multitude of reasons. I am sure many professionals in technical and scientific fields, however, may have asked themselves the first question in a reflective moment without necessarily the same positive responses attributed to professional historians.
Book thumbnail image Will the real Alfred Russel Wallace please stand up? By John van Wyhe The year 2013 is the centenary of the death of the Victorian naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, best-known as the man who formulated the theory of evolution by natural selection independently of Charles Darwin.
Amazing! By Anatoly Liberman Words, as I have noted more than once, live up to their sense. For instance, in searching for the origin of amaze, one encounters numerous truly amazing reefs. This is the story. Old English had the verb amasian “confuse, surprise.”
Book thumbnail image Tale of two laboratories By Istvan Hargittai The Los Alamos National Laboratory came to life in 1943 as the concluding segment of the Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bombs for the US Army. In August 1945, these bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Seven historical facts about financial disasters By Richard S. Grossman In the early 1600s, the King of Sweden declared that copper, along with silver, would serve as money. He did this because he owned lots of copper mines and thought that this policy would increase the public’s demand for copper—and also its price, making him much wealthier.
Book thumbnail image What has psychology got to do with the Internet? By Yair Amichai-Hamburger I believe that the Internet has special characteristics which together create an exceptional environment for the user. To start with, many websites allow you to maintain your anonymity. You may do this by assuming a pseudonym, using your initials or just “leaving the space blank”. This characteristic frees people from many of the issues that constrict them in their day to day offline lives.
Book thumbnail image FDR, Barack Obama, and the president’s war powers By Richard Moe Barack Obama earlier this year became the first president in recent memory to propose limiting the powers of his office when he called for reigning in the use of drones. “Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions,” he said on 23 May 2013.
Book thumbnail image Why does this baby cry when her mother sings? By Siu-Lan Tan This mesmerizing video has received over 21 million views, and is spreading rapidly through social media. The baby is 10 month-old Mary Lynne Leroux, who weeps as her mother Amanda sings My Heart Can’t Tell You No, a song most recently popularized by Sara Evans.
Book thumbnail image Discussing capital markets law There are many mechanisms for raising capital — debt, derivatives, equity, high yield products, securitization, and repackaging – which fund and drive fund the economy. But as international financial markets move and shift as the world changes, regulations and legal frameworks must also adapt rapidly.
Book thumbnail image To medical residents By Heidi Moawad The completion of residency training is a time of key decisions. For residents, the assessment of several strong job options is a long-awaited reward after years of preparation. However, unlike the regimented and scheduled process of residency applications and interviews culminating in match day during the fourth year of medical school, the search for a job or fellowship is self-directed, individualized, and without a set end point or deadline.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to hosting the most explosive Guy Fawkes Night By Daniel Parker For over 400 years, bonfires, fireworks, and effigies have burned on November 5th to commemorate the failed Gunpowder Plot put together by Guy Fawkes and twelve other conspirators. With a little help from OUP, you could out-shine all previous Bonfire Night celebrations. So pick up your Roman Candles, grab some sparklers, and join me as we run down OUP’s top five tips for hosting the perfect Guy Fawkes Night.
Book thumbnail image Russian choral music: the joy of discovering ‘unknown unknowns’ By Kristian Hibberd By Kristian Hibberd I first met its editor Noëlle Mann in the late 1990s as I began my PhD at the University of London. During the course of my studies, I had met (and often had the privilege of being taught by) some incredibly gifted, dedicated musicians and academics. Noëlle was all of that but what struck me most profoundly was the irresistible drive and boundless energy she applied to any venture to which she committed herself
Book thumbnail image A few things to remember, this fifth of November By Philip Carter As you prepare to gather round a bonfire and to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at fireworks, don’t forget (indeed, ‘remember, remember’) that you’re part of a well-established national tradition. What’s now known as the Gunpowder Plot was uncovered on the night of Monday 4 November 1605 when Thomas Knyvett, keeper of Whitehall Palace, led a second search of the vaults under the House of Lords.
Book thumbnail image Add a fourth year to law school By Edward Zelinsky President Obama has joined with other critics of contemporary legal education in calling for the reduction of law school to a two year program. The President and these other critics are wrong. Indeed, the remedy they propose for the ills of legal education has it exactly backward.
Book thumbnail image Announcing the Place of the Year 2013 Shortlist: Vote for your pick In honor of Oxford’s 20th edition of the acclaimed Atlas of the World, we put together a longlist of 20 places around the globe for our yearly Place of the Year competition. The votes have been tallied, the geography committee has provided their essential input, and the shortlist nominees have been decided upon.
Book thumbnail image A close call: the victory of John Adams Today marks the 217th anniversary of the start of the third election of the president of the United States on 4 November 1796. Still a young country, the election was center stage that year as George Washington decided to stop running. Many patriots were viable candidates, but John Adams had served as vice president under Washington and was an obvious choice for a candidate.
Book thumbnail image Drone technology and international law By Frederik Rosén Drone technology presents us with a quantum leap in the history of seeing in war: a history moving from hilltops and watchtowers to the use of binoculars, balloons and airplanes and then on to radar, night vision, satellites…and drones. Drone technology brings us closer than ever to the battleground. It is a medium of proximity and visibility.
Book thumbnail image White versus black justice By Martha J. Cutter My nephew Jake Silverman is a brainy, confident, energetic, and strong-willed six-year-old. He eats more food than I ever thought it was possible for a six-year-old boy to consume, loves my iPad with a passion, and sometimes has temper tantrums when he doesn’t get precisely what he wants. He already knows he wants to be a doctor, and I have no doubt that he will be an unruly teenager who will mature into a brilliant, handsome, and talented young man. At least that is my hope.
Book thumbnail image Q&A with author Craig L. Symonds There are a number of mysteries surrounding the Battle of Midway, and a breadth of new information has recently been uncovered about the four day struggle. We sat down with naval historian Craig L. Symonds, author of The Battle of Midway, newly released in paperback, to answer some questions about the iconic World War II […]
Book thumbnail image Eric Orts on business theory Eric Orts on business theory Business is one of the most powerful and influential institutions in our world today, but there has been relatively little theoretical work from scholars…We sat down with Eric Orts, author of Business Persons, to discuss thinking critically about business institutions in a theoretical manner.
In the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace with Bill Bailey By George and Jan Beccaloni By George and Jan Beccaloni On Sunday 29 July 2013, we headed off to Wallacea for three weeks to assist comedian Bill Bailey with a documentary he is presenting about Alfred Russel Wallace. George, the Natural History Museum’s Curator of Orthopteroid Insects, acted as the Historical Consultant.
Book thumbnail image Is big data a big deal in political science? By R. Michael Alvarez Not a day passes when I don’t see something in the news about big data. Sometimes the stories will be about some interesting new big data application. For example I recently read about the WeatherSignal app that is collecting weather data from smartphones. And of course there has been a lot in the news lately about the big data and privacy,
Maps of The Iliad By Barry B. Powell While The Iliad is a fictional tale of the Trojan War between the Trojan and Achaean warriors during the Late Bronze Age (circa 1500-1200 BC), it is set in a real location: the eastern Mediterranean, along the Aegean Sea. We present a brief slideshow of maps from Barry B. Powell’s new translation of the ancient epic, which illustrate the geographic regions mentioned, from towns and cities, to character origins, and even allied battle grounds.
Book thumbnail image Ten facts about Charles Darwin’s ten children By Tim M. Berra Charles married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and together they had ten children, three died in childhood and seven lived long lives.
Book thumbnail image On (re-)discovering Alfred Russel Wallace By George Beccaloni Two of my greatest passions in life are cockroaches and Alfred Russel Wallace, so I am fortunate to not only be the curator of the London Natural History Museum’s collection of orthopteroid insects, but also the director of the Wallace Correspondence Project.
Book thumbnail image Life as an OUP intern By Jessica Harris I know that I want to work in publishing, and I know that to get into publishing, it helps to have work experience. But when I applied for an eight-week paid internship at Oxford University Press (OUP), I certainly didn’t think I’d get it, especially as OUP is one of the industry’s biggest names. I sent off my application a couple of days before the deadline but tried not to think about it.
Book thumbnail image Matching our cognitive brain span to our extended lifespan By Dr. Sandra B. Chapman Among adults over 50, “staying mentally sharp” out ranks social security and physical health as the top priority and concern in the United States. Many individuals will live to be 100 or older, requiring their brains to remain at peak performance for another whole lifetime. Unfortunately, science shows cognitive decline begins at age 42.
Book thumbnail image Asbo, Jago, and chavismo: What party hat for Arthur Morrison? By Peter Miles First, a word to Google. Dead people do not have birthdays. I hate to be a party-pooper in the eyes of any zombies still celebrating Halloween, but Google will insist on informing me that today is Nietzsche’s 169th birthday or the 143rd birthday of the chap who first put a metal strip in a banknote or the 158th birthday of the Czech inventor of the bicycle seat — when it never is.
Book thumbnail image Building the hydrogen bomb By Patrick Coffey Even before the Manhattan Project began, Edward Teller found the idea of building the Super (a hydrogen bomb) irresistible. After the Project’s end, Teller prepared a fifty-nine-page report, “A Prima Facie Proof of the Feasibility of the Super,” which he presented at an April 1946 conference at Los Alamos.
Book thumbnail image The Milky Way’s tilted dark matter halo By Victor P. Debattista The gravity of the Milky Way Galaxy is tearing the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy apart. Stars ripped out of the tiny galaxy have ended up in a stream, which wraps around our own much heavier galaxy.
Book thumbnail image Measurement doesn’t equal objectivity By Stephen Gaukroger In 1983, the director of a grocery chain was appointed to report on the National Health Service, and he concluded that it was under-managed. He was then given the power to recruit 200 chief executives, who were instructed not just to succeed but to succeed measurably. They were told to log waiting lists, appointments, referrals, lengths of stay, operations, incidents, perinatal deaths, overall mortality rates… in fact anything to which a number could be attached.
October 2013 (110))
Reading close to midnight in a leather armchair Fancy a spot of ghost hunting? Try to ignore the hairy hand in the corner of your eye and curl up with M.R. James this Halloween. Darryl Jones, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James, provides an excellent guide to his strange imagination and menace. Join Jones in the Trinity College Dublin Library to discuss James’s life and work.
Book thumbnail image A spooky Halloween playlist By Taylor Coe No other holiday has mood swings quite like Halloween. Running the gamut from horror to kitsch to comedy, the holiday is as variable as the types of costumes donned by schoolchildren on the day itself. This Halloween, we have put together a collection of songs collected from the staff at Oxford University Press that reflects that intrinsic variability.
Book thumbnail image Halloween with the Ghost Club By Roger Luckhurst As Lisa Morton notes in her excellent Trick or Treat? A History of Halloween (2013), our annual festival of spooks is a typical result of messy history and cultural confusion. It entered modern English culture as a misunderstanding of the three-day Celtic new year celebration in Ireland, which started at sunset on the 31st of October, to mark summer’s end.
Book thumbnail image Engineering has an image problem that needs fixing By David Blockley Engineering is at the very heart of our society. Unfortunately many people don’t see it that way because engineering has an image problem. But why does that matter?
Etymological gleanings for October 2013 By Anatoly Liberman Touch and go. I asked our correspondents whether anyone could confirm or disprove the nautical origin of the idiom touch and go. This is the answer I received from Mr. Jonathan H. Saunders: “As a Merchant Mariner I have used and heard this term for over thirty years.
Book thumbnail image The many strengths of battered women By Sherry Hamby One woman, to save money to prepare for leaving her abusive husband, sewed $20 bills into the hemlines of old clothes in the back of her closet. Another woman started volunteering at her school so she could keep close watch over her children and earned Volunteer of the Year at her school.
Book thumbnail image Halloween witches: ladies not for burning By Owen Davies Why is Halloween associated with witches? Look back beyond the twentieth century and you will find few connections. The 31st of October has long been a day of great religious significance of course. It is All Hallows’ Eve, the build-up to the Catholic All Saints’ Day, and then All Souls’ Day on 2 November. This was a time when the worlds of the living and the dead were at their closest.
Book thumbnail image A Halloween reading list from University Press Scholarship Online The nights darken, the wind howls, and branches (or ghostly fingers?) tap against your windowpane. This can only mean one thing – Halloween approaches! To celebrate the day of ghouls, ghosts and other creatures which go bump in the night, we’ve compiled a list of University Press Scholarship Online‘s most spine-chilling chapters (available free for a limited time).
Book thumbnail image Come together in Adam Smith By Daniel B. Klein I support a classical liberal worldview. I call to social democrats and conservatives alike: Be fair. Let us treat one another like fellow Smithians and come together in Adam Smith.
Book thumbnail image Dear Russell Brand; on the politics of comedy and disengagement By Matthew Flinders Out Paxo’ing Paxman might be one thing but it is quite another to make the leap from comedian to serious political commentator.
Book thumbnail image Ghosts, goblins, and ghouls, oh my! With the 31st of October quickly approaching, scores of costumes and vast amounts of candy are disappearing from stores as we prepare for Halloween. But, with all the time and money put into the decorations and celebration, how much do we really know about this widely celebrated tradition? How many of us can even define the term, Halloween?
Book thumbnail image Phantoms and frauds: the history of spirit photography By Kate Scott The last time President Abraham Lincoln and First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln sat for a portrait photograph together was in the early 1870s, five years or more after the president’s death and burial. The president, filmy and translucent, tenderly placed his see-through hands on his wife’s shoulders as she looked into the camera.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Lou Reed By Anna-Lise Santella I heard about Lou Reed’s death in the most modern of ways. He had taken over my Twitter feed, which on Sunday was suddenly filled with links to Rolling Stone‘s obituary, often preceded by shock-induced expletives or followed by links to a video of a favorite song.
Book thumbnail image “Woo woo versus doo doo” By Kelly Besecke The relationship between reason and spirituality has been part of our cultural conversation since the advent of modernity. In recent times, we’ve seen this conversation play out in public debates over creationism and arguments between religious leaders and representatives of a “new atheism.”
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year 2013: Behind the longlist The 2013 Oxford Place of the Year (POTY) process is now in full swing. The longlist poll closes this Thursday, so be sure to get your votes in! (Scroll to the bottom of this page to vote.) The POTY shortlist will be announced on Monday, 4 November 2013.
Book thumbnail image ´Operation: Last Chance´, dilemmas of justice, and lessons for international criminal tribunals By Sergey Vasiliev In late July 2013, The Guardian reported that the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (SWC), a global Jewish NGO, had launched a poster campaign in Germany requesting the public to assist in identifying and bringing to justice the last surviving alleged perpetrators of crimes under the Nazi regime. Two thousand posters were hung in the streets, featuring a sinister black-and-white image of the most horrific dead-end the modern-era humankind has seen: the snow-covered rail tracks approaching the gate of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp.
A Hallowe’en reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Lizzie Shannon-Little What better way to send shivers down your spine this Halloween than to curl up with a spooky tale? These Classics have been putting the frighteners on people for quite some time, and we’ve got the collywobbles just thinking about them.
Book thumbnail image How medical researchers become morally entangled By Henry S. Richardson A huge amount of ethical angst swirls around the topic of informed consent. Can lay people who are considering signing up as subjects in a medical study really be made to understand the risks they are facing?
Book thumbnail image New York City goes underground By Joseph B. Raskin Service on the first route of the New York City subway system began 109 years ago today, on 27 October 1904. The occasion was marked by ceremonies in City Hall, led by George A. McClellan and representatives of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the operators of that line. Mayor McClellan saw the opening of the subway as the beginning of a new era for the greater city.
Book thumbnail image Gridlock and The Federalist By David Brian Robertson In the The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay offer us urgent lessons for coping with the kind of gridlock that grips American government today. They were defending a plan intended to replace a failing national government. The proposed Constitution aimed to break a government stalemate that threatened the survival of the infant American republic.
Book thumbnail image Argentina’s elections: A Q&A By Francisco Cantu, R. Michael Alvarez, and Sebastian Saiegh In anticipation of Argentina’s mid-term elections to be held on Sunday, 27 October 2013, Political Analysis co-editor R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) discussed some of the most important things that we need to know about this contest with Francisco Cantu (University of Houston) and Sebastian Saiegh (UCSD).
Book thumbnail image Paul Collier on immigration The debate over immigration policy is characterized by explosive rhetoric on both sides. Paul Collier, author of Exodus: How Migration is Changing Our World, discusses why liberals and conservatives both need to reassess their positions, and how we must find a middle ground based on sound data and research.
Book thumbnail image From the Higgs to dark matter By Gianfranco Bertone A quiet turmoil agitates the international scientific community, as cosmology and particle physics discretely inch toward a pivotal paradigm shift. The giant detectors that have allowed the much celebrated discovery of the Higgs boson, for which the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded this October, now sit quietly in the depths of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider tunnel — barely fitting in their underground hall, like the green apple in Magritte’s painting The Listening Room —
Book thumbnail image Metabolomic markers of aging By Ana M. Valdes Aging is a complex process of accumulation of molecular, cellular, and organ damage, leading to loss of function and increased vulnerability to disease and death.
Book thumbnail image Considering your digital resume By Steven Sielaff Throughout my time as Oral History Review (OHR) editorial assistant at the Oral History Association’s (OHA) annual conference in Oklahoma City, OK, I saw a number of prevailing themes. In the recent past, the push towards digitization and web-based portals has dominated the professional landscape. This was certainly the case again at this year’s conference.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Frank Norris By Jerome Loving More than a century ago, on October 25, 1902, we lost a major novelist by the name of Frank Norris, author of McTeague: A Story of San Francisco (1899). Like Stephen Crane, he died in his prime, but not before writing at least one of the great American novels in the naturalist tradition of Thomas Hardy and Theodore Dreiser.
Book thumbnail image Shakespeare in disguise Celebrate Halloween with Shakespeare and Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO)! Test your knowledge on which characters disguise themselves, what the witches say around their cauldron, why ghosts haunt the living, and who plays tricks in the night …
Book thumbnail image Astrobiology: pouring cold asteroid water on Aristotle By David C. Catling Over 2,300 years ago, in his book De Caelo (On the Heavens), Aristotle asked if other Earth-like worlds exist and dismissed the idea. But now, remarkably, the question is on the verge of being answered scientifically. NASA’s Kepler space telescope, launched in 2009, has collected data on the statistical occurrence of small planets that orbit stars at a distance where it’s the right temperature for liquid water and conceivably life.
Book thumbnail image International Law Weekend 2013 By Jo Wojtkowski The 2013 International Law Weekend Annual Meeting is taking place this week at Fordham Law School, in New York City (24-26 October 2013).
Book thumbnail image Jo Ann Robinson and the importance of biography By Robert Heinrich Why think of American history in terms of biography? Perhaps most obviously, looking at individuals’ lives allows us to see behind the curtain of many of the great events and movements in American history.
Book thumbnail image Sofia Gubaidulina, light and darkness By Meghann Wilhoite Today is the birthday of a composer who writes in a radically different musical style than many of us are accustomed to hearing on a day-to-day basis, as we sit on hold with the doctor’s office or hum along with the music piped into the aisles of the grocery store.
Book thumbnail image Oktoberfest Library By Marsha Bryant Beer does not resemble wine so much as it resembles music. – Garrett Oliver
Vernon Scannell: War poetry and PTSD By James Andrew Taylor the more I read about his life after the war – the monumental drinking binges, the black-outs, the terrifying, sweating nightmares, and most of all the raging, unreasonable jealousies and the sickening violence that he meted out to his wife and, later, his lovers – the more I began to wonder whether this was not also the story of a man seriously damaged by his wartime experiences.
“Deuce,” “doozy,” and “floozy.” Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman It is hard to hide something (anything) from Stephen Goranson (see his comment to Part 1), who will find a needle in a haystack, and The Canterville Ghost is a rather visible needle. Yet Oscar Wilde is no longer as popular as one could wish for.
Book thumbnail image Participating in the OAPEN program By Andrew Pettinger I was recently invited by Oxford University Press (OUP) to have my book, The Republic in Danger, published on the online open access library OAPEN. After a few general questions, I happily accepted. Why?
Book thumbnail image Why study economics? As you begin your university course in economics, you’re probably wondering just how your studies will intersect with the world outside the classroom. In the following adapted excerpt from Foundations of Economics, author Andrew Gillespie highlights the importance of studying economics.
Book thumbnail image Dizzying new perspectives of vertigo research By Béla Büki In the last three decades vertigo science has been revolutionized by new examination techniques and improving understanding of physiological principles.
Book thumbnail image Urban warfare around the globe [interactive map] What is the future of warfare? Counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen’s fieldwork in supporting aid agencies, non-government organizations, and local communities in conflict and disaster-affected regions, has taken him from the mountains of Afghanistan to the cities of Syria. His experience in the last few years has led to new ways of thinking about the face of global conflict.
Book thumbnail image Five reasons to stay sober after October Macmillan Cancer Support have raised over £1 million with their #gosober for October campaign. But is this a lifestyle that more of us should adopt permanently? Here are five great reasons to stay sober after October.
Book thumbnail image Getting and keeping the vote By Jean Baker Organizing for the women’s suffrage parade planned for 23 October 1915 in New York had taken months. By this time leaders of the New York movement were practiced at arranging such popular spectacles in a state that would be a significant prize, with parades its most effective, opinion–changing tactic. Finally–nearly seventy years after the Seneca Falls Convention and its call for women’s suffrage– the momentum seemed to be shifting.
Images of jazz through the twentieth century By Mervyn Cooke From the Harlem Rag to grand pianos to the Grammy awards to the international stage… Jazz has had many different incarnations since its origins 120 years ago. This brief slideshow with images from Mervyn Cooke’s The Chronicle of Jazz conveys the diversity of change in jazz performers throughout the years. Innovation, experimentation, controversy, and emotion — all found in the most imaginative and enduring music.
Book thumbnail image Gravity: developmental themes in the Alfonso Cuarón film By Siu-Lan Tan Spoiler Alert: This article includes plot details from the film. Watching Gravity as a professor who teaches child psychology, I could not help but see the developmental themes that resonate with this film. One of the luminous images that lingered with me long after the film ended is the scene in which Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is nestled in the safety of a spacecraft following a grueling battle for her life.
Place of the Year: History of the Atlas At the end of each year at Oxford University Press, we look back at places around the globe (and beyond) that have been at the center of historic news and events. In conjunction with the publication of the 20th edition of Oxford Atlas of the World we launched Place of the Year (POTY) 2013 last week. In honor of 20 editions of the Atlas, we put together a longlist of 20 nominees that made an impact heard around the world this year. If you haven’t voted, there’s still time (vote below).
Book thumbnail image ‘And he laid down his hammer and he died’: Health and performance pay By Keith A. Bender and Ioannis Theodossiou The 18th Century political economist, Adam Smith, wrote: ‘Workmen… when they are liberally paid by the piece, are very apt to overwork themselves and to ruin their health and constitution in a few years’
Book thumbnail image The changing face of war [infographic] In a world of 9.1 billion people… where 61% of the world’s population lives in urban centers… primarily with coastal cities as magnets of growth… and the people within these cities becoming ever more connected… with mobile phones as tools for destruction…
Book thumbnail image Medical research ethics: more than abuse prevention? By Henry S. Richardson Scholarly and regulatory attention to the ethics of medical research on human subjects has been one-sidedly focused on the prevention of moral disasters. Scandals such the US Public Health Service (PHS)’s Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which for decades observed the effects of untreated syphilis on the participants, most of whom were poor black sharecroppers, rightly spurred the broad establishment of a regulatory regime that emphasized the importance of preventing such severe harming and exploitation of the human subjects of research.
Book thumbnail image Does time pass? By Adrian Bardon In the early 5th century BCE a group of philosophers from the Greek colony of Elea formed a school of thought devoted to the notion that sense perception — as opposed to reason — is a poor guide to reality. The leader of this school was known as Parmenides.
Book thumbnail image The wait is now over By Erik N. Jensen Let’s get one thing straight about Andy Murray’s Wimbledon singles title: It was not the first one by a Briton in 77 years, despite what the boisterous headlines might have you believe. London’s venerable Times set the tone on July 8 with its proclamation, “Murray ends 77-year wait for British win.”
Bloody but unbowed By Sonia Tsuruoka By Sonia Tsuruoka Not much remains to be said about the politics of the written word: scores of historical biographers have examined the literary appetites of revolutionaries, and how what they read determined how they interpreted the world. Mohandas Gandhi read Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience during his two-month incarceration in South Africa.
Book thumbnail image Jonathan Swift, Irish writer By Claude Rawson Jonathan Swift, whom T. S. Eliot called “colossal,” “the greatest writer of English prose, and the greatest man who has ever written great English prose,” died on 19 October 1745.
Book thumbnail image Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave, slave narratives, and the American public By Mitch Kachun Like many scholars who study nineteenth century African American history and literature, I am excited by the attention surrounding the newly released film, 12 Years a Slave, based on the experiences of Solomon Northup, a free black man from New York who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery.
Book thumbnail image Romeo & Juliet: the film adaptations By Jill L. Levensen In its fall preview issue for 2013 (dated 2-9 September), New York magazine lists Romeo and Juliet with other films opening on 11 October 2013, and it comments: “Julian Fellowes (the beloved creator of Downton Abbey) tries to de-Luhrmann-ize this classic.” The statement makes two notable points.
Book thumbnail image Riots, meaning, and social phenomena By P.A.J. Waddington The academic long vacation offers the opportunity to catch–up on some reading and reflect upon it. Amongst my reading this summer was the special edition of Policing and Society devoted to contemporary rioting and protest.
Book thumbnail image What patients really want By Aidan O’Donnell Picture this scenario. In a brightly-lit room, young women in spotless white tunics apply high-tech treatments to a group of people lying on beds. At first glance, you might think this is a hospital or clinic, but in fact, it is a beauty salon.
Cookstoves and health in the developing world By Gautam N. Yadama Fires, Fuel, and the Fate of 3 Billion examines the difficult issues at play in the developing world’s use of crude indoor cookstoves for heat and food preparation. The incidence of childhood pneumonia and early mortality in these regions points to the public health threat of these cultural institutions, but as Gautam Yadama and Mark Katzman show, simply replacing the stoves may not be the simple solution that many presume.
Book thumbnail image Children’s invented notions of rhythms What is your earliest musical memory? How has it formed your creativite impulse? Jeanna Bamberger’s research focuses on cognitive aspects of music perception, learning, and development, so when it came to reviewing her work, she thought of her own earliest musical experiences. The following is an adapted extract from Discovering the musical mind: A view of creativity as learning by Jeanne Bamberger.
Book thumbnail image Getting parents involved in education By Francesco Avvisati, Marc Gurgand, Nina Guyon, and Eric Maurin Problems of truancy, violence, and discipline can contribute to many schoolchildren in industrialized societies graduating from school without mastering basic skills.
“Deuce,” “doozy,” and “floozy.” Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Don’t hold your breath: all three words, especially the second and the third, came in from the cold and will return there. Nor do we know whether anything connects them. Deuce is by far the oldest of the three. Our attestations of it go back to the middle of the seventeenth century.
Book thumbnail image Food fortification By Mark Lawrence Food fortification, that is the addition of one or more nutrients to a food whether or not they are normally contained in the food, is receiving much attention as a potential solution for preventing or correcting a demonstrated nutrient deficiency. It is a powerful technology for rapidly increasing the nutrient intake of populations. Political agendas and technological capacities are combining to significantly increase the number of staple foods that are being fortified, the number of added nutrients they contain and their reach.
Book thumbnail image Developing countries in the world economy By Deepak Nayyar In the span of world history, the distinction between industrialized and developing economies, or rich and poor countries, is relatively recent. It surfaced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In fact, one thousand years ago, Asia, Africa and South America, taken together, accounted for more than 80% of world population and world income.
Book thumbnail image From Boris Johnson to Oscar Wilde: who is the wittiest of them all? Today marks the publication of the fifth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations under the editorship of broadcaster and former MP Gyles Brandreth. But who is the wittiest of them all?
Book thumbnail image Appomattox and black freedom By Elizabeth R. Varon This year’s Civil War sesquicentennial commemorations have highlighted the theme of emancipation, and appropriately so: Lincoln’s promulgation of his Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863 was a watershed event. But if we cast our eyes back to African American freedom commemorations in the wake of the war, we are reminded that emancipation was a process, not an event — and that its fulfillment hinged on Confederate military defeat.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating World Anaesthesia Day World Anaesthesia Day commemorates the first successful demonstration of ether anaesthesia on 16 October 1846, which took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital, home of the Harvard School of Medicine. This ranks as one of the most significant events in the history of medicine and the discovery made it possible for patients to obtain the benefits of surgical treatment without the pain associated with an operation.
Book thumbnail image The end of Nez Perce In early October of 1877, Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce surrendered to the United States military after a harrowing five month war to reclaim their ancestral homeland from gold rushing Americans. The following excerpt from Elliot West’s The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story describes the settlement made and the challenging move north the displaced Nez Perce faced as a result of it.
Interview with Charles Hiroshi Garrett By Anna-Lise Santella After nearly a decade of work, the second edition of The Grove Dictionary of American Music—often called AmeriGrove—is finished. In September 2013, shortly before publication, I talked with Editor in Chief Charles Hiroshi Garrett about the project.
Book thumbnail image In the wake of the uprisings By Jan Wouters and Sanderijn Duquet In early 2011, a series of revolutionary chain reactions against uncompromising and authoritarian regimes set the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) in motion. The popular uprisings spread quickly across the Arab world and their effects continue today.
Book thumbnail image Announcing the Place of the Year 2013 Longlist: Vote for your pick Here at OUP, at the end of each year, we look back at the places around the globe (and beyond) which have been at the center of historic events. In conjunction with the publication of the Oxford Atlas of the World, 20th Edition, today we launch the Place Of The Year (POTY) 2013.
Book thumbnail image Dealing with digital death By Damien McCallig Through the use of email, social media, and other online accounts, our lives and social interactions are increasingly mediated by digital service providers. As the volume of these interactions increases and displaces traditional forms of communication and commerce the question of what happens to those accounts, following the death of the user, takes on greater significance.
Book thumbnail image Ivor Gurney and the poetry of the First World War By Tim Kendall One of the anthologist’s greatest pleasures comes from discovering previously unknown pieces to jostle with the familiar classics. Editing The Poetry of the First World War, I knew that I should need to accommodate ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, ‘The Soldier’, and ‘For the Fallen’. Whatever their qualities, these have become so inextricably part of our understanding that to omit them would be perverse.
Book thumbnail image On shutdown politics: why it is not the Constitution’s fault By Elvin Lim It has become a routine recourse, when examining American politics, for modern commentators to blame the Constitution for the failures of government. We are told that the separation of powers encourages gridlock, and parties pull together what the Constitution pulls asunder.
Book thumbnail image Mary Hays and the “triumph of affection” By Eleanor Ty In the early 1790s, Mary Hays was a rising writer who had published an Oriental tale, an essay on the usefulness of public worship, and, with her sister, produced a collection of essays on miscellaneous topics: romances, friendships, and improvements to female education. She admired and had befriended radicals Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and was introduced to the circle of London intellectuals in the 1790s.
Book thumbnail image Another kind of government shutdown By Melissa Aronczyk Since the US government shutdown last week, lawmakers and public commenters have been worrying about the massive costs to American taxpayers and the US economy. Previous government shutdowns in 1995 and 1996 cost us an estimated $2.1 billion in 2013 dollars.
Book thumbnail image World Arthritis Day – promoting awareness of rheumatic diseases By Robert J Moots World Arthritis Day is celebrated each year on the 12th of October. It was first established in 1996 by Arthritis and Rheumatism International with the aim to raise awareness of issues affecting people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases within the medical community, as well as the general population.
Book thumbnail image The wondrous world of the UW Digital Collections By Caitlin Tyler-Richards A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a presentation on archiving commemorative African fabrics, through the course of which I learned about the University of Wisconsin’s Digital Collections Center. As a historian-in-training and digital archive enthusiast, I became immediately intrigued by all the resources and projects described by Melissa McLimans, a digital librarian who works with the Center and helped digitally archive the fabric.
Book thumbnail image Accelerating world trend to abolish capital punishment By William Schabas For more than a decade, 10 October has been the World Day Against the Death Penalty. It is an important activity of the global movement against capital punishment. Amnesty International has been campaigning on the issue since the 1970s. But since the beginning of the century, the movement has grown.
Book thumbnail image Management for humans By John Hendry The word ‘management’ derives from the sixteenth century Italian maneggiare, to handle or control a horse. The application has been extended over the centuries from horses to weapons, boats, sportspeople and nowadays to people and affairs quite generally, but the connotation of control remains.
Book thumbnail image Riding the tails of the pink ribbon By Gayle Sulik The iconic pink breast cancer awareness ribbon – once a consciousness-raising symbol—now functions primarily as a logo for the breast cancer brand.
Book thumbnail image The golden wings of the bicentennial: Giuseppe Verdi at 200 By Francesco Izzo It is finally here. The big anniversary. The bicentennial. Today, Giuseppe Verdi turns 200. There has been excitement in the air for quite some time—leading opera houses presenting new productions and outreach initiatives to honor the great composer, publishing companies rushing to release a host of new books for all sorts of readerships, and public and private organizations around the world (governments and municipalities, research centers and fan clubs) working to celebrate the occasion as it deserves.
Book thumbnail image Shakespeare and the controversy over Richard III’s remains By Philip Schwyzer What are we going to do with Richard III? More than a year after his bones were unearthed in Leicester, the last Plantagenet king is still waiting for a resting place.
An interlude By Anatoly Liberman Every word journalist is on the lookout for interesting pieces of information about language. H. W. Fowler, the author of the great and incomparable book Modern English Usage, confessed that his main reading was newspapers. Naturally: where else could he find so much garbled English?
Interrogating inequality around the globe The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York brought together leading sociologists from around the world to discuss the field, focusing on “Interrogating Inequality.” Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor-in-Chief of Social Forces, was lucky enough to steal five sociologists 20 blocks south to Oxford’s New York office.
Book thumbnail image Five reasons why China has the most interesting economy in the world By John Knight China is not only soon likely to have the largest economy in the world but it also has the most fascinating because of the challenges that it has successfully met and the challenges that lie ahead for this semi-industrialised economy.
Book thumbnail image Watching Titus, feeling flesh By Hester Lees-Jefferies Last month I sat in my favourite theatre, the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon, watching Michael Fentiman’s excellent Royal Shakespeare Company production of Titus Andronicus. Titus is one of my favourite plays, loose and messy, blackly comic and oddly beautiful.
Book thumbnail image And the Nobel Prize goes to… Higgs and Englert! By Jim Baggott Earlier today the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to English theorist Peter Higgs and Belgian François Englert, for their work on the ‘mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles’. This work first appeared in a series of research papers published in 1964.
Pragmatic preservation and the Vanderbilt Hotel By Alodie Larson As Grand Central Terminal celebrates its centennial this year, I have found myself admiring other accomplishments of the firm responsible for a significant part of its design, Warren & Wetmore. In my first days in the New York office of Oxford University Press, I noticed an imposing cadre of busts from the southeast windows of the building.
Book thumbnail image Education depends on brains By Philippe Grandjean This time of the year, parents worry about what the new school year will bring for their children, teachers complain about school budget constraints, and politicians express ambitions that at least 90% of all children complete basic schooling and 50% or more pursue college degrees.
Book thumbnail image The sounds of American counterculture and citizenship By Michael J. Kramer We’re told many stories about the 1960s, typically clichéd tales of excess and revolution. But there’s more to the popular music of the 1960s. There are many ways in which rock music has shaped our ideas of individual freedom and collective belonging. Rock became a way for participants in American culture and counterculture to think about what it meant to be an American citizen, a world citizen, a citizen-consumer, or a citizen-soldier.
Book thumbnail image Metro North disruption and “employer convenience”, double taxation – again By Edward Zelinsky Once again, those of us who depend on Metro North’s railroad commuter service found ourselves bereft of adequate transportation to travel to work in Manhattan. Once again, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA), which runs Metro North, urged us to avoid Manhattan by telecommuting from our homes for the duration of this service disruption.
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year: Through the years Next week we launch our annual Place of the Year Contest (POTY), where we reflect back on the world’s hits and misses. Our panel of geography experts are hard at work compiling a list of places that have made an impact felt around the world in 2013. One place will be chosen as the winner. While they compile the most newsworthy locales, we wanted to reflect back on past years’ winners.
Book thumbnail image Ten constitutional preambles you may not know How do nations across the globe declare their intent in the formation of a new government? To celebrate the launch of the innovative, new platform Oxford Constitutions of the World, we have highlighted a broad range of preambles from several jurisdictions below and the full constitutions freely available on the Oxford Constitutions of the World site for a limited time.
Book thumbnail image Mr Leggy has left the building (for a while) By Ali Sparkes You might think this is just Children’s Book Week but it’s also another significant week on the calendar. It’s National Spiders Come In Week.
Book thumbnail image Confronting habitat loss in the 21st Century According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, ‘habitat’ means the place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs. Tomorrow is World Habitat Day. The obvious question is, why do we need a day devoted just to habitat? The short answer is that loss of habitat is now the foremost conservation concern of the 21st century.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating World Teachers’ Day By Jamie Zibulsky Today is World Teachers’ Day. What is World Teachers’ Day, you ask? It is “a day [first celebrated in 1994 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] devoted to appreciating, assessing, and improving the educators of the world.” This internationally recognized day commemorates teachers around the globe and their commitment to children and learning.
Book thumbnail image Five things you may not know about Chester Arthur By Michael Gerhardt It is hard to imagine there is anything worth knowing about Chester Arthur. Many Americans might not even recognize that he was a president of the United States. By almost any measure, he is one of our most forgotten presidents: Never elected to the office in his office and a political hack […]
Book thumbnail image A medieval saint in modern times By Kandice Rawlings Saint Francis of Assisi died on this day in 1226, and when he was canonized just two years later, the fourth of October became his feast day. Even before his sainthood was official, St Francis was a popular figure among the faithful, and the religious order he had founded already had chapters throughout Europe.
Book thumbnail image The precarious future of ocean megafauna By Justin Gregg Being an enormous, hulking beast has long been an effective defense mechanism. The plains and forests of North America were once teeming with colossal creatures like giant ground sloths and woolly mammoths, behemoths that plodded along safe in the knowledge that few predators would dare challenge them.
The economics of cancer care To mark Breast Cancer Awareness Month this October, here is an extract from Cancer: A Very Short Introduction by Nick James.
Book thumbnail image The first woman senator While I was racing through the tunnels that link the concourses at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, trying to make a tight connection, faces of famous Georgians adorning the walls flashed by. Among them I spotted Rebecca Latimer Felton and wondered how many other travelers might recognize her as the first woman to serve in the United States Senate. Not that her term lasted all that long. When the governor appointed her on October 2, 1922, the Senate was not in session. By the time it convened in November, an election had taken place that chose her successor.
Images from Broadway’s past By Ethan Mordden In Anything Goes, Broadway historian Ethan Mordden takes us on a tour of the history of Broadway musicals over the past 100 years. From classical shows to Bernadette Peter’s recent turn in the 2011 production of Follies, take a tour of the evolution of the musical through the years and “all that jazz” that is has captivated audiences for ages.
Book thumbnail image Happy 60th Birthday: The science that makes transplantation work By Daniel M. Davis Sixty years ago today, the world’s top science journal Nature published an article just 3½ pages long, which won a Nobel Prize for its lead author Peter Medawar and more importantly put doctors on the right path for making transplantation surgery the life-saver that it is today.
Book thumbnail image In the footsteps of the fashionable world By Hannah Greig Each autumn, throughout the 1700s, London’s West End was transformed. Previously quiet squares were populated again, first by servants and tradesmen. After the houses were readied, their employers journeyed to the capital from their country estates between October and January. Snow, noted one observer, ‘brings up all the Fine folks [to London], flocking like half-frozen birds into a Farm-yard, from the terror…of another fatal month’s confinement…in the country’.
Ostentatious breeches, gods’ braggadocio, and ars poetica By Anatoly Liberman As promised, I am returning to the English verb brag and the Old Scandinavian god Bragi (see the previous post). If compared with boast, brag would seem to be more suggestive of bluster and hot air. Yet both may have been specimens of Middle English slang or expressive formations.
Book thumbnail image Why is Gandhi relevant to the problem of violence against Indian women? By Judith M. Brown The global media has, in recent months, brought to the attention of a world audience the prevalence of violence against women in India. The horrific rape of a woman student, returning home after watching an early evening showing of The Life of Pi, in Delhi in December 2012, and the subsequent trial and conviction of her drunken and violent attackers, has led to considerable comment about violence against women.
Book thumbnail image Why foreign policy must be more ideological than economic policy By Richard S. Grossman To what extent should economic and foreign policies be guided by ideology? Are politicians who remain committed to particular policy prescriptions principled representatives? Are they opportunists who ride the popularity of simple, easily explained idea into office?
Book thumbnail image Feral politics: Searching for meaning in the 21st century By Matthew Flinders Could it be that conventional party politics has simply become too tame to stir the interests of most citizens? With increasing political disaffection, particularly amongst the young, could George Monbiot’s arguments about re-wilding nature and the countryside offer a new perspective on how to reconnect disaffected democrats? In short, do we actually need feral politics?
Book thumbnail image The first ray gun By Stephen R. Wilk When reporting on the origin of that science fiction cliché, the ray gun or death ray, most histories cite H.G. Wells’ classic story The War of the Worlds, which first appeared in Pearson’s Magazine between April and December of 1897. Wells was undoubtedly one of the founders of science fiction, striving to create original situations and ideas.
Book thumbnail image Sagan and the modern scientist-prophets By Lynda Walsh Nobody questions Carl Sagan’s charisma. He was television’s first science rock star. He made appearances on the Tonight Show; he drove a Porsche with a vanity plate that read “PHOBOS,” one of Mars’s moons; journalists enthused over his “velour” voice.
Book thumbnail image Five things you may not know about Jimmy Carter By Michael Gerhardt Most people think of Jimmy Carter, if they ever do, as a failed president and perhaps overly energetic former president. Yet, a closer look at his four years in office suggest there was more to his presidency than his forging a Middle East peace initiative and his landslide loss in his reelection campaign.
Book thumbnail image The price of free speech By Ronald K.L. Collins It is ironic: Free speech is seldom free. It often demands a price. There is a comic adage that says, “tell your boss what you think of him and the truth will set you free.” Indeed. Too often, such is the cost of free speech.
Book thumbnail image Judging a book by its cover: recordings, street art, and John Coltrane By Tony Whyton Created by the Berlin-based street artist MTO, a graffiti artwork was painted on a Parisian wall a few years ago and only on display for a few days before being painted over. A few photographs of the image, taken by MTO at the scene, are all that remain of the work.
September 2013 (97))
Yggdrasil and northern Christian art By G. Ronald Murphy S.J. By G. Ronald Murphy, S.J. A lot of things become clear when you realize that many of the puzzling and mysterious Christian artifacts and poetry of the North, those from England and Germany as well as those from the Scandinavian countries, are speaking in the language of Germanic myth—specifically in the language of the ancient evergreen tree, the savior of the last human beings, Yggdrasil.
Book thumbnail image Cheers to the local bar By Christine Sismondo “Where everybody knows your name.” Easily one of the best phrases ever written. That string of five words summed up the idea of the “local,” a refuge from the dynamism of modernity where a small clutch of people get together nearly every day to shoot the shit over a pint – or four.
Book thumbnail image How to be an English language tourist? By David Crystal Hilary and I asked ourselves this question repeatedly when we were planning the tour that we eventually wrote up as Wordsmiths and Warriors: The English-Language Tourist’s Guide to Britain. Where can you find out about the places that influenced the character and study of the English language in Britain? How do you get there? And what do you find when you get there?
Book thumbnail image Will young invincibles buy into the ACA? By Stephen Gorin, PhD, MSW Since its enactment in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, has been the focus of controversy and heated debate. As the date for implementing the health exchanges approaches, the war of words has intensified. It is perhaps not surprising that in a recent poll for the Kaiser Family Foundation, 51% of respondents said that they lacked enough information to understand how the ACA would affect them and their families, and 44% were unsure whether the ACA was even law.
Book thumbnail image Émile Zola and the integrity of representation By Brian Nelson Émile Zola’s main achievement was his twenty-volume novel cycle, Les Rougon-Macquart (1871–1893). The fortunes of a family, the Rougon-Macquart, are followed over several decades. The various family members spread throughout all levels of society, and through their lives Zola examines methodically the social, sexual, and moral landscape of the late nineteenth century.
Book thumbnail image Breaking Bad’s Faustian Cast By Jessica Barbour In a Reddit AMA session a few months ago, Bryan Cranston was asked when he thought his character on Breaking Bad broke bad. His response: “My feeling is that Walt broke bad in the very first episode. It was very subtle but he did because that’s when he decided to become someone that he’s not in order to gain financially. He made the Faustian deal at that point and everything else was a slippery slope.”
Book thumbnail image How film music shapes narrative By Siu-Lan Tan Reflecting on his futuristic 2002 film Minority Report, Steven Spielberg said “one of the most exciting scenes” he had to shoot was this action scene – in which two characters (John and Agatha) traverse a busy shopping mall with armed police in pursuit, relying on Agatha’s ability to see into the future in order to hide and successfully evade capture.
Book thumbnail image Criticisms of Obamacare By Tom Allen The start of implementation of Obamacare has triggered a renewed, fiercer response from its critics. During my 12 years in Congress there was no comparable effort to undermine a recently enacted law, including President Bush’s prescription drug bill, which almost all Democrats opposed. Why are Republican Governors and House members—with no plan to replace Obamacare—so determined to destroy it?
Book thumbnail image 2013 OHA will be much more than OK By Troy Reeves Thanks to a professional development grant, I spent a few days earlier this month visiting colleagues in Oklahoma and Texas, hoping to steal — I mean borrow! — ideas and procedures to improve the UW-Madison oral history program.
Book thumbnail image Slum tourism and its discontents By Sonia Tsuruoka By Sonia Tsuruoka This is how rich, curious Westerners fritter away the summer months: not yachting along the Côte d’Azur or strolling arm-in-arm through Mediterranean villas, but navigating the hectic, crime-ridden slums of Kibera, Dharavi, and Rocinha in an assortment of developing countries like South Africa, India, and Brazil.
Book thumbnail image Journalism: journey to an uncertain destination? By Ian Hargreaves Returning to any book script created a decade ago involves lexical shock. When the subject is journalism and the decade the one just gone, the effect is more that of lexical implosion.
Book thumbnail image The next generation of HIV/AIDS awareness By Perry N. Halkitis In the early days of the AIDS epidemic, treatment options were limited at best. Most who were living with HIV/AIDS, the majority of whom were gay men, attempted to find and use treatments that would save their lives and control the virus from causing further physical deterioration.
Book thumbnail image Ten surprising facts about the violin By Ayana Young As one of the most renowned and recognizable instruments in the modern orchestra, the violin’s petite shape and magnified sound charms listeners, players and dreamers alike. Beyond the aesthetic and captivating sound, the history of the violin is just as enticing.
Book thumbnail image Private equity, hedge funds must be understood to be regulated effectively By Timothy Spangler In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, much ill-feeling remains towards Wall Street, the investment banks and those individuals who profit from short-term movements in the financial markets. As the crisis has dragged on, more questions are being raised about how the modern financial system actually works.
Etymology gleanings for September 2013 By Anatoly Liberman I begin almost every set of gleanings with abject apologies. To err is human. So it is not the mistakes I have made in the past and will make in the future that irritate me but the avoidable and therefore unforgivable slips.
Book thumbnail image Who cares for those who care? By Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein In 2009, Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the majority, in Long Island Care at Home vs. Evelyn Coke upheld the administrative rule of the US Department of Labor that classified home health care workers as elder companions, excluding them from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
The amended Constitution By David J. Bodenhamer Veneration of the Constitution—and of the Founders who drafted it—began early in the nation’s history. Thomas Jefferson, who in 1787 expressed reservations about the Philadelphia convention, hailed the document two years later as “unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.”
Book thumbnail image How exactly is the Federal Reserve governed? No one doubts the politics of selecting a Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has withdrawn from consideration and Janet Yellen, current Vice Chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, is now the frontrunner. What does the new chair have to expect?
Book thumbnail image Why do the French insist on their ‘cultural exception’? By David Ellwood Is French culture exceptional, exceptionalist, or just… unique ? The question was raised again this year by the row which broke out just before the start of US-EU trade talks. The French government insisted that cultural products, particularly film and television, should be left out of the negotiations due to their special status as timeless acts of artistic creation.
Book thumbnail image Very Short Introductions go online By Luciana O’Flaherty All those who have read and loved a Very Short Introduction know that they offer a short but sophisticated route into a new or slightly familiar topic. The series was launched in 1995 and has continued to offer new books each year (around 30 a year, at the last count) for students, scholars, and the avidly curious.
Book thumbnail image What should we do about Syria? By Nigel Biggar It could well be that current negotiations between the United States, France, and Russia will lead to the Assad regime’s surrender of its chemical weapons. Everyone — bar the regime itself — has a legitimate interest in seeing that happen. Meanwhile, the civil war in Syria drags on, in which far more people have been killed — and will yet be killed — by conventional weapons than by chemical ones. What stance should we take toward this complex conflict, morally speaking?
Book thumbnail image Politics, narratives, and piñatas in health care By Andrew Koppelman Obamacare has been like the title character in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: everyone talks about it but it never arrives. It is finally about to make its entrance. On 1 October 2013, all 50 states and the District of Columbia will open health insurance marketplaces (sometimes called “exchanges”) for people who aren’t covered by their employer or a government program.
Book thumbnail image The Gold Corner By Charles Geisst One of the more audacious trading operations in Wall Street history occurred in September 1869. The “Gold Corner” as it quickly became known, involved nothing less than an attempt to force up the price of gold using the resources of the United States government in the process.
Book thumbnail image What is atonal? A dialogue Viennese composer Alban Berg played a major role in the transformation of serious music as it entered the modern period. He was also a skilled, analytic writer, whose essays, lectures, and polemics provide a unique perspective on classical music in transition. A new English edition of his Pro Mundo – Pro Domo. edited by Bryan R. Simms, contains 47 essays, many of which are little known and have not been previously available in English. Below is a brief extract from one of his dialogues with critic Julius Bistron.
Book thumbnail image Fine-tuning treatment to the individual cancer patient By Martine Piccart Personalized medicine is one of the objectives of the European Union’s “Horizon 2020” funding program and a high priority on the ESMO board’s strategic agenda: indeed, in oncology, many therapies share a narrow therapeutic index and high cost, implying that prescribing the wrong treatment to the wrong patient at the wrong time can have very negative consequences for both patients and public health systems.
Book thumbnail image What does health reform do for Americans? By Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs The Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act that was passed by Congress and signed into law in March 2010 sets in motion reforms in U.S. health insurance coming into full effect in 2014. Most Americans are confused about what the law promises — and no wonder.
Book thumbnail image The final judgement in the trial of Charles Taylor By Simon Meisenberg The trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor moved the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) into the limelight of international criminal justice for the last half decade. Without any doubt, the presence of a former Head of State in the dock drew international attention to the smallest of the ad hoc international criminal courts.
Book thumbnail image Middle East food security after the Arab Spring By Eckart Woertz Syria and Egypt paradigmatically highlight the perils of food security in the Middle East. Oil exports of Egypt, the largest wheat importer of the world, ceased at the end of the 2000’s. Generating enough foreign exchange for food procurement became more difficult and plans for more self-sufficiency have failed in the face of limited water and land resources.
Book thumbnail image The whale that inspired Greenpeace By Frank Zelko On 15 September 2013, Greenpeace celebrated its 42nd anniversary. The organization, which was born in Vancouver in 1971, began life as a one-off campaign against US nuclear testing in the far North Pacific.
Book thumbnail image Edmund Gosse: nonconformist? By Michael Newton “The trouble with you,” an old friend recently declared to me, “is that you have always been a conformist.” He meant that I had never undertaken that necessary radical break with my parents and their ideals and interests. Without such a generational rupture, it seemed to him, nobody could claim to be a fully independent, realised person. While he had been dropping acid and dropping (temporarily) out of college, I’d been reclining under a tree with John Keats. And surely there was nothing rebellious in that.
Book thumbnail image Healing the divide between Christianity and the occult By Stephen H. Webb Mormon critics have long tried to discredit Joseph Smith by identifying him with a host of contested religious movements from the ancient world. These include Gnosticism, hermeticism, alchemy, and the Jewish Kabbalah.
Book thumbnail image Give peace a chance in Syria By John Gittings When Ban Ki-moon, speaking in The Hague, called recently on member countries to “give peace a chance” in Syria, and condemned the supply of weapons to both sides, he was taking part in a ceremony at the Peace Palace to mark the centennial of its foundation (a result of the Hague Peace Conference in 1899) which otherwise was ignored by the media.
Carnival Cruise and the contracting of everything By Nancy S. Kim By now, you’ve heard the stories of passengers urinating in bags, slipping on sewage, and eating stale cereal aboard the Carnival Cruise ship that was stranded in the Gulf of Mexico — not exactly the fun-filled cruise for which the passengers had signed up and paid. Several lawsuits have been filed which Carnival is seeking to dismiss, claiming its contract prohibits them.
King Richard’s worms By Philip A. Mackowiak By Philip Mackowiak It has been said that the only persons who refer to themselves as “we” are royalty, college professors, and those with worms. In the 4 September 2013 issue of the Lancet, Piers Mitchell and colleagues present evidence that Richard III, one of England’s best known medieval kings and the deformed villain of Shakespeare’s Richard III, had two reasons for referring to himself in the first person plural.
Book thumbnail image When are bridges public art? By David Blockley The costly controversy over the abandonment of the ambitious Wear Bridge scheme and current plans by Sunderland City Council to ‘reduce down to a simpler design’ is a manifestation of what can happen when thinking about various forms of art is confounded.
Book thumbnail image A fresh musical start for fall By Jill Timmons Leaves are changing, temperatures are cooling, and students are returning to the rigors of school. For those of us in the music industry, fall can also be a time of personal renewal. As autumn commences, we have the opportunity to turn the page from summer pursuits and ignite fresh and innovative initiatives.
Book thumbnail image The demographic landscape, part II: The bad news By Jonathan Minton Our demography has been scarred by the two World Wars. In our maps these appear as two thin clusters of ovals, like onions that have been flattened then cut open. Topographically, these oval clusters show mortality risk jutting shard-like out of the lowlands of early adulthood like the kite-shaped plates of a stegosaurus.
Are you daft or deft? Or, between lunacy and folly By Anatoly Liberman The subject promised by today’s title has been simmering on my back burner for a long time, but now that the essay on simpleton is out, I am ripe for tackling it.
Book thumbnail image Error, metaphor, and the American road to war By Louis René Beres For too long, sheer folly has played a determinative role in shaping US military policy. Before Washington commits to any new war or “limited action” in the Middle East, it would be prudent to look back at some of our previous misjudgments.
Book thumbnail image Can neighborhood parks and playgrounds help fight childhood obesity? By Maoyong Fan and Yanhong Jin The prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States has risen dramatically across all racial, gender, and ethnic groups since 1980. Approximately three out of ten children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese.
Book thumbnail image The demographic landscape, part I: the good news By Jonathan Minton If demography were a landscape, what would it look like? Every country has a different geographical shape and texture, visible at high relief, like an extra-terrestrial fingerprint. But what about the shape and texture revealed by the demographic records of the people who live and die on these tracts of land?
Codes and copyrights By Binka Kirova and Ivan Penkin By Binka Kirova and Ivan Penkin There is nothing random about trademarks. Behind each trademark lies a well-considered move. Symbols are used to create an analogical correspondence between two elements and a concise form of expressing the essence or meaning of a certain object or idea.
Book thumbnail image Striking Syria when the real danger is Iran By Louis René Beres As the world’s attention focuses on still-escalating tensions in Syria, Tehran marches complacently to nuclear weapons status, notably nonplussed and unhindered. When this long-looming strategic plateau is finally reached, most probably in the next two or three years, Israel and the United States will have lost any once-latent opportunities to act preemptively.
Book thumbnail image Poetry of the Preamble By Garrett Epps Would it have made a difference to us, today, if the Preamble announced itself as the voice of the people of existing states, rather than (as it does) of “the people of the United States”?
Book thumbnail image Francesca Caccini, the composer By Meghann Wilhoite In my last post I wrote about little known composer Sophie Elisabeth. Today’s subject, Francesca Caccini, is somewhat better known. The last decade or so has seen a renewed interest in her work.
Book thumbnail image Five tips for medical students By Elizabeth Wallin With the new medical school term about to start, lots of fresh-faced medical students are about to hit the wards for the first time. Finding the right balance between lectures, bookwork and bedside experience is difficult, and different for everyone. Some learn best in the library, others in theatre, and others by sticking like glue to a qualified doctor.
Book thumbnail image Heaney, the Wordsworths, and wonders of the everyday By Lucy Newlyn Here is one of the poems Dorothy wrote from her sick room. Dated by her as 1836 (and copied out for the Wordsworths’ friend and neighbour Isabella Fenwick in 1839), it gives us some insight into her state of mind as she looked back on a crisis in 1832-3 when her life was in danger.
Book thumbnail image The first tanks and the Battle of Somme By Paul Jankowski “And there, between them, spewing death, unearthly monsters.” To a Bavarian infantry officer on the Somme in the early morning hours of 15 September 1916, the rhomboid, tracked behemoths lurching at him amidst waves of attacking enemy infantry had no name.
The rise and fall of Lehman Brothers This September marks the fifth anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy. While US markets have posted a stronger than expected year, full recovery has been slow since the “too big to fail” 2008 financial crisis. Robert W. Kolb takes a look back at Lehman Brothers’ decline in the following excerpt from The Financial Crisis of Our Time.
Book thumbnail image James Fenimore Cooper: thoughts on a life By John McWilliams Cooper’s daunting, lifelong energies led him to venture down still other fictional paths, nominally imaginary but rendered realistic through trenchant social commentary. He experimented with unreliable first person narrative, with the biography of an inanimate object, with urban satire, with the beast fable (The Monikins), and with dystopian fiction (The Crater).
Book thumbnail image Theodore Roosevelt becomes President, 14 September 1901 By Lewis L. Gould Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States upon the death of William McKinley in the early morning of 14 September 1901. An assassin had fatally wounded McKinley eight days earlier. Vice President Roosevelt took the presidential oath at a friend’s home in Buffalo, New York, hurried to Washington for a brief Cabinet meeting.
Book thumbnail image The Holy Cross By Philip H. Pfatteicher Throughout much of the Christian Church, 14 September is celebrated as a feast of the Holy Cross. By focusing on the visible cross, the Christian church is making a rich and manifold proclamation. Venantius Fortunatus (530-609) in his hymn “Sing my tongue, the glorious battle” reflects one aspect of devotion to the cross.
Book thumbnail image CSI: Oral History By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards In our first podcast of the season, managing editor Troy Reeves speaks with the newest addition to the Oral History Review (OHR) editorial staff, David J. Caruso. As you will learn, David wears a number of hats in the oral history community.
I love APSA in Chicago in the summer By Cherie Hackelberg By Cherie Hackelberg Without a doubt, attending society conferences is one of my favorite job responsibilities as a Marketing Manager for the Academic and Trade books division at Oxford. I typically spend the majority of my days marketing our books from my desk.
Book thumbnail image Why send a woman to Washington when you can get a man? By Richard A. Baker In a 1948 election contest to fill a US Senate seat, the wife of one of the candidates took a dim view of her husband’s opponent, Representative Margaret Chase Smith. Why, she wondered publicly, would the voters of Maine want to send “a woman to Washington when you can get a man?”
Book thumbnail image On the Man Booker Prize 2013 shortlist By Robert Eaglestone So here’s the first thing about the books on the Booker Prize lists, both short and long: until the end of August, it was hard-to-impossible to get hold of most of them. Only one was in paperback in July (well done, Canongate). And while some were in very pricey hardback, several hadn’t even been published. This begs the question: who is the Booker Prize for?
Book thumbnail image Back to (art) school By Kandice Rawlings Summer is over, and it’s back-to-school season. Art students are heading back to their classrooms and studios, receiving a course of training that will help them become professional artists.
Book thumbnail image Are the differences in acceptance of LGBT individuals across Europe a public health concern? By Richard Bränström Although there has been much progress in many European countries regarding social acceptance of LGBT individuals in recent decades; much discrimination, social injustice, and intolerance still exists with adverse consequences for both physical and mental health in these populations.
No simplistic etymology of “simpleton” By Anatoly Liberman Simpleton is an irritating word. At first sight, its origin contains no secrets: simple + ton. And that may be all there is to it despite the obscurity of –ton. We find this explanation in the OED and in the dictionaries dependent on it.
Book thumbnail image Booksellers in revolution By Trevor Naylor The written word has always played its part in the spreading of revolutionary ideas and in the recording of historical events. Until the Internet, this was done principally by the bookshops of the world, nowhere more so than across the countries of Asia and the Middle East, where the humble corner bookshop sells not just books, but newspapers, magazines, stationery, and all manner of things to keep its daily customers up to date.
Book thumbnail image Five important facts about the Irish economy By Donal Donovan After many years of extraordinary success the dramatic collapse of the Irish economy in 2008 was unprecedented in the history of post-war industrial countries. Who and what was responsible for the demise of the poster boy “Celtic Tiger?” What lessons can be learned form the Irish debacle and can the Tiger come roaring back?
Book thumbnail image Ezra Pound and James Strachey Barnes By David Bradshaw and James Smith The extent of Ezra Pound’s involvement with Italian fascism during the Second World War has been one of the most troubling and contentious issues in modernist literary studies.
Book thumbnail image Prospects for China’s migrant workers By Douglas J. Besharov and Karen Baehler Let’s assume that Nobel economist Paul Krugman and others are right about China’s economy being “in big trouble” and headed for a “nasty slump.” What does this mean for the 150 million current Chinese workers who left their home villages to fill jobs in the new economy’s growth centers?
Book thumbnail image Israel’s survival in the midst of growing chaos By Louis René Beres Nowadays, chaotic disintegration seems widely evident in world politics, especially in the visibly-fragmenting Middle East. What does it mean to live with a constant and unavoidable awareness of such fracturing? This vital question should be asked everywhere on earth, but most urgently in Israel.
Burlesque in New York: The writing of Gypsy Rose Lee In celebration of the anniversary of the first burlesque show in New York City, I reread a fun murder mystery, The G-String Murders, by Gypsy Rose Lee. “Finding dead bodies scattered all over a burlesque theater isn’t the sort of thing you’re likely to forget. Not quickly, anyway,” begins the story.The editors at Simon & Schuster liked the setting in a burlesque theater and appreciated Gypsy’s natural style, with its unpretentious and casual tone. Her knowledge of burlesque enabled her to intrigue readers, who were as interested in life within a burlesque theater as in the mystery.
Book thumbnail image Learning to sing: lessons from a yogi voice teacher By Laura Davis You know that stress dream that everyone has at one time or another? The one where you’re standing up in front of a giant group of people and something goes horribly wrong? You forget your speech, your voice cracks, you’re not wearing pants.
Book thumbnail image The case against striking Syria By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Chemical weapons are horrendous agents. Small amounts can kill and severely injure hundreds of noncombatant women, men, and children in a matter of minutes, as apparently occurred recently in Syria. Some analysts consider them “poor countries’ nuclear bombs.”
Six methods of detection in Sherlock Holmes By James O'Brien Between Edgar Allan Poe’s invention of the detective story with ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ in 1841 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Study in Scarlet’ in 1887, chance and coincidence played a large part in crime fiction. Conan Doyle resolved to be different in future.
Book thumbnail image MoveOn.org and military action in Syria By David Karpf Last week, MoveOn.org announced its opposition to President Obama’s proposed military strikes in Syria. MoveOn will now begin mobilizing its eight million+ members to speak out against the Syrian action, and is already planning rallies around the country.
Book thumbnail image The rebirth of international heritage law By Lucas Lixinski In June this year, developments around the Great Barrier Reef were excitedly discussed and closely scrutinized by the World Heritage Committee, a subsidiary organ of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Book thumbnail image A folklore and fairy tales reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Jessica Harris This month our Oxford World’s Classics reading list is on folk and fairy tales. Many of these stories pre-date the printing press, and most will no doubt continue to be told for hundreds of years to come. How many of these have you heard of, and have we missed out your favourite?
Book thumbnail image National Grandparents Day Tribute By Georgia Mierswa Oxford University Press would like to take a moment to honor all grandparents, great-grandparents, and beyond, acknowledging the often extraordinary efforts (more are primary caregivers than ever before in history!) required to build and sustain a family. The information and statistics below have been drawn from numerous articles on the significance of grandparents in Encyclopedia of Social Work.
Book thumbnail image Understanding the history of chemical elements >By Eric Scerri After years of lagging behind physics and biology in the popularity stakes, the science of chemistry is staging a big come back, at least in one particular area. Information about the elements and the periodic table has mushroomed in popular culture.
Book thumbnail image What about Henry Hudson? By Roger M. McCoy Henry Hudson envisioned that he would be the first explorer to find the elusive western passage through North America to the Orient. He persisted in this westward looking vision although his financier, the Dutch East India Company, insisted that he search eastward through the ice-bound sea north of Russia. Hudson had previously tried this northeastern route as well as a northerly route directly over the North Pole. Both had failed due to impassable ice.
Book thumbnail image The thylacine On the 7th of September each year, Australia observes National Threatened Species Day, so we thought this would be a good time to look at a species we couldn’t save. The following is an extract from the Encyclopedia of Mammals on the extinct thylacine (or Tasmanian tiger).
Book thumbnail image Keith Moon thirty-five years on By Alyn Shipton When Harry Nilsson took a call on 7 September 1978 to tell him that the Who’s drummer Keith Moon had been found dead in Nilsson’s London apartment, it was a shock for two reasons.
Book thumbnail image Reinvention of hybrid business enterprises for social good By Eric W. Orts On 1 August 2013, Delaware became the nineteenth state in the United States to adopt a version of a benefit corporation statute, which is designed to expand the range of legitimate purposes undertaken by business firms to include the interests of employees, environmental sustainability, and other nontraditional social goals beyond the traditional objective of profit-making for owners and investors.
Book thumbnail image To medical students: the doctors of the future By Heidi Moawad As a medical student, you are the future of health care. Despite the persistent negativity about the state of health care and the seemingly never-ending health care crisis, you have astutely perceived the benefits of becoming a physician.
Book thumbnail image Undocumented immigrants in 17th century America By Richard A. Bailey When the Mayflower—packed with 102 English men, women, and children—set out from Plymouth, England, on 6 September 1620, little did these Pilgrims know that sixty-five days later they would find themselves some 3,000 miles from their planned point of disembarkation.
Book thumbnail image The Reign of Terror By William Doyle Two hundred and twenty years ago this week, 5 September 1793, saw the official beginning of the Terror in the French Revolution. Ever since that time, it is very largely what the French Revolution has been remembered for. When people think about it, they picture the guillotine in the middle of Paris, surrounded by baying mobs, ruthlessly chopping off the heads of the king, the queen, and innumerable aristocrats for months on end in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity. It was social and political revenge in action. The gory drama of it has proved an irresistible background to writers of fiction, whether Charles Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities, or Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel novels, or many other depictions on stage and screen. It is probably more from these, rather than more sober historians, that the English-speaking idea of the French Revolution is derived.
Spain and the UK: between a rock and a hard place over Gibraltar By William Chislett The installation of a concrete reef by Gibraltar in disputed waters off the British territory, which is designed to encourage sea-life to flourish, was the final straw for Spain, which has long claimed sovereignty over the Rock at the southern tip of the country.
Book thumbnail image The lark ascends for the Last Night By Robyn Elton On Saturday 7 September 2013, lovers of classical music will gather together once again for the final performance in this year’s momentous Proms season. Alongside the traditional pomp and celebration of the Last Night, with Rule, Britannia!, Jerusalem, and the like, we are promised a number of more substantial works, including Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and the overture to Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.
Book thumbnail image Adapting Henry V By Gus Gallagher In the Autumn of 2011 I found myself at something of a loose end in the beautiful city of Tbilisi, Georgia, working with the Marjanishvili Theatre there on a production of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Unsure of what my next project might be, my attention turned to an old love, Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Monthly etymology gleanings for August 2013, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman My apologies for the mistakes, and thanks to those who found them. With regard to the word painter “rope,” I was misled by some dictionary, and while writing about gobble-de-gook, I was thinking of galumph. Whatever harm has been done, it has now been undone and even erased.
Book thumbnail image Reasoning in medicine and science By Huw Llewelyn In medicine, we use two different thought processes: (1) non-transparent thought, e.g. slick, subjective decisions and (2) transparent reasoning, e.g. verbal explanations to patients, discussions during meetings, ward rounds, and letter-writing.
Book thumbnail image The trouble with Libor By Richard S. Grossman The public has been so fatigued by the flood of appalling economic news during the past five years that it can be excused for ignoring a scandal involving an interest rate that most people have never heard of. In fact, the Libor scandal is potentially a bigger threat to capitalism than the stories that have dominated the financial headlines.
Book thumbnail image Why Parliament matters: waging war and restraining power By Matthew Flinders The 29 August 2013 will go down as a key date in British political history. Not just because of the conflict in Syria but also due to the manner in which it reflects a shift in power and challenges certain social perceptions of Parliament.
Book thumbnail image Social video – not the same, but not that different By Karen Nelson-Field Why is it when a new media platform comes along that everything we know about how advertising works and how consumers behave seems to go out the window? Because the race to discovery means that rigorous research with duplicated results are elusive.
Book thumbnail image Polio provocation: a lingering public health debate By Stephen E. Mawdsley In 1980, public health researchers working in the United Republic of Cameroon detected a startling trend among children diagnosed with paralytic polio. Some of the children had become paralyzed in the limb that had only weeks before received an inoculation against a common pediatric illness.
The end of the Revolutionary War By John Ferling On 3 September 1783, the Peace of Paris was signed and the American War for Independence officially ended. The following excerpt from John Ferling’s Almost a Miracle: The American Victory in the War of Independence recounts the war’s final moments, when Washington bid farewell to his troops.
Book thumbnail image Interpreting Chopin on piano By Deborah Rambo Sinn One of the fascinating things about being a musician is that I can perform the same Chopin piece that has been played by thousands of pianists for almost two centuries and breathe life into it in a way that no one has ever done before. Tomorrow, I will play the same piece and know it will be different again.
Book thumbnail image Pension fund divestment is no answer to Russia’s homophobic policies By Edward Zelinsky A group of California state senators, including senate president pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, has called for California’s public employee pension plans to protest Russia’s homophobic laws and policies by ceasing to make Russian investments. While the senators are right to denounce Russia’s assault on human rights, they are wrong to call for the divestment of the Golden State’s public pension funds.
Book thumbnail image Buddhism or buddhisms: mirrored reflections By Richard Payne Of late, scholars have increasingly called into question the utility of the nation-state as the default category for the study of Buddhism. In terms of the way Buddhism is academically apprehended, the implication of Johan Elverskog’s argument in “The Buddhist Exchange: Irrigation, Crops and the Spread of the Dharma” — that Buddhism […]
Book thumbnail image Punitive military strikes on Syria risk an inhumane intervention By Jennifer Moore The Geneva Conventions of 1949 do not justify missile strikes in Syria. The humanitarian principle of distinction requires that military force is used without indiscriminately targeting civilians, but does not sanction the use of force itself. International humanitarian law thus governs the conduct of war but not its initiation.
Book thumbnail image The poetry of Federico García Lorca By D. Gareth Walters It is apt that Spain’s best-known poet, Federico García Lorca, should have been born in Andalusia. Castile may claim to be the heart and the source of Spain, both historically and linguistically, but in broad cultural terms Andalusia has become for many non-Spaniards the very embodiment of Spain. Lorca’s poetry abundantly reflects this perception.
Book thumbnail image Can supervisors control international banks like JP Morgan? By Dirk Schoenmaker The dramatic failure of Lehman Brothers in 2008 has raised the question whether national supervisors are able to effectively control international banks. The London Whale, the notorious nickname for the illegal trading in the London office of JP Morgan, questions the effectiveness of international supervision.
Parricide in perspective By Kathleen M. Heide, PhD It hardly seems like 24 years since Jose and Kitty Menendez were shot to death by their two sons, Lyle and Eric. It was a crime that shocked the nation because the family seemed “postcard perfect” to many observers. Jose was an immigrant from Cuba who worked hard and became a multi-millionaire. He married Kitty, a young attractive woman he met in college, who was also hardworking. They were the parents of two handsome sons.
August 2013 (107))
Bowersock and OUP from 1965 to 2013 Earlier this year, Oxford University Press (OUP) published The Throne of Adulis by G.W. Bowersock, as part of Oxford’s Emblems of Antiquity Series, commissioned by the editor Stefan Vranka from the New York office. It was especially thrilling that Professor Bowersock agreed to write a volume, as it represents a homecoming of sorts for the noted classics scholar, who began his career with OUP in 1965 with the monograph Augustus and the Greek World.
Book thumbnail image The dawn of a new era in American energy From global climate change to “fracking,” energy-related issues have comprised a source of heated debate for American policymakers. Needless to say, assessing the economic and environmental consequences of certain developmental shifts is often fraught with difficulty, particularly when considering existing national and international frameworks.
Book thumbnail image Fall cleaning with OHR By Caitlin Tyler-Richards The Oral History Review staff returns triumphant! A bit tanner, a bit wiser, and ready for another round of exploration into the theory and practice of oral history. We’ve already started arranging interviews, reviews, and commentary for the fall and look forward to engaging with you all once more.
Book thumbnail image Closing the opportunity gap requires an early start By Kevin G. Welner Rarely is anything as highly valued yet poorly managed as the creation of education policy in the United States. Year after year, and lawmaker after lawmaker, evidence has been ignored in favor of a hunch, an ideology, or the latest quick-fix scheme.
Book thumbnail image Cops and Robbers Redux By Michael Weiner The activity has many names: “rough and tumble,” “boy,” “physical,” “aggressive.” We see it everywhere, on playgrounds, in homes, at schools. With early childhood education literature rife with new research, we recognize that this type of play activity is developmentally essential for children.
Book thumbnail image How can a human being ‘disappear’? On the 30th of August the United Nations observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances. Emmanuel Decaux (President of the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances) and Olivier de Frouville (Chair and Rapporteur of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances(WGEID)) have taken the time to consider a few questions with us in recognition of this important observance day, which was established by the UNGA (resolution 65/209, para. 4).
Book thumbnail image The two-state solution and the Obama administration: elusive or illusive? By Martin Bunton The likelihood of a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians has always been negligible in the absence of a determined outside mediator. Indeed, the recent resumption of direct negotiations that have been suspended for almost three years is due solely to the determined efforts of the U.S. secretary of state, John Kerry. So, why has the Obama administration chosen to dig in now? And so what?
Book thumbnail image Eight years later By Karl Seidman At the eighth anniversary of when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and triggered the series of infrastructure failures that flooded the city, there are many signs of New Orleans’ progress in rebuilding and remaking itself. First and foremost is repopulation. Although still well below its pre-Katrina total of 455,863, New Orleans’ population continues to grow.
Book thumbnail image Harriet Cohen: alluring woman, great pianist devoted to Bach By Simon Wright Harriet Cohen (1895-1967) was one of the leading British pianists of her age, but her unusually small hands (“I cannot normally cover more than eight notes with each hand”) led her naturally to specialize in intimate classical and pre-classical works, rather than in any thundering octaves of nineteenth-century piano music.
Book thumbnail image Unconventional monetary policy By Christopher Bowdler and Amar Radia Central banks in advanced economies typically conduct monetary policy by varying short-term interest rates in order to influence the level of spending and inflation in the economy. One limitation of this conventional approach to monetary policy is the so called lower bound problem. If the central bank were to try to set short-term interest rates much below zero, then households and companies would choose to hold money in the form of currency instead of depositing it in banks.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington The 28th of August 2013 marks the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, one of the largest political rallies in US History for African American civil rights. Between 200,000 and 300,000 participants marched from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial demanding meaningful civil and economic rights. At the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther […]
Monthly etymology gleanings for August 2013, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman I have received many comments on the posts published in August and many questions. Rather than making these gleanings inordinately long, I have broken them into two parts. Today I’ll begin by asking rather than answering questions, because to some queries I am unable to give quotable (or any) answers.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for APSA 2013 By Cathy J. Cohen, Karen Mossberger, and Cherie Hackelberg The 2013 American Political Science Association Annual Meeting is taking place in Chicago this year from 29 August – 1 September 2013. The theme of this year’s meeting is “Power and Persuasion,” looking at the politics of persuasion and power and how they intersect in context and scale.
Book thumbnail image Crawling leaves: photosynthesis in sacoglossan sea slugs By Sónia Cruz “Crawling leaves” or “solar-powered sea slugs” are common terms used to name some species of sacoglossan sea slugs capable of performing photosynthesis, a process usually associated with plants. These sea slugs ingest macroalgal tissue and retain undigested functional chloroplasts in special cells of their gut (kleptoplasty). The “stolen” chloroplasts (kleptoplasts) continue to photosynthesize, in some cases up to one year.
Book thumbnail image Contemporary victims of creative suffering By David Cunningham Like many teachers, I intend to treat the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington as an occasion to revisit Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech. Many of my students will, I expect, be deeply affected by Dr. King’s ability to impart a timeless quality to the “fierce urgency of now” that he associated with the Civil Rights Movement.
Book thumbnail image Social injustice and public health in America By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel Although there has been much progress in the United States toward social justice and improved health for racial and ethnic minorities in the 50 years since the 1963 March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, much social injustice persists in this country — with profound adverse consequences for the public’s health.
Celebrating Women’s Equality Day By Elizabeth Keenan In 1971, when Representative Bella Abzug introduced a joint resolution to Congress creating Women’s Equality Day, she wasn’t likely thinking about women in popular music. After all, the subject is seemingly silly compared to what Women’s Equality Day commemorates.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for David Gilbert Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. On Tuesday 27 August 2013, writer David Gilbert leads a discussion on Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis.
Book thumbnail image Women’s Equality Day By Sally G. McMillen Today we celebrate Women’s Equality Day in commemoration of the certification of the 19th Amendment, granting of women’s right to vote throughout the country. Women in the United States were granted the right to vote on 26 August 1920.
Book thumbnail image Shakespeare’s hand in the additional passages to Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy By Douglas Bruster Why should we think that Shakespeare wrote lines first published in the 1602 quarto of The Spanish Tragedy, a then-classic play by his deceased contemporary Thomas Kyd? Our answer starts 180 years ago, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge—author of ‘Kubla Khan’ and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—said he heard Shakespeare in this material.
Book thumbnail image Ready to study UK law? Are you one of the 17,000 students about to embark on a law course in the UK? Why not get your teeth stuck into our quiz to find out how clued up you are before you start at university? We have so many preconceptions about the law from what we see on the TV and through films — but how much do you really know?
Book thumbnail image Krakatoa By Bill McGuire I know that if I ask someone to name a single volcano, the chances are that they will hit upon Krakatoa; such is the degree to which the cataclysmic 1883 blast of the volcano has etched itself into the public consciousness. Remotely located in the Sunda Strait, between the Indonesia islands of Sumatra and Java, the islands that made up the long-dormant volcano were pretty much unheard of prior to August, 130 years ago, when all hell broke loose.
Book thumbnail image Why is the relationship between the US and Mexico strained? Relations between the United States and Mexico, in spite of the two countries’ geographical proximity, are nothing but complex. While intimately linked, the negativity with which Mexico is regarded by American lawmakers and citizens has prevented the formation of a strong, bilateral alliance thus far.
10 facts about Galileo Galilei By Matt Dorville One of the most prolific scientists of all time, Galileo’s life and accomplishments have been studied and written about in detail. From his discovery of the moons of Jupiter to his fight with Pope Urban VIII, noted authors and playwrights have been fascinated with both Galileo’s life and work.
Book thumbnail image The Cuadrilla fracking site: a policing dilemma By P.A.J. Waddington I’m not claiming to be clairvoyant, but the current controversy concerning Cuadrilla’s fracking site at Balcombe, West Sussex, is eerily similar to one of the five scenarios that form the foundations for the book I and my colleagues, John Kleinig and Martin Wright have recently published.
Book thumbnail image Ten facts about toasts By Jessica Harris On 4 August 1693, Dom Perignon invented champagne, or so the story goes. The date is no doubt made up, sparkling wines had existed long before the 17th century, and the treasurer of the Abbey of Hautvilliers actually did everything he could to prevent wine from refermenting. But who wouldn’t mind a glass of bubbly to celebrate?
The ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum By Paul Roberts The historic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 may have buried Pompeii and Herculaneum under a thick carpet of volcanic ash, but it preserved what is surely our most valuable archaeological record of daily life in Ancient Rome to date.
Book thumbnail image Is Edward Snowden a civil disobedient? By Kimberley Brownlee Since he exposed himself in June 2013 as the source of the NSA leaks to the Guardian and Washington Post, former CIA analyst Edward Snowden has been called many things including a hero, a traitor, a whistleblower, and a civil disobedient.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and “She Loves You”: 23 August 1963 By Gordon R. Thompson By Gordon R. Thompson As the summer of 1963 drew to a close and students prepared to return to school, the Beatles released what may have been their most successful single. “She Loves You” would top the British charts twice that year, remain near the top for months, and help to launch the band into the American consciousness.
Book thumbnail image Remembering the slave trade By Jean Allain Today is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, established by UNESCO “to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of peoples”. That tragedy was the development of, in Robin Blackburn’s words, a “different species of slavery”. One that took the artisan slavery of old (consisting in the main of handfuls of slaves working on small estates or as domestic servants) and industrialised it, creating plantations in the Americas which fed the near insatiable appetite of Europeans for sugar, coffee, and tobacco.
Book thumbnail image Zeroing in on zero-hours work Stephen Fineman The growth of zero-hours work contracts has grabbed the headlines recently. The contracts offer no guaranteed work hours and can swing between feast (over work) and famine (literally nil hours). Employees are expected to be available as and when needed; if they refuse (which in principle they can) they risk being labelled as unreliable and overlooked the next time round.
Book thumbnail image Religious displays and the gray area between church and state By Rebecca Sager and Keith Gunnar Bentele This August marks the 10-year anniversary of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s suspension for refusing to comply with a federal court order to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building. Judge Moore, rather famously, erected the statue in the middle of the night and created a controversy that stirred up emotions about what role religion should play in our public spaces.
Five things you didn’t know about Debussy By Elliot Antokoletz To mark the anniversary of Debussy’s birth today in 1862, a list of little known facts about the composer.
Book thumbnail image Ten ways to use a bibliography What is a student to do with a list of citations? Are an author’s sources merely proof or can they be something more? We often discuss the challenges of the research process with students, scholars, and librarians.
Looking “askance” By Anatoly Liberman I have been meaning to tell the story of askance for quite some time—as a parable or an exemplum. Popular books and blogs prefer to deal with so-called interesting words. Dude, snob, and haberdasher always arouse a measure of enthusiasm, along with the whole nine yards, dated and recent slang, and the outwardly undecipherable family names.
Book thumbnail image A quiz on the history of sandwiches August in National Panini month, honoring the lightly grilled, trendy sandwich that Americans have come to love over that past few decades. Instead of just focusing on just one sandwich though, we would like to present the entirety of the sandwich universe.
Book thumbnail image Five important facts about the Russian economy By Michael V. Alexeev Churchill once famously said that Russia was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” While this definition was based mainly on Russia’s behavior in international politics in the late 1930s, it could also apply it to Russia’s economy today.
Book thumbnail image A Who’s Who of the Edinburgh Festival By Daniel Parker It’s that time of year again; Edinburgh is ablaze with art, theatre and music from around the world. For the month of August, Edinburgh is the culture capital of the world, as thousands of musicians, street-performers, actors, comedians, authors, and artists demonstrate their art at various venues across the city. Listed in Who’s Who and Who Was Who are some of the most famous names to have performed at the festival since its inception in 1947.
Book thumbnail image 100th anniversary of the first crystal structure determinations By André Authier This year celebrates the hundredth anniversary of the first crystal structure determinations. On 30 July 1913, the crystal structure of diamond was published by W. H. and W. L. Bragg, father and son, and those of sodium chloride, potassium chloride, and potassium bromide, by W. L. Bragg, the son.
Book thumbnail image Who were the Carlisle Commissioners? Part two: Jeremy Bentham By Daniel Parker Jeremy Bentham wanted to become a Carlisle Peace Commissioner but his application was wilfully ignored by Governor Johnstone. The Carlisle Peace Commissioners set out to the United States in 1778, three years into the American Revolutionary War, to negotiate a peace treaty.
Book thumbnail image The 1812 Overture: an attempted narration By Jessica Barbour I was a sophomore in college, sitting in my morning music history course on the Romantic period, and my professor was discussing the concept of program music, which Grove Music Online defines as “Music of a narrative or descriptive kind; the term is often extended to all music that attempts to represent extra-musical concepts without resort to sung words.”
Book thumbnail image Happy birthday, Scofield! By Kate Pais Best known for its cross referencing system, helpful commentary in the margins, and highlighting quotations from Jesus in red, the Scofield Study Bible provides many resources for modern readers of various backgrounds. The Scofield Reference Bible, as it is also known, is used by millions of readers around the world from numerous denominations of Christianity and academic fields.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Coco Chanel (1883-1971) By Audrey Ingerson “I, who love women, wanted to give her clothes in which she could drive a car, yet at the same time clothes that emphasized her femininity, clothes that flowed with her body. A woman is closest to being naked when she is well dressed.”
Book thumbnail image Just who are humanitarian workers? By Jennifer Moore On the 19th of August, World Humanitarian Day, we honor the contributions of humanitarian workers around the world, especially those who have lost their lives helping people in war-torn societies. This day was first marked in 2008 through a Swedish-sponsored resolution in the United Nations General Assembly
Book thumbnail image Gender politics and the United Nations Security Council By Gina Heathcote On 25 June 2013, the United Nations Security Council issued its sixth resolution on women, peace, and security: Resolution 2106. In line with three of the preceding resolutions on women, peace, and security – Resolutions 1820, 1889 and 1960 – the Council focused on the issue of sexual violence in armed conflict.
Book thumbnail image Who were the Carlisle Commissioners? Part one By Dr. Robert V. McNamee In July, Electronic Enlightenment (EE) updated with materials taken from the Virginia Historical Society and the correspondence of Adam Ferguson, amongst others. These apparently disparate historical correspondences (and others already published in EE) are brought together within this unique digital framework so that students, scholars and the public can read, in this instance, “across the Atlantic”.
Book thumbnail image The black quest for justice and innocence By Brenda Stevenson Those who followed the Trayvon Martin case this summer did so not just because of the conflicting details of the shooting deaths of these two unarmed black youth, but because these cases, like too many others, have played out in our public consciousness as markers of American justice. Does “liberty and justice for all” actually exist; or are these words from our Pledge of Allegiance just part of the grand American narrative that is more myth than reality?
Book thumbnail image Antarctica in the imagination Long before it was first spotted in 1820, Antarctica has captured imaginations, and the many quests undertaken to explore it never fail to be dramatic adventures. Although Antarctica has been and continues to be studied, many do not know the continent’s past and the challenges it will face in the coming decades.
The Detroit bankruptcy and the US Constitution By Susan P. Fino Bankruptcies of state governmental entities are relatively rare. Until the Detroit bankruptcy the largest example was a county. In the 1970s, two cities came close to the edge—New York and Cleveland—but both managed to find a way back from the precipice.
Book thumbnail image What were the Red Sea Wars? An inscribed marble throne at the Ethiopian port of Adulis offers us a rare window into the fateful events comprising what has come to be known as the “Red Sea Wars.”
Book thumbnail image Cross-border suspicions and law enforcement at US-Mexico border By Jay Albanese We’ve divided our planet into nearly 200 countries with sovereign borders and laws designed to preserve mutual self-interest. It is not surprising, therefore, that many countries are suspicious of their cross-border neighbors and sometimes outwardly hostile to them. Simply put, the adage “good fences make good neighbors” applies on the international scene as well.
Book thumbnail image Whose Odyssey is it anyway? By Justine McConnell The death of Martin Bernal in June attracted less media attention than one might have hoped for the man who brought an unprecedented attention to the contemporary study of Classics. His 1987 work, Black Athena, was not the first to argue for a strong, pervasive African influence on the culture of ancient Greece, but it was the first to receive widespread notice.
Book thumbnail image Challenges of the social life of language When we consider two obvious facts – that virtually everyone becomes a fluent speaker of at least one language, and that language is central to social life – we can see that most of us are quite sociolinguistically talented. Whether we’re consciously aware of it or not, we know quite a lot about many of the intricacies of “the social life of language.” This doesn’t mean, however, that our knowledge is complete or wholly accurate. Here are ten illustrations of the point.
Book thumbnail image Ideal pregnancy length: an unsolved mystery By Anne Marie Jukic, Donna Baird, Clarice Weinberg, and Allen Wilcox Pregnancy begins with conception – an event that is practically invisible. Since we can’t measure the beginning of pregnancy, it’s hard to know how far along a woman is in her pregnancy. We guess the beginning of pregnancy either from the woman’s report of her last menstrual period or from fetal size on ultrasound, both of which have errors.
Book thumbnail image Sophie Elisabeth, not an anachronism By Meghann Wilhoite An intriguing post popped up in my Tumblr feed recently, called “The all-white reinvention of Medieval Europe” from the blog Medieval POC. Both in this post and generally throughout the blog the author makes the point that “People of Color are not an anachronism.”
Book thumbnail image Walter Scott’s anachronisms By Ian Duncan One of Sir Walter Scott’s creations has been much in the news lately: his country house at Abbotsford was formally reopened to the public by Her Majesty the Queen on 3 July 2013, following a £12 million restoration.
Three recent theories of “kibosh” By Anatoly Liberman The phrase put the kibosh on surfaced in texts in the early thirties of the nineteenth century. For a long time etymologists have been trying to discover what kibosh means and where it came from. Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Gaelic Irish, and French have been explored for that purpose.
Book thumbnail image Crossbow competitions and civic communities By Laura Crombie In the popular imagination, tournaments feature prominently as the greatest spectacles of the Middle Ages. If archery competitions are thought of, it is probably in the context of Robin Hood films or the great English longbow (and the successes it brought, particularly Agincourt).
Book thumbnail image Spain’s unemployment conundrum By William Chislett There is only a glimmer of light in Spain’s long unemployment tunnel after five years of recession. This is because a new economic model has yet to emerge to replace the one excessively based on the property sector, which collapsed with devastating consequences.
Book thumbnail image Between self-murder and suicide: the etymology of a modern stigma By Andreas Bähr Translated from German by Dominic Bonfiglio Some words can kill. Even those one wouldn’t have thought so to look at. Consider “self-murder.” Perpetrators of this supposed crime die a second, linguistic death in retribution for their deed — eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
Book thumbnail image Money, prices, and growth in pre-industrial England By Nick Mayhew At a time when governments across the world are pursuing the elusive goal of economic growth, it may be instructive to consider the historical evidence for growth in Britain.
Book thumbnail image Buddhism beyond the nation state By Richard Payne Concern with the limitations imposed by presuming contemporary geo-political divisions as the organizing principle for scholarship is not new, nor is it limited to Buddhist studies. Jonathan Skaff opens his recent Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580–800 by quoting Marc Bloch’s 1928 address to the International Congress of Historical Sciences (1928).
Book thumbnail image A cool president: what you might not know about Calvin Coolidge By Elyse Turr August 3rd marks the 90th anniversary of Calvin Coolidge being sworn in as our 30th President following the sudden death of Warren G. Harding. Calvin Coolidge won re-election in 1924. In The Forgotten Presidents: Their Untold Constitutional Legacy, Michael Gerhardt uncovers the overlooked vestiges of his presidency.
Book thumbnail image Are HD broadcasts “cannibalizing” the Metropolitan Opera’s live audiences? By James Steichen When the Metropolitan Opera launched its high-definition broadcast initiative in 2006, hopes were very high. The basic concept was simple: the Met would offer live cinema broadcasts of its Saturday matinee performances to a network of movie theaters around the country.
10 questions for Wayne Koestenbaum Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. On Tuesday 16 July 2013, writer Wayne Koestenbaum leads a discussion on The Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka.
Book thumbnail image Family values and immigration reform By Grace Yukich This summer has been pivotal for the American family. On 26 June 2013, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, making same-sex couples eligible for the same federal benefits that opposite-sex couples have.
Book thumbnail image Is your doctor’s behavior unethical or unprofessional? By Catherine DeAngelis During a difficult operation on a patient, a surgeon is handed the wrong instrument by the nurse assisting him. He screams at the nurse, “You gave me the wrong thing,” and throws the instrument across the room.
Book thumbnail image The emergence of an international arbitration culture By Joshua Karton International arbitration is an obscure field, even among lawyers. However, it is becoming more visible for the simple reason that the field is growing. Arbitration is now one of the most important means for the resolution of international business disputes, including — most notably from the public’s point of view — disputes between investors and the governments of countries in which they invest.
Book thumbnail image The fall of the Celtic Tiger – what next? By Donal Donovan and Antoin E. Murphy Traditionally the Irish, who can sing the dead to sleep, have been good at organising wakes. The financial wake of 2008 is another matter. 2008 will be known as the year that initiated the great Irish financial crisis, just as 1847 has gone down as “Black 47”, the year when the Great Irish Famine peaked.
Book thumbnail image Who inspired President Abraham Lincoln? If Abraham Lincoln can be credited for delivering America from the grip of Civil War-era secessionism, he stood on the shoulders of two presidential giants: the iconic 19th century visionary honored the same constitutional ideals of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.
Reparations and regret: a look at Japanese internment Twenty-five years ago today, President Ronald Reagan gave $20,000 to each Japanese-American who was imprisoned in an internment camp during World War II. Though difficult to imagine, the American government created several camps in the United States and the Philippines to lock away Japanese Americans.
Book thumbnail image Natural wonder or national symbol? A history of the Victoria Regia Few could have imagined the elusive floral wonder retrieved in January 1837 from the heart of Guyana’s wildest jungles– and fewer still could have predicted the extent to which it would transform an entire continent’s cultural and aesthetic sensibilities.
Book thumbnail image What’s your favorite Back to School memory? Compiled by Sonia Tsuruoka Fading tans and falling temperatures mean it’s that time of year again. As the new academic term approaches, the annual Back to School frenzy has kicked into high-gear, with parents and students of all ages rushing to complete last-minute mall runs and Staples trips in preparation.
Book thumbnail image Breaking Bad: masculinity as tragedy By Scott Trudell In the opening shots of Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, a pair of khaki pants is suspended, for a tranquil moment, in the desert air. The pants are then unceremoniously run over by an RV methamphetamine lab with two murdered bodies in back. When the camper crashes into a ditch, the driver Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) gets out.
Book thumbnail image A children’s literature reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole For many of us that love reading, the seeds are sown in childhood through the books we read or have read to us.
Book thumbnail image Honouring treaty and gender equality By Rosemary Nagy In Canada, there are almost 600 documented cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women over the last twenty years. The Canadian government has continuously refused to hold a national public inquiry into the missing and murdered women, despite mounting international and domestic pressure to do so.
Book thumbnail image A lost opportunity for sustainable ocean management Philip Mladenov Russia has recently blocked the creation of two of the world’s largest marine protected areas at a special meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) in Bremerhaven. These marine reserves would have been massive – covering more than 3.5 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica.
Book thumbnail image Sound symbolism and product names By Barbara Malt In many animal communications, there’s a transparent link between what is being communicated and how that message is communicated. Animal threat displays, for instance, often make the aggressor look larger and fiercer through raising of the hair and baring of the teeth. A dog communicates excitement through look and sound.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: George Duke By Ted Gioia When a famous musician dies, journalists reach for a handle, some short phrase to summarize what a performer did to gain a dose of fame. Keyboardist George Duke, who died on Monday at age 67, resists such pigeonholing.
Book thumbnail image UNDRIP, CANZUS, and indigenous rights By Katherine Smits and Stephen Winter In recent weeks, the Global Indigenous Preparatory Conference for the United Nations High Level Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly convened in Alta, Norway and released its comprehensive ‘Outcome Document’. The document has met with resounding indifference. That result might have been expected.
Five things to know about my epilepsy By Jane Williams Diagnosed with epilepsy more than half my lifetime ago, I can’t remember what it’s like not to know about it. Despite it being the most common serious neurological condition in the UK, there is still a surprising amount of misconceptions surrounding it.
Alphabet soup, part 2: H and Y By Anatoly Liberman This is a story of the names of two letters. Appreciate the fact that I did not call it “A Tale of Two Letters.” No other phrase has been pawed over to such an extent as the title of Dickens’s novel.
Book thumbnail image The impact of a dementia treatment By Bruce Miller Dementia is a collection of symptoms caused by a number of different disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. The term dementia describes a progressive decline in memory or other cognitive functions that interferes with the ability to perform your usual daily activities (driving, shopping, balancing a checkbook, working, […]
Book thumbnail image Assembling a coherent picture in the Daniel Pelka case By P.A.J. Waddington The appalling murder of Daniel Pelka by his mother, Magdelena Luczak, and her partner, Mariusz Krezolek, has yet again been followed by soul-searching and a storm of criticism directed at ‘the authorities’ for their failure to protect Daniel from the child abuse that eventually led to his death.
Book thumbnail image Human rights education and human rights law: two worlds? By Paul Gready and Brian Phillips Education and training programmes have become one of the most familiar features of the contemporary global human rights landscape. Their current volume and scope would have been unimaginable even two decades ago. Programmes dedicated to human rights education and training are now delivered by a myriad of actors and are aimed at various audiences.
Book thumbnail image Is yoga religious? Understanding the Encinitas Public School Yoga Trial Practicing yoga is more popular than ever, with plenty of studios to be found across the US. As yoga has now begun to enter school curriculum, some parents and their children are unhappy, feeling that programs such as these are religious.
Book thumbnail image An interview with Sara Japhet By Robert Repino Biblical scholar Sara Japhet has been a leading authority on the two books of Chronicles since the publication of her landmark works The Ideology of the Book of Chronicles and Its Place in Biblical Thought (Hebrew 1977; English translation 1989), followed by I and II Chronicles: A Commentary in 1993.
Book thumbnail image Memo From Manhattan: The Tompkins Square Park Riot By Sharon Zukin Today, the sixth of August, marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riot in New York’s East Village. Though on that night many neighborhood residents were protesting in the streets, the riot was caused by police brutality.
Twelve facts about the drum kit By Alice Northover Drummers are often seen as the most unintelligent and unmusical of band members. Few realize how essential the kick of a pedal and tap of the hi-hat are for setting down the beat and forming the tone of the band. So what is there to the drum kit besides a set of drums, suspended cymbals, and other percussion instruments?
Book thumbnail image The federalist argument for the Multi-State Worker Act By Edward Zelinsky The Multi-State Worker Act (the current version of the Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act) would, if enacted into law, prevent states from taxing non-resident telecommuters (like me) on the days such telecommuters work at their out-of-state homes. Can someone who values the states and their autonomy (also like me) favor the Act?
Book thumbnail image Things to do in Orlando during AOM2013 By Kathleen Tam The 73rd Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management is taking place in Orlando this year. The conference provides a forum for sharing research and expertise in all management disciplines through invited and competitive paper sessions, panels, symposia, workshops, speakers, and special programs for doctoral students.
Book thumbnail image Two faces of the Limited Test Ban Treaty By Jacob Darwin Hamblin Fifty years ago, the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union signed a pact to stop testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, oceans, and space. As we commemorate the treaty, we will not agree on what to celebrate. There are two sides of the story.
Book thumbnail image ‘Yesterday I lost a country’ By Kathleen Cavanaugh Since 2003, Iraq has experienced significant political unrest and the emergence of ethno-religious divisions. That there is a sectarian complexion to emerging socio-political movements in Iraq (religious, ethno-political) is not in question. The ‘fear of sectarianism’ has undoubtedly shaped and formed how protest movements in Iraq (and indeed regionally) are constituted.
Book thumbnail image The strengths and limitations of global immunization programmes By Desmond McNeill Modern vaccines are among the most powerful tools available to public health. They have saved millions of lives, protected millions more against the ravages of crippling and debilitating disease, and have the capacity to save many more. But like all complex and sophisticated tools, they can be used for different purposes, in different ways, and with various consequences.
Book thumbnail image Oil and threatened food security Today, debate in the West remains largely focused on energy security and decreased dependence on foreign oil, but in the Middle East, an equally threatening crisis looms in a shortage of food and water. Ahead of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association & CAES Joint Annual Meeting (4-6 August 2013 in Washington, D.C.), we present a […]
Book thumbnail image Why we should commemorate Walter Pater By Matthew Beaumont Pater’s most celebrated and controversial book, Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) is about the distant past, superficially at least, and therefore risked seeming irrelevant even in his own time. It could not however have inspired a generation of undergraduates, including Oscar Wilde, to embrace aestheticism, and a cult of homoeroticism, as his critics claimed, if it had not also been a coded polemic about the present.
A lion: Joseph Paxton in the nineteenth century and today By Tatiana Holway Two hundred years ago today, on 3 August 1813, Joseph Paxton turned ten. In a farm hand’s family of nine children, this was likely to have been a nonevent. A decade after that, the day would also have come and gone like any other.
Book thumbnail image Recovery residences and long-term addiction recovery By Leonard A. Jason, Amy A. Mericle, Douglas L. Polcin, and William L. White Drug abuse and addiction are among the costliest of health problems, totaling approximately $428 billion annually. People recovering from substance abuse disorders face many obstacles in our current health care system.
Book thumbnail image What is “toxic” about anger? By Ephrem Fernandez, Ph.D. What is anger? In essence, anger is a subjective feeling tied to perceived wrongdoing and a tendency to counter or redress that wrongdoing in ways that may range from resistance to retaliation. Like sadness and fear, the feeling of anger can take the form of emotion, mood, or temperament.
Book thumbnail image What are you drinking? By Jonathan Kroberger Today is International Beer Day and there’s nothing we like to talk about more than a few good brews. Between the Oxford Companion to Beer, America Walks into a Bar, Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing, The Economics of Beer, and several episodes of The Oxford Comment, OUP employees have managed to imbibe a little expertise in the area.
Book thumbnail image The first branch of the Mabinogi The Mabinogion is the title given to eleven medieval Welsh prose tales preserved mainly in the White Book of Rhydderch (c.1350) and the Red Book of Hergest (c.1400). They were never conceived as a collection—the title was adopted in the nineteenth century when the tales were first translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest.
Book thumbnail image Nine facts about athletics in Ancient Greece The World Championships in Athletics takes place this month in Moscow. Since 1983 the championship has grown in size and now includes around 200 participating countries and territories, giving rise to the global prominence of athletics. The Ancient Greeks were some of the earliest to begin holding competitions around athletics, with each Greek state competing in a series of sporting events in the city of Olympia once every four years.
Book thumbnail image Wonga-bashing won’t save the Church of England Linda Woodhead We are living through a very significant historical change: the collapse of the historic churches which have shaped British society and culture. The Church of England, by law established, is no exception. A survey I recently carried out with YouGov for the Westminster Faith Debates (June 2013) shows that in Great Britain as a whole only 11% of young people in their twenties now call themselves CofE or Anglican, compared to nearer half of over-70s. The challenge facing the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is to address this decline. But the initial indications suggest he may be heading in the wrong direction.
Book thumbnail image The origins of the Fulbright program By Sam Lebovic Since its creation in the summer of 1946, the Fulbright program has become the “flagship international educational exchange program” of the US government. Over the past 67 years, almost 320,000 students, scholars and teachers have traveled internationally as part of the program’s vast effort to improve mutual understanding between nations.
Book thumbnail image The Clooneys and the Kennedys By Ken Crossland The story of Rosemary’s Clooney’s rise, fall, and rise again to the summit of American music is a story unparalleled in American showbiz history. From her emergence at the archetypal girl-next-door in the Fifties, through to her late life renaissance as an interpreter par excellence of jazz and popular song, Clooney’s 57-year career scaled all the heights.
Book thumbnail image Psychiatry and the brain By George Graham and Owen Flanagan Even before the much-heralded DSM-5 was released, Thomas Insel the Director of NIMH criticized it for lacking “scientific validity.” In his blog post entitled “Transforming Diagnosis,” Insel admitted that the symptom-based approach of DSM is as good as we can get at present and that it yields “reliability” by disciplining the use of diagnostic terminology among professionals.
Book thumbnail image Where’s Mrs Y? The effects of unnecessary ward moves By Miles Witham and Marion McMurdo It’s a Thursday morning in February, and I have just arrived on the ward to start my ward round. Mrs Y, a lady in her 90’s with dementia, was admitted with pneumonia a few days ago. She is on the mend, rehabilitating well, and we planned to get her home tomorrow with some extra home care.
July 2013 (106))
An ice cream quiz By Audrey Ingerson and Stephanie Rothaug We’ve all heard of the classics: vanilla, chocolate, rocky road, mint chocolate chip. But what about the crazier end of the spectrum? Flavors like cherry blossom, chocolate marshmallow, chorizo caramel, sea salt, chai tea, or cinnamon toast.
Monthly etymological gleanings for July 2013 By Anatoly Liberman As always, I am grateful to our correspondents for their questions, suggestions, and corrections. Occasionally I do not respond to their queries because I have nothing to say and keep trying to find a quotable answer.
Book thumbnail image From RDC to RDoC: a history of the future? By KWM Fulford Back in 1963 the New York Times reported enthusiastically that “….a young doctor at Columbia University’s New York State Psychiatric Institute has developed a tool that may become the psychiatrist’s thermometer and microscope and X-ray machine rolled in to one.”
Five quirky facts about Harry Nilsson By Alyn Shipton By Alyn Shipton (1) Harry nearly had no career at all after he accepted a dare as a teenager to slide down a fast running flume at Wofford Heights in California. After sliding down the waterway for several miles at high speed he narrowly escaped with his life by grabbing a metal bar above his head and hauling himself out of the rapid current.
Book thumbnail image The mysteries of Pope Francis By Peter McDonough If you’ve visited Rome, you may have noticed that the Jesuit headquarters, right off St. Peter’s Square, overlooks–“looks down on”– the Vatican. Jesuits are fond of reminding visitors, with a smile, of this topographical curiosity and its symbolic freight.
Book thumbnail image Dress as an expression of the pecuniary culture By Thorstein Veblen The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way of demonstrating the wearer’s abstinence from productive employment. It needs no argument to enforce the generalisation that the more elegant styles of feminine bonnets go even farther towards making work impossible than does the man’s high hat.
Book thumbnail image How DSM-5 has been received By Joel Paris, MD The reception of DSM-5 has been marked by very divergent points of view. The editors of the manual congratulated themselves for their achievement in an article for the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “The Future Arrived.”
Book thumbnail image The Treaty of Box Elder July 30, 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Box Elder between the United States and the Northwestern Shoshones. At first glance it’s not much of a treaty, just five short articles. Unlike the treaty that a month before defrauded the Nez Perces of 90 per cent of their land, or the Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Sioux in 1868, which the U.S. broke to steal the Black Hills, the Box Elder treaty gets little attention. Most historians who have written about treaties…
Book thumbnail image Anthems of Africa By Simon Riker I would love to visit Africa someday. I think it would settle a lot of curiosity I have about the world. For now, my most informed experience regarding the place is a seminar I took this past semester, called Sacred and Secular African American Musics.
Book thumbnail image Post-DSM tristesse: the reception of DSM-5 By Edward Shorter We’re all suffering from DSM-5 burnout. Nobody really wants to hear anything more about it, so shrill have been the tirades against it, so fuddy-duddy the responses of the psychiatric establishment (“based on the latest science”).
Book thumbnail image Sources of change in Catholicism By Peter McDonough Vocation directors report a ten percent bump in applications to the Society of Jesus since the ascension of a Jesuit to the papacy. The blip reflects a certain relief. The personable contrast that Pope Francis offers to his dour predecessor shifts the motivational calculus.
Book thumbnail image Homicide bombers, not suicide bombers By Robert Goldney To some this heading may seem unexpected. The term ‘suicide bomber’ has entered our lexicon on the obvious basis that although the prime aim may have been the killing of others, the individual perpetrator dies. Indeed, over the last three decades the media, the general public , and sometimes the scientific community have uncritically used the words ‘suicide bomber’ to describe the deaths of those who kill others, sometimes a few, usually ten to twenty, or in the case of 9/11, about two thousand, while at the same time killing themselves.
Book thumbnail image Do dolphins call each other by name? By Justin Gregg If you haul a bottlenose dolphin out of the water and onto the deck of your boat, something remarkable will happen. The panicked dolphin will produce a whistle sound, repeated every few seconds until you release her back into the water. If you record that whistle and compare it to the whistle of another dolphin in the same predicament, you’ll discover that the two whistles are different. In fact, every dolphin will have its own “signature” whistle that it uses when separated from her friends and family.
Book thumbnail image World Hepatitis Day 2013: This is hepatitis. Know it. Confront it. By John Ward, MD On the 28th of July, countries around the globe will commemorate the third annual World Hepatitis Day. One of only eight health campaigns recognized by the World Health Organization, this health observance raises awareness of the silent yet growing epidemic of viral hepatitis worldwide.
Book thumbnail image When science may not be enough By Louis René Beres We live in an age of glittering data analysis and complex information technologies. While there are obvious benefits to such advancement, not all matters of importance are best understood by science. On some vital matters, there is a corollary and sometimes even complementary need for a deeper –more palpably human – kind of understanding.
Book thumbnail image Korea remembered It is sixty years since the Korean War came to a messy end at an ill-tempered armistice ceremony in Panmunjom’s new “peace” pagoda. That night, President Dwight Eisenhower made a brief and somber speech to the nation. What the U.S. negotiators had signed, he explained to his compatriots, was merely “an armistice on a single battleground—not peace in the world.”
Oxford authors and the British Academy Medals 2013 We don’t often discuss book awards on the OUPblog, but this year the inaugural British Academy Medals were awarded to three authors and their titles published by Oxford University Press: Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, edited by Noel Malcolm; The Organisation of Mind by Tim Shallice and Rick Cooper; and The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean by David Abulafia (USA only).
Book thumbnail image Experiencing art: it’s a whole-brain issue, stupid! By Arthur Shimamura We love art. We put it on our walls, we admire it at museums and on others’ walls, and if we’re inspired, we may even create it. Philosophers, historians, critics, and scientists have bandied about the reasons why we enjoy creating and beholding art, and each has offered important and interesting perspectives.
Book thumbnail image Songs of summer, OUP style Compiled by Natasha Zaman It’s finally summer — the perfect time to spend with family and friends, enjoy the weather, gardens and parks, and to create fond memories. What better way to create those summer memories than have our favorite songs playing in the background?
Book thumbnail image Kammerer, Carr, and an early Beat tragedy Following last year’s release of On the Road, adapted by director Walter Salles from the legendary Jack Kerouac novel published in 1957, two more Beat Generation movies are on the way. Big Sur, a November release directed by Michael Polish, stars Jean-Marc Barr, Stana Katic, Anthony Edwards, and Radha Mitchell in a story based on Kerouac’s 1962 novel about his efforts to shake off inner demons at an isolated cabin near the California coast.
Book thumbnail image Fit for a (future) king: George, Alexander, and Louis By Matthew Kilburn It’s not been easy to avoid news that the duke and duchess of Cambridge have had their first child, that the baby is a boy, and that he’s been named George Alexander Louis.
Book thumbnail image Recent advances and new challenges in managing pain By Lesley Colvin Pain is one of the most feared symptoms whether it is after surgery, in the context of chronic disease, or related to cancer. Around 18% of people will be affected by moderate to severe chronic pain at some point in their life, with chronic pain having as big a negative impact on quality of life as severe heart disease or a major mental health problem.
Book thumbnail image A birthday gift of lullabies for Baby Cambridge By Natasha Zaman After a long wait, the royal baby has arrived. To honor the occasion, congratulate the Duchess of Cambridge, and welcome the new baby, we at Oxford University Press (OUP) have arranged a birthday gift: a compilation of classic lullabies from some of the different regions around the globe where OUP has offices.
Book thumbnail image The fall of Mussolini Seventy years ago today, in the late afternoon of Sunday 25 July 1943, the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini went for what he imagined was a fairly routine audience with the Italian king. The war had been going badly for Italy: two weeks earlier US, Canadian and British forces had landed in Sicily, and met with little resistance. And the previous evening a number of senior fascists had passed a motion calling on the king to assume full military command.
Book thumbnail image Constantine in Rome By David Potter July is a month of historic anniversaries. The Fourth of July and Bastille Day celebrate moments that have shaped the modern world. No less important is the 25th of July. This Thursday will mark the 1707th anniversary of Constantine’s accession to the throne of part of the Roman Empire.
Book thumbnail image The challenge of decentralized competition enforcement Peter Whelan The adoption of Regulation 1/2003 produced a number of significant effects for the enforcement of EU competition law. The European Commission was of course provided with more robust enforcement powers; the relationship between national competition law and EU competition law was clarified; and the EU-level notification system was abolished, with Article 101(3) TFEU becoming directly applicable for the first time. The latter two of these changes in particular have increased the need for EU competition law experts to keep abreast of national competition law developments in the EU.
Book thumbnail image What’s in a royal name? HRH Prince George Alexander Louis of Cambridge has arrived! There was much hand-wringing over which names would be chosen for the third in line to the British throne, so we thought this would be an excellent opportunity to pull out our copy of An A-Z of Baby Names by Patrick Hanks and examine the history of the names given to mother, father, and baby. Below are extracts from the text.
Alphabet soup, part 1: V and Z By Anatoly Liberman It is common knowledge that an average page of an English dictionary contains at least twice as many borrowed as native words, even though come, go, see, sit, stand, do, make, man, woman, in, on, and other similar heavy duty words go back to Old English.
Book thumbnail image The misfortune of Athos We wish a happy birthday to Alexandre Dumas today with the musketeers. In the 1620s at the court of Louis XIII, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis with their companion, the headstrong d’Artagnan, are engaged in a battle against Richelieu, the King’s minister, and the beautiful, unscrupulous spy, Milady. Behind the flashing blades and bravura, Dumas explores the eternal conflict between good and evil. The following is an excerpt from Chapter 27, The Wife of Athos.
Book thumbnail image Of Mormonish and Saintspeak By Philip Barlow In the beginning, Mormonism was a cult. Not in the vulgar sense often attributed to feared or misconstrued religious minorities, but in the way that earliest Christianity or nascent Islam was a cult: a group that forms around a charismatic figure coupled with radical new religious claims.
Book thumbnail image A bit of a virtual vade mecum By Frédéric G. Sourgens Surveying recent scholarship, one could be forgiven to think that “international investment law” is a fad. Articles suggest that, like vuvuzelas at football games, “investment law” made a rather noisy entrance, annoyed the majority of onlookers, and destroyed the integrity and purity of a centuries’ long tradition.
Book thumbnail image On ‘work ethic’ By Peter Womack The expression is somehow on everybody’s lips. Its incidence in the media has risen steadily over the last decade or so, and now an attentive reader of the broadsheets is likely to encounter it every day. It’s most often found on the sports pages: one recent forty-eight-hour period registered online praise for the respective work ethics of the footballer Nicolas Anelka, the cricketer Peter Siddle, the tennis player Marion Bartoli, and the British Lions rugby team.
Summers with George Balanchine By Elizabeth Kendall By Elizabeth Kendall A hundred years ago in the summer of 1913, nine-year-old George Balanchine, then Georgi Balanchivadze, spent the last moments of normal childhood — in the country, in the forest by a lake — before he was abruptly brought back to St. Petersburg.
Book thumbnail image Understanding history through biography At the April 2013 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Susan Ware, General Editor of the American National Biography, discussed her first year in charge of the site and her vision for its future. Ware argues that one of the best ways to understand history is through the lives of history’s major and minor players.
Book thumbnail image No love for the viola? By Katherine Stopa To be frank, there has never been much love for the viola (or violists). As an erstwhile violist I would get two types of reactions about my instrument of choice: from non-musicians, “what’s a viola?” and from musicians… well just Google “viola jokes” and it will return some real doozies.
Book thumbnail image Why should we care about the Septuagint? Even though the Bible is one of the most widely read books in history, most readers of religious literature have no knowledge of the Septuagint—the Bible that was used almost universally by early Christians—or of how it differs from the Bible used as the basis for most modern translations.
Book thumbnail image Myths about rape myths By Helen Reece In recent decades, England and Wales have experienced extensive rape law reform and a substantial rise in rape reporting, but the number of rape convictions has not kept pace, leading to a galloping attrition rate: the current proportion of recorded rapes that result in a rape conviction is about 7%.
Book thumbnail image Europe’s 1968: voices of revolt By Robert Gildea May ‘68 is often used as a shorthand for the protests and revolts that took place in that year, conjuring up images of barricades and Molotov cocktails in the Latin Quarter of Paris. But 1968 did not take place only in one year
Book thumbnail image It’s only a virus By Dorothy H. Crawford “It’s only a virus.” How often do GPs utter those words over the course of a working day? They mean, of course, that your symptoms are mild, non-specific and don’t warrant any treatment. If you just go home and rest you’ll recover in a few days.
Book thumbnail image Armchair travels By Julie Kalman This is a piece about subjectivity. And while we’re on the topic, let’s just stop for a moment to talk about me. When the weekend paper delivers its fullness at the breakfast table, I don’t stop to read the travel section.
Book thumbnail image ‘Wild-haired and witch-like’: the wisewoman in industrial society By Francesca Moore Many of us rely on herbal remedies to maintain our health, from peppermint tea to soothe our stomachs to arnica cream for alleviating bruising. Such is the faith in these remedies that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has funded alternative medical treatments and specialist homeopathic hospitals.
Book thumbnail image Why do women struggle to achieve work-life balance? By Heidi Moawad Is work-life balance consistent with professional ambition? A recent study concludes that young women are now proclaiming that they don’t want to be leaders. Does this data suggest that young women who do want to be leaders should not bother to ‘lean in’ by acquiring expert level knowledge, attaining specialized skills and pursuing experience-building work projects when they have the opportunity?
Book thumbnail image The superpower I want most Back in June, we asked you to tell us your favorite superpower. After reviewing several entries, our expert panel of judges has selected Gary Zenker’s piece on “The super power I want most.
Book thumbnail image Vaccination: what are the risks? By Peter C. Doherty All prediction is probabilistic. Maybe that statement is unfamiliar. It’s central to the thinking of every scientist, though this is not to the way media commentators like Jenny McCarthy approach the world. Scientists make certain predictions, or recommend courses of action on the basis of the best available evidence, but we realize that there is always an element of risk.
Book thumbnail image The Poetic Edda and Wagner’s Ring Cycle By Carolyne Larrington In his masterpiece, Wagner synthesised stories from across the Old Norse – Icelandic collection of poems known as the Poetic Edda. He had long been mulling over an opera based on the German epic, Das Nibelungenlied, but he realised that he needed more material and more inspiration. Wagner knew where he might find it: “I must study these Old Norse eddic poems of yours; they are far more profound than our medieval poems”, he remarked to the Danish composer Niels Gade in 1846.
Book thumbnail image What have we learned from modern wars? Richard English War remains arguably the greatest threat that we face as a species. It also remains an area of activity in which we still tend to get far too many things wrong. For there’s a depressing disjunction between what we very often assume, think, expect, and claim about modern war, and its actual historical reality when carefully assessed.
Book thumbnail image Glaucoma: not just a disease of adults By Robert M. Feldman, MD Glaucoma is a potentially blinding disease where degeneration of the optic nerve leads to progressive vision loss. In the United States, it is estimated that 2.2 million suffer from glaucoma.
Book thumbnail image The pleasure gardens of 18th-century London By David Blackwell A popular form of aristocratic entertainment in mid-18th-century London was to stroll round the city’s ornamental pleasure gardens, both those at Vauxhall (launched in 1732 with a masked gala) and its more fashionable rival, Ranelagh Gardens (opened in 1742 and now the site of the annual Chelsea Flower Show).
The good, the bad, the missed opportunities By Christopher Adam, David Cobham, and Ken Mayhew By Christopher Adam, David Cobham, and Ken Mayhew Popular perceptions of governments’ economic records are often shaped by the specific events that precipitate their downfall. From devaluation crises in the 1960s, through industrial relations in the 1970s, to the débâcle of the poll tax in the 1990s, governments in the UK have often fought (and lost) elections on defining events—not all of which are of their own making.
How courteous are you at court? By Anatoly Liberman “Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been? I’ve been to London to look at the Queen,/ Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?/ I frightened a little mouse under the chair.” Evidently, our power of observation depends on our background and current interests.
Book thumbnail image Why Edward Snowden never had a right to asylum By Geoff Gilbert There is nothing that complicated about the Edward Snowden case, but it does involve several overlapping areas of law, international and domestic, and commentators seem to assume there is some sort of accepted hierarchy.
Book thumbnail image Test your knowledge of nutrition, health, and economics Now more than ever, health is one of the most important political issues for countries all over the world. As policies are brought in to tackle health problems, such as obesity, malnutrition, and food access, scholars look at what role economics plays in health and nutrition.
Book thumbnail image How do you study large whales? By Kathleen E. Hunt Wildlife physiology—the study of the inner workings of an animal’s body, such as its reproductive hormones, stress responses, fat reserves, and much more—has historically depended heavily on the ability to capture an animal, assess its body condition, obtain a blood sample, and release the animal unharmed for further study.
Book thumbnail image How do you know if ‘bad’ art really is bad? By Aaron Meskin, Margaret Moore, Mark Phelan, and Matthew Kieran Are the bad art pictures on Tumblr really bad or are they just unfamiliar? Would we come to like them more–and judge them as better–if we looked at them more? In order to answer these questions, we need to consider the mere exposure effect.
Book thumbnail image The ghost of Sherlock Holmes By Douglas Kerr The ghost of Sherlock Holmes started life (if that’s the word) early. Conan Doyle sent the detective plunging over the Reichenbach Falls in the grip of Professor Moriarty in “The Final Problem,” published in the Strand magazine in December 1893. The following year, music-hall audiences were joining in the chorus of a popular song, written by Richard Morton and composed and sung by H. C. Barry.
Book thumbnail image Captive Nations Week A commemoration that is not as well known, every third week of July is Captive Nations Week. Officially signed into law by President Eisenhower and the United States in 1959, the week is meant to bring recognition to the many countries that have been oppressed by non-democratic governments, written in the 1950s with Communism specifically in mind. The Cold War had widespread political ramifications, and no book on Oxford’s list provides a better look…
Book thumbnail image Lullaby for a royal baby By Meghann Wilhoite Not only does Will and Kate’s royal wee one now have an ASDA parking spot, there’s another nice surprise awaiting his or her arrival: a specially-composed lullaby, called “Sleep On”. It’s a sweet little tune, written by Welsh composer Paul Mealor.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Raúl Esparza Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 16 July 2013, actor Raúl Esparza leads a discussion on The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.
Book thumbnail image Stereotypes and realities in Catholicism By Peter McDonough Writing about Catholicism started out as a sideline for me. Most of my research as a political scientist was about the breakup of authoritarian regimes in places like Brazil and Spain.Then, in what indulgent colleagues called “Peter’s midlife crisis,” I began inquiring into changes in the Catholic church.
Book thumbnail image A Who’s Who quiz for the British summer Britons know that when the sun shines you need to take advantage of it! With so many fantastic events spanning the summer months, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the British summertime. Come rain or shine, this Who’s Who quiz for British summer events is sure to keep your summer bright.
Book thumbnail image The coming of age of international criminal justice By Julia Geneuss and Florian Jessberger Fifteen years ago, on 17 July 1998, the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court (ICC), was adopted, creating the first permanent international forum to try and punish perpetrators of mass atrocities.
Book thumbnail image Palliative care: who cares? By Catherine Proot and Michael Yorke Who cares? When the chips are down, most people do, but they are likely to need support and encouragement. The challenge is to make the palliative care skills and support more widely available in the family home, where the majority of people prefer to be cared for and die. It could be said that caring for a dying person is not a single person’s job, even if it is the most important and honourable one that that person might ever do.
Book thumbnail image In the buff: a classical view of National Nude Day By Dimitris Plantzos We can’t think of classical Greece without its nude statues, but what was it about nudity that made Greece classical? Thucydides was convinced that taking your kit off while exercising was a sign of cultural progress.
Book thumbnail image Le 14 juillet By Sanja Perovic Le 14 juillet, as Bastille Day is known in France, is the only national festival that commemorates the French Revolution. According to revolutionary gospel, it marks the day when the ‘people’ stormed the state prison that once stood on today’s Place de la Bastille, thereby heralding the end of despotism and an era of freedom.
Is obesity truly a public health crisis? Obesity is often framed by public health officials as an epidemic, leading to a virtually unequivocal understanding of fat as “bad.” What this framing does not take into account, however, are the increasingly negative consequences of categorizing people – particularly women – as overweight.
Book thumbnail image A trial of criminology By P.A.J. Waddington The British Society of Criminology annual conference was held this year at the University of Wolverhampton and its centrepiece was to hold a trial of criminology. Presided over by His Honour, Judge Michael Challinor, both the ‘prosecution’ and ‘defence’ wore wigs and gowns, and there was the usual bout of examination and cross-examination of witnesses.
Book thumbnail image What is the legacy of Henry VIII? Was Henry VIII a “family man” so to speak? The notion seems vaguely ridiculous; by 1547, the philandering English monarch had laid claim to six wives, two of which he had executed, including the infamously-beheaded Anne Boleyn.
Book thumbnail image Why reference editors are more like Gandalf than Maxwell Perkins By Max Sinsheimer Recently I was chatting with a regular at my gym, an Irish man named Stephen, when he asked me what I do for a living. I told him I am an editor in the reference department at Oxford University Press, and he excitedly launched into a description of the draft manuscript he had just completed, a novel about his wild (and illicit) youth spent between Galway and the Canary Islands.
Book thumbnail image Letters from Heaven By Martyn Lyons While researching in the Archive of Everyday Writings (Archivo de las Escrituras Cotidianas) in Alcalá de Henares, I came across a very curious manuscript. It was the copy of a letter from God which, it claimed, had descended to earth during a Mass held in St. Peter’s in Rome. It had been picked up by a deaf-mute boy called Angel, who miraculously began to read it aloud.
Book thumbnail image Book groups and the latest ‘it’ novel Robert Eaglestone I’ve never been to a book group (although I was once invited to a Dad’s ‘Listening to the Album of the Month with Beer’ club) but I’ve always been afraid that it would be a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, or, worse, that – because I’m basically a teacher – it would turn me into the sort of terribly bossy know-it-all you don’t want drinking your nicely chilled wine. That said, I often get asked to recommend the current ‘it’ novel for book groups.
Book thumbnail image A sweet, sweet song of salvation: the stars of Jesus rock By Larry Eskridge The Jesus People movement emerged in the 1960s within the hippie counterculture as the Flower Children rubbed shoulders with America’s pervasive evangelical subculture. While the first major pockets of the movement appeared in California, smaller groups of “Jesus freaks” popped up—seemingly spontaneously—across the country in the late Sixties.
Book thumbnail image Untied threads By Joel Sachs Unidentified key players are the bane of biographers, who cannot resist the urge to tie all the knots. In my case, writing about the extraordinary life of the composer Henry Cowell, two people resisted identification, both of them connected with the sad story of Cowell’s imprisonment on a morals charge.
Book thumbnail image Cooperation through unproductive costs By Jason A. Aimone, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Michael D. Makowsky, and Jared Rubin What do prison gangs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Ultra-Orthodox Jews have in common? All of these groups require highly-visible “costs” that reduce their members’ opportunities in the outside world.
Flutes and flatterers By Anatoly Liberman The names of musical instruments constitute one of the most intriguing chapters in the science and pseudoscience of etymology. Many such names travel from land to land, and we are surprised when a word with romantic overtones reveals a prosaic origin. For example, lute is from Arabic (al’ud: the definite article followed by a word for “wood, timber”).
Book thumbnail image Nine curiosities about Ancient Greek drama The International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama held annually in Cyprus during the month of July. Since its beginning in 1996, the festival has reimagined performances from the great Ancient Greek playwrights, so we dug into J.C. McKeown’s A Cabinet of Greek Curiosities for some of the lesser known facts about Ancient Greek theatre.
Book thumbnail image Can religion evolve? John Schellenberg On the last page of ‘On The Origin of Species’, Charles Darwin turns from millions of years of natural selection in the past to what he calls a “future of equally inappreciable length” and ventures the judgment that “all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress to perfection.”
Book thumbnail image Seven things you didn’t know about “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” the iconic hit featured on the Beatles’ much-celebrated 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, is probably among one of the most mesmerizing and musically inventive Billboard-toppers of all time.
Book thumbnail image Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the politics of “variable obscenity” By Christopher Hilliard It’s the most famous own goal in English legal history. In London’s Old Bailey, late in 1960, Penguin Books is being prosecuted for publishing an obscene book – an unexpurgated edition of D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The prosecution asks the jury whether Lady Chatterley’s Lover was “a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read.”
Book thumbnail image Thinking through comedy from Fey to Feo By Keith Johnston Comedy is having a bit of a cultural moment. Everywhere you turn people seem to be writing seriously about comedians and the art of comedy. Tina Fey and Caitlin Moran are credited with setting the agenda for pop feminism, Marc Maron is hailed as a pioneer of new media journalism, Louis CK is mentioned in the same breath as Truffaut, and Tig Notaro is regarded as an “icon”…
Book thumbnail image Creativity in the social sciences The question of how social scientists choose the topics they write about doesn’t agitate inquiring minds as the puzzle of what drives creative writers and artists does. Many innovative social scientists take up the same subjects again and again, and their obsessiveness is probably indicative of considerations and compulsions more powerful than increasing ease with a familiar field of inquiry. They are specialists who have fallen in love with their subjects, rather like artists…
What’s really at stake in the National Security Agency data sweeps By Stephen J. Schulhofer As controversy continues over the efforts of the National Security Agency to collect the telephone records of millions of innocent Americans, officials have sought to reassure the public that these programs are permitted by the Constitution, approved by Congress, and overseen by the courts. Yet the reality is that these programs fully deserve the discomfort they have aroused.
Book thumbnail image On suicide prevention By Robert Goldney, AO, MD Not all suicide can be prevented. That is particularly so when help is not sought. On other occasions suicide can be interpreted as the inevitable outcome of a malignant mental disorder, and that can be of some comfort to grieving families and friends who may be feeling guilty at their sense of relief that uncertainty is over. Clinicians may also share those emotions. However, if adequate assessment of each individual is undertaken and appropriate management pursued, on balance there will be an overall reduction in the unacceptable rate of suicide worldwide.
Book thumbnail image Beyond narcissism and evil: The decision to use chemical weapons By Jacob Darwin Hamblin With all eyes on chemical and nuclear weapons in the Middle East, it might seem natural to speculate about the ethical and moral positions of world leaders, or even to apply psychological analyses to them. We ask ourselves whether the Iranian leaders are psychotic enough to attack Israel with nuclear weapons, or we wonder which of the Syrian leaders would be monstrous enough to use chemical weapons.
Book thumbnail image An idioms and formulaic language quiz By Audrey Ingerson On this day in 1928, sliced bread was sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company of Chillicothe, Missouri. Ever since then, sliced bread has been held up as the ideal — at least in idiomatic expressions. Ever heard of “the greatest thing since sliced bread”?
Book thumbnail image What can we learn from the French Revolution? By Marisa Linton The world has seen a new wave of revolutions; in North Africa, the Middle East, and beyond, we can see revolutions unfolding on our tv screens even if we’ve never been near an actual revolution in our lives. The experience makes us think anew about the nature of revolutions, about what happens, and why it may happen.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to Wimbledon By Alana Podolsky This weekend, Wimbledon will come to an end, looking far different from tennis’ start in the middle ages. Originally played in cloisters by hitting the ball with the palm of a hand, tennis added rackets in the 16th century. Lawn tennis emerged in Britain in the 1870s, and the first championships took place at Wimbledon in 1877.
Book thumbnail image Suspicious young men, then and now By Kenneth R. Johnston What do Edward Snowden and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have in common? Both were upset by government snooping into private communications on the pretext of national security. Snowden exposed the US National Security Agency’s vast programs of electronic surveillance to the Guardian and the Washington Post, Coleridge belittled the spy system of William Pitt the Younger in his autobiography, Biographia Literaria (1817).
Book thumbnail image The third parent By Rachel Bowlby The news that Britain is set to become the first country to authorize IVF using genetic material from three people—the so-called ‘three-parent baby’—has given rise to (very predictable) divisions of opinion.
Book thumbnail image New UPSO partners quiz with Liverpool and Stanford How well do you know Liverpool University Press and Stanford University Press, the newest members of the UPSO family? Why not take our quiz to test your knowledge?
Book thumbnail image Nelson Mandela: a precursor to Barack Obama Not long before Barack Obama was first elected President of the United States, in October 2008, the African American novelist Alice Walker commented that the then still Senator Obama, as the leader in waiting of the most powerful nation on earth, might be regarded as a worthy successor to the towering figure of Mandela. She discerned within the American leader’s authoritative and crusading self-presentation the template of Robben Island’s most famous one-time resident.
Book thumbnail image Anaesthesia exposure and the developing brain: to be or not to be? By Vesna Jevtovic-Todorovic and Hugh Hemmings Rapidly mounting animal evidence clearly indicates that exposure to general anaesthesia during the early stages of brain development results in long lasting behavioural impairments . These behavioural impairments manifest as reduced performance in tests of learning and memory know as cognitive deficits, lack of motivation, and problems with social interactions. Some worrisome similarities are apparent when emerging human data are carefully compared with animal data.
Book thumbnail image Six surprising facts about “God Bless America” By Sheryl Kaskowitz Some of my friends hate “God Bless America.” They find it sentimental, old-fashioned, cheesy. They bristle at its over-the-top jingoism, at its exceptionalism that seems out of step with the globalism of the twenty-first century. They say it violates the separation of church and state. They associate it with Bush, or Reagan, or Nixon, with the boring, mainstream, un-groovy side of American culture.
Book thumbnail image US Independence Day author Q&A: part four Happy Independence Day to our American readers! In honor of Independence Day in the United States, we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday today.
When it rains, it does not necessarily pour By Anatoly Liberman Contrary to some people’s expectation, July has arrived, and it rains incessantly, that is, in the parts of the world not suffering from drought. I often feel guilty on account of my avoiding the burning questions of our time.
Book thumbnail image An Independence Day reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Penny Freeman For this month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list, we picked some of our favorite American classics in honor of Independence Day. There’s no better holiday to celebrate America’s iconic writers, and their great works, than the Fourth of July. Whether you were assigned to read these books in class, or keep meaning to pick up a few of those classics you missed out on, we have something for everyone on the list.
Book thumbnail image Five things you should know about the Fed This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Federal Reserve, which was created after President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act on December 23, 1913. In this adapted excerpt from The Federal Reserve: What Everyone Needs to Know, Stephen H. Axilrod answers questions about The Federal Reserve’s historical origins, evolving responsibilities, and major challenges in a period of economic crisis.
US Independence Day author Q&A: part three In honor of Independence Day in the United States, we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses have inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday.
Book thumbnail image Bring me a scapegoat to destroy: babies, blame, and bargains By Matthew Flinders When reading this week’s coverage of the independent report into the regulation of Morecambe University Hospital Trust by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), I could not help but reflect upon the links between this terrible episode in public sector management and Stanley Cohen’s famous work on moral panics and folk devils.
Book thumbnail image Are we alone in the universe? By David Wilkinson As a scientist and a theologian I am intrigued by the continued fascination with questions of aliens. In Superman’s new reboot, Man of Steel, Jonathan Kent says to Clark: ‘You’re the answer, son… to “are we alone in the universe?”’. Of course, he is not the first parent to conclude that their children are not of this planet, but he does raise one of the biggest scientific questions of our time – are we alone?
Book thumbnail image US Independence Day author Q&A: part two In honor of Independence Day in the United States, we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses have inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday. Today Donald A. Ritchie, author of The US Congress: A Very Short Introduction shares his answers.
Book thumbnail image TV got game? The NBA on NBC and other b-ball tunes By Ron Rodman June marks the end of a long season for professional basketball in the US—the National Basketball Association (NBA) playoff finals cap the end of a season that begins in October. American television broadcasts professional basketball games just as it does other major sports, and seeks to draw an audience for sports telecasts by dramatizing broadcasted games. To help draw audiences, many networks use dramatic theme music for the games.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Justin Scott Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 2 July 2013, author Justin Scott leads a discussion on Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.
Book thumbnail image Three Attorneys General are wrong By Edward Zelinsky On 6 May 2013, the US Senate by a bi-partisan vote of 69-27 approved the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013. The Act would require large, out-of-state Internet and mail order sellers to collect sales taxes, just as brick-and mortar stores must collect such taxes.
Book thumbnail image Ten things you didn’t know about the Battle of Gettysburg By Kate Pais The 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg is upon us. The Civil War and Gettysburg remain one of the most integral and well documented parts of American history. In hopes of honoring this extra special anniversary, here are ten little known anecdotes about the Battle of Gettysburg, found in the timeless and timely resource The Gettysburg Nobody Knows, an essay collection edited by Gabor S. Boritt.
Book thumbnail image Moralizing states: intervening in Syria By Kathleen A. Cavanaugh The narrative that underpins humanitarian intervention has been reframed from a narrow focus of intervention to a broader notion of responsibility to protect. While the concept of responsibility to protect is clearly best placed in an international framework, one key aspect of the question of intervention is the proposition of legal authority.
Book thumbnail image US Independence Day author Q&A: part one In honor of Independence Day in the U.S., we asked some of our influential American history and politics VSI authors to ask each other some pointed questions related to significant matters in America. Their passionate responses have inspired a four day series leading up to America’s 237th birthday.
June 2013 (99))
These days do we really need a Man of Steel? By Arthur P. Shimamura As a child, I encountered the Man of Steel in the Adventures of Superman, the 1950s TV series that I watched as morning reruns a decade later. My Superman was “faster than a speeding bullet” and fought for “truth, justice and the American way.” My 26-year-old son, Thomas, encountered a similarly invincible superhero in Superman: The Movie, the 1978 blockbuster which starred Christopher Reeve.
Book thumbnail image Robert Kennedy’s Battle Hymn By Benjamin Soskis The Civil War anthem “Battle Hymn of the Republic” had long been a favorite of Robert Kennedy’s, but it did not become closely associated with the man—and the hopes many Americans had invested in him—until his death. In planning the requiem high mass held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York the Sunday after his assassination forty five years ago, on 8 June 1968, Ethel Kennedy insisted on deviating from the traditional liturgy and concluding the service with the hymn.
Images to remember the Battle of Plataea In 479 BCE, ancient city-state rivals, the Spartans and Athenians, joined in alliance against Persia, 50 years before the infamous Peloponnesian War. Together, they took the Oath of Plataea, revealing deep-seated anxieties about how the defeat would be remembered in history… and to whom the credit would fall.
Book thumbnail image Why does nothing get done in Congress? How did the “textbook” Senate of the 1950s — one of compromise and where people worked together to solve the problems America faced — transform into our current one of gridlock, lack of compromise, and partisan warfare? Sean Theriault, author of The Gingrich Senators: The Roots of Partisan Warfare in Congress, traces the roots of this transformation back to one group of senators, who started in the House of Representatives after 1978, which is when Gingrich joined.
Book thumbnail image Demystifying the Hanging Garden of Babylon For centuries, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have captivated scholars as some of the most magnificent – and last remaining – representations of classical antiquity. Of those seven, the Hanging Garden of Babylon has particularly intrigued scholars, due in large part to the ambiguity surrounding its physical construction, geographical location, and enduring architectural legacy.
Book thumbnail image Wimbledon, Shakespeare, and strawberries By Daniel Parker It’s time to dust off your racket and wrestle the tennis balls from your dog’s mouth. Wimbledon 2013 is upon us! Using Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) as my experienced, disciplined, but approachable coach, I cast a hawk-eye over OSEO’s collection of Shakespeare texts to look for references to tennis.
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated and the Treaty of Versailles By J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad Serbia did well in the ‘Balkan Wars’ of 1912–13, in which the young Balkan nations first despoiled the Ottoman empire of most that was left of its European territory and then fell out over the spoils. Serbia might have got more had the Austrians not objected.
Book thumbnail image 10 things to understand about diaspora The word diaspora, as explained in the Oxford Dictionaries, is most closely associated with the dispersion of the Jews beyond Israel. However, it is also defined as the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland. To learn more about diasporas around the world, we asked Kevin Kenny, Professor of History at Boston College and author of Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction to share some of his extensive knowledge.
Book thumbnail image A marriage equality reading list By Alice Northover Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act in their decision on the United States vs. Windsor. The judges also dismissed the Proposition 8 case (Hollingsworth vs. Perry), clearing the way for same-sex couples in California to marry.
Book thumbnail image Smoke and mirrors By Ian Lloyd Recent weeks have seen a plethora of media postings concerning revelations about the US government’s systems for obtaining access to communications data. The passage quoted above would seem to fit well into these but actually comes from 1999 and relates to the disclosure of a massive surveillance operation, known as project ECHELON which allegedly allowed the US security agencies (and also those from the UK and a number of other countries) to monitor the content of all email traffic over the Internet.
Book thumbnail image World music for woodwind By Laura Jones When you think of styles that are associated with the clarinet or saxophone you might think of classical, klezmer, or jazz, but these instruments are also well-suited to many world music styles. Ros Stephen explores this concept in the Globetrotters series, with original pieces in styles from across the globe.
Book thumbnail image The great quiet By Trevor Herbert The story of military music in the long nineteenth century is absent from conventional music histories even though it had a vast influence on most aspects of musical life. Bands of music originated in the British military in the eighteenth century among the aristocratic officer class as a form of entertainment and as a means of enhancing the cultural status of that profession, and they retained this function throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.
Book thumbnail image The realities of spy fiction By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones When talking about spy fiction, people sometimes confuse verisimilitude and reality. Spy novelists who use the words “friends” and “cousins” to describe our American collaborators are engaging in verbal verisimilitude. When John Le Carré tells us in his latest novel A Delicate Truth that the business of secret intelligence is now being privatized, he’s conveying an important reality.
Book thumbnail image What’s next for same-sex marriage after the U.S. Supreme Court By Robert J. Hume The same-sex marriage decisions at the Supreme Court on Wednesday represented important wins for same-sex couples, even if the victories were not quite complete. After Wednesday’s rulings, section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act is no longer constitutional.
Monthly etymological gleanings for June 2013 By Anatoly Liberman One cannot predict which posts will interest the public and which will leave them indifferent. I hoped that my “revolutionary” hypothesis on the origin of Old Nick would result in a tidal wave (title wave, as some of my students write), but it did not produce as much as a ripple, whereas the fairly trivial essay on the letter y aroused a lively discussion.
A flag of one’s own? Aimé Césaire between poetry and politics By Gregson Davis Aimé Césaire (1913 – 2008) has left behind an extraordinary dual legacy as eminent poet and political leader. Several critics have claimed to observe a contradiction between the vehement anti-colonial stance expressed in his writings and his political practice. Criticism has focused on his support for the law of “departmentalization” (which incorporated the French Antilles, along with other overseas territories, as administrative “departments” within the French Republic) and his reluctance to lead his country to political independence.
Beware of gifts near elections: Cyprus and the Eurozone ?By Alexandros Apostolides Cyprus was not on the agenda of most analysts as the next plot twist in the Eurozone Sovereign debt saga. Although the island nation has been locked out of international capital markets since May 2011, the government of President Demetris Christophias only asked for support from the Eurogroup on 25 July 2012.
Book thumbnail image Byrd’s reasons to sing By Kerry McCarthy By Kerry McCarthy The composer William Byrd published the first great English songbook (Psalms, Sonnets and Songs) in 1588. He began his book with an unusual and charming list: “Reasons briefly set down by the author to persuade everyone to learn to sing.” Byrd’s “reasons to sing” give us a glimpse into everyday musical life in the time of Shakespeare.
Book thumbnail image Days are long—Life is short Author Christopher Peterson passed away late last year. As the World Congress on Positive Psychology approaches (Oxford University Press will be at booth 110), we’d like to pay tribute to one of the founders of the field in this brief excerpt from Pursuing the Good Life.
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: North Korea invades South Korea In 1945 Korea had been divided along the 38th parallel, its industrial north being occupied by the Soviets and the agricultural south by the Americans. Korean leaders wanted a quick reunification, but only on their own terms, and the Communists taking power in the north did not see eye to eye with the nationalists whom the Americans supported in the south.
Book thumbnail image Happy birthday Mr. Orwell By Robert Colls Sorry to bother you with serious thoughts on your birthday George, but you’ve become quite a famous chap down here. To your certain horror you’ve even become slightly fashionable and it’s only a matter of time before some lithe young man calling himself ‘Orwell’ comes sashaying down the catwalk in bags and cords, thin tash and Tin Tin hair.
Book thumbnail image Concerning the cello By Simon Riker How many times have I heard someone say, “Oh, I just love the cello! What a beautiful instrument!”? Certainly too many to count or remember, since I began playing the instrument at the age of nine. Of course, it’s little wonder that the cello resonates so strongly with people, since its range and timbre so neatly overlap with the human voice, as many cellists will be quick to point out.
Book thumbnail image Google: the unique case of the monopolistic search engine By Albert A. Foer and Sandeep Vaheesan In early January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) closed its nearly two-year investigation into Google’s conduct. Unanimously, the Commissioners stated that Google’s alleged favoring of its own vertical search features in search results was not an antitrust violation. They found that changes to Google’s search algorithm were intended to offer more informative search results.
Book thumbnail image Oh, I say! Brits win Wimbledon By Philip Carter It’s 1 July 1977: the Jacksons are Number 1 in the UK charts; a pint of beer costs 40 pence, milk per pint is 11p; Elvis has just given what will be his final concert; Virginia Wade becomes the last British player to win the women’s singles tennis championship at Wimbledon. – See more at: https://blog.oup.com/?p=45004&preview=true#sthash.r1cxNYqs.dpuf
Book thumbnail image Does Elton John have a private life? Raymond Wacks Do celebrities forfeit their right to privacy? Pop stars, stars of screen, radio, television, sport and the catwalk—are regarded as fair game by the paparazzi. Members of the British Royal family, most conspicuously, and tragically, the Princess of Wales have long been preyed upon by the media. More recently, photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge, taken surreptitiously while she was sunbathing at a private villa in Provence, were published online.
Book thumbnail image When in Rome, swear as the Romans do What’s the meaning of the word irrumatio? In Ancient Rome, to threaten another individual with irrumatio qualified as one of the highest offenses, topping off a list of seemingly frivolous obscenities that — needless to say — did not survive into the modern era.
Book thumbnail image The highest dictionary in the land? By Dennis Baron Perhaps the highest-profile cases to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this term are the two involving the definition of marriage. U.S. v. Windsor challenges the federal definition of marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman” (Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA], 1 USC § 7), and Hollingsworth v. Perry seeks a ruling on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage which reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
The Bible and the American Revolution By Kate Pais Was the American Revolution more of a religious war than we thought? The Bible had a powerful influence in a land that was originally established as a haven for Protestant freedom. As seen in these examples taken from James P. Byrd’s Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution, notable men in history frequently referenced Christian faith to help justify their patriotism and ultimately, war.
Book thumbnail image How will a changing global landscape affect health care providers? By Heidi Moawad Health care is expanding its reach in many directions. Globalization is increasingly allowing patients throughout the world to access all types of health care from anywhere in the world. Between the growth in medical tourism, medical missions service, international education, and the increasing intersection of western medicine into eastern culture and eastern medicine into western culture, individuals have vaster array of choices to preserve their health than ever before.
Book thumbnail image Remembering the doughboys By Christopher Capozzola Ninety-six years ago today, on 26 June 1917, over 14,000 American soldiers disembarked at the port of St. Nazaire on the western coast of France. They were the initial members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), the United States’ contribution to the First World War. As America approaches the centennial of World War I, will it remember the doughboys? For their sake—and for ours—we should.
Book thumbnail image Making sense with data visualisation By James Nicholson Statistics to me has always been about trying to make the best sense of incomplete information and having some feeling for how good that ‘best sense’ is. At a very crude level if you have a firm employing 235 people and you randomly sample 200 of these on some topic, I would feel my information was pretty good (even though it is incomplete).
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: Nazis attack the USSR (‘Operation Barbarossa’) In December 1940 planning began for a German invasion of the Soviet Union. By that winter, the USSR had made further gains in the west, apparently with an eye to securing a glacis against a future German attack. A war against Finland gave her important strategic areas. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were swallowed in 1940.
OHR signing off (temporarily!) By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Dear readers, the time has come for the Oral History Review (OHR) social media team to say so long for now. We’ve had a fantastic time bringing you the latest and greatest on scholarship in oral history and its sister fields. However, all sorts of summer adventures are calling our names, so we’re taking a brief hiatus from the world wide web. In fact, as you are reading this, I am on my way to Nigeria for two months!
Book thumbnail image The end of ownership By Alex Sayf Cummings Is there such a thing as a “used” MP3? That was the question before the United States District Court for Southern New York earlier this Spring, when Capitol Records sued the tech firm ReDigi for providing consumers with an online marketplace to “sell” their unwanted audio files to other music fans.
Book thumbnail image When is a question a question? Russell Stannard Is there such a thing as a Higgs boson? To find out, one builds the Large Hadron Collider. That is how science normally progresses: one poses a question, and then carries out the appropriate experiment to find the answer.
Book thumbnail image Religious, political, spiritual—something in common after all? By Roger S. Gottlieb Many people think it’s a great idea: we can have all the benefits of religion…without religion! We’ll call it “spirituality” and in choosing it we will have unlimited freedom to adopt this or that ritual, these or those beliefs, to meditate or pray or do yoga, to admire (equally) inspiring Hindu gurus, breathtakingly calm Buddhist meditation teachers, selfless priests who work against gang violence, wise old rabbis, and Native American shamans—not to mention figures who belong to no faith whatsoever.
Book thumbnail image Music to surf by By Carey Fleiner The 20th of June is International Surfing Day. I’m not sure if I have the proper street cred to write about surfing. For one thing, even though I grew up on the Mid-Atlantic coast, I can’t swim. My nephew, however, was part of a hardcore crowd who surfed regularly on the beaches near Ocean City, Maryland, and the Indian River Inlet, Delaware, in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Book thumbnail image University as a portfolio investment: part-time work isn’t just about beer money By Sarah Jewell, Jim Pemberton, Alessandra Faggian, and Zella King Gone are the days when all students had to wonder about was how much – or little – effort to put into studying without compromising their chances of getting a degree and walking into a graduate job, thanks to changes in higher education funding and increasing student numbers.
Multifarious Devils, part 4. Goblin By Anatoly Liberman Petty devils are all around us. Products of so-called low mythology, they often have impenetrable names. (Higher mythology deals with gods, yet their names are often equally opaque!) Some such evil creatures have appeared, figuratively speaking, the day before yesterday, but that does not prevent them from hiding their origin with envious dexterity (after all, they are imps). A famous evader is gremlin.
Book thumbnail image Forcible feeding and the Cat and Mouse Act: one hundred years on By Ian Miller Between 1909 and 1914, imprisoned militant suffragettes undertook hunger strikes across Britain and Ireland. Public distaste for the practice of forcible feeding ultimately led to the passing of the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill Health) Act, or ‘the Cat and Mouse Act’ as it was more commonly known. The 25th of April 2013 marks the 100th anniversary of this Act, passed so that prison medical officers could discharge hunger-striking suffragettes from prisons if they fell ill from hunger.
Book thumbnail image Finding the future of democracy in the past By Mark Philp & Joanna Innes There are two different questions that might be asked about contemporary democracy: how did we get here? And where else might we have tried to get?
Book thumbnail image Forging Man of Steel By Robin Rosenberg I like Superman—as a character, as a superhero, as an embodiment of (certain) values. I looked forward to seeing Man of Steel this summer. Although I was disappointed, I’ll start with its strengths. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Book thumbnail image Prepare for the worst By Seth Stein LeJacq These days we generally agree that the big medical problems should be left to the professionals. We don’t see ourselves as the appropriate people and our homes as the appropriate places to deal with major injuries, severe illnesses, chronic conditions, and many other significant medical events. This wasn’t the case in seventeenth-century Britain, where domestic healing was the norm and the home was the central place where healing occurred. People prepared to deal with the very worst illnesses and injuries at home.
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: Napoleon defeated at Waterloo In the end, though the dynasty Napoleon hoped to found and the empire he set up both proved ephemeral, his work was of great importance. He unlocked reserves of energy in other countries just as the Revolution had unlocked them in France, and afterwards they could never be quite shut up again. He ensured the legacy of the Revolution its maximum effect, and this was his greatest achievement, whether he desired it or not.
Book thumbnail image The search for ‘folk music’ in art music By Robert G. Rawson Writing about the perceptions and contexts for music from the Haná region in Moravia in the most recent volume of Early Music got me thinking more broadly about the subject of ‘folk music’ or rustic music of various types, and the emphasis and value frequently placed upon it in the context of art music.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Domenica Ruta Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selections while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 18 June, author Domenica Ruta leads a discussion on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Book thumbnail image The evolution of language and society By Avi Lifschitz We might have grown skeptical about our cultural legacy, but it is quite natural for us to assume that our own cognitive theories are the latest word when compared with those of our predecessors. Yet in some areas, the questions we are now asking are not too different from those posed some two-three centuries ago, if not earlier.
Book thumbnail image How can you reduce pain during a hospital stay? By Dr. Anita Gupta Too often patients feel like they’re in the passenger seat when entering the hospital. Even in the best of circumstances — such as planned admissions — patients often don’t feel in control of their own care. One of the most unnecessary issues facing patients when they enter the hospital is untreated (or undertreated) pain.
Drone killings By Sascha-Dominik Bachmann Targeted killing by drones (using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or Unmanned Combat Aircraft Systems (UCAS) as weapon platforms) has become an increasingly debated subject. Criticism is not only directed against its overall legality and legitimacy, but also its negative impact on the theatre state as a sovereign state in cases of extraterritorial strikes, a potential lack of efficiency, and a growing uneasiness with its morality.
Book thumbnail image The mystery of the Hanging Garden of Babylon By Stephanie Dalley I once gave a general talk about ancient Mesopotamian gardens, and was astonished, when I prepared for it, to find that there was really no hard evidence for the Hanging Garden at Babylon, although all the other wonders of the ancient world certainly did exist.
Book thumbnail image Presidential fathers By Michael J. Gerhardt On Father’s Day, we rarely celebrate presidents, though we could. All but a handful of our presidents were fathers, and our first president, George Washington, is commonly regarded as the Father of our country. While of course nothing about being president necessarily makes anyone a better parent, many presidents have in fact had their legacies largely shaped by their relationships with their fathers and children.
Book thumbnail image A love of superheroes By Suzanne Walker The night I saw The Avengers for the first time, I took the train back to my apartment and immediately dashed off the following email to a friend of mine: “The Avengers was amazing, I can’t even describe it. Feeling strangely fearless about life, and my head is filled with too many intellectual thoughts about superheroes.”
Book thumbnail image Ethical and Legal Considerations Quiz Do you know how an author meets the criteria for authorship? Or what should happen to the author’s name if they die before their manuscript is published? This quiz, taken from the AMA Manual of Style, helps you to navigate the ethical and legal considerations and dilemmas most commonly encountered in scholarly scientific publication.
Book thumbnail image Government data surveillance through a European PRISM By Christopher Kuner The recent revelations concerning widespread US government access to electronic communications data (including the PRISM system apparently run by the National Security Agency) leave many questions unanswered, and new facts are constantly emerging. Thoughtful commentators should be hesitant to make detailed pronouncements before it is clear what is actually going on.
Book thumbnail image Criticize the Constitution? Blasphemy! By Jeremy Wang-Iverson Late last year, The Chronicle Review published a cover story on Louis Michael Sediman and the Constitution. In his interview with The Chronicle’s Alexander Kafka, Seidman explains that he began questioning the role of Constitution in the early 1970’s while clerking for Thurgood Marshall, and then working for the D.C. public defender, experiences which offered him the opportunity to see Constitutionalism in practice.
Book thumbnail image 20 of the most iconic songs in industrial music By S. Alexander Reed Curated from the pages of Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music, this playlist spans over 30 years, offering a chronological tour of industrial music. From its politically charged beginnings in noisy performance art and process-based tape meddling, it moved into 1980s flirtations with rock to its more recent aggressive, synth-driven goth-tinged dance stylings.
Book thumbnail image Superhero essay competition: tell us your favorite superpower It’s the summer of the superhero here at Oxford University Press. We’re publishing two essay collections on the real powers superheroes hold — on our imagination and our understanding of the world. Our Superheroes, Ourselves, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD, and What is a Superhero?, edited by Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD and Peter Coogan, PhD, look at some of our greatest superheroes (and supervillains) and explore what exactly makes them “super”.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to Superman By Deborah Sims Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it another Superman-related blogpost to tie in with today’s release of Man of Steel? Hold on to the bulging blue bicep of Oxford University Press and prepare to gaze below in wonder as we take you on a ride over the past 80 years of Superman.
Book thumbnail image The European Union: debate or referendum? Simon Usherwood To the casual observer of British politics, we would appear to be heading towards a referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU). The Prime Minister has spoken for it, the clamour in the press and in the lobbies of Westminster continues to grow stronger and there is no good reason to speak against it, or so it would seem.
Book thumbnail image Meditation in action By Roger S. Gottlieb Suddenly, it seems, meditation is all the rage. Prestigious medical schools (Harvard, Duke, etc.) have whole departments devoted to “Integrative Medicine” in which meditation plays an essential part. Troubled teens are given a healthy dose of mindfulness and their behavior improves. Long-term prisoners in maximum security prisons have gone on ten day meditation retreats, sitting for 12 hours a day in a makeshift gymnasium ashram.
Book thumbnail image An outdoor overture By Anna-Lise Santella On 12 June, summer officially begins in Chicago when the Grant Park Music Festival, “the nation’s only free, outdoor classical music series of its kind,” opens its 79th season at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park. I’m a huge fan of summer music festivals in general — what’s not to like about spending a beautiful night in a beautiful place listening to music I love performed by some of the best musicians in the world? — but of Grant Park in particular.
Book thumbnail image Letters from your father By David Roberts Praised in their day as a complete manual of education, and despised by Samuel Johnson for teaching `the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master’, Lord Chesterfield’s Letters reflect the political craft of a leading statesman and the urbane wit of a man who associated with Pope, Addison, and Swift.
Multifarious devils, part 3. “Pumpernickel,” “Nickel,” and “Old Nick” By Anatoly Liberman Although a German word, Pumpernickel (which in what follows will not be capitalized) seems to be sufficiently familiar to the English speaking world not to require a gloss. The origin of the bread (Westphalia, and there perhaps the town of Osnabrücken) has been ascertained, but the etymology of the name remains a puzzle—at least to some extent.
Book thumbnail image Happy birthday Charles Kingsley By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The first time I tried to read The Water-Babies I was 7 or 8 years old. I was sitting on a beach near Margate, during a summer when my other reading had mostly been American comics: Spiderman, Superman, and the rest. Then I opened up a strange story about a hidden underwater world, in which a young chimney sweep is transformed into a newt-like baby who swims around the world righting wrongs, and eventually discovers that the most important battles are inside him. He was like a tiny Victorian superhero.
What is a poem? By William Fitzgerald In 1934 William Carlos Williams famously published what seems to be a note left on the refrigerator for a spouse to read, only now set typographically to look like a poem. It’s called ‘This is Just to Say’.
Book thumbnail image New Generation Thinkers 2013 By Gregory Tate The research that went into my monograph was, like most academic scholarship, very specific: it focused on the ways in which Victorian poets drew on, contributed to, and resisted the development of the scientific discipline of psychology in the mid-nineteenth century. However, as is invariably the case with even the most recondite research, it also addressed larger issues.
Book thumbnail image Keep Calm and . . . What? By Moses Rodriguez, Orhun Kantarci and Istvan Pirko So all the test results are back, and you’re seeing the patient (and perhaps his /her partner) to report that the patient is in the early stages of multiple sclerosis (MS) or is recovering from a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) indicative of MS. “What’s the next step?” they may ask. Maybe you’ll tell them to go home and continue training for that cross-country bike trip or planning the wedding or designing a website for their new start-up company.
Book thumbnail image The power of popular songs By Saartje Vanden Borre and Elien Declercq 1883. In Tourcoing, a French industrial town right on the border with Belgium, the local celebrity and writer of Flemish origin Jules Watteeuw published Le marchand d’oches for the first time. His song about a Flemish rag-and-bone man who had migrated to Northern France to make a living but kept dreaming about his hometown as the Garden of Eden, was a huge success.
Book thumbnail image The reign of Alexander the Great The relatively short reign of Alexander (336 to 323 BC) marked one of the major turning-points in world history. The Greek city states continued to function after his death, but the world order had changed and a new era began, which came to be labelled the Hellenistic period. For Alexander, like many an autocrat, departed without leaving a viable succession plan.
Book thumbnail image Do American children use calorie information at fast food or chain restaurants? By Dr. Holly Wethington Federal law in the United States requires restaurants with at least 20 locations nationally to list calorie information next to menu items on menus or menu boards. This law includes the prominent placement of a statement concerning suggested daily caloric intake on the menu. While national menu labeling has not been implemented, some fast food and chain restaurants have begun to post this information voluntarily.
Book thumbnail image Does part-time employment help or hinder single mothers? By Roger Wilkins A significant demographic trend in recent decades, in Australia and a number of other developed countries, has been the growth in lone parent families as a proportion of all families. In 1981, 13 per cent of Australian mothers with dependent children were lone parents; by 2006, this had risen to 20 per cent.
Book thumbnail image Kinky Boots By Liz Wollman Young Charlie Price (Stark Sands) of Northampton, England, has just unwillingly inherited his family’s struggling shoe factory. His girlfriend wants him to sell it to a condominium developer and move to London, where they can live a properly upwardly mobile life. Torn between his family obligations and his desire to do something other than run a shoe factory, Charlie meets a drag queen named Lola (born Simon; played by Billy Porter), who happens to break a heel and mention that he would do anything for a better-made pair of fabulous boots to wear during drag performances.
Book thumbnail image Ocean of history By David Igler On 8 June—a day known around the world as World Oceans Day—we should take a few moments to consider the history as well as the plight of our watery globe. The earth is mostly covered by water, not land, and that water is largely responsible for all forms of human and non-human life. The oceans are instrumental to everything; they form the basis of the earth’s water cycle, provide sustenance to much of humanity, and serve as a barometer of the mounting climate crisis.
Book thumbnail image The origin and text of The Book of Common Prayer Despite its controversial history, the Book of Common Prayer is an influential religious text and one of the most compelling works of English literature. How has this document retained its relevancy even after numerous revisions? What can it teach us about British history and the English language? We spoke with Brian Cummings, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Book of Common Prayer, about the importance of this text.
Book thumbnail image Paul Ortiz on oral history By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards As regular readers might have guessed, the Oral History Review staff has spent the last few months obsessing over oral history’s bright, digital future. However, now that special issue 40.1, Oral History in the Digital Age, is out, we’re taking a break — just a break! — to recall the oral history projects that run on something other than tagging and metadata. To that end, we were lucky enough to catch up with Professor Paul Ortiz, director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program (SPOHP) at the University of Florida.
Book thumbnail image The beauty pageant and British society By Rebecca Conway Next week sees the culmination of the 2013 search for Miss England. Aspiring beauty queens from across the nation will compete for the title and the chance to contend for the Miss World crown in front of a global audience of one billion television viewers.
Book thumbnail image What’s the future of seamount ecosystems? Philip Mladenov Seamounts are distinctive and dramatic features of ocean basins. They are typically extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly above the surrounding deep-ocean floor but do not reach the surface of the ocean. The Global Ocean contains some 100,000 or so seamounts that rise at least 1,000 metres above the ocean floor.
Book thumbnail image Think spirituality is easy? Think again… By Roger S. Gottlieb The modern idea of spirituality—divorced from religious tradition, dependent on a personal choice of creed, centered on feeling good and avoiding stress—easily invites criticism or even contempt. Many see it as an evasion of religious truth and moral responsibility, a narcissistic choose-your-own-at-the-mall self-indulgence that has nothing to do with serious religious, ethical, or political life.
Book thumbnail image Five reasons to watch the Tony Awards on Sunday By Liz Wollman The Tony Awards is consistently the lowest-rated broadcast of all televised entertainment awards shows, which helps explain why it is also the most awesome. I’m not being snide, here—either about the teeny spectatorship or about the awesomeness. As to the former point, here’s some perspective: The 2012 Academy Awards ceremony was watched by 39.3 million people, while the 2012 Tony Awards ceremony was watched by six million people.
Book thumbnail image Oh Mother, where art thou? Mass strandings of pilot whales By Marc Oremus and C. Scott Baker Biologists since Aristotle have puzzled over the reasons for mass strandings of whales and dolphins, in which large groups of up to several hundred individuals drive themselves up onto a beach. To date, efforts to understand mass strandings have largely focused on the role of presumably causal environmental factors, such as climatic events, bathymetric features or geomagnetic topography. But while these studies provide valuable information on the spatial and temporal variation of strandings, they give little insight into the social mechanisms that compels the whales to follow their counterparts to an almost certain death (at least without human intervention).
Where no kiss has gone before By Tim Allen I grew up with Star Trek. When I was 10, I helped my mom put together an intricate scale model of the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701, if you’re curious). I knew that LeVar Burton could tell me about a warp core before I knew that he would read me a children’s book, and I knew that Klingon was a learnable language long before I had ever heard of human languages like Tagalog or Swahili.
Multifarious Devils, part 2. Old Nick and the Crocodile By Anatoly Liberman In our enlightened age, we are beginning to forget how thickly the world of our ancestors was populated by imps and devils. Shakespeare still felt at home among them, would have recognized Grimalkin, and, as noted in a recent post, knew the charm aroint thee, which scared away witches. Flibbertigibbet (a member of a sizable family in King Lear), the wily Rumpelstilzchen, and their kin have names that are sometimes hard to decipher, a fact of which Rumpelstilzchen was fully aware.
Book thumbnail image Traditional farming practices and the evolution of gender norms across the globe By Alberto Alesina, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn The gender division of labor varies significantly across societies. In particular, there are large differences in the extent to which women participate in activities outside of the home. For instance, in 2000, the share of women aged 15 to 64 in the labor force ranged from a low of 16.1% in Pakistan to 90.5% in Burundi.
Book thumbnail image Violence, now and then By Hannah Skoda We are used to finding a stream of extreme violence reported in the media: from the brutal familial holocaust engineered by Mick Philpott to the terror of the Boston bombings. Maybe it is because such cases seem close to home and elicit reactions both voyeuristic and frightened, that they gain so much more emotive coverage than quotidian violence in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Book thumbnail image Foolish, but no fool: Boris Johnson and the art of politics By Matthew Flinders It would be too easy – and also quite mistaken – to define Boris Johnson as little more than the clown of British politics; more accurate to define him as a deceptively polished and calculating über-politician.
Book thumbnail image Why is Emily Wilding Davison remembered as the first suffragette martyr? By Elizabeth Crawford “She paid ‘the price of freedom’. Glad to pay it – glad though it brought her to death (..) the first woman martyr who has gone to death for this cause.” In the context of the women’s suffrage campaign who do you think was the subject of this eulogy? Was it Emily Wilding Davison, the centenary of whose death is being honoured this June?
Book thumbnail image Ten reasons you should get to know Irish playwright Stewart Parker By Marilynn Richtarik Stewart who? That’s okay — I’m used to starting at the beginning. (1) Stewart Parker just might be the most important Irish writer you’ve never heard of. Born in 1941, he began his career as a poet, tried his hand at experimental prose, and eventually dedicated himself to drama.
Book thumbnail image Coronation Music By Miriam Higgins Sunday 2 June marks the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey in London. It also therefore follows that it is the anniversary of the works which were first performed at the coronation, including William Walton’s Orb and Sceptre March and Coronation Te Deum, and Ralph Vaughan Williams’s O taste and see and Old Hundredth Psalm Tune (All people that on earth do dwell).
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Jonathan Dee Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selection while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 4 June, author Jonathan Dee leads a discussion on Father and Son.
Book thumbnail image Blaxploitation, from Shaft to Django By Robert Repino and Tim Allen What do you get when you combine Hollywood, African American actors, gritty urban settings, sex, and a whole lot of action? Some would simply call it a recipe for box office success, but since the early 1970s, most people have known this filmmaking formula by the name “Blaxploitation.” Blaxploitation cinema occupies a fascinating place in the landscape of American pop culture.
Book thumbnail image The continuing irrationality of New York’s “Convenience of the Employer” rule By Edward Zelinsky On Friday, 17 May 2013, two Metro-North commuter trains collided near Bridgeport, Connecticut. Through the following Tuesday, the Metro-North accident disrupted normal commuter train service between parts of Connecticut and New York City. To cope, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy asked residents of the Nutmeg State to work from their homes until rail service could be restored.
Book thumbnail image Ten things you didn’t know about the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law By Katherine Marshall 1. Key dimensions: If you are lucky enough to own the entire ten volume set, plus the Index and Tables, you will need to be equipped with a sturdy shelf. Each volume of the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) weighs roughly two kilograms. 2. Quality Control: Each article in the Encyclopedia can go through up to eight rounds of review to ensure that the scholarship is of the highest possible standard.
Book thumbnail image A history of nationalism By John Breuilly In 1904 Józef Pilsudski and Roman Dmowski, rival Polish nationalist leaders, were both in Tokyo, just after Japan had defeated Russia, one of their major enemies. Japan now served as a model for other nationalists. Pilsudski was to become head of state in post-1918 independent Poland. Dmowski expressed admiration for Japanese nationalism well into the 1930s. This episode illustrates two points neglected in the history of nationalism.
Book thumbnail image Why equal protection trumps federalism in same-sex marriage cases By Erin Ryan Federalism is once again at the forefront of the Supreme Court’s most contentious cases this Term. The cases attracting most attention are the two same-sex marriage cases that were argued in March. Facing intense public sentiment on both sides of the issue and the difficult questions they raise about the boundary between state and federal authority, some justices openly questioned whether they should just defer to the political process.
Book thumbnail image Quantum parallelism and scientific realism By Paul Cockshott The philosopher Althusser said that philosophy represents ideology, in particular religious ideology to science, and science to ideology. As science extended its field of explanation, a series of ‘reprise’ operations were carried out by philosophers to either make the findings of science acceptable to religion or to cast doubt on the relative trustworthiness of science compared to the teachings of the church.
BRCA1 and BRCA2 in the digital age By Lorna Speid With as little thought as combing our hair or brushing our teeth, we tweet, engage with family and friends on Facebook, write blogs, and give our opinions on social media sites. On the major streets of all major cities in the world, children, teenagers, professionals, the unemployed, and pensioners alike take calls and send texts without a second thought. Technology is so much a part of our day to day lives that we can barely remember how we could have managed without it.
Book thumbnail image Stories We Tell: How we reconstruct the past By Arthur P. Shimamura Our memories, in many ways, define who we are as an individual or at least who we think we are. In the recent documentary, Stories We Tell, filmmaker Sarah Polley presents her own tale of the search for her biological father. Through interviews with relative and friends, snapshots, and re-enactments of pertinent events that look like old home movies, the documentary moves like a real-life Rashomon, wherein bits of the “truth” are revealed from various points of views.
Book thumbnail image An Eastern reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole The great works of the Eastern world have provided inspiration for this month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list. From those you have probably heard of (like the Kamasutra) to those you may not have (such as The Recognition of Sakuntala), these classic works provide a window on the classical worlds of India, China, and the Middle East.
May 2013 (109))
Europa borealis: Reflections on the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest Malmö By Philip V. Bohlman and Dafni Tragaki In the spirit of the Eurovision Song Contest motto for 2013 “We Are One,” we seek the common space afforded by dialogic reflections on the European unity that has inspired and eluded the Eurovision since 1956. We search to rescue stretto from the fragments of the largest and most spectacular popular-music competition in the world.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: the month of May edition By Alice Northover It’s been several weeks since our last procrastination round-up, so I hope you enjoy this mega-link list. (I’ve cut it down.)
Book thumbnail image Antiquity and perceptions of Chinese culture What role does antiquity play in defining popular perceptions of Chinese culture? Kenneth W. Holloway confronted this issue recently with a set of bamboo manuscripts featured in the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Confucians have claimed these manuscripts while denying its relevance to the rest of early China. Excavated texts have the potential to transform our understanding of history, but we cannot force them to conform to long held intellectual frameworks.
Book thumbnail image World No Tobacco Day: How do we end tobacco promotion? By Linda Bauld For the past 25 years, the World Health Organisation and its partners have marked World No Tobacco Day. This day provides an opportunity to assess the impact of the world’s leading cause of preventable death – responsible for one in ten deaths globally – and to advocate for effective action to end tobacco smoking. This year, the WHO has selected the theme of banning tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship.
Book thumbnail image Doubting Thomas: a patron saint for scientists? By Thomas Dixon The story of Doubting Thomas is a wonderful philosophical parable about seeing and believing, but what exactly is the intended moral? And what light does it shed on the relationship between science and religion?
Book thumbnail image The IRS scandal and tax compliance By Leonard E. Burman and Joel Slemrod The IRS is under withering scrutiny for allegedly using partisan political criteria to evaluate applications for nonprofit 501(c)(4) status. All sides agree that, if true, this would constitute an unacceptable abuse of power and that it raises serious questions about the adequacy of IRS governance.
Book thumbnail image The mysteries around Christopher Marlowe Four hundred and twenty years ago, on Wednesday 30 May 1593, Christopher Marlowe was famously killed under mysterious circumstances at the young age of 29. Test your knowledge on this enigmatic figure of history. Do you know when Marlowe was born? Who killed him and why? Find out answers to these and much more in our quiz. Good luck!
Book thumbnail image Hay hopes By Caroline Shenton Writing a book also means talking about it. A lot. Over the last nine months since publication, I have given around thirty talks about #parliamentburns, as the book is known on Twitter, to groups large and small, here and abroad, and in huge lecture theatres as well as at a pub, an art gallery, and in someone’s front room with a greedy labrador in attendance (actually one of my favourite venues).
Book thumbnail image Cancer drug rationing – dare we speak its name? By David J. Kerr I have been an oncologist for thirty years, intimately involved in patient care and in the development of novel anti-cancer therapies. Over that time I have seen the average survival for patients with advanced and metastatic colorectal cancer (my particular field of study) improve from six months without treatment, to around two years with the full panoply of currently available medicines
Book thumbnail image X-rays and science: from molecules to galaxies By Richard B. Gunderman We often think of x-rays strictly in terms of medical diagnosis, but in fact they have played a huge role in scientific discovery beyond medicine. Though they are part of the same electromagnetic spectrum that includes visible light, their different properties enable them to reveal phenomena that the naked eye cannot perceive.
Monthly etymological gleanings for May 2013 By Anatoly Liberman Language controlled by ruling powers? Very much depends on whether the country has a language academy that decides what is correct and what is wrong. Even in the absence of such an organization, a committee consisting of respected scholars and politicians sometimes lays down the law. Spelling is a classic case of “ruling the language.”
Book thumbnail image 60th anniversary of the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II On 2 June 1953 Queen Elizabeth II took her coronation oath at Westminster Abbey. Since her accession on 6 February 1952 aged 25, following the death of her father King George VI, the day had been planned in great detail. Our Who’s Who editors take a look at the people who helped to create that historical day.
Book thumbnail image The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky, and Balanchine 100 years ago, the world was shocked by, of all things, a ballet. Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring), choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky and composed by Igor Stravinsky, caused a riot when it was first performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913. Stravinsky’s composition was revolutionary; it introduced dissonance in classical music.
Book thumbnail image Everest, the first ascent, and the history of the world Today, 29 May 2013, is the sixtieth anniversary of the first ascent of Everest. It’s a time to reflect not only on the achievement of which mankind is capable, but also on the power of the Earth. The crash of the tectonic plates that created the Himalaya and Karakoram mountain ranges is the largest known collision in geological history. Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to conquer this remote and dangerous range, and return to share the view from the summit.
Book thumbnail image Why I dedicated a book about nothing to my future grandchildren By Frank Close I want to say something about Nothing. Specifically, not just the book but the part that no one, or very few, read carefully: the dedication. Nothing originally appeared in hardback in 2007 titled The Void, and was dedicated thus: “For Lizzie and John”.
Book thumbnail image Hyperconnectivity and governance Professor Ian Goldin talks to Matthew Flatman of Pod Academy about the dilemmas our hyper-connected world faces. There are many benefits, but also many drawbacks, to our growing globalization and interconnectedness. How can we tackle these issues at a local, regional, national, and global level?
Important announcement from the OUPblog Dear readers, We’re planning to make several changes to the OUPblog this year to improve the site performance and your reading experience. One of the first steps will be taking place over the next couple weeks. We will change some of our navigation and categorization on the blog based on user behavior: deleting, adding, shifting, and renaming several categories. For example, our current ‘dictionaries’ category will be renamed ‘language’ and sub-categories will better reflect the full range of our language publishing from lexicography to linguistics.
Book thumbnail image Keith Gandal on Baz Lurhmann’s The Great Gatsby By Keith Gandal The New Yorker’s predictably elitist and conservative review of Baz Lurhmann’s new movie has David Denby concluding with the following: “Will young audiences go for this movie, with its few good scenes and its discordant messiness? “
Book thumbnail image Why launch a new journal? In July, the first issue of the Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology (JSSAM) will come out. The launch of a new journal is always a source of great anticipation in the academic publishing world. We face many concerns about a proliferation of unnecessary journals, reduced library budgets, and creating valuable publications in a digital world.
Book thumbnail image Who wants to be a Cabinet minister? By Gill Bennett Who would want to be a Cabinet minister? Clearly, all ambitious politicians entertain some hope of high, if not the highest office. But I am asking the question in a more rhetorical sense. For in the almost universal cynicism, if not downright hostility, to politicians generally and government ministers in particular that pervades the media and much of the general public, I think that too few people stop to consider what a difficult job it is.
Book thumbnail image Aaron Minsky brings us rock cello! Aaron Minsky is an award-winning composer who has made it his mission to persuade us that bowed stringed instruments (especially the cello) can be extremely effective in popular music. He began his career as a rock guitarist and then went on to study the cello with the finest classical teachers from The Juilliard School and other prestigious establishments. He has performed his works with orchestras around the world and on radio and television.
Book thumbnail image The five most common insults and slogans of medieval rebels By Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers How subversive was the speech of Flemish rebels in the later Middle Ages? Violence remained the exception in urban rebellions, whereas subversive utterances, though always risky, must have been almost the rule of daily politics in the urban centres of late medieval Flanders and, clearly, in many other European towns and cities as well.
Book thumbnail image South by south what? an academic’s report from SXSWEdu By Ricky W. Griffin South by Southwest (SXSW) has rapidly become a social phenomenon. But many people don’t really understand what it’s all about, in part because of the lens through which they may view it. For example, some know it as a music festival. For others, it’s a film festival. And for still others it’s about emerging technologies and opportunities for entrepreneurship. But in reality, it’s all three.
Book thumbnail image The ineffable magic of a distant island By Roger Lovegrove The ineffable magic of a distant island! There is an irresistible lure even in fanciful images of distant islands: they are isolated morsels of land, far out in the wide reaches of oceanic isolation, tiny islands in tiny worlds of their own.
Book thumbnail image The hunt for the origin of HIV The month of May is home both to World Aids Vaccine Day (also known as HIV Vaccine Awareness Day) and the anniversary of the discovery of the AIDS virus itself. But how much do we know about where the HIV virus actually came from, and how it spread to become the global killer it is today? We spoke with Dorothy H. Crawford, author of Virus Hunt: The search for the origin of HIV, about the HIV virus and its history.
Book thumbnail image Do we need the apostrophe? By Simon Horobin The recent decision by Devon County Council to drop the apostrophe from its road signs was met with dismay and anger by those concerned about the preservation of linguistic standards. Lucy Mangan, writing in The Guardian, branded it an ‘Apostrophe Catastrophe’ which ‘captures in microcosm the kind of thinking that pervades our government, our institutions, our times’, drawing parallels with the government’s handling of the banking crisis, binge-drinking and sexual assault. Similar prophecies of doom followed the decision by the bookseller Waterstones to drop the apostrophe from its shop names.
Book thumbnail image Tragedy of the science-communication commons By Andrew Gelman There’s a prevailing notion that communicating science is difficult, and it is therefore difficult to engage the general public. People can be fazed by statistics in particular, so how can we convey the importance of this science effectively?
Book thumbnail image Bismarck: as seen by his personal assistant Jonathan Steinberg An old English proverb claims that ‘no man is a hero to his valet’. In this, as in so many other respects, Otto von Bismarck defies the rule. In 1875, Christoph Willers von Tiedemann, a youngish Liberal member of the German parliament, became Bismarck’s first personal assistant; the job took up most of his time for the next six years. When he received a formal invitation to tea addressed to Privy Councillor Christoph von Tiedemann from his wife, complete with his home address to remind him where it was, he decided to resign. At the end of his service he sketched a portrait of his remarkable boss.
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: President Kennedy and the moon landing Possibly spurred by a wish to offset a recent publicity disaster in American relations with Cuba, President Kennedy proposed in May 1961 that the United States should try to land a man on the moon (the first man-made object had already crash-landed there in 1959) and return him safely to earth before the end of the decade…
Book thumbnail image Arrested Development: The English language in cut-offs By Mark Peters Arrested Development—the cult comedy set to rise from the dead on Netflix 26 May 2013—had its own distinctive language. It was a show of catchphrases: “I’ve made a huge mistake.” “No touching!” “I’m a monster!” “There’s always money in the Banana Stand.” “Steve Holt!” “Her?”
Book thumbnail image Online resources for oral history By Caitlin Tyler-Richards After listening to this week’s podcast with managing editor Troy Reeves and oral historian extraordinaire Doug Boyd, you might think the Oral History Review has fallen prey to corporate sponsorship. Let me assure you, dear audience, that we are not in bed with Starbucks, E-Harmony, or General Mills. Instead, it seems Doug, guest editor of our special issue “Oral History in the Digital Age” and author of “OHMS: Enhancing Access to Oral History for Free,” is prone to elaborate metaphors when describing oral history best practices.
Book thumbnail image Do nurses care? By Wilfred McSherry Almost on a daily basis the tabloids and media have some negative comment or observation to make about the dreadful state of the National Health Service (NHS) and the atrocious standards of care that patients receive at the hands of NHS nurses.
Symmetry is transformation By Ian Stewart Symmetry has been recognised in art for millennia as a form of visual harmony and balance, but it has now become one of the great unifying principles of mathematics. A precise mathematical concept of symmetry emerged in the nineteenth century, as an unexpected side-effect of research into algebraic equations. Since then it has developed into a huge area of mathematics, with applications throughout the sciences.
Book thumbnail image People of computing According to Oxford Reference the Internet is “[a] global computer network providing a variety of information and communication facilities, consisting of interconnected networks using standardized communication protocols.” Today the Internet industry is booming, with billions of people logging on read the news, find a recipe, talk with friends, read a blog article (!), and much more.
Book thumbnail image The old shall be made new By Simon Wright The issue and performance of previously unpublished musical works — juvenilia, early pieces, and even completions by others of music left by composers, for one reason or another, incomplete — always provokes interesting debate. Would the composer have wanted it? Does the newly presented work serve the best interests of the composer’s reputation? Does the music throw new (or even controversial) light on ‘the life and works’?
Book thumbnail image China: the making of an economic superpower By Linda Yueh China has successfully utilised inward foreign direct investment (FDI) to “catch up” in growth by using foreign investment to help develop manufacturing and export capacity.
Multifarious devils, part 1: “bogey” By Anatoly Liberman As has often happened in the recent past, this essay is an answer to a letter, but I will not only address the question of our correspondent but also develop the topic and write about Old Nick, his crew, and the goblin. The question was about the origin of the words bogey and boggle. I have dealt with both in my dictionary and in passing probably in the blog.
Book thumbnail image The History of the World: Nixon visits Moscow 22 May 1972 The following is a brief extract from The History of the World: Sixth Edition by J.M. Roberts and O.A. Westad. In October 1971 the UN General Assembly had recognized the People’s Republic as the only legitimate representative of China in the United Nations, and expelled the representative of Taiwan. This was not […]
Book thumbnail image Getting to the heart of poetry OUP recently partnered with The Poetry Archive to support Poetry by Heart, a new national poetry competition in England. Here, competition winner Kaiti Soultana talks about her experience.
Book thumbnail image The marginalized Alexander Pope By Dr. Robert V. McNamee Spring 2013 marks two significant anniversaries for Alexander Pope, perhaps the most representative and alien English poet of the 18th century. Pope is memorialized both for the 325th anniversary of his birth, on 21 May 1688, and for the 300th anniversary of two significant literary acts: one a publication, the other a proposal to publish.
The dire offences of Alexander Pope By Pat Rogers There’s never been a shortage of readers to love and admire Alexander Pope. But if you think you don’t, or wouldn’t, like his poetry, you’re in good company there too. Ever since his own day, detractors have stuck their oar in, some blasting the work and some determined to write off the writer. A noted poet and anthologist, James Reeves, wrote an entire book in 1976 to assail Pope’s achievement and influence.
One hundred years of The Rite of Spring By Meghann Wilhoite The centenary of the 29 May 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is being celebrated by numerous orchestras and ballet companies this year, which is always worth mentioning when that first performance incited a riot. The ballet (also performed as an orchestra piece) depicts a collection of pagan spring rituals involving fortune telling, holy processions, and culminating in l’élue (the elected one) dancing herself to death.
Book thumbnail image The “public safety” exception to Miranda then and now By Yale Kamisar In 1984 a 6-3 majority of the US Supreme Court established the “public safety” exception to Miranda in a case called New York v. Quarles. Unfortunately, the factual basis for the exception the Court made in this case was quite weak.
Book thumbnail image The future of user-generated content is now By Grégoire Marino In its December press release, the European Commission agreed to reopen the debate on copyright. A dialogue will be launched to tackle several major issues with the current copyright framework, including the topic ‘user-generated content’. The outcome of this open discussion should guide the Commission in its mission to modernize the European copyright framework and adapt it to the digital economy.
Book thumbnail image They’re watching, but are they seeing? By Gautam Shroff Notwithstanding the many privacy concerns it raises, the role of video surveillance footage in cracking the Boston terror attack case in a matter of days is well known. Such footage played an equally critical role in tracking down the bombers of the 2005 London attacks. However, in 2005 investigators took weeks to manually sift through about two thousand hours of video footage.
Book thumbnail image Thinking gender and speaking international law By Gina Heathcote Gender studies begin by asking how you understand gender, the boundary, the space, the difference, the divergence and the sameness between m and f. How femininity and masculinity are knowable, reversible, collapsible, forgettable, changeable and open to renegotiation, supposedly given, fixed, yet mutable.
Book thumbnail image Law, gerontology, and human rights: can we connect them all? By Prof. Israel Doron Historically, law was not generally considered an important part of gerontological science. As noted by Doron & Hofman (2005), the law was, at best, considered part of gerontology in that it played a part in the shaping of public policy towards the older population, or was incidental to ethical discussions connected with old age. At worst, gerontology has simply ignored those aspects of the law connected with the old, and kept lawyers out of its province.
Book thumbnail image Dangerous assumptions in neuroscience By Robert G. Shulman I’ve spent decades in magnetic resonance research and since 1980 my colleagues and I have been studying the human brain. Like many fields of science, it is astounding to reflect on the progress made in the uses of magnetic resonance which has gone from being a physicist’s means of studying the nucleus to an omnipresent tool for clinical medicine and biological research, especially in neuroscience.
Mindful exercise and mental health By Helen Lavretsky, M.D., M.S. There is currently extensive use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) — also known as integrative or mind-body medicine — in the United States to sustain well-being in both aging baby boomers and in children and adolescents.
Book thumbnail image The science non-fiction of Commander Chris Hadfield’s ‘Space Oddity’ By S. Alexander Reed Audi now employs two generations of Spocks as spokesmen and Axe body spray hawks a space voyage sweepstakes to hormonal jocks with the promise that chicks dig astronauts. Tired of ninjas, pirates, robots, and zombies, edgy advertisers appear to have set their fad-hungry gaze on space as the current (if not final) frontier of Awesome—the somewhat-undefinable quality that high-fives our inner ten year-old.
Book thumbnail image War and glory The failures of leadership… the destructive power of beauty… the quest for fame… the plight of women… the brutality of war… Such themes have endured for over 2,700 years in Homer’s classic The Iliad — from the flight of Helen and Paris, to the fury of Menelaus and Agamemnon, to the fight between Hector and Achilles. We sat down with Barbara Graziosi and Anthony Verity, the writer of the introduction and translator respectively, to discuss the new Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Iliad.
Book thumbnail image Clinician’s guide to DSM-5 By Joel Paris, MD The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is a classification of all diagnoses given to patients by mental health professionals. Since the publication of the third edition in 1980, each edition has been a subject of intense interest to the general public. The current manual, DSM-5, is the first major revision since 1994.
Book thumbnail image American psychiatry is morally challenged By Michael A. Taylor The fundamental problem with American psychiatry is American psychiatrists. It seems every few months there’s fresh news about some well-known academic psychiatrist paid boatloads to endorse a new treatment that doesn’t work—or worse—causes harm. Among the 394 US physicians in 2010 who received over $100,000 from the pharmaceutical industry, 116 were psychiatrists, well out of proportion of the percentage of psychiatrists in medical practice.
Book thumbnail image Dust off your flags … it’s Eurovision time! By Annie Leyman Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the Eurovision Song Contest has a unique appeal. Although often seen as tacky, extravagant and occasionally politically controversial, that doesn’t stop around 125 million people around the world watching it each year! It has helped to launch careers, in the cases of ABBA and Bucks Fizz, as well as destroy them (cast your memories back to Jemini, aka ‘nul points’).
Book thumbnail image The Trojan War: fact or fiction? By Eric Cline The Trojan War may be well known thanks to movies, books, and plays around the world, but did the war that spurred so much fascination even occur? The excerpt below from The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction helps answer some of the many questions about the infamous war Homer helped immortalize.
Book thumbnail image Personality disorders in DSM-5 By Donald W. Black, M.D. Those of us in the mental health professions anxiously await the release of the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Others may wonder what the fuss is about, and may even wonder what the DSM-5 is. In short, it is psychiatry’s diagnostic Bible.
Book thumbnail image A different approach By Eileen Mack I recently travelled with the band Victoire for a brief residency at the music school of a large university. As well as performing a concert, we spoke to the music majors there on the topic of “alternative career paths” in classical music. By “alternative” I mean career paths other than playing in an orchestra or teaching at an academic institution. In our case, the musicians of Victoire all work predominantly in the performance and composition of contemporary classical music.
Book thumbnail image The missing children of early modern religion By Alec Ryrie I’ve been working on the ‘lived experience’ of early modern religion: what it was actually like to be a Protestant in 16th or 17th-century Britain. And I’ve become more and more convinced there’s a crucial element of the story almost completely missing from the standard accounts: children.
Book thumbnail image Musings on the Eurovision Song Contest By Alyn Shipton When the first Eurovision Song Contest was broadcast in 1956, the BBC was so late in entering that it missed the competition deadline, so it was first shown in my native England in 1957. Nonetheless, it seems as if this curious example of pan-European co-operation, which started with seven countries and is now up to 40, has been around forever.
The oddest English spellings, part 20: The letter “y” By Anatoly Liberman I could have spent a hundred years bemoaning English spelling, but since no one is paying attention, this would have been a wasted life. Not every language can boast of useless letters; fortunately, English is one of them. However, it is in good company, especially if viewed from a historical perspective. Such was Russian, which once overflowed with redundant letters.
Book thumbnail image The classification of mental illness By Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman According to the UK Centre for Economic Performance, mental illness accounts for nearly half of all ill health in the under 65s. But this begs the question: what is mental illness? How can we judge whether our thoughts and feelings are healthy or harmful? What criteria should we use?
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to surviving a zombie apocalypse By Daniel Parker Sons are eating their mothers’ brains. Brothers are eating each other’s brains, and the baby is eating the brain of the pet cat. It has finally happened. The zombie apocalypse is here. As May is International Zombie Awareness Month, I offer my bloodied hand to guide you through the five things you need to know to survive a zombie apocalypse.
Book thumbnail image DSM-5 will be the last By Edward Shorter In assessing DSM-5, the fog of battle has covered the field. To go by media coverage, everything is wrong with the new DSM, from the way it classifies children with autism to its unremitting expansion of psychiatry into the reach of “normal.” What aspects should we really be concerned about?
10 moments I love in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that aren’t in Baz Luhrmann’s film By Kirk Curnutt The build-up to Baz Luhrmann’s frenetic, chromatic interpretation of The Great Gatsby was a wild ride for those of us who live and breathe F. Scott Fitzgerald daily. One minute you’re grading end-of-the semester papers, the next you’re fielding phone calls from NPR or the Associated Press.
The History of the World: Israel becomes a state From the beginning of the Nazi persecution the numbers of Jews who wished to settle in Palestine rose. As the extermination policies began to unroll in the war years, they made nonsense of British attempts to restrict immigration, which was the side of British policy unacceptable to the Jews; the other side – the partitioning of Palestine – was rejected by the Arabs.
Book thumbnail image Baseball scoring By Jessica Barbour What is it about the sounds of baseball that make them musical, and so easily romanticized? In Ken Burns’ documentary Baseball, George Plimpton says that “Baseball has these absolutely unique sounds. The sounds of spring and summer….The sound of the ball against the bat is absolutely extraordinary. I don’t know any American male that doesn’t hear that in the springtime and get called back to some moment in the past.” These sounds are especially vivid in a game that’s often so quiet.
Book thumbnail image Insomnia in older adults What keeps you up at night? Do the effects of sleep deprivation change with age? What are risks associated with insomnia in older adults? Mr. Christopher Kaufmann and Dr. Adam Spira join us to discuss their most recent research in The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.
Book thumbnail image 100 years of psychopathology By Paolo Fusar-Poli and Giovanni Stanghellini In 1913, Allgemeine Psychopathologie (General Psychopathology) was published. A guide for young students, doctors and psychologists, it had been completed two years earlier by a 28-year-old German psychiatrist: Karl Jaspers. He aimed to overcome scientific reductionism and establish psychopathology as a new comprehensive science during a period of significant advances in neuroscience.
Book thumbnail image Pornography, sperm competition, and behavioural ecology By Michael N. Pham, William F. McKibbin, and Todd K. Shackelford Like candy, pornography creates an adaptive mismatch. For a moment, try to see the world not from “human eyes” but from the eyes of an animal biologist. You might think that men’s enjoyment of pornography is bizarre: men are sexually aroused by the sight of ink that’s splattered on magazine pages, or computer pixels that display light. Nobody would argue that men evolved to have sex with magazines or computers. Adaptive mismatch? Quite.
Book thumbnail image A National Short Story Month reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole In this month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list, we decided to celebrate National Short Story Month by selecting some of favourite story collections. We have everything here from Gaskell to Cervantes, Fitzgerald to Kafka. But have we missed your favourite? Let us know.
Book thumbnail image Israel’s urgent strategic imperative By Louis René Beres It is hard to understand at first, but Israel’s survival is linked to certain core insights of the great Spanish existentialist philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset. Although he was speaking to abstract issues of art, culture, and literature, Ortega’s insights can be extended productively to very concrete matters of world politics.
How sequesterable are you? Leonard Jason, Madison Sunnquist, Suzanna So, and Sarah Callahan have created an infographic regarding the sequestration and its impacts.
Book thumbnail image H. P. Lovecraft and the Northern Gothic Tongue By Roger Luckhurst There is a very specific language of Gothic and horror literature that has its roots buried deep in the history of English: doom has been around since Old English; dread carries over from Middle English; eerie, that sense of vague superstitious uneasiness, enters Middle English through Scottish. The adjectives are harsh and guttural: moons are always gibbous, the trees eldritch.
Book thumbnail image Oral history and hearing loss By Caitlin Tyler-Richards When perusing the internet for innovations in the oral history discipline, I generally seek out new voices, intuitive platforms and streamless presentations. Embarrassingly, I rarely consider the basics of oral history collection and production, the act of sharing someone’s story with a wider audience. That is one of several reasons I so enjoyed Brad Rakerd’s contribution to Oral History Review issue on Oral History in the Digital Age, “On Making Oral Histories More Accessible to Persons with Hearing Loss.”
Book thumbnail image Ten things you need to learn about heart failure By Kenneth Dickstein A diagnosis of heart failure can be overwhelming. Here are ten things you can learn to cope with this condition.
Book thumbnail image Jekyll and Hyde: thoughts from Creation Theatre’s director We are delighted that this year Oxford World’s Classics will be sponsoring Oxford theatre company Creation Theatre’s production of Jekyll and Hyde, which is taking place at another Oxford institution – Blackwell’s Bookshop – from 8 June to 6 July. To celebrate our partnership, we asked the production’s Director, Caroline Devlin, for her thoughts on Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Book thumbnail image What’s the secret of bacteria’s success? By Sebastian Amyes Bacteria have achieved many firsts; they were the first cellular life-forms on the planet, they are the primary biomass on the planet; they are the most prevalent cell type in and on the human body outnumbering our own cells; they are responsible for more human deaths than any other infectious agents; and, in some parts of the world, they are the premier cause of all deaths. How did these small, single-cell organisms, that are invisible to the naked eye become so successful?
The real secret behind Gatsby By Keith Gandal The Great Gatsby is one of the best-known American novels, but weirdly, and strangely reflective of Gatsby himself, one of the least understood. The much-awaited Baz Lurhmann version of The Great Gatsby opens in the United States tomorrow, and like Gatsby himself — as a new trailer reminds us — the novel is “guarding secrets.”
Visions of Wagner By Barry Millington By Barry Millington Few composers embrace such a span of disciplines — musicological, philosophical, historical, political, philological — as Richard Wagner. To what extent does the wide-ranging, comprehensive nature of Wagner’s works militate against a true understanding of them? How close are we, in his bicentenary year, to an understanding that does them justice? The following illustrations from The Sorcerer of Bayreuth: Richard Wagner, his Work and his World demonstrate the variety of perspectives on Wagner, from outdated stereotypes to new reappraisals.
Book thumbnail image The first jukebox musical By Hal Gladfelder The opening-night audience at John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera—first performed on 29 January 1728 at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln’s Inn Fields—can’t fully have known what sort of theatrical experience awaited them. The play’s title, for a start, must have struck them as nonsensical. What could a beggar have to do with an opera?
Panning for etymological gold: “aloof” By Anatoly Liberman It may not be too widely known how hard it is to discover the origin of even “easy” words. Most people realize that the beginning of language is lost and that, although we can sometimes reconstruct an earlier stage of a word, we usually stop when it comes to explaining why a given combination of sounds is endowed with the meaning known to us.
Book thumbnail image The five big lifestyle changes for heart health Today’s problem for the health-conscious person is information overload – new health studies pour out almost daily from newspapers, radio stations, and television networks. Just how true are the studies? How compelling are the facts they claim? Lionel Opie, Director Emeritus of the Hatter Cardiovascular Research Institute, has read countless scientific articles and listened to countless international experts – as well as keeping an ear open when patients tell him about their experiences – to identify the ‘big five’, the only five lifestyle changes with compelling evidence behind them.
Book thumbnail image This is your brain on food commercials… By Ashley N. Gearhardt Gooey chocolate and scoops of mouth-watering chocolate ice cream. Steaming hot golden French fries. Children see thousands of commercials each year designed to increase their desire for foods high in sugar, fat, and salt like those mentioned above. Yet, we know almost nothing about how this advertising onslaught might be affecting the brain.
Book thumbnail image Advice from the CDC on travel and H7N9 By Megan Crawley O’Sullivan, MPH Avian influenza. H7N9. Bird flu. If you are planning a trip to China, these phrases might have you concerned. There are still many uncertainties regarding the new influenza A (H7N9) virus: it isn’t clear where the virus started or how people are getting sick, and a vaccine is not yet available. Amid these unanswered questions, it’s not surprising that many travelers are doubting their plans.
Book thumbnail image Getting from “is” to “ought” near the end of life By Nancy Berlinger There is a saying in ethics: you can’t get an “ought” from an “is.” Descriptions of the world as it is do not reveal truths about the world as it ought to be. Even when descriptions of real-world conditions suggest that something is seriously wrong — that our actions are causing unintended and avoidable harms to ourselves, to others, to our common environment — reaching agreement on how we ought to change our thinking and our behavior, and then putting these changes into practice, is hard.
Book thumbnail image The limits of American power, a historical perspective By Christopher Nichols Just when, where, why, and how should American power be used? Current assumptions about the near omnipresence—though far from omnipotence—of US power, its influence and its reach are now shaky. Yet these same assumptions coexist alongside widely shared views that such power could and should be used.
Book thumbnail image International humanitarianism in the United States By Julia Irwin Each year on 8 May, the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies of dozens of nations unite in celebration of World Red Cross/Red Crescent Day. This global event observes the birthday of Henry Dunant, one of the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC), and commemorates the humanitarian principles that this organization represents.
Book thumbnail image Beatlemania Fifty years ago, in March of 1963, The Beatles released their first album entitled Please Please Me. While the music partly based on British folk and popular forms—including skiffle and music-hall styles—American rock ’n’ roll was by far their dominant resource. The album quickly dominated the British charts and led the group to a path of superstardom that changed the world forever.
Book thumbnail image Give weight-loss diets a rest By Abigail C. Saguy and Tamara B. Horwich A respected cardiologist of our acquaintance recently confessed that he often tells his patients to lose weight. This may sound like good advice, but he knows better. Scores of clinical studies show that heavier patients with heart disease are, on average, less likely to die than thinner ones. Furthermore, weight loss efforts are typically counterproductive.
Book thumbnail image Adopt the Marketplace Fairness Act By Edward A. Zelinsky The Marketplace Fairness Act, now being debated in the US Senate, is a rare phenomenon: a bill with strong bi-partisan support and an accurate title. The Act would indeed establish fairness in the marketplace by imposing on out-of-state internet and mail order sellers the same sales tax withholding requirements now imposed only on in-state brick-and-mortar businesses.
Book thumbnail image Why do we have a Heart Failure Awareness Day? By Anya Creaser How would you feel if you were told you had heart failure? Once you had recovered from the shock, what are the questions you’d ask? European Heart Failure Awareness Days aim to combat all those blank looks in doctors’ offices. So you have heart failure and now you have to live with it. But you’re not alone.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for ESIL 2013 By Katherine Marshall In April 2013, OUP attended the American Society of International Law’s annual conference in Washington DC. Now, it is the turn of the society’s European counterpart, the European Society of International Law (ESIL).
Book thumbnail image John Snow and cholera: how myth helped secure his place in history By Sandra Hempel The high-profile marking of John Snow’s bicentenary on March 15th would have surprised the great man. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the WellcomeTrust, and The Lancet were among the august UK organisations to honour him, with events including an exhibition, three days of seminars, and a gala dinner. The physician was also celebrated in the United States where he has a large fan base.
Book thumbnail image Cinco de Mayo and the insurgent taco On the fifth of May, many in the US and Mexico will celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the commemoration of Mexico’s victory over the French at the Battle of the Puebla in 1862. In this excerpt from Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food, Jeffrey Pilcher looks at Cinco de Mayo and the first written instance of the word “taco.”
Book thumbnail image A day for birds, birds for a lifetime By Thomas R. Dunlap Bird Day began in 1894 as part of the wildlife conservation movement that sprang up in response to the slaughter of the bison and the Passenger Pigeon. Birds always had a large role, for they were threatened but also familiar and fascinating. More than any other form of life they drew and held people, becoming for many a lifelong interest, passion, and even obsession.
Book thumbnail image Seven things you never knew about heart failure Heart failure affects 750,000 people in the UK alone and is fast becoming a greater threat to public health than cancer. But how much do you know about this condition? The European Heart Failure Awareness Day is designed to raise awareness of heart failure, including possible symptoms, the importance of an early and accurate diagnosis, and the need for optimal treatment. In that spirit, we’ve prepared this brief quiz on heart failure for you to test your knowledge.
Is diplomatic history dying? By Timothy J. Lynch Despite lying at the intersection of both history and international relations — two of the most popular disciplines in the contemporary arts academy — diplomatic history is seen as old-fashioned. New, trendier, and leftier approaches have risen. Consider that of the 45 historians at the University of Wisconsin in 2009, 13 (or 29 per cent) specialized in gender, race, and ethnicity; only 1 (or 2 per cent) studied diplomatic history or US foreign policy.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to NBC’s Hannibal By Kimberly Hernandez The new television show Hannibal resurrects Thomas Harris’s famous serial killer and offers a few new surprises bound to shock both newcomers and longtime fans of Dr. Lecter. So while you’re catching up on the latest incarnation of the series, why not brush up on criminology facts or learn something new about cannibalism?
Book thumbnail image State and private in China’s economy By Tim Wright The central story of China’s economic reforms and the resulting economic miracle has been the move from a centrally planned to a largely market economy, and the emergence of a market-based and mainly private sector alongside the old state-owned sector. Most quantitative trends are still in that direction, and legal and institutional reforms, notably stronger property rights within a situation of limited rule of law, have provided some support.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating 100 years of Indian Cinema: a quiz By Alana Podolsky On 3 May 1913, Raja Harishchandra, the first Indian feature-length film, premiered. Since then, India’s film industry, mostly known as Bollywood but operating outside of Bollywood’s Mumbai base as well, has become the world’s most prolific film industry — 1325 films were produced in 2008.
Book thumbnail image DSM-5 and psychiatric progress By Tom Burns National Mental Health week in May this year will see the launch of the eagerly anticipated DSM-5. This is the fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual which defines all psychiatric diagnoses and is often referred to as ‘the psychiatrists’ bible’. How can something so dry and dull sounding as a classificatory manual generate such fevered excitement? Indeed how did the DSM compete for space in a short book such as the VSI to Psychiatry?
Book thumbnail image Sir Robert G Edwards (1925 – 2013) With the announcement of the death of Bob Edwards at the age of 87, on April 10th 2013, a field of medicine and science has lost its grandfather. What is more, for more than five million children worldwide the man whose life’s work made their conception possible is no more. In every generation there are scientists whose discoveries and innovations make a difference but only a small number become household names. As one half of ‘Steptoe and Edwards’ Bob Edwards achieved that elevation in the popular imagination.
Book thumbnail image The Henry Ford you know By Vincent Curcio When you hear the name “Henry Ford” do you feel a certain shiver inside? Does a sober look come over your face as you mumble, “Well, he was a terrible anti-Semite”? You aren’t wrong of course, as many books and articles have documented through the years. In fact, that reaction probably places you in the majority. Of course, you know about the Model T and the assembly line too.
Book thumbnail image More malignant than cancer? In anticipation of Heart Failure Awareness Day, we’re running a series of blog posts on this dangerous disease. To kick us off today, we chatted with Professors Theresa MacDonagh, past Chair of the British Society for Heart Failure, and Andrew Clark, Chair-elect, about the diagnosis of heart failure and the importance and benefit of adequate treatment.
Book thumbnail image The Oi! movement and British punk By Matthew Worley According to the Daily Mail, Oi! records were ‘evil’. According to the Socialist Worker, Oi! was a conduit for Nazism. According to the NME, Oi! was a means to inject ‘violent-racist-sexist-fascist’ attitudes into popular music. The year is 1981, and on 3 July the Harmbrough Tavern is set ablaze in the London borough of Southall.
Book thumbnail image “If a child can be born in a stable, I guess I can die in a hospital.” By Sinéad Donnelly A palliative medicine physician colleague of mine asked an audience of physicians where they would like to die: at home, hospice or hospital? Sitting in the audience I can only remember the number in favour of the third option. One person – and that was me.
Gleanings from Dickens By Anatoly Liberman Some time ago I read Sidney P. Moss’s 1984 book Charles Dickens’ Quarrel with America. Those who remember Martin Cuzzlewit and the last chapter of American Notes must have a good idea of the “quarrel.” However, this post is, naturally, not on the book or on Dickens’s nice statement: “I have to go to America—on my way to the Devil” (this statement is used as an epigraph to Moss’s work).
Book thumbnail image Preparing for International Trademark Association Annual Meeting 2013 By Christopher Wogan In Trade Mark Law: a Practical Anatomy, Jeremy Phillips’ classic analysis of trademarks, Jeremy notes that how a trademark functions depends on “(i) how the trade mark owner uses it and (ii) how the purchaser views it.” The purpose of the trademark system is not only for those who own trademarks and their competitors, but also for those consumers who may or may not choose to use goods and services provided by the trade mark owner.
Book thumbnail image Saints and sinners, politicians and priests, and the 2013 local elections By Matthew Flinders Justin Welby recently used his first Easter sermon as Archbishop of Canterbury to warn of the dangers of investing too much faith in frail and fallible human leaders, be they politicians or priests. Blind belief in the power of any single individual to bring about true change in any sphere, he argued, was simplistic and wrong, and led inevitably to disillusionment and disappointment.
April 2013 (126))
Mediterranean diets and health risks for the elderly at high cardiovascular risk What is the relationship between a Mediterranean diet and the risk of hyperuricemia in the elderly? Dr. Salas-Salvado joins us to discuss his most recent research in the The Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Kierkegaard’s bicentenary By Daphne Hampson The fifth of May 2013 marks the bicentenary of the birth of the Danish philosopher, theologian, and man of literature Søren Kierkegaard. He will be celebrated in Copenhagen and around the world. What estimate should we form of him today?
Book thumbnail image “Forever Let Us Hold Our Banner High!” By Ron Rodman By Ron Rodman The death of Annette Funicello this month set off a wave of nostalgia among baby boomers who remember her as the star of the “Mouseketeers” of the original Mickey Mouse Club (MMC). MMC was the brainchild of Walt Disney, studio founder, entertainer, and entrepreneur, originally as a means of promoting the then new Disneyland, which opened in Anaheim, California on 17 July 1955.
Book thumbnail image Sovereign debt after March 2013 By Muti Gulati It is perhaps natural human tendency to think that the big events that occur during our lifetimes — particularly if they involve us personally — are both unique and will change the course of history. Reality though is that most of us aren’t particularly good at predicting what future historians will consider important.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Jack the Ripper By John Randolph Fuller From April 1888 to February 1891, history’s most infamous cold case emerged when a series of 11 murders ripped through London’s working-class Whitechapel district. All of the murdered were women, and most were prostitutes. Whitechapel was one of the poorest areas in London and by the 1880s some of England’s grimiest industries, such as tanneries and breweries, had become established there.
Book thumbnail image Is stock market trading good for society? By Alex Edmans, Vivian W. Fang, and Emanuel Zur Short-term stock traders — such as hedge funds — have come under fire for pursuing their own profits rather than the long-run health of companies they invest in. The recent financial crisis added fuel to flames, but they had started burning several decades earlier. In the 1980s, many commentators argued that Japan’s economic success resulted from shareholders taking long-term stakes and thus having incentives to improve their firms’ long-run health.
Book thumbnail image Unearthing Viking jewellery By Jane Kershaw There’s a lot we still don’t know about the Vikings who raided and then settled in England. The main documentary source for the period, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, simply tells us that Viking armies raided Britain’s coastline from the late eighth century. Raiding was followed by settlement, and by the 870s, the Vikings had established a territory in the north and east of the country which later became known as the ‘Danelaw’.
Book thumbnail image The latest developments in cardiology What is the relationship between atherosclerosis and acute myocardial infarction? How do aldosterone blockers reduce mortality? What steps are doctors taking toward personalized cardiac medicine? What are the new drugs and devices to treat hypertension? What is salt’s role in the human diet? The international cardiology community examined these questions and more at the Cardiology Update 2013 in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year.
Book thumbnail image ‘No choice for you’ according to the ACMG By Dr. Anna Middleton The American College of Medical Genetics (ACMG) has recently published recommendations for reporting incidental findings (IFs) in clinical exome and genome sequencing. These recommendations advocate actively searching for a set of specific IFs unrelated to the condition under study. For example, a two-year-old child may have his (and his parents’) exome sequenced to explore a diagnosis for intellectual disability and at the same time will be tested for a series of cancer and cardiac genetic variants.
Book thumbnail image The physiological, psychological, and biological reasons for crying Are humans the only species to cry for emotional reasons? How are tears linked to human evolution and the development of language, self-consciousness, and religion? Which parts of the brain light up when we cry? How is crying related to empathy and tragedy? Why can some music bring people to tears? Below, you can listen to Michael Trimble talk about the topics raised in his book Why Humans Like to Cry: Tragedy, Evolution, and the Brain.
Book thumbnail image Mary Wollstonecraft: The first modern woman? By Gary Kelly A recent book on the essayist William Hazlitt calls him the ‘first modern man’. If he was, perhaps Mary Wollstonecraft was the first modern woman. By ‘modern’ I mean someone with ideas on how to cope with what sociologist Anthony Giddens calls ‘the consequences of modernity’.
Book thumbnail image Mediation and alternative dispute resolution By Peter Causton Why compromise? Increasingly in civil litigation there are no winners — not even the lawyers, following the review and implementation of Sir Rupert Jackson’s report into costs. The question is rapidly being re-phrased as “Why litigate?” Prior to 1 April, lawyers were able to work on a “no win, no fee” basis and recover a percentage uplift and after the event (ATE) insurance premium on top of their fees if the claim was successful.
Book thumbnail image Freedom Day and democratic transition By Robert P. Inman and Daniel L. Rubinfeld Despite the recognized virtues of democratic rule, both for protection of personal rights and liberties and for economic progress, the current list of world governments still classifies 46 of all countries, or 25%, as dictatorships. Rulers in these existing dictatorial regimes resist the transition to democracy, often at a high cost each year in lives and resources.
Book thumbnail image Closeted/Out in the quadrangles By Monica L. Mercado “That was my radio show!” narrator David Goldman exclaimed, looking at copies of classified ads placed in the University of Chicago’s student newspaper during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when he was an undergraduate student. Goldman, a retired math teacher and one of the founders of the gay liberation movement at the University of Chicago, recently contributed his story to the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality (CSGS) research project.
Book thumbnail image Looking at trees in a new way By David Haberman If I have learned anything as a lifelong student of the world’s multitude of religious traditions, it is that reality for humans is malleable and quite varied — nothing is essential in human experience. Almost everything gets filtered through and shaped by a particular cultural lens. Something as simple as a tree is not so simple after all.
Book thumbnail image Daniel Defoe, Londoner By David Roberts Defoe is often described as a realist. Ian Watt’s seminal book, The Rise of the Novel, went so far as make his ‘realism’ a pre-condition for the development of the novel. But when it came to cities, and to London in particular, Defoe was often drawn to ghosts and shadows: to dreams of emptiness as much as crowds and the great business of daily life. As Edward Hopper found the essence of New York in stray people hunched over night-time drinks amid darkened streets, so the London of Defoe’s writing often turns out to be an inversion of the place his readers knew, perhaps because he knew it better than anyone else.
Global warfare redivivus Charles Townshend When the ‘global war on terror’ was launched by George W. Bush – closely followed by Tony Blair – after the 9/11 attacks, many people no doubt felt reassured by these leaders’ confidence that they knew the best way to retaliate. Some, though, found the global war concept alarming for several reasons. The notion of a ‘war’ seemed to indicate a wrong-headed belief that overt military action, rather than secret intelligence methods, was an effective response. More seriously, perhaps, this seemed to be a ‘war’ which couldn’t be won. Since it is all but inconceivable that terrorism per se can ever be eliminated by any method, the Bush-Blair crusade looked dangerously like a declaration of permanent war of an Orwellian kind.
The life of a nation is told by the lives of its people… America has a rich and diverse history which shows itself in its music, politics, film, and culture. The power of biography helps to illuminate larger questions of war, peace, and justice and in exploring the lives of the figures that helped to shape America’s history we can discover more about our past.
11 facts about penguins By Georgia Mierswa Happy World Penguin Day! And what better way to celebrate than by looking at photos of penguins waddling, swimming, diving, and generally looking adorable. Penguin facts are lifted from the Oxford Index’s overview page entry on penguins (on the seabird, not the 1950s R&B group).
Book thumbnail image Whose Magic Flute is it, anyway? By William Gibbons One of Mozart’s most enduringly popular operas, The Magic Flute has captivated audiences since its premiere in Vienna in 1791. Centered on the struggles of the heroic Prince Tamino, his beloved Pamina, and the wise Sarastro (with help and comic relief from the birdcatcher Papageno) against the Queen of the Night, we know The Magic Flute as a classic tale of the battle between good and evil, or perhaps between enlightenment and ignorance.
Book thumbnail image The illusion of “choice” By Rickie Solinger Recently Planned Parenthood announced that it will no longer use the term “choice” to describe what the organization aims to preserve. It’s about time. The weak, consumerist claim of individual choice has never been sufficient to guarantee women what they need — the right to reproduce or not — and to be mothers with dignity and safety.
Book thumbnail image World Malaria Day 2013 By Johanna Daily The WHO’s Sixtieth World Health Assembly proclaimed the 25th of April as World Malaria Day in recognition of the continued high mortality caused by this parasitic infection, particularly in young children. The goal of World Malaria Day is “to provide education and understanding of malaria as a global scourge that is preventable and a disease that is curable.”
Book thumbnail image What to do in winter? By Marie-Louise Bird If you live a long way from the equator, the amount of daylight that you have access to in summer compared to winter varies hugely. For example at 41 degrees (Launceston in Tasmania, Australia, Boston MA, USA and Portugal, Europe) the length of daylight varies from just over 9 hours in winter to over 15 in summer and even more dramatic at 53 degrees, with hours of daylight from 7.5 in winter to 17 in summer. It is not surprising that this will have impact on the total amount of physical activity that people perform in the different seasons with less activity in winter (14% at 41 degrees south).
Book thumbnail image 20 years since the Bishopsgate bombing By John Horgan On 24 April 1993, the city of London was brought to a standstill. A massive terrorist bomb exploded at the NatWest tower, killing one person and injuring at least 40 more. The truck bomb, planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was designed to strike at the financial heartland of London, and it succeeded. In addition to the human casualties, what has since become known as the Bishopsgate bomb caused $1 billion in financial damages.
Monthly etymological gleanings for April 2013 By Anatoly Liberman Thief again. One comment on thief referred to an apparently admissible Lithuanian cognate. It seems that if we were dealing with an Indo-European word of respectable antiquity, more than a single Baltic verb for “cower” or “seize” would have survived in this group. I also mentioned the possibility of borrowing, and another correspondent wondered from whom the Goths could learn such a word.
Book thumbnail image More than virtual: real community, many ways of connecting By Karen Dill-Shackleford Mike was a doctoral student profoundly appreciated and esteemed by faculty, peers, staff, and all who came in contact with him. As is typical in our community, Mike was already a successful mid-career professional. He worked in the tech world and brought his expertise to us. He didn’t have a background in research psychology, but in the last year of his doctoral program, his work was published on nine occasions.
Book thumbnail image How can we respond to the widespread inadequate understanding of dementia? By Dr Victor Pace Dementia is always in the news nowadays. Every day brings a new story: of poor care, of concerns about future numbers, of some new approach to treatment. From something that was never spoken about, it has moved centre stage, stemming from the combined realisation that many of us or our loved ones will develop it as we all live longer, and that the care people with dementia receive is grossly inadequate. This is difficult to remedy as care will become even more expensive as the number of dementia patients grows. Dementia has replaced cancer as the dreaded disease of the twenty first century.
Book thumbnail image Editing an encyclopedia By Dr. David Milne When I was invited to review the second volume of Odd Arne Westad’s and Melvyn Leffler’s The Cambridge History of the Cold War in 2010, I compared the enterprise to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie — which I intended both as a compliment and as a criticism. Sweeping in its coverage, the Encyclopédie aimed to capture the main currents of Enlightenment thinking.
Book thumbnail image The environmental history of Russia’s steppes By David Moon When I started researching the environmental history of Russia’s steppes, I planned my visits to archives and libraries for conventional historical research. But I wanted to get a sense of the steppe environment I was writing about, a context for the texts I was reading; I needed to explore the region. I was fortunate that several Russian and Ukrainian specialists agreed to take me along on expeditions and field trips to visit steppe nature reserves.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday William Shakespeare! We are celebrating Shakespeare’s 449th birthday with a quiz! Test your knowledge on the famous bard. Can you tell your poems from your plays? Do you know who his twins were named after, or his exact birthdate? Find out answers to these and much more in our quiz. Break a leg!
Book thumbnail image On Earth Day, remembering counterculture environmentalists By Frank Zelko Forty-three years have passed since Senator Gaylord Nelson’s teach-in first made its mark on America. Since then, Earth Day has become as regular a fixture on the US calendar as Labor Day and Halloween, albeit without the shopping and candy.
Book thumbnail image Workplace mobbing: add Ann Curry to its slate of victims By Maureen Duffy Journalists want to report the news not be the news. But in the case of Ann Curry, the former Today show co-host who was pushed into stepping down from the co-anchor slot last June, she has become the news. New York Times reporter Brian Stelter’s recent feature article about morning television and the toxic culture at NBC’s Today show provides more than enough information to conclude that Ann Curry was a target of workplace mobbing.
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Book thumbnail image Thank you for participating in National Library Week Thank you to everyone who participated in the free access period to Oxford Reference and the OED for National Library Week. Both the OED and Oxford Reference offer some additional free content for the public and are both available for 30 day free trials for libraries (Libraries can email free trial requests to library[dot]marketing[at]oup[dot]com).
Book thumbnail image What does Earth Day mean for an environmental law scholar? By Liz Fisher I have been pondering this question since asking my seven-year-old son (who for the record is not an environmental law scholar) what Earth Day was about and he told me ‘That’s the day you think about climate change and stuff’. His description might not be the most accurate and Earth Day has a complex history, but he is correct in the general sentiment.
Book thumbnail image Earth Day By Michael Allaby Today is Earth Day. At least, that’s the date of the official International Mother Earth Day, as adopted by the United Nations in 2009. It’s a day when we’re asked to reflect on the interdependence of all living things, our responsibility to restore damaged environments to health, and to cherish the world around us.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about environmental law? Happy Earth Day from our environmental law team!
Book thumbnail image Top five untrue facts about Hitler By Thomas Weber It has been thirty years this month since the master forger Konrad Kujau had his fifteen minutes of fame. Kujau managed to fool Stern magazine in Germany and the Sunday Times into believing that Hitler had secretly kept a diary. On 25 April 1983, Stern went public with the sensational story that Hitler’s diaries – which Kujau had penned in the late 70s and early 80s – had surfaced and that the history of the century had to be rewritten. By 6 May, it had become clear that two of the most venerable German and British publications had become the laughing stock of their nations. While no-one still believes that Hitler kept a diary, many other untrue facts about Hitler have been surprisingly resilient
Book thumbnail image How is Earth doing after 40 years of Earth Days? By Daniel B. Botkin This year we will celebrate Earth Day for the 43rd time. Where have we come in those years in dealing with the environment, and how has Earth’s environment fared? I have been an ecological scientist since 1965, five years before the first Earth day. Many improvements have taken place in how the major nations deal with the environment.
Book thumbnail image Sacred groves By Eliza F. Kent In 1967, the historian Lynn White, Jr., published a ground-breaking essay proposing that values embedded in Christianity had helped to legitimize the despoliation of the earth. Writing three years before the first Earth Day, White argued in “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis” that Biblical cosmologies granted moral sanction to our unrestrained exploitation of natural resources
Book thumbnail image Earth Day then, Earth Day now: ages apart By Larry Rasmussen By the late 1960s, air and water pollution had already achieved serious environmental damage in the USA. Acid rain damaged forests, smog plagued cities, and suburban sprawl in its own paved-over way extended urban blight. Yet little appropriate national legislation existed. There was no Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Clean Water Act, or Endangered Species Act. Land, rivers, and people — whether in city or countryside — were all dumped on.
Book thumbnail image The father of the modern computer Who was Alan Turing and why is he regarded as one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century? How did he become the father of the computer science? How did the development of the Automatic Computing Engine lead to the development of the first modern computer? We spoke with B. Jack Copeland, author of Turing: Pioneer of the Information Age, about Turing’s work.
Book thumbnail image A sharer’s feast: Shakespeare’s birthday party 398 years on By Bart van Es April 23rd 1564, or a day or two earlier, saw the birth of William Shakespeare, and on that same day fifty-two years later, also in Stratford, he died. This congruence of dates lends some credibility to the account given by the local vicar many years later of the way the playwright spent his final hours: ‘Shakespeare, Drayton, and Ben Jonson had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.’
Book thumbnail image Judge Learned Hand’s influence in the practice of law While Judge Learned Hand never served on the Supreme Court, he is still considered one of the most influential judges in history. Highly regarded as an excellent writer, he corresponded with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Theodore Roosevelt, Walter Lippmann, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Berenson, and many other prominent political and philosophical thinkers. We spoke with Constance Jordan, editor of Reason and Imagination: The Selected Letters of Learned Hand, on Hand’s engagement with the issues of the day and his influence on modern law.
Book thumbnail image Post-Soviet Chechnya and the Caucasus When the names and ethnic backgrounds of the two Boston Marathon bombing suspects were released on Friday, 19 April 2013, rumors immediately began flying over Chechnya, its people, and its role in the world. In order to provide some deeper perspective on the region after the fall of the Soviet Union, we present this brief extract from Thomas de Waal’s The Caucasus: An Introduction.
Book thumbnail image The need for a new first aid training model in a post-9/11 world By Lisa M. Brown, Ph.D. and Bruce Bongar, Ph.D., ABPP Immediately after two bombs rocked Boston Marathon bystanders and runners, medical volunteers, Medical Reserve Corp members, and law enforcement were seen running to aid victims. For those who suffered trauma, it is likely that these heroic and timely interventions saved lives and improved outcomes.
Book thumbnail image Oxford University Press at the BBC Proms 2013 By Lucy Allen Every year, around mid-April, music lovers await the news that the BBC proms schedule has been announced. We look forward to the old favourites, the new commissions, the excited atmosphere, and some of the best performers in the world. When summer arrives, scores of people—young and old alike—travel to London to visit the Royal Albert Hall and be part of this great British tradition.
Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey 15 April 2013 marked the fifth Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the 66th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers, an event which broke baseball’s racial barrier. In each game that is now played on 15 April, all players wear Jackie Robinson’s iconic #42 (also the title of a new film on Robinson). Thirty years ago, historian and ardent baseball fan Jules Tygiel proposed the first scholarly study of integration in baseball, shepherded by esteemed Oxford editor, Sheldon Meyer: Baseball’s Great Experiment.
Book thumbnail image A day in the life of a London marathon runner By Daniel ‘pump those knees’ Parker and Debbie ‘fists of fury’ Sims Pull on your lycra, tie up your shoelaces, pin your number on your vest, and join us as we run the Virgin London Marathon in blog form. While police and security have been stepping up after Boston, we have been trawling Oxford University Press’s online resources in order to bring you 26 miles and 375 yards of marathon goodness. Get ready to take your place on the starting line.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Bicycle Day By Amanda Feilding Albert Hofmann was one of the most important scientists of our time, who through his famous discovery of LSD, crossed the bridge from the world of science into the spiritual realm, transforming social and political culture in his wake. He was both rationalist and mystic, chemist and visionary, and in this duality we find his true spirit.
Book thumbnail image Earth Day 2013: dating creation By Martin Redfern Attempts to calculate the age of the Earth came originally out of theology. It is only comparatively recently that so-called creationists have interpreted the Bible literally and therefore believe that Creation took just seven 24-hour days. St Augustine had argued in his commentary on Genesis that God’s vision is outside time and therefore that each of the days of Creation referred to in the Bible could have lasted a lot longer than 24 hours. Even the much quoted estimate in the 17th century by Irish Archbishop Ussher that the Earth was created in 4004 BC was only intended as a minimum age and was based on carefully researched historical records, notably of the generations of patriarchs and prophets referred to in the Bible.
Book thumbnail image MMR panic in Swansea and policing By P.A.J. Waddington I often think that we learn more from the experiences of those whose lives are different from our own than we do from those who share our experiences. Distance often confers clarity and gives a greater appreciation of context, enabling similarities and differences to become visible. This occurred to me recently as the news of the increasing measles epidemic in Swansea began to grow more alarming.
Book thumbnail image Our treaties, ourselves: the struggle over the Panama Canal By Natasha Zaretsky In March 1978, Ada Smith, a fifty-six-year old woman from Memphis, sat down at her typewriter and wrote an angry letter to Tennessee’s Republican Senator Howard Baker. She explained that until recently, she had always been proud of her country, and “its superiority in the world.” But now her pride had turned to fear: “After coming through that great fiasco Vietnam, which cost us billions in dollars and much more in American blood, we are now faced with another act of stupidity, which, in the years to come, could be even more costly.”
Book thumbnail image Singing in a choir is like knitting and bingo By Barbara Stuart Joining a choir is all the rage and some say that choir memberships are getting younger. It’s like knitting and bingo — it’s cool to sing in a choir. Not in the choirs around here, not yet! Every English choral society has its stalwarts; ladies (sadly mostly ladies — there are never enough men) who run the committee, enjoy a frisson with the young(ish) conductor, share lifts, and find friendship.
Book thumbnail image Sudden cardiac death: what about the rest of the family? By Mattis Ranthe Sudden cardiac death is internationally defined as sudden, unexpected death due to natural unknown or cardiac causes, with an acute change in cardiovascular status within one hour of death or, in unwitnessed cases, in a person last seen functioning normally within 24 hours of being found dead. In young people it is most often caused by undiagnosed heart problems that may be hereditary, indicating that there may be genetic mutations causing the condition.
Does the lily grow in the valet? Is good ballet bally good? By Anatoly Liberman This post is an answer to a letter I received from our correspondent Jonathan Davis. Not too long ago, I mentioned the differences in the pronunciation of niche: in the speech of most Americans it rhymes with pitch, but the rhyme niche/leash can also be heard, and it seems to be prevalent in Britain. Mr. Davis is an Englishman living in Texas and, not unexpectedly, favors the vowel of ee and sh in niche, while those around him prefer short i and ch.
Book thumbnail image Border Control in America before Ellis Island By Hidetaka Hirota On the seventeenth of April 1907, 11,747 immigrants arrived in the Ellis Island landing station in New York, marking a record high in terms of the number of people processed on a single day at the station, where 17 million newcomers landed between 1892 and 1954. This arrival was part of a broader landmark immigration wave.
Book thumbnail image Sympathy in modernist literature By Kirsty Martin In Virginia Woolf’s 1931 modernist novel ‘The Waves’ her character Neville, looking around in a chapel service at school, is suddenly transfixed by his friend Percival: “But look – he flicks his hand to the back of his neck. For such gestures one falls hopelessly in love for a lifetime.” Neville is captivated, and overwhelmed, by Percival’s gesture here. Capturing this moment, Woolf’s language becomes gesturative too…
Book thumbnail image Portraying Dusty Springfield on stage and in film By Annie Randall As I celebrate the late Dusty Springfield’s 74th birthday on the 16th of April, I am struck by the number of singers who choose to perform as Dusty—complete with wigs, costumes, and the trademark hand gestures—rather than singing Dusty’s hit songs as themselves. It’s no surprise that ambitious and confident singers want to sing Dusty’s hits; many of the songs, like “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” “Son of a Preacher Man,” and “The Look of Love,” are not only beautifully crafted, they’re vocally challenging
Book thumbnail image A National Poetry Month reading list from Oxford World’s Classics In this month’s Oxford World’s Classics reading list, we decided to celebrate National Poetry Month by selecting some of our bilingual poetry editions. In each of the below books, the poems are laid out as parallel texts, with the original language on the left and the English translation on the right. This means that you can enjoy the works either in the original language, in translation, or even compare the two.
Book thumbnail image A vegetable wonder! By Tatiana Holway With headlines and taglines and raves such as these fanning out from Fleet Street in the autumn of 1837, it would be hard to overestimate the sensation surrounding the immense water lily found earlier that year in the remote South American colony of British Guiana and subsequently named Victoria regia in honor of the empire’s newly crowned queen.
Book thumbnail image Our Henry James By John Carlos Rowe As we anticipate the public release this year of Scot McGehee’s and David Siegel’s film, What Maisie Knew, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on 7 September 2012, I wonder once again what drives popular fascination with Henry James’s fiction in our postmodern condition? Of course, I love Henry James and have spent much of my scholarly career reading, teaching, and writing about his works.
Book thumbnail image Henry Moseley and a tale of seven elements By Eric Scerri This year marks the 100th anniversary of a remarkable discovery by an equally remarkable scientist. He is Henry Moseley, whose working career lasted a mere four years before he was killed in World War I shortly before his 26th birthday. Born in 1887 in England, Moseley came from a distinguished scientific family.
The long, withdrawing roar of Matthew Arnold By Jane Garnett Matthew Arnold is probably now most recalled for one phrase, the “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” of the Sea of Faith in his poem “Dover Beach” (first published in 1867), and for having written the lectures which were published serially and then in book form (1869) as Culture and Anarchy. Both are cited more than considered, and the nature of Arnold’s cultural project is often misunderstood.
Book thumbnail image Discovering the hermit in the garden By Gordon Campbell For many years, answering polite enquiries about my current book project was relatively easy: I could explain that it was about Milton, or the Bible, or Renaissance art and architecture, or the decorative arts, or whatever might be the topic, and the conversation could happily proceed to more interesting subjects. For the past few years, however, I have had to say that I was writing a book about ornamental hermits in eighteenth-century gardens.
Book thumbnail image Signaling singleness: mating intelligence and Black Day By Jessica Fell Williams and Glenn Geher On the 14th of April, single Koreans will signal their singleness by wearing, eating, and experiencing “black” as a statement on the nature of being single. From the perspective of mating intelligence, following mating-relevant customs that are specific to one’s culture is crucial in mating.
Book thumbnail image Celebre a Semana Nacional da Biblioteca com a OUP Celebre a Semana Nacional da Biblioteca com acesso gratuito ao OED e à Oxford Reference, disponível para todos na América do Norte e do Sul até 20 de abril. Todas as pessoas terão acesso através do mesmo logon, sem necessidade de registro. Estamos liberando essa quantidade inédita de conteúdo da OUP em agradecimento a todo o trabalho vital que os bibliotecários realizam para apoiar seus patronos e em celebração à semana que honra as bibliotecas.
Book thumbnail image Celebre la Semana Nacional de Bibliotecas con OUP Celebre la Semana Nacional de Bibliotecas con acceso gratuito al OED y Oxford Reference, disponible para América del Norte, del Sur y el Caribe hasta el 20 de Abril. Visite cualquiera de los sitios Web y utilice libraryweek como nombre de usuario y contraseña para acceder a todo el contenido que los sitios tienen que ofrecer. Todo el mundo tendrá acceso a través del mismo nombre de usuario y contraseña y no se requiere ningún registro.
Book thumbnail image Celebrate National Library Week with OUP Celebrate National Library Week with free access to the OED and Oxford Reference, available to everyone in North and South America through the 20th of April. Visit either site and use the special username and password to login and access everything the sites have to offer. Everyone will have access through the same login and no registration of any kind is required.
Book thumbnail image The 10th anniversary of the mapping of the human genome By Robert Klitzman “It’s like Star Wars,” a woman with the Huntington Disease mutation recently told me. This lethal gene had killed her relatives in every generation for hundreds of years, but she could now test her embryos to ensure that her children did not get it. “I don’t understand it all,” she told me, “but the peace of mind is huge.”
Book thumbnail image Mark Roodhouse on the black market From cigarettes to knockoffs, what’s available on the black market? Lecturer in modern history Mark Roodhouse investigates the illegal trade in counterfeit and stolen goods in Britain from the interwar period to today. And there’s always a boom in the underground economy as austerity measures hit, whether with “losses of goods in transit” during the Second World War or horsemeat discovered in packaged meals in 2013. Mark Roodhouse speaks with BBC Wiltshire’s Mid-Morning Show about the history of the black market.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Webby honoree edition By Alice Northover Thank you to our wonderful contributors, staff, and most of all readers. OUPblog is one of nine 2013 Webby honorees in the ‘Blog – Cultural’ category. I can’t tell you how thrilled we are to be alongside the New Yorker’s Page-Turner and Perez Hamilton. And further congratulations to the Oxford Islamic Studies Online team or their Religion & Spirituality Websites nomination and the Oxford Music Online team for their Best Writing (Editorial) honor.
Book thumbnail image The Mashapaug Project By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Continuing our celebration of the release of 40.1, today we’re excited to share a conversation between managing editor Troy Reeves and contributors Anne Valk and Holly Ewald. Valk and Ewald are the authors of, “Bringing a Hidden Pond to Public Attention: Increasing Impact through Digital Tools,” which describes the origins and methods of the Mashapaug Project, a collaborative community arts and oral history project on a pond in Providence, Rhode Island.
eIncarnations By William Sims Bainbridge By William Sims Bainbridge Cleora Emily Bainbridge was born 8 November 1868, and passed away on 14 April 1870. Her father was a clergyman, and her mother, Lucy Seaman Bainbridge, was director of the Woman’s Branch of the New York City Mission Society. In 1883, her father, William Folwell Bainbridge, imagined what her life might have been like by casting her as the heroine of his novel Self-Giving, where she became a Christian missionary and died a martyr.
Book thumbnail image Children and schools just keep getting better By Gary Thomas Frank Spencer’s famous assertion to Betty that ‘Every day in every way, I am getting better and better!’ is true. We are indeed getting better and better all the time.
Book thumbnail image The challenges and rewards of biographical essays By Susan Ware One of the first things I did after being appointed general editor of the American National Biography was to assign myself an entry to write. I wanted to put myself in the shoes of my contributors and experience first-hand the challenge of the short biographical form.
Book thumbnail image Name that dance “Shake Shake Shake Señora”! We’ve all heard that song, but do you know how to dance to it? Should you do the Rumba, the Hustle, or possibly the Merengue? Dancing is a universal form of expression and is also unique to different cultures worldwide. In 1982, the International Theatre Institute created the worldwide holiday known as “International Dance Day” on April 29th. In honor of the upcoming holiday, we’ve gathered information from the Oxford Index to test your dance knowledge. Take our brief “Name that dance” quiz, it’s not as easy as you think!
Book thumbnail image From Me (the Beatles) to You (the Stones): April 1963 By Gordon R. Thompson After the success of the single “Please Please Me” and the release of the album Please Please Me, British fans and the press eagerly anticipated “From Me to You.” Fans had pre-ordered so many copies of the disk that when Parlophone did release R 5015 on 11 April 1963, the single immediately appeared in pop charts where it would stay for an amazing 21 weeks.
Book thumbnail image The other Salem witch trials By Owen Davies The history of American witchcraft is indelibly associated with Salem, Massachusetts, where in 1692 nineteen people were executed as witches after the accusations of two young girls sparked a wave of fear. The village of Salem, the centre of the events of 1692, is now the town of Danvers, with the focus of today’s witchcraft industry centred on Salem city. But there are numerous other Salems in America, born of the country’s religious heritage – Salem in Hebraic means “peace”. But forget colonial Salem for a moment, as on two occasions in America’s more recent past Salem was the scene of trials related to witchcraft.
Remembering Roger Ebert By James Tweedie The legendary film critic Roger Ebert passed away last Thursday at the age of 70, after a recurrence of cancer. Ebert’s career in journalism spanned almost six decades, beginning when he was named the first movie reviewer for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1967. By 1975 he was a nationally recognized critic and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Will boys be boys? By Anatoly Liberman Within a year, two recent articles on the origin of the word boy have come to my attention. This is great news. Keeping a talent of such value under a bushel and withholding it from the rest of the world would be unforgivable. Nowadays, if a philological journal does not come as a reward for the membership in a popular society, its circulation is extremely low.
Book thumbnail image Understanding the Muslim world By Robert Repino While interest in Islam has grown in recent years—both in the media and in educational institutions—there remains a persistent misunderstanding of the religion’s practices, beliefs, and adherents, who now number over one and half billion people. Addressing this problem is not simply an academic exercise, for the past decade especially has shown that our understanding of Islam can have enormous consequences on foreign and domestic policies, as well as on social relations.
Book thumbnail image Living alone and ‘bouncing back’ after bereavement By Juliet Stone Is living alone in later life bad for your health? As we get older, the likelihood that we will be living on our own increases. We live in an ageing population and data from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2010, nearly half of people aged 75 and over were living on their own. So the experiences and concerns of older people living alone are increasingly relevant to policy-makers and to society at large.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on Ebbets Field By Daniel Campo At the turn of the 20th century, the baseball team in Brooklyn was known as the Superbas and they played ball at Washington Park, between First and Third streets along Third Avenue near the Gowanus Canal. While the park was convenient for its patrons, located in a densely developed part of the borough and connected to trolley lines on 3rd and 5th avenues, fans and players frequently complained about the awful odors emanating from the canal and nearby industrial works.
Book thumbnail image Woman – or Suffragette? By Lynda Mugglestone In 1903, the motto “Deeds not Words” was adopted by Emmeline Pankhurst as the slogan of the new Women’s Social and Political Union. This aimed above all to secure women the vote, but it marked a deliberate departure in the methods to be used. Over fifty years of peaceful campaigning had brought no change to women’s rights in this respect; drastic action was, Emmeline decided, now called for.
Book thumbnail image Latin America in the world today By Ilan Stavans The Hispanic world is in the news lately, and the news is mostly good. Latinos in the United States are a growing political force, and developments in Latin America are at the forefront of world affairs. To start with, Latinos, the largest minority in the United States (approximately 57 million strong and slated to double by 2030), are acknowledged to be the deciding factor in Barack Obama’s re-election.
Book thumbnail image Lessons from Iraq 10 years on By Nigel D. White Ten years after the capture of Baghdad on 5 April 2003 by US troops, following an invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces, we are still awaiting the outcome of the Chilcot Inquiry which was set up by the government of Gordon Brown in 2009. The report has been delayed at least until the end of 2013 due to the reluctance of the government to release key documents, but the outcome as regards the illegality of the invasion should not be in doubt.
Book thumbnail image Musical scores and female detectives of the 1940s By Dr Catherine Haworth The dangerous dames, fall-guy private eyes, and psychologically unstable heroes and villains who roam the streets of the 1940s crime film have often been linked with anxieties surrounding changing roles for men and women in the years around World War II. Although appearing less regularly, the evolution of the ‘working-girl’ detective character can also be connected with these shifts in gendered identity.
Book thumbnail image The legacies of Margaret Thatcher’s rhetoric By Richard Toye The death of Margaret Thatcher has already prompted an outpouring of reflections upon her place in history. One aspect of her legacy that deserves attention is her use of rhetoric and the way in which, to a great degree, she helped reshape the language of British politics as well as the substance of policy. Historians divide about when original Thatcherism really was.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Margaret Thatcher By Matthew Flinders Could it be that far from the all-powerful ‘Iron Lady’ that Margaret Thatcher was actually a little more vulnerable and isolated than many people actually understood?
Book thumbnail image March Madness: Atlas Edition – A champion! Today’s the day! Either X or X will end March Madness with a victory, and we can all return to our normal television programming — although we hope intelligent madness continues. Since the 11th of March, Oxford University Press has been running March Madness: Atlas Edition based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition. Mexico and Indonesia met in the finals while Madagascar and Turkey competed for third place.
Book thumbnail image Sherlock Holmes knew chemistry By James F. O’Brien Sir Arthur Conan Doyle claimed that he wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories while waiting in his medical office for the patients who never came. When this natural teller of tales decided to write a detective story, he borrowed the concept of a cerebral detective from Edgar Allan Poe, who had “invented” the detective story in 1841 when he wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
Book thumbnail image Holocaust Remembrance Day By Katharina von Kellenbach Holocaust Remembrance Day was originally declared a state holiday in Israel in 1951. The date, the 27th of the month of Nissan, was chosen in memory of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In the United States, a week-long series of “Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust” was ratified by US Congress in 1979 to coincide with Yom HaShoah, which falls sometime during April or May.
Book thumbnail image The Arms Trade Treaty: a major achievement By Stuart Casey-Maslen On Tuesday, 2 April 2013, after seven years of discussions and negotiations, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the UN Arms Trade Treaty by an overwhelming margin — the first ever global agreement governing the transfer of conventional arms. A total of 154 States voted in favor of the resolution, three voted against, and 23 abstained. The treaty will now be opened for signature on 3 June 2013.
Book thumbnail image Can we raise woolly mammoths from their Pleistocene graves? By Sharon Levy Thousands of years after the last woolly mammoth died, some bioengineers dream of resurrecting the species. When I first heard their arguments, these folks struck me as the modern, high-tech version of snake-oil salesmen. When I first heard their arguments, these folks struck me as the modern, high-tech version of snake-oil salesmen.
Yom HaShoah and everyday genocide For the historian Mary Fulbrook, the history of the small town of Bedzin hits close to home. Her mother was a refugee from Nazi Germany and a close friend to the wife of Uda Klausa, a one-time civilian administrator in that small town so close to the infamous concentration camp Auschwitz. What role did Klausa, as countless local functionaries across the Third Reich, play in facilitating Nazi policy? Fulbrook traveled to Bedzin with her son to film a series of videos exploring the subject as a companion to her book, A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust.
Book thumbnail image Happy National Tartan Day: Celebrating Scottish American data By Sydney Beveridge First observed nationally in 1997, Tartan Day celebrates the legacy and contributions of Scottish Americans. The annual festivities are held on April 6th, the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, the 1320 Scottish Declaration of Independence.
Book thumbnail image A Burns celebration of tartan On the day before a yearly celebration of Scottish heritage (Tartan Day), Robert Burns brings us the first Duan (division) of his poem The Vision, an extract from Selected Poems and Songs.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: hatchet-man edition By Alice Northover If my grandfather could survive the Siege of Leningrad and still distinguish between a German and a Nazi, then so can I says Polina Aronson. Shakespeare and food. The Sight and Sound Film Poll: An International Tribute to Roger Ebert and His Favorite Films
Book thumbnail image Can a low-sodium diet endanger patients with heart problems? A Q&A with Dr. Jean Sealey. Patients suffering from cardiovascular disease are treated with drugs known as a renin-angiotensin system (RAS) blockers, which have been proven to reduce mortality in large clinical trials of patients with hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes. Now, a new study published this week in the American Journal of Hypertension has shown that some such patients are concurrently salt depleted and may not benefit from the RAS blocking drugs; in fact, RAS blockers may endanger their health.
Book thumbnail image Television viewing time and mortality By Jose Recio-Rodriguez Americans spend about five hours daily in front of a television set according to official statistics. Prolonged television viewing is one of the most common behaviors associated with a sedentary lifestyle and public health authorities consider physical inactivity a major problem. Clinical trials have revealed a dose-response relationship between sitting time and mortality, including from cardiovascular disease.
Book thumbnail image A green equilibrium fosters a new behavior in Sri Lanka By Christopher Wills The balancing act that keeps ecosystems intact results from interactions, not only among the animals and plants, but also among their many smaller pathogens, parasites, symbionts, and pollinators. Taken together, all these interactions among the visible and invisible world produce an ecological balance, a green equilibrium.
Book thumbnail image Environmental History’s growing pains By Nancy C. Unger In the fall of 1994 I was invited to offer my university’s first environmental history course. Entering this unchartered territory, I scrambled to find sample syllabi and appropriate books. Nearly two decades later, environmental history is a standard course offering, and my university, like so many others, boasts a thriving Environmental Studies major as well as a major in Environmental Science
Book thumbnail image What do the Falkland Islands continue to tell us about territorial world views? By Klaus Dodds The last couple of weeks have been busy ones when it comes to news about the Falkland Islands. Or Islas Malvinas as Argentine and other readers might insist upon. For others, the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) is the preferred naming option – highlighting as it does their continued contested status.
The professionalization of library theft By Travis McDade The indication that an ordinary string of rare book thefts has evolved into a terrifying string of rare book thefts often comes down to this: the presence of a man whose sole job it is to get rid of library ownership marks. No other single trait indicates as certainly that a theft ring has moved from the amateur to the professional ranks.
Book thumbnail image The 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention By Stuart Casey-Maslen Derided by a number of major military powers when it was adopted, almost 16 years later the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention is in pretty rude health. No fewer than 161 States have adhered to its provisions — the most recent being Poland in December 2012 – and few outside dare to use anti-personnel mines these days such is the stigmatisation of the weapon, even though a ban has not yet crystallised in customary law.
Book thumbnail image McDonald’s revisited: when globalization goes native By David Ellwood In January 2013 the Daily Telegraph ran a story on the refusal of the inhabitants of the famed old neighbourhood of Montmartre, in Paris, to accept the arrival in their midst for the first time of a Starbucks coffee shop. The Paris Pride heritage association denounced this “attack on the place’s soul.” A resident said “we must do everything to stop this disfiguring, as it opens the door to any old rubbish.”
Book thumbnail image Plebgate By P.A.J. Waddington “‘Pleb’–gate” — as the altercation between Andrew Mitchell, MP, and police officers guarding Downing Street has become known — continues to rumble along. It seems to me that there is a huge unanswered question lurking therein. It is this: what on earth are police officers doing providing an armed guard for the Prime Minister?
It is hard to stop thief By Anatoly Liberman The title of this post is meant to warn our readers that the origin of the word thief has never been discovered. Perhaps an apology is in order. I embarked on today’s seemingly thankless topic after I received a question from Denmark about the possible ties between Danish to “two” and tyv “thief.”
Book thumbnail image Jack the Ripper and the case of Emma Smith By Paul J. Ennis Many people are puzzled by the phenomenon of ripperology. What kind of person has a grim fascination with a serial killer famous for not getting caught? For me, and many fellow ripperologists, the appeal is not Jack per se, but the atmosphere of Whitechapel in the 1880s. The case is a window into a forgotten world and one that shows us how that world was experienced by the common man.
Book thumbnail image What a mess! The politics and governance of the British Constitution By Matthew Flinders Today’s publication of a parliamentary report recommending a constitutional convention in the United Kingdom sheds light on a number of issues that urgently demand debate.
Kenyatta confirmed as Kenyan president but ethnic politics remain By Gabrielle Lynch On Saturday 30 March 2013, Kenya’s Supreme Court unanimously decided that Kenya’s presidential election — which had been held on 4 March — was conducted in a free, fair, transparent, and credible manner, and that Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto of the Jubilee Alliance were validly elected. Raila Odinga of the Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD) publicly disagreed with the court’s findings, but emphasised the supremacy of the constitution and wished Kenyatta and Ruto luck in implementing the 2010 constitution.
Book thumbnail image Celebração da Semana Nacional da Biblioteca (de 14 a 20 de abril) Celebre a Semana Nacional da Biblioteca de 14 a 20 de abril com livre acesso aos dois produtos Oxford mais populares. De 14 a 20 de abril, todas as pessoas na América do Norte e do Sul terão livre acesso ao OED e ao Oxford Reference. O livre acesso será feito através de um nome de usuário e senha publicados aqui no blog OUP no dia 14 de abril. Todas as pessoas terão acesso através do mesmo logon, que estará disponível até o final da semana.
Book thumbnail image Celebración de la Semana Nacional de Bibliotecas (14 al 20 de Abril) Celebre la semana de bibliotecas del 14 al 20 de abril, con acceso gratuito a dos de los productos en línea más populares de Oxford. Empezando de Abril 14 hasta Abril 20, todo el mundo en América del Norte y del Sur tendrá acceso gratuito al Oxford English Dictionary y a Oxford Reference. El acceso gratuito será a través de un nombre de usuario y contraseña que va a ser anunciado en este Blog de OUP en abril 14. Todo el mundo tendrá acceso con la misma clave hasta el último día de la semana.
Book thumbnail image National Library Week Celebration (14-20 April) Celebrate National Library Week, 14-20 April 2013, with free access to two of Oxford’s most popular online products. Starting 14 April and running through 20 April, everyone in North and South America will have free access to the OED and Oxford Reference. Free access will be through a username and password announced here on the OUPblog on 14 April. Everyone will have access through the same login, which will last until the end of the week.
Book thumbnail image Autism is many diseases By Mary Coleman The field of autism is riddled by several unsolved mysteries. One concerns the rate of children who suffer from autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). A study released last year by the CDC’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network used school behavioral assessments and clinical reports of children who were 8 years old in 2008 and applied a standard checklist of criteria for diagnosis.
Book thumbnail image ASD is now the approved new diagnostic category for autism By Martin J. Lubetsky, MD Many parents and professionals are debating the American Psychiatric Association (APA) approved DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) revised diagnosis of autism. DSM-5 is expected to be available for purchase by the time of the APA Annual Meeting in May 2013.
Book thumbnail image The rise of interfaith marriage In the last decade, 45% of all marriages in the United States were between people of different faiths. The rapidly growing number of mixed-faith families is a sign of openness and tolerance among religious communities in the United States, but what’s good for society as a whole often proves difficult for individual families. As Naomi Schaefer Riley shows in her provocative new book ‘Til Faith Do Us Part: How Interfaith Marriage is Transforming America, interfaith couples are actually less happy than others and certain combinations of religions are more likely to lead to divorce.
Book thumbnail image Ways to be autism aware By Alice Hammel and Ryan Hourigan (1) Be aware that people with autism can usually understand more than they can express. Autism doesn’t change the fact that everyone understands more than they can express. When we learn a new language, we can understand what someone is saying long before we can create sentences that demonstrate the depth of our knowledge.
Book thumbnail image April Fools! And the winner is… By Anna-Lise Santella This is no April fool. The results of the contest to write the best spoof of a Grove Music article are really in! We received many excellent submissions and thank all contributors for providing us with entertainment, hysterical laughter, and frequent groans of recognition. Our choice was extremely difficult.
Book thumbnail image On the 100th anniversary of the assembly line By Vincent Curcio On 1 April 1913, Henry Ford symbolically pressed a lever that catapulted factory workers into the modern era. That lever was the assembly line, which was started at his Highland Park factory on that date. From then on the organized chaos and time-wasting labor of the typical factory floor were transformed into a process that was much quicker and economical, and far less strenuous.
Book thumbnail image March Madness: Atlas Edition – Championship Round While everyone is wondering which of the Elite Eight will make it to the Final Four, Mexico and Indonesia are battling it out for the title of “Country of the Year.” It’s time for the finals of March Madness: Atlas Edition! While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
Book thumbnail image IRS boondoggles: Star Trek videos and reasonable compensation cases By Edward A. Zelinsky Many Americans have seen the now-infamous Star Trek video made by the IRS with taxpayer funds. It is painful to watch. Captain Kirk (known in the 21st century as William Shatner) pronounced himself “appalled at the utter waste of U.S. tax dollars.” The video’s dialogue is depressingly sophomoric. The acting talents of the IRS employees are comparable to the acting talents of law professors, that is to say, nonexistent.
Shakespeare’s fools Feste is a fool for the Countess Olivia and seems to have been attached to the household for some time, as a “fool that the Lady Olivia’s father took much delight in”. Feste claims that he wears “not motley” in his brain, so even though he dresses the part of the fool, he is not an idiot, and can see through the other characters.
Book thumbnail image Does spelling matter? By Simon Horobin As part of his agenda to improve primary school education, Michael Gove plans to invest more teaching time in driving up standards of spelling; his proposals include a list of 162 words which all eleven-year old children will be expected to spell correctly. As his critics were quick to point out, Gove’s belief in the importance of accurate spelling was somewhat undermined by a number of misspellings in the White Paper itself; Tristram Hunt gleefully suggested that Gove, “of all people,” should be able to spell bureaucracy.
March 2013 (104))
An Oxford Companion to Game of Thrones The long-awaited third season of Game of Thrones premiers on HBO 31 March 2013 and Oxford University Press has everything you need to get ready, whether you’re looking to brush up on your dragon lore, forge your own Valyrian steel, or learn about some of the most dramatic real-life succession fights culled from our archives.
Book thumbnail image Why is baseball exempt from antitrust law? By Stuart Banner As the baseball season opens and fans wonder how their favorite teams and players will do this year, a certain sort of fan will also wonder about a perennial question. Why is baseball the only sport exempt from antitrust law? The answer cannot be found in the text of the antitrust statutes, which do not distinguish between baseball and other forms of enterprise.
Book thumbnail image The death of Charlotte Brontë By Janet Gezari Her death followed a debilitating illness and occurred almost exactly nine months after her marriage to her father’s curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. The death certificate states its cause as “Phthisis” or acute tuberculosis, the same disease that killed Emily and Anne.
Book thumbnail image Disappearing States By Jane McAdam The ‘disappearing State’ or ‘sinking island’ phenomenon has become a litmus test for the dramatic impacts of climate change on human society. Atlantis-style predictions of whole countries disappearing beneath the waves raise fascinating legal issues that go to the heart of the rules on the creation and extinction of States.
Book thumbnail image Constantine and Easter By David Potter Christians today owe a tremendous debt to the Roman emperor Constantine. He changed the place of the Church in the Roman World, moving it, through his own conversion, from the persecuted fringe of the empire’s religious landscape to the center of the empire’s system of belief. He also tackled huge problems with the way Christians understood their community.
Book thumbnail image Free will and quantum conspiracy By Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner Why do some claim free will is an illusion? The easy answer: free will does not fit within a scientific worldview. Any choice you make is presumably determined by your brain’s electrochemistry at the time. That electrochemistry, a physical thing, was uniquely determined by your heredity, your previous experiences, and your present environment. Your choice was therefore predetermined by prior physical events. It was not “free.” Therefore no free will.
Book thumbnail image The future of same-sex marriage by the numbers By Sydney Beveridge This week, the Supreme Court heard two cases that could change same-sex marriage laws nationwide. If the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 are ruled illegal, same-sex couples around the nation could rush to the altar this summer. To help measure the impact of this ruling on the population, Social Explorer took a look at data on same-sex couples.
Book thumbnail image Exclusion and the LGBT life course By Phillip L. Hammack Few scenes in one’s life evoke vivid imagery. A generation’s historical memory can be reduced to a single significant moment—think Pearl Harbor, JFK’s assassination, 9/11. For gay and lesbian Californians of my generation, the State Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage seemed initially like it might just be such a moment.
Book thumbnail image Blogging oral history It’s been six months since we at Oral History Review (OHR) started blogging regularly at the OUPblog, so we think now is a good time to look back on the last few months. We’ve discussed everything from the historiography of oral history to the challenges of recording interviews on recent history, and we’ve approached these issues with essays, q&as, timelines, quizzes, and podcasts.
Book thumbnail image Oh! what a lovely conclave By Stella Fletcher “Carnival time is over,” the newly-elected Pope Francis is reported to have said when he was offered an ermine-trimmed mozzetta such as most of his predecessors had worn round their shoulders during the winter season. He may not have been alluding to the thirteen-day sede vacante which had just reached its much-anticipated conclusion, but it does seem fair to say that this papal interregnum was arguably the jolliest on record.
Book thumbnail image Magic moments By Owen Davies The recent battle between religion and science conducted in the media, spearheaded by Professor Richard Dawkins and other high-profile figures, has garnered much international attention. The debate is not new of course; it stretches back several centuries. One aspect of the debate that receives less attention today is the issue of magic: a concept which is inextricably linked to the history of science and religion. The notion of both science and religion as magic is as relevant today as it ever was.
A very short slideshow of our very short soapboxes We had 13 wonderful Very Short Introductions authors taking part in our series of Very Short Soapboxes at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival last week. The change of venue, from the usual marquee at Christ Church to the warmth and comfort of Blackwell’s bookshop, was a blessing (who wants to stand in a tent with a snow blizzard outside? Although some would say our authors are that good). From Medical Law to The Napoleonic Wars, from The Gothic to The British Empire, there was a subject for everyone to enjoy. Here are a few highlights.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating the suffrage movement in International Women’s History Month Who Was Who entries provide insight into the diversity of attitudes to women’s suffrage in the early years of the twentieth century. The career section of the suffragette Constance Lytton’s entry details the injuries she sustained after being force fed during a prison hunger strike, while Ellen Odette, Countess of Desart’s work was summarized as “The usual duties of a well-educated, intelligent woman, conscientiously carried out; very strong anti-suffrage views.”
Book thumbnail image Dinah Shore’s TV legacy By Ron Rodman For Black History Month, I wrote about an American Television pioneer: Nat “King” Cole, who was the first African American to host a television show. Since many have dubbed March as “National Women’s Month,” I focus on another pioneer of early television, Dinah Shore.
This April fools’ day, learn from the experts By Philip Carter As the First of April nears you may be planning the perfect joke, hoax or act of revenge. If so—and if you’re looking for inspiration—may we recommend some of British history’s finest hoaxers, courtesy of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. So this year, how about …
Book thumbnail image What can animals see, hear, or sense? Our world is dominated by colours and patterns that provide information about how to behave and survive. These are a product of how our sensory system and brain interpret the physical properties of the environment. For example, how people see and describe colours can depend on whether they have ‘normal’ colour vision or not, what culture they come from, and even what their emotional state is. Colour is in the eye of the beholder!
Achebe By Richard Dowden A conversation with Chinua Achebe was a deep, slow and gracious matter. He was exceedingly courteous and always listened and reflected before answering. In his later years he talked even more slowly and softly, savouring the paradoxes of life and history. He spoke in long, clear, simple sentences which often ended in a profound and sad paradox
Monthly etymological gleanings for March 2013 By Anatoly Liberman This has been a good month for the “gleanings”: I have received many questions and many kind words through the blog and privately. My usual thanks to those who read and react.
Book thumbnail image Female characters in the Narnia series What can the reader expect of the Chronicles of Narnia series to reveal about Christianity? According to Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Narnia series serves as a refreshing take on what it means to experience the divine in daily life. Christianity is portrayed in a more humanizing light through C.S. Lewis’s imaginative interpretation of Christian doctrine. In the following excerpt from The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia, Williams examines the portrayal of female characters in the Narnia series.
Book thumbnail image Soldier, sailor, beggarman, thief By Clive Emsley Soldiers, sailors, and airmen reflect the societies from which they come. We should not be surprised therefore if they reflect vices as well as virtues; yet there is often hostility to anyone picking up on the vices of service personnel. When putting together a recent book, I was denied permission to use a quotation from the memoir of an infantry lieutenant about theft by members of his platoon in Germany in 1945. It might be asked: why was the information put in the memoir if it was not to be read? It was not always thus.
Book thumbnail image Humane, cost-effective systems for formerly incarcerated people By Leonard A. Jason and Ron Harvey A recent New York Times article, reports on a study that found private, corporate-run transitional half-way houses were less effective in preventing recidivism than releasing inmates directly into communities. For those interested in understanding and improving outcomes among ex-offenders, these results are discouraging.
Book thumbnail image Psychocinematics: discovering the magic of movies By Arthur Shimamura Like the great and powerful Oz, filmmakers conceal themselves behind a screen and offer a mesmerizing experience that engages our sights, thoughts, and emotions. They have developed an assortment of magical “tricks” of acting, staging, sound, camera movement, and editing that create a sort of sleight of mind. These techniques have been discovered largely through trial and error, and thus we have very little understanding of how they actually work on our psyche.
Book thumbnail image The Blaines of Lake Geneva Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (1896–1940) was born in St Paul, Minnesota, and named after his second cousin three times removed, the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner”. He went to Princeton University, but dropped out, eventually joining the Army in 1917. In honor of the anniversary of the publication of This Side of Paradise on 26 March 1920, we dug up this excerpt from this great novel.
Book thumbnail image Whitman today By Jerome Loving Walt Whitman died 121 years ago today. The Bruce Springsteen of his age, he sang about and celebrated what he called “the Divine Average”. And it was always on equal terms, the woman the same as the man, as he suggests in “America”.
Book thumbnail image Ode to my Tuba - the beautiful Tallulah By Ruth Fielder At the age of sixteen I was told that I would no longer be able to play my beloved trumpet, due to medical complications. The only alternative, to uphold my county scholarship and commitments to orchestras and brass bands, was to take up the tuba. The arrogant trumpeter that I was back then was horrified at this cumbersome instrument, cuddling a great lump of brass that seemed to prove no merit to my sense of style or popularity.
Book thumbnail image March Madness: Atlas Edition – Final Four Oklahoma State and Georgetown are out, but Madagascar, Indonesia, Turkey, and Mexico are still in the running. Confused? It’s time for the Final Four of March Madness: Atlas Edition! While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
Book thumbnail image Mark Blyth on austerity It is one of the most important topics in world politics and economics, yet few understand how it works and its real impact. Austerity — that toxic combination of politics and economics — must be recognized for what it is and what it costs us. The arguments for it are thin, while the evidence of its impact on wealth and income inequality is ample. For every economy to grow, this dead economic idea needs to stay dead.
Book thumbnail image Is competition always good? By Maurice E. Stucke Wow! That is what my university’s former football coach wanted to hear from prospective student-athletes when touring the new $45 million football practice facility. Parts of my university need repair. Departments face resource constraints. But the new practice facility was to set the standard in the university’s fierce competition for talented recruits. So our former coach led reporters through the planned 145,000 square-foot building, with its grand team meeting room, custom-designed chairs, hydro-therapy room, restaurant, nutrition bar, and lockers equipped to charge iPads and cellphones.
Book thumbnail image Alcohol advertising, by any other name… By Steve Pratt and Emma Croager Most adults won’t be familiar with the music video You Make Me Feel by Cobra Starship, as it has much greater appeal to young people. There is little doubt however that the overwhelming majority of adults would quickly identify the product placement in the video. The commercial intent of the product placement in this example is self-evident.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, Topsy By David Leopold William Morris (1834-1896) is widely recognized as the greatest ever English designer, a poet ranked by contemporaries alongside Tennyson and Browning, and an internationally renowned figure in the history of socialism. However, since the year 2013 offers no ‘big’ anniversary as a pretext to survey these various major achievements, I will instead use 24 March (his birthday) as an excuse to look at how Morris actually spent some of his own birthdays.
Book thumbnail image The historical arc of tuberculosis prevention By Graham Mooney In Tijuana, Mexico, 43-year-old tuberculosis patient Maria Melero takes her daily medicines at home while her health worker watches on Skype. Thirteen thousand kilometers away in New Delhi, India, Vishnu Maya visits a neighborhood health center to take her TB meds. A counselor uses a laptop to record Maya’s fingerprint electronically. An SMS is then sent to a centralized control center to confirm that Maya has received today’s dose.
Book thumbnail image World TB Day By Helen Bynum March 2013 is a busy month. For the ladies, various countries celebrate Mother’s Days and globally International Women’s Day fell on the eighth. At the end of the month Passover and Easter are special periods of celebration for two of the world’s leading religions. Easter is a major opportunity for a chocolate fest whatever you believe.
Chinua Achebe, 1930-2013 Oxford University Press is sad to hear of the passing of Chinua Achebe. The following is an excerpt from The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, edited by John Gross.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: cool videos edition By Alice Northover Google Plus and academic productivity. Extremely rare triple quasar found. Fitting in with our March Madness: Atlas Edition, Oxford Bibliographies in Geography launched this week. Nonsense botany from Edward Lear. His nonsense language wasn’t bad either. Dead authors can tweet you out of the water. A reminder about Open Culture’s master list.
Book thumbnail image Antisocial personality disorder: the hidden epidemic By Donald W. Black, M.D. It may be hard to believe, but one of the most common and problematic mental disorders is ignored by the public and media alike. People — and reporters — breathlessly talk about depression, substance abuse and autism, but no one ever talks about antisocial personality disorder. Why?
Book thumbnail image In the path of an oncoming army: civilians in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars By Mike Rapport Modern wars, someone once wrote, are fought by civilians as well as by armed forces. In fact, it is of course a truism to say that civilians are always affected by warfare in all periods of the past – as the families left behind, by the economic hardship, by the horrors of destruction, plunder, requisitioning, siege warfare, hunger and worse. The involvement of civilians in modern wars, however, became more intense because, with the advent of ‘total war’, belligerent states began to mobilise the entire population and material resources of the country. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were an early example of the ways in which a modern war could grind millions of people up in its brutal cogs, whether as conscripts in the firing lines of Europe’s mass armies and navies, or as civilians caught in the path of the oncoming battalions and trapped in the crossfire of the fighting itself. At the Oxford Literary Festival on 24 March, I will be speaking about the non-combatants who, in one way or another, found themselves entangled in the wars.
Book thumbnail image Witchcraft: yesterday and today By Malcom Gaskill I’m looking at a photo of my six-year-old daughter wearing her witch costume – black taffeta and pointy hat – last Halloween. Our local vicar marked the occasion by lamenting in the parish magazine this ‘celebration of evil’. All Hallows’ Eve, the night when traditionally folk comforted souls of the dead, is not, in fact, evil, but did once have evil in its margins. Spirits on the loose might be bad as well as good, and for humans to manipulate them was witchcraft. The perception of evil, concentrated in the figure of the witch, was once powerfully real. Kate’s fancy dress character, however winsome, has a profound cultural connection to a terrifying dimension of the past and, as we’ll see, the present too.
Book thumbnail image Rain explained By Storm Dunlop Rainfall in excessive quantities or in an unusual location may give rise to flooding – as we have seen only too frequently in Britain in the past year – but quite apart from such problems and its many other uses, water is absolutely essential for agriculture – particularly in tropical countries where the onset and progress of the monsoon is anxiously awaited, and in regions where agriculture is utterly dependent on precipitation brought by the less predictable tropical cyclones – known as ‘cyclones’, ‘hurricanes’, or ‘typhoons’, depending on their location around the world.
Very Short Film competition: we have a winner! By Chloe Foster We’re very pleased to annouce the winner of the Very Short Film competition 2013. The Very Short Film competition was launched in partnership with The Guardian in October 2012.
Book thumbnail image Gimme Shelter: De Quincey on Drugs By Robert Morrison According to Gerard Manley Hopkins, when Thomas De Quincey was living in Glasgow in the mid-1840s he “would wake blue and trembling in the morning and languidly ask the servant ‘Would you pour out some of that black mixture from the bottle there.’ The servant would give it him, generally not knowing what it was. After this he would revive.” What “it” was, of course, was opium, the drug that De Quincey became addicted to in 1813 — two hundred years ago this year.
Book thumbnail image Bob Dylan – A first listen By Meghann Wilhoite Somehow, I’ve made it into my 30s without ever having listened to Bob Dylan‘s first album. That is, not that I can remember; my mother informed me over the weekend that I indeed heard it many times as a young one, but truth be told I don’t remember much from my diaper-wearing days (but we’ve already gone over how terrible my memory is).
Book thumbnail image What is ‘the brain supremacy’? Q: What is the brain supremacy? A: I use the phrase ‘the brain supremacy’ to describe the increasing relevance of neuroscience. It foresees an era – whose birth is already well underway – when the balance of power within the sciences will shift from the natural to the life sciences, from physics and chemistry to the fast-moving sciences of the mind and brain.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Marie-Claire Alain By James David Christie The world lost one of its greatest and most beloved musicians on 26 February 2013, when the great teacher, recording artist and organist, Marie-Claire Alain, passed away in her 87th year. She was among the very few organists known in households around the world. She was usually referred to as the “First Lady of the Organ” and she was definitely that, but I always thought she should have been more appropriately called the “Greatest Organist in the World”
No great shakes? You are mistaken By Anatoly Liberman I am saying goodbye to the Harlem Shake. The miniseries began two weeks ago withdance, moved on to twerk and twerp, and now the turn of the verb shake has come round. Reference books say little about the origin of shake. They usually list a few cognates and produce the Germanic etymon skakan (both a’s were short)
Book thumbnail image Re-introducing values clarification to the helping professions By Howard Kirschenbaum, Ed.D. In the 1960s, about the same time that Albert Ellis was developing his original cognitive-behavioral therapy approach and William Glasser was developing his reality therapy (a cognitive behavior approach that evolved into Choice Theory), an educator named Louis Raths was developing a new affective-cognitive-behavioral counseling approach that eventually came to be called “values clarification.”
Book thumbnail image Ben Jonson: such is fame By Ian Donaldson Some years ago, while I was working in Australia’s national capital, Canberra, I was about to give a lecture on Ben Jonson when the telephone rang. It was the Canadian High Commission on the phone. A small delegation (I was told) was just setting out to hear the lecture, and wanted more precise directions to the place where I’d be speaking.
Book thumbnail image Eating horse in austerity Britain By Dr Mark Roodhouse On 27 April 1942, the Bow Street magistrates convicted The Waldorf Hotel, London, its head chef, and a London horseflesh dealer for ignoring the regulations fixing the maximum price of horsemeat. The chef paid the dealer £6 10s for 78 lb of horsemeat, nearly double the official price of £3 18s. Two American journalists, staying at The Waldorf while reporting on the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, read the news with consternation.
Book thumbnail image World Social Work Day: Against neoliberal social work? By John Harris and Vicky White Social workers around the world are being invited to celebrate World Social Work Day on 19 March under the banner “Promoting Social and Economic Equalities”, taken from the Global Agenda (2010). Such a call to arms is sorely needed in the face of the growing influence of neoliberalism on global social work, an influence manifested in marketisation, consumerisation, and managerialisation.
The case for a European intelligence service with full British participation By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones The question is not what can membership in the European Union do for us in the UK, but what can we do for the EU? There is one way in which we British can strengthen the benefits of union. We can demand and nourish a European Intelligence Service (EIS). Forget the parochial moaning, the time is ripe for such an initiative.
Book thumbnail image Two visions of the end in Wagner’s Parsifal By William Kinderman Two centuries after Richard Wagner’s birth in 1813, his final music drama Parsifal continues to exert uncanny fascination, as Francois Girard’s new production at the Metropolitan Opera shows. For much of his life, Wagner was captivated by the legends of the Holy Grail; this “stage consecration festival play” is his culminating work. Dark episodes in Parsifal’s performance history display clearly the risks of its aesthetic treatment of redemption, which can project a hypnotic portrayal of collective identity.
Book thumbnail image Preparing for ASIL 2013 By Ninell Silberberg In How Nations Behave, Louis Henkin’s classic book on law and foreign policy, he noted that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” The purpose then, of international law, is to provide a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations and a process for resolving conflicts when they arise.
Book thumbnail image March Madness: Atlas Edition – Round Two It’s time for Round Two of March Madness: Atlas Edition, right on the heels of the first round of the March Madness basketball playoffs beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, 19 March 2013. While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
Virginia Woolf on Laurence Sterne By Tim Parnell and Ian Jack The 18th century novelist Laurence Sterne died on March 18 1768. During a recent trip to OUP’s out of print library in Oxford, we came across the 1928 Oxford World’s Classics edition of his novel A Sentimental Journey, which included an introduction by none other than Virginia Woolf.
Book thumbnail image Buyer Beware: The case of Lysol disinfectant By Kristin Hall As North Americans, should we have confidence that the products we purchase are safe? Should we trust that manufacturers and advertisers keep consumer welfare in mind during the marketing process – from product conception to point of purchase? Of course we should. One would hope that corporations would have a sense of moral responsibility to act in the best interest of their customers.
Book thumbnail image Five inconvenient truths about the Antarctic By Klaus Dodds When I wrote The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction, I wanted the book to be something of a provocation. The aim, in short, was to highlight things that often get neglected in the midst of stories and images of past and present explorers, melting ice caps, tourists and the penguin. The reality is rather more disturbing.
Book thumbnail image Hypnosis for chronic pain management By Mark P. Jensen How can hypnosis affect pain management? The results from three lines of research have combined to create a renewed interest in the application of hypnosis for chronic pain management. First, imaging studies demonstrate that the effects of hypnotic suggestions on brain activity are real and can target specific aspects of pain. Hypnosis for decreases in the intensity of pain result not only in significant decreases in pain intensity, but also decreases in activity in the brain areas that underlie the experience of pain intensity.
Book thumbnail image Erasmus Darwin: sex, science, and serendipity By Patricia Fara The world, wrote Darwin, resembles ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice.’ Unexpectedly, that fine image of competitive natural selection was created not by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), but by his grandfather Erasmus (1731-1802)
Book thumbnail image Benedict XVI, Francis, and St. Augustine of Hippo By Miles Hollingworth We have a new Pope: Francis — a name honouring St. Francis of Assisi, who venerated poverty and recommended it to his followers. In the build up to his election, a good deal of attention was naturally directed to the challenges facing the Catholic Church. Not least of these is the question of social justice and the plight of the global poor.
Book thumbnail image World War II vocabulary To celebrate the imminent release of Oral History Review (OHR)’s latest issue, 40.1, on oral history in the digital age, we’re delighted to share a chat between managing editor Troy Reeves and contributor Lindsey Barnes. Barnes and her colleague Kim Guise are co-authors of “World War Words: The Creation of a World War II–Specific Vocabulary for the Oral History Collection at The National WWII Museum,” a case study of developing controlled vocabulary for the oral history collections at the National WWII Museum.
Book thumbnail image Beware the Ides of March! By Greg Woolf Romans measured time in months but not in weeks. The Ides simply meant the middle day of a month and it functioned simply as a temporal navigation aid — one that looks clumsy to us. So one might make an appointment for two days before the Ides or for three days after the Kalends (the first day of the month) and so on.
Book thumbnail image Medical law and ethics: portrait of a partnership In many textbook titles and university courses, ‘medical law’ and ‘ethics’ are spoken of in the same breath, as one might speak of Darby and Joan. It’s often assumed that there’s a solid, uncomplicated marriage, in which each partner knows his or her function; or at least an efficiently commercial partnership governed by a clearly drafted document. But, like most real relationships, it’s not so simple.
Book thumbnail image A David Bowie quiz He goes by many names: Ziggy Stardust, the Thin White Duke, David Robert Jones… yes, it’s David Bowie. This British musician, actor, and artist is known for his many metamorphoses and accomplishments, from his surprise hit single “Space Oddity” in 1969 to a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 11th Annual Webby Awards in 2011. In celebration of the new Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, we’ve pulled together a brief quiz from information in the Oxford Index on this eclectic artist who has also just released his first album in over a decade.
Book thumbnail image Divided nations By Ian Goldin The growing disconnect between the problems that bind us and the countries that divide is the greatest threat to humanity. Each day we are confronted by mounting evidence of the yawning governance gap. Recently, British people have been surprised to find their meat has been through the mincer of multiple legal jurisdictions through which beef has been blended with horse.
Book thumbnail image Identifying Mrs Meeke By Simon Macdonald During the French Revolution many of the losers in the process of regime change found their property, including their private papers, snapped up by the new authorities. For historians, some of the richest pickings among this material relate to people whose lives, had they not collided with the revolutionary state, might otherwise have gone unrecorded. While exploring these archives a few years ago, I came across a remarkable cache confiscated from an Englishman who had been living in revolutionary Paris.
Fools and horses By Dick Hobbs The news that sections of the UK public may have been munching on horse, rather than beef, has prompted renditions of an all too familiar refrain from British politicians and their cohorts in the media. “Mafia gangs” and “mobsters” have apparently combined in an “international conspiracy” to doctor the rump of the British menu in the form of cheap frozen meals.
Twerk, twerp, and other tw-words By Anatoly Liberman I decided to throw a look at a few tw-words while writing my previous post on the origin of dance. In descriptions of grinding and the Harlem Shake, twerk occurs with great regularity. The verb means “to move one’s buttocks in a suggestive way.” It has not yet made its way into OED and perhaps never will (let us hope so), but its origin hardly poses a problem: twerk must be a blend of twist (or twitch) and work (or jerk).
Book thumbnail image How we can use the Internet to resolve intergroup conflict By Yair Amichai-Hamburger Conflicts across the world between communities cause high levels of social and physical devastation as well as a large drain in resources, but how can relations be improved? Psychologist Gordon Allport realized that a casual contact between rival group members will not change the stereotype that each holds on the other, particularly if there are status differences between the groups.
Book thumbnail image Responding to Homer: women’s voices By Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos When George Steiner was musing in 2002 (in his review of Logue’s War Music) on the shapes and forms that responses to Homer seemed likely to take in the new millennium, he welcomed the work of Louise Glück and Jorie Graham as the first shoots of a female reworking of Homer. In Glück’s Meadowlands (1998) we find a lyric Odyssey in the depiction of a modern marriage disintegrating, while in The End of Beauty (1987) Graham’s Penelope delights in unravelling and thereby deconstructing earlier poetic forms. The fact that both writers draw on the Odyssey rather than the Iliad appears to lend substance to Samuel Butler’s conviction, remembered by Steiner, that the Odyssey is ‘woman’s work.’
Book thumbnail image A feminist reading list from Oxford World’s Classics By Kirsty Doole March is International Women’s History Month, so what better time to suggest some feminist-friendly classics from our Oxford World’s Classics series? Below you’ll find a mixture of fiction, politics, and religion, and while some will probably be familiar, I’ve thrown in a couple of less conventional choices for a feminist list. Agree with these choices? Disagree? What have I missed out? Let us know in the comments.
Book thumbnail image The Academy Awards (as seen from the other Academy) By Lucy Fischer During my childhood, there were only two “award” shows that I watched religiously. One was the Miss America Pageant (I am, after all, “of a certain age”) and the other was the Oscars. I abandoned the former long before its demise (as a card-carrying feminist) but the latter has remained on my viewing schedule. In fact, it is often one of the few programs I still watch “live” given that my TV viewing is entirely DVR-dependent.
Book thumbnail image Five women songwriters who helped shape the sound of jazz By Ted Gioia The songwriting business offered few opportunities to women in the early 20th century. And jazz bandleaders, despite their own experiences with discrimination, were hardly more tolerant of female talent. Although audiences expected the leading orchestras to showcase a ‘girl singer’, women were rarely allowed to serve in other capacities, either on the bandstand or writing arrangements and compositions.
Book thumbnail image March Madness: Atlas Edition On 19 March 2013, 64 college basketball teams will meet on the court for the battle of the year. In the United States, college basketball season ends when elite teams compete in March Madness over the course of four weeks. Teams compete based on their placement in a regional bracket, and either go home or move forward after a single game. Four teams will make the “Final Four” on 6 April, and on 8 April, the NCAA will have its college basketball champion.
Book thumbnail image Can art forgers be artists too? Art forgeries are often decried for crime, but could they be considered art? Many young artists learn to copy old master before refining their own work, and contemporary artists often play with ideas of authorship. So can an art forger be considered a legitimate artist? Do they want to make a statement? What motivates art forgers to commit forgery? We spoke with Jonathon Keats, author of Forged: Why Fakes are the Great Art of Our Age. – See more at: https://blog.oup.com/2013/03/art-forgers-artists/?preview=true&preview_id=36324&preview_nonce=600140b224#sthash.OZRHQ9Ow.dpuf
Book thumbnail image A history of psycholinguistics in the pre-Chomskyan era By Willem Levelt How do we speak and how do we understand language? It is widely believed that the scientific study of these uniquely human abilities was launched during the 1950s with the advent of Noam Chomsky’s generative linguistics. True, modern psycholinguistics received a major impulse from this “cognitive revolution,” but the empirical study of how we speak and listen and how children acquire these amazing skills has its roots in the late 18th century
Book thumbnail image The connection from physical to mental By Robert Kirk Physicalists like me think everything in the world is ultimately physical, and that the physical facts provide for all the facts, including consciousness. But how should we conceive of the link between physical and mental?
Book thumbnail image Home clutter, confusion, and chaos Spring cleaning is just around the corner. In this excerpt from Pursuing the Good Life (originally published on Psychology Today), the late Christopher Peterson reflects on his own clutter and the detrimental effects of clutter on people.
Book thumbnail image Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day By Philip Carter This Sunday, if you give (or receive) cards, flowers, and gifts for Mothering Sunday, spare a thought forConstance Adelaide Smith. In 1913 Constance read an article in a local newspaper which described plans to introduce to Britain an American ‘Mother’s Day’ celebration. The aim, as devised by the Philadelphian Anna Jarvis, was to establish a celebration to be held annually on the second Sunday in May
Book thumbnail image Six facts about physiology The Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online. To highlight some of the great resources, we’ve pulled together some interesting facts about physiology from James R. Munis’s Just Enough Physiology.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Rain on the sun edition By Alice Northover OUP author Jason Mittell is understandably proud of his student’s excellent video. March Madness begins. We’ll be starting our own on the OUPblog and OxfordWords, but to start one for the papacy and of course Tournament of Books. American Revolutionary art Internet-ed. And more links for your reading pleasure…
Book thumbnail image Why are Mexicans leaving farm work, and what does this mean for US farmers? By J. Edward Taylor and Diane Charlton Agriculture in North America traditionally has had its comparative advantage in having access to abundant low-skilled labor from Mexico. Around 70% of the United States hired farm workforce is Mexico-born, according to the National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS). Fruit, vegetable, and horticultural farms in the US have enjoyed an extended period of farm labor abundance with stable or decreasing real wages.
Can women fight? By Anthony King On 24 January 2013, Leon Panetta, the US Secretary of State for Defence, made an historic announcement: from 2016, combat roles would be open to female service personnel. For the first time, women would be allowed to serve in the infantry. Applauded in liberal quarters, the decision was widely seen as unproblematic since it merely ratified a de facto reality.
Book thumbnail image Mary and Joan on International Women’s Day International Women’s Day has grown since the 1900s to become a global occasion to inspire women and celebrate achievements. Perhaps two of the most inspirational female figures from history are the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc. We spoke with Marina Warner, author of the seminal titles, Joan of Arc: The Image of Female Heroism and Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary, about these women and their historical and personal impact.
Book thumbnail image Bestsellers: a snapshot of an age To celebrate World Book Day this week, we take a look at what John Sutherland thinks about why we read bestsellers and what they say about the age in which they were published, in his Very Short Introduction to Bestsellers.
Book thumbnail image P.A.J. Waddington on jury service By Professor J. Waddington Fortunately, I have escaped the obligation of performing jury service, but I know many who have been less fortunate. The stories they tell of their experience hardly fosters confidence in this institution that enjoys such a position of unquestioned pre-eminence in the Common Law criminal trial. They tell of ignorant, utterly disengaged, deeply prejudiced people, often more anxious to escape the confines of the court and resume their lives, than committed to doing justice.
Book thumbnail image Controlling the fable-makers Along with Plato, Aristotle (384–322 bc) was one of the two greatest philosophers of antiquity, and in the view of many he was the greatest philosopher of all time. His Poetics is the most influential book on poetry ever written and is a founding text of European aesthetics and literary criticism. We present a brief extract from Republic, Books Two and Three.
Book thumbnail image Diary of a string time teacher By Kathy Blackwell A friend once asked if I ever get bored teaching the violin and doing the same thing year after year. He was surprised when I said “It’s anything but dull and boring!” I have always enjoyed the unique character and style of each student, and it’s a privilege as a teacher to see them develop over the years.
Book thumbnail image Descartes’ dogs By Robert V. McNamee and Daniel Parker It is well known in the history of psychology that Descartes was an early thinker on what we would now call classical conditioning or Pavlovian conditioning, which he referred to as “reflex”. However, an early epistolary reference seems generally to be missed: his letter to his friend Marin Mersenne, 18 March 1630.
The Harlem Shake and English etymology By Anatoly Liberman American schools dance nonstop. A wild display of “flailing arms and wriggling torsos,” known as the Harlem Shake, is the latest addition to our civilization. High school “kids” writhe eel-like on the floor, chairs, and tables, fall, sometimes break arms and legs, and have fun, which is the unassailable backbone of our educational system. At some places, teachers and principals dance with the kids and thus double the amount of fun.
Book thumbnail image Even small government incentives can help tackle entrenched social problems By Leonard A. Jason As the federal bureaucracy continues to struggle with philosophical issues of the appropriate role of government, many Americans feel that our political parties are incapable of providing credible solutions to the nation’s burgeoning societal and economic problems.
Book thumbnail image Beastly Eastleigh and the ‘None-of-the-Above’ Party By Matthew Flinders I’d never even heard of Eastleigh, let alone been there, until a couple of weeks ago. When I did go there I wished that I hadn’t. The fact that I am told that the ‘notable residents’ of Eastleigh include Benny Hill and Stephen Gough (the ‘naked rambler’ no less) did little to quell the stench of good-times-past that hung in the air. But last week the people of Eastleigh spoke – in record numbers – and their message was clear: ‘sod off’.
Book thumbnail image Why I like Ike – sometimes By Andrew J. Polsky We are in the midst of a great Dwight Eisenhower revival. Our 34th president, whose tenure once appeared to be little more than a sleepy interlude between the New Deal era and the tumultuous 1960s, is very much in vogue again. The past year has seen the publication of three major new biographies. On 7-8 March, Ike’s presidential legacy and its implications for our own time will be the focus of a conference at Hunter College in New York City.
Book thumbnail image A conversation with Chet Raymo on White-crowned Sparrows and other matters By Douglas E. Christie Does the world have a voice? Do particular places have a distinctive vocabulary, grammar, and syntax all their own? Can we learn this language, learn to attune our ears to its music and perhaps in this way come to inhabit the world with more care and feeling? These are not new questions, nor are they original to me.
Book thumbnail image Stalin’s curse By Robert Gellately My interest in the Cold War has developed over many years. In fact, as I look back, I would say that it began around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s when I was still in high school. Over the years, as a college student and then as a university professor, I began to look more closely at the vast literature that developed on the topic and to examine the bitter controversies that had raged since 1945.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles record “From Me to You,” Tuesday 5 March 1963 By Gordon R. Thompson With Northern Songs (their publishing company) established, the Beatles needed a song for their next single and, flushed with the success of “Please Please Me” and the emerging ecstasy at their performances, they again brought together elements from different songs in their repertoire to create something new and fresh. George Martin scheduled a recording session for Tuesday 5 March, towards the end of their first national tour when they served as a warm-up act to British singer Helen Shapiro.
Book thumbnail image Patsy Cline… 50 years on On 5 March 1963, a plane flying over Tennessee encountered inclement weather and crashed. On board were some of the great country musical talent of the time, including Randy Hughes, Cowboy Copas, Hawkshaw Hawkins, and Patsy Cline. A star of both country and popular music, Cline is remembered as one of the greatest American singers of the 20th century. The following is an extract from The Encyclopedia of Country Music entry on Patsy Cline by Margaret Jones.
Book thumbnail image For stronger gun control laws; against the divestiture of gun stocks By Edward Zelinsky Even before the events in Newtown, I supported the strengthening of gun control laws. Advocates of gun rights correctly assert the need for better enforcement of existing laws as well as the urgency of confronting the violent nature of our culture. But General McChrystal is also correct. There is no compelling reason for civilians to own or possess high capacity weaponry designed for military missions.
My favorite insult By William Irvine When friends heard that I was working on a book on insults, I typically had some explaining to do: “It is not a book of insults; it is a book about insults and the role they play in human society.” They would go on to ask whether, in my research, I had come across any good insults. Indeed I had. In the process of doing research, I had not only read every insult anthology I could get my hands on but categorized the insults I found there.
Book thumbnail image Port and border security By Andrew Staniforth In direct response to the increased post-9/11 terrorist threat from al Qa’ida, the British government appointed Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC as Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation (IRTL) during 2001. In more than nine years as Independent Reviewer, Lord Carlile spent a considerable proportion of his time on ports and border security. This was perhaps a mundane part of the Reviewer’s routine, but its importance struck him very quickly.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford guide to women’s history: quiz In the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography you’ll currently find biographies of 6340 women who’ve shaped British history and culture between the 1st and 21st century — making it one of the most extensive accounts of women’s contribution to national life. Who are these women?
Book thumbnail image The KKK in North Carolina How can mainstream institutions and ideals subsume organized racism and political extremism? Why did the United Klans of America (UKA) once flourish in the Tar Heel state? From lax policing to a lack of mainstream outlets for segregationist resistance, a variety of factors led to the creation of one of the strongest and most complex Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups in America — and a dramatic conservative shift in North Carolina.
Book thumbnail image The Constitution and the health care debate Many Americans share a deep reverence of the Constitution — perhaps to the country’s detriment. While we have learned from the Founders and Framers, they didn’t issue commandments. They left room for interpretation, change, and even some disobedience. Louis Michael Seidman, author of On Constitutional Disobedience, spoke to us about how this eighteenth century document is influencing our modern debate on health care and his controversial take on how to bring American laws up to date.
Book thumbnail image Michael Gillette on Lady Bird Johnson and oral history This episode of the OHR on OUPblog, I take the opportunity to interview Michael Gillette, author of Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History. In this podcast, Gillette discusses the book, the research behind and process of interviewing “Mrs. Johnson,” and his current role as executive director of Humanities Texas. Our host, Oxford University Press, published Lady Bird Johnson at the end of last year.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to the 2013 Papal Elections By Kimberly Hernandez Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI retired from his papal duties with the intention to lead a life of prayer in seclusion. His sudden abdication has left many of the faithful wondering who will step in as his successor. While there are rumors that the next Pope may be from Latin America or Africa, the exact process of how a Pope is chosen is still shrouded in mystery.
Book thumbnail image Medical Law: A Very, Very, Very, Very Short Introduction By Charles Foster By the standards of most books, the Very Short Introduction to Medical law is indeed very short: 35,000 or so words. As every writer of a VSI knows, it is hard to compress your subject into such a tiny box. But I wonder if I could have been much, much shorter. 88 words, in fact.
February 2013 (89))
Metre and alliteration in The Kalevala By Keith Bosley The Kalevala’s influence lies not only in Finnish history — such as its essential role in fostering a distinct sense of national cultural identity that resulted in its independence in 1917 following the Russian Revolution — but elsewhere too. One of the more famous examples may be found in J.R.R. Tolkien, who credited several aspects of the Finnish epic and the language as part of the inspiration behind The Lord of the Rings. Väinämöinen, the wise old sage, was a source of inspiration for the character of Gandalf, and Tolkien was rapt with excitement upon discovering a Finnish Grammar.
Music during World War II By Annegret Fauser When politicians attempt to capture a unifying moment, they often choose the music of Aaron Copland. Why? Classical music in 1940s America had a ubiquitous cultural presence at time when national identity consolidated.
Book thumbnail image Ten ways to rethink ‘Arthur’s Britain’ Guy Halsall, author of Worlds of Arthur: Facts and Fictions of the Dark Ages, illuminates the reality behind the façade of myths and legends concerning King Arthur. He outlines here ten ways which will challenge what you thought you knew about the legendary King Arthur and the world in which he was supposed to have lived.
Monthly etymology gleanings for February 2013 By Anatoly Liberman My usual thanks to those who have commented on the posts, written me letters privately or through OUP, and corrected the rare but irritating typos. I especially appreciate comments that deal with the languages remote from my sphere of interest: Arabic, Farsi, Romany, and so forth. But, even while dealing with the languages that are close to my area of expertise (for example, Sanskrit and Frisian), quite naturally, I feel less comfortable in them than in English, German, or Icelandic (my “turf”).
Book thumbnail image Medical apocalypse By Richard Gunderman, MD PhD When many people hear the word apocalypse, they picture four remorseless horsemen bringing death and destruction during the world’s final days. In fact, the Greeks who introduced the word over 2,000 years ago had no intention of invoking the end times. Instead the word apocalypse, which is composed of the roots for “away” and “cover,” means to pull the cover away, to reveal, and to see hidden things.
Book thumbnail image Don’t get taken for a ride: taxis and other “tricky” markets By Loukas Balafoutas Have you ever wondered if your car mechanic is charging you too much? Or been worried about taking your laptop to a computer specialist, because that might cost you almost as much as a new computer? Have you ever suspected that your taxi is driving you in circles when you were visiting a tourist destination?
Book thumbnail image The financial decline of great powers By Guy Rowlands When great powers decline it is often the case that financial troubles are a key component of the slide. The vertiginous decline of a state’s financial system under extreme pressure, year after year, not only saps the strength and volume of financial activity, it also proves extremely difficult to reverse, and the great risk is that a disastrous situation is worsened by misguided and ultimately catastrophic attempts on the part of a government to dig itself out of its hole.
Book thumbnail image Ford Madox Ford and unfilmable Modernism By Max Saunders One definition of a classic book is a work which inspires repeated metamorphoses. Romeo and Juliet, Gulliver’s Travels, Frankenstein, Dracula, The Great Gatsby don’t just wait in their original forms to be watched or read, but continually migrate from one medium to another: painting, opera, melodrama, dramatization, film, comic-strip. New technologies inspire further reincarnations
Book thumbnail image A history of Fashion Week By Anna Wright and Emily Ardizzone Fashion weeks showcase the latest trends, which often blend dazzling technical innovation with traditional craftsmanship, and from a design point of view present a heady mix of the classic and surprising, of newness and renewal. The first Fashion Week of 2013 has been no exception, with surprises including John Galliano’s controversial return to the fashion world.
Book thumbnail image Follow-up: Is it music? A closer look By Meghann Wilhoite In December I blogged about composers whose works challenge listeners to reconsider which combinations of sounds qualify as music and which do not. Interestingly, The Atlantic recently ran an article relating the details of a study that tested how much of our perception of what is “music” – in this case, pleasant, consonant music – is learned (and thus not innate).
Book thumbnail image Do the Oscars snub films without redemptive messages? By Elijah Siegler Last night at the Oscars, the Academy awarded a golden statuette to a film about a flawed hero who we the audience empathize with, who departs their normal life, enters a strange world, but returns triumphantly. Did I just describe Best Picture Winner Argo?
Book thumbnail image Social media and the culture of connectivity By José van Dijck In 2006, there appeared to be a remarkable consensus among Internet gurus, activists, bloggers, and academics about the promise of Web 2.0 that users would attain more power than they ever had in the era of mass media. Rapidly growing platforms like Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), and Twitter (2006) facilitated users’ desire to make connections and exchange self-generated content.
Images of Ancient Nubia For most of the modern world, ancient Nubia seems an unknown and enigmatic land. Only a handful of archaeologists have studied its history or unearthed the Nubian cities, temples, and cemeteries that once dotted the landscape of southern Egypt and northern Sudan. Nubia’s remote setting in the midst of an inhospitable desert, with access by river blocked by impassable rapids, has lent it not only an air of mystery, but also isolated it from exploration.
Book thumbnail image Five things you might not know about Bobby Moore By Daniel Parker From the iconic image of Bobby Moore holding the World Cup trophy aloft to the famous embrace between him and Pele during the 1970 World Cup, from his loyalty to West Ham United Football Club to his brave struggle against bowel cancer in his later years, Bobby Moore represents a significant chapter in the history of world football. But what about the man behind the bronze? Here are five things you might not have known about the man known as Mooro:
Book thumbnail image Levin’s proposal True love in opposition. Levin and Kitty’s match set against the triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky. How can Tolstoy’s crushing rejection scene (drawn from his own life) be portrayed on screen? A new film adaptation of Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, has opened worldwide, and we’ve paired a scene from the film with an excerpt of the work below.
Book thumbnail image African American lives February marks a month of remembrance for Black History in the United States. It is a time to reflect on the events that have enabled freedom and equality for African Americans, and a time to celebrate the achievements and contributions they have made to the nation.
Thomas Gray and Horace Walpole on Grand Tour, spread news of a papal election, 1739/1740 By Dr. Robert V. McNamee On Sunday, 29 March 1739, two young men, aspiring authors and student friends from Eton College and Cambridge, departed Dover for the Continent. The twenty-two year old Horace Walpole, 4th earl of Orford (1717–1797), was setting out on his turn at the Grand Tour. Accompanying him on the journey, which would take them through France to Italy, was Thomas Gray (1716–1771), future author of the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”.
Book thumbnail image Have conditions improved in Afghanistan since 2001? CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen visited the Carnegie Council in New York City late last year to discuss “Talibanistan,” a collection he recently edited for Oxford University Press. Bergen, who produced the first television interview with Osama bin Laden in 1997, discussed the positive changes in Afghanistan over the past ten years: “Afghans have a sense that what is happening now is better than a lot of things they’ve lived through…”
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Tumbled edition By Alice Northover Another week, another delayed Friday procrastination. Last week I was rumbled in the demands to tumble — that is, Oxford University Press’s academic division has a shiny new Tumblr. For those of you in publishing and not on Tumblr, the inordinately helpful Rachel Fershleiser gave a presentation on Tumblr tips earlier this week. So without further ado…
Book thumbnail image On the Battle of the Atlantic Winston Churchill is surrounded by many popular and well-entrenched myths. Despite his long and close relationship with the Royal Navy, he is regarded by many as an inept strategist who interfered in naval operations and often overrode his professional advisers with inevitably disastrous results. In the video below, we chatted with author Christopher Bell, who shed some light on the misconceptions behind the Battle of the Atlantic.
Book thumbnail image The Franco-German connection and the future of Europe By Ulrich Krotz and Joachim Schild Ten years ago, at the Elysée Treaty’s 40th anniversary, Alain Juppé characterized France and Germany as the “privileged guardians of the European cohesion.” As the European Union’s key countries celebrated the 50th anniversary of their bilateral Treaty, Europe traverses a whole set of crises making the Franco-German “entente élémentaire” (Willy Brandt) appear as ever more important for providing or preserving European crisis management, decision-making, and, in whatever exact form: cohesion.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and Northern Songs, 22 February 1963 By Gordon R. Thompson Songwriting had gained the Beatles entry into EMI’s studios and songwriting would distinguish them from most other British performers in 1963. Sid Colman at publishers Ardmore and Beechwood had been the first to sense a latent talent, bringing them to the attention of George Martin at Parlophone. Martin in turn had recommended Dick James as a more ambitious exploiter of their potential catalogue.
Book thumbnail image North Korea and the bomb By Joseph M. Siracusa It is vital to begin any discussion of North Korea’s nuclear program with an understanding of the limits on available information regarding its development. North Korea has been very effective in denying the outside world any significant information on its nuclear program. As a result, the outside world has had little direct evidence of the North Korean efforts and has mainly relied on indirect inferences, leaving substantial uncertainties.
Book thumbnail image De Quincey’s wicked book By Robert Morrison In The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Immanuel Kant gives the standard eighteenth-century line on opium. Its “dreamy euphoria,” he declares, makes one “taciturn, withdrawn, and uncommunicative,” and it is “therefore…permitted only as a medicine.” Eighty-five years later, in The Gay Science (1882), Friedrich Nietzsche too discusses drugs, but he has a very different story to tell.
Book thumbnail image The Nat “King” Cole Show: pioneer of music television By Ron Rodman In this blog last month, I wrote about Dr. Billy Taylor and his pioneering work on television as an advocate for jazz. To celebrate Black History Month, it is appropriate to mention another African American musician who was a pioneer on American television: Nat King Cole, jazz pianist and vocalist, was the first African American musician to host a nationally-broadcast musical variety show in the history of television.
Book thumbnail image ‘And the Oscar went to …’ In his acceptance speech at the 1981 Oscars (best original screenplay, Chariots of Fire), Colin Welland offered the now famous prediction that ‘The British are coming!’ There have since been some notable British Oscar successes: Jessica Tandy for Driving Miss Daisy (1989); director Anthony Minghella for The English Patient (1996); Helen Mirren (in The Queen, 2006).
Out of Shakespeare: ‘Aroint thee’ By Anatoly Liberman Dozens of words have not been forgotten only because Shakespeare used them. Scotch (as in scotch the snake), bare bodkin, and dozens of others would have taken their quietus and slept peacefully in the majestic graveyard of the Oxford English Dictionary but for their appearance in Shakespeare’s plays. Aroint would certainly have been unknown but for its appearance in Macbeth and King Lear.
Book thumbnail image American copyright in the digital age In 2010, Aaron Swartz, a 26-year-old computer programmer and founder of Reddit, downloaded thousands of scholarly articles from the online journal archive JSTOR. He had legal access to the database through his research fellowship at Harvard University; he also, however, had a history of dramatic activism against pay-for-content online services, having previously downloaded and released roughly 100,000,000 documents from the PACER database.
Book thumbnail image The best of times? Student days, mental illness, and gender By Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman Students are often told — perhaps by excited friends or nostalgic parents — that university is the best time of their life. Well, for some people these years may live up to their billing. For many others, however, things aren’t so straightforward. College can prove more of a trial than a pleasure.
Book thumbnail image Richard Burbage: Shakespeare’s first Hamlet By Bart van Es The death of Richard Burbage in 1619 caused a minor scandal. So lavish was the outpouring of grief that it threatened to overshadow official mourning for Queen Anne who had died a few days before. Shakespeare’s leading actor had a legendary status in the seventeenth century. It is also a minor scandal that he is not more famous today.
Book thumbnail image Obama’s State of the Union Address By Elvin Lim Obama’s speech last week was an attempt to be as partisan or liberal as possible, while sounding as reasonable as possible. “Why would that be a partisan issue, helping folks refinance?” the president asked as part of this strategy. The Republican Party continues to suffer an image problem of being out of the mainstream, and the president was trying to capitalize on this moment of vulnerability.
Book thumbnail image Cyber attacks: electric shock By Alfred Rolington Cyber attacks on Iran have been well publicised in the press and on Western television. General William Shelton, a top American cyber general, has now turned these attacks around saying that these events are giving Iran a strategic and tactical cyber advantage creating a very serious “force to be reckoned with.”
Papal resignations through the years After eight years, Pope Benedict announced on Monday 11 February that he would step down as pontiff within two weeks. While abdication is not unheard of, it is the first papal resignation in almost 600 years. A Dictionary of Popes gives an overview of those who gave up the Papacy before him. Full entries can be found on Oxford Reference.
Book thumbnail image Jazz lives in the African American National Biography By Scott Yanow When I was approached by the good folks at Oxford University Press to write some entries on jazz artists, I noticed that while the biggest names (Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.) were already covered, many other artists were also deserving of entries. There were several qualities that I looked for in musicians before suggesting that they be written about.
Book thumbnail image Five books for Presidents Day By John Ferling Picking out five books on the founding of the nation, and its leaders, is not an easy task. I could easily have listed twenty-five that were important to me. But here goes
Book thumbnail image Prepping for tax season The W2s are in the mail and tax providers’ commercials on TV. Yes, it’s tax season and time for a reminder about what and why taxes are. Here’s a brief excerpt from Taxes in America: What Everyone Needs to Know by Leonard E. Burman and Joel Slemrod.
Book thumbnail image The presidents that time forgot By Michael J. Gerhardt If you think that Barack Obama can only learn how to build a lasting legacy from our most revered presidents like Abraham Lincoln, you should think twice. I am sure that Obama knows what great presidents did that made them great. He can also learn, however, from some once popular presidents who are now forgotten because they made mistakes or circumstances that helped to bury their legacies.
Book thumbnail image What does the future hold for international arbitration? How can we outline the discussion on the law and practice of international arbitration? What is the legal process like from the drafting of the arbitration agreements to the enforcement of arbitral awards? Long-time international arbitrators Constantine Partasides, Alan Redfern, and Martin Hunters — co-authors of Redfern and Hunter on International Arbitration: Fifth Edition with Nigel Blackaby — sat down with the OUPblog to discuss the latest developments in their field.
Book thumbnail image Do people tend to live within their own ethnic groups? By Maisy Wong There are many policies around the world designed to encourage ethnic desegregation in housing markets. In Chicago, the Gautreaux Project (the predecessor of the Moving To Opportunity program) offered rent subsidies to African American residents of public housing who wanted to move to desegregated areas. Germany, the United Kingdom, and Netherlands, impose strict restrictions on where refugee immigrants can settle. Many countries also have “integration maintenance programs” or “neighborhood stabilization programs” to encourage desegregation. These policies are often controversial as they are alleged to favor some ethnic groups at the expense of others. Regardless of the motivation behind these policies, knowing the welfare effects is important because these desegregation policies affect the location choices of many individuals.
Book thumbnail image A quiz on Prohibition How much do you know about the era of Prohibition, when gangsters rose to power and bathtub gin became a staple? 2013 marks the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the wildly unpopular 18th amendment, initiated on 17 February 1933 when the Blaine Act passed the United States Senate. To celebrate, test your knowledge with this quiz below, filled with tidbits of 1920s trivia gleaned from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America: Second Edition.
Book thumbnail image The tragic death of an actor By Maya Slater The farce is at its height: the old clown in the armchair is surrounded by whirling figures in outlandish doctors’ costumes, welcoming him into their brotherhood with a mock initiation ceremony. He takes the Latin oath: ‘Juro’, falters. His face crumples. The audience gasps – is something wrong? But the clown is grinning now, all is well, the dancing grows frenzied, the play rushes on to its end. Not till the next day will the audience find out what happened afterwards. They carried the clown off the stage in his chair, and rushed him home. He was coughing blood, dying. He asked for his wife, and for a priest to confess him. They failed to arrive before he died.
Book thumbnail image The five stages of climate change acceptance By Andrew T. Guzman A few days ago, the President of the United States used the State of the Union address to call for action on climate change. The easy way to do so would have been to call on Congress to take action. Had President Obama framed his remarks in this way, he would have given a nod to those concerned about climate change, but nothing would happen because there is virtually no chance of Congressional action.
Book thumbnail image Re-introducing Oral History in the Digital Age By Caitlin Tyler-Richards By Caitlin Tyler-Richards This week, in the spirit of our upcoming special issue on oral history’s evolving technologies, we want to (re)introduce everyone to the website Oral History in the Digital Age, a substantial collaboration between several institutions to “put museums, libraries, and oral historians in a position to address collectively issues of video, digitization, preservation, and intellectual property.
Book thumbnail image The bombing of Monte Cassino On the 15th of February 1944, Allied planes bombed the abbey at Monte Cassino as part of an extended campaign against the Axis. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. Over four months, the Battle of Monte Cassino would inflict some 200,000 causalities and rank as one of the most horrific battles of World War II. This excerpt from Peter Caddick-Adams’s Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell, recounts the bombing.
Book thumbnail image The abdication of Pope Benedict XVI Gerald O’Collins, SJ “Pope Benedict is 78 years of age. Father O’Collins, do you think he’ll resign at 80?” “Brian,” I said, “give him a chance. He hasn’t even started yet.” It was the afternoon of 19 April 2005, and I was high above St Peter’s Square standing on the BBC World TV platform with Brian Hanrahan. The senior cardinal deacon had just announced from the balcony of St Peter’s to a hundred thousand people gathered in the square: “Habemus Papam.” Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected pope.
Book thumbnail image Comfort food By Georgia Mierswa This Valentine’s Day-themed tech post was supposed to be just that—a way to show that all that sexy metadata powering the Oxford Index’s sleek exterior has a sweet, romantic side, just like the rest of the population at this time of year. I’d bounce readers from a description of romantic comedies to Romeo and Juliet to the three-act opera Elegy for Young Lovers, and then change the Index’s featured homepage title to something on the art of love to complete the heart shaped, red-ribboned picture.
Book thumbnail image Valentine’s Day serenades By Alyssa Bender Love is in the air at Oxford University Press! As we celebrate Valentine’s Day, we’ve asked staff members from our offices in New York, Oxford, and Cary, NC, to share their favorite love songs. Read on for their selections, and be sure to tell us what your favorites are too. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Book thumbnail image A Valentine’s Day Quiz It’s that time of the year again where the greeting cards, roses and chocolates fly off the shelves. What is it about Valentine’s Day that inspires us (and many of the great literary authors) to partake in all kinds of romantic gestures? This month Oxford Reference, the American National Biography Online, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and Who’s Who have joined together to create a quiz to see how knowledgeable you are in Valentine traditions. Do you know who grows some of the sweetest roses or hand-dips the sweetest treats? Find out with our quiz.
Why the corporation is failing us, and how to restore it By Colin Mayer The corporation is the most important institution in the world – an institution that clothes, feeds and houses us; employs us and invests our savings; and is the source of economic prosperity and the growth of nations around the world. At the same time, it has been the cause of terrible poverty, deprivation and environmental degradation, and these problems are set to increase in the future.
‘Guests’ and ‘hosts’ By Anatoly Liberman The questions people ask about word origins usually concern slang, family names, and idioms. I cannot remember being ever asked about the etymology of house, fox, or sun. These are such common words that we take them for granted, and yet their history is often complicated and instructive. In this blog, I usually stay away from them, but I sometimes let my Indo-European sympathies run away with me. Today’s subject is of this type.
Book thumbnail image Ordering off the menu in China debates By Jeffrey Wasserstrom Growing up with no special interest in China, one of the few things I associated with the country was mix and match meal creation. On airplanes and school cafeterias, you just have “chicken or beef” choices, but Chinese restaurants were “1 from Column A, 1 from Column B” domains. If only in recent China debates, a similar readiness to think beyond either/or options prevailed!
Book thumbnail image Why don’t people pay off credit card debt? By Irina A. Telyukova In the United States, around 25% of households tend have a substantial amount of expensive credit card debt that they carry over multiple months or even years, while also holding significant liquid assets, i.e. balances in checking and savings accounts.
Book thumbnail image Will Obama address Afghanistan in his State of the Union address tonight? President Obama is expected to announce at his State of the Union address tonight that 34,000 US troops — half the number currently stationed there — will return from Afghanistan next year. The war in Afghanistan has now continued for over ten years, since US forces entered the country after September 11th. The country, however, is still far from stable.
Book thumbnail image Anna Karenina’s happiness It’s Valentine’s Day on Thursday, so let us celebrate the happiness of brief, all-encompassing love. We’ve paired a scene from the recent film adaptation of Anna Karenina, currently nominated for fours Oscars, with an excerpt of the novel below. In it, Anna and Vronsky discuss the happiness of their newfound love.
Book thumbnail image The essential human foundations of genocide By Louis René Beres “In the end,” says Goethe, “we are creatures of our own making.” Although offered as a sign of optimism, this insight seems to highlight the underlying problem of human wrongdoing. After all, in the long sweep of human history, nothing is more evident and palpable than the unending litany of spectacular crimes.
Book thumbnail image Harry Christophers on Melgás In January 2013 Oxford University Press published a beautiful setting of Salve Regina by Portuguese composer Diogo Dias Melgás (1638-1700). This edition, part of the Musica Dei donum series, is the first published version of the work and includes detailed performance and editorial notes by early music specialist Sally Dunkley. In this video, Harry Christophers […]
Book thumbnail image The dog: How did it become man’s best friend? The 11th February marks the opening of Westminster Kennel Club’s 137th Annual All Breed Dog Show. First held in 1877, the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is America’s second-longest continuously held sporting event, behind only the Kentucky Derby. The Westminster Dog Show epitomizes our long-standing tradition of domestication of dogs, but how did we arrive at such a moment in human and dog relations? The Encyclopedia of Mammals, edited by David MacDonald, offers some explanation as to how this species went from being wild prey-hunters to “best in show”, and from defending territories to defending last year’s titles.
Book thumbnail image Who was Dorothy Wrinch? Remembered today for her much publicized feud with Linus Pauling over the shape of proteins, known as “the cyclol controversy,” Dorothy Wrinch made essential contributions to the fields of Darwinism, probability and statistics, quantum mechanics, x-ray diffraction, and computer science. The first women to receive a doctor of science degree from Oxford University, her understanding of the science of crystals and the ever-changing notion of symmetry has been fundamental to science.
Book thumbnail image On this day: the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death Philip Carter Today, 11 February 2013, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of the poet Sylvia Plath (1932-1963). It is an event that has significantly shaped biographies and critical studies of her work — particularly following the publication of Ariel (1965), her posthumous collection edited and prepared by Ted Hughes. Then, as now, many reviewers regarded these poems as foretelling the circumstances of her death. Plath’s biography in the Oxford DNB offers an alternative perspective.
Book thumbnail image ‘Dr. Murray, Oxford’: a remarkable Editor Dictionaries never simply spring into being, but represent the work and research of many. Only a select few of the people who have helped create the Oxford English Dictionary, however, can lay claim to the coveted title ‘Editor’. In the first of an occasional series for the OxfordWords blog on the Editors of the OED, Peter Gilliver introduces the most celebrated, Sir James A. H. Murray.
Book thumbnail image National Libraries Day UK Ever wondered what the Latin word for owl is? Or what links Fred Perry and Ping Pong? Maybe not, but you may be able to find the answers to these questions and many more at your fingertips in your local library. As areas for ideas, inspiration, imagination, and information Public Libraries are stocked full of not only books but online resources to help one and all find what they need.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Snow leopard edition By Alice Northover It’s Friday once more and I’m holed up in my snow-proof bunker anticipating Nemo — both the storm and the movie. Readers browsing through the damaged library of Holland House in West London, wrecked by a bomb on 22 October 1940. The University of North Carolina’s Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library is publishing one piece of Civil War-era correspondence a day, 150 years to the day after it was written.
Book thumbnail image The strange career of Birth of a Nation By Jim Cullen Today represents a red letter day — and a black mark – for US cultural history. Exactly 98 years ago, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation premiered in Los Angeles. American cinema has been decisively shaped, and shadowed, by the massive legacy of this film.
Book thumbnail image Quiz on the word origins of food and drink Did you know that ‘croissant’ literally means ‘crescent’ or that oranges are native to China? Do you realize that the word ‘pie’ has been around for seven hundred years in English or that ‘toast’ comes from the Latin word for ‘scorch’? John Ayto explores the word origins of food and drink in The Diner’s Dictionary. We’ve made a little quiz based on the book. Are you hungry for it?
Appreciating the perspective of Rastafari By Ennis B. Edmonds Recently, I was discussing my academic interest with an acquaintance from my elementary school days. On revealing that I have researched and written about the Rastafarian movement, I was greeted with a look of incredulity. He followed this look with a question: “How has Rastafari assisted anyone to progress in life?”
Book thumbnail image His name was George F. Babbitt. Sinclair Lewis was the first US writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Known for his insightful and critical depictions of American society, one of Lewis’ most famous works was Babbitt. In honor of the anniversary of Lewis’ birth (7 February 1885), we’ve crept into the archives and dug up some pages from Babbitt for you to enjoy.
Book thumbnail image Based on a “true” story: expecting reality in movies By Arthur P. Shimamura This year’s academy award nominations of Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty, attest to our fascination of watching “true stories” depicted on the screen. We adopt a special set of expectations when we believe a movie is based on actual events, a sentiment the Coen Brothers parodied when they stated at the beginning of Fargo that “this is a true story,” even though it wasn’t.
Book thumbnail image In conversation with Sally Dunkley How can modern singers recreate Renaissance music? The Musica Dei donum series by Oxford University Press explores lesser known works of the Renaissance period. Early music specialists and series editors Sally Dunkley and Francis Steele have gone back to the original manuscripts to create authentic editions in a practical format for the 21st century singer.
Book thumbnail image Two parents after divorce By Simone Frizell Reiter According to Statistics Norway, around 10,000 children under the age of 18 experience divorce every year. These numbers do not take into account non-married couples that split up. Therefore, in reality far more children experience parental separation.
Monthly etymology gleanings for January 2013, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman I am picking up where I left off a week ago. Mare and Mars. Can they be related? The chance is close to zero. Both words are of obscure origin, and attempts to explain an opaque word by referring it to an equally opaque one invariably come out wrong.
Book thumbnail image Maybe academics aren’t so stupid after all By Peter Elbow People who care about good language tend to assume that casual spoken language is full of chaos and error. I shared this belief till I did some substantial research into the linguistics of speech. There’s a surprising reason why we — academics and well-educated folk — should hold this belief: we are the greatest culprits. It turns out that our speech is the most incoherent. Who knew that working class speakers handle spoken English better than academics and the well-educated?
Book thumbnail image The smart fork and the crowding out of thought By Matthew Flinders One of the critical skills of any student of politics – professors, journalists, public servants, writers, politicians and interested members of the public included – is to somehow look beyond or beneath the bigger headlines and instead focus on those peripheral stories that may in fact tell us far more about the changing nature of society. Enter the story of the ‘smart fork’.
Book thumbnail image Why football cannot last By Anthony Scioli, Ph.D. “Just look at the gladiators… and consider the blows they endure! Consider how they who have been well-disciplined prefer to accept a blow than ignominiously avoid it! How often it is made clear that they consider nothing other than the satisfaction of their [coach] or the [fans]! Even when they are covered with wounds they send a messenger to their [coach] to inquire his will.
Book thumbnail image A history of smuggling in America Today America is the world’s leading anti-smuggling crusader. While honorable, that title is also an ironic one when you consider America’s very close history of… smuggling. Our illicit imports have ranged from West Indies molasses and Dutch gunpowder in the 18th century, to British industrial technologies and African slaves in the 19th century, to French condoms and Canadian booze in the early 20th century, to Mexican workers and Colombian cocaine in the modern era. Simply put, America was built by smugglers.
Book thumbnail image Are you still writing 2012 on your tweets? By Mark Peters Twitter is a joke factory, where professional comics and civilian jesters crank out one-liners round the clock. In that joke factory, there are popular models. Every day, new jokes play on phrases such as “Dance like no one is watching,” “Sex is like pizza,” and “When life hands you lemons.” While the repetition can be maddening, I’m impressed by how, inevitably, there’s always another good joke lurking in even the most tired formula.
Book thumbnail image Why does “Ol’ Man River” still stop Show Boat? By Todd Decker Show Boat is back on the boards, visiting four major opera companies in a new production of yet another new version. Originally debuted on Broadway in 1927, apparently Show Boat will never stop being remade. The new production, directed by Francesca Zambello, had its premiere at the Chicago Lyric Opera a year ago, an appropriate starting place as much of the second act takes place in the Windy City.
Book thumbnail image Psychological adaptive mechanism assessment and cancer survival By Thomas P. Beresford, M.D. Psychological treatment studies that did not measure the maturity of psychological adaptive mechanisms in cancer patients have reported conflicting cancer survival results. Widely publicized studies noted increased survival rates among cancer patients who underwent psychotherapeutic treatment. However, more recent multicenter study could not replicate improved survival after behavioral treatment, and other studies have reported similarly conflicting results.
Book thumbnail image And the winner is… George W. Bush By Edward Zelinsky The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 is widely understood as a victory for President Obama. However, the long-term story is more complicated than this. The Act in large measure confirms in bi-partisan fashion the tax-cutting priorities of George W. Bush.
Book thumbnail image Growing up going to bed with The Tonight Show By Krin Gabbard If you remember a time when there was no Tonight Show, then you probably remember a time when there was no American television industry. In 1954, NBC took Steve Allen’s local New York TV show, broadcast it nationally five days a week, and called it Tonight. The show did not become an institution until Johnny Carson became its host exactly fifty years ago in October 2012.
Book thumbnail image Public International Law Quiz In the last fifty years, public international law has undergone a radical transformation, moving from a discipline which ‘the great majority of lawyers of all states [knew] little or nothing’ about (Oppenheim) to the fastest growing legal discipline. To celebrate the recent update to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Law, we present this quiz.
World Cancer Day 2013: The Best of British By Lauren Pecorino There is a tendency to point out deficiencies when it comes to cancer campaigns and treatment, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.
Book thumbnail image Five facts about Thomas Bodley This week marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Sir Thomas Bodley, diplomat and founder of the Bodleian Library. After retiring from public life in 1597, Bodley decided to “set up my staff at the library door in Oxon; being thoroughly persuaded, that in my solitude, and surcease from the Commonwealth affairs, I could not busy myself to better purpose, than by reducing that place (which then in every part lay ruined and waste) to the public use of students.”
Book thumbnail image “Third Nation” along the US-Mexico border By Michael Dear Not long ago, I passed a roadside sign in New Mexico which read: “Es una frontera, no una barrera / It’s a border, not a barrier.” This got me thinking about the nature of the international boundary line separating the US from Mexico. The sign’s message seemed accurate, but what exactly did it mean?
Book thumbnail image Burrowing into Punxsutawney Phil’s hometown data By Sydney Beveridge Every February second, people across Pennsylvania and the world look to a famous rodent to answer the question—when will spring come? For over 120 years, Punxsutawney Phil Soweby (Punxsutawney Phil for short), has offered his predictions, based on whether he sees his shadow (more winter) or not (an early spring).
Book thumbnail image James Joyce and birthdays By Finn Fordham Joyce was obsessed with birthdays. Today, February 2nd, is his. An emerging secular saint’s day, it will be remembered and alluded to round the world – especially in Dublin – in the corners of newspapers and pubs, in blogs (like this one), tweets and the odd talk. Born in 1882, Joyce’s cake – if he could have one, let alone eat it – would have a hundred and thirty one candles; a hundred years ago, therefore, he would have been celebrating his 31st birthday. The image of candles is suitable, since Joyce’s birthday fell on ‘Candlemas’, a holy day which commemorates Christ’s first appearance in a synagogue with his mother, forty days after his birth, in part by the lighting of candles.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: mysterious jetsetting edition By Alice Northover Friday procrastination is back! Apologies for the absence loyal followers but this blog editor has been jetsetting, mysterious, and then trapped in an email prison as a result of the mysterious jetsetting. What did I miss? Well here are some things you may have missed:
Book thumbnail image Oral historians and online spaces By Caitlin Tyler-Richards In November 2012, a thread appeared on the H-Net Oral history listserv with the enticing subject line “experimental uses of oral history.” Amid assorted student projects and artistic explorations, two projects in particular caught my eye: the VOCES Oral History Project and the Freedom Mosaic. As we work towards our upcoming special issue on Oral History in the Digital Age, I’ve been mulling over oral historians negotiate online spaces.
Book thumbnail image Collective redress – another false dawn? By Professor John Sorabji (Hon) Collective action reform in England and Wales was first seriously mooted twenty five years ago. From the perspective of proponents of the opt-out form of collective action (i.e., a form of collective proceedings where all the potential claimants are automatically represented in the proceedings unless they explicitly choose not to be), nothing of substance has been achieved since then.
Book thumbnail image A Very Short Film competition By Chloe Foster After more than three months of students carefully planning and creating their entries, the Very Short Film competition has closed and the longlisted submissions have been announced.
January 2013 (92))
Ríos Montt to face genocide trial in Guatemala By Virginia Garrard-Burnett After the judge’s ruling Monday in Guatemala City, the crowd outside erupted into cheers and set off fireworks. The unthinkable had happened: Judge Miguel Ángel Gálvez had cleared the way for retired General Efraín Ríos Montt, who between 1982 and 1983 had overseen the darkest years of that nation’s 36-year long armed conflict, would stand trial for genocide.
Book thumbnail image Understanding and respecting markets By Michael Blair QC, George Walker, and Stuart Willey Almost every day has brought a fresh story about investment markets, their strengths and weaknesses. Misreporting of data for calculation of LIBOR, money laundering with a whiff of Central American drugs trading, costly malfunctioning of programme trading mechanisms which brought the trading company to its knees, reputational damage inflicted by as yet unsubstantiated accusations of illicit financing in breach of international sanctions… the list goes on and on.
Book thumbnail image To memorize or not to memorize By Meghann Wilhoite I have a confession to make: I have a terrible memory. Well, for some things, anyway. I can name at least three movies and TV shows that Mary McDonnell has been in off the top of my head (Evidence of Blood, Donnie Darko, Battlestar Galactica), and rattle off the names of the seven Harry Potter books, but you take away that Beethoven piano score that I’ve been playing from since I was 14, and my fingers freeze on the keyboard.
Book thumbnail image What is a false allegation of rape? By Candida Saunders What is a false allegation of rape? At first, this might appear to be a daft question. Reflecting the general tendency to think of the truth or otherwise of allegations in reductive terms of being either true or false, the meaning of “false allegation” is commonly taken to be self-evident. A false allegation of rape is an allegation that is false; the rape alleged did not, in fact, occur. In the abstract, this seems a perfectly logical and sensible approach.
Book thumbnail image The non-interventionist moment By Andrew J. Polsky The signs are clear. President Barack Obama has nominated two leading skeptics of American military intervention for the most important national security cabinet posts. Meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who would prefer a substantial American residual presence after the last American combat troops have departed in 2014, Obama has signaled that he wants a more rapid transition out of an active combat role
Monthly etymology gleanings for January 2013, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Last time I was writing my monthly gleanings in anticipation of the New Year. January 1 came and went, but good memories of many things remain. I would like to begin this set with saying how pleased and touched I was by our correspondents’ appreciation of my work, by their words of encouragement, and by their promise to go on reading the blog in the future. Writing weekly posts is a great pleasure.
Book thumbnail image Jim Downs on the Emancipation Proclamation The editors of the Oxford African American Studies Center spoke to Professor Jim Downs, author of Sick From Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction, about the legacy of the Emancipation Proclamation 150 years after it was first issued. We discuss the health crisis that affected so many freedpeople after emancipation, current views of the Emancipation Proclamation, the reception of Professor Downs’s book, and the insights the book can give us into the public health crises of today.
Book thumbnail image The future of information technologies in the legal world By Richard Susskind The uncharitable might say that I write the same book every four years or so. Some critics certainly accuse me of having said the same thing for many years. I don’t disagree. Since the early 80s, my enduring interest has been in the ways in which technology can modernize and improve the work of the legal profession and the courts. My main underpinning conviction has indeed not changed – that legal work is document and information intensive and that a whole host of information technologies can and should streamline and sometimes even overhaul traditional methods of practicing law and administering justice.
Book thumbnail image HIV/AIDS testing: suspicion and mistrust among Baby Boomers By Chandra Ford February 7th will mark the thirteenth National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Despite the fact that blacks make up only 14% of the US population, the CDC reports that blacks accounted for 44% of all newly reported HIV infections in 2009, the HIV infection rate among Latinos was nearly three times as high as that of whites, and 1 in 4 persons living with HIV/AIDS in the USA is an older adult (50+ years old).
Book thumbnail image Who was Harry Hopkins? By David Roll He was a spectral figure in the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Slightly sinister. A ramshackle character, but boyishly attractive. Gaunt, pauper-thin. Full of nervous energy, fueled by caffeine and Lucky Strikes. Hopkins was an experienced social worker, an in-your-face New Deal reformer. Yet he sought the company of the rich and well born. He was a gambler, a bettor on horses, cards, and the time of day.
Book thumbnail image How ardently I admire and love you… On 28 January 1813, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was published. Originally titled ‘First Impressions’, Austen was forced to re-title it with a phrase from Frances Burney’s Cecilia after the publication of Margaret Holford’s First Impressions. We’ve paired an extract from the book with a scene from the most recent dramatization to see how Austen’s words have survived the centuries.
Book thumbnail image The Subject is Jazz By Ron Rodman The New Year is a time of looking forward to the future and back to the past. Looking back, last year witnessed the death of Dave Brubeck, one of the all time great jazz musicians. Brubeck became famous through his live performances and his recordings, especially the seminal Time Out album released in 1958. But he also became famous through his many appearances on American and international television.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, Pride and Prejudice! Would you find me a date? By Sarah Raff Two hundred years after the initial publication of Pride and Prejudice, commodities marketed to Janeites overwhelmingly emphasize Jane Austen’s powers as an advisor. Shoppers can choose among volumes called Finding Mr. Darcy: Jane Austen’s Rules for Love or Dating Mr. Darcy: The Smart Girl’s Guide to Sensible Romance; The Jane Austen Guide to Life, Happily Ever After, Modern Life’s Dilemmas, Dating, Good Manners, and coming soon, Thrift.
Book thumbnail image The global data privacy power struggle By Christopher Kuner Tension between different regulatory systems has long existed in certain areas (think of the disagreements between EU and US competition regulators regarding the aborted GE-Honeywell merger in the early 2000s). A similar power struggle is currently underway between different legal regimes regulating the collection, processing, and transfer of personal data.
Book thumbnail image Why are married men working so much? By John Knowles If you become wealthier tomorrow, say through winning the lottery, would you spend more or less working than you do now? Standard economic models predict you would work less. In fact a substantial segment of American society has indeed become wealthier over the last 40 years — married men.
Book thumbnail image A letter from Harry Truman to Judge Learned Hand Learned Hand was born on this day in 1872. In a letter dated 15 May 1951, Judge Learned Hand wrote President Harry S. Truman to declare his intention to retire from “regular active service.” President Truman responded to Hand’s news with a letter praising his service to the country. These letters are excerpted from Reason and Imagination: The Selected Letters of Learned Hand, edited by Constance Jordan.
Obama’s Second Inaugural Address By Elvin Lim Conservatives hate it; liberals love it. His Second Inaugural Address evinces Barack Obama coming into his own, projecting himself unvarnished and real before the world. No more elections for him, so also less politics. He is number 17 in the most exclusive club in America — presidents who get to serve a second term. Yes, there’s still the bonus of a legacy. But the legacy-desiring second-term president would just sit back and do no harm, rather than put himself out there for vociferous battles to come.
Book thumbnail image The curious appeal of Alice By Peter Hunt The recent appearance of Fifty Shades of Alice, which is (I am told) about a girl who follows a vibrating white rabbit down a hole, made me reflect, not for the first time, that children’s literature is full of mysteries.
Book thumbnail image ‘Ebonics’ in flux By Tim Allen On this day forty years ago, the African American psychologist Robert Williams coined the term “Ebonics” during an education conference held at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri. At the time, his audience was receptive to, even enthusiastic about, the word. But invoke the word “Ebonics” today and you’ll have no trouble raising the hackles of educators, journalists, linguists, and anyone else who might have an opinion about how people speak.
Book thumbnail image The Playboy Riots of 1907 By Ann Saddlemyer There had been rumours for months. When Dublin’s Abbey Theatre announced that John Millington Synge’s new play The Playboy of the Western World would be produced on Saturday, 26 January 1907, all were on alert. Controversy had followed Synge since the production of his first Wicklow play, The Shadow of the Glen, in which a bold, young and lonely woman leaves a loveless May/December marriage to go off with a fine-talking Tramp who rhapsodizes over the freedom of the roads. Irish women wouldn’t do that!
Book thumbnail image A Grove Music Mountweazel By Anna-Lise Santella On my desk sits an enormous, overstuffed black binder labeled in large block letters “BIBLE”. This is the Grove Music style sheet that was handed to me on my first day on the job, the same one — with a few more recent amendments — assembled by Stanley Sadie and his editorial staff for the first edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians published in 1980.
Book thumbnail image A fresh look at the work of Robert Burns By Robert P. Irvine As we sit down to enjoy our Burns Suppers on Friday, it is worth pausing to ask ourselves just how well we know some of the songs and poems that are a feature of the occasion. Editing and presenting a selection of his texts in the order in which they were published, taking as my copy-text the version of the poem or song published on that occasion, has given me many new insights into the original contexts of Burns’s work.
Book thumbnail image Could my child be responsible for the next tragedy? By Karen Schiltz, Ph.D. Like many of you, I was in shock and horrified about the slaughtering of 20 little children and 6 adults. I wondered: why did Adam Lanza not receive help for his condition or, if he did, was he misdiagnosed? Did his parents not follow through with providers? Did providers fail to address his problems? Were the parents in denial? Were teachers in denial?
Book thumbnail image The legacy of the Napoleonic Wars Mike Rapport The Duke of Wellington always has a traffic cone on his head. At least, he does when he is in Glasgow. Let me explain: outside the city’s Gallery of Modern Art on Queen Street, there is an equestrian statue of the celebrated general of the Napoleonic Wars. It was sculpted in 1840-4 by the Franco-Italian artist, Carlo Marochetti (1805-1867), who in his day was a dominant figure in the world of commemorative sculpture. Amongst his works is the statue of Richard the Lionheart, who has sat on his mount and held aloft his sword outside the Houses of Parliament since 1860.
Book thumbnail image A better New Year’s resolution: commit to hope By Anthony Scioli From late December to the middle of January it is obligatory for people to make one or more New Years’ resolutions. Recent surveys reveal that the most common resolutions made by Americans include losing weight, getting fit, quitting smoking, quitting drinking, reducing debt, or getting organized.
Book thumbnail image A song for Burns Night 2013 By Anwen Greenaway The twenty-fifth of January is the annual celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns. Legend has it that in 1801 a group of men who had known Burns gathered together to mark the fifth anniversary of his death and celebrate his life and work. The event proved a great success, so they agreed to meet again the following January on the poet’s birthday, and thus the tradition of Burns Night Supper was born.
Book thumbnail image Do you really know Who’s Who? Do you know for how long Boris Johnson held his first job, or which music video The IT Crowd’s Richard Ayoade has produced? Who’s Who has become a phrase incorporated into our everyday language. With the iconic red-covered book or its online counterpart, you can get the lowdown of Who’s Who in politics, Who’s Who at the Oscars, even the Who’s Who of the cooking world. Written by the entrants themselves, the biographies not only walk you through their career and education but also, in some cases, reveal some interesting and unusual recreations! Take our quiz to see if you really know Who’s Who.
Wrenching an etymology out of a monkey By Anatoly Liberman Primates have given Germanic language historians great trouble. In the most recent dictionary of German etymology (Kluge-Seebold), the entry Affe “ape” is one of the most detailed. In the revised version of the OED, monkey is also discussed at a length, otherwise rare in this online edition. Despite the multitude of hypotheses, the sought-for solution is not in view.
Book thumbnail image What happens when Walmart comes to Nicaragua? By Hope Michelson Walmart now has stores in more than fifteen developing countries in Central and South America, Asia and Africa. A glimpse at the scale of operations: Nicaragua, with a population of approximately six million, currently has 78 Walmart retail outlets with more on the way. That’s one store for every 75,000 Nicaraguans; in the United States there’s a Walmart store for every 69,000 people.
Book thumbnail image Competition results: who’s your favourite philosopher? To celebrate the publication of our second Philosophy Bites book, Philosophy Bites Back, authors Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds asked you to let us know Twitter who your favourite philosopher is and why. The competition is now closed and the results are in!
Book thumbnail image Palliative care: knowing when not to act By Richard Hain One of the things that has always puzzled me is the number of palliative care services that have the word ‘pain’ in the title. Why do we concentrate so much on that one, admittedly unpleasant, symptom? Why ‘Pain and Palliative Care Services’ rather than, for example, ‘Vomiting and Palliative Care Service’ or ‘Dyspnoea and Palliative Care Service’ or even ‘Sadness, Anger, Existential Anguish and Palliative Care Service’?
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Piltdown By T. Douglas Price Science works in mysterious ways. Sometimes that’s even truer in the study of the origins of the human race. Piltdown is a small village south of London where the skull of a reputed ancient human ancestor turned up in some gravel diggings a century ago. The find was made by Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur archaeologist, with an unusual knack for major discoveries.
Choices and rights, children and murder By Leigh Ann Wheeler How did we arrive at this stunningly polarized place in our discussion — our national shouting match — over women’s reproductive rights? Certainly it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, consensus and moderation on the issue of abortion has been the rule until recently. Even if we go back to biblical times, the brutal and otherwise misogynist law of the Old Testament made no mention of abortion, despite popular use of herbal abortifacients at the time.
Book thumbnail image Do you know your references and allusions? Are you an Athena when it comes to literary allusions, or are they your kryptonite? Either way, the Oxford Dictionary of Reference and Allusion can be your Henry Higgins, providing fascinating information on the literary and pop culture references that make reading and entertainment so rich. Take this quiz, Zorro, and leave your calling card.
Book thumbnail image Are the political ideals of liberty and equality compatible? Are the political ideals of liberty and equality compatible? In this video, OUP author James P. Sterba of University of Notre Dame, joins Jan Narveson of University of Waterloo, to debate the practical requirements of a political ideal of liberty. Not only Narveson but the entire audience at the libertarian Cato Institute where this debate takes place is, in Sterba’s words, “hostile” to his argument that the ideal of liberty leads to (substantial) equality. Sterba goes on to further develop that argument in From Rationality to Equality.
Book thumbnail image Plagiarized or original: A playlist for the contested music of Ira B. Arnstein By Gary Rosen From the 1920s to the 1950s, Ira B. Arnstein was the unrivaled king of music copyright litigants. He spent the better part of those 30 years trying to prove that many of the biggest hits of the Golden Age of American Popular Song were plagiarized from his turn-of-the-century parlor piano pieces and Yiddish songs. “I suppose we have to take the bad with the good in our system which gives everyone their day in court,” Irving Berlin once said, but “Arnstein is stretching his day into a lifetime.”
Book thumbnail image Checking in on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream, with data By Sydney Beveridge Martin Luther King, Jr. was the legendary civil rights leader whose strong calls to end racial segregation and discrimination were central to many of the victories of the Civil Rights movement. Every January, the United States celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day to honor the activist who made so many strides towards equality.
Book thumbnail image Lessons of Casablanca By David L. Roll Seventy years ago this month, Americans came to know Casablanca as more than a steamy city on the northwest coast of Africa. On January 23, 1943, the film Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, a tale of doomed love and taking the moral high ground, was released to packed movie houses. The next day, a Sunday, President Franklin Roosevelt ended two weeks of secret World War II meetings in Casablanca with Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
Book thumbnail image Depression in old age By Siegfried Weyerer Depression in old age occurs frequently, places a severe burden on patients and relatives, and increases the utilization of medical services and health care costs. Although the association between age and depression has received considerable attention, very little is known about the incidence of depression among those 75 years of age and older.
Book thumbnail image John Ruskin’s childhood home Praeterita, John Ruskin’s incomplete autobiography, was written between periods of serious mental illness at the end of his career, and is an eloquent analysis of the guiding powers of his life, both public and private. An elegy for lost places and people, it recounts Ruskin’s intense childhood, his time as an undergraduate at Oxford, and his journeys across France, the Alps, and northern Italy. In the following excerpt, Ruskin remembers his childhood home.
Book thumbnail image Chaucer in the House of Fame By Jonathan Dent By the time Geoffrey Chaucer died in 1400, he had been living for almost a year in obscurity in a house in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and on his death he was buried in a modest grave in the church’s south transept. The poet’s last few months had not been his happiest. At the close of a decade in which he had gradually retired from the various administrative offices he had occupied under Edward III and Richard II, Richard’s deposition by Henry Bolingbroke in September 1399 had turned Chaucer’s world upside down.
Book thumbnail image Jason Steinhauer, the Kluge Center, and opportunities for oral historians By Troy Reeves In our second blog post of 2013, I, Troy Reeves, Managing Editor, have taken over, while our social media coordinator and blog contributor Caitlin Tyler-Richards get some well deserved time away from the office. This guarantees the reader of two things: (1) This post will be wordy, nearing on inscrutable; and (2) far less funny.
Book thumbnail image Bill McGuire on the geological consequences of climate change Could it be that we are on track to bequeath to our children and their children not only a far hotter world, but also a more geologically fractious one? Already there are signs that the effects of climbing global temperatures are causing the sleeping giant to stir once again.
Book thumbnail image Thought Control Tim Bayne As a teacher I have sometimes offered to give a million pounds to any student who can form any one of the following beliefs—that they can fly; that they were born on the moon; or that sheep are carnivorous. Needless to say, I have never had to pay up. The Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass might have been able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but that is a feat few of us can match. In fact, the formation of belief doesn’t seem to be under our voluntary control at all. Coming to adopt a belief seems to be more like digesting or metabolizing than looking or speaking—it seems to be something that happens to one rather than something that one does.
Book thumbnail image C is for Coloratura By Jessica Barbour Marilyn Horne, world-renowned opera singer and recitalist, celebrated her 84th birthday on Wednesday. To acknowledge her work, not only as one of the finest singers in the world but as a mentor for young artists, I give you one of my favorite performances of hers:
Five facts about the esophagus We are pleased to announce that the Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online. To highlight the great resources, we’ve got some curious facts about the oesophagus from Stephen Hauser’s Mayo Clinic Gastroenterology and Hepatology Board Review.
Book thumbnail image Examining photographs of Einstein’s brain is not phrenology! By Dean Falk, Fred Lepore, and Adrianne Noe Imagine that you return from work to find that a thief has broken into your home. The police arrive and ask if they may dust for finger and palm prints. Which would you do? (A) Refuse permission because palm reading is an antiquated pseudoscience or (B) give permission because forensic dermatoglyphics is sometimes useful for identifying culprits. A similar question may be asked about the photographs of the external surface of Albert Einstein’s brain that recently emerged after being lost to science for over half a century.
Drinking vessels: ‘goblet’ By Anatoly Liberman One more drinking vessel, and I’ll stop. Strangely, here we have another synonym for bumper, and it is again an old word of unknown origin. In English, goblet turned up in the fourteenth century, but its uninterrupted recorded history began about a hundred years later. Many names of vials, mugs, and beverages probably originated in the language of drinkers, pub owners, and glass manufacturers. They were slang, and we have little chance of guessing who and in what circumstances coined them.
The two funerals of Thomas Hardy By Phillip Mallett At 2.00 pm on Monday 16 January 1928, there took place simultaneously the two funerals of Thomas Hardy, O.M., poet and novelist. His brother Henry and sister Kate, and his second wife Florence, had supposed that he would be buried in Stinsford, close to his parents, and beneath the tombstone he had himself designed for his first wife, Emma, leaving space for his own name to be added. But within hours of his death on 11 January, Sydney Cockerell and James Barrie had established themselves at his home at Max Gate, and determined that he should be laid in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Book thumbnail image Changing the conversation about the motives of our political opponents By E. Tory Higgins “Our country is divided.” “Congress is broken.” “Our politics are polarized.” Most Americans believe there is less political co-operation and compromise than there used to be. And we know who is to blame for this situation—it’s our political opponents. Democrats know that Republicans are to blame, and Republicans know that Democrats are to blame.
Book thumbnail image Memories of undergraduate mathematics By Lara Alcock Two contrasting experiences stick in mind from my first year at university. First, I spent a lot of time in lectures that I did not understand. I don’t mean lectures in which I got the general gist but didn’t quite follow the technical details. I mean lectures in which I understood not one thing from the beginning to the end. I still went to all the lectures and wrote everything down – I was a dutiful sort of student – but this was hardly the ideal learning experience…
Book thumbnail image Douglas Christie on contemplative ecology There is a deep and pervasive hunger for a less fragmented and more integrated way of understanding and inhabiting the world. What must change if we are to live in a sustainable relationship with other organisms? What role do our moral and spiritual values play in responding to the ecological crisis? We sat down with Douglas E. Christie, author of The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, to discuss a contemplative approach to ecological thought and practice that can help restore our sense of the earth as a sacred place.
Book thumbnail image Ancient manuscripts and modern politics By Louis René Beres Oddly, perhaps, there are striking similarities between Western Epicureanism and Eastern Buddhism. Even a cursory glance at Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, reveals a characteristically “Buddhist” position on human oneness and human transience. Greek and Roman Stoicism, too, share this animating concept, a revealing vision of both interpersonal connectedness and civilizational impermanence.
Book thumbnail image The music industry, change, and copyright What happens when the creative world, technology, and the law combine? Look to the introduction of radio in the 1920s and a long-forgotten composer named Ira B. Arnstein. The long and tortured career of Arnstein, “the unrivaled king of copyright infringement plaintiffs,” opens a curious window into the evolution of copyright law in the United States and the balance of power in Tin Pan Alley.
Book thumbnail image A letter from Learned Hand Learned Hand (1872-1961) served on the United States District Court and is commonly thought to be the most influential justice never to serve on the Supreme Court. He corresponded with people in different walks of life, some who were among his friends and acquaintances, others who were strangers to him. In the letter below, Hand writes to Mary McKeon, a New Yorker troubled by Hand’s decision to invalidate the warrantless search and consequent arrest of the Soviet spy, Judith Coplon.
Book thumbnail image HFR and The Hobbit: There and Back Again By Arthur P. Shimamura Is it the sense of experiencing reality that makes movies so compelling? Technological advances in film, such as sound, color, widescreen, 3-D, and now high frame rate (HFR), have offered ever increasing semblances of realism on the screen. In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we are introduced to the world of 48 frames per second (fps), which presents much sharper moving images than what we’ve seen in movies produced at the standard 24 fps.
Book thumbnail image The Tottenham riots, the Big Society, and the recurring neglect of community participation By Bryan Fanning and Denis Dillon The Tottenham riots in the London Borough of Haringey took place in August 2011. We examined three responses to them: reports by North London Citizens, an alliance of 40 mostly faith community institutions including schools, the Tottenham Community Panel established by Haringey Council, and the Riots, Communities and Victims Panel established by Parliament.
Book thumbnail image The death of Edmund Spenser By Andrew Hadfield Writing to his friend Dudley Carleton on 17 January 1599, the enthusiastic correspondent John Chamberlain (1553-1628) noted that “Spencer, our principall poet, coming lately out of Ireland, died at Westminster on Satturday last.” Chamberlain’s testimony confirms that Spenser died on 13 January. Chamberlain is a good recorder of court gossip and a barometer of what interested the upper echelons of London society.
Book thumbnail image Choice in the true necessaries and means of life In 1845 Henry David Thoreau left his home town of Concord, Massachusetts to begin a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself a mile and a half away on the north-west shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau’s classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and above all the freedom it gave him to adapt his living to the natural world around him.
Book thumbnail image The map she carried By Marjorie Senechal In the heyday of the British Empire, Britain’s second most-widely-read book, after the Bible, was: (a) Richard III (b) Robinson Crusoe (c) The Elements (d) Beowulf ? Why do I ask? “Since late medieval or early modern time,” Michael Walzer writes in Exodus and Revolution, “there has existed in the West a characteristic way of thinking about political change, a pattern that we commonly impose upon events, a story that we repeat to one another.”
Book thumbnail image Do old people matter? By Merryn Gott and Christine Ingleton A couple of weeks ago one of us (MG) attended the biannual Hospice New Zealand conference in Auckland where there was a discussion session responding to the question ‘Do old people matter?’ The general feeling amongst delegates was that, of course they matter, or for some, of course we matter. The answer to the question was regarded to be self-evident; no debate was needed.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and “Please Please Me,” 11 January 1963 By Gordon R. Thompson Although “Love Me Do” had been the Beatles’ induction into Britain’s recording industry, “Please Please Me” would bring them prominently into the nation’s consciousness. The songwriters, the band, the producer, and the manager all thought that they had finally found a winning formula. An advertisement in the New Musical Express proclaimed that the disc would be the “record of the year,” even as it raised a chuckle among industry insiders; but the hyperbole would prove prophetic.
Book thumbnail image Autism: a Q&A with Uta Frith We spoke to Uta Frith, author of Autism: A Very Short Introduction and asked her about diagnosis, the perceived links between autism and genius, and how autism is portrayed in culture.
Book thumbnail image A comic quotation quiz Moliere wrote in La critique de l’école des femmes (1663) that “it’s an odd job, making decent people laugh.” In the hopes that 2013 will be filled with delightful oddity and humor, we present this quiz, drawn from the Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, 4th edition. Edited by the late Ned Sherrin, the dictionary compiles words of wit and wisdom from writers, entertainers and politicians.
The changing face of opera By Meghann Wilhoite Outreach and innovation are two buzzwords that pop up again and again in relation to established “classical” music institutions such as symphony orchestras and opera companies. In an effort to build younger audiences, many of these institutions have introduced new programs that attempt to do away with the of the concert-going experience, such as expensive tickets or the need for a certain type of attire, that might discourage younger or less experienced listeners from attending.
Book thumbnail image ‘Grooming’ and the sexual abuse of children By Dr Anne-Marie McAlinden The word “grooming” has become synonymous with child sexual abuse. It is often used to describe situations of extra-familial abuse–where “predatory strangers” befriend children who were previously unknown to them. Two of the most prominent social connotations of the term are “on-line grooming” committed via the internet and “institutional grooming” and abuse committed by those in positions of power and trust.
How come the past of ‘go’ is ‘went?’ By Anatoly Liberman Very long ago, one of our correspondents asked me how irregular forms like good—better and go—went originated. Not only was he aware of the linguistic side of the problem but he also knew the technical term for this phenomenon, namely “suppletion.” One cannot say the simplest sentence in English without running into suppletive forms. Consider the conjugation of the verb to be: am, is, are. Why is the list so diverse? And why is it mad—madder and rude—ruder, but bad—worse and good—better?
Book thumbnail image London place names, but not as you know them This week marks the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. The Metropolitan Railway line, completed in 1863, then running from Paddington to Farringdon Street, was the first part of the London Underground to be built, and was the first Underground railway up and running in the world. More than 2,000 workers built the line, and the first carriages were pulled by steam before electrification was introduced in the early nineteenth century. Today, the Tube, as it quickly became known, is often an area of frustration in many commuters’ lives, though we have to admit that without it we would be stranded (probably somewhere near the M25). In honour of its longstanding service, here are ten little-known yet interesting facts about the locations in which underground stations can be found today.
Book thumbnail image Teaching algorithmic problem-solving with puzzles and games By Anany Levitin In the last few years algorithmic thinking has become somewhat of a buzz word among computer science educators, and with some justice: ubiquity of computers in today’s world does make algorithmic thinking a very important skill for almost any student. There are few colleges and universities that require non-computer science majors to take a course exposing them to important issues and methods of algorithmic problem solving.
Book thumbnail image Reveries of a solitary fell runner By Matthew Flinders New Year is – or so I am told – a time to reflect upon the past and to consider the future. Put slightly differently, it is a time to think. Is it possible, however, that we may have lost – both individually and collectively – our capacity to think in a manner that reaches beyond those day-to-day tasks that command our attention?
Book thumbnail image Stay-at-home dads aren’t as new as you think By Katherine Pickering Antonova At the start of this year, the New York Times declared stay-at-home dads a new trend. The numbers are still miniscule compared to stay-at-home moms, but dads are increasingly visible on the internet, if not yet on the playground. There are SAHD blogs, forums for tips and support, and sites that help isolated dads find parenting groups (or all of the above in one place, like the National At-Home Dad Network).
Book thumbnail image What do mathematicians do? By Jason Rosenhouse Writing in 1866, the British mathematician John Venn wrote, in reference to the branch of mathematics known as probability theory, “To many persons the mention of Probability suggests little else than the notion of a set of rules, very ingenious and profound rules no doubt, with which mathematicians amuse themselves by setting and solving puzzles.” I suspect many of my students would extend Venn’s quip to the entirety of mathematics.
Book thumbnail image On music and mentorship By Trevor Wiggins As part of my freelance existence, I mentor a number of musically gifted teenagers. They operate in a varied and difficult-to-negotiate world, especially if they possess a great talent but are not in a highly protected ‘hothouse’ environment. As musicians, they are expected to behave with total professionalism, changing from kids having fun on a beach to soloing in front of 10,000 people in a few minutes. (I have seen them do just that on many occasions.)
Book thumbnail image Words of 2012 round-up By Alice Northover While most people are getting excited for the start of awards season on Sunday with the Golden Globes, the season has just ended for word nerds. From November through January, the Word(s) of the Year announcements are made. I’ll let you decide who is the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, SAGs, National Film Critics Circle, etc. of the lexicography community. Just remember YOLO — because it appeared on every list.
Book thumbnail image Responsible Wealth should oppose the GST Grandfather Exemption By Edward Zelinsky In the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, Congress and President Obama recently agreed that the federal estate tax will be imposed at a 40% rate on estates over $5,000,000. On 11 December 2012, a group of affluent Americans, organized under the banner of Responsible Wealth, had called for a stronger federal estate tax. In particular, Responsible Wealth urged that federal estate taxation begin at a rate of 45% on estates over $4,000,000.
Book thumbnail image Holy Court of Owls, Batman! By Mark Peters My name is Mark Peters, and I am a Batman-aholic. I blame Christopher Nolan. Between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I felt an insatiable thirst for more Batman than Mr. Nolan was providing. In my desperation, I turned to a childhood addiction: comic books.
Book thumbnail image Ten revision tips from the OUP student law panel For many students it’s that time of year again when the festive cheer has ended and they are brought back down to earth with a bump by the prospect of mountains of revision to plough through. To help, we asked some students from the OUP Student Law Panel for their top revision tips that help them survive the exam season, and have a collection of their responses for you below.
Book thumbnail image Space weather By Storm Dunlop We are all used to blaming things (rightly or wrongly) on the weather, but now it seems that this tendency has been extended to space weather. Space weather, for those who are uncertain, describes the effects that flares and other events on the Sun produce on Earth. Consult many of the sites on the World Wide Web that are devoted to events on a particular day in history, and you will be told that on 16 August 1989, a geomagnetic storm caused the Toronto Stock Exchange to crash.
Book thumbnail image Downton’s Secrets By Deborah Cohen Not long now, Downton fans. The beribboned third season wafts ashore in America today, though if the students I teach are any indication, the younger set (fervent Occupiers, some of them — savor the irony!) have already partaken via illegal means.
Book thumbnail image So the world didn’t end? A new cycle By Barbara Rogoff The news was full of claims that the ancient Maya had predicted the end of the world with the winter solstice of 2012. The solstice went by a few days ago, and here we still are. Related to the mistaken claims of those in the news, the ancient Maya and the apocalypse-predictors conceive of time and life in very different ways. Unlike the end-is-coming view, life and time are cyclical in Maya cosmology. An end is a new beginning, as many current Maya spiritual guides have been trying to clarify to the world.
Friday procrastination: it’s 2013 edition By Alice Northover People gradually returned to the office this week, but this year in linking goes off with a bang. We have strong showing from Berfrois and Inside Higher Ed to begin. I’m finally getting sick of the 2012 listicles (and I really like those year-end lists). And videos! But first, here’s a picture of some of the books OUPblog received last year despite the fact that we don’t review books on the blog.
Book thumbnail image The discourse of the blues Happy New Year, everyone! The Oral History Review is ringing in 2013 with a second oral history podcast. This week, managing editor Troy Reeves speaks with Roger Davis Gatchet about his Oral History Review article, “‘I’ve Got Some Antique in Me’: The Discourse of Authenticity and Identity in the African American Blues Community in Austin, Texas.” (Vol 39, issue 2). And if that isn’t enough to entice you, there’s also (what Troy assures me is) a really hilarious Weird Al Yankovic joke.
Book thumbnail image A definition of ‘hobbit’ for the OED In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit… What’s a hobbit and how did J.R.R. Tolkien come by this word? Was it invented, adapted, or stolen? To celebrate the release of The Hobbit film and renewed interest in J.R.R Tolkien’s work, we’ve excerpted this passage from The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall, and Edmund Weiner.
Book thumbnail image Animal evolution: a new view of an old tree By Peter Holland The metaphor of the ‘evolutionary tree’ is powerful. Closely related species, such as octopus and squid, can be pictured as twigs sitting near each other on a small branch, in turn connected to larger and larger branches, each representing more distant evolutionary relationships. Every animal species, past and present, is a twig somewhere on the vast tree of life. But what is the shape of this metaphorical tree? Can we find the correct place for all the twigs, or perhaps even just the largest branches? In short, who is related to whom? To solve this would be to reconstruct the history of animal life on our planet.
Book thumbnail image From cigarettes to obesity, public health at risk By Mark S. Gold, MD Public health officials and academics identified cigarette smoking and related disease as the nation’s number one killer and foremost driver of health costs in the 1980s. At that time overeating and obesity were not major problems, yet they may soon cause more disease, deaths, and health care costs than cigarettes. Food addiction, which may explain part of the epidemic, is slowly and finally “catching on”. It’s been controversial, with some scientists dismissing it out of hand, so like any hypothesis, it needs additional tests.
Book thumbnail image The Dirty Dozens English has two great rhyming slanguages, cockney rhyming slang and the dozens, the African American insult game. We’ll leave the parsing of cockney phrases for now and examine the dirty, bawdy, and wonderful world of verbal street duels. While its origins lie in “yo’ mama” jokes, this is language meant for music, as rap and hip-hop today can attest. Here’s a taste with an excerpt from Elijah Wald’s The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama.
Book thumbnail image Neuroscience in education By Sergio Della Sala & Mike Anderson In the past ten years, there has been growing interest in applying our knowledge of the human brain to the field of education – including reading, learning, language, and mathematics.Teachers themselves have embraced the neuro revolution enthusiastically.
Drinking vessels: ‘tankard’ By Anatoly Liberman One drinks to the coming New Year, and one drinks while remembering the old one. Besides, some do it according to the Gregorian calendar, while others prefer the Julian one. As could be expected, the end of the world has been delayed and life continues. I was touched by the kind words from our regular correspondents; over time they have become my good friends.
Book thumbnail image Community-level influences of behavior change How can you resolve to change in 2013? With a community. The Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online, and to highlight some of the great resources, we’ve excerpted Prathibha Varkey, MD, MPH, MHPE’s Mayo Clinic Preventive Medicine and Public Health Board Review below.
Book thumbnail image Should we be worried about global quasi-constitutionalization? By Grahame Thompson Have we seen a potentially new form of global governance quietly emerging over the last decade or so, one that is establishing a surrogate and informal process of the constitutionalization of global economic and political relationships, something that is creeping up on us almost unnoticed? This issue of ‘global constitutionalization’ has become an important topic of analysis over recent years.
Book thumbnail image I resolve to take Benjamin Franklin seriously It’s that time again: time to set resolutions and goals for ourselves as we enter the New Year. In this excerpt from Pursuing the Good Life, the late Christopher Peterson puts the spotlight on Benjamin Franklin, encouraging us to take the statesman a little more seriously… not for his political or scientific achievements, but for the way he set and cultivated his personal goals. Peterson shows that whether our resolutions are set in the beginning of January or halfway through the year, Franklin’s approach is one that we can all take some notes from.
Book thumbnail image Questioning the health of others and ourselves By Patricia Prijatel A little evergreen tree has died alongside our road and, as we walked by it yesterday, my husband wondered why. All the other trees around it are healthy and it did not look like it had been hit by lightning or damaged by wind or attacked by bugs. The tree is about six feet tall, so it lived several years. We are in the Rocky Mountains and this little guy took root on its own, growing precariously in that place by the road.
December 2012 (108))
Top ten OUPblog posts of 2012 by the numbers By Alice Northover While I already gave my opinion of the best OUPblog posts of the year, it’s only fair to see what you the reader decided. Here’s our top ten posts according to the number of pageviews they received.
Book thumbnail image Alice’s top 10 OUPblog posts of 2012 By Alice Northover One of the great advantages of being OUPblog editor is that I read practically everything that was published on the blog in 2012: the 1,088 articles, Q&As, quizzes, slideshows, podcasts, videos, and more from the smartest minds in the scholarly world. When I first attempted the list, I had 30 articles bookmarked and I’d only made it six months back. I’m sure I’ll hate myself for missing a piece tomorrow.
Book thumbnail image Love and appetite in Anna Karenina By Leo Tolstoy A timely reminder to act while you still can for New Year’s Eve… A new film adaptation of Anna Karenina, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, has opened worldwide, so we wanted to put it to the test. How faithful is the script to the novel? We’ve paired a scene from the film with an excerpt of the work below. One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina sets the impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky against the marriage of Levin and Kitty, thus illuminating the most important questions that face humanity.
Book thumbnail image Music: a proxy language for autistic children By Adam Ockelford I spend around 12 hours a week – every week – sharing thoughts, feelings, new ideas, reminiscences and even jokes with some very special children who have extraordinary musical talents, and many of whom are severely autistic.
Book thumbnail image OUP staff pick the best adult books of 2012 Oxford University Press staff love to read so we’ve gathered together a few recommendations from what our staff read this year (although maybe not published this year).
Book thumbnail image OUP staff pick the best kids books of 2012 Oxford University Press staff love to read, but we were kids once too, so we’ve gathered together a few recommendations from our staff to keep the little ones entertained in the long winter. (Books we’ve read, but may not have been published this year).
Book thumbnail image Rebecca Lane’s top 5 books of 2012 By Rebecca Lane The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams I listened to the audiobook version narrated by Stephen Fry. With his hilarious accents for all the different aliens I enjoyed it far more than if I’d read it. I’m glad I finally know why the number 42 is so important.
Book thumbnail image Abby Gross’s top books of 2012 By Abby Gross I read science and social science manuscripts for work, so in my off time I like to read other genres, from fiction and fantasy to cookbooks. Here were some of my favorite reads of the year.
Book thumbnail image Josh Landon’s top 5 books of 2012 By Josh Landon The Passage of Power The fourth volume in Caro’s (insert hyperbolic adjective here) Lyndon Johnson biography is a must-read for his depiction of Robert Kennedy alone. Wow, who knew he was such a [expletive deleted]?
Book thumbnail image Cornelia Haase’s top 5 books of 2012 By Cornelia Haase The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Heart-breaking tale about nine-year-old Liesel who lives with a foster family in Nazi Germany after her parents have been taken to a concentration camp. Not just another dramatic World War II novel, but a brilliant book about family relationships, fear, and human strength.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: winter cold edition By Alice Northover What do you read when struck down with a winter cold? Run back to the classics of Fitzgerald and Spielberg; learn from the ancients and panic about technology; and try not to look at things that make your eyes fall out.
Book thumbnail image Atlas of the World Quiz School might be out for the holidays, but there’s still lots to learn. Since education never ends, we’ve prepared this geography quiz drawn from facts from the Oxford Atlas of the World, 19th edition. The only atlas to be updated annually, Oxford’s Atlas of the World combines gorgeous satellite images with the most up-to-date geographic and census information. Have fun geographers!
Gerard Wolfe at the Tenement Museum Thirty years after the first edition was published, Synagogues of New York’s Lower East Side: A Retrospective and Contemporary View, Second Edition (Fordham University Press) was released earlier this year. The author Gerard Wolfe shows how the Jewish community took root on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 19th and early 20th century by focusing on these beautiful buildings and houses of worship.
Book thumbnail image Romanticism: a legacy By Michael Ferber The Very Short Introductions are indeed very short, so I had to cut a chapter out of my volume that would have discussed the aftermath or legacy of Romanticism today, two hundred years after Romanticism’s days of glory. In that chapter I would have pointed out the obvious fact that those who still love poetry look at the Romantic era as poetry’s high point in every European country. Think of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Pushkin, Mickiewicz, Leopardi, Lamartine, Hugo, and Nerval. Those who still love “classical” music fill the concert halls to listen to Beethoven, Schumann, Chopin, Berlioz, and Wagner; and those who still love traditional painting flock to look at Constable, Turner, Friedrich, and Delacroix. These poets and artists are still “alive”: their works are central to the culture from which millions of people still draw nourishment. I can scarcely imagine how miserable I would feel if I knew I could never again listen to Beethoven or read a poem by Keats.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Music in 2012 By Anwen Greenaway 2012 has been an eventful year for the OUP music teams. We’re in reflective mood as the year draws to a close, so we thought we’d share our highlights of 2012.
Book thumbnail image New year’s resolution: don’t sabotage yourself By Susan David We humans are funny. Often we create beliefs or engage in behaviors that seem to help us in the short term, only to discover they get in the way of the lives we really want to live, or the people we want to become. Allow me to share the story of my friend, Erin.
Charting success: The Beatles, December 1962 By Gordon R. Thompson The Beatles were unlikely successes on London’s record charts in December 1962. Northerners with schoolboy haircuts who wrote and performed their own songs, their first record “Love Me Do” had risen slowly up British charts, despite lack of significant promotion by their publisher and record company, and without an appearance on national television.
Monthly etymology gleanings for December 2012 By Anatoly Liberman A Happy New Year to our readers and correspondents! Questions, comments, and friendly corrections have been a source of inspiration to this blog throughout 2012, as they have been since its inception. Quite a few posts appeared in response to the questions I received through OUP and privately (by email). As before, the most exciting themes have been smut and spelling.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Newton, 325 years after Principia By Robyn Arianrhod This year, 2012, marks the 325th anniversary of the first publication of the legendary Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), the 500-page book in which Sir Isaac Newton presented the world with his theory of gravity. It was the first comprehensive scientific theory in history, and it’s withstood the test of time over the past three centuries.
Photos from Oxford University Press offices around the globe Our generous employees have been snapping away at our office decorations and we’d like to share them with you.
Book thumbnail image Selling the Beatles, 1962 By Gordon R. Thompson As a regional businessman and a fledgling band manager, Brian Epstein presumed that the Beatles’ record company (EMI’s Parlophone) and Lennon and McCartney’s publisher (Ardmore and Beechwood) would support the record. This presumption would prove false, however, and Epstein would need to draw on all of the resources he could spare if he were to make the disc a success.
Book thumbnail image Season’s Greetings from Oxford University Press
Book thumbnail image The women of Les Miz By Stacy Wolf On Christmas Day, the eagerly-awaited movie musical Les Misérables — “A Musical Phenomenon” the advertisement promises — will open across the United States. If it makes half the splash that its Broadway source did in 1987, we’re in for a long ride. The musical ran for 6680 performances, and won Tony awards for Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score. It closed and then re-opened for another 463-performance run in 2006. It continues to tour the US.
Book thumbnail image Football, festivity, and music By Ron Rodman Sports fans eagerly anticipate television broadcasts of their favorite sports, whether it is baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, boxing, golf, auto racing, or any of the other events aired on the tube. In the USA, the biggest television sports event is undoubtedly (American) professional football: the National Football League. In 2011, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” was the highest-rated program on American TV.
Book thumbnail image Words like lumps of coal It’s the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring, except the writer throwing her manuscript across the room. What words will Santa give her? Gifts of ‘stillicide’ or ‘ectoplasm’ for her National Book Award — or lumps of coal for failing NaNoWriMo. We’d like to share a few reflections on terrible words from writers such as David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and Michael Dirda in the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus below.
Book thumbnail image German Christmas traditions By Neil Armstrong In recent years German Christmas markets have been promoted to the English as the epitome of a traditional and authentic Christmas. As germany-christmas-market.org.uk suggests, “if you’re tired of commercialism taking over this holiday period and would like to get right away for a real traditional and romantic Christmas market you might want to consider heading to Germany.”
Book thumbnail image Can the shape of someone’s face tell you how healthy they are? By Anthony J Lee You can tell a lot about someone from their face, from simple demographic information such as sex and ethnicity, to the emotions they’re feeling based on facial expressions. But what about their health? Can the shape of someone’s face tell you how likely this person is to catch the common cold?
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: it’s Sunday edition The Christmas rush isn’t limited to retail outlets as the OUPblog and its editors have been busy the past few weeks, so here is our much delayed reading roundup.
Book thumbnail image Oxford authors on Sandy Hook On 14 December 2012, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother before driving from his home to Sandy Hook Elementary School and opening fire on students and staff. Twenty children and six adults were murdered before the gunman committed suicide. Many Oxford University Press authors felt compelled to share their expertise to offer comfort, explanations, and understanding. Here’s a round-up of their recent articles on the tragedy.
Book thumbnail image Self-help isn’t what it used to be By Peter W. Sinnema Self-help isn’t what it used to be. At least, its early renditions were cast in a style alien to the contemporary ear. The concept was first named (and voluminously expounded) by Samuel Smiles in his 1859 best-seller, Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance. Erstwhile apothecary, railway secretary, newspaper editor, and biographer, Smiles’ birth in Haddington, Scotland marks its bicentennial on December 23.
Book thumbnail image Christmas at the White House Today would have been Lady Bird Johnson’s 100th birthday. In honor of her and the season, we wanted to share one of Lady Bird’s Christmas recollections, as told to Michael Gillette in Lady Bird Johnson: An Oral History.
Book thumbnail image Resources to help traumatized children By Robert Hull As parents, children, and communities struggle to come to terms with the events in Newtown last week, it is important for educators and parents to be aware of just how deeply children can be affected by violence. Community violence is very different from other sources of trauma that children witness or experience. Most trauma impacts individual students or small groups, whereas the violence that was experienced in Newtown affected the local community and the entire nation.
Two Christmas stories: An analysis of New Testament narratives By Daniel J. Harrington By Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. The New Testament contains two Christmas stories, not one. They appear in Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2. They have some points in common. But there are many differences in their characters, plot, messages, and tone. In the familiar version of the Christmas story, Mary and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Because there was no room in the inn, the baby Jesus is born in a stable and placed in a manger.
Book thumbnail image You must forget me By Leo Tolstoy How can Anna live without her lover Count Vronsky? One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina sets the impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky against the marriage of Levin and Kitty. We’ve paired an excerpt of the novel with a scene from the film adaptation, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, below. How do Tolstoy and Wright bring that fateful train station to life?
Book thumbnail image Identifying and preventing antisocial behavior By Donald W. Black For many years I have pondered the mental state and motivations of mass shooters. The tragic events in Newtown, CT this past week have brought this to the fore. Mass shootings have become everyday occurrences in the United States, and for that reason tend not to attract much attention unless the circumstances are especially heinous, such as this instance in which the victims were young children. We are all left wondering what can be done.
Book thumbnail image The case for creating trauma-sensitive schools By Eric Rossen In the wake of another national tragedy, it is more apparent than ever that our schools must embrace a stronger role in supporting the mental health of our youth by developing trauma-sensitive schools. The mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed several staff and 20 elementary school students came less than two months after Hurricane Sandy, a storm that brought devastation and displacement to tens of thousands of people in the Northeast.
Book thumbnail image Who’s Who dinner party quiz Who’s Who (and its sister publication, Who Was Who) has traditionally included entries for the cream of British society, and in this festive season, the Who’s Who team have come up with a theoretical dinner party where key people from all areas of life, alive and dead, could come together to solve the world’s problems. As every good dinner party host knows, it is essential to make sure that guests have plenty in common with others at their table. Do you know what links each person at this dinner party table with their neighbour?
Book thumbnail image Looking back on looking back: history’s people of 2012 By Philip Carter 2012 — What a year to be British! A year of street parties and river processions for the Jubilee; of officially the best Olympics ever; of opening and closing ceremonies; of Britons winning every medal on offer; of the (admittedly, not British) Tour de France, of David Hockney’s Yorkshire, and a new James Bond film. Even a first tennis Grand Slam since the days when shorts were trousers and players answered to ‘Bunny’.
Book thumbnail image Jack Kerouac: On and Off the Road By David Sterritt Jack Kerouac, the novelist and poet who gave the Beat Generation its name, died 43 years ago on 21 October 1969 at the age of 47. On Friday, the long-delayed movie version of Kerouac’s autobiographical novel about crisscrossing the United States with his hipster friend Neal Cassady in the 1940s, On the Road will be released. When the novel was published in 1957, six years after he finished writing it, Kerouac dreamed up his own screen adaptation, hoping to play himself (called Sal Paradise in the novel) opposite Marlon Brando as Dean Moriarty, the Cassady character.
Book thumbnail image Christmas beers By Garrett Oliver For those of us who celebrate Christmas, this time of year is resplendent with sights, songs, and smells that bring the holiday instantly to mind. Most of us who grew up with a real Christmas tree in the house are instantly transported by the smell of a freshly cut fir tree. For others, it’s the smell of pies baking. For the ancients, it was frankincense and myrrh. For me… it’s latex paint. Wait, I can explain!
Book thumbnail image On the Second Amendment: should we fear government or ourselves? By Elvin Lim The tragic shootings in Newtown, CT, have plunged the nation into the foundational debate of American politics. Over at Fox News, the focus as been on mourning and the tragedy of what happened. As far as the search for solutions go, the focus has been on how to cope, what to say to children, and what to do about better mental health screening.
Book thumbnail image The Grimms and ‘Tales for Children and the Household’ By Joyce Crick This year, Thursday December 20th, is the 200th anniversary of the publication of their Tales for Children and the Household, currently being celebrated world-wide. Just in time for Christmas. But even after 200 years, English-speaking countries still seem to know little more about the brothers and their stories than as a brand name for films from Disney or Terry Gillliam. How many could we name off the cuff? A dozen? Twenty?
Book thumbnail image Foil thy Foes with Joy By Jessica Barbour One of Benjamin Britten’s strengths as a composer was writing music for children. Not just music for children to enjoy — many of his works, particularly his operas, are not really kid-friendly affairs — but for them to perform. I’m thinking particularly of choral music, where he excelled at writing songs that I found both beautiful and really fun to sing when I was very young.
Book thumbnail image No jingles: an alternative Christmas playlist By Tim Rutherford-Johnson Christmas is, almost inescapably, a time of music. A lot of it is familiar and much-loved, but for those who might be looking for some more adventurous listening this year – beyond Slade, the Messiah, and Victorian carols – here are some pointers to alternative Christmas music from down the ages.
Book thumbnail image Limit the estate tax charitable deduction By Edward Zelinsky One widely-discussed possibility for reforming the federal income tax is limiting the deduction for charitable contributions. Whether or not Congress amends the Code to restrict the income tax deduction for charitable contributions, Congress should limit the charitable contribution deduction under the federal estate and gift taxes. Such a limit would balance the need for federal revenues with the desirability of encouraging charitable giving.
Book thumbnail image Semi-legal marijuana in Colorado and Washington: what comes next? By Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken, and Mark A.R. Kleiman As officials in Washington State and Colorado try to decide how to implement the marijuana-legalization laws passed by their voters last month, officials in Washington, DC, are trying to figure out how to respond. Below, a quick guide to what’s at stake.
Why don’t ‘gain’ and ‘again’ rhyme? By Anatoly Liberman This is a story of again; gain will be added as an afterthought. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, dictionaries informed their users that again is pronounced with a diphthong, that is, with the same vowel as in the name of the letter A.
Book thumbnail image Nurturing a spirit of caring and generosity in children By Kenneth Barish At this holiday season, I would like to offer a few thoughts on how we can help nurture in our children a spirit of generosity and concern for others. I cannot write this post, however, without first expressing my deepest condolences to the families of Newtown, Connecticut, for their unimaginable and unbearable loss.
Ulster since 1600: politics, economy, and society By Philip Ollerenshaw For many people the terms Ulster, Northern Ireland, ‘the North’, conjure up images of communal conflict, sectarianism, and peace processes of indefinite duration. More than 3,500 people were killed in the national, communal and sectarian conflict that engulfed Northern Ireland between 1969 and Easter 1998 when the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Tens of thousands were injured or maimed, while sporadic acts of political violence persist to this day.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School By Kathleen M. Heide, Ph.D. The mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut is a tragic event that is particularly painful as it comes at a time when people across the world are trying to focus on the upcoming holidays as the season of peace bringing good tidings of great joy. Three factors about the Newtown school shooting are noteworthy. First, it was a mass murder. Second, it appears to have been precipitated by the killing of a parent (parricide). Third, it was committed by a 20-year old man. All of these factors are relevant in making sense of what appears to be inexplicable violence.
Book thumbnail image Some warning behaviors for targeted violence By J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D. As the debate concerning public and social policy surrounding gun control intensifies, I would like to offer some comments on the identification of individuals who concern us as potential perpetrators of planned killing(s). These thoughts are from the trenches of threat assessment, and do not address or offer opinions concerning the larger policy issues we face as a country regarding firearms and public mental health care — one of which is highly emotionally charged and the other sorely neglected.
Book thumbnail image The Naming of Hobbits By Michael Adams It will be interesting to see how much of J. R. R. Tolkien’s several invented languages will appear in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. In a letter to his American publisher, dated 30 June 1955, Tolkien suspected there were limits to how much invented language readers would ‘stomach’, to use his term. There are certainly limits to how much can be included in a film. American audiences, anyway, are subtitle averse.
Book thumbnail image Christmas dinner with the Cratchits “There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows!”
Book thumbnail image Top ten Christmas carols of 2012 By Iain Mackinlay Christmas is the busiest time of year for the Oxford University Press Music Hire Library. With everyone wanting to include festive music in their December concerts the three Library worker elves are kept scurrying around the mile-long stretch of music shelves from September to December, busily packing up orders in time for Christmas concert rehearsals.
Book thumbnail image How to help your children cope with unexpected tragedy By Brenda Bursch Children look to their parents to help them understand the inexplicable. They look to their parents to assuage worries and fears. They depend on their parents to protect them. What can parents do to help their children cope with mass tragedy, such as occurred this week with the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut?
Book thumbnail image How many more children have to die? By Rochelle Caplan, MD Surely the time has finally come to put our heads together and focus on three seldom connected variables regarding mass murders in the United States: the lack of comprehensive psychiatric care for individuals with mental illness, poor public recognition of the red flags that an individual might harm others, and easy access to firearms.
Book thumbnail image Ganja administration By James H. Mills It was announced 10 December as an outcome of the recent Commission into cannabis that the UK Government has decided to reorganise its ‘ganja administration’ with the objective of taxing sales of the drug in order to generate revenues and to control the price in order to discourage excessive consumption. The Government will work with partners from the private sector to ensure that products of a consistent quality are available to consumers.
Book thumbnail image Roast Goose, the Mrs Beeton way With Christmas approaching, we are looking towards the food we’ll share on the day itself. If you’re looking for ideas, who better to consult that Mrs Isabella Beeton herself, who authored the seminal Household Management at just 22 years old. Below is her sage advice on that classic Christmas meat, roast goose.
Book thumbnail image Killing journalists in wartime: a legal analysis By Sandesh Sivakumaran The last couple of years have been bad for journalists. I’m not referring to phone-hacking, payments to police, and the like, which have occupied much attention in the United Kingdom these last months. Rather, I’m referring to the number of journalists who have been killed in wartime. These last two years alone have seen eminent journalists such as Marie Colvin and Tim Hetherington killed while reporting on armed conflicts.
Book thumbnail image The ageing brain By As our bodies start to show the signs of ageing, our brain is naturally ageing too. But some older people can become forgetful and have trouble remembering common words or organising daily activities more than others. There are few proven interventions to prevent this kind of cognitive decline in older adults, although treating modifiable risk factors for vascular disease and stroke, such as cholesterol and body mass index, has been suggested as a promising approach to preventing or delaying cognitive impairment for a growing UK population of older adults. So is there a link between high blood pressure and forgetfulness?
Book thumbnail image Don’t bank on it By Beverley Hunt With just over a week to go until Christmas, many of us are no doubt looking forward to the holidays and a few days off work. For those working on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, however, writing the history of the language sometimes took precedence over a Christmas break.
Book thumbnail image The life of J.R.R. Tolkien By Philip Carter Published in 1937 The Hobbit was Tolkien’s first published work of fiction, though he had been writing on legends since at least 1915. His creation — a mythological race of ‘hobbits’, in which Bilbo Baggins takes the lead — had originally been intended for children. But from the outset Tolkien’s saga also proved popular with adults, perhaps appreciative of the hobbits’ curiously English blend of resourcefulness and respectability.
Book thumbnail image Oral history in disaster zones By Caitlin Tyler-Richards When Superstorm Sandy hit the United States’ east coast in late October, I was struck by the way in which oral historians and other like-minded academics responded to the ensuing chaos. This was not the first time I had seen oral history interact with natural disaster; one of the first articles I prepped for our Twitter feed was KUT News’ “Forged in Flames: An Oral History of the Labor Day Wildfires,” a multi-media documentation of the wildfires that overtook Texas in September 2011.
Book thumbnail image Hanukkah and Christmas: a spiritual interpretation By Roger S. Gottlieb Ahhh…the joys of the holiday season in America! A frightening degree of crass commercialism, public rages about the ‘war on Christmas,’ emotionally draining family events or a soul-graying loneliness when you have no place to go. Food in abundance, but often consumed with a sense that it’s way off of one’s (more healthy) diet; or perhaps a nagging guilt that we in the middle/upper classes have so much more than the approximately 1 billion people who lack access to clean water, adequate food, and health services.
Making and mistaking martyrs By Jolyon Mitchell It was agonizing, just a few weeks before publication of Martyrdom: A Very Short Introduction, to discover that there was a minor mistake in one of the captions. Especially frustrating, as it was too late to make the necessary correction to the first print run, though it will be repaired when the book is reprinted. New research had revealed the original mistake. The inaccuracy we had been given had circulated the web and had been published by numerous press agencies and journalists too. What precisely was wrong?
Book thumbnail image Beethoven’s creativity in the 21st century By William Kinderman Our fascination with creativity is a timeless and universal phenomenon. Since Greek antiquity, its most telling embodiment has been Prometheus: that heroic benefactor of humanity who stole the fire whose vital sparks sustain science and the arts. In more modern times, it is the fire of the imagination that is understood to illuminate and guide the creative mind, transforming the conventions of culture.
Book thumbnail image Samuel Johnson and human flight By Thomas Keymer One doesn’t associate Samuel Johnson, whose death 228 years ago today ended his lengthy domination of the literary world, with the history of aviation. But ballooning was a national obsession in Johnson’s last year, and he was caught up in the craze despite himself.
Book thumbnail image How Nazi Germany lost the nuclear plot By Gordon Fraser When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, neither the Atomic Bomb nor the Holocaust were on anybody’s agenda. Instead, the Nazi’s top aim was to rid German culture of perceived pollution. A priority was science, where paradoxically Germany already led the world. To safeguard this position, loud Nazi voices, such as Nobel laureate Philipp Lenard, complained about a ‘massive infiltration of the Jews into universities’.
Drinking vessels: ‘bumper’ By Anatoly Liberman Some time ago, I devoted three posts to alcoholic beverages: ale, beer, and mead. It has occurred to me that, since I have served drinks, I should also take care of wine glasses. Bumper is an ideal choice for the beginning of this series because of its reference to a large glass full to overflowing. It is a late word, as words go: no citation in the OED predates 1677. If I am not mistaken, the first lexicographer to include it in his dictionary was Samuel Johnson (1755). For a long time bumper may have been little or not at all known in polite society.
Book thumbnail image A holiday maze By Georgia Mierswa Ah, the holidays. A time of leisure to eat, drink, be merry, and read up on the meaning of mistletoe in Scandinavian mythology… Taken from the Oxford Index’s quick reference overview pages, the descriptions of the wintry-themed words above are not nearly as simplistic as you might think — and even more intriguing are the related subjects you stumble upon through the OI’s recommended links. I’ll never look at a Christmas tree the same way again.
Book thumbnail image Robert Browning in 2012 By Gregory Tate This year marked the bicentenary of the birth of the Victorian poet Robert Browning in 1812, although this news might come as something of a surprise…
Book thumbnail image The art of science By Leonard A. Jason Are art and science so different? At the deepest levels, the overlap is stunning. The artist wakes us from the slumber of ordinary existence by uncovering a childlike wonder and awe of the natural environment. The same magical processes occur when a scientist grasps the mysteries of nature, and by doing so, ultimately shows a graceful interconnectedness.
Book thumbnail image Life in a brewery What kind of crazy things happen at a brewery bar? What is some of the interesting stuff you can do with beer? What’s proper beer etiquette? If you don’t like beer, what beer should you try? How do you become a brewer? How do you break into the brewing industry? Interviews with the Eric Peck, Brooklyn Brewery Tour Guide and Bartender, and Tom Price, Brooklyn Brewery Brewer and Lab Manager, reveal life inside a brewery.
Book thumbnail image The Beethoven question: How does a musician cope with hearing loss? By Anwen Greenaway By Anwen Greenaway Hearing is clearly the most important sense for a musician, particularly a composer, so the trauma of experiencing difficulties with this sense is hard to imagine. Beethoven famously suffered deteriorating hearing for much of his adult life; an affliction which brought him to despair at times. The cause of his deafness is still unknown, although much speculated upon, but the composer’s feelings about his situation are well-documented.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Charles Rosen Charles Rosen, a titan of the music world, passed away on Sunday. He was a fine concert pianist, groundbreaking musicologist, and a thoughtful critic who wrote prolifically, including regular articles for the New York Review of Books, not just on music but on its broader cultural contexts. We’re excerpting his entry in Grove Music Online below.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Patrick Moore By David Rothery There’s a Patrick Moore-sized hole in the world of astronomy and planetary science that is unlikely ever to be exactly filled. He presented “The Sky at Night,” a monthly BBC TV astronomy programme, from 1957 until his death. This brought him celebrity, and the books that he wrote for the amateur enthusiast were bought or borrowed in vast numbers from public libraries for half a century — including by myself as a schoolboy.
Book thumbnail image Artists’ books: emphasizing the physical book in an era of digital collections By Michael Levine-Clark Probably like most librarians, I went to library school because I loved books and associated libraries with some of my fondest book-related memories. In my childhood, and through college, I used libraries to find books. Occasionally I used periodicals or even microfiche, but the library, to me, was all about the books. I learned in library school that library collections were becoming increasingly digital, and that most of the things libraries purchased were journals.
Book thumbnail image A deep-sea microorganism and the origin of eukaryotes By Masashi Yamaguchi and Cedric Worman There are only two kinds of organisms on Earth: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes include the Bacteria and Archaea and consist of structurally simple cells that are generally a few micrometers (1 µm= 1/1,000 mm) in size and lack a nucleus. Eukaryotes include animals, plants, fungi, etc. and consist of structurally complex cells that are nearly 10,000 times the volume of prokaryotic cells and have a nucleus enclosed by a double membrane in addition to various organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts.
Mars, grubby hands, and international law By Gérardine Goh Escolar The relentless heat of the sun waned quickly as it slipped below the horizon. All around, ochre, crimson and scarlet rock glowed, the brief burning embers of a dying day. Clouds of red dust rose from the unseen depths of the dry canyon–Mars? I wish! We were hiking in the Grand Canyon, on vacation in that part of our world so like its red sister. It was 5 August 2012. And what was a space lawyer to do while on vacation in the Grand Canyon that day? Why, attend the Grand Canyon NASA Curiosity event, of course!
Book thumbnail image Competition: who’s your favourite philosopher? To celebrate the publication of our second Philosophy Bites book, Philosophy Bites Back, authors Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds have released a 39 minute podcast episode of a wide range of philosophers answering the question ‘Who’s Your Favourite Philosopher?’
Tax reform and the fiscal cliff Taxes have always been an incendiary topic in the United States. A tax revolt launched the nation and the modern day Tea Party invokes the mantle of the early revolutionaries to support their call for low taxes and limited government. And yet, despite the passion and the fury, most Americans are remarkably clueless about how our tax system works. Surveys indicate that they have no idea about how they are taxed, much less about the overall contours of federal and state tax systems.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to Mars By Alice Northover With our announcement of Place of the Year 2012 and NASA’s announcement at the American Geophysical Union on December 3rd, and a week full of posts about Mars, what better way to wrap things up than by pulling together information from across Oxford’s resources to provide some background on the Red planet.
Book thumbnail image Six facts about regional anesthesia The Mayo Clinic Scientific Press suite of publications is now available on Oxford Medicine Online. To highlight some of the great resources, we’ve pulled together some interesting facts about anesthesia from James Hebl and Robert Lennon’s Mayo Clinic Atlas of Regional Anesthesia and Ultrasound-Guided Nerve Blockade. Get free access to the Mayo Clinic suite for a limited time with this Facebook offer (watch out, it closes today!).
Book thumbnail image Written in the stars By Marilyn Deegan The new discoveries of the Mars rover Curiosity have greatly excited the world in the last few weeks, and speculation was rife about whether some evidence of life has been found. (In actuality, Curiosity discovered complex chemistry, including organic compounds, in a Martian soil analysis.) Why the excitement?
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: why is it December? edition By Alice Northover What happened to 2012? I checked the book room, those weird spaces between the cubicles, and the inexplicable drawers in conference rooms (why would they have stuff in them in the first place). Here’s a week in (my) reading — a particularly librarianish one too.
Book thumbnail image De Quincey’s fine art By Robert Morrison Two hundred and one years ago this month, along the Ratcliffe Highway in the East End of London, seven people from two separate households were brutally murdered. News of the atrocities quickly spread throughout the country, generating levels of terror and moral hysteria that were not seen again until three-quarters of a century later when Jack the Ripper launched his savage career in a neighbouring East End district. Britain had no professional police force until 1829, and so the task of apprehending the killer (or killers) fell to an ill-coordinated group of magistrates, watchmen, and churchwardens who were woefully unprepared for the pressures of a major murder investigation,
Book thumbnail image The discovery of Mars in literature By David Seed Although there had been interest in Mars earlier, towards the end of the nineteenth century there was a sudden surge of novels describing travel to the Red Planet. One of the earliest was Percy Greg’s Across the Zodiac (1880) which set the pattern for early Mars fiction by framing its story as a manuscript found in a battered metal container. Greg obviously assumed that his readers would find the story incredible and sets up the discovery of the ‘record’, as he calls it, by a traveler to the USA to distance himself from the extraordinary events within the novel.
Book thumbnail image Does the state still matter? Mark Bevir Governance, governance everywhere – why has the word “governance” become so common? One reason is that many people believe that the state no longer matters, or at least the state matters far less than it used to. Even politicians often tell us that the state can’t do much.
Book thumbnail image Why we are outraged: the New York Post photo controversy By Barbie Zelizer A New York Post photographer snaps a picture of a man as he is pushed to his death in front of a New York City subway. An anonymous blogger photographs a dying American ambassador as he is carried to hospital after an attack in Libya. Multiple images following a shooting at the Empire State Building show its victims across both social media and news outlets. A little over three months, three events, three pictures, three circles of outrage.
Book thumbnail image Mars and music By Kyle Gann By long tradition, sweet Venus and mystical Neptune are the planets astrologically connected with music. The relevance of Mars, “the bringer of war” as one famous composition has it, would seem to be pretty oblique. Mars in the horoscope has to do with action, ego, how we separate ourselves off from the world; it is “the fighting principle for the Sun,” in the words of famous astrologer Liz Greene.
Book thumbnail image Ten things you didn’t know about Ira Gershwin By Philip Furia Today marks the 116th anniversary of the birth of Ira Gershwin, lyricist and brother to composer George Gershwin. There are many fascinating details about Ira, ten of which are collected here. 1. When Ira was growing up, he held a lot of odd jobs, one of which was shipping clerk at the B. Altman department store housed in the same building where today Oxford University Press has its offices.
Book thumbnail image Secession: let the battle commence By James Ker-Lindsay There has rarely been a more interesting time to study secession. It is not just that the number of separatist movements appears to be growing, particularly in Europe, it is the fact that the international debate on the rights of people to determine their future, and pursue independence, seems to be on the verge of a many change.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Dave Brubeck By Ted Gioia I first met Dave Brubeck when I was in my twenties, and writing my book on West Coast jazz. Dave deeply impressed me, and not just as a musician. How many celebrities have a marriage that lasts 70 years? I think Dave is the only one. He was a very caring family man, a good dad and husband – never a given in the entertainment industry. He was a pioneer on civil rights, threatening to cancel concerts when faced with complaints about his integrated band.
Oh, what lark! By Anatoly Liberman For some time I have fought a trench war, trying to prove that fowl and fly are not connected. The pictures of an emu and an ostrich appended to the original post were expected to clinch the argument, but nothing worked. A few days ago, I saw a rafter of turkeys strutting leisurely along a busy street. Passersby were looking on with amused glee while drivers honked. The birds (clearly, “fowl”) crossed the road without showing the slightest signs of excitement.
Book thumbnail image Mars: A lexicographer’s perspective By Richard Holden The planet Mars might initially seem an odd choice for Place of the Year. It has hardly any atmosphere and is more or less geologically inactive, meaning that it has remained essentially unchanged for millions of years. 2012 isn’t much different from one million BC as far as Mars is concerned. However, here on Earth, 2012 has been a notable year for the Red Planet.
The familiar face of Winston Churchill By Christopher M. Bell By Christopher M. Bell Churchill, a tireless self-promoter in his own time, would undoubtedly have taken a great deal of satisfaction from knowing that the legend he helped to craft would endure well into the twenty-first century. Unlike most politicians, he was deeply concerned with how he would be remembered – and judged – by history.
In his own voice: H.L.A. Hart in conversation with David Sugarman By David Sugarman This recording of my lengthy interview with H.L.A. Hart (1907–1992) has been resurrected from my audio tapes and given new life. Dusted and digitalized, the result is something quite beautiful. Here is Hart in his own words recorded in 1988, reviewing his life, his work, and his significance. The interview presents Hart as three individuals: legal philosopher, interviewee, and critic. The recording adds another dimension to our understanding of Hart that must be incorporated into our collective memory.
Book thumbnail image Mars: A geologist’s perspective By David Rothery So Mars is ‘Place of the Year’! It has the biggest volcano in the Solar System — Olympus Mons — amazing dust storms, and the grandest canyon of all — Valles Marineris. Mind you, the surface area of Mars is almost the same as the total area of dry land on Earth, so to declare Mars as a whole to be ‘place of the year’ seems a little vague, given that previous winners (on Earth) have been islands or single countries.
Book thumbnail image Is it music? A listener’s journey By Meghann Wilhoite 2012 has been a poignant year for avant-garde music. German composer Hans Werner Henze passed away in October at age 86; a little over a week later American composer Elliott Carter passed away at the age of 103. The late John Cage was, as Musical America put it, “feted beyond his own wildest dreams” this year in celebration of his birth centenary. All three of these composers wrote music that challenged listeners to reconsider the boundaries of what qualifies as music.
Book thumbnail image Contraception, HSAs and the unnecessary controversy about religious conscience By Edward Zelinsky Among the bitter but unnecessary controversies of this election year was the dispute about the federal government’s mandate that employers provide contraception as part of their health care coverage for their employees. Employers religiously opposed to contraception believe this mandate infringes their right of Free Exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Advocates of the contraception mandate characterize it as vital to women’s health and choice.
Book thumbnail image How we decide Place of the Year Since its inception in 2007, Oxford University Press’s Place of Year has provided reflections on how geography informs our lives and reflects them back to us. Adam Gopnik recently described geography as a history of places: “the history of terrains and territories, a history where plains and rivers and harbors shape the social place that sits above them or around them.” An Atlas of the World expert committee made up of authors, editors, and geography enthusiasts from around the press has made several different considerations for their choices over the years.
Book thumbnail image And the Place of the Year 2012 is…… It’s a city! It’s a state! It’s a country! No — it’s a planet! Breaking with tradition, Oxford University Press has selected Mars as the Place of the Year 2012. Mars, visible to the naked eye, has fascinated and intrigued for centuries but only in the past 50 years has space exploration allowed scientists to better understand the Red Planet. On 6 August 2012, NASA’s Curiosity Rover landed on Mars’ Gale Crater; by transmitting its findings back to Earth, Curiosity has made Mars a little a less alien.
Book thumbnail image Challenges for international law By John Louth and Merel Alstein What is a state? We think we know but when we compare things that are (e.g. Monaco, Andorra, Liechtenstein) to things that are not (e.g. Scotland, Kosovo, Palestine) our understanding unravels. This is a core question of international law and the troubling thing is that the best experts in the subject wouldn’t give a consistent explanation for the differences between these examples.
Book thumbnail image Musical ways of interacting with children By Professor Jane Edwards As a music therapy scholar, teacher, and practitioner for more than 20 years, I have been able to learn from many sources about the crucial role our early years play in our lives. The ability to reflect on challenges experienced in our adult lives by linking back to childhood experiences is an essential aspect of the way that many music therapists practice. Rather than using descriptions of family histories to apportion blame, the therapist tries to understand the current experience of the patient and their worldview through the lens of past experience, to see if there is some way to make sense of self-destructive behaviours, or difficulties experienced in creating meaningful and satisfying relationships with others.
Book thumbnail image Personality disorders, the DSM, and the future of diagnosis By Edward Shorter Ben Carey’s thought-provoking article in the New York Times about the treatment of personality disorders in the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association raises two questions: 1. Do disorders of “personality” really exist as natural phenomena, comparable to mania or dementia?
Book thumbnail image Otto Dix and The War By Reinhold Heller The German artist Otto Dix — born this day in 1881 — drew a remarkable image of himself in 1924 (the tenth anniversary of the beginning of World War I), simply rendered in bold lines of India ink, caricature-like in its exaggerated simplicity. In the drawing we see Dix as he gazes directly out at us through squinting eyes, sporting a small curving mustache, a cigarette dangling from his lips, wearing a battered steel helmet and tattered uniform while carrying a heavy machine gun.
Book thumbnail image Great Expectations: an audio guide Perhaps Dickens’s best-loved work, Great Expectations tells the story of young Pip, who lives with his sister and her husband the blacksmith. He has few prospects for advancement until a mysterious benefaction takes him from the Kent marshes to London. Pip is haunted by figures from his past — the escaped convict Magwitch, the time-withered Miss Havisham and her proud and beautiful ward, Estella — and in time uncovers not just the origins of his great expectations but the mystery of his own heart. Here is a sequence of podcasts with Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Great Expectations.
Book thumbnail image What makes this World AIDS Day different from all others? By Kenneth Mayer Last year, on World AIDS Day, U.S. President Barack Obama set ambitious goals to reach more people with treatment and fundamental prevention. Echoing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call for an “AIDS-free generation,” he envisioned a tipping point in a 30-year battle to subdue the world’s costliest epidemic. This World AIDS Day, the administration’s release of a global AIDS roadmap takes the vision into practice.
November 2012 (90))
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: milking edition By Alice Northover It’s been an eventful week in Oxford spires (although I write this from the New York office which contains no spires). We had a kerfuffle over the OED and we’re gearing up for the Place of the Year extravaganza next week. So what have we learned in between?
Book thumbnail image Oral history students as narrators For this week’s contribution to OUPblog, we’ve gone audio — we are the Oral History Review, after all. In our first podcast, our guest Stephen Sloan elaborates on “On the Other Foot: Oral History Students as Narrators,” a piece he wrote for the most recent issue of the OHR (volume 39, issue 2). This post represents another first: an effort to give current and future OHR contributors room to discuss their articles further.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating Scotland: St Andrew’s Day St Andrew, the patron saint of Scotland, is rather a mysterious figure; very little is actually known about his life. Meanwhile, St Andrew’s Day, on 30th November, is well-established and widely celebrated by Scots around the world. The bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and the Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations include quotes from a wide-range of people, on an even wider-range of subjects. Here are some contributions from some of Scotland’s most treasured wordsmiths.
Book thumbnail image The truth about anaesthesia What do anaesthetists do? How does anaesthesia work? What are the risks? Anaesthesia is a mysterious and sometimes threatening process. We spoke to anaesthetist and author Aidan O’Donnell, who addresses some of the common myths and thoughts surrounding anaesthesia.
Book thumbnail image What sort of science do we want? By Robyn Arianrhod 29 November 2012 is the 140th anniversary of the death of mathematician Mary Somerville, the nineteenth century’s “Queen of Science”. Several years after her death, Oxford University’s Somerville College was named in her honor — a poignant tribute because Mary Somerville had been completely self-taught. In 1868, when she was 87, she had signed J. S. Mill’s (unsuccessful) petition for female suffrage, but I think she’d be astonished that we’re still debating “the woman question” in science.
Book thumbnail image Cape Verdean music and musicians By Terza S. Lima-Neves For a relatively unknown small island nation in West Africa with a population of half a million people, Cape Verde enjoys a rich and lively music scene. This archipelago of ten islands and former Portuguese colony is a nation historically affected by drought and famine, leading to a very sizable global immigrant community. Many of Cape Verde’s musicians either live abroad or were born in countries such as Portugal or the United States, the host country of the largest community of Cape Verdeans outside of Cape Verde.
Summing up Alan Turing By B. Jack Copeland Three words to sum up Alan Turing? Humour. He had an impish, irreverent and infectious sense of humour. Courage. Isolation. He loved to work alone. Reading his scientific papers, it is almost as though the rest of the world — the busy community of human minds working away on the same or related problems — simply did not exist.
Monthly etymology gleanings for November 2012 By Anatoly Liberman It has been a tempestuous month in the world but a quiet one in the department of English etymology. Both the comments and the questions I received dealt with separate words, and there have been not too many of them. Lollygag. In July 2007 I already wrote what I thought about this word. Although most people, at least in America, say lollygag, its doublet lallygag is well-known. The variation is typical.
Book thumbnail image Moral cost of occupation for the occupiers By Daniel Bar-Tal and Izhak Schnell While many countries moved towards termination of occupation, colonialism, and imperialism, Israel still continues the prolonged occupation of West Bank and part of Golan Heights, and partially controls Gaza Strip. It appears that the prolonged occupation bears harsh moral, social, and psychological consequences, not only for the occupied population, but to the occupying society as well. Prolonged occupation refers not only to a statutory or geographical situation, but also inherently carries with it moral and socio-psychological meanings.
Book thumbnail image ‘Zombie drugs’ By Dr Rosie Harding & Dr Elizabeth Peel According to official statistics, a significant minority of people living with dementia are prescribed antipsychotic drugs. The 2012 National Dementia and Antipsychotic Prescribing Audit suggests that there has been a fall in the prescription of these medications. However, less than half of GP practices in England participated and thousands of people with dementia are still prescribed antipsychotic drugs each year. What many perhaps don’t know is that only one antipsychotic (Risperidone) has actually been licensed for use in elderly people with dementia.
Book thumbnail image The Day-Lewis Lincoln: (racial) frontiersman By Jim Cullen As anyone vaguely familiar with his work knows, Day-Lewis is legendary for the extraordinary variety of characters he has played, and the vertiginous psychological depth with which he has played them. I first became aware of Day-Lewis in early 1985, when, in the space of a week, I watched him portray the priggish Cecil Vyse in the tony Merchant-Ivory film adaptation of E.M. Forster’s Room with a View and then saw him play Johnny, the punk East End homosexual, in Stephen Frears’s brilliantly brash My Beautiful Launderette.
Book thumbnail image Hard times no more: The Performers >By Liz Wollman One of the largest — and, I admit, most disappointing — revelations I had while researching 1970s adult musicals for my book, Hard Times: The Adult Musical in 1970s New York City, was just how tame they all ended up being. Sure, there was frank talk about sex in most adult musicals. There were also a lot of naked bodies on display.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and “Please Please Me,” November 1962 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles recorded their arrangement of “Please Please Me,” a lilting lover’s complaint transformed into a burst of adolescent adrenaline. On 26 November 1962, after repeated attempts to capture just the right balance of frustration and anticipation, George Martin informed them over the studio intercom that they had just recorded their first number-one disc. But the path to the top of the charts would not be easy.
Book thumbnail image Pomegranates: did you know… November is National Pomegranate Month and we thought it’d be interesting to highlight the fascinating history of this fruit. Here are some fun facts from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Second Edition, edited by Andrew F. Smith. Plus, the “Pomegranates” entry in the Encyclopedia by David Karp.
Place of the Year 2012: Then and now Oxford University Press hopes you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Following a weekend of food comas and couch potato-ing, here’s a slideshow celebrating the Place of the Year (POTY) shortlist nominees that hopefully will perk you up this morning. See how our ten finalists have changed over the years. We’re excited to announce the location that will join Yemen, South Africa, Warming Island, Kosovo and Sudan as a Place of the Year winner on December 3rd! Stay tuned!
Book thumbnail image The Brain Supremacy By Kathleen Taylor Ours is a world full of science. Much of that technology and knowledge, from mobile phones to the understanding of gravity, currently comes from what we call ‘the natural sciences’: those which study the material universe. In school, we learn to distinguish physics, chemistry, geology, and their natural kin from life sciences like biology and psychology. Our ideas of what science is, and indeed what we are, have been shaped accordingly. The brain supremacy, that coming era in which neuroscience will challenge physics for cultural dominance, is about to reshape those ideas as never before.
On animals and tools By Robert St. Amant Try this experiment: Ask someone to name three tools, without thinking hard about it. This is a parlor game, not a scientific study, so your results may vary, but I’ve done this dozens of times and heard surprisingly consistent answers. The most common is hammer, screwdriver, and saw, in that order.
Book thumbnail image The e-reader over your shoulder By Dennis Baron A publisher of digital textbooks has announced a utility that will tell instructors whether their students are actually doing the assigned reading. Billed as a way to spot low-performers and turn them around before it’s too late, CourseSmart Analytics measures which pages of their etexts students have read and exactly how long that took.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Turkey edition Goodbye Thanksgiving, hello Black Friday — or in my case leftovers.
Book thumbnail image Marian Stamp Dawkins on why animals matter There is an urgent argument for the need to rethink animal welfare, untinged by anthropomorphism and claims of animal consciousness, which lack firm empirical evidence and are often freighted with controversy and high emotions. With growing concern over such issues as climate change and food shortages, how we treat those animals on which we depend for survival needs to be put squarely on the public agenda. Marian Stamp Dawkins seeks to do this by offering a more complete understanding of how animals help us.
Book thumbnail image Art and human evolution By Stephen Davies Young children take to painting, singing, dancing, storytelling, and role-playing with scarcely any explicit training. They delight in these proto-art behaviors. Grown-ups are no less avid in extending such behaviors, either as spectators or participants. Provided we have a generous view of art, we all engage routinely and often passionately with it.
Book thumbnail image Is spirituality a passing trend? Philip Sheldrake “Spirituality” is a word that defines our era. The fascination with spirituality is a striking aspect of our contemporary times and stands in stark contrast to the decline in traditional religious belonging in the West. Although the word “spirituality” has Christian origins it has now moved well beyond these – indeed beyond religion itself.
Book thumbnail image Words we’re thankful for Here on the OxfordWords blog we’re constantly awed and impressed by the breadth and depth of the English language. As this is a great week to be appreciative, we’ve asked some fellow language-lovers which word they’re most thankful for. From quark to quotidian, ych a fi to robot, here’s what they said:
Book thumbnail image Meditation experiences in Buddhism and Catholicism By Susan Stabile Becoming a Tibetan Buddhist nun is not a typical life choice for a child of an Italian Catholic police officer from Brooklyn, New York. Nevertheless, in February of 1988 I knelt in front of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India, as he cut a few locks of my hair (the rest had already been shaved), symbolizing my renunciation of lay life. I lived in the vows of a Buddhist nun for a year, in the course of spending two years living in Buddhist monasteries in Nepal and India
Book thumbnail image Music we’re thankful for By Alyssa Bender Thanksgiving is upon us in the US. Before the OUP Music team headed home for some turkey and stuffing, we compiled a list of what we are most thankful for, musically speaking. Read on for our thoughts, and leave your own in the comments. Happy Thanksgiving!
Book thumbnail image Spitting blood: the absence and presence of tuberculosis By Helen Bynum Flying back from Boston recently I was delighted to be able to watch the 2008 film version of Frost and Nixon. I had greatly enjoyed the play in London and heard the film was also very good. So I plugged in the headphones and settled back.Before too long ex-president Richard Nixon is telling would-be interviewer David Frost how he bonded with his Russian counterpart Nikita Khrushchev over their shared sadnesses: Nixon had lost two brothers to tuberculosis.
Book thumbnail image Ten things you didn’t know about Thanksgiving By Erin Fegely With Thanksgiving quickly approaching in the United States, we thought that it would be interesting to highlight 10 fun facts on the holiday from the newly released The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Second Edition. Additionally, you will find an interview with Editor in Chief Andrew Smith dispelling common myths associated with the origin of Thanksgiving.
Shakespearean passions around ‘bullyragging’ By Anatoly Liberman After writing a post on bully, I decided to turn my attention to bullyrag, noun and verb, both branded as obscure. The verb has been attested in several forms, but only ballarag is of some interest. Ballywrag is a fanciful spelling of ballarag, while bullrag contains the familiar two elements without a connecting vowel.
Book thumbnail image Inside a brewery Garrett Oliver, editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, takes us behind the scenes of the brewing process inside the Brooklyn Brewery’s Refermentation Room, and his favorite room in the brewery — the Barrel Room. He is brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and the foremost authority on beer in the United States.
Book thumbnail image Voltaire, l’esprit, and irony By John Fletcher In 1744 Voltaire produced for an edition of Mérope a “Lettre sur l’esprit”, which he later incorporated after corrections in later editions of the Dictionnaire philosophique under the article “Esprit.” In it he attempted to define the nature of wit in the following terms: Ce qu’on appelle esprit est tantôt une comparaison nouvelle, tantôt une allusion fine:
Book thumbnail image Copyright law and creative social norms By Michael Birnhack Copyright law provides a general legal framework intended to encourage creativity in literature and the arts. However, in some fields of cultural production, to borrow a term from Pierre Bourdieu, we observe that the players develop their own set of norms. These social norms de facto replace the formal law. The norms often develop in a bottom-up way, rather than the set of top-down rules. This intersection of formal copyright law and social norms in creative fields requires attention.
Book thumbnail image Seven words that gained fame on TV shows Television shows have a huge influence on popular culture, and so it is not surprising that many words and phrases have come into common usage through the medium of television. Here are a few of our favourite words and phrases that were popularized through iconic TV shows.
Book thumbnail image Elliott Carter By Paul Griffiths I must have seen Elliott Carter several times in London from deep back in the seventies; perhaps the earliest of my mental photographs has him standing at the kerbside at Oxford Circus, waiting to cross the road, his head slightly turned and raised to look at his publisher who was with him, Janis Susskind, his face (as it would always be) smiling, his white hair lifted by the wind.
Book thumbnail image An interview with Emanuel Tov In this interview conducted for Oxford Biblical Studies Online (OBSO), Professor Marc Brettler (Brandeis University) discusses with Professor Tov his early days as a scholar of Biblical studies, his research into the Qumran scrolls, and the legacy of his work — most notably his landmark book Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, which continues to set the standard for his field.
Book thumbnail image Music in political ads By Ron Rodman Ask most TV viewers about what they think of political ads on TV, and they will say that they hate them. But political TV ads have been shown to be effective in validating voters’ leanings toward or against a particular candidate, or for sowing seeds of doubt about a particular candidate.
Book thumbnail image Giant pumpkins By Cindy Ott By Cindy Ott At this year’s Topsfield Fair in Massachusetts, Ron Wallace broke the world record for the biggest pumpkin yet with a specimen weighing in at 2009 pounds. Photographs of Wallace next to this colossal body of orange flesh made headlines not only in the regional Boston Globe but also the nationwide Huffington Post. Yet every year in the popular press scenes of a pickup truck with its bed filled to the brim or a grown adult comfortably nestled inside a single giant pumpkin document the variety’s comically huge size.
Place of the Year 2012 in pictures Fresh off the heels of an exciting “Word of the Year” week, OUP geographers are still debating what should be recognized as the Place of the Year 2012. This slideshow highlights the POTY shortlist, full of contenders that may have to duel this out. Unless….if you make your vote below, we’ll be able to select the place that has inspired the majority of readers this year, sparing the planet World War POTY.
Book thumbnail image Is Almanac Day in your calendar? By Benjamin Wardhaugh As well as Halloween, Guy Fawkes, and All Saints’s day, this time of the year used to see another day of fun and frenzy. ‘Almanack Day’, towards the end of November, saw the next year’s almanacs go on sale. It generally came round on or about 22 November: St Cecilia’s Day. In London, Stationers’ Hall would be crammed to the rafters…
Book thumbnail image Five GIFers for the serious-minded By Alice Northover When people think of GIFs, they often imagine a silly animation for a quick joke. But like any medium, it has potential beyond our cat-centric imagination. “The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace,” Head of US Dictionaries, Katherine Martin, recently commented. So it’s only appropriate to highlight a few GIFers who take the file format beyond a basic form.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: M(o)ustache edition By Alice Northover It’s the close of WOTY week everyone and I’m GIFed out. Welcome new followers! And goodbye to those who quickly OD’ed on Oxford content. You will be missed. First off, it’s Movember, when men around the world sprout moustaches to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Our own Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is presenting a moustachioed man (no women) every day this month on Twitter.
Book thumbnail image Oral history, research, and technology A month ago, the Oral History Association (OHA) hosted their 2012 annual conference, “Sing It Out, Shout It Out, Say It Out Loud: Giving Voice through Oral History” in Cleveland, Ohio. Unsurprisingly, one topic that came up in both formal presentations and casual conversation was the field’s use of the latest tech.
Book thumbnail image Anna Karenina’s conduct By Leo Tolstoy One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina sets the impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky against the marriage of Levin and Kitty, thus illuminating the most important questions that face humanity. A new film adaptation of the novel, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, opens today in the United States. We’ve paired a scene from the film with an excerpt of the novel below.
Book thumbnail image Drugs in the Internet era By Les Iversen When Drugs: A Very Short Introduction was published in 2001, drugs were relatively hard to obtain. Recreational users could buy illegal drugs from back-street dealers, while prescription medicines required a trip to the doctor to obtain a script. The Internet has changed all that. Nowadays in Western Europe and in North America there are dozens of website dealers offering novel psychoactive drugs (“legal highs”) and prescription medicines at modest prices. The market for designer drugs has grown hugely.
Book thumbnail image What’s so impressive about drumming? By Meghann Wilhoite November is International Drum Month, so declared by the Percussion Marketing Council. Percussionists are often the most underrated performers in the world of music, perhaps because specialized instruments aren’t strictly necessary: anyone with an upturned bucket or even just two hands to clap can engage in percussion pretty much anywhere. But drumming is harder than it looks.
Book thumbnail image Tarzan of the planet earth Jason Haslam October 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication, in the pulp-fiction magazine All-Story, of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ best known novel, Tarzan of the Apes. The complete novel published in the October 1912 issue, was given the cover image (where it was described as “A Romance of the Jungle”), and became an immediate hit among the All-Story’s readers. In the months following Tarzan’s appearance, dozens of readers’ letters were published, many of which asked for (or even demanded) a sequel, a request Burroughs would fulfill, eventually writing over two-dozen Tarzan novels.
Book thumbnail image Media reaction to ‘GIF’ as Word of the Year [GIFed] By Alice Northover Reaction has been mixed from people around the United States and the world to the USA Word of the Year, so I thought I’d bring together a few highlights. Don’t forget the GIF WOTY confusables!
Book thumbnail image Six WOTY confusables about GIF There has also been some widespread confusion on a few things relating to GIF’s selection as Word of the Year [USA], so we thought it would be helpful to give a little roundup for clarification. (1) Oxford Dictionaries USA and The New Oxford American Dictionary (and Oxford Dictionaries UK and Oxford Dictionary of English) are not the Oxford English Dictionary. OUP publishes many dictionaries and the OED is only one of them.
A lovable bully By Anatoly Liberman Bullying is a hot topic. Strict laws have been passed with the view of intimidating the intimidators or at least keeping them at bay. Regardless of the consequences such measures may have, linguists cannot ignore the problem and keep out of the public eye. So to arms, comrades! That a word like bully should vex etymologists needn’t surprise anybody.
Should fishing communities play a greater role in managing fisheries? By Robert Deacon Marine fisheries around the world are in a state of decline. Each decade the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reports that a larger fraction of the world’s fisheries are overexploited or depleted. Historical trends in individual fisheries have led some scientists to predict all major fisheries will be collapsed by mid-century. The economic status of these resources is even more dismal.
Book thumbnail image To gif or not to gif To gif, or not to gif–that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of crude animation Or to take arms against a sea of static And by opposing end them.
Book thumbnail image The era of partisan polling By Elvin Lim It is tempting now that the election returns are in for us to want to plow forward and forget the spectacular silliness we just traversed. But before we move on, it is critical that we call out those who had predicted a huge Romney victory, among them Dick Morris, Michael Barone, and Karl Rove. Ours is the era of partisan polling, and it is intellectually dishonest and bad for democracy.
Book thumbnail image The two-term era By Andrew J. Polsky When Barack Obama won reelection last week, he became the third consecutive president to win a second term. The last time that happened was at the beginning of the 19th century, when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe benefited from Democratic-Republican dominance at the presidential level. Indeed, by the time Monroe ran for reelection in 1820, the opposition Federalist Party had collapsed.
Book thumbnail image Eight interesting facts about Fanny Hensel By R. Larry Todd Tomorrow marks the 207th anniversary of composer Fanny Hensel’s birth. Here’s a a few interesting facts about this overlooked composer. (1) Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was a granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, a devoted sister of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, and the wife of the Prussian painter Wilhelm Hensel.
Book thumbnail image Ten variations of ‘omnishambles’ By Alice Northover Part of the strength of new words is their flexibility — that they can grow, change, and adapt. This elasticity helps cement their place in our language, rather than a brief life in slang. So to present omnishambles’s impact more fully, I’ve rounded up five variations upon it and proposed five additions of my own.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Dictionaries UK Word of the Year 2012: ‘omnishambles’ By Fiona McPherson A common misconception about the work of a lexicographer is that we sit around in the manner of a cabal each week and argue about what words to include or reject. The fantasy is that we each suggest a word or two and then, after a heated debate, vote, with the result that some words emerge victorious and begin the journey to the dictionary page, while those that are blackballed are consigned to lexical oblivion. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Dictionaries USA Word of the Year 2012: ‘to GIF’ By Katherine Martin The GIF, a compressed file format for images that can be used to create simple, looping animations, turned 25 this year, but like so many other relics of the 80s, it has never been trendier. GIF celebrated a lexical milestone in 2012, gaining traction as a verb, not just a noun. The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace.
Book thumbnail image Announcing the Place of the Year 2012 Shortlist: Vote! Happy Geography Awareness Week! At Oxford University Press, we’re celebrating by highlighting the interesting, inspiring and/or contentious places of 2012. The longlist, launched last month, took us from Iran to Cambridge, NY, the home of pie à la mode. We explored 29 places on Earth, but we couldn’t resist an extraterrestrial trip to Mars. Thanks to your votes in the most tightly watched election this year, we narrowed down the nominees to a shortlist.
Book thumbnail image Fredric Nachbaur on University Press Week As I was preparing to write my post for University Press Week post-Hurricane Sandy, I reflected on how university presses have bonded together in the past during times of tragedy to help us all understand what is happening at and in the moment and how we can try to move forward. The Association for American University Presses (AAUP) created “Books for Understanding” soon after 9/11 to bring the latest and most valuable scholarship to readers in an easy-to-find and easy-to-use place. The AAUP instantly became a resource for people who wanted to know more and to find it from reliable sources — university presses, the pillars of knowledge.
Book thumbnail image Why day care should be subsidized The Nordic countries and France heavily subsidize pre-school child care. In Sweden, parents pay only about ten percent of the actual costs. As a result, about 75 percent of all Swedish children aged one to five are in formal day care. In Germany, where the availability of subsidized day care spots is strictly limited, that number is less than 60 percent. What is the case for subsidizing day care?
Book thumbnail image Remembrance Sunday Remembrance Sunday, falling on 11th November in 2012 and traditionally observed on the Sunday closest to this date, marks the anniversary of the cessation of hostilities in the First World War. It serves as a day to reflect upon those who have given their lives for the sake of peace and freedom. We have selected a number of memorable, meaningful and moving quotes to commemorate the fallen.
Book thumbnail image 10 November 1975: Daniel Patrick Moynihan addresses the UN on Zionism Before Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927-2003) was elected as a Democratic Senator from New York in 1976, a seat he held 24 years, he served as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. While Moynihan was the ambassador, the UN passed Resolution 3379, which declared “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” In the new book Moynihan’s Moment: America’s Fight Against Zionism as Racism, historian Gil Troy chronicles Moynihan’s fiery response to that resolution, a speech that was delivered 37 years ago today.
Book thumbnail image Kelly Gang folklore clanks ever onwards By Ian MacFarlane Bushranger Ned Kelly belongs to Australia, doesn’t he? You might think so, but Australians are surprised to find that there is interest in Ned Kelly far beyond our shores. There are quite a few UK titles from the past, and Australian volumes about him turn up on US book sites all the time.
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: Hurricane Sandy edition By Alice Northover As many of you may have noticed, it’s been a little chaotic in the New York office of Oxford University Press these past two weeks. The MTA and NJTransit have the Flickr streams to prove a photo of a boat on railway tracks is worth a thousand “Service has been suspended until further notice” messages.
Book thumbnail image How to play Six Degrees of Oxford Index on Twitter Can you connect two seemingly different ideas? Now’s your chance! In a new addition to our regular Friday Twitter games, we’re introducing Six Degrees of Oxford Index or #6degreesOI. We’ll pose a challenge — such as Pompeii to propaganda – with the #6degreesOI hashtag. Discover the five steps to move from one Oxford Index Overview Page (Pompeii) to the other (propaganda) using the “Related Overviews” on the right hand side. The first person to tweet the correct steps with the #6degreesOI hashtag wins.
How is beer made? Ever wonder what ingredients are needed to make beer? How do they interact? What exactly does fermentation entail? Garrett Oliver, editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, takes us inside the Brooklyn Brewery to show us where beer comes from and how fermentation works. He is brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and the foremost authority on beer in the United States.
Book thumbnail image Geography, chronology, and Israel’s survival By Louis René Beres Modern science has spawned revolutionary breakthroughs in the essential meanings of space and time. Still, such major breakthroughs in human consciousness remain distant from the often overlapping worlds of diplomacy and international relations. This disregarded distance is dangerous, and, potentially, catastrophic. In the Middle East, especially, there is ample room for needed reconciliations between science and diplomacy.
Book thumbnail image Is Renaissance art ‘history’? By Geraldine Johnson When the latest news in the art world is all about record-breaking prices for contemporary works and the celebrity buzz of London’s Frieze Art Fair, thinking about Renaissance art might seem, well, a little old-fashioned, if not downright eccentric. But if the two experiences I had recently are anything to go by, maybe we need to think again.
Book thumbnail image Denzel Washington’s Flight from authority By Jim Cullen Over the course of the last thirty years, Denzel Washington has played a notable variety of roles: leading man and aging man; hero and villain; emblem of his race and Everyman. Yet to a truly striking degree the various roles he’s chosen — and here it’s worth noting that as one of the most blue-chip actors in Hollywood, he’s long enjoyed considerable power in this regard — revolve around two key relationships: mentor and protégé.
Book thumbnail image Sinfonia Antartica: ‘Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free’ By Simon Wright One hundred years ago this month the bodies of Captain Scott and his companions were discovered, eight months after they had perished from starvation, frostbite, and exposure on their return journey from the South Pole. Ostensibly a scientific and research expedition, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his party had raced against Roald Amundsen to be first at the South Pole, and lost.
Book thumbnail image In praise of the podcast PB. The initials are not exactly as familiar as, say, BBC, or NPR, but we’re not operating in a massively different environment. PB: Philosophy Bites. Time was when to broadcast on the radio (or the ‘wireless’) you’d have to seek a license for permission to use a teeny weeny portion of the radio frequency spectrum. Broadcasting was time-consuming, bureaucratic, and above all expensive. It required staff and costly equipment and it was possible only with the support of highly-trained studio technicians and engineers. No longer
Monthly etymology gleanings for October, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Fowl, fox, and pooch. My cautious reservations about a tie between the etymon of fowl and the verb fly were dismissed in one of the comments. Therefore, a few additional notes on that word may be in order. The origin of fowl is uncertain, that is, controversial, not quite unknown.
Book thumbnail image Barry Landau’s coat pockets By Travis McDade On a “60 Minutes” episode on Sunday 28 October, Bob Simon looked at the Barry Landau archives theft case. Aside from some official-sounding but unsupportable claims (“Barry Landau carried out the largest theft of these treasures in American history”) it was a pretty good show. Still, one part rankled. In the middle of the segment, Simon was shown several coats Landau had outfitted with special pockets in which he could secret documents before leaving victim institutions.
Book thumbnail image Human rights on steroids: Kony 2012 in review By Lucy Harding In March 2012 an online video campaigning for the arrest of Joseph Kony, alleged Commander-in-Chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army, was launched by Invisible Children Inc. Within six days the video had been watched by over 100 million people. If you hate Joseph Kony you are now joined by a host of celebrities including Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.
Book thumbnail image Who did Sandy help? By Elvin Lim Everything is political at this time of the electoral calendar, so there is no use pretending that Hurricane Sandy will not have an effect on the presidential race. President Obama has been given a new life line. Forced to take politics out of his campaign, he can take a break from defending his record for two days. When an incumbent president is forced by emergency events to stop talking politics, he always enjoys the glow emanating form the Oval Office.
Book thumbnail image Who needs another translation of Homer’s Iliad? By Anthony Verity There must have been hundreds of English versions since Chapman (c.1560-1634), a good many of them on bookshop shelves today. The usual answer is that great literature needs frequent reinterpretation. If students of antiquity and curious general readers are being urged today to return to the first work in writing in the Western canon, those who can read Greek will continue to translate the Iliad for their benefit, in the hope of recreating something of the “feel” of the original.
Book thumbnail image New Atlantis at Voodoo Fest By John Swenson I had the great thrill over the week to perform as part of the Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show at the Voodoo Experience in New Orleans. The three day music extravaganza takes place under the live oaks in beautiful City Park. Sanchez asked me to read from New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Future of New Orleans at the beginning of his set on the Preservation Hall stage. I read about my return to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina as the band played the melodic swells of “At the Foot of Canal Street” behind me.
Book thumbnail image Election fraud and electoral integrity By Ines Levin Last week, stories emerged about irregularities in elections in Lithuania and Ukraine that took place over the weekend. In the case of Ukraine, ahead of the election Yanukovyc’s government had been blamed of engaging in unfair campaign advertising practices, persecution of opposition leaders, and the fashioning of fake opposition parties; and following the election, international observers from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted a series of problems with the conduct the election.
Book thumbnail image Health information that travels with you By Megan Crawley, MPH Imagine you’re a doctor, taking the subway to work. You suddenly remember that your first patient of the day is preparing for a trip overseas. You want to prepare for this pre-travel consultation, but all your reference books are at the office and you won’t have time once you get there.
Book thumbnail image George McGovern By Edward Zelinsky On 15 November 1969, I was shivering on the Mall in Washington, D.C., surrounded by a band of self-proclaimed Maoists celebrating the prospect of a Viet Cong victory. This was the second “Moratorium” against the Vietnam War. While the first Moratorium in October had a decidedly mainstream flavor, the tone of the November event was markedly different. I was conflicted on that cold November day in Washington. I opposed the Vietnam War, as did the thousands of others standing on the Mall that day.
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year 2012: A Q&A with Joshua Hagen As we continue to prepare for Place of the Year 2012, we’ve invited Joshua Hagen, Professor of Geography at Marshall University and co-author of Borders: A Very Short Introduction, to share his thoughts on the relationship between geography and current events. Here’s what he has to say….
“Remember, remember the fifth of November” By Daniel Swift “Remember, remember the fifth of November,” instructs the old nursery rhyme, and offers a useful summary: “Gunpowder, treason and plot.” But we have never been sure quite what, or how, we should be remembering. On 5 November 1605 a small gang of Catholics and minor noblemen plotted to blow up the Houses of Parliament, during the State Opening at which King James I would be present. One of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes, was caught with the gunpowder before he set it off. The other plotters were soon caught, and all were executed.
Book thumbnail image Contrasting profiles in hope By Anthony Scioli I have made a career of studying hope. As a clinical psychologist most of my focus has been on the role of hope in relation to anxiety and depression, or the healing power of hope when confronting a serious illness. As a result of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign of “hope and change” I have increasingly been asked to comment on the role of hope in presidential politics. In 2010, I decided to do some research on hope and the presidency to see what I might learn.
Book thumbnail image Russia’s toughest prisons: what can the Pussy Riot band members expect? By Judith Pallot The onion dome of Russian Orthodox Church dominates the skyline of women’s correctional colony number 14 (IK14) in Part’sa. The Governor of the colony, showing Laura and I around, told us that five prisoners – all tuberculosis sufferers – who volunteered to help build the Church were miraculously cured of their disease. It was a story we were to hear repeated several times on our research trip to women’s penal colonies in S-W Mordoviia.
Book thumbnail image How to avoid programming By Robert St. Amant What does a computer scientist do? You might expect that we spend a lot of our time programming, and this sometimes happens, for some of us. When I spend a few weeks or even months building a software system, the effort can be enormously fun and satisfying. But most of the time, what I actually do is a bit different. Here’s an example from my past work, related to the idea of computational thinking.
Book thumbnail image How to survive election season, oral history style By Caitlin Tyler-Richards Every presidential election, similar concerns arise: Don’t the campaign ads seem especially vicious? Has the media coverage always been this crazed? Will we ever actually get to vote? While I know many who become more motivated the more absurd the election season becomes, I tend to become disenchanted with the whole process, wondering how my one small vote could compete against the Koch Brothers or Morgan Freeman.
Book thumbnail image Curly-murly, flippy-floppy boom-booms By Mark Peters There are many words I love. Some of my favorites are abyss and buttmunch. I also love many categories of words, such as euphemisms and variations of the f-word. One of my favorite types of word makes my heart go thump-thump and pit-a-pat: reduplicative words. Reduplicative words are far more than a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, though they’re often a load of gaga.
Book thumbnail image Who owns the Paracel, Spratley, & Senkaku Islands? By Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen The idea that the twenty-first century will be marked by the ascendency of Asia, and more specifically the rise of China as a global superpower, has gained broad currency in academic discussions, policy decisions, and general public opinion around the world. After focusing on the Middle East for much of the last two decades, the United States has recently declared a pivot to the Asia-Pacific region, for example, while opinion surveys show majorities of Americans already believe China’s economy has overtaken that of the US.
500th anniversary of the dedication of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling By Anne Leader Today marks the 500th anniversary of the dedication of Michelangelo’s magnificent Sistine Ceiling on the vigil of All Saints’ Day (otherwise known as Halloween) in 1512. The anniversary comes at a time of growing debate about whether the Vatican should impose limits on who can enter the chapel and how.
Book thumbnail image Requiem Mass settings By Lucy Allen The clocks have gone back, the days are colder, the evenings are darker, and poppies are starting to appear on everyone’s lapels. As November approaches our thoughts turn to Armistice Day (11th November) and to commemorating the fallen. Orders for the music of Requiem settings keeps the OUP Hire Library busy at this time of year, but with so many different Requiem versions, how does one select which to perform? We asked OUP staff and their families for their favourite; read on to find out which they chose.
Book thumbnail image Evidence-based policies By Jeremy Hardie Everybody likes evidence based policy – who could favour a policy that is not confronted with the facts? – but after twenty or more years trying to make it work, we have ended up with some quite strange results, at least in the US and the UK.
October 2012 (88))
Monthly etymology gleanings for October, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman I have received many questions and comments and will respond to them pell-mell. Any more ~ anymore in positive statements. A correspondent from Pennsylvania wondered why those around him use anymore as meaning “these days, nowadays” (for example, Anymore, I just see people wearing skinny jeans with flip flops) and whether this usage owes anything to Pennsylvania Dutch. I am almost sure it does not.
Book thumbnail image Dances of Death By Jessica Barbour An eerie image emerged from Europe’s 14th-century bubonic plague epidemics into popular imagination: Death, in skeleton form, leading living souls in a processional dance to the grave. This idea, the danse macabre, was evoked by artists and writers across the continent, a cultural reaction to daily lives spent surrounded by death. I was introduced to the genre in school when I first heard Camille Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre, a boisterous seven-minute work for orchestra written in the 1870s.
Book thumbnail image A Halloween ghost story Looking for a fright ? The ghost stories of M.R. James, considered by many to be the most terrifying in English, have lost none of their power to unsettle and disturb. So we’re presenting an extract from ‘Casting the Runes’ in the Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James, edited by Darryl Ince, to get you in the mood for Halloween.
Book thumbnail image Parents: does size matter? By Linsay Gray What can the height of a person tell us about them and their children? Although determined to an extent by genes, the height of a fully grown man or woman can be considered as a “marker” of the circumstances they experienced early in life. These childhood circumstances include illness, living conditions, diet, and maybe even stress. Such early life circumstances have been shown to be linked to health risks later in life…
Book thumbnail image With final debate over, ground game intensifies By Elvin Lim Mitt Romney barely passed the bar on Monday night’s debate. He was tentative and guarded, not just because he was being strategic, but because he wasn’t (understandably) in command of the facts of foreign policy of which a sitting president is in command. Barack Obama ‘won’ the debate, but it will have minimal impact on altering the fundamental dynamics of the race.
Book thumbnail image The unquestioned center By Andrew J. Polsky The third presidential debate made clear why Governor Mitt Romney has chosen not to wage a campaign based on foreign policy: there is simply no political gain in it. On issue after issue, he took stands effectively indistinguishable from those of President Barack Obama. Romney quibbled over details of timing or emphasis, asserting he would have taken action sooner or more forcefully. But on a wide range of questions — no military intervention in Syria, withdrawing from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, use of drones, sanctions on Iran — the challenger’s positions are substantively the same as the president.
Book thumbnail image Birth control, marriage, and women’s sexuality By Christina Simmons Ninety-six years ago, on 16 October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened her first — illegal — birth control clinic in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Human efforts to control fertility are at least as old as written history; ancient Greeks and Egyptians used spermicidal and barrier methods. But Sanger’s action began a new phase. In less than two weeks police shut the clinic down, but the incident heightened the visibility of the fledgling birth control movement.
Book thumbnail image Howard Skempton on composing By Anwen Greenaway Composer Howard Skempton is one of the mainstays of British contemporary classical music. He is an experimental composer who writes in a style completely his own, un-deflected by trends in composition or performance. Having developed, under the tutelage of Cornelius Cardew, a musical style characterised by its elegance and simplicity, Skempton’s catalogue of compositions is now extensive and diverse.
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year: A look back at past winners Earlier this month, we launched Oxford University Press’ annual Place of the Year competition. For many, geography is just the next vacation, but understanding geography gives much more than fodder for travel fantasies. Geography provides insight into the forces driving people, events, societies, and technology — both past and present. With help from The Atlas of the World, 19th edition, here’s a look at past winning hotspots driving human history.
Book thumbnail image Journalistic narratives of Gerald Ford By James L. Baughman It has been more than 25 years since Gerald Ford narrowly lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. Ford’s presidency has become a dim memory. “The more I think about the Ford administration,” John Updike wrote in 1992, “the more it seems I remember nothing.” Taking office after Richard Nixon resigned in August 1974, Ford struggled to restore the public’s faith in the presidency, badly shaken by the numerous illegalities associated with the Nixon White House.
Book thumbnail image Stone Age dentistry discovery By Claudio Tuniz Advanced analytical methods, based on radioactivity and radiation, have recently revealed that therapeutic dental filling was in use during the Stone Age. As part of the team that performed the study, I worked with experts in radiocarbon dating, synchrotron radiation imaging, dentistry, palaeo-anthropology and archaeology. Our discovery was based on the identification of an extraneous substance on the surface of a canine from a Neolithic human mandible.
Book thumbnail image When a language dies By Nancy C. Dorian When he died recently, Bobby Hogg took the Cromarty fisherfolk dialect out of existence with him, at least as a fluently spoken mother tongue, and the media took notice. The BBC reported on his death, celebrating the unique nature of his native dialect. In an Associated Press report originating in London, his dialect was spoken of as “a little fragment of the English linguistic mosaic.” A knowledgeable University of Aberdeen linguist spoke of this as “the first time that an actual Scots dialect has so dramatically died with the passing of the last native speaker.”
Book thumbnail image Pasqua Rosee and the coffee shop Coffee shops are in the news, but where did it all begin? Perhaps with this man, Pasqua Rosee (fl 1651-6), who opened London’s first coffee-house at St Michael Cornhill. Rosee’s coffee-house was a shed in St Michael’s churchyard. Here served “two or three dishes” of coffee “at a time twice or thrice a day.” Rosee’s coffee-house was a shed in St Michael’s churchyard.
Book thumbnail image An Oxford Companion to James Bond By Daniel ‘Pussy Galore’ Parker and Gabby ‘Odd Job’ Fletcher By Daniel ‘Pussy Galore’ Parker and Gabby ‘Odd Job’ Fletcher ‘Ah’, he says stroking a white fluffy cat, ‘we’ve been expecting you’. Leave Ms Moneypenny with a peck on the cheek, stash your Walther PPK in your back pocket and jump into our Aston Martin so you can join us as we speed through an A to Z of Bond fun, fact, and fiction. We have stories about Roger Moore’s penchant for love-making, tales of fictional islands, and even anecdotes about crocodile jumping. We’ve devoured OUP’s online reference works to bring you a delicious helping of double 0 heaven. Welcome to the world of Bond, James Bond
Book thumbnail image Friday procrastination: energy pod edition By Alice Northover Many moons ago OUPblog had a “Friday Procrastination” series collecting some interesting (and non-Oxford!) reading from around the web. I’m hoping to kick start it again with what I’ve been reading this week. Any further recommendations are welcome.
Book thumbnail image The challenges of discoverability By Robert Faber By Robert Faber In the world of digital scholarship, discovery really matters. There are many new ways of reading content on the web or mobile devices, but making our publications easy to find in the vast ocean of digital information is a growing challenge. When we decided to take this on and set up a “discoverability” program across all OUP’s global academic publishing, it sounded simple enough: we just have to improve the ways people find and use our content, right?
The “Choice” Bazaar Daniel Callahan Some years ago I wrote a book on abortion that espoused women’s legal right to choose abortion, which was later cited in Roe v. Wade. It should have made me popular with feminists, but it did not and for one reason: I also argued that abortion is an ethical choice, and that not all abortions would necessarily be good choices. Trained as a philosopher, I pointed out that a traditional part of morality is deciding how to make good choices in the shaping of one’s life.
Book thumbnail image Presidential campaigns: replicating Reagan By Gil Troy Although he last ran for office nearly 30 years ago, and died 8 years ago, Ronald Reagan remains a surprisingly strong presence on today’s campaign trail. It is not just the multiple times Republican candidates’ invoked his name during the primary debates. It is not just that Americans are still debating Reagan’s cry to shrink the federal government.
Book thumbnail image The 50th anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment By Kenneth S. Broun This October 25th marks the fiftieth Anniversary of the beginning of Nelson Mandela’s twenty-seven years in South African prisons. He was initially sentenced in October, 1962 to five years imprisonment for inciting African workers to strike and for leaving the country without valid travel documents. Immediately after sentencing, he was sent to the Robben Island prison, lying off Cape Town harbor, where he was held in solitary confinement.
Book thumbnail image Music events to see in New Orleans 1-4 November By John Swenson Greetings to all of you in New Orleans for the AMS/SEM/SMT conference. I’ve been writing about the music of New Orleans dating back to the mid-1970s and am still making discoveries to this day. The city is a seemingly bottomless well of creative musicians, with more arriving every day from around the world seeking the muse that inspires this magic, spiritual sound. Here are a few suggestions about where you might want to go over the next few days to hear this aural cornucopia in person. These recommendations are really just the tip of the iceberg, but they reflect what I am likely to be hearing myself.
Book thumbnail image Solo or duet? Married couples in the American National Biography By Susan Ware What are the chances, I wondered, of having separate entries for a married couple in the American National Biography Online (ANB)? I’m still new to my job as the general editor of the ANB, but it struck me as intriguing that the very first update released on my watch will contain one such couple: country music singers Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Joined together in marriage and music, they both led fascinating lives that earned them inclusion – separately — in the ANB.
An etymologist among the gods By Anatoly Liberman Etymology, a subject rarely studied on our campuses, enjoys the respect of many people, even though they persist in calling it entomology. Human beings always want to know the origin of things, but sometimes etymology is made to carry double, like the horse in O. Henry’s story “The Roads We Take.” For instance, it is sometimes said that etymology helps us to use words correctly. Alas, it very seldom does so. If someone asks us about the meaning of the adjective debonair and is not only informed that a debonair man is genial, suave, and so forth but also that the adjective goes back to the French phrase de bon aire “of good disposition (nature),” this may help.
Book thumbnail image Is the George Washington Bridge a work of art? By David Blockley Happy 81st Birthday, George Washington Bridge! The French architect Le Corbusier reportedly said you are “the most beautiful bridge in the world” – you “gleam in the sky like a reversed arch.” But are you really a work of art? The designer Othmar H. Ammann certainly was conscious of the need to make beautiful bridges.
Book thumbnail image Armed conflict: using unmanned aerial vehicles By Bill Boothby During the ten years since an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, was used to target Qaed Senyan al-Harthi in Yemen in 2002, attack of ground targets from unmanned platforms in the air has gone from a novelty to mainstream. The United States sees such technology as a vital element in its fight against international terrorism, and such military operations are routinely conducted from the airspace above Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Book thumbnail image On the second presidential debate By Elvin Lim The second presidential debate tells us about the candidates’ readings of their own campaigns. Both Romney and Obama were fighting for air time, trying to break out of the impasse of “he-said-she-said.” Women were mentioned about 30 times in the debate because Romney knew that he had to close the gender gap. Obama joined in on the China bashing because Romney has started to gain traction with workers in Ohio with his attacks on China’s trade violations.
Book thumbnail image Should we want a business leader in the White House? By Andrew Polsky During the first two presidential debates, Mitt Romney repeatedly invoked his business experience as a key qualification for the White House. He uttered phrases such as “I know how to make this economy grow” and “I know how to grow jobs” at least a half dozen times in his second debate with President Barack Obama. The notion that a business leader would bring to the presidency a uniquely useful skill set, especially in a period of sluggish economic growth, has a certain appeal.
Book thumbnail image Changing evangelical responses to homosexuality By Scott Schieman Although popular culture war depictions have often presented evangelical elites as intransigent in their opposition to homosexuality, authors of a new study published by Sociology of Religion find that during the last several decades, evangelical elites have actually been subtly but significantly changing their moral reasoning about homosexuality. Based on content analysis of the popular evangelical magazine Christianity Today, authors Jeremy N. Thomas and Daniel V. A. Olson identify the shifts that compose this change.
Book thumbnail image James Bond: the spy we love By Cornelia Haase Premiering today, 23 October 2012, Skyfall is the 23rd film in the highly successful James Bond film series. It has been 50 years since the release of the first Bond film, Dr. No, in 1962. Over the decades, there have been many Bond adventures and we have seen six different actors portraying the MI6 agent, as well as many Bond villains, and the famous Bond girls who don’t seem to be able to resist Bond’s charms.
Book thumbnail image Sounds of the swing era By Catherine Tackley The sound of a big band in full flight must surely rank as one of the defining timbres of twentieth century music. It continues to be preserved by, among many others, Wynton Marsalis’ Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, remixed by DJs and artists like Matthew Herbert, re-popularised by stars including Michael Bublé, rejuvenated for a new teen audience by West Coast composer Gordon Goodwin
Book thumbnail image Nucleic Acids Research and Open Access By Richard Roberts In 2004, when the internet was pervading every aspect of science, the Executive Editors of Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) made the momentous decision to convert the journal from a traditional subscription based journal to one in which the content was freely available to everyone, with the costs of publication paid by the authors. There was great trepidation, by the editors and Oxford University Press, that authors would refuse to do this and instead would choose to publish elsewhere.
Book thumbnail image Place of the Year 2012: Behind the longlist Last week, we launched Place of the Year 2012 (POTY), a celebration of the year in geographical terms. As Harm de Blij writes in Why Geography Matters: More than Ever, “In our globalizing, ever more inter-connected, still-overpopulated, increasingly competitive, and dangerous world, knowledge is power. The more we know about our planet and its fragile natural environments, about other peoples and cultures, political systems and economies, borders and boundaries, attitudes and aspirations, the better prepared we will be for the challenging times ahead.”
Book thumbnail image The unshackled cultivation of Rimbaud By Martin Sorrell Among the enfants terribles of literature, Rimbaud holds a pre-eminent place. But he’s been made famous against his will. If he had his way, everything he wrote — save perhaps his factual letters from Africa and elsewhere about trade and the dodgy deals he was trying to clinch – would have been destroyed. All the astonishing poetry that has made him an icon burnt on a bonfire of vanities, but fortunately it was saved.
The myth of a constant and stable environment By Daniel B. Botkin Nature has always changed; even the moon’s rotation around Earth and distance from Earth have changed over the millions of years. Living things require, and depend upon, change in nature in order to survive. We have learned this from science, from geological history recorded in ancient nautilus shells to understanding radioactivity.
Book thumbnail image To fix a broken planet By Louis René Beres Whatever our faith-based differences concerning immortality, death has an unassailable biological purpose — to make species survival possible. Nonetheless, we humans need not always hasten the indispensable process with utterly enthusiastic explosions of crime, war, terrorism, and genocide.
Book thumbnail image The birth of disco By Denny Hilton By Denny Hilton On this day in 1959, a nightclub opened its doors in the quiet city of Aachen, West Germany, and a small revolution in music took place. The Scotch-Club was similar to many restaurant-cum-dancehalls of the time, with one exception: rather than hire a live band to provide the entertainment, its owner decided instead to install a record player…
Book thumbnail image The value of networks By Michele Catanzaro and Guido Caldarelli Thanks to a single Facebook post in 2010, an extra 340,000 people went to vote in the 2010 USA Congress elections. This striking discovery, made by political scientist James Fowler and colleagues, reveals the extent to which social networks can influence the basic workings of democracy.
The top ten dramatizations of Moby-Dick By George Cotkin By George Cotkin Moby-Dick draws readers into it. And many of its more creative readers have sought to capture its grandeur on film and stage. From the first film in 1926 to the present, these attempts have taken liberties with the novel, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. But that is the challenge that Moby-Dick offers its readers, a text that is deep and wide, an ocean of issues and concerns that we must all, in some fashion, navigate
Book thumbnail image Lofty musing: Has it only been 467 years? By Meghann Wilhoite Imagine yourself in a lofty cathedral, silver voices echoing off of vaulted stone, with a slight chill in the close air. Are you there? Ok, now you’re ready for the music of English composer John Taverner. Touted as the most influential composer of his time, Taverner (c.1490-1545) was and continues to be admired for his skill in the creation of polyphonic (‘many-voiced’) music — that is, independent musical lines that layer on top of each other in a way that sounds harmonious; the lines fit together without losing any of their individuality.
Book thumbnail image Fit firefighters By Dr Fehmidah Munir, Dr Stacy Clemes, Dr Jonathan Houdmont, and Dr Ray Randall Firefighters are expected to maintain high levels of physical fitness in order to safely perform their required duties. However, many firefighters struggle to maintain fitness levels and have problems with being overweight or obese. Obesity can have a significant impact on health, including an increased risk of cardiovascular heart disease, which is a leading cause of fatalities among firefighters. Obesity also negatively impacts on work productivity and there is concern that obesity may endanger firefighters’ abilities to protect the safety and well-being of the public they are serving as well as their own safety, health and well-being.
‘Awning’ and ‘tarpaulin’ By Anatoly Liberman The title of this post sounds like an introduction of two standup comedians, but my purpose is to narrate a story of two nautical words. The origin of one seems to be lost, the other looks deceptively transparent; but there may be hope. Both turned up in the seventeenth century: in 1624 (awning) and 1607 (tarpaulin) respectively.
Book thumbnail image The rise of the academic novel By Jeffrey J. Williams The academic novel is usually considered a quaint genre, depicting the insular world of academe and directed toward a coterie audience. But it has become a major genre in contemporary American fiction and glimpses an important dimension of American life. In the past twenty years, many prominent American novelists have contributed their entries, including Paul Auster, Ann Beattie, T. C. Boyle, Michael Chabon, and Percival Everett.
Book thumbnail image Slang is good for you By Michael Adams Slang is good for you. Some people say that it isn’t. They think it’s vulgar, sloppy, repetitive. They think it’s casual speech out of place in semi-formal discourse, Chuck Taylors with a jacket and tie.
Book thumbnail image Chauvinism and idealism in American nationalism By Anatol Lieven When the Bush administration launched its campaign to gather US public support for the invasion of Iraq, I was especially struck by the way in which they managed to mobilise on the one hand chauvinist nationalist hostility to the outside world in general and Muslims in particular, and on the other hand a civic nationalist belief in America’s mission to spread democracy and freedom to those same Muslims.
Book thumbnail image American football on TV and the music of the night By Ron Rodman Monday Night Football has been a staple of American television for over forty years. The first Monday night broadcast aired on the ABC network on 21 September 1970, with a game between the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns. Ever since, Monday Night Football (MNF) broadcasts have rarely been topped in the Nielsen ratings. After a storied run on ABC, MNF moved to the popular sports cable network, ESPN, in 2006.
Book thumbnail image Friend, foe, or frontal lobe? By Don Stuss and Bob Knight In a scene from the movie The Shadow, the evil villain Khan, the last descendant of Genghis Khan, is defeated by the Shadow who hurls a mirror shard deep into his right frontal lobe. Khan does not die, but awakens in an asylum, confused as to how he got there and discovering that his powers no longer work. The doctors saved his life by removing the part of his brain that harbored his psychic abilities — his frontal lobes.
Book thumbnail image Announcing the Place of the Year 2012 Longlist: Vote! As the year winds down, it’s time to take a look back. Alongside the publication of the 19th edition of The Atlas of the World, Oxford University Press will be highlighting the places that have inspired, shaped, and challenged history in 2012. We’re also doing things differently for Place of the Year (POTY) in 2012. In addition to our regular panel of geographers and experts, we’re opening up the choice to the public.
Book thumbnail image The Day Parliament Burned Down in real-time on Twitter To mark the anniversary of a now little-remembered national catastrophe – the nineteenth-century fire which obliterated the UK Houses of Parliament – Oxford University Press and author Caroline Shenton will reconstruct the events of that fateful day and night in a real-time Twitter campaign on 16 October 2012.
Book thumbnail image Tennyson in 2012 By Gregory Tate 2012 has been a good year for the Victorian novel. The dizzying number of adaptations, exhibitions, and readings which have been organised to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens testify to the ongoing popularity of nineteenth-century fiction, and of this most famous of Victorian novelists in particular.
Watch your cancer language By Patricia Prijatel People who have lived through cancer just want to get on with their lives—head into the future like everybody else, free of cancer, free of its memory. That’s why the labels others affix to us can make us especially testy. Take, for example, the label survivor.
Book thumbnail image Gifting the mind By Jenni Ogden Neuroscience today is high tech: fantastic imaging machines churn out brain scans of the living, thinking brain, and computers crunch data to highlight patterns that may or may not fit the latest theory about how the mind works. How far we have come from the studies of the great neurologists and psychiatrists of the 19th century who relied on clinical descriptions of individual patients to further our knowledge of the brain and its mind. Or have we?
Book thumbnail image Joyce Carol Oates at OUP NYC OUP has just published the second and revised edition of The Oxford Book of American Short Stories, and we were happy to welcome Joyce Carol Oates into our Madison Ave offices recently to sign stock, and to meet staff. Here are some photos of her with OUP employees.
Book thumbnail image Intersections of sister fields By Sarah Milligan In March 2012, there was a discussion on the public folklorists’ listserv Publore about the evolution of oral history as a defined discipline and folklorists’ contribution to its development. As an observer and participant in both fields, I see overlap today. The leaderships of both national associations — the Oral History Association (OHA) and the American Folklore Society (AFS) — frequently collaborate on large-scale projects, like the current IMLS-funded project looking at oral history in the digital age.
Book thumbnail image Four questions about the relationship between music and language By Aniruddh D. Patel Music and language are our two most powerful and complex communication systems. What is their relationship as mental systems? This question has fascinated thinkers for centuries, but only in the past decade has it become a focus of empirical research.
Book thumbnail image The future of an illusion By Andrew Scull Fights over how to define and diagnose mental illness are scarcely a novel feature of the psychiatric landscape, but their most recent manifestation has some unusual features. For more than a decade now, the American Psychiatric Association has been preparing a new edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), the fifth (or by some counts the seventh) edition of that extraordinary tome, each incarnation weightier than the last. Over the past two years, however, major attacks have been launched on the enterprise, replete with allegations that the new edition shows signs of being built on hasty and unscientific foundations
Book thumbnail image Paul Ryan’s worldview By Tom Allen Paul Ryan is the most puzzling member of Congress, at least to me. I served with him on the House Budget Committee for four of my twelve years in the House. Paul is warm, personable, intelligent, articulate — a true gentleman. Yet what he says about the federal budget and taxes makes little sense. His belief in the miraculous power of tax cuts and the crippling effect of federal “spending” was not supported by the economists who testified at our hearings.
Book thumbnail image Air Force Two or a constitutional inconvenience? By Sam Popkin When vice presidents travel the world on White House assignments, be it to a foreign leader’s funeral, an international meeting not quite important enough for the president, or a “fact-finding trip” to give them exposure or soothe a rankled constituency, they are treated as the second most important person in America.
Book thumbnail image Glissandos and glissandon’ts As a musician, I found this absolutely shocking — here I thought I’d been hearing the glissando (the effect created when, for example, a pianist runs his finger up or down the keyboard), all my life, and suddenly it turned out that the very legitimacy of the word had been dismissed by Blom, a prominent music-writer linguist, more than 30 years before I was even born.
Book thumbnail image Coming out for marriage equality Polls and election results show Americans are sharply divided on same-sex marriage, and the controversy is unlikely to subside, especially with a presidential election almost upon us. As a result, Debating Same-Sex Marriage co-author John Corvino, chose to speak to some of the questions revolving around the same-sex marriage dilemma and why the rights and responsibilities of marriage are still important.
Book thumbnail image The consequences of alcohol and pregnancy recommendations By Sarah CM Roberts and Lyndsay Ammon Avalos What should be the public health messaging on drinking during pregnancy? The answer isn’t clear-cut. We do know that there is strong evidence that high levels of alcohol consumption during pregnancy harm the developing fetus. However, we don’t know conclusively what the impact is of lower level alcohol consumption. That is, we don’t know if there is a truly safe level of alcohol use, nor do we know if the line between safe and unsafe alcohol consumption is the same for all pregnant women.
Book thumbnail image On Ayn Rand and the 2012 presidential election Stanford Professor Jennifer Burns recently spoke with the 92nd Street Y about her new book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Pointing out the correlation between Rand and Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Burns explains how Rand’s philosophy of the “virtue of selfishness” and “favor of the individual” has become a tenant of American politics today.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Christopher Peterson Oxford University Press is saddened to hear of the passing of Christopher Peterson, who died yesterday in his home. One of the founders of the field of positive psychology, Chris’s focus over the last 15 years had been on the study of happiness, achievement, and physical well-being. His new book, Pursuing the Good Life, is scheduled to be published by OUP this December.
Book thumbnail image Addressing mental disorders in medicine and society By Norman Sartorius Stigma attached to mental disorders often makes the life of people who suffer from such illnesses harder than the illness itself. Once marked as having a mental illness, the persons who have them as well as their families encounter difficulties in finding jobs, marital partners, housing, or protection from violence. If they happen to have a physical illness as well, they get treatment of lesser quality for it.
A global ingle-neuk, or, the size of our vocabulary By Anatoly Liberman The size of our passive vocabulary depends on the volume of our reading. Those who grew up in the seventies of the twentieth century read little in their childhood and youth, and had minimal exposure to classical literature even in their own language. Their children are, naturally, still more ignorant. I have often heard the slogan: “Don’t generalize!” and I am not. I am speaking about a mass phenomenon, not about exceptional cases.
Book thumbnail image New York’s “Dress Wars” By Kal Raustiala In the depths of the Great Depression, TIME magazine offered readers a glimpse at New York’s “Dress Wars.” Knockoffs, TIME wrote, were everywhere in the garment industry, and “dirty tricks” increasingly ubiquitous: “Among such tricks was the universal and highly developed practice of copying original styles. By the early Depression years it had gone so far that no exclusive model was sure to remain exclusive 24 hours; a dress exhibited in the morning at $60 would be duplicated at $25 before sunset and at lower prices later in the week.”
Achievement, depression, and politicians By Clark Lawlor ‘For two or three years the light faded from the picture. I did my work. I sat in the House of Commons, but black depression settled on me.’ Starter for ten: who said this? (Apologies if you haven’t watched University Challenge). It was Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest British prime minister and certainly one who played a crucial role in guiding his nation through the Second World War.
Book thumbnail image Obama out of practice for first debate By Elvin Lim President Obama had a bad night. The key to succeeding in a presidential debate is recognizing that it is not a parliamentary debate. The rules, the moderator, and even the immediate audience (since they are not permitted to applaud) do not matter. Instead, candidates should bare their souls to the camera lenses. There, magic is made.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on the first presidential debate By Andrew J. Polsky As the first presidential debate recedes in the rearview mirror, we may be able to gain clearer perspective on what it means to the 2012 presidential race. For starters, the clear winner was the news media. No one likes a one-sided presidential campaign, and that was the direction of the contest over several weeks prior to the debate.
Book thumbnail image The triple-negative diet to fight breast cancer In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we’ve pulled the following excerpt from Surviving Triple-Negative Breast Cancer: Hope, Treatment, and Recovery by Patricia Prijatel. She provides a quick guide on how to eat healthy in order to better fight the disease.
Book thumbnail image The point of no return By Alyssa Bender If a theater noob polled a group of theater fans on what classic musicals she must see to jumpstart her theater education, you would be hard pressed to find a fan without The Phantom of the Opera on their list. The show, which opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London on 9 October 1986, has left an undeniable impact on London’s West End, Broadway, and theater in general.
Book thumbnail image Canadian Thanksgiving By Christopher Hodson Americans, think fast: pause those (no doubt) raucous Columbus Day festivities and tilt an ear to the north. Sounds from beyond the 45th parallel should emerge. These may include Molson-fueled merriment and the windswept yawning of those huge CFL end zones. That’s right, it’s Canadian Thanksgiving! Yeah, they have one too.
Book thumbnail image The history of the OED Appeals The efforts of members of the public have been at the heart of the Oxford English Dictionary for over 150 years. The Dictionary couldn’t have been written without these contributions. We are calling on language lovers everywhere to help us trace the history of words whose origins are shrouded in mystery, with a brand new Appeals area of OED.com. The OED’s record of appealing to the public for assistance stretches back to its very beginnings—to a time when the project not only had nothing to do with Oxford, but wasn’t even a dictionary.
Book thumbnail image John Lilburne, footwear, fame, and radical history By Ted Vallance Forrest Gump’s momma famously told him that you could tell a lot about a person from their shoes. Footwear features prominently in two images of the Leveller leader John Lilburne, with both the seventeenth- and the nineteenth-century prints depicting Lilburne wearing striking leather boots [link to article]. The Sunderland museum also holds a pair of boots once said to have belonged to Lilburne, though these appear to be of a rather plainer design than those that were so lovingly rendered in his 1649 trial portrait.
Book thumbnail image Don’t you like the castle? A remote village covered almost permanently in snow and dominated by a castle and its staff of dictatorial, sexually predatory bureaucrats — this is the setting for Kafka’s story about a man seeking both acceptance in the village and access to the castle. In The Castle, Kafka explores the relationship between the individual and power, as the protagonist K. asks why the villagers so readily submit to an authority which may exist only in their collective imagination. In the following excerpt from the new Oxford World’s Classics edition, K. first encounters the castle and the strange power it holds over the village.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles begin, Friday, 5 October 1962 By Gordon R. Thompson The Beatles’ dream of releasing a record came to fruition fifty years ago today when Parlophone issued the band’s first disc, “Love Me Do.” That night, EMI played the song on its own London-produced weekly radio program Friday Spectacular, broadcast on Radio Luxembourg. In the Beatles’ Anthology, George Harrison recalled that, “First hearing ‘Love Me Do’ on the radio sent me shivery all over.
Book thumbnail image Fighting Triple-Negative Breast Cancer According to Breastcancer.org, about one in eight U.S. women will develop invasive breast cancer over the course of her lifetime. It is a complicated disease that takes different forms — one of the most confounding being Triple-Negative Breast Cancer. Patricia Prijatel, a nationally published magazine writer and an award-winning teacher, was diagnosed with Triple-Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC) in 2006.
Book thumbnail image What is the position of HIV & AIDS in North Africa & the Middle East? The biennial International AIDS Conference was held in Washington D.C. in July of 2012. This was the first time that the conference had been on US soil for 20 years. The International AIDS Society had previously decided that while legislation prevented HIV positive people from travelling to the States, the conference would not be held there. However, these laws were repealed by the Obama administration in 2010. The meeting was huge: 25000 people. Speaking at the conference, I identified three key issues…
Book thumbnail image The OED needs you! Announcing the new OED Appeals Today the Oxford English Dictionary announces the launch of OED Appeals, a dedicated community space on the OED website where OED editors solicit help in unearthing new information about the history and usage of English. The website will enable the public to post evidence in direct response to editors, fostering a collective effort to record the English language and find the true roots of our vocabulary.
Book thumbnail image 50 years of James Bond in music Few characters in the history of cinema, if any, are more iconic than Ian Fleming’s debonair super-spy, James Bond; few, too, can boast of any comparison to the equally iconic music which accompanies the intrepid agent 007’s exploits. Since the series’ beginning, the Bond films have been marked by exceptional music, including contributions from Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, Louis Armstrong and Madonna, and, of course, John Barry’s instantly recognizable “James Bond Theme.”
Book thumbnail image Tutankhamun and the mummy’s curse In the winter of 1922-23 archaeologist Howard Carter and his wealthy patron George Herbert, the Fifth Earl of Carnarvon, sensationally opened the tomb of Tutankhamun. Six weeks later Herbert, the sponsor of the expedition, died in Egypt. The popular press went wild with rumours of a curse on those who disturbed the Pharaoh’s rest and for years followed every twist and turn of the fate of the men who had been involved in the historic discovery. Long dismissed by Egyptologists, the mummy’s curse remains a part of popular supernatural belief. We spoke with Roger Luckhurst, author of The Mummy’s Curse: The true history of a dark fantasy, to find out why the myth has captured imagination across the centuries, and how it has impacted on popular culture.
Monthly etymology gleanings, part 2, September 2012 By Anatoly Liberman Last week’s “gleanings” were devoted to spelling and ended with the promise to address the other questions in the next installment. But, since the previous part inspired some comments, I will briefly return to Spelling Reform. One of the questions was: “Who needs the reform?” Everybody does. At present, children spend hours learning “hieroglyphs” like chair, choir, character, ache, douche, weird, pierce, any and many versus Annie and manly, live (verb) versus live (adjective), and hundreds of others.
Book thumbnail image The articulate assault By H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman We’re at the Tacoma Theatre in Washington, DC. Packed house, predominantly Black crowd. Chris Rock struts across the stage: “You know how I could tell he can’t be President? Whenever he on the news, White people always give him the same compliments, always the same compliments. ‘He speaks so well.’ … Like that’s a compliment… What the fuck did you expect him to sound like?!”
Book thumbnail image On taste and morality: from William Hogarth to Grayson Perry By Helen Berry The artist Grayson Perry recently completed a cycle of six giant tapestries, The Vanity of Small Differences, inspired by William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress. In the Turner Prizewinner’s modern rendition, Tim Rakewell (like his Georgian counterpart Tom Rakewell) undergoes a social transformation from humble origins to landed gentry. In Perry’s version, Tim’s life course is transformed by university education and a self-made fortune in computers – which catapults him socially from his humble origins in a Northern council house, via the bourgeois confines of middle-class dinner tables, to owning his own country estate.
Book thumbnail image Obama is surging By Elvin Lim The Obama campaign, by fortune or by wit, has peaked at the right moment. Early voting has already started in Virginia, and starts in Iowa and Ohio next week. This means that the polls telling a uniform story of an Obama surge in crucial swing states aren’t just snap-shots; they are predictive of how voters — about 35 percent of total voters — are actually starting to vote as we speak.
Book thumbnail image Anatol Lieven on American nationalism On the one hand, there is the core tradition of American civic nationalism based on the universalist ‘American Creed’ of almost religious reverence for American democratic institutions and the U.S. constitution. On the other, there exists a chauvinist nationalism which holds that these institutions are underpinned by cultural values which belong only to certain Americans, and which is strongly hostile both to foreigners and to minorities in America which are felt not to share those values.
Book thumbnail image Beethoven on stage in 33 Variations By William Kinderman By William Kinderman A blend of past and present, art and life: Beethoven’s most challenging work for piano, the Diabelli Variations op. 120, has triggered a mania of interest on the theatrical scene. Several years ago New York playwright Moisés Kaufman visited my wife Katherine Syer and myself — the first of several visits — to shape a play on Beethoven.
Book thumbnail image The Giving Pledge and private foundations By Edward Zelinsky The Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, has announced that eleven more affluent families have taken the Pledge and have thereby committed to donating at least half of their wealth to charity. Among these new Pledgers is Gordon Moore, a legendary founder of Intel and the father of Moore’s Law which postulates that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles roughly every two years.
Book thumbnail image Violating evolved caregiving practices By Darcia Narvaez The American Academy of Pediatrics recently endorsed two controversial childrearing practices: sleep training and circumcision for infants. Both practices violate ancestral caregiving practices which we know are linked to positive child outcomes. Over 30 million years ago the social mammals emerged, characterized by extensive on-demand breastfeeding, constant touch, responsiveness to the needs of the offspring, and lots of free play. Humans are one branch of social mammals
Book thumbnail image Stroke: the dramatic revolution Stroke is a devastating condition with high rates of mortality and morbidity and profound implications for health economics and resources worldwide. At present, in England alone, stroke is the third largest cause of death and the single largest cause of adult disability. Each year, approximately 110,000 people in England will have a first or recurrent stroke and more than 900,000 people are currently living with the effects of stroke, with half of these being dependent on other people for help with everyday activities.
September 2012 (90))
Traduttore traditore By Mark Davie It’s curious that the language I’ve mostly worked with — Italian — has provided the adage which is routinely quoted in any discussion of the challenges of translation, and yet no-one seems to know who first coined the phrase. It appears in the plural form “Traduttori traditori” — “translators traitors” — in a collection of Tuscan proverbs by the 19th-century writer Giuseppe Giusti.
Book thumbnail image Truman Capote’s artful lies By William Todd Schultz, PhD Why did Truman Capote try writing his last unfinished book, Answered Prayers? In a sometimes ruthless sautéing of jet set high society, he oddly and self-destructively scorched many of his closest friends, women like Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt, among unlucky others, whom he liked to call, in a better mood, his “swans.” It turned out to be a sideways suicide. He never recovered from the fallout. His last years were a hurricane of drink, drugs, and artistic fragmentation.
Book thumbnail image Did Obamacare’s court victory win over Americans’ hearts and minds too? By Andrea Campbell and Nathaniel Persily The Supreme Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius achieved a level of media coverage and public salience reached by very few Supreme Court decisions. It represented a political moment, if not a constitutional one. Although legal scholars might focus on the doctrinal importance of the decision for shaping the contours of congressional power, this unusually high profile case is also fascinating to study as an event that structured public opinion about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the Court itself.
The seven myths of mass murder By J. Reid Meloy For the past 15 years my colleagues and I have researched mass murder; the intentional killing of three or more individuals, during one event. Recent cases of mass murder have pointed to misconceptions about this rare and frightening act, and I would like to shed some light on some common myths.
Book thumbnail image Opposing narratives of success in politics Stephanie Li While our presidential candidates are known far in advance of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, party conventions remain intriguing spectacles for the kind of human detail they offer about the men who aspire to the Oval Office. Every four years pundits and political commentators observe that conventions have become increasingly scripted affairs that lack the spontaneity of times past, but party conventions serve to present individual narratives as much as specific policy positions.
Book thumbnail image Permission-giving: from Cromwell to Kate Middleton Some of my more radical academic colleagues remain inordinately sceptical of the role of individual leaders set against the tectonic plates of economic systems, social classes, genders, political alliances and ethnic groups. To suggest that individual leaders might make a difference is to place an unwarranted responsibility upon mere actors when the real issue is ‘the system’ – whatever the system is.
Book thumbnail image Just what is triple-negative breast cancer? By Patricia Prijatel The big news this week comes from the Cancer Genome Atlas program, which has announced a strong molecular connection between basal-like breast cancer tumors and ovarian cancer. The news stories I have read on the topic provide a great deal of hope for women with basal-like cancers. But the hope is, unfortunately, buried in a greater deal of confusion.
Book thumbnail image Bob Chilcott on choral workshops Bob Chilcott talks to Oxford University Press about why he likes running choral workshops, the challenges that these days present, and what he hopes singers take away.
Book thumbnail image What is marriage? As I write, a committee is meeting to decide which two names to submit to the British prime minister for the post of archbishop of Canterbury. Whoever gets the job, a major issue that he will have to deal with is that of gay marriage, which the British government has pledged to introduce, and which the Church of England, along with most other religious confessions inBritain, opposes. The current debate about gay marriage forces all religions, as well as the government and the general public, to re-examine both their views on homosexuality, and their definitions of exactly what marriage is.
Monthly etymology gleanings, part 1, September By Anatoly Liberman First and foremost, many thanks to those who have sent questions and comments and corrected my mistakes. A good deal has been written about the nature of mistakes, and wise dicta along the errare humanum est lines have been formulated. Yes, to err is human, but it is the stupidity and “injustice” of some mistakes that are particularly vexing.
Book thumbnail image West Side Story, 55 years later By Meghann Wilhoite Today marks the 55th anniversary of the Broadway premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story. A racially charged retelling of Romeo and Juliet, West Side Story is set in the “blighted” West Side of 1950s Manhattan, the potent themes of star-crossed love and gang rivalry successfully translated from 16th century Italy to 20th century New York by book-writer Arthur Laurents and lyricist Steven Sondheim.
Book thumbnail image Why should we care about what we call cancer care? Supportive care and palliative care: two terms that I often use when talking about cancer care. Without consulting the dictionary one might say that palliation means alleviation, or decrease, while supportive means sustaining: apparently contradictory terms? Really? Come on, be creative and follow me. It is time for us to stop placing these concepts in opposition to each other.
Book thumbnail image Afghanistan 2013: The road narrows By Andrew J. Polsky Three recent developments in Afghanistan underscore the difficulty that will confront the next American president, whether he is Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. First, as Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced, the last of the 33,000 additional troops sent to Afghanistan by President Obama two years ago to quell the revived Taliban insurgency have now returned home.
Book thumbnail image Context clues in the American presidential campaigns By Sandy Maisel Presidential campaign watching is a great American game. Did Romney respond correctly when challenged on why he failed to mention our men and women in uniform in his convention speech? Does President Obama really like hanging out in sports bars and receiving giant bear hugs from pizza shop owners? How big was the Obama convention bounce and what does it mean?
Book thumbnail image New BBC drama ‘The Paradise’ & Oxford World’s Classics Tonight sees the start of a major new drama series on BBC 1, The Paradise. Adapted from Zola’s novel The Ladies’ Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) and set against the backdrop of the spectacular rise of the department store in the 1860s and 70s, the story follows the fortunes of a young girl from the provinces who starts work as a salesgirl in the shop, and her entanglement with the charismatic owner. Oxford World’s Classics is delighted to publish the tie-in edition of Zola’s novel, in a compelling translation by Brian Nelson.
Book thumbnail image Henry Cowell’s imprisonment By Joel Sachs Many people begin a conversation about Henry Cowell by telling me why he spent four years in San Quentin. Although I prefer to dwell on Cowell’s enormous accomplishments as a composer, theorist, performer, and educator, there is no need to run from the matter. The misinformation begins with the idea that he was convicted of a morals charge. He was not “convicted;” there was no trial.
Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age camel On 24 September 1896, F. Scott Fitzgerald was born. While remembered today for his masterpiece The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald made his living off short stories. He chronicled life of the 1920s and 30s with unparalleled versatility, whether as parody, tragedy, fantasy, or romance. His attitude to the charisma and vices of America’s privileged was complex and often ambivalent. This dichotomy is reflected in the following from “The Camel’s Back.”
Book thumbnail image Immigration policy debates in the 2012 election By Louis Desipio Popular concern about US immigration policy has increased dramatically over the past two decades. During this period, the resources and technologies for enforcement of immigration law have also increased considerably. The remainder of US immigration policy — particularly questions of how many immigrants the United States should admit, who should be eligible to immigrate, and what should be done about immigrants resident in the United States who reside in the country without legal status — see much less consensus.
Book thumbnail image Here’s to a wet New Orleans By Christopher Morris In the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac, Jack Payne of Delacroix, which is a tiny fishing village in the wetlands of the Mississippi delta below New Orleans, explained to Bob Marshall of the Times-Picayune, that “Everything I rebuild will either be on pilings or wheels. It’s gotta be higher than storm surge, or something I can pull outta here. This is our future, man. We know it’s gonna happen again and again — and just get worse.”
Book thumbnail image What’s in a literary name? By Alastair Fowler Names and naming are topics of perennial interest, but until recently there were few general discussions of names as a literary feature. This is strange, since questions about names keep coming up in criticism. How are character names chosen? Are literary names always meaningful, or are some characters named quite casually? Does each genre have a list of first names available only for that sort of writing?
Book thumbnail image Remembering Dogen’s death By Steven Heine As the founder of Soto Zen, one of the major Buddhist sects in Japan, the birth and death anniversaries of Dogen Zenji (1200-1253) are celebrated every fifty years. It was amply demonstrated at the beginning of the millennium through the outpouring of new publications and media productions, including a kabuki play and TV show as well as manga versions of his biography, that these events help to disseminate the master’s teachings to a worldwide audience yet also turn him into a commercial commodity that is somewhat misrepresented.
Book thumbnail image Oktoberfest Today the tents will open at the most famous beer festival in the world: Oktoberfest. That’s right, it starts in September. For those of us who can’t make it to a Munich beer tent between now and the end of the festival on October 6th, here’s the Oktoberfest entry by Conrad Seidl in The Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver.
Book thumbnail image 5 things we should know about the Libyan and Egyptian demonstrations By Tariq Ramadan 1. We must start first by condemning the violence and killing of diplomats and civilian people. Whatever we may feel, however we may be hurt by the video, it cannot justify in any way the killing of people. Such actions are simply anti-Islamic and against Muslim values. The demonstrations were in fact first organised by a tiny group of Salafi literalists who were attempting to direct popular emotions against the United States and the West in order to gain for themselves a central religious and political role.
Book thumbnail image Tariq Ramadan on the Arab Spring News broke of the killing of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Libya followed by numerous protests throughout the Arab World while Tariq Ramadan was in the United States to discuss one of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring. One of the world’s leading Islamic thinkers, Tariq Ramadan, he has won global renown for his reflections on Islam and the contemporary challenges in both the Muslim majority societies and the West.
Book thumbnail image How the social brain creates identity Who we are is a story of our self–a narrative that our brain creates. Like the science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. But though the self is an illusion, it is an illusion we must continue to embrace to live happily in human society. In The Self Illusion, Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other.
Book thumbnail image The sustainability of civil engineering By David Muir Wood The definition of civil engineering is a historical curiosity. Originally so called to distinguish it from military engineering, it was particularly concerned (in the 18th century, for example) with the provision of infrastructure for transport – hence the French emphasis on ponts et chaussées in their organisation of education and professional activity. But there is really no difference in the nature of the engineering performed by civil engineers and military engineers…
Book thumbnail image Why are reference works still important? Looking at the growing use of our online products, we know that many still choose to reach beyond first impressions on the web to delve further in a reference work from Oxford. Why is it still so important to do so?
Book thumbnail image Five things you should know about Grove By Jessica Barbour There is a reference work on the subject of music to which English-speaking music students are referred every day. It has been around, in various editions, for over 130 years, and in its current online form it includes more than 40,000 full articles. As a 1955 article in Time put it, “For three-quarters of a century, the sun never set on Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.”
Book thumbnail image Unravelling the life of Henry Cowell without unravelling the biographer By Joel Sachs As I began to go through papers at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, I was buffeted by competing forces: the exhilaration of unravelling the stunning reality of a man’s life, and the growing fear that, should I actually live to read all of the documents, I might never be able to digest them.
Book thumbnail image Theirs to reason why? Literature, philosophy, and war By Cécile Fabre On the eve of the battle of Borodino, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, one of the main characters in War and Peace and, in that scene at least, Tolstoy’s mouthpiece, describes war as follows: ‘But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare?…’
Do birds and fowls fly? By Anatoly Liberman An etymologist is constantly on the lookout for so-called motivation. Why is a cat called cat, and why do English speakers say tree if the Romans called the same object arbor? As everybody knows, the “ultimate truth” usually escapes us. Once upon a time (about five thousand or even more years ago?) in a hotly debated locality there lived the early Indo-Europeans, and we still use words going back to their partly unpronounceable sound complexes.
Book thumbnail image Karl Lagerfeld By Emily Ardizzone Karl Lagerfeld: a name synonymous with high fashion and discerning taste, a name that also sends shivers down the spines of those that fall victim to his quick wit and cutting criticism. In the midst of Fashion Week chaos, Lagerfeld celebrated his 79th birthday on September 10th. As he nears the end of his seventieth decade, 2013 will be a year to remember for one of the most iconic and important men in contemporary fashion.
Connecting with Law Short Film Competition Winners We’re pleased to share the winning entries to Oxford University Press Australia and New Zealand’s annual film competition for law students. Now in its fifth year, the Connecting with Law Short Film Competition 2012 was open to all students currently enrolled in an Australian law school. To enter, students chose at least one definition from the Australian Law Dictionary and created a 2-5 minute film based around the definition/s to educate and help students connect with the law
Book thumbnail image The September Surprise By Elvin Lim Mitt Romney definitely did not count on foreign policy becoming a major issue two weeks after he chose budget hawk, Paul Ryan, to be his running mate, making his the weakest ticket on foreign policy for decades. What is even more perverse is that Romney himself chose to go off message.
Book thumbnail image When “Stuff happens.” By Andrew J. Polsky The killing of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya on 11 September 2012 serves as a vivid reminder that unexpected events often intrude on presidential elections. Sometimes these events have a significant impact on how voters view the parties and the candidates. But often the electorate shrugs off breaking news. As former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously put it, “Stuff happens.”
Book thumbnail image Is America an empire? By Timothy H. Parsons The intense controversy that this question engenders is remarkable. On the left, critics of assertive American foreign, military, and economic policies depict these policies as aggressively immoral by branding them “imperial.” On the right, advocates for an even more forceful application of American “hard power,” such as Niall Ferguson and the other members of his self-described “neo-imperialist gang,” argue that the United States should use its immense wealth and military might to impose order and stability on an increasingly chaotic world.
Book thumbnail image New term / New season By Anwen Greenaway It’s September, which means back-to-school in the world of education, but for classical music it’s a different start, that of the 2012-13 opera season. In the old days opera was a grand affair; the first night of a production meant black tie and opera cloaks. These days its far more relaxed, and you won’t be frowned upon if you’re wearing jeans at the Royal Opera House.
Book thumbnail image Occupied by Images By Carol Quirke Media buzz about Occupy Wall Street’s first anniversary began by summer’s end. That colorful, disbursed social movement brought economic injustice to the center of public debate, raising questions about free-market assumptions undergirding Wall Street bravado and politicians’ pious incantations. Most watched from the sidelines, but polling had many cheering as citizens marched and camped against the corrosive consequences of an economically stacked deck.
Book thumbnail image The garbled scholarship of the American Civil War By Donald Stoker How can we frame a discussion? What terminologies give us a basis for common understanding? While many deplore arguing semantics, it is often essential to argue the meaning of words. Scholars aren’t immune to speaking to opposite ends when they don’t share common definitions. The American Civil War does not lack for books, but they aren’t all talking on the same terms. For example, what do we mean by “strategy”?
Book thumbnail image How will US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan affect Central Asia? Earlier this summer, NATO leaders approved President Obama’s plan to end combat operations in Afghanistan next year, with the intention of withdrawing all US troops by the end of 2014. The war in Afghanistan, which begun in 2001 as a response to the events of September 11, has turned Central Asia into one of the most volatile regions in the world, with the US, Russia, and China all vying for influence among the former Soviet republics.
Book thumbnail image The mathematics of democracy: Who should vote? By Joseph C. McMurray An interesting, if somewhat uncommon, lens through which to view politics is that of mathematics. One of the strongest arguments ever made in favor of democracy, for example, was in 1785 by the political philosopher-mathematician, Nicolas de Condorcet.
Book thumbnail image Nouvelle Cuisine in Old Mexico By Jeffrey M. Pilcher Mexican cuisine has experienced a renaissance in the past few decades. In the United States, taco trucks and immigrant family restaurants have replaced Americanized taco shells and chili con carne with Oaxacan tamales and carne asada. Meanwhile, celebrity chefs have embraced Mexican food, transforming it from street food into fine dining.
Book thumbnail image Why do people hate teachers unions? Because they hate teachers. By Corey Robin Like Doug Henwood, I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out why people—particularly liberals and pseudo-liberals in the chattering classes—hate teachers unions. One could of course take these people at their word—they care about the kids, they worry that strikes hurt the kids, and so on—but since we never hear a peep out of them about the fact that students have to swelter through 98-degree weather in jam-packed classes without air conditioning, I’m not so inclined.
Book thumbnail image Political dramaturgy and character in 2012 By Jeffrey C. Alexander In the wake of the party conventions, the shape of the Presidential contest has crystallized. Shocking to pundits and purveyors of conventional wisdom, Barack Obama has stretched his lead, narrowly in the national polls, more decisively in the critical swing states. Campaigns are all about hope and bluff. Though “no one will hear a discouraging word” from the Romney campaign, the writing is on the wall.
Book thumbnail image Theodore Roosevelt, family man as political strategy By Lewis L. Gould Theodore Roosevelt was forty-two years old when he became the twenty-sixth president of the United States. He had been a Republican since his boyhood, but his allegiance to the Grand Old Party was not that of a regular partisan. He had little interest in the protective tariff and was not a fan of businessmen or the process by which they made their money. Instead, as a member of the New York aristocracy, he saw his duty as representing the American people in their adjustment to the promises and perils of industrial growth.
Book thumbnail image When law is part of the problem By John Gardner The law is often an ass. More often than ever. Modern governments, their hands tied by the robber-barons of global finance, often try to assert their power with their feet: by kicking out at another supposed social problem with another big policy initiative. Usually they come up with an accompanying raft of new laws. Legislative incontinence prevails.
Book thumbnail image Empathizing toward human unity By Louis René Beres According to ancient Jewish tradition traced back to the time of Isaiah, the world rests upon thirty-six just men — the Lamed-Vov. For these men who have been chosen and must remain unknown even to themselves, the spectacle of the world is insufferable beyond description. Eternally inconsolable at the extent of human pain and woe, so goes the Hasidic tale, they can never even expect a single moment of real tranquility.
Book thumbnail image Keeping movies alive Film is considered by some to be the most dominant art form of the twentieth century. It is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds.
The Joy of Sets By Jason Rosenhouse In more than a decade of socializing with creationists and other religious fundamentalists, I frequently encountered blinkered arguments about mathematics. This attack on set theory, however, was new to me. I cannot even imagine why anyone would think set theory is relevant to discussions of whether it is man or God who creates math. Perhaps the problem is that set theorists often speak a bit casually about infinity, which some people think is tantamount to discussing God. Alas, this line of criticism is too blinkered to take seriously.
Book thumbnail image How much do you know about the piano? By Alyssa Bender In its three centuries of existence, the piano has become one of the most widely spread instruments in the world. In a quick poll of our music social media team here at Oxford University Press, nine out of eleven of us have had piano training. (Of course, we are the music social media team, so our results may be a bit skewed from other departments!)
Book thumbnail image Grandfather Erasmus Darwin: written out of history By Patricia Fara Darwin and evolution go together like Newton and gravity or Morse and code. The world, he wrote, resembles ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice.’ Competitive natural selection in a nutshell? Yes – but that evocative image was coined not by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), but by his grandfather Erasmus (1731-1802). Although Charles Darwin is celebrated as the founding father of evolution, his neglected ancestor was writing about evolution long before he was even born.
The oddest English spellings, part 21: Phony from top to bottom By Anatoly Liberman I have written more than once that the only hope to reform English spelling would be by doing it piecemeal, that is, by nibbling away at a comfortable pace. Unfortunately, reformers used to attack words like have and give and presented hav and giv to the irate public. This was too radical a measure; bushes exist for beating about them. Several chunks of orthographic fat are crying to be cut off.
Book thumbnail image Red families v. blue families revisited By June Carbone and Naomi Cahn The 2012 presidential election may turn on marriage. Not marriage equality, though President Obama may garner campaign contributions and enthusiasm from his endorsement of same-sex marriage, and Mitt Romney may garner financial support and emotional resonance from his opposition. And not concern about family instability, though the GOP’s grip on those concerned about family values is unlikely to loosen. Instead, this election may turn on the changing balance between the married and the unmarried.
Book thumbnail image Computer programming is the new literacy By Robert St. Amant It’s widely held that computer programming is the new literacy. (Disagreement can be found, even among computing professionals, but it’s not nearly as common.) It’s an effective analogy. We all agree that everyone should be literate, and we might see a natural association between writing letters for people to read and writing programs for computers to carry out.
Book thumbnail image The woes of Lascaux By Paul G. Bahn Of all decorated Ice Age caves, by far the most famous is that of Lascaux, which was discovered 72 years ago today by four boys (the hole was found by a dog on 8 September 1940, but the boys entered the cave on 12 September). It houses the most spectacular collection of Paleolithic wall-art yet found. It is best known for its 600 magnificent paintings of aurochs (wild cattle), horses, deer, and “signs,” but it also contains almost 1,500 engravings dominated by horses.
Book thumbnail image Why did Milton write his theology in Latin? By John Hale John Milton wrote his systematic theology, De Doctrina Christiana, his “dearest possession,” in Latin — a usual choice for a theological work, but with many unusual aspects. Language was a choice, not a foregone conclusion. Continental theologians could be rendered into English (for instance, the work by Johannes Wolleb).
Book thumbnail image Post-mortem on the DNC Convention By Elvin Lim The Democrats are enjoying a little bump from their convention last week, but it had little to do with Barack Obama and a lot to do with Bill Clinton. The reason why Clinton’s speech worked was because he was specifically charged to address the substance of his speech to independents and older white males. He was very successful in making his speech appear reasonable, while delivering very partisan conclusions. As such, the speech was becomingly presidential.
Book thumbnail image How do you remember 9/11? By Patricia Aufderheide Documentary film both creates and depends on memory, and our memories are often composed of other people’s. How do we remember public events? How do you remember 9/11? On this anniversary of 9/11, along with your own memories, you can delve into a treasure trove of international television covering the event.
Book thumbnail image The flatterers: Sweet-talking the American people By Andrew J. Polsky If there is one thing on which Mitt Romney and Barack Obama agree, it is this: We, the American people, are wonderful. “We are the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ones who wanted a better life, the driven ones.” We have always been determined to “build a better life” for ourselves and our children. (Romney)
Book thumbnail image The greatest film ever made! By Guy Westwell What is the greatest film ever made? In an attempt to answer this question the editors of the British Film Institute’s journal Sight and Sound conducts a poll of leading film critics, scholars and directors. The first poll took place in 1952, when Vittorio De Sica’s Italian Neorealist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) was declared the winner. Sixty years later, and with nearly 850 critics, scholars and programmers contributing, the results of the 2012 poll have just been published.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles at EMI, September 1962 By Gordon R. Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles entered EMI’s recording studios on Abbey Road for their first official recording session. Their June visit had gained them a recording contract, but had cost Pete Best his position when artist-and-repertoire manager George Martin winced at the drummer’s timing. With little ceremony, Lennon, McCartney, and especially Harrison recruited the best drummer in Liverpool — a mate who sometimes subbed for Best — and left the firing of Best to manager Brian Epstein. Thus, Ringo Starr ascended to the drummer’s throne.
Book thumbnail image A brief history of western music defined Many of you may have seen the cdza video “An Abridged History of Western Music in 16 Genres | cdza Opus No. 7" (below) that went viral this summer. (cdza, founded by Joe Sabia, Michael Thurber, and Matt McCorkle, create musical video experiments.) To complement this lively celebration of the history of western music, from ragtime to reggae and baroque to bluegrass, we thought about how we can put this music into words. Here’s a quick list of definitions, drawn from the latest edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Music, to help lead you through each genre.
Book thumbnail image Work-life balance and why women don’t run By Kristin Kanthak You know the national convention is over when the balloons drop and the presidential candidate’s family joins him on stage amid the cheers of the delegates. In fact, candidates’ families are a central part of their run for the presidency and for their bids for earlier elections prior to the presidency. But we’ve never had a female nominee for the presidency, and the relationship between female politicians and their families is much more complicated.
Book thumbnail image Religion’s “return” to higher education By Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen This fall about ten million undergraduate students will be heading back to America’s 2500 four-year colleges and universities, and they will be attending schools that are significantly more attuned to religion than they were ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Today’s students encounter religion in a wide variety of forms and settings, both on campus and off.
Jericho: The community at the heart of Oxford University Press By Martin Maw We’re delighted to announce that the Oxford University Press Museum, based at OUP’s Oxford publishing office, reopens today following extensive refurbishment. Archivist Martin Maw celebrates the occasion by taking a look at the historic links between OUP and Jericho, the local area.
Top 3 differences between The Colbert Report and The Daily Show By Jennifer Burns How does being a guest on The Colbert Report compare to being a guest on The Daily Show? Here’s a breakdown! More Face Time with Everyone: Backstage at The Daily Show was a blur; I had no sooner arrived than I was in make-up, met Jon, and was heading out into the lights. By contrast, I had lots of time at The Colbert Report to see the stage, meet the producers, and chat with sundry tech people.
Book thumbnail image Behind the scenes at ‘OUP Studios’ By Georgia Mierswa The New York office’s 13th floor conference room — a quiet, large space with no outside light — functions surprisingly well as miniature studio. Within a few hours of the film crew arriving, the office chairs and table have been removed, a green screen unfurled, camera, lights, and mic all assembled, and the Publisher of Scholarly and Online Reference is sitting in the spotlight, prepped for his interview.
Book thumbnail image The literary and scientific Galileo By John L. Heilbron Galileo is not a fresh subject for a biography. Why then another? The character of the man, his discovery of new worlds, his fight with the Roman Catholic Church, and his scientific legacy have inspired many good books, thousands of articles, plays, pictures, exhibits, statues, a colossal tomb, and an entire museum. In all this, however, there was a chink.
Book thumbnail image What happens next in the search for the Higgs boson? By Jim Baggott The 4 July discovery announcement makes it clear that the new particle is consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson. The next step is therefore reasonably obvious. Physicists involved in the ATLAS and CMS detector collaborations at the LHC will be keen to push ahead and fully characterize the new particle. They will want to know if this is indeed the Higgs boson. How can they tell?
Book thumbnail image Innovating with technology By Mark Dodgson and David Gann If you have ever been lucky enough to design and build a home, you would in the past have been confronted by technical drawings that are incomprehensible to anyone but trained architects. Nowadays you can have a computerised model of your house that lets you move around it in virtual reality so that you get a high fidelity sense of the layout and feel of rooms. That’s innovation.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Scholarly Editions Online launches today: but why? By Sophie Goldsworthy Today sees the launch of a major new publishing initiative from Oxford University Press – Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO). OSEO will provide trustworthy and reliable critical online editions of original works by some of the most important writers in the humanities, such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, as well as works from lesser-known writers such as Shackerley Marmion.
Book thumbnail image The life of Ford Madox Ford By Max Saunders This year’s televisualization of Parade’s End has led to an extraordinary surge of interest in Ford Madox Ford. The ingenious adaptation by Sir Tom Stoppard; the stellar cast, including Benedict Cumberbatch, Rebecca Hall, Alan Howard, Rupert Everett, Miranda Richardson, Roger Allam; the flawlessly intelligent direction by award-winning Susanna White, have not only created a critical success, but reached Ford’s widest audience for perhaps fifty years.
Book thumbnail image Mourning and praising Colony Records By Liz Wollman Colony Records, which will close on Saturday, September 15th after 64 years of business, is no mere record store. A cavernous, crowded, and never particularly tidy place, Colony has kept one foot firmly in its Tin Pan Alley past, and the other in its media-saturated present. The largest and easily most famous provider of sheet music in New York City, Colony also houses cassettes, CDs, DVDs, karaoke recordings, an absolutely enormous collection of records, and all kinds of memorabilia
Book thumbnail image How does the Higgs mechanism create mass? By Jim Baggott Through thousands of years of speculative philosophy and hundreds of years of hard empirical science, we have tended to think of mass as an innate property (a ‘primary quality’) of material substance. We figured that, whatever they might be, the basic building blocks of matter would surely consist of microscopic lumps of some kind of ‘stuff’.
Book thumbnail image Toward a new history of Hasidism By David Biale Two years ago, I agreed to serve as the head of an international team of nine scholars from the US, UK, Poland and Israel who are attempting to write a history of Hasidism, the eighteenth-century Eastern European pietistic movement that remains an important force in the Orthodox Jewish world today. I was perhaps not the obvious choice for this role: although I’ve written several articles and book chapters on Hasidism, it has not been my main area of research.
Do you ‘cuss’ your stars when you go ‘bust’? By Anatoly Liberman Here, for a change, I will present two words (cuss and bust) whose origin is known quite well, but their development will allow us to delve into the many and profound mysteries of r. Both Dickens and Thackeray knew (that is, allowed their characters to use) the verb cuss, and no one had has ever had any doubts that cuss means “curse.” Bust is an Americanism, now probably understood everywhere in the English-speaking world. The change of curse and burst to cuss and bust seems trivial only at first sight.
Book thumbnail image An Anatomy of #Eastwooding By David Karpf Clint Eastwood took the stage at the Republican convention last week and gave a… well, let’s call it a memorable performance. I’m not sure if there’s ever been such a bizarre prime time address given at a national convention. The celebrated actor/director spent eleven minutes in a mumbling debate with an empty chair representing President Obama. Political conventions are highly scripted events. Eastwood’s extended, failed ad lib was anything but scripted.
Book thumbnail image Is the particle recently discovered at CERN’s LHC the Higgs boson? By Jim Baggott Experimental physicists are by nature very cautious people, often reluctant to speculate beyond the boundaries defined by the evidence at hand. Although the Higgs mechanism is responsible for the acquisition of mass, the theory does not give a precise prediction for the mass of the Higgs boson itself.
Book thumbnail image Avast, ye file sharers! Is Internet piracy dead? The Internet has two faces. For every exercised freedom of speech and shared idea, there’s an act of fraud, counterfeiting, and copyright infringement. How is the law – in particular the English legal system – attempting to stem the tide of the last problem – online infringement – and take pirates down?
Book thumbnail image Post-mortem on the RNC Convention By Elvin Lim The Republicans’ convention bump for Mitt Romney appears to be muted. Why? There was a lot of bad luck. Holding the convention before the Labor Day weekend caused television viewership to go down by 30 percent, as did the competing and distracting news about Hurricane Isaac. The Clint Eastwood invisible chair wasn’t a disaster, but a wasted opportunity that Romney’s advisors should have vetted. V
Osama and Obama By Andrew J. Polsky No Easy Day, the new book by a member of the SEAL team that killed Osama bin Laden on 30 April 2011, has attracted widespread comment, most of it focused on whether bin Laden posed a threat at the time he was gunned down. Another theme in the account by Mark Owen (a pseudonym) is how the team members openly weighed the political ramifications of their actions.
Book thumbnail image Pablum for profit’s sake? By William D. Romanowski When Protestant evangelicals opened a Hollywood front in the late twentieth-century “culture wars,” the result was an odd mixture of moral reproach and commercialization of religion. To no avail, they famously protested MCA/Universal over The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and then joined conservative Catholics — outraged over the movie Priest (1995) — in a boycott of the Walt Disney Company, the world’s largest provider of family entertainment.
Book thumbnail image Why is the Higgs boson called the ‘god particle’? By Jim Baggott The Higgs field was invented to explain how otherwise massless force particles could acquire mass, and was used by Weinberg and Salam to develop a theory of the combined ‘electro-weak’ force and predict the masses of the W and Z bosons. However, it soon became apparent that something very similar is responsible for the masses of the matter particles, too.
Book thumbnail image John Zorn at 59 By Meghann Wilhoite By Meghann Wilhoite It’s difficult to pin a label onto John Zorn. Active since the early 70s, Zorn has effectively woven his peculiar style of musical experimentation into the fabric of New York City’s downtown scene. His work—in the general sense of the word—has varied from philanthropic to shocking, with a curatorial bent that has often held quite a bit of sway.
Book thumbnail image Paul Ryan and the evolution of the vice presidency By Edward Zelinsky By selecting Representative Paul Ryan as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Romney confirmed the decline of the traditional role of vice presidential candidates as providers of geographic balance. Ryan’s selection reinforces the shift to a more policy-oriented definition of the vice presidency. This shift reflects the nationalization of our culture and politics and the increased importance of the general election debate between vice presidential candidates.
Book thumbnail image Networked politics in 2008 and 2012 By Daniel Kreiss A recent Pew study on the presidential candidates’ use of social media described Barack Obama as having a “substantial lead” over Mitt Romney. The metrics for the study were the amounts of content these candidates post, the number of platforms the campaigns are active on, and the differential responses of the public.
Book thumbnail image What is the Higgs boson? By Jim Baggott We know that the physical universe is constructed from elementary matter particles (such as electrons and quarks) and the particles that transmit forces between them (such as photons). Matter particles have physical characteristics that we classify as fermions. Force particles are bosons.
Book thumbnail image So what is ‘phone hacking’? By Professor Ian Walden Over the past two years there has been much furore over journalists accessing the voicemail of celebrities and other newsworthy people, particularly the scandal involving Milly Dowler. As a result of the subsequent police investigation, ‘Operation Weeting’, some 24 people have since been arrested and the first charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service in July 2012 against eight people, including Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson. The leading charge was one of conspiracy “to intercept communications in the course of their transmission, without lawful authority”. But what does ‘phone hacking’ mean and have the CPS got it right?
Book thumbnail image To let you appreciate what sort of consul he professes himself to be On 2 September 44 BC, Cicero launched into the first of the most blistering oratorical attacks in political history, attacks which ultimately cost him his life. The following is an excerpt of the Second Philippic, a denunciation of Mark Antony, from the Oxford World’s Classic Political Speeches. Do we hear echoes of contemporary political rhetoric in these harsh tones?
Book thumbnail image Textual Variants in the Digital Age By Christopher Cannon The editing of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the form in which we now read it took many decades of work by a number of different scholars, but there is as yet no readily available edition that takes account of all the different versions in which the Canterbury Tales survives. Some of this is purely pragmatic. There are over 80 surviving manuscripts from before 1500 containing all or some parts of the Tales (55 of these are complete texts or were meant to be).
August 2012 (108))
Understanding Olympic design By Jilly Traganou After attending the “Because” event at the Wolff Olins office on July 4, I was once again reminded of the big disconnect that lies between designers and their public. Wolff Olins is the firm that designed the London 2012 brand, a multifaceted design campaign that included much more than the London 2012 logo. Readers may remember the numerous complaints that the logo generated. As my research revealed, this was caused partly due to IOC’s restrictions and the corporate unwillingness to allow for the full application of what might be seen as a “no logo” campaign.
Book thumbnail image Finding the right word How do you choose the right word? Some just don’t fit what you’re trying to convey, either in the labor of love prose for your creative writing class, or the rogue auto-correct function on your phone. Can you shed lacerations instead of tears? How is the word barren an attack on women? How do writers such as Joshua Ferris, Francine Prose, David Foster Wallace, Zadie Smith, and Simon Winchester weigh and inveigh against words?
Book thumbnail image How and why do myths arise? It is trite to say that one’s pet subject is interdisciplinary. These days what subject isn’t? The prostate? But myth really is interdisciplinary. For there is no study of myth as myth, the way, by contrast, there is said to be the study of literature as literature or of religion as religion. Myth is studied by other disciplines, above all by sociology, anthropology, psychology, politics, philosophy, literature, and religious studies.
Book thumbnail image What’s so super about Super PACs? By Katherine Connor Martin Back in January we published a short glossary of the jargon of the presidential primaries. Now that the campaign has begun in earnest, here is our brief guide to some of the most perplexing vocabulary of this year’s general election. It may seem like the 2012 US presidential election has stretched on for eons, but it only officially begins with the major parties’ quadrennial nominating conventions, on August 27–30 (Republicans) and September 3–6 (Democrats). How can they be called nominating conventions if we already know who the nominees are?
Book thumbnail image The Friday before school starts By Alice M. Hammel and Ryan M. Hourigan While standing at the local superstore watching my children choose their colorful binders and pencils for the upcoming school year, I saw another family at the end of the aisle. Their two sons had great difficulty accessing the space because of the crowd and they were clearly over-stimulated by the sights and sounds of this tax-free weekend shopping day. One boy began crying and the other soon curled into a ball next to the packets of college-lined paper.
Book thumbnail image Unfit for the future: The urgent need for moral enhancement By Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson For the vast majority of our 150,000 years or so on the planet, we lived in small, close-knit groups, working hard with primitive tools to scratch sufficient food and shelter from the land. Sometimes we competed with other small groups for limited resources. Thanks to evolution, we are supremely well adapted to that world, not only physically, but psychologically, socially and through our moral dispositions. But this is no longer the world in which we live.
Book thumbnail image May the odds be ever in your favor, APSA 2012 On Sunday, 26 August 2012, storm clouds were gathering over political scientists in the United States. The American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting and Exhibition 2012 was due to begin on Wednesday, August 29th, but Hurricane Isaac had other plans. The #APSA2012 hashtag was blazing like District 12's costumes as academics and exhibitors pulled out. (Oxford University Press will not be attending APSA 2012, but you can order books with the conference discount.)
(Bi)Monthly Etymology Gleanings for July-August 2012 By Anatoly Liberman Farting and participles (not to be confused with cabbages and kings). Summer is supposed to be a dead season, but I cannot complain: many people have kindly offered their comments and sent questions. Of the topics discussed in July and August, flatulence turned out to be the greatest hit. I have nothing to add to the comments on fart. Apparently, next to the election campaign, the problem of comparable interest was breaking wind in Indo-European.
Book thumbnail image Presidential nominating conventions matter By Kate Kenski In recent years, the value of American presidential nominating conventions has been questioned. Unlike the unscripted days of old, the modern conventions are media events used to broadcast to the nation the merits of the parties’ presidential nominees as the country moves toward the general election campaign. Because of the convention scripting and pageantry akin to a hybrid of the Oscars and a rock concert, some media outlets don’t feel that the conventions are as news worthy as they once were — a view that is unfortunate.
Book thumbnail image Understanding ‘the body’ in fairy tales By Scott B. Weingart and Jeana Jorgensen Computational analysis and feminist theory generally aren’t the first things that come to mind in association with fairy tales. This unlikely pairing, however, can lead to important insights regarding how cultures understand and represent themselves. For example, by looking at how characters are described in European fairy tales, we’ve been able to show how Western culture tends to bias the younger generation, especially the men.
Book thumbnail image What would the ancient Greeks make of London 2012? By Nigel Spivey Overheard somewhere near London’s Green Park tube station, amid a throng of spectators for the 2012 Olympic triathlon: “What would those ancient Greeks make of this?” I had no opportunity there and then to attempt a response, but it still seems worth considering. What indeed? Triathlon, for a start, they should comprehend; an ancient Greek word (meaning ‘triple challenge’), it would seem like some fraction of the ‘Twelve Labours’ (dodekathlon) undertaken by Herakles, and the winner duly heroized.
Book thumbnail image Knowing it when we see it: ‘Madness’ and crime By Arlie Loughnan One of the most high profile court cases concerning ‘madness’ and crime has concluded. In a unanimous decision, the Oslo District Court in Norway has convicted Anders Behring Breivik of the murder of 77 people in the streets of central Oslo and on the island of Utøya in July 2011. Breivik’s conviction was based on a finding that he was sane at the time of the killings. He has been sentenced to 21 years in prison but it is possible that he will be detained beyond that period, under a regime of preventative detention.
Book thumbnail image The political impossibility of the Ryan-Romney budget By Andrew J. Polsky Pain has no political constituency. This fundamental rule of American politics (and democratic systems more generally) points up the difficulty of enacting or sustaining public policies that leave large numbers of citizens worse off. Politicians dread casting votes on legislation that will impose costs on any significant group of constituents, lest the opposition seize on the issue in the next election. Austerity policies typically spell defeat for the political party or coalition that imposes them.
Book thumbnail image The battle over homework By Kenneth Barish For this back-to-school season, I would like to offer some advice about one of the most frequent problems presented to me in over 30 years of clinical practice: battles over homework. I have half-jokingly told many parents that if the schools of New York State no longer required homework, our children’s education would suffer, but as a child psychologist I would be out of business.
Book thumbnail image Young Goethe By David Constantine By David Constantine Goethe was born almost dead on 28 August 1749. He opened his eyes, he lived, only when the midwife rubbed his heart with wine. Perhaps that uncertain start awoke a determination in him to stay alive as long as possible. There’s a wry saying in German: Alle Menschen müssen sterben — ich auch, vielleicht (All men must die — me too, perhaps). And that’s how Goethe lived, cannily keeping out of the way of death, cramming as much life as he could into the time allowed.
Book thumbnail image The LPO, Minis, and an Olympic afterglow By Ron Rodman This is my last blog on the music and TV broadcasts for the 2012 Olympic games — I promise. But I just saw a new video ad that I must share. In my last blog post, I noted the remarkable feat of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO), who, under the baton of Philip Sheppard, recorded the national anthems of all 205 participating nations in the Olympic games in a little under 52 hours of studio time.
Josquin des Prez By Jesse Rodin No figure in Western music poses a greater challenge to the writing of history than Josquin des Prez (ca. 1450–1521). That’s because there is no composer of comparative fame — musicians regularly speak Josquin’s name in the same breath as Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms — about whom so very little is known.
Book thumbnail image The Decline and Fall of the American Political Convention By Geoffrey Kabaservice Will you be tuning in to watch this year’s Republican and Democratic national conventions in the hope of seeing something of historic significance? The managers of both conventions are working hard to make sure that you don’t get your wish. From their standpoint, the best convention is a precooked and tightly controlled event that passes placidly and without controversy into the annals of national forgetfulness.
Book thumbnail image Hegel on an ethical life and the family Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born on this day, 27 August, in 1770. Hegel’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Right is one of the greatest works of moral, social, and political philosophy. It contains significant ideas on justice, moral responsibility, family life, economic activity, and the political structure of the state — all matters of profound interest to us today. Here is an extract from Hegel’s thoughts on the Family.
Book thumbnail image Delirium in hospital: Bad for the brain By Daniel Davis Taking an elderly friend or relative to hospital is a painful experience for most people, and is often made worse when they become confused and disorientated during their stay.This acute confusional state is called delirium.
Book thumbnail image Romney needed to pick Ryan By David C Barker and Christopher Jan Carman Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the new Republican vice presidential nominee, has many virtues as a candidate. He is smart, charismatic and energetic, and he hails from a competitive but usually blue-leaning state that the GOP would like to secure into the red column. But one of Ryan’s virtues stands out above the rest for the Tea Partiers and other conservatives whom Governor Romney is still trying to win over.
Book thumbnail image Martin Kemp vs John Gittings: Icons of Peace Today, John Gittings and Martin Kemp will be discussing icons of peace. Human history is dominated by war, but can we forge a different narrative? In The Glorious Art of Peace, former Guardian journalist John Gittings argues that progress depends on a peaceful environment, identifying iconic proponents of peace such as Confucius and Gandhi. Art historian Martin Kemp’s Christ to Coke looks at the creation of some of our peacetime icons and traces the things they have in common.
Book thumbnail image Stonewalling Progress By Mark McCormack Leading British gay rights charity, Stonewall, have produced a new report into the extent of homophobia in British schools. Surveying 1,600 sexual minority youth, it finds that 55% of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) students experience homophobic bullying, 96% hear “homophobic remarks” and that homophobia frequently goes unchallenged. This builds on their 2007 report, which argued that homophobia was “endemic” and “almost epidemic” in British schools. These are harrowing findings, but they obscure rather than reveal the social dynamics of many British schools today.
Book thumbnail image Maths, magic, and the electric guitar By David Acheson I’ve just had a great time at the 2012 Edinburgh International Book Festival, even though it was a rather strange experience for a mathematician. In the Author’s Yurt (sic), for example, I was surrounded by fiction writers, with lots of pointy beards and wild hair. As it happens, I used to write detective stories when I was a young boy, so once had vague dreams of becoming a fiction writer myself.
Book thumbnail image Paul Ryan, Randian? No, just another neocon By Jason Brennan Paul Ryan — possible future Vice President of the United States — calls Ayn Rand one of his principal inspirations. He once claimed (and later denied) that Atlas Shrugged was required reading for his staff. He even gives copies of Atlas Shrugged as Christmas presents, which is a touch ironic, since Rand was an ardent atheist.
Book thumbnail image Early intervention for children with reading difficulties By Karen L. Schiltz, Ph.D. Getting ready to go back to school can be a challenge. It is even more of a challenge when you suspect something is not quite right with your child. As parents, we do not want our child to have problems. We deeply want our child to be o.k. in everyday life. When our child suffers, we suffer as well.
Book thumbnail image The Roman Republic: Not just senators in togas By David M. Gwynn When we gaze back at the ancient world of the Roman Republic, what images are conjured in our minds? We see senators clad in togas, and marching Roman legions. The Carthaginian Hannibal leading his elephants over the Alps into Italy, Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon and his murder on the Ides of March. These images are kept fresh by novels and comic books, and by television series like Rome and Spartacus: Blood and Sand.
Book thumbnail image Into the arena: Defending politics at the Edinburgh International Book Festival By Matthew Flinders ‘It is not the critic who counts,’ Theodore Roosevelt famously argued: ‘not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…who spends himself in a worthy cause’. The arena in question was The Guardian’s ‘Rethinking Democracy’ debate at the Edinburgh International Book Festival and my ‘worthy cause’ was an attempt to defend democratic politics (and therefore politicians) from the anti-political environment in which it finds itself today.
Book thumbnail image Did the government invent the Internet? By Richard R. John Did the government invent the Internet? In a 23 June 2012 Wall Street Journal article, journalist L. Gordon Crovitz answered “no.” “It’s important to understand the history of the Internet,” Crovitz contended, “because it’s too often wrongly cited to justify big government.” Crovitz gave the credit instead to researchers at Xerox PARC who in the 1970s developed the Ethernet to link different computer networks.
Book thumbnail image Money and politics: A look behind the news By Louis René Beres In the final months of a presidential election campaign, the prevailing political talk, amid an ambience of cynicism and indignation, turns unhesitatingly to money. American voters understand that economics and politics remain interpenetrating. Whatever happens in either one of these seemingly discrete realms, especially when money is involved, more or less substantially impacts the other.
Book thumbnail image Richard Causton, the EUYO, and the Cultural Olympiad By Anwen Greenaway Composer Richard Causton worked with the European Union Youth Orchestra on Twenty-Seven Heavens, premiering in the UK tonight at Usher Hall in Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Causton composed the work, which he describes as a Concerto for Orchestra, for the 2012 Cultural Olympiad festivities celebrating the UK, London, and the Olympics.
Book thumbnail image Short answers to snappy questions about sports doping Largely because of the furor about the Chinese swimmer, Ye Shewin, I have spent a lot of time in TV and radio studios recently. My book, Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat is really about the science of doping now and what could happen in the future. But of course I get asked a lot of more general questions as well. I thought I would indicate the most common queries and my thoughts here:
Book thumbnail image Rethinking Europe: Do we need a European Community anymore? By David Ellwood At first sight it looked like an incongruous debate for Edinburgh. The only debate dedicated to Europe included three unusual debaters. How to reconcile such different impulses and points of view?
Book thumbnail image Meles Zenawi: In his own words By Peter Gill In the rush to judgement on the record and the legacy of Meles Zenawi as Ethiopia’s leader for the past two decades, the man himself has barely left the shadows. Yes, he achieved record economic growth for his country, and yes, he was a force for stability and an ally in the West’s ‘war on terror,’ and no, he was certainly not a liberal democrat.
The jarring word ‘ajar’ By Anatoly Liberman All modern dictionaries state that the adverb ajar goes back to the phrase on char, literally “on the turn” (= “in the act of turning”). This is, most probably, a correct derivation. However, such unanimity among even the most authoritative recent sources should be taken with caution because reference books tend to copy from one another. Recycling a plausible opinion again and again produces an illusion of solidity in an area notorious for debatable results. That is why it is so interesting to read books published before Skeat’s dictionary (1882) and the OED came out.
Book thumbnail image Five things you may not know about leadership PACs By Kristin Kanthak Political Action Committees, or PACs, get considerable attention in our current debate about how we finance American elections. When most Americans think of a PAC, they think of the campaign contribution arm of interest groups, like the National Rifle Association’s “National Rifle Association of America Political Victory Fund,” or large corporations, like Honeywell International’s aptly named “Honeywell International Political Action Committee.”
Book thumbnail image Claude Debussy at 150 One hundred and fifty years ago today, one of the titans of the musical world was born. Claude Debussy’s innovative compositions influenced generations of composers and helped defined 19th century music. We’re celebrating his birth with an extract from the Claude Debussy entry by Robert Orledge (2002) in The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham.
Book thumbnail image Are crimes morally wrong? By Hyman Gross Are crimes morally wrong? Yes and no; it depends. It’s easy to think we know what we’re talking about when we ask this question. But do we? We need to know what we mean by ‘crimes’. And we need to know what we mean by ‘morally wrong’. This turns out to be trickier than we may at first think.
Book thumbnail image Team Romney’s game change By Elvin Lim In our fast-paced world where candidates throw everything but the sink at television and Internet audiences to see what sticks, Mitt Romney made a particularly gutsy move last week by adopting Medicare in his fight against Obama and Obamacare. Together with the selection of Paul Ryan as VP candidate, this was a game change revealing that Team Romney is going straight for demographics in this home stretch of the campaign.
Book thumbnail image Money for nothing? The great 2012 campaign spending spree By Andrew J. Polsky Money is a main subtext of the 2012 elections: how much will be spent, who donates and spends it, how quickly it may be exhausted and whether campaigns have enough. Before November, we may spend as much time talking about campaign spending as the issues and the candidates.
Book thumbnail image Arne Kalleberg reflects on 90 years of Social Forces Sociology has adopted much more sophisticated methods and theories over the last one hundred years. The growth in specialization has made it difficult for many scholars to have a good sense of what is happening in areas in which they are not specialists. But Social Forces, a leading international social science research journal, has grown and changed along with it. We sat down with Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Social Forces editor Arne Kalleberg to discuss the past, present, and future of sociology, social sciences, and the journal.
Book thumbnail image The king of instruments: Scary or sleepy? By Meghann Wilhoite By Meghann Wilhoite Whenever I tell people I’m an organist, I usually get one of two reactions. The person I’m talking to hunches over and sings the formidable opening notes of J.S. Bach’s D minor prelude; or, the person relates the organ’s slumberous effect during seemingly interminable church services.
Book thumbnail image Buddhism or Buddhisms? Lexical consequences of geo-political categories By Richard Payne In a previous post, we argued that the geo-political categories commonly employed in both popular and academic representations of Buddhism are problematic. The problems were grouped into rhetorical and lexical; the rhetorical consequences having been considered there, we now turn to the lexical. Specifically, the lexical distinction between mass nouns and count nouns clarifies how thinking about the subject of study logically (and implicitly) follow from ways of talking about that subject.
Book thumbnail image The Declaration of Independence and campaign finance reform By Alexander Tsesis The Supreme Court’s recent equation of personal and corporate campaign contributions has vastly increased corporate and super-PAC donations during this election year. The Court’s premise that corporations deserve the same right to political speech as ordinary people is a modernist interpretation that would have sounded completely foreign to the framers of the Declaration of Independence. I
Book thumbnail image Waking the Giant at Edinburgh International Book Festival By Bill McGuire If it’s August, it must be Edinburgh. Doing the rounds of the UK’s book festivals is always great fun, but the Edinburgh International Book Festival is almost inevitably the annual highlight. While the book festival is exciting in its own right, this is in large part because the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe are in full spate, packing this great city with visitors from far and wide, and with acts and events that boggle even the most unflappable mind.
Book thumbnail image A Spice Girl Symphony: The Olympic Closing Ceremony By Ron Rodman The 2012 Olympic games concluded on Sunday with choreographer Kim Gavin’s musical extravaganza. As with Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony, Gavin was intent on impressing his vision of British music to the world. To underscore its significance, he titled the closing “A Symphony of British Music.” This title was a peculiar choice considering that classical historical musicology considers the “symphony” as a specific genre of classical music: a serious multi-movement work composed by a renowned composer, and performed by an orchestra.
Book thumbnail image World Humanitarian Day By John Gittings Cynical observers, of the kind who always scoff at the UN and its aims, may regard World Humanitarian Day (19 August) as just another high-minded but meaningless annual event. Yet the day has a very specific origin, which should remind us that humanitarianism is not just a fine principle but a hard struggle against the opposing forces of violence and war.
Book thumbnail image Grammar sticklers may have OCD By Dennis Baron It used to be we thought that people who went around correcting other people’s grammar were just plain annoying. Now there’s evidence they are actually ill, suffering from a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder/oppositional defiant disorder (OCD/ODD). Researchers are calling it Grammatical Pedantry Syndrome, or GPS.
The difficulty of insider book theft By Travis McDade On Sunday, the New York Times reported on the wholesale looting of the prestigious Girolamini Library in Naples, Italy, by its director, Marino Massimo de Caro. He seems to have treated the place as his own personal collection, stealing and selling hundreds — maybe thousands — of rare and antiquarian books during his 11 month tenure. This has provoked the normal amount of head-shaking and hand-wringing. But what is most striking — aside from the embarrassing appointment of the unqualified de Caro to the job in the first place — is how terrible a thief he was.
Book thumbnail image Shark sensory mechanisms By Ivan R. Schwab M.D. F.A.C.S. Sharks always draw a crowd. We have a macabre fascination with these creatures because of their commanding presence and predatory lifestyle. Such a lifestyle demands high quality sensory systems, something sharks have had millions of years to develop.
Book thumbnail image Knockoff fashion, trend-setting, and the creative economy Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary? Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman approach the question of incentives and innovation in a wholly new way in The Knockoff Economy — by exploring creative fields where copying is generally legal, such as fashion, food, and even professional football. The University of Virginia spoke with author Christopher Sprigman about the role of knockoffs in the fashion industry and their impact on the creative economy.
Book thumbnail image Did we really want a National Health Service? By Nick Hayes For most today, it’s difficult to imagine a British hospital system where treatment is not ‘free’ at the point of delivery, paid for out of national taxation, because in our imagination, the alternatives conjure pejorative images of the Americanisation of health. Those today opposed to decentralisation also echo the concerns of earlier health reformers like Dr Stark Murray, who thought the pre-nationalised hospital system simply disparate and chaotic.
Book thumbnail image A British ante-invasion: “Telstar,” 17 August 1962 By Gordon R. Thompson Many describe the 1964 arrival of the Beatles in New York as the beginning of the “British Invasion,” but UK rock and pop had begun culturally infiltrating our consciousness much earlier. Indeed, a London instrumental group topped American charts in the fall of 1962 with a recording that celebrated the first telecommunications satellite. Launched from Cape Canaveral on 10 July,
Book thumbnail image The Demise of the Toff By William Doyle Born to tenants of a country squire in Yorkshire, I knew about what my grandmother called ‘toffs’ at an early age. The squire was a toff. As a child I scarcely realised that the squire and his lifestyle were already relics of a fast-disappearing pattern of society.
Book thumbnail image Even more facts about the Silk Road By Valerie Hansen The “Silk Road” was a stretch of shifting, unmarked paths across massive expanses of deserts and mountains — not a real road at any point or time. I previously examined the historical documents and evidence of the silk road, but here are a few more facts from camels to Marco Polo on this mysterious route. The peak years of the Silk Road trade were between 500 and 800 C.E., after the fall of the Han dynasty and Constantinople replaced Rome as the center of the Roman empire.
Book thumbnail image A double life: Leading flute historian and history editor Nancy Toff By Alyssa Bender One of our history editors here at Oxford University Press (OUP) has a unique second life. She is the author of two of our best-selling flute books on our music list, The Monarch of the Flute, recently released in paperback, and The Flute Book, a staple in the field and now out in its third edition. This editor is our very own Nancy Toff, and to celebrate these releases — as well as her receiving the National Flute Association’s 2012 National Service Award at the annual convention this past weekend — we sat down with Nancy for a Q&A.
Book thumbnail image Bereavement: the elephant in the room By Christine Young and Tracy Dowling For most of us the death of a child is unimaginable and when it happens to someone close to us, or in our community, we may have no idea of how to respond. If you’re a grandparent or close family member you may well be dealing with your own sense of loss as well as thinking about how to support the bereaved family and it’s the latter that people typically struggle with.
Book thumbnail image Frank Close and Peter Higgs at the Edinburgh International Book Festival As you may know, our author Frank Close spoke with Peter Higgs on Monday. We put out a call for questions earlier on the blog, but didn’t anticipate the warm enthusiasm of the crowd over Twitter (follow Frank Close on Twitter at @CloseFrank). Thank you for all your updates, pictures, encouraging comments. Here’s a quick recap.
I been, I seen, I done By Anatoly Liberman The forms in the title are substandard but ubiquitous in conversational English, and the universally understood reference to the genre called whodunit (it originated about seventy years ago) testifies to its partial victory. I have often heard the question about their origin and will try to answer it, though my information is scanty and to the best of my knowledge, a convincing theory of whodunit (the construction, not the genre) is lacking, which does not augur well for a detective story.
Book thumbnail image Julia Child at 100 One hundred years ago today, a legendary and influential American chef was born: Julia Child. From the introduction of fine cooking into every American home with books and television appearances, her unpretentious and enthusiastic attitude welcomed many to the best food can offer. We’re celebrating Julia Child’s life and work with an extract by Lynne Sampson from The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.
Book thumbnail image Edgar Allan Poe and terror at sea The wife of Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Clemm Poe, was born 15 August 1822. She lived a brief life, marrying Poe at 13 (he was 27) and dying of tuberculosis at 24. Poe worked hard to support their marriage and in 1838, three years into their marriage, Poe wrote his only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. While many of Poe’s works after his wife’s death were marked by the deaths of young women, terror clearly fascinated him from an early stage. Here Arthur Gordon Pym recounts a frightening incident at sea.
Book thumbnail image 15 August 1040: Macbeth kills King Duncan I of Scotland By Daniel Swift Susan Sontag wrote that having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a piece of the True Cross. We don’t have a photograph, of course, and even the portraits that we do have are unreliable, but in his plays he left snapshots of a different kind.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Suzzy Roche Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selection while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 21 August, Suzzy Roche leads a discussion on The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and will perform it at the end.
Book thumbnail image The great silence: Afghanistan in the presidential campaigns By Andrew J. Polsky From time to time, political commentators bemoan the fact that we don’t debate the war in Afghanistan in our political campaigns. Back in 2010, Tom Brokaw complained that in the heated mid-term elections neither party showed any interest in arguing about the best course to pursue in the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He chalked this up to the fact that most Americans could opt out of military service, so the wars touched few families.
Sherry Smith on Red Power In the 1960s hippies and Indians found common cause. How so? They joined forces to challenge and overturn longstanding federal policies designed to extinguish all remnants of native life and culture. In addition, civil rights advocates, Black Panthers, unions, Mexican-Americans, Quakers and other Christian denominations, and Hollywood celebrities also supported Red Power activists’ fight for Indian rights. In Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power, Sherry Smith offers the first full account of this remarkable story.
Book thumbnail image Red and yellow and pink and green… By Katherine Shaw Many of us learn the colours of the rainbow from an early age, but have you ever wondered where the names for the different shades we see around us come from? The origins of many of the words for the colours of the visible spectrum go back far in time, and are ultimately unknown. But the origins of others are better recorded.
Book thumbnail image Saving Sibelius: Software in peril By Meghann Wilhoite You may not have known it, but July was a pretty stressful month for the composers of this world. Or at least several thousand of them. The life of Sibelius, one of the leading music notation software programs, has seemingly come under threat of dissipation as Avid (who owns the software) has recently shut down Sibelius’ UK office, simultaneously laying off the software’s core development team.
Book thumbnail image Buddhism or Buddhisms? Rhetorical consequences of geo-political categories By Richard Payne The categorization of Buddhism along geo-political lines is perhaps the most common organizing principle today. It also tends to be accepted uncritically. Thus we find, without explanation, such expressions as “Indian Buddhism,” “Tibetan Buddhism,” “Chinese Buddhism,” “Burmese Buddhism,” and so on.
Book thumbnail image Imagining the Internet and why it matters By Robin Mansell Societies are benefitting in numerous ways from an open Internet, not least because of the collaborative culture it seems to favour. Increasingly, however, national and regional legislative initiatives are raising questions about how citizens’ interests (freedom from monitoring of their online activities) can be reconciled with the interests of the state (securing their safety) and of companies (safeguarding their revenue streams).
Book thumbnail image A small town near Auschwitz: 70 years on By Mary Fulbrook Take a trip to the Polish town of Bedzin today, and there is not a lot to see. The ruins of the old castle rise above the town; a Lidl supermarket helps the casual traveller searching in vain for an open pub or restaurant. This certainly does not seem to be a key location on the trail to Auschwitz, now the epicentre of what might be called Holocaust tourism.
Book thumbnail image An Olympic roundup of blog posts It’s been a long, hard road to London 2012 and while the closing ceremony brings an end to the sporting events and spectacle, we all know it’s not truly the end. The Paralympics begin in a few weeks. There will continue to be reports, analysis, and even a few more blog posts from us. Let’s take a look back on Olympic news, analysis, context, and history from the past few months. And we’ll see you in Rio de Janeiro in 2016!
Book thumbnail image The Oxford Companion to the London 2012 Opening Ceremony By Alice Northover Many questioned how the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games Opening Ceremony was going to make a mark after the spectacular Beijing Olympics only four years earlier. While Beijing presented the Chinese people moving as one body — dancing, marching, and presenting a united front to the world — the British answer was a chaotic and spirited ceremony, shifting from cricket matches to coordinated dance routines, Mr Bean’s comedic dream to a 100-foot Lord Voldemort.
Book thumbnail image Who should Mitt Romney choose as his Vice Presidential running mate? “The choice of Vice-President is going to be extremely difficult for Mitt Romney to game…” The GOP campaign has good reason to be nervous about the running mate choice. Will it be someone who previously sought the presidential nomination — Michele Bachmann or Rick Santorum — or someone out of left field, like Sarah Palin was for John McCain’s campaign? We spoke to Samuel L. Popkin, author of The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House, about Mitt Romney’s choices.
Book thumbnail image African Americans at the Olympic Games By Robert Repino Though they were conceived for idealistic reasons and designed to celebrate universal human aspirations, the modern Olympic Games have served as a stage for the world’s political and social struggles. Virtually every political controversy — from wars to ideological conflicts to human rights struggles — have managed to find expression every four years in the athletic events and in the media campaigns that go with them. Perhaps no group has influenced the Games more — both as athletes and as human rights pioneers — than African Americans, whose very participation in the modern games has been one of many tiny steps forward in the progress toward a more just world.
Book thumbnail image Olympic Greatness By David Potter In a year when Michael Phelps became the most decorated Olympian of all time with 22 medals, and Usain Bolt became the first man to win the 200 meters twice, it’s worth asking: What does “great” mean in sports? We might gain perspective by considering how the Ancient Greeks determined greatness in athletes. Then and now, true greatness is as defined not by a single moment, but by the ability to build a record of extraordinary achievement.
Book thumbnail image Enid Blyton Happy Birthday Enid Blyton! This giant of children’s literature was born on 11 August 1897. To celebrate, here is an edited extract from the Enid Blyton entry by David Rudd in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature edited by Jack Zipes (© Oxford University Press 2006).
Book thumbnail image Where are the ‘Isles of Wonder?’ By Anthony Bale Danny Boyle’s spectacular opening ceremony at the London Olympics on 27 July 2012 was entitled Isles of Wonder. As many will have noticed, it was shot through with references to the medieval and early-modern past. Mike Oldfield’s performance of In Dulce Jubilo, a 1970s reworking of a late-medieval German-Latin carol, provided one of the most exuberant moments. In Stratford, dancing nurses accompanied it. There were many references to and quotations from Shakespeare as well.
Book thumbnail image The science behind drugs in sport What is cheating? What drug compounds for performance enhancement are legal and why? Why do the sports drug classification systems change all the time? If all the chemical were legal, what effect would this have on sport? Biochemist and author Chris Cooper explores the biological, moral, political, and ethical issues involved in controlling drug use in sports.
Book thumbnail image Did you know that we’re all made of stars? By Andrew King What are you made of? You may never have thought about it before, but every atom in your body was once part of a star, even several stars in succession. And almost all the elements that make up your body – carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on – would not exist at all without the stars.
Book thumbnail image Komen leadership in flux By Gayle Sulik Earlier today, Komen President Liz Thompson announced her plans to leave Susan G. Komen for the Cure next month. Founder Nancy Brinker will also give up her role as Komen CEO and serve as chair of the board as soon as a replacement is found, and two board members are stepping down, Brenda Lauderback and Linda Law.
Facts about the Silk Road By Valerie Hansen The ‘Silk Road’ was a stretch of shifting, unmarked paths across massive expanses of deserts and mountains – not a real road at any point or time. Archaeologists have found few ancient Silk Road bridges, gates, or paving stones like those along Rome’s Appian Way. They are best seen from the air…
Book thumbnail image Bob Chilcott and Charles Bennett on “The Angry Planet” Composer Bob Chilcott and librettist Charles Bennett discuss their experiences of creating “The Angry Planet”, a large-scale cantata on the theme of the environment which was premiered at the 2012 Proms by the Bach Choir, the BBC Singers, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, and London schoolchildren.
Book thumbnail image The Doctrine of Discovery and Indigenous Peoples By Robert J. Miller and Jacinta Ruru Today is the United Nations International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. It is a day for action. An important part of this action must be to continue the work towards banishing racist international colonialism law including the Doctrine of Discovery. This Doctrine legitimated the notion that the first European country that discovered lands unknown to other Europeans could claim property and sovereign rights over Indigenous Peoples and their homelands.
Book thumbnail image London’s Burning! Today we are celebrating the UK publication of The Day Parliament Burned Down, in which the dramatic story of the nineteenth century national catastrophe is told for the first time. In this blog post, author Caroline Shenton presents the top ten London fires that have changed the face of the capital city.
Book thumbnail image Edinburgh International Book Festival: Frank Close and Peter Higgs By Frank Close When I interviewed Peter Higgs at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose in June, he had been waiting 48 years to see if his eponymous boson exists. On July 4 CERN announced the discovery of what looks very much like the real thing. On August 13 I am sharing the stage with Peter again, this time in Edinburgh. We shall be discussing his boson and my book The Infinity Puzzle, which relates the marathon quest to find it. How has his life changed?
Two English apr-words, part 2: ‘Apricot’ By Anatoly Liberman Fruits and vegetables travel from land to land with their names. Every now and then they proclaim their country of origin. Such is the peach (though of course not in its present-day English form), whose name is a borrowing of Old French peche (Modern French pêche), ultimately from Latin Persicum malum “Persian apple.” It follows that the noun peach began its life as an adjective. To a modern speaker of French and English the distance between pêche ~ peach and persicum (with its phonetic pit gone) is unbridgeable, but Swedish persika, Dutch perzik, and Russian persik are quite transparent.
How exactly did Mendeleev discover his periodic table of 1869? By Eric Scerri The usual version of how Mendeleev arrived at his discovery goes something like this. While in the process of writing his textbook, ‘The Principles of Chemistry’, Mendeleev completed the book by dealing with only eight of the then known sixty-three elements. He ended the book with the halogens.
Book thumbnail image Cyber War and International Law By Dr. Russell Buchan and Nicholas Tsagourias It seems both timely and necessary to question whether public international law adequately protects states from the threat of cyber attacks. This is because states have become increasingly dependent upon computer networks and the information that they hold in order to effectively regulate their societies.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Robert Hughes Oxford University Press is saddened to hear of the passing of Robert Hughes. Robert Hughes was born in Australia in 1938 and lived in Europe and the United States since 1964. He worked in New York as an art critic for Time Magazine for over three decades from 1970 onward. He twice received the Franklin Jeweer Mather Award for Distinguished Criticism from the College Art Association of America. He is the author of numerous books, including Culture of Complaint: The Fraying of America, which Oxford University Press published in 1993. Publishers Weekly called it a “a withering, salubrious jeremiad.” Robert Hughes is survived by his wife, two stepsons, brother, sister, and niece.
Book thumbnail image Vice Presidents at War By Andrew J. Polsky Much of the attention to Mitt Romney’s choice of a running mate will focus on whether the selection will influence the outcome of the election in November. (The short answer is probably not, unless he suddenly decides to think outside the proverbial box.) We might do better to spend more time considering how a vice president influences policy. I find that vice presidents have sometimes played a role in policy debates, but it is never decisive.
Book thumbnail image Are small farmers in developing countries stuck on stubble? By Nicholas Magnan No-till agriculture, a resource conserving technology which increases the amount of organic matter in the soil, offers many benefits to farmers and society. Because farmers don’t plow their fields before planting, equipment, fuel, and labor costs are reduced. These reduced costs should appeal to cash-poor farmers in developing countries. Furthermore, no-till has been shown to increase and stabilize crop yields, conserve water in the soil and protect the crop from mild drought, prevent soil erosion, and mitigate climate change through carbon sequestration.
Book thumbnail image Excelling Under Pressure By Gerald Klickstein The Olympics are in full swing, and we’re bound to witness some athletes who triumph and others who choke under the stress of performing. What differentiates those two groups? I’ve been probing that question for decades from the perspective of a musician and educator. Through my research and experience, I’ve come to appreciate that, for athletes and musicians alike, the primary distinction between those who excel under pressure and those who crack lies in how they prepare to perform.
Book thumbnail image Public pensions’ unrealistic rate of return assumptions By Edward Zelinsky Ten years ago, the financial problems of public employee pensions concerned only specialists in the field. Today, the underfunding of public retirement plans is widely understood to be a major problem of the American polity. Underfinanced public pensions threaten the ability of the states and their localities to provide basic public services while paying the retirement benefits promised to state employees.
Book thumbnail image Funding and Favors at the Olympics By David Potter Public funding for sports events was a fact of life for the Greeks and Romans. So was private funding, and both the Greeks and the Romans knew what the benefits and what the pitfalls associated with either might be. Can we be certain that the organizers of the London Olympics are quite so clear about this? The widely advertised donation (amounting to thirty-one million dollars) by pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) of testing facilities for 6,250 blood samples taken from athletes could raise that question.
Book thumbnail image Making prisoners work: from hulks to helping victims By Susan Easton and Christine Piper In July 2012, two prisoners lost their application for judicial review of two Prison Service Instructions which implement the Prisoners’ Earnings Act 1996. This Act demands that a deduction of up to 40% from the wages of prisoners in open prisons is imposed.
Book thumbnail image Putting the Higgs particle in perspective By Jim Baggott On 4 July scientists at CERN in Geneva declared that they had discovered a new particle ‘consistent’ with the long-sought Higgs boson, also known as the ‘God particle’. Although further research is required to characterize the new particle fully, there can be no doubt that an important milestone in our understanding of the material world and of the evolution of the early universe has just been reached.
Music and the Olympics: A Tale of Two Networks By Ron Rodman Television networks use music to connect audience and program through theme music and short video spots called “promos. Themes and promos carry what media musicologist Philip Tagg calls “appellative functions”, which summon viewers to the television screen. With an event as big as the Olympics, television networks need to attract as large an audience as possible to maximize commercial ad revenue.
Book thumbnail image Food Addiction By Mark S. Gold, MD and Kelly D. Brownell, PhD In July of 2007, we hosted the first meeting of its kind, the Yale Conference on Food and Addiction. This Conference brought together 40 experts on nutrition, diabetes, obesity and addiction for two days to discuss and debate the controversies surrounding food and addiction. What emerged were the early signs of a developing field, one with experts from many disciplines, all of whom were interested in whether and how food might affect the brains in ways similar to classic substances of abuse.
Book thumbnail image Democratic Realism By Matthew Flinders Politics is messy. Period. It revolves around squeezing collective decisions out of a multitude of competing interests, demands, and opinions. In this regard democratic politics is, as Gerry Stoker has argued, “almost destined to disappoint.” And yet instead of simply defining Obamacare as a good illustration of what is wrong with democracy in the United States it’s possible to reject ‘the politics of pessimism’ that seems to surround contemporary politics and instead see the splendor and triumph of what Obama has achieved.
Book thumbnail image Test Your Smarts on Dope By Leslie Taylor Why are certain substances used? How are they detected? Do they truly have an effect on the body? Cooper explains how drugs designed to improve physical ability — from anabolic steroids to human growth hormone and the blood booster EPO — work and the challenges of testing for them, putting in to context whether the ‘doping’ methods of choice are worth the risk or the effort. Showing the basic problems of human biochemistry, physiology, and anatomy, he looks at what stops us running faster, throwing longer, or jumping higher. Using these evidence-based arguments he shows what the body can, and cannot, do.
Book thumbnail image Can ignorance ever be an excuse? By Katherine Hawley We have developed quite a taste for chastising the mighty in public. In place of rotten fruit and stocks, we now have Leveson, Chilcot, and the parliamentary select committees which have cross-examined Bob Diamond of Barclays and Nick Buckles of G4S.
Book thumbnail image What Pericles would say about Obamacare By Paul Woodruff The mess in and around Obamacare is a good illustration of what’s wrong with democracy in the United States. Notice I do not say “what’s wrong with democracy.” Democracy in a truer form wouldn’t produce such monstrosities. Here we have a law designed to bring much needed benefits to ordinary citizens — which it will do, given a chance — while showering unnecessary riches on the insurance industry. The interests of a few have cruelly distorted a program for the many.
Book thumbnail image History lessons from Beijing taxi drivers By Valerie Hansen “You have made a grave error in deciding to focus on the history of the Silk Road. The most important, and the most interesting, period in all of Chinese history is the third century, after the overthrow of the Han dynasty, when China was divided into three major kingdoms.” The Beijing taxi driver was dead earnest. Like many other drivers he listened regularly to radio broadcasts about Chinese history.
Book thumbnail image Music and the Olympic Opening Ceremony: Pageantry and Pastiche By Ron Rodman Film director Danny Boyle’s gargantuan presentation at the opening ceremonies of the 30th Olympiad in London had little to do with the actual games, but had everything to do with his vision of Britain. The show was full of pageantry, drawing upon the 17th century English masque, a sort of loosely structured play with dance, music, costumes, songs and speeches, and festive scenery, with allegorical references to royalty, who would sometimes participate in the show. All elements of the masque were present, including the participation of the Queen herself, who stepped into the narrative briefly.
Book thumbnail image James Bond at the London 2012 Opening Ceremony By Jon Burlingame When James Bond and Queen Elizabeth parachuted out of the helicopter (or appeared to) during Friday night’s opening ceremonies of the London Olympics, director Danny Boyle could think of only one piece of music to play: the “James Bond Theme.” And of all the dozens of recordings of 007's signature music that have been made over the years, he chose the unmistakable original: John Barry’s recording of Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” from the very first Bond adventure, Dr. No, which opened in British cinemas 50 years ago, in October 1962.
Two English apr-words, part 1: ‘April’ By Anatoly Liberman The history of the names of the months is an intriguing topic. Most of Europe adopted the Roman names and some of them are trivial: September (seventh), October (eighth), November (ninth), and December (tenth). (Though one would wish the numerals to have reached twelve.) But there is nothing trivial in the division of the year into twelve segments and the world shows great ingenuity assigning names to them.
Book thumbnail image Moby Dick Lives! By George Cotkin Moby-Dick is alive and doing quite well. It serves as inspiration for cultural creation of all sorts. As much an adventure story as a metaphysical drama, the novel raises questions about the nature and existence of God, about the quest for knowledge, about madness and desire, about authority and submission, and much more. Its style, at once bold and impassioned, erratic and windy, somehow still manages to entrance and inspire readers a century and a half after its publication. It is, as critic Greil Marcus remarks, “the sea we swim in.”
Book thumbnail image Seduction by contract: do we understand the documents we sign? By Oren Bar-Gill We are all consumers. As consumers we routinely enter into contracts with providers of goods and services—from credit cards, mortgages, cell phones, cable TV, and internet services to household appliances, theater and sports events, health clubs, magazine subscriptions, and more.
July 2012 (84))
Book thumbnail image Reading Tea Leaves By Andrew J. Polsky With Mitt Romney’s trip abroad to visit Israel, Poland, and Great Britain, the focus of the 2012 presidential campaign shifts briefly to foreign policy. The Romney people hope to project the image of their candidate as a credible head of state and commander-in-chief, as well as to score some political points at home. The visit to Israel, a nation President Obama hasn’t visited during his first term, seems designed to stir doubts about the incumbent among American Jews, long one of the most reliable Democratic voting blocs. This is all pretty standard fare for presidential candidates.
Book thumbnail image The advantages and vanity of Moll Flanders On 31 July 1703, Daniel Defoe was placed in a pillory for the crime of seditious libel. A bold businessman, political satirist, spy, and (most importantly) writer, he had a sympathetic crowd who threw flowers instead of rocks or rotten fruit. We’re celebrating this act with an excerpt from another bold soul, this time from Defoe’s imagination. In a tour-de-force of writing, Moll Flanders tells her own story, a vivid and racy tale of a woman’s experience in the seamy side of life in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England and America. Let’s hear from Moll on her advantages and vanity.
Book thumbnail image Wedding Music By Jessica Barbour The summer wedding season is in full swing and many of us will have attended a ceremony or two by the time it’s over. My little sister was married on July 15, and the months leading up to the event were very busy ones for my family members, who planned and prepared the entire event themselves.
Book thumbnail image An ODNB guide to the people of the London 2012 opening ceremony By Philip Carter Where do you stand on Friday’s opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympic Games? Delighted, inspired, a little bit baffled? There’s a possibility, we realize, that not all of the show’s 1 billion-strong audience will have caught every reference. So here’s the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography guide to some of those who made it possible.
Book thumbnail image The medieval origins of 20th century anti-semitism in Germany By Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth When the Black Death struck in Europe, it killed between 30 and 70 percent of the population. What could account for such a catastrophe? Quickly, communities started to blame Jews for the plague. Pogroms occurred all over Switzerland, Northern France, the Low Countries, and Germany. Typically, the authorities in a location would be alerted to the “danger” by a letter sent from another town (Foa 2000). In typical cases, the city council then ordered the burning of the entire Jewish community.
Book thumbnail image Finding and classifying autism for effective intervention By Martin J. Lubetsky, MD People are finding autism in their families, pediatric offices, day cares, preschools, playgrounds, and classrooms. Individuals with autism are now portrayed in movies, television shows, news reports, and documentaries. The diagnosis of autism is being hotly debated in the media, academic medical centers, universities, autism centers, and advocacy agencies. Autism, or soon-to-be-called Autism Spectrum Disorder, is a developmental neurobiological disorder, characterized by severe and pervasive impairments in reciprocal social interaction skills and communication skills (verbal and nonverbal) and by restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior, interests, and activities.
Book thumbnail image How radioactivity helps scientists uncover the past By Claudio Tuniz Neanderthal was once the only human in Europe. By 40,000 years ago, after surviving through several ice ages, his days (or, at least, his millennia) were numbered. The environment of the Pleistocene epoch was slightly radioactive, the same way it is today, but this was not Neanderthal’s problem. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the arrival of a new human
Book thumbnail image Olympic confusion in North and South Korea flag mix-up By Jasper Becker Do North and South Korea belong to the same country? Are they the same race sharing the same history and language? The answers to these questions are far from clear even to the Koreans themselves. It depends on the day really or the Olympics. In the 2000, 2004, and 2006 Olympics the two countries joined together at the games’ opening ceremonies and marched in matching uniforms behind the Korean Unification Flag.
Book thumbnail image How to Teach a Successful Medical Class By Peggy Mason, MD Recently the second year-medical students (Class of 2014) at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine honored me with the L.D.H. Wood Pre-Clinical Teaching Award. This occasion prompted me to reflect on what made the Medical Neurobiology class that I taught in the fall of 2011 so successful. I believe that the following were key to the class’s success.
Book thumbnail image British Olympic lives By Mark Curthoys The London Games have unsurprisingly stimulated renewed interest in Britain’s Olympic heritage. The National Archives has made available online records of the modern Olympic and Paralympic Games. Chariots of Fire (1981), the film which tells the story of the sprint gold medals won in Paris in 1924 by Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, has been re-released. English Heritage commemorative blue plaques have recently been unveiled in London at the homes of Abrahams and his coach Sam Mussabini.
Book thumbnail image Where penguins live, and other reasons why the Antarctic is not the Arctic By Klaus Dodds Let’s start with some salient facts. Fact one: The Antarctic is not the Arctic, no matter how often toy makers and television programming routinely confuses the geographical distribution of polar bears and penguins. Penguins are to be found in Antarctica.
Book thumbnail image Dispelling the myths of emancipation The story of the Civil War has never been simple: from slavery to states rights, liberation to sharecropping, the loss of life on the battlefield with bullet wounds to in the camps with illness. As new scholarship for the sesquicentennial emerges, many myths are shattering. One such myth is exactly how liberating emancipation was.
Book thumbnail image The Victory Odes of Pindar As the Olympics kicks off tomorrow, Mayor of London Boris Johnson has ensured that London 2012 retains its ties to the ancient world. Trained as a classicist and fond of reciting Latin (particularly in debate), he commissioned an ode by Armand D’Angour in the style of the Ancient Greek poet Pindar, which was recited at the Olympic Gala at Royal Opera House on July 24th. Oxford University classicist Dr Armand D’Angour’s Olympic Ode will be installed at the Olympic Park in East London, but you can discover Pindar’s verses on the blog today.
Book thumbnail image The tiger: a sad tale of declining numbers International Tiger Day, also known as Global Tiger Day, is an annual celebration held annually on 29 July. The initiative of the Saint Petersburg Tiger Summit, the day raises awareness of tiger conservation, promotes opportunities for discussing the tiger’s natural habitats, and encourages support for ongoing conservation efforts. Ahead of International Tiger Day this Sunday, we take a look at the threats tigers face today with n this amended extract from The Encyclopedia of Mammals.
Puzzling heritage: The verb ‘fart’ By Anatoly Liberman It cannot but come as a surprise that against the background of countless important words whose origin has never been discovered some totally insignificant verbs and nouns have been traced successfully and convincingly to the very beginning of Indo-European. Fart (“not in delicate use”) looks like a product of our time, but it has existed since time immemorial. Even the nuances have not been lost: one thing is to break wind loudly (farting); quite a different thing is to do it quietly (the now obscure “fisting”).
Book thumbnail image Genocide and identity conflict By I. William Zartman Genocide doesn’t burst out unannounced. It is preceded and prepared by identity conflict that escalates from social friction to contentious politics, from politics to violence, and eventually to targeted mass killing. The United Nations in 1946 defined genocide as “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups” and redefined it in 1948 as “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” It can be carried out by rebel movements, but it is more frequently the work of the sovereign state.
Rosalind Franklin: the not-so-dark lady of DNA By Jenifer Glynn If Rosalind Franklin had lived, she would have been 92 today. But she died at 37, five years after the discovery of the structure of DNA had been announced by Watson and Crick. As Crick confessed later (but never confessed to her), “the data which really helped us to obtain the structure was mainly obtained by Rosalind Franklin”.
Book thumbnail image No Panacea: Why a draft wouldn’t stop a war Andrew J. Polsky The long conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have prompted a number of politicians and pundits to recommend a return to conscription. On several occasions Charles Rangel, the Democratic representative from New York City, has introduced bills to revive the draft. Stanley McChrystal, former military commander in Afghanistan, has urged that the country not fight another war without a draft. His call was the point of departure for noted journalist Thomas E. Ricks, who proposes a law mandating universal service for all 18-year-olds, with an option for either military or civilian public service.
Book thumbnail image Public Health, Public Hypochondria By Catherine Belling We used to feel reassured by the possibility that medicine might soon be able to find any disease hidden inside our bodies before it could do real harm, and remove it before we even began to feel sick. “Disease awareness” and “early detection” became public health buzzwords. We have been encouraged to get screened for diseases we probably don’t have (but just might). Some began paying for full body CT scans in the hope of catching and fixing all possible anomalies and pathologies the instant they appeared. What could possibly be wrong with such diligent vigilance?
Book thumbnail image The Olympics and Music: then and now By Lucy Allen 27 July 2012: the day that many Britons have been waiting for, and the day when the attention of the world will be focused on London and the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games. As a nation we have been holding our breath in anticipation of this extravaganza: a showcase of British and world sporting talent, and the spirit of competition. But the Games are more than just sport, they are also an opportunity for the host nation to demonstrate its cultural excellence and achievements.
Book thumbnail image AIDS in 2012 By Richard Giannone The International Conference on AIDS is announcing the details about Trudeva, the new drug from Gilead Science, that has shown to be effective in lowering the risk of HIV infection. It’s a single pill that in Brazilian trials reduces the rate of infection. The drug is expensive, about $12,000 a year. With 15,000 new infections a year and 1.2 million already infected with HIV, the drug is well worth the price.
Book thumbnail image HIV and AIDS in Latinos By Kurt C. Organista 30 years into the epidemic I remain struck by is how HIV continues to exploit our country’s entrenched social, cultural, and economic cleavages — almost to the point of appearing to be a homophobic, racist, sexist, and transphobic virus! Latinos now rank second to African Americans in their disproportionately high rates of AIDS cases: 50% & 20%, respectively, despite only composing 13% & 15% of the US population. Consider for example that 75% of AIDS cases in the US are among men who have sex with men (MSM), and the same is true within US Latino population.
Book thumbnail image Was Elizabeth I Richard II? The Kent Archives have a cache of Dering letters — begging letters, affectionate letters, letters full of gossip and news. One of them came with an enclosure that caught my attention: it was the handwritten transcript of a conversation, almost a playlet. It rang bells; I remembered reading it years back, although most of the details were beyond recall. The document recorded an encounter between Queen Elizabeth I and William Lambarde, a legal theorist and pioneering antiquarian
Book thumbnail image #litdozens and the best rhyming literary insults in 140 characters or less English has two great rhyming slanguages, cockney rhyming slang and the dozens, the African American insult game. We’ll leave the parsing of cockney phrases to news reporters covering the Olympics for now and examine the lewd, bawdy, and wonderful world of verbal street duels. Elijah Wald investigated the origins of this cacophony of dirty jokes in The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama. While it may have begun in “yo’ mama” jokes, this language was meant for music, as rap and hip-hop today can attest. The dozens even appears in the seminal writings of Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston.
Book thumbnail image You are essentially what you wear By Bruce Hood I have been known on occasion to offer an audience the opportunity to wear a second-hand cardigan that it has been cleaned for $20. After an initial “what’s the catch?” reluctance, a large proportion of the audience usually raise their hands to volunteer. At this point, I tell them that the cardigan previously belonged to a mass murderer. For US audiences, it’s Jeffrey Dahmer whereas Fred West is our psychopath of choice in the UK. At this point you probably realize that I am lying and the cardigan does not belong to either.
Book thumbnail image What is the health impact of the 2012 London Olympic transport plans? While the UK government worries about visitors streaming through customs at Heathrow, locals around the new Olympic site are worried about what the sudden wave of visitors will mean to them. What can they expect as ticket-holders jam roads, crowd public transport, and over-run East London? Will the commitment to public health hold true for transportation? And what will happen after the closing ceremony?
Book thumbnail image The continuing life of science fiction By David Seed In 1998 Thomas M. Disch boldly declared in The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World that science fiction had become the main kind of fiction which was commenting on contemporary social reality. As a professional writer, we could object that Disch had a vested interest in making this assertion, but virtually every day news items confirm his argument that SF connects with an amazingly broad range of public issues.
Book thumbnail image The water problem By William deBuys The dirty little secret about water in the West is that water conservation is a hoax. When we conserve water by using less, we don’t save it for the health of the watershed or put it aside in any way; we simply make it available for someone else to consume, if not today, then tomorrow in the next strip mall or housing development down the road.
Book thumbnail image Not a Euphemism By Mark Peters I write about euphemisms for Visual Thesaurus every month, and I love collecting and discussing evasions, dodges, lies, and straight-up malarkey, such as the terms sea kitten and strategic dynamism effort. However, I am also a fan of words and phrases in the “not a euphemism” category: especially the phrase not a euphemism itself, which is used in speech and writing to both downplay and heighten the filthiness of dirty-sounding phrases.
Still in the fishbowl (2): ‘Mackerel’ By Anatoly Liberman Not that I can say anything quotable on the subject of the mackerel, but people keep writing about it and the attempts to understand how this fish got its name are so interesting that the story may be worth telling. Only one thing seems certain. Mackerel first appeared in a West-European text, in the French form makerels (plural) about 1140 (which means that it was known much earlier), and no one doubts that the English borrowed their word from Old or Anglo-French. From France it spread to other lands, sometimes through an intermediary. The question is why the French called the mackerel this.
Book thumbnail image The Ties That Bind Ancient and Modern Sports What do we share with the Ancient World? Thankfully, not too much. But we do share a love of sports and strangely enough we still approach sports in the same way. We complain about commercialization, but sponsors and marketing have existed since games began (although we’ve moved on from statues to cereal). And for the greatest games, the Olympics, we seek the best: the peak of human physical achievement and unique moments in time as records shatter. As the world awaits the London 2012 Summer Olympics, we spoke with David Potter, author of The Victor’s Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, about how sports unites us with our past.
Book thumbnail image Are One Direction redefining masculinity? By Mark McCormack With One Direction topping the US music chart, and David Beckham to be the first man featured on Elle’s front cover, images of men have changed dramatically in recent years. The softening of masculinity is a good thing, and shows no sign of abating.
Book thumbnail image After a “Referendum” Election By Andrew J. Polsky The 2012 presidential election has assumed the form of a popular referendum on Barack Obama’s four years in the White House. Put simply, neither the president nor his Republican opponent Mitt Romney has said much about what he would do if elected. Voters instead are being asked to render their verdict on the past. One consequence is that the winner, whether Obama or Romney, will not be able to invoke a mandate for policy initiatives over the next four years.
Book thumbnail image The stigma of mental illness By Norman Sartorius When asked, many people with mental illness will say that the consequences of the stigma of mental illness are worse than the illness itself. Stigmatization affects the position that people have in their community, their employment, their housing, the size and functioning of their social network. An episode of mental illness which is well treated may leave no trace in the mental state or functional capacity of the individual. Yet the stigma related to the disease will last for the rest of a person’s life and even often have repercussions for descendants of the person who experienced a stigmatizing illness.
Book thumbnail image The Loudness War By Steve Savage In my last blog posting I wrote in defense of Auto-Tune. So if it’s not Auto-Tune, then what is wrong with pop? To the extent that technological capabilities have created a problem, it’s the loudness war that created it. A brick wall limiter is the tool that makes digital audio files loud and in the process it can crush the dynamics and render the music lifeless. The effect is actually very powerful.
Book thumbnail image The Myths, Realities, and Futures of Child Soldiers Imagine a child soldier. You probably think of a poor African boy, no older than ten, forced by ruthless commanders to take drugs and fire guns whenever and wherever directed. And this image completely contradicts the reality for the vast majority of child soldiers. Washington and Lee School of Law interviewed Professor Mark Drumbl, author of Reimagining Child Soldiers in International Law and Policy, and discovered the myths and realities of child soldiering. What’s more, this distorted images inform the place of a child in local and international justice systems — to the detriment of victims, communities, and the child soldiers themselves.
Book thumbnail image Replacing ILL with temporary leases of ebooks By Michael Levine-Clark One of the things that I love about being a librarian is that as a profession, we work together to share ideas and resources. Perhaps the most remarkable example of this collaborative spirit is interlibrary loan (ILL). We send each other books, DVDs, CDs, articles — whatever we can reasonably share. And we do this at considerable expense to our own institutions because we see a mutual benefit.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating July: Ice Cream Month Ice cream, one of the most spectacularly successful of all the foods based on dairy products, has a comparatively short history. The first ice creams, in the sense of an iced and flavoured confection made from full milk or cream, are thought to have been made in Italy and then in France in the I7th century, and to have been diffused from the French court to other European countries.
Book thumbnail image Faith, politics, and the undocumented By Ananda Rose The subject of illegal immigration continues to spark passionate debate across the nation, and as the 2012 election heats up, the issue can be expected to take a central role on the political stage. In a highly unusual turn of events, many religious groups — otherwise divided on social issues, such as gay marriage or abortion — have found themselves aligned in their support of immigrant rights, including brokering pathways to legality for the undocumented.
Who really deciphered the Egyptian Hieroglyphs? By Andrew Robinson The polymath Thomas Young (1773-1829) — physicist, physiologist, physician and polyglot, among several other things — became hooked on the scripts and languages of ancient Egypt in 1814, the year he began to decipher the Rosetta Stone. He continued to study the hieroglyphic and demotic scripts with variable intensity for the rest of his life, literally until his dying day.
Book thumbnail image Computers read so you don’t have to By Dennis Baron Machines can grade essays just as well as human readers. According to the New York Times, a competition sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation produced software able to match human essay readers grade for grade, and a study of commercially-available automatic grading programs showed that computers assessed essays as accurately as human readers, but a whole lot faster, and cheaper, to boot. But that’s just the start: computers could lead to a reading-free future.
Book thumbnail image Off with Their Heads! (Or not…) By Paul Friedland Two hundred and twenty-three years ago today, the marquis de Launay looked out the window of the fortress of the Bastille and saw a large crowd of Parisians massing outside. Up until that moment, de Launay had possessed a rather cushy job, overseeing a “fortress” that, truth be told, probably held only six or seven prisoners, mostly lunatics and counterfeiters. The crowd expressed its intention to search the premises for gunpowder (to be used to defend the city from an imminent attack by royal forces which in fact never came), but de Launay refused them entry.
Book thumbnail image Titanic: One Family’s Story By John Welshman At the time of the collision, Hanna Touma was standing in the doorway of the family’s cabin. She was talking to one of the other migrants from her village. It was just a jolt, but it made the door slam shut, cutting her index finger. Two of the men went to find out what had happened while Hanna went to the Infirmary to get her hand bandaged. Everyone she passed wondered what had caused the jolt and why the ship had stopped.
Book thumbnail image Online editions in the classroom By Lisa Rodensky Every year I teach a research seminar for English majors at Wellesley College. One of those seminars — “The Victorian Novel: Text and Context” — makes literary research its topic. For this course, the students choose one Victorian novel and that novel is the focus of the papers they produce on biography, transmission, editions, sources, and reception. I also pick a novel (by an author that no other student has picked) and we work together on research questions related to that novel.
Book thumbnail image What is the probability that you are dreaming right now? By Jan Westerhoff Most people think that even though it is possible that they are dreaming right now, the probability for this is very small, perhaps as small as winning the lottery or being struck by lightning. In fact the probability is quite high. Let’s do the maths.
Book thumbnail image Friday 13 July: Unlucky for some Conservative ministers By Gill Bennett On Friday, 13 July 1962, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan sacked a third of his Cabinet. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Chancellor, the Ministers of Education, Defence, Housing and Local Government, and the Ministers for Scotland and without Portfolio all lost their jobs in an episode that became known as the ‘Night of the Long Knives’. This dramatic phrase, most frequently used to describe Hitler’s bloody purge at the end of June 1934 of the leadership of the Sturmabteilung (his paramilitary Brownshirts), has since become political shorthand for any ruthless political manoeuvres and unexpectedly brutal reshuffles.
Book thumbnail image Beyond Conventional Transitional Justice By Reem Abou-El-Fadl After former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February 2011, the Supreme Council for the Armed Forces assumed executive power in Egypt, and launched the ‘transitional period.’ In the seemingly boundless space created by Mubarak’s absence, millions of citizens freely debated every aspect of the emerging political and social order, in public meetings, at home, in the media, and on the streets. It was a time of limitless imagination.
Book thumbnail image The role of ignorance in science Most of us have a false impression of science as a surefire, deliberate, step-by-step method for finding things out and getting things done. In fact, more often than not, science is like looking for a black cat in a dark room, and there may not be a cat in the room. We sat down with author Stuart Firestein to discuss the relationship between science and ignorance, the importance of asking the right questions, and which scientists are to be admired for throwing everything that was known out the window to come up with some of the unifying theories of life itself.
“I Hope They Don’t Think We’re a Rock ‘n’ Roll Outfit”: The Rolling Stones Debut, 12 July 1962 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, in one of London’s busiest shopping districts, the Rolling Stones stepped onto a stage for the first time, full of adolescent confidence and probably not a little performance anxiety. On this Thursday night, a crowd of friends and the curious came to support this muddle of middle-class English adolescents ambitiously exploring a relatively esoteric niche of American music. But everything about this first gig would portend a band that would be, a band that parents would hate and teens love, a band that would be ruthless in its pursuit of success.
Book thumbnail image What effect does immigration have on wages? By Ian Preston Concern about the economic impact on UK-born workers motivates much opposition to high levels of immigration. Immigration over the past decade and a half has brought new workers into the country who are younger and better educated both than British born workers and earlier immigrants. For these newly arrived workers to be employed requires either that they displace employed workers already resident or that the labour market adjusts somehow so as to absorb them.
Back to the fishbowl (1): ‘Herring’ By Anatoly Liberman The fish known as Clupea harengas has two main names: in the Scandinavian countries, it is called sild or something similar (this name made its way to Finland and Russia), while in the lands where the West Germanic languages are spoken (English belongs to this group) the word is herring, also with several variants, for example, German Hering (the spelling Häring is quite obsolete), Dutch haring, and so forth. The rarely used English word sile “young herring” is a late adaptation of sild. The origin of both sild and herring is doubtful.
Book thumbnail image The sleeping giant wakes By David Armstrong Napoleon’s famous remark about China — “There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes he will move the world” — has achieved a new lease of life in the context of China’s remarkable growth since the death of Mao in 1976. Since then, China has registered a real GDP growth of more than twenty times, it has some $2 trillion in foreign reserves, a million Chinese emigrants now work in Africa on behalf of Chinese economic interests there, China’s military power (land, sea, and air) is growing at around 12% annually, and its non-financial overseas direct investment is currently in excess of $330 billion, to mention just a few of the statistics that usually appear on this topic.
Book thumbnail image Religion versus science… By Matthew Bradley Intellectual debates which command rock-star levels of mass appeal are rare, to say the least – but ‘religion versus science’ can still pull in the crowds like the best of the old stadium bands. It goes without saying that an Oxford debate between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins in February this year was packed out on the day, but it’s now also currently near 30,000 hits on YouTube.
Book thumbnail image The Wartime Presidency By Andrew Polsky In 2012, the American people will choose between two candidates for the Oval Office who share in common something unusual — neither one has ever spent a day in a military uniform. No presidential election since 1944 has featured two major party candidates with no military experience. The absence of a candidate with time in the military has led some to bemoan the separation between civilian life and military service. But the more immediate concern should be whether a lack of military experience has an impact on how well a president performs as a wartime leader.
Book thumbnail image Protestantism in Hollywood Hollywood and Christianity often seem to be at war. There is a long list of movies that have attracted religious condemnation, from Gone with the Wind with its notorious “damn,” to The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ. In his latest book, historian and award-winning commentator William Romanowski explores the complicated and remarkable relationship between Protestants and the American film industry. In it he reveals the surprising story of how mainline church leaders opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both the industry and individual conscience.
Book thumbnail image Snail attacks pencil By Winfried S. Peters On the Pacific coast of Costa Rica a major predator in the community of animals living on sandy beaches is a snail, a species of Olive Shell (Agaronia propatula). This snail moves up and down the beach by ‘surfing’, extending its foot so that it is carried along in the wave swash. It is a voracious hunter and its main prey is a smaller species of Olive Shell. In its wave-washed environment it has to act quickly.
Book thumbnail image Reflecting on 50 years of the Rolling Stones By Alyssa Bender This Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the debut performance of the Rolling Stones at London’s Marquee club on Thursday, 12 July 1962. After putting out their first single two years later, the Rolling Stones would go on to release over two dozen studio albums, over 100 singles, and numerous compilation and live albums. We asked some staff at Oxford for their favorite Rolling Stones songs and why they think they’re so great; read on for their answers.
Book thumbnail image The Arab Spring Needs a Season of Reconciliation By Daniel Philpott What is the meaning of justice in the wake of massive injustices? This question confronts the countries of the Arab Spring, just as it confronted tens of countries emerging from war and dictatorship over the past generation. How the Arab Spring countries address the evils of yesterday affects their prospects for peace and democracy tomorrow. Today only Tunisia is reasonably stable.
Book thumbnail image The Crowd in the Capuchin Church Today in 1775, Matthew Lewis, author of The Monk, was born. Set in the sinister monastery of the Capuchins in Madrid, The Monk is a violent tale of ambition, murder, and incest. The great struggle between maintaining monastic vows and fulfilling personal ambitions leads its main character, the monk Ambrosio, to temptation and the breaking of his vows, then to sexual obsession and rape, and finally to murder in order to conceal his guilt.
Book thumbnail image Ensuring a good death: a public health priority By Joachim Cohen and Luc Deliens The quality of dying, and maintaining quality of life for those who are dying and for those caring for them, is an inherent aspect of public health. In developed and developing societies everyone is affected by death and dying (either directly or indirectly, for instance in case of a dying relative) and it affects several aspects of their health and wellbeing. Adequate health promotion can improve the circumstances in which these people need to cope with death and dying and is thus susceptible to improve several aspects of health. Sadly, though the manner in which people die and the quality of dying has blatantly been neglected as a priority of public health, partly because death and dying, in all its aspects, have rather been regarded as antonymous to health and a failure of health care.
Book thumbnail image Alan Turing, Code-Breaker By Jack Copeland Germany’s Army, Air Force, and Navy transmitted many thousands of coded messages each day during the Second World War. These ranged from top-level signals, such as detailed situation reports prepared by generals at the battle fronts and orders signed by Hitler himself, down to the important minutiae of war, such as weather reports and inventories of the contents of supply ships. Thanks to Turing and his fellow codebreakers, much of this information ended up in allied hands — sometimes within an hour or two of its being transmitted.
Book thumbnail image The Meaning of the Codex Calixtinus, Then and Now By Susan Boynton The temporary disappearance of the Codex Calixtinus was devastating to scholars and the general public alike because of its historical significance and special status as a symbolic object representing an important component of Spain´s national identity. This monumental collection of texts, images, and music relating to the cult of Saint James the greater in "Santiago de Compostela" is the most eloquent testimony (besides the Cathedral of Santiago itself) to the process by which James of Zebedee came to be revered as the Apostle of Spain.
Book thumbnail image Hitting the trail while wearing red, white, and blue By Michael Otto This summer, nonfiction reading lists are replete with voices from the battlefield. On bestseller lists, accounts from World War II are only a few steps away from inside perspectives on today’s Seal Teams. And regardless of the theater of battle or the decade of conflict, one cannot turn the final pages of these books without a deep appreciation of the value of team for those in conflict. The fighting unit, the organizational basis by which men and women at war live their daily lives, inspires tremendous loyalty — appropriate to the life and death contingencies members of the team face together. In battle, being a strong team member can save your life as well as the lives of those around you.
Book thumbnail image A New ‘Modern Prometheus’? By Brett Rogers and Benjamin Stevens Early in Ridley Scott’s science fiction (SF) film Prometheus, archaeologists discover a cave-painting of what seems to be a human figure pointing at a group of stars. Having gathered strikingly similar images from ancient and prehistoric cultures around the globe, the archaeologists take this most recent discovery as confirming their theory about the origin of humankind: we were placed here, created, by extraterrestrials. The archaeologists refer to those extraterrestrials as ‘Engineers’ (“What did they engineer?” asks another character. “They engineered us.”).
Book thumbnail image Languages, Species, and Biological Parallels By Stephen R. Anderson Human languages are not biological organisms, despite the temptation to talk about them as “being born,” “dying,” “competing with one another,” and the like. Nonetheless, the parallels between languages and biological species are rich and wonderful. Sometimes, in fact, they are downright eerie…
Book thumbnail image “The picture was made for the apple” By David Bodenhamer Americans do not question the revolutionary character of the Declaration of Independence. Far fewer view the US Constitution in such terms. It is easy to identify many reasons for this duality. The Declaration speaks in the cadences of Shakespeare and the King James Bible. By comparison, the Constitution is a mechanics manual or lawyers brief. The Declaration offers a concise statement of first principles and goals; it created a nation, and it called for noble sacrifice for the sake of liberty. The Constitution is more procedural.
Book thumbnail image 5 July 1962: Algerian Independence By Martin Evans On 5 July 1962, Algeria achieved independence from France after an eight-year-long war — one of the longest and bloodiest episodes in the whole decolonisation process. An undeclared war in the sense there was no formal beginning of hostilities, the intensity of this violence is partly explained by the fact that Algeria (invaded in 1830) was an integral part of France, but also by the presence of European settlers who in 1954, numbered one million as against the nine million Arabo-Berber population.
Book thumbnail image 50 years of Algerian independence 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence. Martin Evans, author of Algeria: France’s Undeclared War, talks about the complexities of Algerian colonial history and the country’s fight for independence in this new video.
Book thumbnail image Edmund Spenser: ‘Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet?’ Edmund Spenser’s innovative poetic works have a central place in the canon of English literature. Yet he is remembered as a morally flawed, self-interested sycophant; complicit in England’s ruthless colonisation of Ireland; in Karl Marx’s words, ‘Elizabeth’s arse-kissing poet’– a man on the make who aspired to be at court and who was prepared to exploit the Irish to get what he wanted.
Book thumbnail image Frank Close reflects on the new boson find By Frank Close Now that the boson has been found (yes, I know we physicists have to use science-speak to be cautious, but it’s real), I can stop hedging and answer the question that many have been asking me for months: how do six people who had an idea share a Nobel Prize that is limited to three? The answer is: they don’t. To paraphrase George Orwell: All may appear equal, but some are more equal than others.
Book thumbnail image Presidents, protest, and patriotism By Andrew J. Polsky In the midst of a military conflict, domestic antiwar opposition always vexes a president. This reaction is understandable. He sees the criticism as a risk to national security, something that will give aid and comfort to the enemy, demoralize American troops in combat, and weaken the resolve of the public. What he fails to appreciate is how protest serves as a warning that something has gone very wrong with his war.
Real ‘spunk’ By Anatoly Liberman There was no word spunk in Swedish until Pippi coined it (an event recently celebrated in this blog), but in English it has existed since at least the sixteenth century. It is surrounded by a host of equally obscure look-alikes (that is, obscure from the etymological perspective). To deal with them, I should remind our readers that English, like all the other Indo-European languages, is full of words in which initial s– looks like a gratuitous addition. It pretends to be a prefix but carries no meaning; it does not even make words more expressive.
Book thumbnail image Alice in Wonderland in Psychiatry and Medicine By Susan Bélanger and Edward Shorter Written by Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published on 4 July 1865. The book has remained in print ever since, becoming one of the most popular and influential works in all of literature. Alice has been translated into nearly a hundred languages, appeared in countless stage and screen adaptations, and continues to resonate throughout both academia and popular culture.
Book thumbnail image Have you appointed your Privacy Officer yet? By Lokke Moerel The European Commission’s proposal for a new Data Protection Regulation represents a landslide in data protection law since the 1995 Privacy Directive came into force. Regulations, other than Directives, are directly applicable in the member states and will not require national implementation. The Commission announced its intention to finalise the legislative process before the end of 2012, after which the Proposed Regulation will take a further two years to come into effect.
Book thumbnail image Spending power bargaining after Obamacare By Erin Ryan In the wake of the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) decision, it’s easy to get lost in debate over the various arguments about how the commerce and tax powers do or don’t vindicate the individual mandate. But the most immediately significant portion of the ruling — and one with far more significance for most actual governance — is the part of the decision limiting the federal spending power that authorizes Medicaid. It is the first time the Court has ever struck down congressional decision-making on this ground, and it has important implications for the way that many state-federal regulatory partnerships work.
Book thumbnail image The dawn of a new age of government? By Elvin Lim Senator Edward Kennedy called healthcare reform the “the great unfinished business of our time.” Now it is finished. Every branch of the US government has had its say. The Supreme Court decision also marks the end of the Rehnquist era. No longer can we reliably predict that it would always send powers back to the states. Indeed, it said “No” to 26 states which had challenged the Affordable Care Act.
Book thumbnail image Mindfulness is more than stress management By Holly Rogers, M.D. At the university counseling center where I work, the students are limp with relief when the semester finally grinds to an end and summer arrives. For college students and graduate students around the country, summer brings a much-needed break from the pressures of the academic year. However, academic pressures are not the only challenges facing emerging adults, young people between the ages of 19-29. They are typically dealing with a wide range of challenges and stressors that are related to their stage of life; they are in the midst of a developmental process that can take quite a bit of fortitude to resolve.
Book thumbnail image Living Anthems By Mark Clague The Fourth of July, aka “Independence Day” (the annual federal holiday in the United States marking the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence from Britain), is cause for national celebration and certainly the celebration of nationalism. Fireworks, orchestral concerts, parades, 5-K runs, carnivals, family picnics, and political speeches are common holiday happenings. Many are accompanied by music, especially by a haphazard class of folk tunes known as patriotic song that often defy historical logic, but nevertheless have become potent cultural symbols.
Book thumbnail image The Likely Failure of Obamacare After ‘National Federation’ By Edward Zelinsky As virtually all Americans now know, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, sustained the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”). President Obama hailed the Court’s decision as confirming “a fundamental principle that here in America — in the wealthiest nation on Earth — no illness or accident should lead to any family’s financial ruin.” The President and his supporters tell us that PPACA will provide health care coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans. From the President’s vantage, the Court’s decision in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius guarantees the desired expansion of health care coverage.
A new era at the American National Biography In April 2012, the American National Biography gladly received a new general editor: Susan Ware. Mark Carnes welcomed his successor, saying, “A superb choice! Susan Ware is an outstanding biographer, a proven editor, and a wonderful person. She will thrive in a job whose importance does not preclude it from being great fun.” We’re excited to have Susan leading the ANB and she’s offered a sneak peak of her plans for improving and extending this fantastic resource.
Three Myths About the Muslim Brotherhood By Steven A. Cook Since Egypt’s Supreme Presidential Election Commission declared Mohamed Morsi the winner of the presidential election, there has been a lot of commentary about the Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi, an engineer by training, was a long time member of the Brotherhood and was a member of its political department. Morsi has resigned from both the Brotherhood and its party, Freedom and Justice, but that is more symbolic than substantive.
Book thumbnail image How to become a doctor in the UK By Iqbal Kahn If you ask many people, “How long does it take to train as a doctor?”, the response would probably be five years. And many people joke that it takes longer to train as a vet than a medic! However the simple answer is that a doctor is always training in one form or another, and, that as medical professionals, we should always be striving to be the best.
Book thumbnail image Does the Supreme Court care what the public think? As we continue to look back on Thursday’s Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, the question of how the Court’s opinion was influenced by the public has been raised. To provide some background, we excerpted The U.S. Supreme Court: A Very Short Introduction by Linda Greenhouse.
Book thumbnail image The transformation of listening with the Walkman By Amanda Krause Not long ago, I saw an image floating around the Internet. It simply displayed two items — a cassette tape and a pencil — along with the following statement: “our children will never know the link between the two.” Upon a quick search to locate that image the other day, it looks like it was the topic of a reddit post back in 2011. But as viral things tend to do, it lingered, making its way into Facebook posts and into Internet “age tests” aimed at prompting either confusion or nostalgic reflection.
June 2012 (98))
Book thumbnail image Five things you need to know about the Affordable Care Act With the Supreme Court’s decision on the legality of the Affordable Care Act finally made, we pulled together a quick list of things you should know from Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol.
Book thumbnail image Will health care reform work in the end? In light of the Supreme Court decision yesterday upholding the Affordable Care Act, I thought this brief excerpt from Health Care Reform and American Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know by Lawrence R. Jacobs and Theda Skocpol was in order.
Book thumbnail image Barry Landau and the grim decade of archives theft By Travis McDade Ten years ago, responding to $200,000 worth of thefts by curator Shawn Aubitz, United States Archivist John Carlin said he had “appointed a high-level management task force to review internal security measures” at the National Archives. “A preliminary set of recommendations are under review and a number of new measures are already in place.” Four years later, an unpaid summer intern smuggled 160 documents out of the very same Archives branch. His only tool was a yellow legal pad.
Book thumbnail image Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams talk four billion years of climate change Climate change is a major topic of concern today, scientifically, socially, and politically. But the Earth’s climate has continuously altered over its 4.5 billion-year history. Geologists are becoming ever more ingenious at interrogating this baffling, puzzling, infuriating, tantalizing, and seemingly contradictory evidence. The story of the Earth’s climate is now being reconstructed in ever-greater detail — maybe even providing us with clues to the future of contemporary climate change. Below, you can listen to Dr Jan Zalasiewicz and Dr Mark Williams talk about the topics raised in their book The Goldilocks Planet: The four billion year story of Earths Climate.
Book thumbnail image Do we really need magnets? By Stephen Blundell Do you own any magnets? Most people, when asked this question, say no. Then they remember the plastic letters sticking to their refrigerator door, or the holiday souvenir that keeps takeaway menus pinned to a steel surface in their kitchen. Maybe I do own a few, they say.
Book thumbnail image Tyson vs. Holyfield and the infamous ear-biting incident By Donald W. Black, M.D. Today is the 15th anniversary of one of the oddest episodes in the annals of sports: Mike Tyson bit the ear of Evander Holyfield in the third round of a heavyweight rematch, which led to his being disqualified from the match.
Book thumbnail image Jean-Jacques Rousseau at 300 By Russell Goulbourne Thursday 28 June 2012 marks the tercentenary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the most important and influential philosophers of the European Enlightenment. The anniversary is being marked by a whole host of commemorative events, including an international conference at my own institution, the University of Leeds, which begins today. Rousseau arouses this kind of interest because his theories of the social contract, inequality, liberty, democracy and education have an undeniably enduring significance and relevance. He is also remembered as a profoundly self-conscious thinker, author of the autobiographical Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker.
Book thumbnail image 10 facts and conjectures about Edmund Spenser By Andrew Hadfield A particular anxiety/curiosity of any author who undertakes a work of biography is whether they have discovered anything new about their subject. I’m not sure that I have any ‘smoking gun’ for Edmund Spenser (1554?-1599) that conclusively proves something that no one knew before, and there is no one single archival discovery that can be trumpeted as a particular triumph. But I think I have rearranged and rethought Spenser’s life and its relationship to his work in some new ways. Here is a list of my top ten favourite Spenser facts and conjectures, some known, some less well known.
Book thumbnail image Treaty of Versailles signed This Day in World History On 28 June 1919, in the famous Hall of Mirrors of the French palace at Versailles, more than a thousand dignitaries and members of the press gathered to take part in and see the signing of the treaty that spelled out the peace terms after World War I. American President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau were the among the leaders in attendance.
Book thumbnail image To be Commander-in-Chief On April 4, 1864, Abraham Lincoln made a shocking admission about his presidency during the Civil War. “I claim not to have controlled events,” he wrote in a letter, “but confess plainly that events have controlled me.” Lincoln’s words carry an invaluable lesson for wartime presidents. Author Andrew J. Polsky believes when commanders-in-chief do try to control wartime events, more often than not they fail utterly. He examines Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, showing how each gravely overestimated his power as commander-in-chief.
Book thumbnail image Health care reform and federalism’s tug of war within By Erin Ryan This month, the Supreme Court will decide what some believe will be among the most important cases in the history of the institution. In the “Obamacare” cases, the Court considers whether the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) exceeds the boundaries of federal authority under the various provisions of the Constitution that establish the relationship between local and national governance. Its response will determine the fate of Congress’s efforts to grapple with the nation’s health care crisis, and perhaps other legislative responses to wicked regulatory problems like climate governance or education policy.
Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2012 By Anatoly Liberman Many thanks to those who responded to the recent posts on adverbs, spelling, and cool dudes in Australia. I was also grateful for friendly remarks on the Pippi post and the German text of Lindgren Astrid’s book (in German, spunk, the Swedish name of the bug with green wings, as I now know, remained spunk).
Book thumbnail image National HIV Testing Day: Take the Test, Take Control Today is National HIV Testing Day in the US, where nearly 1.2 million people are living with HIV and almost 1 in 5 don’t know they’re infected. Here Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA, editor-in-chief of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, discusses the importance of HIV testing. Dr. Hirsch is also professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Book thumbnail image National HIV Testing Day and the history of HIV testing By Richard Giannone National HIV Testing Day brings the past alive into the present. It was not until 2 March 1985 that the FDA approved the first antibody-screening test for use in donated blood and plasma. The test came three years after Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute in Paris identified the suspect virus in 1983. Later that year Anthony Gallo at the National Cancer Institute in Washington cultivated the virus for further investigation and human testing. HIV testing arose in a culture of fear. The history of the test’s accuracy and efficiency is a story of dread.
Book thumbnail image AIDS and HIV in Africa On HIV Testing Day, Gregory Barz and Judah M. Cohen, the American ethnomusicologists who edited The Culture of AIDS in Africa, reflect on the ways they came to their field research.
Book thumbnail image Does Britain need Armed Forces Day? By Julian Lindley-French Years ago I was sleepless in Seattle having just flown in from Europe. I flicked on early morning TV and was greeted with a very American spectacle; an F-15 flying down the Grand Canyon against the ghostly backdrop of the stars and stripes and the US Army choir singing “Star-Spangled Banner”. It all seemed so, well, American; and I could not for a moment imagine such on-yer-sleeve patriotism ever catching on in Britain.
Democracy as concentration By Matthew Flinders Nietzche’s suggestion that “When the throne sits upon mud, mud sits upon the throne” is a powerful phrase that has much to offer the analysis of many political systems in the world today, but my sense is that it is too crude, too raw, and too blunt to help us understand the operation of modern forms of democratic governance. It is certainly not a phrase that enters my mind when I reflect upon the election and presidency of Barack Obama. American democracy is, just like American society, far from perfect. Yet to see democracy as some form of social distraction or to define elections as meaningless risks descending into nihilism.
Book thumbnail image Democracy as distraction By Louis René Beres In our American republic, democracy is allegedly easy to recognize. We the people seek change and progress via regular presidential elections. Every four years, proclaims our national mantra, electoral politics offer us the best form of human governance. If only we can choose the right person, we will be alright. How could it be otherwise?
Book thumbnail image Berlin Airlift begins This Day in World History On 26 June 1948, after three months of Communist rulers blocking the delivery of supplies to the American, British, and French zones of West Berlin, the western powers struck back with a bold response. American and British planes stepped up their process of flying supplies to West Berlin to an around the clock operation and the Berlin Airlift was on.
Book thumbnail image Why Auto-Tune is not ruining music By Steve Savage Originally made famous as a special effect on Cher’s “Believe,” Auto-Tune — the program that can fix the pitch of a singer — has received a lot of bad press. A recent piece in Time Magazine blamed it as the central reason “why pop is in a pretty serious lull at the moment” and listed it in its “50 Worst Inventions.” There have been demonstrations at the Grammy’s against Auto-Tune as though it was to blame for the onslaught of formulaic pop (2009, Death Cab for Cutie). Jay-Z had a hit with the anti-Auto-Tune song “D.O.A (Death of Auto-Tune),” despite its widespread use by fellow rap artists from T-Pain to Kanye West.
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Bradford Morrow Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selection while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 26 June, Bradford Morrow leads a discussion on My Antonia by Willa Cather.
Book thumbnail image Excluded, suspended, required to withdraw By Maureen Duffy When can social experiences cause as much suffering and hurt as physical pain? The answer is when they involve rejection and social exclusion. There are endless ways, both small and large, in which people can reject and exclude you and participate in making your life miserable.
Book thumbnail image Off the Road By Eric Sandweiss Three weeks come and gone, and what do we have to show for it? Not quite 6000 new miles on the odometer. A nice, even tan across parts of my head that, in earlier years, never knew sunlight. Eleven orphaned socks. A fuel pump that wouldn’t survive the Continental Divide. Me, I’m rethinking life on the road.
Book thumbnail image Most older pedestrians are unable to cross the road in time By Dr Laura Asher The ability to cross the road safely is important for the health of older people. Those who cannot cross the road safely are less able to access to the shops, health services and social contacts they need to stay healthy. The feeling that they will not be able to reach the other side of the road in time can deter older adults from even going out at all.
Book thumbnail image Pablo Picasso gives first exhibition outside Spain This Day in World History On 24 June 1901, two Spanish artists joined in an exhibition of their works at the Paris gallery of Ambroise Vollard. One of these artists was Francisco Iturrino, who had lived off and on in Paris since 1895 and whom Vollard had mentored. The other was a not-yet-20-year-old named Pablo Picasso, who had been befriended by Iturrino and the gallery owner.
Book thumbnail image Sir Robert Dudley, midwife of Oxford University Press By Dr. Martin Maw The life of Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester (1532-88) was every bit as opulent and complex as one of the grand dresses in which Elizabeth I was pictured wearing in her pomp, a Gloriana presiding over the vast hive of the Tudor court. Dudley knew that hive inside out: its drones, its honeyed talk and the potentially lethal stings of its intrigues, and most of all its Queen. Perhaps the most ambiguous figure in English royal history, Dudley was more than a friend but less than a full consort to his virgin monarch, a male confidant on intimate terms with the most powerful woman of her age.
Book thumbnail image Five things you can do about multiple sclerosis By Barbara S. Giesser, MD First, the bad news. Multiple Sclerosis (MS), is a chronic, incurable, often progressive, and unpredictable neurodegenerative condition. The good news is that in the 21st century, with early diagnosis, prompt treatment, and numerous options for treating the disease and its symptoms, most people who are diagnosed nowadays can expect to lead full functional lives with MS mostly being a nuisance, rather than a source of significant permanent disability. Here are five basic strategies for not letting MS get the better of you.
Book thumbnail image Computers as authors and the Turing Test By Kees van Deemter Alan Turing’s work was so important and wide-ranging that it is difficult to think of a more broadly influential scientist in the last century. Our understanding of the power and limitations of computing, for example, owes a tremendous amount to his work on the mathematical concept of a Turing Machine. His practical achievements are no less impressive. Some historians believe that the Second World War would have ended differently without his contributions to code-breaking. Yet another part of his work is the Turing test.
Book thumbnail image Healing American Health Care By Walter M. Bortz, II M.D. One hundred years ago the fledgling American Medical Association (AMA) and the Carnegie Foundation joined in an effort to redress the wretched state of medicine in America. Its scientific value was meager, but more important was its status as a huckster enterprise. The AMA and Carnegie sought out Abraham Flexner, a young John Hopkins graduate educator, to lead the examination. The resulting Flexner Report is widely regarded as the single most important document in the history of current medicine.
Book thumbnail image Chinese Empress Cixi declares war on foreigners On 21st June 1900, the Dowager Empress of China declared war on all foreigners. The conflict had been decades in building. Throughout the 19th century, foreign powers had carved up China, creating their own zones where they effectively ruled and where their nationals enjoyed privileged status.
Book thumbnail image Turing’s Grand Unification By Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens Many of the central moments in science have been unifications: realizations that seemingly disparate phenomena are all aspects of one underlying structure. Newton showed that the same laws of motion and gravity govern apples and planets, creating the first explanatory framework that joins the terrestrial to the celestial. Maxwell showed that a single field can explain electricity, magnetism, and light. Darwin realized that natural selection shapes all forms of life. And Einstein demonstrated that space and time are shadows of a single, four-dimensional spacetime.
Book thumbnail image Downton Abbey and the Curse of King Tut By Roger Luckhurst You must surely have been tempted on occasion to curse Julian Fellowes, if not for the script of Young Victoria, then for the creation of Downton Abbey, that death star of good old-fashioned aristocratic virtue and due deference. For a little while, all public debate seemed to be sucked through the funnel of Downton discourse, coinciding as it did with the election of all those shiny Eton boys to government in 2010. But don’t worry: he may already be cursed.
Thoughts on the Passing of Sir Andrew Huxley, OM, FRS, Nobel Laureate By Alan J. McComas With the death of Sir Andrew Huxley on 30 May 30 2012, the world lost not only an intellectual giant but a man respected, admired, and loved by all who knew him. Born into a most distinguished family, Andrew was at the age of 94, likely to have been the last surviving grandchild of T. H. Huxley, the Victorian scientist and educator, and the friend and champion of Charles Darwin. Andrew’s brothers (by his father’s first marriage) included Julian Huxley, the zoologist and first Director-General of UNESCO, and Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World.
Children, Etymologists, and Heffalumps By Anatoly Liberman The problem with Christopher Robin’s woozles and heffalumps was that no one knew exactly what those creatures looked like. The boy just happened to be “lumping along” when he detected the exotic creature. “I saw one once,” said Piglet. “At least I think I did,” he said. “Only perhaps it wasn’t.” So did I,” said Pooh, wondering what a Heffalump was like. “You don’t often see them,” said Christopher Robin carelessly. Tracking a woozle was no easy task either. “Hallo!” said Piglet, “what are you doing?”
Book thumbnail image Muddling counterinsurgency’s impact By Andrew J. Polsky John A. Nagl, a noted commentator on military affairs, blurs many lines in his effort to claim success for counterinsurgency tactics in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. For example, he correctly observes that in Iraq in 2007 both the counterinsurgency (COIN) methods employed during the American troop surge and the Sunni Awakening helped reverse the tide of violence. Yet he quickly brushes past the impact of the latter when he asserts “[t]he surge changed the war in Iraq dramatically.”
Book thumbnail image Alan Turing’s Cryptographic Legacy By Keith M. Martin I’ve always been intrigued by the appeal of cryptography. In its most intuitive form, cryptography is the study of techniques for making a message unreadable to anyone other than the intended recipient. Why is that so intrinsically interesting to so many people?
Book thumbnail image World Refugee Day: holding up the mirror? By Alison Kesby You may be aware that today, 20 June 2012, is World Refugee Day. At one level, World Refugee Day is a time to pause and take stock of the state of international protection – to examine anew the myriad causes of refugee flows and the strengths and weaknesses of the international protection system. It is a time to reaffirm the importance of the 1951 Refugee Convention but also to ask afresh important questions: who today is in need of protection, and why?
Book thumbnail image Attack ads and American presidential politics By Matthew Flinders Politics appears to have become a ‘dirty’ word not for the few but for the many. Across the developed world a great mass of ‘disaffected democrats’ seem increasingly disinterested in politics and distrustful of politicians. My sense is that the public long for a balanced, informed, and generally honest account of both the successes and failures of various political parties and individuals but what they tend to get from the media, the blogosphere, most commentators, and (most critically) political parties is a great tsunami of negativity or what I call ‘the bad faith model of politics’.
Book thumbnail image Kodachrome America By Eric Sandweiss In 1938, Charles Cushman commenced his Kodachrome journey across America. At the same time, architects and city planners began to extend the tools of historic preservation beyond their original applications. From Santa Fe to Charleston, city councils experimented with new powers, daring to extend protections once reserved for isolated battlefields, Great Men’s homes, or government buildings to include entire neighborhoods, and arguing that the public benefit derived from preserving architectural character outweighed an individual owner’s rights to do with his property what he wished.
Book thumbnail image Turing : the irruption of Materialism into thought By Paul Cockshott This year is being widely celebrated as the Turing centenary. He is being hailed as the inventor of the computer, which perhaps overstates things, and as the founder of computing science, which is more to the point. It can be argued that his role in the actual production of the first generation computers, whilst real, was not vital. In 1946 he designed the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE), a very advanced design of computer for its day, but because of its challenging scale, initially only a cut down version (the Pilot ACE) was built (and can now be seen in the Science Museum).
Book thumbnail image Lady/Madonna: Profits and perils of the same song By Adam Bradley We’ve all had the experience: you’re listening to the radio on your morning commute or walking through the mall one Saturday afternoon when a tune catches your ear. There’s something familiar about it, but upon further listening you know that it’s a new song. What about it sounds the same as the song already in your head?
Book thumbnail image Can a child with autism recover? By Mary Coleman The symptoms of autism occur because of errors, mostly genetic, in final common pathways in the brain. These errors can either gradually become clinically apparent or they can precipitate a regression, often around 18 months of age, where the child loses previously acquired developmental skills.
Book thumbnail image Who opposed the War of 1812? By Troy Bickham As North America begins to mark the bicentennial of the War of 1812, it is worth taking a brief moment to reflect on those who opposed the war altogether. Reasons for opposing the war were as diverse as justifications for it. Ideology, religious belief, opportunism, apathy, and pragmatism all played roles. Unlike Europeans caught up in the Napoleonic Wars ravaging that continent, the vast majority of free males in North America had — whether by right of law or the by the fact that military service was easy to avoid — choice of whether or not to participate.
Book thumbnail image Why are we rejecting parents? By Adam Pertman Politicians love to say it. Child-welfare professionals work mightily to practice it. American laws and practices promote its essential truth: every boy and girl deserves to live in a permanent, loving family.
Book thumbnail image Napoleon defeated at the Battle of Waterloo This Day in World History In a day-long battle near Brussels, Belgium, a coalition of British, Dutch, Belgian, and German forces defeated the French army led by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo led to his second and final fall from power, and ended more than two decades of wars across Europe that had begun with the French Revolution.
Book thumbnail image Maurice Wilkes on Alan Turing By Peter J Bentley It is perhaps inevitable that on the anniversary of Turing’s birth we should wax lyrical about Turing’s great achievements, and the loss to the world following his premature death. Turing was a pioneer of theoretical computing – his ideas are still used to this day in our attempts to understand what we can and cannot compute. His achievements are tremendous in many aspects of mathematics, computing, and the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence. But our digitized world was not created by one man alone. Turing’s work was one of many key pioneers of his era. If only we could listen to the views of a direct contemporary of Turing, we might learn a more complete picture.
Book thumbnail image Exploring the Victorian brain, shorthand, and the Empire In 1945 the British Medical Journal marked the centenary of the birth of Victorian neurologist William Richard Gowers (1845-1915), noting that his name was still a household word among neurologists everywhere, and that ‘historical justice’ required that he should be remembered as one of the founders of modern British medicine.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles at EMI: The Contract, 18 June 1962 By Gordon Thompson Perhaps the most significant unresolved controversy surrounding the recording of the Beatles first single “Love Me Do” rests on the question of whether or not EMI had finalized a contract with them. To wit: on 6 June 1962, were the Beatles auditioning or were they already under contract? Documentation and personal memories conflict such that no single answer can claim to be definitive, even as the evidence suggests a nuanced social interplay between Parlophone’s George Martin and Beatles manager Brian Epstein.
Helping children learn to accept defeat gracefully By Kenneth Barish This Father’s Day, I would like to share some thoughts on an important aspect of children’s emotional development and a source of distress in many father-child relationships — winning and losing at games. Everyone who plays games with children quickly learns how important it is for them to win. For most children (and, to be honest, for many adults) these games matter. The child doesn’t want to win; s/he needs to win.
Book thumbnail image The Last Public Execution in France By Paul Friedland 73 years ago today, Eugène Weidmann became the last person to be executed before a crowd of spectators in France, marking the end of a tradition of public punishment that had existed for a thousand years. Weidmann had been convicted of having murdered, among others, a young American socialite whom he had lured to a deserted villa on the outskirts of Paris. Throughout his trial, pictures of the handsome “Teutonic Vampire” had been splashed across the pages of French tabloids, playing upon the fear of all things German in that tense summer of 1939. When it came time for Weidmann to face the guillotine, in the early morning hours of 17 June, several hundred spectators had gathered, eager to watch him die.
Book thumbnail image Enoch Powell By Bill Schwarz Enoch Powell was born one hundred years ago on 16 June 1912. His was a provincial, Birmingham family, his parents — both schoolteachers — still retaining a hint of Lloyd George radicalism. The young Enoch, nicknamed by his mother ‘The Professor’, was given to ferocious study. Gradually, as he grew into his teens, the family’s historic radicalism came to be increasingly attenuated as loyalty to King and Empire took on life as a moral absolute. This shift from radicalism to loyalism was not peculiar to the Powells; it signified a deeper political shift in the lived experience of Birmingham itself.
Book thumbnail image Vampyre Rising By Robert Morrison “The ghost-stories are begun by all but me,” John William Polidori wrote from Geneva on 17 June 1816 as one of five participants in perhaps the most famous literary competition of all time. Polidori was the handsome, arrogant, and often quick-tempered outsider in a group that also included Percy Shelley, radical poet and thinker, and a married man; his lover, Mary Godwin, the only child of the philosopher William Godwin and the passionate advocate of women’s rights, Mary Wollstonecraft; Lord Byron, the most celebrated (and then notorious) literary figure of the age; and Claire Clairmont, Mary’s step-sister and Byron’s newest mistress.
Book thumbnail image 5 questions about Quantum Theory By Bruce Rosenblum In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science. And then the trouble started. Experimental quantum facts and the quantum theory explaining them are undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is heatedly controversial.
Book thumbnail image An Interview with Fredrick C. Harris Dr. Fredrick C. Harris is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center on African-American Politics and Society (CAAPS) at Columbia University. He is the author of several books, including his latest, The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and the Rise and Decline of Black Politics. In it, he argues that the election of Obama exacted a heavy cost on black politics. In short, Harris argues that Obama became the first African American President by denying that he was the candidate of African Americans, thereby downplaying many of the social justice issues that have traditionally been a part of black political movements. In this interview, Harris discusses his findings with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Book thumbnail image In this ‘information age’, is privacy dead? By Raymond Wacks Are public figures entitled to privacy? Or do they forfeit their right? Is privacy possible online? Does the law adequately protect private lives? Should the media be more strictly controlled? What of your sensitive medical or financial data? Are they safe and secure? Has the Internet changed everything?
Book thumbnail image Verulamium, the Garden City! By Lydia Carr In my last blog post, I looked at my research into the inter-war archaeologist Tessa Verney Wheeler (1898–1936) and the biography it led to. Today I’d like to present something she might have penned herself. Tessa and Rik Wheelers were both preoccupied with making the British past accessible, interesting, and even familiar on a local level. They used children’s activities, lectures, concerts, contests, newspaper articles, and even fiction on occasion to accomplish that.
Book thumbnail image Facebook is no picnic By Susan J. Matt Lately, loneliness has been attributed to our digital technologies, but its real, root cause is our mobile individualism. America’s mobility rates have declined over the last few decades, but we still move more than most other industrialized peoples. This longstanding pattern in American life means that our social networks are often disrupted, leaving us uprooted and alone. While Americans have long struggled to connect with each other, the contemporary generation faces particular challenges.
Book thumbnail image Norway gives women partial suffrage This Day in World History On 14 June 1907, Norway’s Storting (Stortinget) demonstrated the difficulty faced by women’s suffrage advocates around the world. On the one hand, the national legislature approved a bill that would allow some of Norway’s women to vote for lawmakers and even to win seats in the Storting. On the other hand, the male lawmakers limited voting rights to women who had the right to vote in municipal elections.
Book thumbnail image How not to infringe Olympic intellectual property rights By Rachel Montagnon Since 2005, when London won the Host City contract for this year’s Olympics, there has been an intensity of interest in how the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) would go about the protection of the Olympic image and in the detail of the UK Government’s legislative attempts to exclude those who would attempt to take advantage of that image, without paying for the privilege.
Criticizing the OED By Anatoly Liberman The literature on the history of the Oxford English Dictionary is extensive, but I am not sure that there is a book-length study of the reception of this great dictionary. When in 1884 the OED’s first fascicle reached the public, it was met with near universal admiration. I am aware of only two critics who went on record with their opinion that the venture was doomed to failure because it would take forever to complete, because all the words can not and should not be included in a dictionary, and because the slips at Murray’s disposal must contain numerous misspellings and mistakes.
Book thumbnail image How New York Beat Crime By Franklin E. Zimring For the past two decades New Yorkers have been the beneficiaries of the ‘argest and longest sustained drop in street crime ever experienced by a big city in the developed world. In less than a generation, rates of several common crimes that inspire public fear — homicide, robbery and burglary — dropped by more than 80 percent. By 2009 the homicide rate was lower than it had been in I961. The risk of being robbed was less than one sixth of its 1990 level, and the risk of car theft had declined to one sixteenth.
Book thumbnail image Boris Yeltsin elected Russia’s first President This Day in World History On 13 June 1991, millions of Russians went to the polls for the first time in an open election to choose a president. Emerging as winner was 60-year-old Boris Yeltsin, a maverick with a reputation for alcohol abuse who had for some time advocated political and economic reforms.
Book thumbnail image The sex lives of mushrooms The overnight appearance of mushrooms in a meadow or on a suburban lawn is a marvelous sight. It is one of many awe-inspiring, magical processes that have evolved among the fungi, yet this group remains the least studied and most poorly understood kingdom of organisms.In the video below, internationally renowned mushroom expert Nicholas Money talks us through the strange beauty – and strange sex lives – of mushrooms
Book thumbnail image 10 questions for Lynn Neary Each summer, Oxford University Press USA and Bryant Park in New York City partner for their summer reading series Word for Word Book Club. The Bryant Park Reading Room offers free copies of book club selection while supply lasts, compliments of Oxford University Press, and guest speakers lead the group in discussion. On Tuesday 12 June, NPR arts correspondent Lynn Neary leads a discussion on Wuthering Heights.
Is Team Obama cracking under pressure? By Elvin Lim How quickly fortunes change. For the first time this election season, the Republicans look poised not only to match Obama’s fundraising ability, but to beat him at it. There is certainly no way that Obama is going to enjoy the 3 to 1 advantage he had over McCain four years ago. All this is also to say, then, that for the first time this year, Mitt Romney could be the frontrunner in the presidential race.
Book thumbnail image Reforming the Farm Bill By Amanda Kay McVety On 5 June, the US Senate began discussing its draft of the 2012 farm bill. The final bill will govern American farm and food policy for the next five years, and quite a bit of attention is being paid to proposed changes in the funding of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) and environmental sustainability programs. But more than America’s health is at stake because the bill will affect farmers and families around the globe. What happens here matters there. Government subsidies to “farmers” (often actually massive agribusinesses) in the world’s wealthiest nations make life harder for everyone in the world’s poorest.
Book thumbnail image Where is Heidi? On 12 June 1827, a Swiss writer named Johanna Spyri was born. While living in Zurich, she began to write about life in the Swiss countryside. It is there in the Alps that her most famous character Heidi lives. While Heidi has captured the hearts of readers around the world, it is first her abrasive grandfather that she must charm.
Book thumbnail image Europe in Spite of Itself By Philip V. Bohlman By Philip V. Bohlman For Rambo Amadeus, Montenegro’s entry in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest (ESC), Europe’s annual spectacle of musical nationalism was over the moment it began. Randomly placed as the opening number in the first semi-final evening on 22 May, Rambo won only disdain from the millions of Eurovision fans who follow the build-up to Eurovision week. For Eurovision’s loyal minions Rambo did everything wrong: A bit portly, with unkempt hair and a poorly-fitting tuxedo, he rapped coarsely, unapologetically attacking the European financial crisis head-on.
Book thumbnail image Climate change, coral reefs, and social capital By Tim McClanahan and Josh Cinner Human relationships with nature can follow different paths. Sometimes the path leads to the collapse of both ecosystems and society. History shows that the directions down this path are simple; unsustainable practices lead to severe environmental damage. This damage has various harmful feedbacks into society, particularly through food production.
Book thumbnail image Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh executed This Day in World History Early in the morning of 11 June 2001, Timothy McVeigh was executed for planning and carrying out the worst terrorist attack in United States history to date: the bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Eleven children in an-office daycare center were among the 168 people killed in the blast. Five hundred more people were wounded.
Book thumbnail image Titanic Street One of the intriguing aspects of the Titanic story is the way it offers insights into particular locations. A particularly good example is Oxford Street in Southampton. Southampton became established as England’s main passenger port following the transfer, from 1907, of the White Star Line’s transatlantic express service from Liverpool. By 1912, the city was home to steamship companies that included the Royal Mail, Union Castle, and American Lines.
Book thumbnail image Let’s hear it for the music team! By Dominic McHugh When the Tony Awards are announced this evening, no doubt most people will be looking at the big categories like Best Musical and Best Original Score. And these are the awards that are most likely to be exploited in the shows’ publicity in future months — rightly so, since it’s the coherence of the end product that makes or breaks a production in the long run.
Book thumbnail image Bits and Pieces of the Mother Road By Eric Sandweiss Route 66 is more famous and less necessary than ever. Gray-haired couples on motorcycles cruise past its boarded-up motels. Families stop at themed rest areas to eat at picnic stands shaped to resemble the iconic roadside attractions that the decommissioned highway no longer supports. Historic markers draw curious travelers off the interstate and onto meandering two-lane roads that peter out in quiet small-town Main Streets.
Book thumbnail image Marriage equality and the dustbin of history By Gary Alan Fine Marriage season is now upon us and in year 2012 there are stirrings. Perhaps not in heteronormative quarters, where divorce remains a spectator sport, but infecund passion is blooming where moral fences and rocky laws abound. Just recently our president, commander-in-chief of the bully pulpit, revealed that he has evolved his views. He is no longer uncomfortable with what was once termed (with slight derision) gay marriage, now known as “marriage equality.”
Book thumbnail image Mea Culpa By Samuel Brown Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and the after-effects of a highly divisive campaign against gay marriage in California have brought intense media scrutiny to the Mormons and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Some of the attention has been salutary: the academic study of Mormonism is finally taking off, and respected presses are publishing important new books on Mormonism.
Book thumbnail image Graduates of the Cold War by Donald Raleigh Until recently, my office on the fourth floor of Hamilton Hall at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, was the only one along the corridor not occupied by someone affiliated with Carolina’s distinguished Southern Oral History Program (SOHP). I must have walked past promotional posters and announcements about SOHP activities thousands of times over the preceding decade during which I researched and wrote a book on the Russian Civil War in Saratov province, a project for which I spent each summer sifting through voluminous archival collections in the Volga city.
Book thumbnail image ‘A Beautiful Model’: Moral imitation in Islam By F. E. Peters The Imitatio Christi, composed by the German monk Thomas à Kempis (d. 1471), is a classic of Christian spirituality, widely read and translated from Latin into a variety of languages. It is not of course an instructional manual for the imitation of Christ — how does one imitate the Son of God? — nor Jesus of Nazareth, the man born of woman who was revealed to be the Son of God. Kempis’ famous work has little to do with the Jesus of the Gospels and more to do with Aristotle and the theology faculty at the University of Paris (he disapproved) and the Fathers of the Desert in early Christian Egypt (he approved, with reservations; they were a bit excessive in their asceticism).
Book thumbnail image Props to the cats – the lifespan of slang By Julie Coleman My students are mostly white, middle-class, and female, but their slang is heavily influenced by rap culture. They chillax with their bloods and homies, dissing the skanky hos, expressing props to the players and pimping up their whips. Comparison with hippy slang suggests that it’s only a matter of time before they’re not the only ones using these terms.
Book thumbnail image From Dante to Umberto Eco: why read Italian literature? By Peter Hainsworth Most English-speakers who read literature have heard of Dante. Eliot, Pound and a host of other modern poets, critics and translators have made sure of that, though it’s a moot point whether many readers have followed Dante very far out of his dark wood. When it comes to other classic Italian writers, the darkness thickens.
Book thumbnail image Elizabeth Bowen in European modernism and the awakening of Irish consciousness By Stephen Regan Elizabeth Bowen was born in Dublin on 7 June 1899. She grew up in an elegant Georgian house on Herbert Place, close to the Grand Canal, hearing the busy rattle of trams going over the bridges and the lively bustle of barges carrying timber to a nearby sawmill. Her memoir of early childhood, Seven Winters (1942), recalls the sights and sounds of Dublin city life with striking clarity and immediacy. It both registers the unique and specific details of the author’s early years and takes up its place in a marvelously rich tradition of Irish memoir and autobiography.
Crusaders begin the Siege of Jerusalem This Day in World History On 7 June 1099, some 13,000 Christian Crusaders reached the outskirts of Jerusalem. They were poised on realizing the key goal of the First Crusade — capture of the holy city.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles’ first visit to EMI, part 2 By Gordon Thompson For the Beatles first visit to EMI, George Martin (the director of Parlophone Records) asked his associate Ron Richards to serve as the artist-and-repertoire manager, which involved rehearsing the band and running their session. Pop groups represented a normal part of Richards’ portfolio and clearly the Beatles didn’t rank high enough on Martin’s list of responsibilities to warrant his presence. That would eventually change, but on 6 June 1962, the Beatles presented only a blip on his radar.
Book thumbnail image Tales of the Titanic disaster A lot has changed in the past 100 years, but certain stories stay with us, such as those of the people aboard the RMS Titanic. One of the greatest disasters in maritime history, its sinking sent over one thousand people still aboard into the Arctic waters. Leading political figures and servants, teachers and children, wireless operators and engineers, layered the hulking ship. We sat down with author John Welshman to discuss the people on this star-crossed voyage.
Monthly etymology gleanings for June 2012, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Spelling. I am grateful for the generous comments on my post in the heartbreak series “The Oddest English Spellings.” Several years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Masha Bell at a congress in Coventry, and around that time I corresponded with Valerie Yule. A positive comment from Peter Demaere (Canada) reinforced my message. The situation is as odd as English spelling. Spelling reform had famous supporters from the start. Great linguists, including Walter W. Skeat and Otto Jespersen, and outstanding authors and public figures agreed that we should no longer spell the way we do.
Book thumbnail image Indian forces massacre Sikhs in Amritsar This Day in World History After months of standoff between India’s government and Sikh dissidents, the Indian army attacked those dissidents who had taken refuge in the holiest Sikh shrine — the Golden Temple, in Amritsar, India — on June 6, 1984. The fighting left hundreds dead and more captured. The attack also enraged many Sikhs across India, which would have fatal consequences for Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, who had ordered the assault.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles’ first visit to EMI, part 1 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, the Beatles recorded for the first time in a building that would eventually bear the name of their last venture. On Wednesday, 6 June 1962, the most important rock band of the twentieth century auditioned at the EMI Recording Studios in Abbey Road, London.
Book thumbnail image What should we do with failed businesses? By Jason Kilborn What should we do with failed businesses? This question has plagued societies around the world for centuries. With the advent of formal bankruptcy or insolvency procedures in the Middle Ages, the questions have multiplied as societies on every continent except Antarctica have struggled to implement the most effective techniques for managing private economic collapse.
Book thumbnail image The anxiety of AIDS recognition By Richard Giannone Thirty-one years after AIDS was first officially documented, the anguish for gay men who lived through the horrible assault of stealth diseases remains vivid. The news was seismic on impact, glacial in outcome. The public recognition of the cluster of diseases was at once a relief and a terror yet to be endured. I’m seventy-seven and recall that 1981 hinge moment in gay life with an abiding sense of its damaging effects.
Book thumbnail image To sell a son… Uncle Tom’s Cabin On 5 June 1851, the abolitionist journal National Era began running a serial by the wife of a professor at Bowdoin College. A deeply religious and well-educated white woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe was an ardent opponent of slavery. As she wrote to the journal editor, Gamaliel Bailey: “I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak… I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.” The work, eventually titled Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Or Life Among the Lowly, became a national sensation.
Book thumbnail image Composing for a Diamond Jubilee Will Todd has been commissioned to write an anthem for the celebrations marking The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating her 60 years as monarch. Choristers from St Paul’s and a ‘Diamond Choir’ of young singers from around the UK will perform The Call of Wisdom at the Service of Thanksgiving on 5 June at St Paul’s Cathedral. We asked Will to give us his thoughts on the new piece and the occasion it is celebrating.
Book thumbnail image How to write music fit for a queen In 1953, 8,000 people in Westminster Abbey and millions of Britains gathered around televisions and radios, listened as 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth II was formally crowned. William Walton composed a March and a Te Deum for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. Known for its expressive quality and easy assimilation of disparate influences, Walton’s music provided an appropriate glamour and vitality necessary for such an occasion.
Book thumbnail image What news from Rome? Nobody ever planned to create a state that would last more than a millennium and a half, yet Rome was able, in the end, to survive barbarian migrations, economic collapse, and even the conflicts between religions that had grown up within its borders. Today we have an image and myth of the indestructible empire. But this view is shifting as new research reveals small details about the life of Romans — emperor to slave — and how the empire survived. We sat down with Greg Woolf, author of Rome: An Empire’s Story, to discuss the enduring appeal of Ancient Rome and the latest breakthroughs in scholarship.
Book thumbnail image How will America pay for long-term care? As Democrats and Republicans continue to fight over the future of American health care, we must ask: How are we paying for it now? Should open-ended Medicare coverage be replaced with a selection of private insurers? Should Medicare subscribers be paying higher premiums? We sat down with Richard Frank, Professor of Health Economics at Harvard University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), to discuss the current state of long term care coverage.
Book thumbnail image From childhood to the Diamond Jubilee: the life of Queen Elizabeth II To celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, we’ve selected an extract from our Oxford Paperback Reference title, The Kings and Queens of Britain, for your enjoyment. – Nicola, blog editor.
Book thumbnail image Innocence and Experience: Childhood in Kafka By Ritchie Robertson Some of the great modernists have written evocatively about childhood. At first glance, Kafka may not seem to be among them. The minutely detailed recollection of childhood that Proust provides in Swann’s Way, or Thomas Mann’s account of a school day in the life of young Hanno Buddenbrook, lack counterparts in Kafka. His world-famous and compelling fantasies are about inscrutable authorities, such as the Court and the Castle, and their victims are doomed at worst to inexplicable punishment, at best to frustration. Kafka would seem to deal with experience rather than innocence.
Book thumbnail image A nightmare diagnosis By Lorna Speid Your worst nightmare has come to pass. You are given a diagnosis that has left you in a state of shock. The specialist told you there is nothing else that they can do for you. “What was it that he said?” you ask yourself. “Did I hear him correctly?” you mutter to yourself. You are driving home, but you are on automatic pilot.
Book thumbnail image Diamonds By William D. Nesse 2012 marks the Diamond Jubilee of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England. The Imperial State Crown she wore after her coronation and the Soverign’s Sceptre with cross that she held contain two of the most remarkable gems in the world. Both were cut from the Cullinan diamond, reportedly the largest diamond ever found (3106 carats/0.62 kg). Cullinan I or Star of Africa (530.2 carats) is the largest of the nine gems cut from the Cullinan and it is now part of the Soverign’s Sceptre with cross. The Cullinan II, or Lesser Star of Africa (317.4 carats), is mounted on the Imperial State Crown.
Book thumbnail image Michael Palin on anxiety By Daniel Freeman and Jason Freeman Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. But what about those people for whom anxiety is an inevitable part of their working life, such as actors and presenters? How do they cope? We asked Michael Palin, member of the legendary Monty Python team and long established as one of the nation’s most cherished broadcasters, how he copes with nerves as a performer. As it turns out, the strategies he adopts can be useful to anyone struggling with anxiety. Here’s an extract from our interview.
May 2012 (112))
On America’s Constitutions Many have focused on the US Constitution as an enduring document that has guided America from a young, chaotic nation to a world power, but are we missing its flaws? For every “majestic generality” of the constitution, there are the bizarre burdens of electoral college and quirks of governance. We sat down with Sanford Levinson, author of Framed: America’s 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance, to talk about America’s constitutions — state and national — and their role in current politics.
Book thumbnail image When Phileas Fogg met Passepartout A £20,000 wager is yet to come for the exceedingly precise, regular, and upright gentleman Phineas Fogg. In Around the World in Eighty Days — the latest addition to our Oxford Children’s Classics series — a retiring English gentleman must leave his home on Savile Row. But no gentleman is without a trusty valet.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Doc Watson By Tony Russell Doc Watson, who has died aged 89, bore the most illustrious name in traditional American folk music. A superb and original guitarist, and a singer of warmth and handsome simplicity, he set countless musicians, both within and beyond the United States, on the road to careers in folk music. Probably no folk performer of his time has inspired greater admiration and affection.
Book thumbnail image ‘The glory of my crown’: royal quotations past and present By Susan Ratcliffe With the celebration of Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee only a few days away, it is perhaps a good moment to look back at some other long-serving monarchs of the British Isles. Inevitably, those who rule for a long time come to the throne early: Queen Victoria was 18 at her accession, and was described by Thomas Carlyle on her Coronation as ‘Poor little Queen! She is at an age when a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid on her from which an archangel might shrink.’ After her reign of 63 years, H. G. Wells thought differently: ‘Queen Victoria was like a great paper-weight that for half a century sat upon men’s minds, and when she was removed their ideas began to blow about all over the place haphazardly’.
Monthly etymology gleanings for May 2012, part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Shrew again. Soon after I posted an essay on shrew, in which I dissociated that word from a verb meaning “cut,” a correspondent asked me how my etymology (from “devil”) could be reconciled with the obvious connection between Old Engl. scirfemus (related to sceorfan “cut”) and German Schermaus (related to scheren, the same meaning), the latter from Middle High German scheremus. (The relevant forms can be found in the OED.) The connection referred to in the letter cannot be denied, but I think that both the Old English and the Middle High German word owe their existence to folk etymology: the shrew was associated with venom and its name underwent change.
Book thumbnail image The allure of the evening dress By Hollie Graham Once again, it is the captivating magnificence of the evening dress that is lighting up the fashion world. The Victoria & Albert Museum opened a ‘Ball Gowns: British Glamour since 1950’ exhibition on Saturday, 19 May 2012 (open until 6 January 2013). It will display evening wear spanning 60 years, by designers such as McQueen, Packham, Stiebel, and Deacon. Boasting gowns worn by celebrities, the truly glamorous, and of course, royalty.
Book thumbnail image The US Supreme Court on plea bargaining By Richard Lippke Are individuals entitled to effective assistance of legal counsel as they decide whether or not to enter guilty pleas instead of going to trial? In two recent decisions by the US Supreme Court, a narrow majority of the Court said “yes”.
Book thumbnail image Scholarly citation and the value of standard editions By Gordon Campbell A personal library represents the intellectual history of its owner. The earliest volumes tend to be those bought as an undergraduate; in their margins there are scribbled notes that are now embarrassing. Another stratum of the library represents books bought for teaching and research; in my case, many of these came from second-hand bookshops.
Book thumbnail image Picturing Putin’s Russia By Mark D. Steinberg Winston Churchill famously called Russia “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”—a phrase that makes me cringe when it shows up in contemporary journalism or student papers. Part of the problem is that we forget Churchill’s point: there IS a key, “Russian national interest.” We are left with a dismissive cliché about Russia as strange and incomprehensible—and thus probably dangerous. Yet this may be less harmful than clichés about how Russians love a strong ruler; Russians have no historical experience with democracy so cannot understand it; Russia will always be alien to “western” values. Frankly, if we want to understand Russia, we may be better off finding Russia mysterious—knowing that there are no easy answers or certainties.
Book thumbnail image Hillary and Tenzing climb Mt. Everest This Day in World History On May 29, 1953, at about 11:30 a.m., New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tibetan Tenzing Norgay stood on top of the world. They had spent more than two hours straining every muscle against ice, snow, rock, and low oxygen to reach this point. But they were atop Mount Everest, more than 29,000 feet above sea level, the highest peak in the world.
Book thumbnail image Is Lady Gaga an artist? By Steve Savage When is it art? This question may be debated endlessly. In the world of music, we know that music can be art — but are musicians artists?
Book thumbnail image The limits of empathy in Toni Morrison’s ‘Home’ By Mary Dudziak Toni Morrison’s new novel Home, about a Korean War veteran’s struggles after the war might seem perfectly suited to an impending cultural turn. The close of the U.S. combat mission in Iraq and an anticipated draw-down of American troops in Afghanistan, might signal the end of a war era and a renewed focus on what we now call the homeland. Perhaps we can turn to Morrison’s beautiful and brief narrative to understand the journeys of our generation’s soldiers as they, like Frank Money (the protagonist), try to find their way home.
Book thumbnail image The detrimental environmental impact of the media By Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller We’ve seen Earth Day pictures of our planet that highlight its symmetry, its chaos, and its beauty. We’ve learnt about the pollution and environmental decay that threaten us all. Media coverage of the environment over the last five decades has shown how natural beauty and human and animal health have been affected by mining and manufacturing, and the increasing danger of climate change. In this context, the media have generally been regarded as sources of information.
Book thumbnail image How do humans, ants, and other animals form societies? Forming groups is a basic human drive. Modern humans are all simultaneously members of many groups — there is the book club, your poker buddies, all those fellow sport team enthusiasts. Most basic of all these groups is the connection we form with our society. This is one group people have always been willing to die for. During most of human history, foreigners have been shunned or killed. Allowing an outsider to join a society is typically an arduous process, when it is permitted at all.
Book thumbnail image Kenyatta elected Kenya’s First Prime Minister This Day in World History On May 27, 1963, the people of Kenya voted for the first time in history for their own government. Winning a better than two-to-one majority of parliamentary seats was KANU, the Kenya African Nation Union. As a result, 73-year-old Jomo Kenyatta, leader of Kenya’s independence movement and head of KANU, was assured of becoming the nation’s first prime minister.
Book thumbnail image Learning not to curse in Arizona By Dennis Baron The Arizona State Senate is considering a proposal to fire teachers who swear. SB 1467 bans their use of any words that would violate FCC regulations against obscenity, indecency, and profanity on broadcast radio and television. A teacher would be suspended without pay after the first offence, fired after the third. Employers would also have the option of dismissing an instructor at the first curse.
Book thumbnail image Welcome to the house of Count Dracula Bram Stoker’s 1897 Gothic shocker introduced Count Dracula to the world, an ancient creature bent on bringing his contagion to London, the very heart of the British Empire. Only a handful of men and women stand between Dracula and his long-cherished goal, but they are vulnerable and weak against the cunning and supernatural powers of the Count and his legions. As the horrifying story unfolds in the diaries and letters of young Jonathan Harker, Lucy, Mina, and Dr Seward, Dracula will be victorious unless his nemesis Professor Van Helsing can persuade them that monsters still lurk in the era of electric light. Here, in one of Jonathan Harker’s diary entries, he meets Dracula for the first time…
Book thumbnail image Geek Chic By Gary Alan Fine Stigma seems a heavy burden to bear, but groups, when they band together in common cause, can reveal astonishing skills of communal jujitsu. Words can lose their moorings and be transformed through the alchemy of collective action: insults become identity markers, and outsiders can find a welcoming home.
Book thumbnail image Why read Faulkner? By Philip Weinstein Faulkner’s best novels show what it is like to live through baffling experience — experience that you can’t sort out while it is happening to you (crashing into you). They do more than “show” this; they enact it on the page. Attending to him responsively creates a kindred experience of bafflement, then of bafflement brought to order. But not brought to order before it registers on you, longer than you like.
Book thumbnail image A house of judgment for Oscar Wilde On 25 May 1895, at the Old Bailey Courthouse, Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. A warrant for his arrest on this charge had been issued immediately after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensbury, which had also left him bankrupt. While imprisoned at Pentonville and then Wandsworth Prison, his health declined sharply, and following his release, he fled to France. A poet, playwright, novelist, short story writer, and wit, Wilde lost the joy of writing in his final years. Whether or not it be “the love that dare not speak its name,” Oscar Wilde’s “The House of Judgement” shows he was no stranger to examination and judgement before his trial.
Book thumbnail image 1940s children’s books: peeps into the past Children’s books are like time machines. Coming across the same edition of a much-loved book from childhood can instantly transport an individual back to the moment of reading. That visceral reaction, however, is rather different from the time-travel experienced by scholars who are working with children’s books from earlier periods.
Book thumbnail image In Memoriam: Paul Fussell Scholar Paul Fussell passed away on Wednesday at the age of 88. He was Donald T. Regan Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several works, including three with Oxford University Press: The Great War and Modern Memory, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, and Abroad: British Literary Traveling between the Wars. Named one of the twentieth century’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books by the Modern Library, The Great War and Modern Memory was the winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies Developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers students and researchers authoritative guides to the key literature in a wide variety of fields. Watch as Editor in Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, Krin Gabbard, a professor at Stony Brook University, discusses his role in the project and how Oxford Bibliographies is revolutionizing the way students do research online.
Book thumbnail image Playing with American Literature By Kevin J. Hayes Does anyone remember the card game Authors? I do. When we were children, my brother and sister and I had great fun playing the game. Authors was quite basic: its rules were the same as the rules for Go Fish. In Go Fish, players ask, “Do you have any aces?” or “Do you have any queens?” In Authors, alternatively, players ask, “Do you have any Shakespeares?” or “Do you have any Tennysons?”
Book thumbnail image Could a calorie tax or cuts in farm subsidies reduce obesity? By Julian M. Alston and Abigail M. Okrent Every day — whether in the supermarket, in restaurants, in the workplace, or preparing meals at home — each US adult makes hundreds of decisions about what foods to buy, what to eat, and when. From those myriad decisions has come an unwelcome, progressive rise in obesity and the social costs of obesity-related illness. In less than thirty years, the prevalence of obese Americans has more than doubled, and now more than one-third of adult Americans are obese.
Book thumbnail image The Brooklyn Bridge opens This Day in World History On May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge opened to great fanfare. With schoolchildren and workers enjoying a rare holiday, thousands flocked from Brooklyn and Manhattan to attend the dedication, led by President Chester Arthur and New York Governor Grover Cleveland. The crowd cheered as Emily Roebling — wife of the chief engineer and an integral figure in its construction — became the first person to cross. That night, fireworks illuminated the sky.
Book thumbnail image Londoners calling: biography from the ‘bottom up’ How do you write a person’s life story? For contributors to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography this is a familiar question and its answer depends, in large part, on who’s under discussion.
Book thumbnail image Obama v. Romney on Afganistan strategy By Andrew J. Polsky Several weeks ago, when asked about his policy on Afghanistan, Republican presidential-nominee-in-waiting Mitt Romney said he would wait until he had spoken to his military commanders before deciding on a timetable to withdraw American troops. A recent report by David E. Sanger in the New York Times makes clear the striking difference in approach between Romney and President Barack Obama. Obama decided last year that he would conclude his Afghan troop surge in September 2012 and hold fast to his withdrawal timetable without conferring with General David H. Petraeus.
Bigger in size but equally ignorant: ‘shark’ By Anatoly Liberman The fishy series in this blog began with shrimp, reached the heights of prawn, and now, bypassing countless intermediate steps, will offer a discussion of shark. I am sorry to admit that despite the monster’s size and voracity I can say deplorably little about the chosen subject, but, since I always deal with obscure vocabulary, I suffer from self-inflicted wounds and have no reason to complain. Before I come to the point, an apology is in order. While compiling my voluminous bibliography of English etymology, I didn’t encounter references to Tom Jones’s publication on shark.
Book thumbnail image Fears and celebrations By Louis René Beres Once each year, on my birthday, I look closely in the mirror, much more closely than on ordinary days. Each year, I grow more apprehensive, of the unavoidable ebbing away of life, of the lingering loneliness that has come ever so incrementally with the death of others, of the gnawing obligation as a husband, father and grandfather to stay alive myself, and of the utterly certain knowledge that there is nothing I can ever do to meet this “responsibility.”
Book thumbnail image Afghanistan’s other regional casualty By Alexander Cooley As NATO leaders gather in Chicago to garner international support for an Afghanistan drawdown and stabilization strategy, they should also consider the overlooked toll that the campaign has taken on the adjacent Central Asian states. Western security assistance has made the Central Asian states more authoritarian and more corrupt, while these trends are only likely to deteriorate as the drawdown of US and ISAF forces accelerates.
Book thumbnail image Decoding the beauty of pearls By Nori Satoh How beautiful pearls are. Pearls emit a complex pattern of brightness, each with completely different color combination. They have attracted human beings, especially women, for long time, but simultaneously they have attracted biologists with a long-standing question of how pearl oysters generate such beautiful biomineralized materials.
Book thumbnail image The soul of a child, Hergé Georges Prosper Remi, better known to the world as Hergé, was born on 22 May 1907. A Belgian comic book artist with almost no formal training, he is best remembered for the enduring character of Tintin. The boy adventurer with his trusted dog, Snowy, at his side has captured the hearts and minds of children and adults across the world. Nevertheless, from Steven Spielberg’s 3D film to the controversy over Tintin au Congo, Tintin’s creator remains elusive. We offer a glimpse into the life and personality of the “father of Tintin” with an excerpt from Hergé by Pierre Assouline.
Book thumbnail image Because I made a blunder, my dear Watson… The Silver Blaze On 22 May 1859, a Scottish doctor and writer admired the world round was born — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. His university teacher, Dr. Joseph Bell, was a partial model for his most famous character — Sherlock Holmes. Let’s listen in as Holmes explains The Silver Blaze to Watson.
Book thumbnail image Ortelius publishes first world atlas This Day in World History On May 22, 1570, bookmaking and map-making history were made. Abraham Ortelius, a Flemish book collector and engraver published the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (Epitome of the Theater of the World) — the world’s first atlas.
Book thumbnail image On hearing compositions for the first time Bob Chilcott is one of the most active choral composers and conductors in Britain today. His 2012 conducting schedule will take him to Poland, Denmark, Spain, Germany, China, Japan, USA, and Canada, as well as to the Royal Albert Hall for the premiere of “The Angry Planet” at the BBC Proms. He spoke to us about hearing his compositions for the very first time and the different qualities that international choirs bring to his music.
Book thumbnail image Time-travelling to distant climates By Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams Imagine that time machine has finally been invented. All of the ancient Earth can now be visited. One could experience the world as it was: see long-dissipated cloud systems with one’s own eyes, feel ancient rain and primeval winds, and sense the warmth of prehistoric sunshine on one’s back. A safari into the ancient past with just 5 stops were allowed. Where would one choose to go?
Book thumbnail image Emotion, interest, and motivation in children By Kenneth Barish When talking about children’s emotions, it is difficult to avoid saying things that are not already commonly known, or even common sense. Recent advances in the psychology and neuroscience of emotions, however, now offer us a new understanding of the nature of emotion. In childhood and throughout life, our emotions guide our thoughts and our imagination, our behavior and our moral judgments.
Book thumbnail image Ruskin: the autobiographer without an audience? By Francis O’Gorman When John Ruskin (1819-1900) began Praeterita (1885-9), his unfinished autobiography, he had no obvious models of what an autobiography should look like, nor a clear view of who his audience was.
Book thumbnail image Charles Lindbergh, a new hero By Thomas Kessner He came as it were from nowhere, setting out on May 20, 1927 on a journey. The non-stop New York to Paris flight was a dream of many great aviators, and they had failed — many of them tragically — to achieve it. Six, all with sterling war records, had died or disappeared trying. The prevailing theory of the experts was to put together a crew of three or four, build a big plane to withstand the stresses and turbulence of the transatlantic flight, strap on as many engines as you can, and fill the fuel tanks to the brim.
Book thumbnail image Da Gama reaches Calicut, India This Day in World History On May 20, 1498, sailing for the Portuguese crown, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut, India. Having successfully sailed around the southern tip of Africa, da Gama had pioneered a sea route from Europe to Asia that bypassed the Muslim nations that controlled the overland spice trade.
Book thumbnail image The Dark Lady in ink and paper On 20 May 1609, Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published in London by Thomas Thorpe (work now found in the Folger Library). The Bard was nearing the end of his play-writing career and soon to retire. A lifetime of poetry was gathered together and printed — possibly without the permission of the author. To celebrate, we’ve excerpted Sonnet 127 and additional commentary from our Oxford World Classics edition edited by Colin Burrow — The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Sonnets and Poems. Enjoy the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s poetry.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, Mr. President By Martin Kemp It’s John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday at Madison Square Garden on 19 May 1962. Only it’s not. His real birthday is ten days in the future. That compelling mass schmaltz that Americans do with an underlying, knowing absurdity saturates the event. After she has characteristically missed her cue on at least two occasions, the host Peter Lawford finally (and with inadvertent irony) introduces the “late Marilyn Monroe”.
Book thumbnail image Laughing in the art museum By Cynthia Freeland Art museums are not churches, but sometimes it feels as if you should behave with equal decorum inside. They seem meant to inspire reverence with their cool interiors and marble staircases. The guards eye visitors like the suspicious librarians of my childhood who always hissed “Whisper!” to noisy school groups. I once was glared at by another visitor when I burst out laughing in the Tate Modern Museum at Andy Warhol’s silver Elvis with guns. The combination of the Southern crooner posing as a macho gun-slinging cowboy with Warhol’s glitzy treatment was just too funny. I wanted to tell that woman she was missing the joke.
Book thumbnail image A man’s true worth A comparison of the Peale and Simpson portraits reveals curious similarities. Yarrow is wearing the same style knit cap in both, although the stripes are in different colors. The collar and buttons of his jacket are the same. He has a white shirt and red waistcoat in both paintings, but his jacket is unbuttoned in the Simpson to show more of the waistcoat. Even the pose, forehead wrinkles, and whiskers are the same in the two paintings. Yarrow looks significantly older in the Simpson painting, although he was in fact only three years older. Whether the difference stems from Peale’s desire to produce a flattering image or from some illness that caused Yarrow’s appearance to age rapidly is not known.
Book thumbnail image The evolution of orchids By Alec Pridgeon “Blasphemy”! That was the only remark that anyone heard from the woman after she stormed out of the orchid society meeting in Florida. Taken aback for a moment, the speaker continued his talk on orchid evolution to an otherwise appreciative audience.
Book thumbnail image How are cures invented? By Jonathan Slack When I arrived in the USA as a professor I was surprised to find how specialized American scientists are. Most US biomedical labs just seem to work on one molecular pathway or even one molecule.
Book thumbnail image Ghost hunting: Research memories of Tessa Verney Wheeler By Lydia Carr The path of the biographer is littered with terrors. Few, to be fair, match the risks listed on the fieldwork forms put out by various Institutes of Archaeology, those exhaustive documents intended to pinpoint every potential danger (and indemnify the sponsoring department against paying for more than a reasonable number of snakebite treatments). But as I’ve often said, biographic research, at least regarding twentieth-century subjects, resembles nothing as much as the first five minutes of a Doctor Who episode, or the last five pages of a M.R. James story.
A case of mistaken identity Since Peale took the painting with him back to Philadelphia, Yarrow obviously did not pay for it. There is no record of whether Peale displayed it in the museum or showed it to the American Philosophical Society. He died in 1829, but the museum continued to operate. When it finally closed in 1852, Peale’s grandson Edmund came across the painting and mistakenly labeled it “Billy Lee,” thinking his grandfather had painted the body servant of George Washington. That the portrait might be of Lee was not an unreasonable assumption. Peale knew him during the terrible winter at Valley Forge.
Book thumbnail image Montréal is founded This Day in World History Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, jumped from the wooden boat onto land. Falling to his knees, he blessed the ground. His followers also came ashore and built an altar, where a Jesuit father offered a blessing. “You are a grain of mustard-seed,” he said, “that shall rise and grow till its branches overshadow the earth.” With these words, French settlers founded Ville-Marie de Montréal — Montréal, Canada — on May 17, 1642.
Applications in medical education By Charles White We at OUP are no strangers to the changes in publishing and all the different forms a ‘book’ can take. One of our recent medical titles has been adapted as an iPad application (or ‘app’) — Cardiac Imaging Cases: Cases in Radiology for iPad — so we asked the co-author what it’s like to practice and learn medicine in this new form.
Book thumbnail image Well-being: David Cameron’s happiness index By Siobhan Farmer and Barbara Hanratty In case you hadn’t noticed, wellbeing is what you need. From companies promoting food supplements to lifestyle magazines, think-tanks and Government departments, wellbeing is on everyone’s agenda. Happiness, quality of life, life satisfaction – it doesn’t seem to matter that we don’t know exactly what it is – we definitely want some.
Book thumbnail image On independence and the continuation of monarchy By Derek Hirst This week, Christine Grahame, convenor of the Scottish National Party’s Justice committee, has urged the linkage of the forthcoming Scottish referendum on independence to a referendum on the continuation of monarchy. Her proposal curiously mirrors discussions in the ruling circles of a once-revolutionary England.
Book thumbnail image It’s Ecology, not Environmental Science By David Gibson “You’re an ecologist, so tell me, should I replace all the incandescent bulbs in my house with fluorescent bulbs? And, what about these new light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs?” Well, I have a reasonably well-informed opinion on this issue, but it’s not really my expertise. “Perhaps then you can tell me more about the problem of invasive species?” Now you’re talking; this is something that ecologists can help with.
After ‘shrimp’ comes ‘prawn’ By Anatoly Liberman Several people pointed out to me that I cannot distinguish a shrimp from a prawn, and I am afraid they are right. The picture copied for the shrimp post had the title “Shrimp cocktail,” but the shrimp there are too big and are really prawns. In any case, I decided to atone for my mistake and write a post on the etymology of prawn. This plan was hard to realize, because the origin of prawn is really, that is, hopelessly unknown: the word exists, but no one can say where it has come from. It is strange that more or less the same holds for shrimp and shark, though both are less opaque. There must have been some system behind calling those sea creatures. The fishermen who coined such names had a reason to call a shrimp a shrimp and a prawn a prawn.
Book thumbnail image Freedom delayed, bought, lost, and regained Margaret also told Peale that Yarrow became the property of her husband Brooke upon the “decase” of Brooke’s father. She and Brooke had planned to build a larger house in Georgetown and move there when it was done. Brooke asked Yarrow to make the bricks for the house and out houses, promising he would set Yarrow free when the job was done.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, Christian Lacroix By Hollie Graham On the May 16th, it will be French designer Christian Lacroix’s 61st birthday. Lacroix has been a leading fashion designer ever since he found fame with his collection for Patou in 1986. Heavily influenced by his interests in costume design and his childhood in the south of France, his signature style is bright, embellished and fantastical. It was this 1986 collection in which his star quality was realised, as Lacroix was awarded the Golden Thimble award for his outstanding and inspirational designs.
Book thumbnail image How did Rome last so long? By Greg Woolf Edward Gibbon, the English historian dedicated to the study of the Roman Empire, chose to entitle his seminal masterpiece The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire because for him, as for others at the end of the eighteenth century, it was decline and fall that was the real puzzle. Yet our question today is not ‘why did it fall?’ but ‘why did it last so long?’
Book thumbnail image Obama: Campaigner-in-Chief By Elvin Lim Barack Obama proved this week that his understanding of public opinion and how timing can be used to massage the media’s storyline is head-and-shoulders above any campaigner we have known in modern history. Mitt Romney cannot begin to overestimate the gap between what Obama enacts by intuition and what he himself can barely perform by imitation.
Book thumbnail image A former slave in Georgetown Free African Americans were not uncommon in Georgetown. The 1800 census counted 277 free blacks, 1,449 slaves, and 3,394 white people. Tax assessments showed other blacks owned property in Georgetown. According to the 1815 assessment not only did “Negro Yarrow” own a house but so did “Negro Hercules, Semus husband.” His house was valued at $500 versus $200 for Yarrow’s. Brooke Beall’s ledger shows that he sold a “plough” and ozanburg cloth to “Negro Tom” and that “Negro Wilks” also had an account with him.
Book thumbnail image Twelve Crucial Moments in Hip-Hop DJ History By Mark Katz I covered nearly forty years in the history of an art form — from its birth in the early 1970s to the latest technological developments — in my new book, Groove Music: The Art and Culture of the Hip-Hop DJ. I wanted to highlight some of the most important events in that rich history and for your to enjoy the accompanying sights and sounds.
In the footsteps of Lewis & Clark, US population growth By Sydney Beveridge By Sydney Beveridge On this day in 1804, two Virginian explorers set out on a journey west in what would become the legendary Lewis and Clark Expedition. And in their footsteps, we can follow America’s expansion west.
Book thumbnail image Anti-psychiatry in A Clockwork Orange By Edward Shorter and Susan Bélanger In the fifty years since the publication of A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess’s dystopian fable remains by far the best-known of his more than 60 books. It also remains controversial and widely misunderstood: assailed for inciting adolescent violence (especially following Stanley Kubrick’s explicit 1971 film adaptation) or viewed as an anti-psychiatry treatise for presenting behavioural conditioning as an instrument of social control. But this aspect of the book needs to be seen within a broader context.
Book thumbnail image A painter and his subject’s humble origins Over the next week, we will be pairing excerpts from Jim Johnston’s From Slave Ship to Harvard with the historical comic strip “Flashbacks” by Patrick Reynolds. Together they tell the story of Yarrow Mamout.
Book thumbnail image Israel declares statehood This Day in World History Late in the afternoon of May 14, 1948, a group of Jewish settlers fulfilled a long-cherished dream and declared, as of midnight that night, the existence of the state of Israel. The announcement created the first Jewish state in nearly two millennia — and outraged the Palestinian people and their Arab allies.
Book thumbnail image Smallpox: the facts On this day in 1496, British doctor Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination to James Phipps, an eight year old boy. To mark the anniversary, we speak with Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA. Dr. Hirsch is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Book thumbnail image Why is Obama the first sitting president to declare support for gay marriage? By Mark McCormack The progress of gay rights is again subject to political warfare in the United States. Despite his recent proclamation in support of gay marriage, many have been disappointed by the pace in which President Obama has addressed issues of sexuality equality: particularly regarding the length of time it took to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and the lack of progress on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. This sentiment is flamed by the passage of homophobic legislation, with 38 states prohibiting marriage equality—the most recent being North Carolina just this week.
Book thumbnail image Clair de supermoon By Jessica Barbour May 12th, which falls exactly one week after last Saturday’s Supermoon, marks the 167th birthday of Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), a composer whose best-known song was inspired by the moon. Fauré is known today as the paramount composer of the French mélodie, and his setting of the poem Clair de lune (“Moonlight”) by Paul Verlaine (1844–1896) demonstrates why his works are beloved by pianists and singers alike.
Book thumbnail image Five pivotal moments from incumbent campaigns By Sam Popkin While a challenger’s presidential campaign can quickly adjust and adapt to shifting winds like a speedboat, an incumbent’s campaign behaves more like a battleship, maneuvering slowly and making very large waves. Instead of a core inner circle calling the shots from a “war room,” a president’s re-election team must coordinate with White House staffers and the President’s cabinet — all of whom have agendas difficult to change, control or coordinate.
Book thumbnail image Constantine dedicates Constantinople This Day in World History Six years before, the emperor had ordered the building of a vast new city. On May 11, 330, construction was sufficiently complete for that city to be dedicated. The Emperor Constantine took part in a solemn mass at St. Eirene, his newly built church, that dedicated the new city to the Virgin Mary. He issued an edict that declared the city New Rome, or the Second Rome, capital of the empire. Within a hundred years, though, the city came to be known by another name — Constantinople.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, Irving Berlin To commemorate the birthday of the great American songwriter, Irving Berlin, we spoke with Jeffrey Magee, author of Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater.
Book thumbnail image How to make a transmedia documentary: three takeaways By Patricia Aufderheide What happens to documentary when media goes interactive? It’s not always a welcome question. Documentarians aren’t necessarily thrilled at the idea of someone poking at their precious work on a smartphone, rather than settling into a seat at a theater or on a couch. But they’re going to have to get used to it. Media users want to do more than just watch these days.
Book thumbnail image The Money Games By David Potter This past weekend Olympic superstar swimmer Janet Evans showed up in New York in the company of Olympic sponsor BMW. The London Olympics are unthinkable without their corporate sponsors, both for the site itself and for the teams that are going to compete. But what would a person connected with the ancient version of the Games think?
Book thumbnail image How loneliness became taboo By Susan J. Matt Are we lonely because of Facebook? For the last few weeks, sociologists, technologists, and other pundits have debated this question. Facebook’s critics claim the technology isolates its users, while its defenders seem unwilling to concede that their social networking results in loneliness. Largely absent from the conversation has been the historical perspective, which sheds important light on the topic. When one takes the long view, it becomes clear that Facebook has not made us lonely, for Americans have been lonely for at least two centuries, and have often struggled to find ways to assuage these feelings.
Book thumbnail image The significance of Golden Spike Day By Maury Klein For Americans in 1869, the driving of the golden spike, which joined the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, carried a significance similar to that of the first moon landing for a later generation. It marked the conquest not only of distance, but of a landscape that was as alien to most Americans as the moon. It bound together the far-flung ends of a nation still licking its wounds from a bloody and divisive civil war. Travelers could now go from New York to California via a series of trains in seven days, a journey that earlier took 35 days across the fever-infested Isthmus of Panama or five months for the perilous sail around Cape Horn. In the process they could also glimpse the West that few of them had ever seen and was already an American mythology in the making.
Book thumbnail image ‘The Unholy Mrs Knight’ and the BBC By Callum Brown In 1955 Margaret Knight became the most hated woman in Britain. She was vilified and demonised in virtually every British newspaper, and thousands of letters attacking her were sent by ordinary Britons to the BBC, to the papers and to her personally. Parents wrote fearing for the safety of their children, bishops and priests criticised her impudence, whilst well-known authors like Dorothy L Sayers castigated her ignorance. Hounded by journalists and pursued by photographers, the smiling image of Mrs Knight in her ‘Sunday-best hat’ and coat appeared in most newspapers. She was the nation’s number one ‘folk devil’ of 1955.
The Oddest English Spellings, Part 20 By Anatoly Liberman Why don’t good and hood rhyme with food and mood? Why are friend and fiend spelled alike but pronounced differently? There is a better way of asking this question, because the reason for such oddities is always the same: English retains the spelling that made sense centuries ago. At one time, the graphic forms we learn one by one made sense. Later the pronunciation changed, while the spelling remained the same. Therefore, the right question is: What has happened to the pronunciation of the words that give us trouble?
Book thumbnail image Birth: the importance of being on time By Hanan El Marroun Some babies are born four weeks too early and others are born three weeks past the due date. Their timing seems random, but that is certainly not the case. Of all births, around 90% take place between 37 and 40 weeks. There are several theories about how the timing of birth is regulated, but the process is not completely understood.
Book thumbnail image Timeliness, timelessness, and the boy with no birthdays By Geraldine McCaughrean By Geraldine McCaughrean As Captain Scott sat in his tent in the Antarctic in 1912, pinioned between the dead bodies of Birdie and Uncle Bill, he wrote countless valedictory notes to people he would never see again, in places half a world away. One was to the godfather of his son, expressing his love and admiration for the man and asking him to look after the boy. A hundred years ago that letter was lying unread in the death tent. But eventually, of course, it was delivered – to J. M. Barrie, foremost playwright and author of his day.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles Get a Second Chance, 9 May 1962 By Gordon Thompson On this spring morning fifty years ago, Brian Epstein climbed the front steps and passed through the simple entrance of the EMI Recording Studios in St. John’s Wood, London, placing him on the other side of the looking glass. As a retailer, he had sold recordings made in these studios by Sir Edward Elgar, Sir Thomas Beecham, and, more recently, Cliff Richard and the Shadows. The neophyte manager of the Beatles now eagerly anticipated the possibility of watching through the control room window as his “boys” joined that exclusive club.
Why Obama cannot receive any credit for his actions By Elvin Lim With the airwaves ablaze with a new controversy about President Obama campaign ad, it may be worth thinking about why it is so difficult for many Americans, even some on the Left, to give Obama credit for anything. To proffer a tentative answer, I’m going to sketch the landscape of the comparison group: how other presidents have been vilified.
Book thumbnail image Philip Auerswald on driving innovation today The benefits of four centuries of technological and organizational change are at last reaching a previously excluded global majority. To make the most of this epochal transition, the key is entrepreneurship. Our friends at the Kauffman Foundation sat down with Philip Auerswald, author of The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs Are Transforming the Global Economy, to discuss what’s next for the world.
Book thumbnail image Sisters in their finest moments Carole Garibaldi Rogers Oral histories of American Catholic women religious repeatedly reveal courageous steps out from traditional roles into ministries that serve the poor and marginalized. They also illuminate historical trends in both the church and society.
Book thumbnail image Martha Graham Redivivus By Mark Franko Martha Graham’s work was prominent in the New York dance world of the 1930s in the wake of her innovative Primitive Mysteries (1931). Yet, her reputation grew exponentially beyond the confines of dance and the New York art world after the premiere of American Document (1938) followed by its national tour in 1939. This is, paradoxically, a work that the Martha Graham Dance Company may be reluctant to perform today in a version close to the original. It was related to the political issues of the day, highly anti-fascist and popular front, and critical of the history of the United States. Graham’s national reputation took hold at this time, and she was noted not only for her choreography and dancing but also for her political stance in the pre-war moment.
Book thumbnail image The growth of the Giving Pledge and the federal estate tax By Edward Zelinsky By taking the Giving Pledge, wealthy individuals publicly commit to contribute “the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.” The Pledge was started by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, Jr. Recently, twelve more wealthy families signed the Giving Pledge including Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal.
Book thumbnail image Mitt Romney as Commander in Chief: some troubling signs Now that Mitt Romney has established himself as the certain Republican nominee in the 2012 president election, Americans will begin to scrutinize his record and his statements more closely. The economic problems that have beset the United States over the past four years mean that much of the attention will focus on Romney’s economic proposals; so, too, does the ongoing controversy over “Obamacare” assure a focus on the Republican’s stance on health care. However, with an ongoing war in Afghanistan and continuing tensions over the Iranian nuclear weapons program, we also need to consider how Romney understands the role of the president as a commander in chief. Some of the signs are disturbing.
Book thumbnail image Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony premieres This Day in World History Back to the audience, facing the orchestra, the composer steadily marked the tempo with his hands. He was not conducting, though — he was deaf. Thus it was that, when the orchestra and chorus finished, he could not hear the applause and cheers of the Vienna audience. When a musician turned him around so he could see the joy on listeners’ faces, Ludwig von Beethoven bowed in gratitude — and wept.
Book thumbnail image Behind the controversy: Sisters serve By Carole Garibaldi Rogers As women religious in the US once again stand accused of misdeeds by the hierarchy, it is worth asking: What have these women done? They have said over and over with their lives that they are simply following the Gospel message to serve the poor. And that deep-rooted conviction underlies almost all of the 94 oral history interviews I conducted with American Catholic nuns, first in the early 1990s and most recently in 2009-2010.
Book thumbnail image The Sack of Rome This Day in World History On May 6, 1527, a mass of German Lutheran and Spanish Catholic troops—unlikely allies—reached Rome angry at being unpaid for months and resentful of the riches of the papacy. As the soldiers—by now a rampaging mob—entered the Vatican, Pope Clement VII was saying a mass in the Sistine Chapel. With Swiss Guards being slaughtered in St. Peter’s Square, the pope was hustled away to safety in the stout Castel Sant’Angelo. And the sack of Rome was on.
Book thumbnail image Who are the women behind the latest Vatican reprimands? By Carole Garibaldi Rogers The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church could have selected any number of unifying actions to mark the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). They have chosen instead a divisive path: to reprimand the leadership of American Catholic nuns.
Book thumbnail image Mayan Midwives and Western Medicine By Barbara Rogoff Doña Chona Pérez, who turns 87 this week, was born with a piece of the amniotic sac over her head like a veil, indicating a birth destiny of being a sacred midwife. This credential indicating divine selection to the profession has been recognized in the Mayan region for many years.
Book thumbnail image Writing and recording with scrapbooks By Ellen Gruber Garvey May 5 is National Scrapbooking Day. Like National Fig Newton Day or National Golf Month, its purpose is mainly commercial. It was unsurprisingly started by an album company. Scrapbook making is hugely popular and profitable. Stores that sell scrapbooking supplies use the day to sponsor scrapping gatherings or crops where scrapbookers — nearly all women — get together to spread their projects out at tables with equipment for diecutting, embossing, distressing paper to make it look old, and sharing tips about layout and technique as they paste family pictures and memorabilia into their scrapbooks.
Book thumbnail image Kublai Khan becomes Mongol Emperor This Day in World History In 1259, the great Mongol Empire — which stretched from parts of China west to Russia — was shaken for the second time by the death of its leader, or khan, when Mongke, a grandson of the founder Genghis Khan, died. One of his brothers, Kublai, left his army in China, came back to Mongolia, and had himself declared the Great Khan.
Book thumbnail image Cinco de Mayo, sesquicentennial of the Battle of Puebla By William H. Beezley Mexicans are celebrating the sesquicentennial of the Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) 1862, when at the Battle of Puebla, their troops defeated a veteran French invasion force. The battle shocked western leaders and military observers in equal measure. The Mexicans were viewed as ragtag, poorly-armed bandits rather than soldiers, and the French were considered by many as the world’s best-equipped, most-experienced army. As astonishing as the victory was, it did not end the French invasion, but only postponed it for a year until a second Battle at Puebla.
Book thumbnail image Differentiating conflict and bullying within friendship In Bully, Emmy award-winning director Lee Hirsch invites viewers to spend a year in the lives of students and parents who deal with public torment and humiliation on a daily basis. By following the young victims from the classroom to their living rooms, viewers are given an intimate look into the effects that bullying has on these targets and their families. While parents and administrators scramble to find a solution to the problem, they must ask themselves: how do we differentiate bullying from conflict within friendships?
Book thumbnail image In remembrance of things passed By Philip Carter On Saturday 5 May, Chelsea face Liverpool in this year’s FA Cup final, the culmination of what (despite its relative, recent decline) remains the world’s most famous domestic football, i.e. ‘soccer’, tournament. If you cut your Cup teeth before the 1990s — since then the competition has been partially eclipsed by Premiership football — you’ll remember Final day as a national, indeed international, occasion when millions tuned in to events on a 115 x 75 yard field in north-west London.
‘If you want anything said, ask Mrs Thatcher’ By Susan Ratcliffe In May 1979 the United Kingdom elected its first female Prime Minister, in spite of her own comment ten years earlier: ‘No woman in my time will be Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary—not the top jobs. Anyway I wouldn’t want to be Prime Minister. You have to give yourself 100%’. A few years later, having become Prime Minister (although she didn’t want the job?) Margaret Thatcher went on to say ‘In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman’. In fact, the things she said were so memorable that she has become one of the most quoted politicians of modern times. Everyone recognizes ‘there is no real alternative’, ‘the lady’s not for turning’, ‘the Falklands Factor’, ‘Rejoice, rejoice!’, ‘Victorian values’, ‘We can do business together’, and ‘There is no such thing as Society’.
Book thumbnail image Why are Russians attracted to strong leaders? By Geoffrey Hosking After a decade of a chaotic but exhilarating democracy in the 1990s, Putin as president and prime minister has been restoring a strong state. At least, that is how we usually understand it. He has certainly restored an authoritarian state. On assuming office in 2000, he strengthened the ‘power vertical’ by ending the local election of provincial governors and sending in his own viceroys – mostly ex-military men – to supervise them. Citing the state’s need for ‘information security’, he closed down or took over media outlets which exposed inconvenient information or criticised his actions. Determined opponents were bankrupted, threatened, arrested, even murdered. He subdued the unruly Duma (parliament) by making it much more difficult for opposition parties to register or gain access to the media, and by encouraging violations of electoral procedure at the polls. Until recently, the Russian public seemed to accept this as part of the natural order.
Book thumbnail image Goya’s Third of May, 1808 By Kandice Rawlings For anyone who’s taken (and remembers) a survey course in Western art, today’s date surely brings to mind a canonical work — Spanish painter Francisco de Goya’s Third of May, 1808. The picture’s fame can be traced both to Goya’s masterful portrayal of drama and political martyrdom, and to its position as one of the first modern depictions of war. Painted some six years after the events it commemorates, this picture, and the circumstances under which Goya painted it, speak to the political instabilities of 19th-century Europe and the resulting tensions these raised for many of its artists.
Book thumbnail image The bizarre history of the Oxford Latin Dictionary By Chris Stray When we are unsure of the meaning of a word, or want to know when it was first used, or what alternative spellings it has, we consult the dictionary. People often refer to “the dictionary,” in fact, as if there were only one, or as if it didn’t matter which one was consulted. But then most households probably only have one dictionary of any size, though consultation via computers, tablets, or smartphones is becoming increasingly common.
Book thumbnail image Why is tobacco control still a problem in Europe? By Ann McNeill, Lorraine Craig, Marc C. Willemsen & Geoffrey T. Fong In Europe, rates of smoking prevalence and premature death attributable to tobacco are still a cause for real concern. Governments in the region will point to progress such as the introduction of smokefree laws, increased taxation on cigarettes, pack warnings, and the fact they have become signatories to the World Health Organisation’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) — as has the European Union (EU) itself. But signing up to the FCTC marks another step along a journey, rather than being an end in itself. A significant gap remains between the recommended best practice and country or region-specific legislation.
Further Adventures of Scr-words, or, the Taming of ‘Shrew’ By Anatoly Liberman Two weeks ago, I pondered the fortunes of the gregarious shrimp. The next ingredient of the scr- ~ shr- cocktail will be the much maligned but innocent shrew. As The Century Dictionary puts it, “there is no foundation in fact for the vulgar notion that shrews are poisonous, or for any other of the popular superstitions respecting these harmless little creatures.” The shrew is an insectivorous mammal. An old etymology traced shrew to a root meaning “cut” (as in shear) and glossed the word as “biter” on account of its allegedly venomous bite. Another version of this etymology refers to the shrew’s pointed snout. The Old High German cognate of shrew meant “dwarf” (a figure cut short?).
Book thumbnail image A look back on the 400th anniversary year of the King James Bible By Gordon Campbell The celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible were in one respect a surprise. As the Archbishop of Canterbury commented at the end of the year, the KJB had not been treated “simply as a possession of religious believers”, much less as a “preserve of the Church”, but rather as part of a wider cultural legacy throughout the English-speaking world. This did not reflect, in the Archbishop’s tolerant view, a diminution of the Bible’s standing as a sacred text, but rather extended its significance beyond the spiritual to the cultural sphere.
Book thumbnail image A cause for celebration? By Clark McCauley A year ago President Obama announced that US Special Forces had shot and killed Osama bin Laden. Jubilant crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington and at Ground Zero in New York City. Pictures of the crowds show them smiling and cheering, raising US flags and flashing victory “V”s.
Book thumbnail image Osama bin Laden: When altruism becomes a sin By Barbara Oakley, Ph.D. As we approach the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, it’s time to step back and think on the sin of altruism. Sin, you say? How can wanting to help others be a sin? Or, at the very least, how could it possibly harm people by simply trying to help them? […]
Book thumbnail image Osama bin Laden killed : This Day in World History In the middle of the night, 2 May 2011, a brief message was radioed from Pakistan to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia: “EKIA.” “EKIA” is military shorthand for “enemy killed in action.” The enemy was Osama bin Laden. After a manhunt of nearly ten years, the United States had found and killed the al Qaeda leader who had ordered the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.
Book thumbnail image Jane Austen, professional writer By Kathryn Sutherland As a novelist, Jane Austen dealt in the little things that loom momentous in the everyday routines of an ordinary life: preparations for an outing, the choice of partners at a dance, the chance for intrigue in a game of cards. What we know of her life is drawn to the same miniature scale: small facts and slender insights hoarded, vetted, and handed down by a protective family who memorialized and effaced their famous aunt in equal measure.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Joe Muranyi Joe Muranyi, the American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and singer — perhaps best known as the last clarinetist to perform with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars — passed away on April 20th at the age of 84. Muranyi was a working musician for over 60 years, from his time as a teenager playing in an Air Force band to his recordings with the Orient Dixieland Jazz Band in the 1990s and for years afterward. He toured with the All Stars in the heart of his career, from 1967 until 1971, the year of the eponymous bandleader’s death.
Book thumbnail image Seven ways schools and parents can mishandle reports of bullying By Maureen Duffy (1) Ignore the bullying complaints, or deny or minimize them. It’s very difficult for a child or young person to come forward with complaints of being bullied in the first place. The negative acts involved in bullying like name-calling, taunting, mocking, spreading rumors, social exclusion, or throwing things at the victim are humiliating. No child or young person wants to be disliked by peers and to have to disclose to an adult that they are targets of bullying can be a source of further shame.
Book thumbnail image The Prison House of Labor By Corey Robin When Kathy Saumier learned that a new factory was coming to town, it seemed as if there really was—as that absurdist bit of suburban wisdom from The Graduate has it—a great future in plastics. Landis Plastics, to be exact. Landis, a family-owned company based in Illinois, makes containers for yogurt and cottage cheese. The company was opening a plant in Solvay, New York, not far from Syracuse where Saumier lived. She applied for a job.
Book thumbnail image There’s no business like Irving Berlin’s business By Jeffrey Magee and Benjamin Sears On 11 May 1888, somewhere outside Mogilyov in Belarus, Irving Berlin was born. The son of a poor Jewish family who fled the pogroms to New York City, Berlin went on to pen some of the most memorable American classics from the patriotic “God Bless America” to wistful “White Christmas.” Without any formal training in music composition or even the ability to notate melodies on a musical staff, he took a knack for music and turned it into the most successful songwriting career in American history. Jeffrey Magee, author of Irving Berlin’s American Musical Theater, and Benjamin Sears, editor of The Irving Berlin Reader, composed this quiz to celebrate the composer’s life and work.
Book thumbnail image A Child of the Jago, Freud, and youth crime today By Peter Miles As every schoolchild knows, never give more than one explanation: rather than uncertainty, it suggests a conscious or unconscious smokescreen. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), Sigmund Freud demonstrated as much by reference to a “defence offered by a man who was accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he said, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all.”
April 2012 (86))
It’s just a joke! By Matthew Flinders Satire is dangerous because some people just don’t get it. They don’t get it in the sense that they seem unable to grasp the fact that the role of a comedian or talk-show host is to get laughs by launching a barrage of cheap shots at politicians. Some politicians undoubtedly deserve it and to some extent standing for political office comes with a side-order of politically barbed jokes and insults and the link between politics and satire goes back centuries — Aristophanes, Aristotle, and even Machiavelli understood the advantages of incorporating humour into political commentary — but my concern is that not only has the nature of the audience changed but so has the nature of political comedy and satire itself.
Book thumbnail image Unqualified but Required By Dr. Allan Barsky As social workers, the NASW Code of Ethics suggests that social workers not only have ethical duties to their clients, but also to their colleagues and employers (e.g., Standards 1.01, 4.01, 2.02, 2.10, and 3.09). So what happens when these obligations collide? How do we determine our primary responsibility, and how do we choose the most ethical course of action when there is no ideal choice?
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: How do cells age? By Jonathan Crowe We’ve all been there: the car that finally became too expensive to keep on the road as more and more parts needed to be replaced, or the computer that started to run so slowly you gave up even bothering to open your web browser. These and other everyday experiences show how there’s an increased risk of things breaking as they get older. And our own bodies aren’t immune: the hair at my temples (and on other parts of my head, I fear) is on a resolute march towards greyness, and my eyesight isn’t as sharp as it once was. In short, our cells are just as susceptible to breaking down as they age as anything else.
Book thumbnail image Can’t we all get along? By Scott Zesch Today is the twentieth anniversary of the most recent Los Angeles race riot. On April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted four police officers charged with severely beating an African-American man named Rodney King. Within hours, protests in south central Los Angeles turned deadly. Outraged residents blocked traffic, attacked motorists, looted shops, and set buildings afire. The riot went on for three days. More than fifty people were killed in the nation’s most destructive episode of civil unrest during the twentieth century.
Book thumbnail image Remembering the Los Angeles Riots By Adam Rosen Sunday, April 29 marks the twentieth anniversary of one of the grimmest episodes in modern American history. For nearly five days, parts of Los Angeles transformed into a free-for-all where looting, gun battles, and arson proceeded without challenge by the city’s authorities. Only after U.S. President George H.W. Bush commanded 3,000 soldiers to occupy the city was order restored. By that time, 53 people had been killed, an estimated $ 1 billion worth of property had been destroyed, and the tenuous thread that held American race relations together had been all but severed.
She danced like a lilac flame: the other Astaire By Kathleen Riley By Kathleen Riley I am writing this on Shakespeare’s birthday, 23rd April, and it strikes me how apposite are Beatrice’s words in Much Ado to the birth, on 10th September 1896, of Adele Marie Austerlitz, later Adele Astaire, a personality and a performer of infinite, inextinguishable and irresistible mirth. In London in the 1920s, she was depicted as a misplaced Shakespearean sprite who ‘should be dancing by glow-worm light under entranced trees on a midsummer eve with a rout of elves, after drinking rose-dew.’
Book thumbnail image Atheist solidarity: Jason Rosenhouse rallys for reason Jason Rosenhouse is Associate Professor of Mathematics at James Madison University. His most recent book is Among The Creationists: Dispatches from the Anti-Evolutionist Front Lines. After years of emersion in creationist culture, Rosenhouse shares his feelings on what it was like to finally stand amongst his fellow non-believers at the Reason Rally.
Book thumbnail image Four myths about Zen Buddhism’s “Mu Koan” By Steven Heine The Mu Koan (or Wu Gongan in Chinese pronunciation), in which master Joshu says “Mu” (literally “No,” but implying Nothingness) to an anonymous monk’s question of whether a dog has the Buddha-nature, is surely the single most famous expression in Zen Buddhist literature and practice. By virtue of its simplicity and indirection, this expression becomes emblematic of East Asian spirituality and culture more generally. Entire books have been published on the topic on both sides of the Pacific.
Book thumbnail image Mighty health threats from little acorns grow By Richard S. Ostfeld, Ph.D 2012 could be a terrible year for Lyme disease. To understand why, we need to go back in time to the autumn of 2010. Over vast parts of the northeastern USA the oak trees that dominate many forests let loose with a bumper crop of acorns. Oaks are notorious for producing highly variable seed crops, from a trickle of one or two acorns per square meter in some years to several dozen per square meter in others. When protein- and lipid-rich acorns are superabundant, white-footed mice are able to cache large numbers and feast all winter, surviving well and breeding early and often. Consequently, their populations can reach peaks of up to 200 individuals per hectare the summer following a good acorn year. Legions of mice scampering around on the forest floor spell good news for blacklegged ticks, the vector responsible for transmitting Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections.
Book thumbnail image Know your slang, poindexters? Never mind if you’ve got the heebee-jeebies, how did we get that word? Winner of the Dartmouth Medal for RUSA/ALA Outstanding Reference Source and 2011 Booklist Editors’ Choice, Green’s Dictionary of Slang is a remarkable collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language. From the past five centuries right up to the present day, and from all the different English-speaking countries and regions, it demonstrate the sheer scope of a lifetime of research by Jonathon Green, the leading slang lexicographer of our time. We dug through a few of the 10.3 million words and over 53,000 entries — definitions of 100,000 words with over 413,000 citations — to come up with a little quiz to celebrate.
Book thumbnail image Derrida and Europe beyond Eurocentrism and Anti-Eurocentrism By Simon Glendinning Two months before his death in October 2004, Jacques Derrida gave an interview to the French newspaper Le Monde which turned out to be his last. Although he refused to treat it as an occasion in which to give what he called “a health bulletin,” he acknowledged that he was seriously ill, and the discussion is overshadowed by that fact: there is a strong sense of someone taking stock, someone taking the chance to give a final word.
Book thumbnail image Miles Davis’s second classic quintet By Keith Waters The Miles Davis Quintet of the mid-1960s — Davis’s “second classic quintet” — was groundbreaking and influential. Their approach to live performance allowed attractive new possibilities for group interaction, the use of harmonic and metric superimposition, and developing pathways for extended improvisation. Their studio recordings offered a host of fresh jazz compositions, innovative in their harmonic progressions, formal designs, and melodic structures.
Book thumbnail image South Africa holds first multiracial election This Day in World History April 26, 1994 marked the beginning of the end of a period of monumental change in South Africa. On that day, for the first time in the nation’s history, more than 17 million black South Africans began casting their votes for government officials. When the election ended four days later, the vote made Nelson Mandela South Africa’s first black president.
Book thumbnail image Ladies: are you taking advantage of cervical screening? By Ji Young Bang, MBBS MPH Cervical cancer is globally the second most frequently occurring malignancy in women, with 400,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths each year. Cervical screening, which aims to detect pre-malignant cervical lesions known as cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), involves sampling cervical epithelial cells via the Papanicolaou smear test or liquid-based cytology. In England, the National Health Service Cervical Screening Programme (NHSCSP) was set up in 1988 and currently all women between the ages of 25 and 64 years are eligible to undergo screening. Despite the widespread availability, are all women taking advantage of cervical screening? If not, what separates these women from those that do choose to participate in screening?
Book thumbnail image The Wehrmacht invades Norway By Dennis Showalter April 1940 witnessed the first, arguably the most economical, and one of the broadest-gauged combined-arms operations in modern military history. The Norwegian campaign is usually considered in the contexts of its end-game and its set-pieces: the drawn-out fighting around Narvik, the Royal Navy’s annihilation of a German task force. Neglected in that context is an initial German invasion plan that was daring in its conception, economical in its use of force, and almost successful in paralyzing an entire country in a matter of a few days.
Monthly Etymology Gleanings for April 2012 By Anatoly Liberman Is loan a verb? Few questions have been asked with such regularity, and few answers have been so definitive, but people keep asking. Perhaps I might make a short introduction. Since English nouns of native origin have no endings (book, rope, pig, cow, goat) and even old borrowed nouns are often monosyllabic (wall, chair, table, desk, pen, lamp) and since infinitives also lack endings (come, go, see, take), the line separating the two grammatical categories is blurred. Some nouns and verbs had different forms in Old English. Such were love (noun) and love (verb); later they lost their endings and now coexist as homonyms. Other verbs were derived from “ready-made” nouns. The opposite process is less common, but consider the nouns meet, say, and go from the corresponding verbs. In principle, any noun can be converted into a verb. “Do students Professor, Dr., or Mr. us at this university?” “Don’t you uncle me!” The messages are perfectly clear.
DNA Day, 2023 By Harry Ostrer Imagine this day in 2023. You decide it is time to allow your doctor to obtain your whole genome sequence to develop a risk profile. You are 58 years old and you have been forgetting simple things. Your family is worried. Your genetic counselor asks which results you would like to learn. You choose only the results for which your doctor says something useful could be done.
Book thumbnail image Scientists identify DNA This Day in World History The April 25, 1953 edition of the journal Nature included a scientific paper that opened new doors in scientific understanding. The paper, written by James Watson and Francis Crick, described the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the substance that determines the hereditary traits of a living organism.
Book thumbnail image Older men do care… By Dr Mark McCann Older men have been getting a bad press. Women are admitted to nursing and residential homes at a greater rate than men of the same age and health. There is an assumption that the reason for this gender difference is that older men are less willing than older women to care for their dependent partners: that for cultural or personal reasons ‘old men don’t do caring’.
Book thumbnail image What is the origin of modern sex? In the 18th century, the world underwent a revolutionary change — in sexual attitudes. Faramerz Dabhoiwala examines how the strict control of sex by the Church, the state, and society eroded in the 1700s based on vast research — from canon law to court cases, novels to pornography, diaries and letters of people great to ordinary. The Enlightenment, the growth of cities, and cultural flowering all contributed to the birth of sex as we know it. In the below videos, Faramerz Dabhoiwala explores the 18th century roots of modern sexuality from gender stereotypes of lust, polygamy, sex tapes, and the sexual obsession of tabloid culture.
Book thumbnail image The 2012 playbooks for Obama and Romney By Elvin Lim The General Election campaign appears to be in full swing now that Mitt Romney is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. But this is really only true on the Republican side. Team Obama is obviously holding back.
Book thumbnail image Dear Alice… Can You Forgive Her? Alice Vavasor is torn between a risky marriage with her ambitious cousin George and the safer prospect of a union with the formidably correct John Grey. Her indecision is reflected in the dilemmas of her friend Lady Glencora, confined in the proprieties of her life with Plantagenet Palliser but tempted to escape with her penniless lover Burgo Fitzgerald, and of her aunt, the irreverent widow Mrs Greenow, who must choose between a solid farmer and an untrustworthy soldier as her next husband. Each woman finds her choice bound up with the cold realities of money, and the tension between public expectation and private inclination in Anthony Trollope’s classic Can You Forgive Her?. Here is a letter from George to Alice.
Book thumbnail image Writing Disasters By David Roberts Natural disaster is an exciting but tricky subject. Risk to survival; extreme deprivation; families sundered and reunited; panoramic set pieces of waves crashing, meteors hurtling, or skyscrapers toppling – all the ingredients are there for a gripping narrative. But think of the technical and ethical challenges. How does a writer choose one focal point among so many? Who survives? If the subject is a real disaster, how does a novelist or screenwriter honour the memory of those who endured, and those who perished? And what about the nagging doubt that it is all an exercise in profiting from misery?
Book thumbnail image La Diada de Sant Jordi and celebrating books on April 23rd By Alice Northover April 23rd has a touch of madness for those in book publishing. It is cause for not just one celebration, but several. It is World Book Night, an annual exchange to spread the love of reading; World Book and Copyright Day as organized by UNESCO to promote both reading and the preservation of authors’ intellectual property (take note plagiarists and book thieves!); the Death day of both the Bard himself, William Shakespeare, and el manco de Lepanto, Miguel de Cervantes, in 1616; the probable Birthday of William Shakespeare in 1564 (his baptism was the 26th of April and baptisms were traditionally held three days after birth); International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, which celebrates the work of science fiction and fantasy authors and encourages the free availability of their great work online (by their own choice, not against their wishes); and finally La Diada de Sant Jordi.
Book thumbnail image Into Maple White Land of the Lost World Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day! Let’s celebrate the great science fiction and fantasy writers with an excerpt from one of the earliest fantasy novels — and an Oxford World Classic — The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Professor Challenger’s claims of dinosaurs living in twentieth-century South America may seem outlandish, but even skeptics become believers in The Lost World…
Book thumbnail image Shakespeare and Cervantes die The date 23 April 1616 marked the end of two eras in world literature; for on that day, two giants of Renaissance letters died. Poet and playwright William Shakespeare died in his home at Stratford-upon-Avon. Farther south, Spanish poet, playwright, and novelist Miguel de Cervantes also passed away.
Do you know Shakespeare’s American career? By Alden T. Vaughan and Viriginia Mason Vaughan Although England had colonies in Virginia and Bermuda before William Shakespeare died in 1616, he never came to America. But no Englishman ever had such a triumphant posthumous migration to America as did Shakespeare: in books (by him and about him), in performances of his dramas on virtually every stage from coast to coast, in school and college curricula from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, in Broadway musicals, in “blackface” minstrel shows, in summer festivals, in stuffed dolls, trinkets, key rings, and tea cups. Shakespeare in America is multifaceted and ubiquitous.
Book thumbnail image Girls and the Jump to Judge By Jason Mittell I’d decided not to write about the pilot of Girls, the new HBO show that has either been hailed as the channel’s great comedy hope, or a crime against humanity (or maybe some middleground somewhere too). But after reading a lot of the criticism and commentary, and getting into at least four lengthy conversations on Twitter about it, I figured I’d assemble some thoughts to join in the fray beyond 140 characters.
Book thumbnail image Ahmed Ben Bella Ahmed Ben Bella was born in Marnia, near the Algerian-Moroccan border, although some doubt remains about whether the year of his birth was 1916 or 1918. One of five brothers of a farmer, in sociological terms Ben Bella’s family was part of the countryside elite that had been impoverished by French colonialism. From these rural roots Ben Bella rose to become the first post-Independence President of Algeria in 1963 and, until his overthrow in June 1965, one of the most famous leaders of the third world revolutionary movement that took off across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Book thumbnail image Cool, clear water? On cleaning up US rivers By Wallace Scot McFarlane Many rivers in the United States carry the burden of having been severely polluted. Indeed all the rivers on which I have lived were once no healthier than an open sewer: the Trinity River (Dallas’s untreated sewage), the Concord River (military-industrial complex Superfund sites), the Androscoggin River (paper mills), the Charles River (“love that muddy water!”), and the Willamette River (paper mills). Although none of these rivers live up to the clean water promised by the Clean Water Act, they are nonetheless much cleaner and offer plenty of recreational opportunities, often neglected by the many people who call these watersheds home.
Book thumbnail image 420, cannabis, illegality, and the cost of prohibition By Mitch Earleywine Cannabis became essentially illegal in the United States in 1937. Perhaps this 75 year experiment has provided enough data for some informed decisions. We’re up to over 800,000 arrests each year, with government spending billions annually on marijuana control. Yet more people have tried the plant than ever before. Several authors suggest that alternatives to prohibition might prove cheaper, send fewer people through our courts, and maintain respect for the law. It seems oddly un-American that a citizen can go to jail for owning a plant, especially here in the land of the free. But change is scary, and fear runs politics in frightening ways.
Book thumbnail image 100 years ago today: the death of Bram Stoker By Roger Luckhurst Bram Stoker was always a man in the shadows, the back-room boy who for thirty-years had organised the life and finances of the greatest actor of his age, Sir Henry Irving. Stoker’s death one hundred years ago today, on the 20th April 1912, conformed to type: it was utterly eclipsed by a much larger catastrophe. He died quietly at home only five days after the R. M. S. Titanic hit an iceberg and sank with the loss of 1500 lives.
Images from American Bandstand As we look back at the life and work of Dick Clark, we put together a slideshow of images from American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire by John Jackson. We’ll miss you Dick Clark!
Book thumbnail image Remembering Dick Clark We were saddened to hear that Dick Clark died yesterday at the age of 82. A television presenter and American icon, Dick Clark is fondly remembered for his years hosting American Bandstand and the New Years Eve Ball Drop in Times Square. We’ve excerpted the preface of American Bandstand: Dick Clark and the Making of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Empire by John Jackson to showcase some of the impact he had on American music.
Book thumbnail image Egypt: The Omar Theories By Steven A Cook It is fair to say that Omar Suleiman’s bid to be Egypt’s next president is one of the most unexpected developments in post-Mubarak Egypt. The last time anyone had seen or heard from Suleiman, he appeared on Egyptian television and declared
Book thumbnail image Captain Cook sights Australia This Day in World History “What we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand.” Thus James Cook concluded his log entry for April 19, 1770 — the day Europeans first sighted the continent of Australia.
Book thumbnail image Propofol and the Death of Michael Jackson One of the hallmarks of an expert is to make what they are doing look effortless. Whether it is tossing pizza, throwing a clay pot on a wheel, or executing the perfect forehand smash, the experts make it look easy. The part that we don’t see is the hundreds of hours of practice, and the hundreds of times it has gone wrong; the shreds of dough stuck to the light bulb.
A scrumptious shrimp with a riddle By Anatoly Liberman My romance with shrimp began when, years ago, I looked up the etymology of scrumptious in some modern dictionary. Naturally, it turned out that the word’s origin is unknown (this happens every time I try to satisfy my curiosity in the area of my specialization). The usually sensible Century Dictionary suggests that scrumptious is an alternation of scrimptious, from scrimption, a funny noun going back to scrimp. The OED thinks so too.
Book thumbnail image Earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco This Day in World History Shortly after 5:12 A.M. on April 18, 1906, and for as long as a minute, the earth shook violently along nearly 300 miles of the San Andreas Fault in California. The violent earthquake, estimated around 8 on the Richter scale, caused severe damage from Salinas, south of San Francisco, to Santa Rosa, north of the city. People as far away as southern Oregon, Los Angeles, and central Nevada felt its tremors.
Mindmelding: two brains, one consciousness? By William Hirstein Have you ever wondered if it is really possible for others to know what you are thinking? Our brains seem to allow both “internal” points of view, and “external” ones. As individuals, we know them from the inside as we experience our thoughts, perceptions and emotions. Scientists, on the other hand, only know our brains from the outside, as they employ brain imaging, EEG, or other types of techniques.
Book thumbnail image Is there an epidemic of autism? By Mary Coleman Autism was first described in 1943 and since then, the understanding of this disease entity by the scientific community has greatly changed. In 2012, autism is now considered a behaviorally defined neurodevelopmental disorder arising well before birth, characterized by a marked clinical and etiological heterogeneity. Recently there is a question whether there may be an epidemic of autism, as the rates of diagnosis have continued to rise to alarming levels.
Book thumbnail image Because we women can keep nothing hidden… The Wife of Bath’s Tale In Chaucer’s most ambitious poem, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1387), a group of pilgrims assembles in an inn just outside London and agree to entertain each other on the way to Canterbury by telling stories. The pilgrims come from all ranks of society, from the crusading Knight and burly Miller to the worldly Monk and lusty Wife of Bath. Their tales are as various as the tellers, including romance, bawdy comedy, beast fable, learned debate, parable, and Eastern adventure. The Wife of Bath is a favourite amongst many for her insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages, and her suggestions of sexual promiscuity. Here is an extract.
Book thumbnail image A Smidget of Regional Terms By Mark Peters There are some things I love to an unhealthy degree, such as The Shield, Russian imperial stouts, George Carlin’s comedy, mint chocolate chip ice cream, and Evil Dead 2. My heart beats equally fast for the Dictionary of American Regional English, which recently published its long-awaited final volume.
Book thumbnail image Words are wind By Adam Pulford Somehow A Song of Ice and Fire, the colossal fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, had escaped my notice until the critically acclaimed TV series hit our screens last year, prompting me to buy the first book in the series. Little did I know that a few weeks later I would spend Christmas continually ushering away family members clutching Monopoly and Cluedo boxes so that I could devour all five volumes in unhealthily close succession. The five books have now been translated into more than 20 languages and have sold over 15 million copies worldwide. As Game of Thrones returns to our screens for a second season, there’s no better time to explore the interesting language used by its creator.
Book thumbnail image Game of Kings, Game of Thrones By Sean O’Hanlan The Lewis Chessmen, arguably the most famous chess pieces in the world, are currently wrapping up a transatlantic tour. A group of 30 charming walrus ivory miniatures have spent the winter on view at New York’s Cloisters museum; on April 22, they will make their way back home to London’s British Museum.
Book thumbnail image The Ethics of Transplants – Why Careless Thought Costs Lives By Janet Radcliffe Richards The trouble with many significant advances in medicine is that that they take us out of our moral depth. They may raise quite different problems from the ones we are used to and, if we are not careful, we may inadvertently undermine the wonderful potential of new technologies by forcing them into existing legal, ethical and institutional frameworks.
Book thumbnail image Leonardo da Vinci is born This Day in World History Painter, sketch artist, sculptor, architect, civil and military engineer, cartographer, anatomist, physical scientist, botanist, geologist, mathematician, and more — Leonardo da Vinci defined the phrase “Renaissance man.” Born on April 15, 1452, and dying at 67, he produced a body of work that remains unrivaled. Giorgio Vasari, biographer of the great Italian artists of the Renaissance, aptly called Leonardo “truly marvelous and celestial.”
Images from the Titanic Disaster By John Welshman At 11:40 pm ship’s time on 14 April 1912, the HMS Titanic hit an iceberg. Just two hours and forty minutes later, the hull broke, taking the ship and over one thousand people still aboard into the sea. It remains one of the greatest disasters in maritime history. In Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, John Welshman gathered 25 pictures of this ill-fated voyage together and we’d like to share a few with you.
Let us now praise human population genetics By Harry Ostrer Exactly who are we anyway? Over the last generation, population genetics has emerged as a science that has made the discovery of human origins, relatedness, and diversity knowable in a way that is simple not possible from studying texts, genealogies, or archeological remains. Viewed as the successor to a race science that promoted the superiority of some human groups over others and that provided a basis for prejudice, forced sterilization, and even extermination, population genetics is framed as a discipline that is based on discovery using the amazing content of fully sequenced human genomes and novel computational methods. None of the recent discoveries would have been possible in the past. And what have we learned?
Book thumbnail image Everyday people aboard the Titanic By John Welshman It was Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (1955) who described the sinking of the Titanic as ‘the last night of a small town’. Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town, draws on Lord’s metaphor by focusing on the stories of just 12 people, chosen as a representative cross-section of passengers and crew.
Book thumbnail image Color blindness in the demographic death toll of the Civil War By James Downs An 2 April 2012 New York Times article, “New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll,” reports that a new study ratchets up the death toll from an estimated 650,000 to a staggering 850,000 people. As horrific as this new number is, it fails to reflect the mortality of former slaves during the war. If former slaves were included in this figure, the Civil War death toll would likely be over a million casualties.
Book thumbnail image Is there life on Mars? I’ve seen proud posts on the internet from people who saw five planets with the naked eye this spring. Venus and Jupiter could hardly be missed in the west after sunset, though Mercury was more elusive as it never strays very far from the Sun and is smaller and fainter. Later in the evening Mars and then Saturn have been rising high in the east. That’s a “full house”, comprising all five of the planets recognised by the ancients. Being a geologist, I usually insist on claiming that a sixth planet is easily visible too…
Book thumbnail image Seneca in Spring-Time By Emily Wilson April, says Eliot famously in the Wasteland, is the cruellest month, “breeding / Lilacs out of the dead ground, mixing/ Memory and desire”. Spring, in this shocking reversal of common tropes, is bad for precisely the reasons we usually think it good: because it involves a rebirth of what had seemed dead. Eliot’s poem, which will itself enact the rebirth or zombie resuscitation of many greatest hits of western literary culture, begins with a recognition of how horrible, and how spooky, this process is. You try to bury the dead, but they won’t stay in the grave.
Book thumbnail image Crusaders capture Constantinople This Day in World History On April 12, 1204, French and Italian Crusaders breached the walls of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and one of the richest cities in the world. Their capture of this rich prize launched one of the most destructive sacks of a city in history. But why did Crusaders who set off to win control of the Holy Land from Muslims attach the chief city of the Eastern Orthodox Church?
Book thumbnail image Women and children first? The enduring myths of the Titanic By Sarah Gregson It is often said of military wars that the first casualty is truth. As we approach the centenary of the sinking of RMS Titanic and the war of ideas that often surrounds this tragedy, it is to be hoped that the truth will at least take a few prisoners. Titanic myths have had extraordinary longevity and, as Cox put it, ‘virtually everything that people know, or think they know … can be traced to the press coverage of April-August 1912’. In the lead up to the centenary, however, perhaps some commentators will read some of the work that has been done to challenge these misconceptions.
Book thumbnail image How will Mitt Romney fare in the general election? Rick Santorum suspended his presidential campaign yesterday and the air in America is abuzz with what will happen next in the Republican nomination race. We sat down to chat politics with Sam Popkin, author of the upcoming The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House. We asked how Mitt Romney will fare in a general election and why he has been underestimated as a candidate.
Dudes, dandies, swells, and mashers By Anatoly Liberman My February blog on dude has been picked up by several websites, and rather numerous comments were the result of the publicity. Below, I will say what I think of the word’s “true” etymology and quote two pronouncements on “dudedom,” as they once appeared in The Nation. But before doing all that, I should thank the readers who pointed to me the existence of some recent contributions to the subject.
Book thumbnail image Declining to investigate atrocities By William A. Schabas On 3 April 2012, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court issued a two-page statement declining to proceed with an investigation into alleged atrocities perpetrated in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 and January 2009. A distinguished commission of inquiry set up in 2009 by the United Nations Human Rights Council and presided over South African judge Richard Goldstone concluded atrocities had taken place. It recommended that investigations be taken up by the Court. The disappointing statement from the Prosecutor reveals his ideological bias, and confirms the politicization of the International Criminal Court.
Book thumbnail image The rise and decline of the American ‘Empire’ By Geir Lundestad Since around 1870 the United States has had the largest economy in the world. In security matters, however, particularly in Europe, the US still played a limited role until the Second World War. In 1945, at the end of the war, the United States was clearly the strongest power the world had ever seen. It produced almost as much as the rest of the world put together. Its military lead was significant; its “soft power” even more dominant.
Book thumbnail image Questions about La Monte Young, music, and mysticism La Monte Young remains an enigma within the music world, one of the most important and yet most elusive composers of the late twentieth century. A musician who lives in near-seclusion in a Tribeca loft while creating works that explore the furthest extremes of conceptual audacity, technical sophistication, acoustical complexity, and overt spirituality, Young has had a profound influence on the development on minimalism, which is seen in a variety of music today. We sat down with music scholar Jeremy Grimshaw, author of Draw a Straight Line and Follow It: The Music and Mysticism of La Monte Young, to discuss the life, work, and the controversy surrounding La Monte Young.
Book thumbnail image First Jewish ghetto established in Venice This Day in World History On April 10, 1516, the government of Venice officially confined the city’s Jews to one small area of the city—the first Jewish ghetto. This area remained the required home to the city’s Jews until Napoleon took the city in 1797 and abolished it. Nevertheless, the old ghetto remains the center of Venetian Jewry.
Book thumbnail image The Love Songs of F. Scott Fitzgerald By Kirk Curnutt According to literary legend, the author of The Great Gatsby sold his soul. Perpetually cash-strapped, F. Scott Fitzgerald spent much of his twenty-year career cranking out popular fiction for the Saturday Evening Post and other high-paying “slicks.” While Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, and William Faulkner racked up double digits in the novels column, Fitzgerald completed a paltry four and a half, with only one of them (Gatsby, of course) truly great. By contrast, he produced 160 short stories, earning a total of $241,453 off the genre – more than $3 million in today’s dollars.
Book thumbnail image When patents restrain future innovation By Christina Bohannan and Herbert Hovenkamp The Supreme Court’s decision in Mayo Collaborative Services (Mayo Clinic) v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (March 20, 2012), cited Creation Without Restraint to reject a patent on a process for determining the proper dosage of drugs used to treat autoimmune diseases.
Book thumbnail image Self-immolation by Tibetans By Michael Biggs Since March 2011, over thirty Tibetans have set themselves on fire to protest against repression in China. This is the latest manifestation of a resurgence in suicide protest — where someone kills him or herself for a political cause, without harming anyone else. The most famous recent case is Mohammad Bouazizi in Tunisia, whose self-immolation sparked the Arab spring in 2011, and whose example was followed by many others in North Africa. Less familiar in the West, the campaign for a separate state of Telangana within India (to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh) was accompanied by a wave of self-immolation in 2010-2011.
Book thumbnail image Why is there a ban on advertising activity in and around the Olympic Games? By Phillip Johnson This summer the Olympics is coming to town. It will be a sporting spectacular – the best sportsmen and women on Earth competing for the ultimate sporting accolade. Yet the Olympics is no longer simply a festival of sport. National governments and brand owners alike have long wanted to be associated with excellence and sporting excellence in particular. The Olympic Games represents the pinnacle of that excellence and so makes it the most desirable sporting “property” in the World.
Book thumbnail image Kenyatta sentenced to seven years hard labor This Day in World History On April 8, 1953, Jomo Kenyatta and five associates were sentenced by a British judge to seven years hard labor for allegedly directing the Mau Mau rebellion, a bloody, ongoing violent protest against European domination of what is now Kenya.
Book thumbnail image eResurrection? By Reverend John Piderit, S.J. In an age of video, TV, camcorders, and iPhones, adept users can capture important events in a digital medium that can be transmitted quickly to people around the world. What would a resurrection appearance of Jesus have looked like if an alert apostle had an iPhone and, assuming the apostle was not immediately told by Jesus to “put that iPhone away”, the apostle captured a minute of Jesus’s appearance with the iPhone video running? Of course, this is a hypothetical and no answer could possibly be definitive. But the question raises interesting issues.
Book thumbnail image The Feast of Passover By Marc Brettler Passover, as it is now celebrated, is a creation of the rabbis, and many of its rituals are a reaction to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. It has a long and complex history, and even in the biblical period, was celebrated in a variety of ways.
Book thumbnail image Questions about Easter, baptism, and the renewal of life It’s Good Friday and a good time to discuss the reflection and renewal that many Christians seek on Easter Sunday. The day commemorating Jesus’s resurrection, Easter marks the end of Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance. In the early church, baptism and Easter were strongly linked. We sat down with Garry Wills, author of the new book Font of Life: Ambrose, Augustine, and the Mystery of Baptism, to discuss the role of baptism in the lives of two early Christian saints: Augustine and Ambrose.
Book thumbnail image First modern Olympic Games held in Athens This Day in World History An estimated 60,000 spectators witnessed the opening ceremonies of the first modern Olympic Games, held in Athens, Greece, on April 6, 1896. The ceremonies took place in the Panathinaiko Stadium, originally built in 330 B.C. and rebuilt in gleaming marble for the occasion.
Book thumbnail image The ingenious problem-solving of the modern-day engineer By David Blockley Engineering is everywhere. We rely on it totally and yet, most of us tend to take it for granted. Do you ever stop to wonder how the water gets to your taps or the electricity to your home? From the water we drink, the food we eat, the electricity we use, the tools we work with, the gadgets that entertain us, to the cars, trains and aeroplane we travel in, we all too often fail to think about the engineers who make it happen, the skills they need and the challenges they face.
Book thumbnail image Modern childhoods and the growth of academic interest I remember turning up on my first day as a junior academic in one of the older universities in the UK and proudly talking about my work as an anthropologist in Thailand working with young prostitutes, only to be met with the withering put-down that ‘it didn’t sound like anthropology — more like comparative social work.’ If it involved children, it couldn’t be a serious area of study. At the time I was totally deflated but today, such a comment would be nonsensical.
Book thumbnail image Eight fun Jazz tracks for new listeners By Ted Gioia Since 2001, April has been designated as Jazz Appreciation Month. This annual celebration was instigated by Dr. John Edward Hasse, Curator of American Music at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and a lifelong jazz advocate. The event has gained momentum with each passing year, and has spurred jazz activities in all fifty states and forty countries.
Book thumbnail image The future for lawyers? What does the future hold for those in the law profession? In this interview, Martin Partington talks to fellow OUP author Richard Susskind OBE about how the legal profession will develop over the next few years, addressing the changes and challenges that could affect lawyers in the future.
The Seasons, Part 3: Rainy Winter? By Anatoly Liberman The Latin for “winter; snowstorm” is hiems, a noun related in a convoluted way to Engl. hibernate. It is a reflex (continuation) of an old Indo-European word for “winter,” and its cognates in various languages are numerous. Germanic must also have had one of them, but it lies hidden like the proverbial needle in a hayrick. Old Icelandic (OI) gymbr means “one-year old sheep.” In the Scandinavian area, this word does not have an exotic ring, as follows from Modern Icelandic and Norwegian gimber ~ gymber ~ gimmerlam (the latter refers specifically to a sheep that has not yet lambed), along with Swedish gymmer with its dialectal variants.
Book thumbnail image Martin Luther King, Jr., is assassinated On 4th April 1968, as he stood on a balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Motel of Memphis, Martin Luther King, Jr., was struck in the neck by a sniper’s bullet. The bullet severed his spinal cord, killing him instantly. King’s death was followed by rioting in several of the nation’s cities.
Book thumbnail image The Dickensian mega-musical By Marc Napolitano Though music plays a significant role within Charles Dickens’s novels—as various characters’ personalities are defined by their fondness for song—music has also proven a central element of the larger legacy surrounding Dickens’s works. From the Victorian period onward, music has been used as a medium for the adaptation of Dickens’s texts.
Book thumbnail image The difference between healthcare insurance and broccoli markets By Elvin Lim Democrats and the Obama administration have seriously if not fatally fumbled on the simple answer to a question Justice Scalia posed: “Could you define the market — everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli?”
Book thumbnail image The Bosnian War, 20 years on… By Gerard Toal Twenty years ago this week, ethnic cleansing began in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Though there were numerous instances of ethnicized violence before this, it was the northeastern town of Bijeljina that became ground zero for a practice the Bosnian war would make infamous. The pre-war population of the municipality was 57,389 (59% Serb), 30,229 (31% Muslim), with approximately ten thousand others who identified themselves as Yugoslavs (the forgotten identity in Bosnia), Croats (only 490) and persons of other or unknown nationality. The recitation of the 1991 census numbers is relevant only because nationality categories mattered to the perpetrators who fell upon Bijeljina and tore it apart.
Book thumbnail image In defense of politics By Matthew Flinders From Canada to Australia — and all points in between — something has gone wrong. A gap has emerged between the governors and the governed. A large dose of scepticism about the promises and motives of politicians is an important and healthy part of any democracy, but it would appear that healthy pessimism has mutated into a more pathological form of corrosive cynicism.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Charles Lockwood Charles Lockwood, co-author (with his brother John) of The Siege of Washington: The Untold Story of the Twelve Days that Shook the Union, died last week of cancer at 63.
Book thumbnail image The Buffett Rule President Obama ignores By Edward Zelinsky Like many of us, President Obama is a Warren Buffett fan. Most prominently, the president advocates, as a matter of tax policy, the so-called “Buffett Rule.” This rule responds to Mr. Buffett’s observation that his effective federal income tax rate is lower than the tax rate of Mr. Buffett’s secretary. In President Obama’s formulation, the Buffett Rule calls for taxpayers making at least $1,000,000 annually to pay federal income tax at a 30% bracket.
Book thumbnail image When Father was away… The Railway Children Happy International Children’s Book Day! When their father goes away unexpectedly, Roberta, Peter and Phyllis have to move with their mother from their London home to a cottage in the countryside. Thus begins E. Nesbit’s The Railway Children, the latest in our Oxford Children’s Classic series, which we’ve excerpted below.
Book thumbnail image An introduction to classic children’s literature Many of our readers will have first acquainted themselves with an Oxford World’s Classic as a child. In these videos, Peter Hunt, who was responsible for setting up the first course in children’s literature in the UK, reintroduces us to The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, and Treasure Island.
Book thumbnail image Quiz on country music, Level 3: Crazy Think you know your country music? While “Crazy” was made famous by Patsy Cline, it was composed by Willie Nelson. And that brings us to Level 3: Crazy — the last stage in our three-part country music quiz, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Tonight is the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards. Are you ready?
Book thumbnail image Scientists propose Big Bang Theory This Day in World History Poet T.S. Eliot might still be right—the world might end with a whimper. But on April 1, 1948, physicists George Gamow and Ralph Alpher first proposed the now prevailing idea of how the universe began—with a big bang.
March 2012 (77))
Quiz on country music, Level 2: Ring of fire Let’s test your knowledge from honky tonk to hillbilly blues. Here’s the second of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents, compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble, and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music. You can still go back and take “Quiz on country media, Level 1: Walk the line.” All this is running up to the 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st. Can you pass all three levels of our a country music knowledge challenge?
Book thumbnail image The lessons of hunger – past and present By Peter Gill A fresh famine is threatening Africa, this time in the semi-desert Sahel region of Francophone West Africa. The greatest concern is Niger where a third of the population cannot be sure they will be able to feed themselves or even be fed over the next few months. In the region as a whole there are some ten million people at risk.
Book thumbnail image Quiz on country music, Level 1: Walk the line The 47th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards is this Sunday, April 1st, so we thought it was time to pull together a country music knowledge challenge. Compiled by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Michael McCall, John Rumble and Paul Kingsbury — authors of The Encyclopedia of Country Music — we begin the first of a three-part quiz on the twang of guitars and accents today. How much do you know about the music of “three chords and the truth”?
Book thumbnail image Ferdinand and Isabella order expulsion of Jews from Spain This Day in World History On January 2, 1492, Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, and Isabella, Queen of Castile, completed La Reconquista (the Reconquest) — the Christian victory over Muslims in Spain — by forcing the surrender of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold. Less than two months later, they signed a decree that signaled the end of the toleration of another religious group within their lands. On March 30, they ordered that all of Spain’s Jews had to either convert to Christianity or leave the country. And those Jews had just four months to make their choices.
Book thumbnail image Being philosophical about scholarly editions By Desmond Clarke When searchable editions of classic philosophical texts became available in the 1980s, one proud publisher advertised the benefits of this new technology at an APA meeting by inviting participants to do a sample search of Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding.
Book thumbnail image What is Shari?ah? By Tamara Sonn For many people, the term shari?ah sets off alarm bells. Visions of court-ordered amputations and stoning arise in the popular imagination. Commentators point out that the European Court of Human Rights has pronounced some components of shari?ah, particularly those dealing with pluralism and public freedoms, incompatible with fundamental principles of democracy. And fears of “creeping shari?ah” have inspired hundreds of Web sites warning that Muslim fanatics intend to reestablish the caliphate and bring the entire world under Islam’s harsh legal system.
Book thumbnail image Questions about the connection between law and mind sciences The law is based on reasoned analysis, devoid of ideological biases or unconscious influences. Judges frame their decisions as straightforward applications of an established set of legal doctrines, principles, and mandates to a given set of facts. Or so we think. We sat down with Director of the Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School (PLMS) and editor of Ideology, Psychology, and Law, Professor Jon Hanson, to discuss the interaction of psychology and the law, and how they interact to form ideologies by which we all must live.
Book thumbnail image What do rockstars, publishers, and media start-ups have in common? By Duncan Calow It is only March, but 2012 has already seen a series of contract disputes over digital media and technology hit the headlines, with cases filed by Peter Frampton, HarperCollins, and new media company Phonedog.com
Monthly Etymology Gleanings for March By Anatoly Liberman I have received many questions, some of which are familiar (they recur with great regularity) and others that are new and will answer a few today and the rest in a month’s time. Nostratic Hypothesis. Our correspondent Mr. Steve Miller asked me whether I ever treat the topic of language evolution and, if I do, what I think of the Nostratic hypothesis.
Book thumbnail image DSM-5 Proposals for Generalized Anxiety Disorder By Allan V. Horwitz The latest revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the DSM-5, now scheduled to be published in May 2013, has generated a tremendous amount of controversy. The DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association to provide common language and criteria for the diagnosis of mental disorders, so any proposed changes to its terminology could mean millions more, or millions less, diagnosed with an illness. Nevertheless, the proposed changes in the Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) have been relatively neglected.
Book thumbnail image Epidemiology and epigenetics – a marriage made in heaven? By Caroline Relton Epidemiology, a well established cornerstone of medical research, is a group level discipline that aims to decipher the distribution and causes of diseases in populations. Epigenetics, perceived by many as the most fashionable research arena in which to be involved, is a mechanism of gene regulation. What brings these perhaps unlikely partners together?
Book thumbnail image Rick Santorum wins in Louisiana Rick Santorum had a great night, but he would need to win 70 percent of the delegates moving forward to unseat frontrunner Mitt Romney. That’s not going to happen, but it’ll be a painful road toward the increasingly inevitable. As late in this game, powerful conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Rush Limbaugh, and Tony Perkins are still advocating for Rick Santorum and other non-moderate candidates. Every day they continue to do this, they make less likely confident predictions from outside the beltway that Republicans will come together in the Fall against Obama.
Book thumbnail image Child Soldiers: Justice, Myths, and Prevention By Mark A. Drumbl Because of the Kony 2012 campaign, everyone is talking about the Lord’s Resistance Army, its deranged leadership, and its many victims in northern Uganda, notably child soldiers. Talk is intense. Amid the constant chatter, however, two crucial issues remain neglected. First, what does justice mean for child soldiers? Second, what contribution does Kony 2012 make to the prevention of child soldiering world-wide?
Book thumbnail image Apollo’s Lyre We’re celebrating World Theatre Day with an excerpt from Gaston Leroux’s masterpiece The Phantom of the Opera. A mysterious Phantom haunts the depths of the Paris Opera House where he has fallen passionately in love with the beautiful singer Christine Daaé. Under his guidance her singing rises to new heights and she is triumphantly acclaimed. […]
Book thumbnail image Do baby-boomers care? By Nancy Guberman Do baby-boomers see care as a normal natural extension of family obligations? A recent study in Quebec, Canada reveals that if baby-boomers in that province do consider care a family responsibility, they have a much more limited understanding of what this care entails than their predecessors and the state.
Book thumbnail image Paris Commune formed This Day in World History In the wake of France’s defeat by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War, workers and students of Paris joined together to form a revolutionary government called the Paris Commune. Elected on March 26, the Commune was in direct opposition to the conservative national government. Some historians call the period of the Commune’s rule the first working-class revolt. Though historic, the rebellion failed.
SciWhys: How do organisms develop? By Jonathan Crowe Each of our bodies is a mass of cells of varying types – from the brain cells that give us the power of thought, to the cardiac cells that form our heart and keep our blood circulating; from the lung cells that take in oxygen from the air around us, to the skin cells that envelop the organs and tissues that lie within. Regardless of their ultimate function, however, each of these cells has come from a single source – the fertilised egg. But how can the complexity and intricacy of a fully-functioning organism stem from such humble beginnings?
Book thumbnail image Greeks launch revolt against Turkish rule This Day in World History Chafing from four centuries of rule by the Ottoman Empire and taking advantage of the Ottoman army’s need to suppress a rebellious local official, the Greek organization Filike Etaireia ( “Friendly Brotherhood”) launched revolts across Greece on March 25, 1821. While it took years for the Greeks to win independence, the day the revolt began is still celebrated as Greek Independence Day.
Book thumbnail image What one atheist learned from hanging out with creationists By Jason Rosenhouse In May 2000 I began a post-doctoral position in the Mathematics Department at Kansas State University. Shortly after I arrived I learned of a conference for homeschoolers to be held in Wichita, the state’s largest city. Since that was a short drive from my home, and since anything related to public education in Kansas had relevance to my new job, I decided, on a whim, to attend.
Book thumbnail image Mad Men and the dangerous fruit of persuasion With the season premiere of AMC’s Mad Men coming this weekend, we thought we’d use this opportunity to introduce you to one of the most highly respected scientists in the field of Persuasion. As a matter of fact, many people consider Dr. Robert Cialdini as the “Godfather of influence”. What better way to do that then provide you with the foreword he wrote to a just-released book, Six Degrees of Social Influence. Enjoy his words below and enjoy the premiere.
Book thumbnail image Handel conducts London premiere of Messiah This Day in World History On March 23, 1743, composer George Frideric Handel directed the first London performance of his sacred oratorio, Messiah. While the composition has become revered as a magnificent choral work—and a staple of the Christmas holiday season—it met some controversy when it first appeared.
Book thumbnail image Name that cloud By Storm Dunlop World Meteorology Day marks a highly successful collaboration under the World Meteorological Organization, involving every country, large or small, rich or poor. Weather affects every single person (every living being) on the planet, but why do people feel meteorology is not for them? Why do they even find it so difficult to identify different types of cloud? Or at least they claim that it is difficult. The average person, it would seem, looks at the sky and simply thinks ‘clouds’. (Just as they look at the night sky and think nothing more than ‘stars’).
Book thumbnail image Carbon dioxide and our oceans By Jean-Pierre Gattuso and Lina Hansson The impact of man’s fossil fuel burning and deforestation on Earth’s climate can hardly have escaped anyone’s attention. But there is a second, much less known, consequence of our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. A large part of human-caused CO2 is absorbed by the world’s oceans, where it affects ocean chemistry and biology. This process, known as ocean acidification, is also referred to as “the other CO2 problem”.
Book thumbnail image It’s World Water Day! What are you doing to help? Is staggering population growth and intensifying effects of climate change driving the oasis-based society of the American Southwest close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe? Today is International World Water Day. Held annually on 22 March, it focuses attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. We sat down with William deBuys, author of A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest, to discuss what lies ahead for Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah.
Book thumbnail image A quiz on the Great Sea — the Mediterranean The Trojan War. The history of piracy. The great naval battles between Carthage and Rome. The Jewish Diaspora into Hellenistic worlds. The rise of Islam. The Grand Tours of the 19th century. The mass tourism of the 20th. We may have missed World Maritime Day on March 17, but we can still admire the watery wonder of the sea and its peoples. And now a quick quiz on the history of the Mediterranean…
Book thumbnail image Three Conversations with Computers By Peter J Bentley What better way to spend an afternoon than having a friendly chat? My three friends are online chatbots – Artificial Intelligence software designed to analyse my sentences and respond accordingly. All I do is visit a specific webpage, then type into a box in my Internet browser and they reply, just like chatting online to a human. These three (jabberwacky, iGod and ALICE) are some of the more advanced chatbots out there, the result of decades of research by computer scientists to try and achieve intelligence in a computer.
The Seasons, part 2. From three to four, summer. By Anatoly Liberman The ancient Indo-Europeans lived in the northern hemisphere (see the previous post), but, although this conclusion is certain, it does not follow that they divided the year into four seasons. Our perception of climate is colored too strongly by Vivaldi, the French impressionists, and popular restaurants. At some time, the Indo-Europeans dominated the territory from India to Scandinavia (hence the name scholars gave them). They lived and traveled in many climate zones, and no word for “winter,” “spring,” “summer,” and “autumn” is common to the entire family; yet some cover several language groups.
Book thumbnail image Nadir Shah enters Delhi and captures the Peacock Throne This Day in World History On March 21, 1739, Nadir Shah, leading Persian (Iranian) and Turkish forces, completed his conquest of the Mughal Empire by capturing Delhi, India, its capital. He seized vast stores of wealth, and among the prizes he carried away was the fabled Peacock Throne.
Book thumbnail image A Keatsian Field Trip By Richard Marggraf Turley, Jayne Elisabeth Archer and Howard Thomas “What if the field in Keats’s ode was (cue drum roll), not an allegorical field, not a cipher for, say, St Peter’s Field in Manchester (the location of the Peterloo Massacre), nor a mythic site of bucolic languor, but an actual Winchester field …
Book thumbnail image Dangerous ignorance: The hysteria of Kony 2012 By Adam Branch From Kampala, the Kony 2012 hysteria was easy to miss. I’m not on Facebook or Twitter. I don’t watch YouTube and the Ugandan papers didn’t pick up the story for several days. But what I could not avoid were the hundreds of emails from friends, colleagues, and students in the US about the video by Invisible Children and the massive online response to it.
Book thumbnail image War, truth, and the shadows of meaning Louis René Beres It is time to look behind the news. Operation Iraqi Freedom is now officially concluded; U.S. operations in Afghanistan are reportedly moving in a similar direction. More generically, however, debate about combat strategy and tactics remains ongoing.
Book thumbnail image Why spring is the season of hope By Anthony Scioli Spring and hope are intertwined in the mind, body, and soul. In spring, nature conspires with biology and psychology to spark the basic needs that underlie hope: attachment, mastery, survival, and spirituality. It is true that hope does not melt away in the summer; it is not rendered fallow in autumn nor does it perish in the deep freeze of winter. But none of these other seasons can match the bounty of hope that greets us in the spring. My reflections on hope and the spring season are cast in terms of metaphors.
Book thumbnail image When we walked on the Moon At 5:14 am GMT on March 20th the sun will cross the celestial equator going from south to north, signalling the beginning of spring in the planet’s northern hemisphere and autumn in the southern. We’re celebrating this astronomical event with Ian Ridpath and newly released NASA photos of the Moon.
Book thumbnail image Song Dynasty falls as Mongols complete conquest of China This Day in World History The Song Dynasty ruled parts of China for more than three centuries. That reign ended on March 19, 1279, when a Mongol fleet defeated a Song fleet in the Battle of Yamen and completed its conquest of China.
Book thumbnail image The myths of monogamy By Eric Anderson Sexual taboos are falling in Western cultures. Largely due to the Internet, today’s youth take a much more sex-positive view to what comes naturally than the generations before them. They have shed the fear and misconception of masturbation. They enjoy a hook-up culture, where sex is easier to come by; and there is less of a double standard for women who also enjoying these freedoms.
A pint of Guinness Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Let’s take a look at a part of Ireland’s history since 1759 — the brewing of Guinness. Now raise a pint of Dublin’s own Guinness to our fellow Irishmen and women. The following article is Brian Glover’s entry on Guinness in the Oxford Companion to Beer, edited by Garrett Oliver.
Book thumbnail image Goldman Sachs and the betrayal and repair of trust By Robert F. Hurley Greg Smith’s March 14, 2012 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs” is a familiar story for those who follow the betrayal and repair of trust. Smith tells a story of his frustration and disillusionment at Goldman changing from a culture that valued service to clients to one that rewarded those who made the most money for the firm even if it betrayed client interests.
Book thumbnail image Magellan reaches the Philippines This Day in World History On March 16, 1521, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan — attempting to sail around the world for Spain — reached the Philippine archipelago. Magellan and his expedition were the first Europeans to reach the Philippines, a stop on the first circumnavigation of the globe — though Magellan’s portion of that journey would soon end.
Book thumbnail image Happy St. Urho’s Day! While Irish eyes are smiling on St. Patrick’s Day, many Finns are already celebrating St. Urho’s Day. The holiday was first celebrated in Minnesota on March 16th, which happens to be just before St. Patrick’s Day.
Book thumbnail image A short history of computer science We challenged author Peter Bentley to name the most important and unknown people in the history of computer science in under three minutes. Which famous computer scientist had a passion for unicycles and juggling?
Book thumbnail image The Ides of March and the enduring romance of prophecy By Stuart Vyse “Beware the Ides of March,” warns the soothsayer in Act 1, scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, and by the end of the play, the Roman dictator, having ignored the soothsayer’s prophecy, is dead at the hands of a conspiracy of foes. The 15th of March was made famous by this single historical event, described in Plutarch’s history of Caesar’s life and made part of our contemporary Western vocabulary by Shakespeare’s tragedy and, more recently, by last summer’s political drama starring Ryan Gosling and George Clooney.
Book thumbnail image David Marsden: The Father of Movement Disorders The final monumental work of the late Professor David Marsden – Marsden’s Book of Movement Disorders – is due for publication this month, almost thirty years on from when the project was initially conceived. In homage to the ‘father of movement disorders’, his friend and colleague, Ivan Donaldson, has written a personal reflection on great contribution and influence David had on the field of movement disorders.
The Seasons, part 1: spring and fall By Anatoly Liberman Since this blog is now in the seventh year of its existence (if I remember correctly, it started in March 2006), some questions tend to recur. Our correspondent wants to know the origin of the word winter. Long ago I touched on winter and summer, but briefly, in the “gleanings,” so that it may be useful to devote a short series to the Germanic names of the seasons, leave these posts in the archive, and thus avoid possible repetition.
An Englishman’s fascination for Egypt’s grand hotels By Andrew Humphreys Imagine luxury hotels during the bygone days when explorers, travelers, and foreign occupying forces mingled. Walk into the lavish lobbies and moonlit terraces of these “gilded refuges.” Mix with delighted high-society, dining and dancing while “wintering on the Nile.” Journalist, editor, and author Andrew Humphreys recreates this world with well-documented accounts, extracts, and anecdotes; vintage photography; and full-color illustrations of travel posters, luggage labels, postcards, decorated letterheads, menus, and invitations in Grand Hotels of Egypt: In the Golden Age of Travel. We sat down with Andrew Humphreys to discuss the glamorous guests, glorious architecture, and regrettable colonialism.
Book thumbnail image Climate change: causing volcanoes to go pop By Bill McGuire When I first mention to someone that a changing climate is capable of causing volcanoes to go pop or the ground to shake, they think that I am either mad or having them on. Usually, this is just because they have not given the idea much thought, so that when I am given the opportunity to explain how this works they often become quite keen on the notion. Of course, the dyed-in-the-wool climate denier ideologues are already attacking the whole thesis; not on the basis of arguments rooted in science, but because it does not fit with their blinkered world view.
Book thumbnail image Obama’s star is rising By Elvin Lim At this time four years ago, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were asking Democratic primary voters to consider the question, “who would be the better president?” This year, Republican candidates are asking their electorate to consider, “who would be worse?” This contrast explains why President Obama has so far resisted the considerable headwind against his re-election.
Book thumbnail image Académie Française forms This Day in World History For five years, beginning in 1629, a small group of writers gathered in Paris to discuss literary topics. The group soon came to the attention of Cardinal Richelieu, the power behind the French throne and a wealthy patron of the arts. He suggested that the body become official, an idea the group grudgingly accepted. On March 13, 1634, they formally constituted themselves as the Académie Française. The Academy has been in operation ever since except for a ten-year hiatus during the French Revolution. The following year they received a charter from the king.
Book thumbnail image Interesting facts about the US Supreme Court By Linda Greenhouse During the 2010-11 term, 7,857 new petitions for review reached the Court. Carrying over 1,209 petitions from the previous term, including forty that the justices had already agreed to hear but that had not yet been argued, the Court granted an additional ninety cases and issued a total of seventy-eight opinions.
Will climate change cause earthquakes? In Waking the Giant, Bill McGuire argues that now that human activities are driving climate change as rapidly as anything seen in post-glacial times, the sleeping giant beneath our feet is stirring once again. The close of the last Ice Age saw not only a huge temperature hike but also the Earth’s crust bouncing and bending in response to the melting of the great ice sheets and the filling of the ocean basins — dramatic geophysical events that triggered earthquakes, spawned tsunamis, and provoked a series of eruptions from the world’s volcanoes.
Book thumbnail image The intellectual foundations of the Occupy Wall Street movement By Frank J. Vandall One of the chief attacks on the Occupy Wall Street Movement is that it has no articulated rational basis. It s just a bunch of unwashed neo-hippies who are wasting time, public resources and park-space while not looking for a job. Careful attention to Occupy Wall Street interviews manifests four foundational complaints, however.
Book thumbnail image Fellowes and the Titanic By John Welshman The latest news for period drama fans is that Julian Fellowes, writer of Downton Abbey, has created a four-part ITV mini-series commemorating the centenary of the Titanic sinking. However, what many viewers may not realise is that there was a real Fellowes on board the ship in 1912. But rather than being an ancestor of the popular writer, Alfred J. Fellowes was a humble crew member and one of the estimated 1,514 people to perish in the maritime disaster.
Book thumbnail image Earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster strike Japan : This Day in World History Japan, situated on the Ring of Fire on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, has suffered some major earthquakes over the years. However, nothing before compared to the triple disaster of March 11, 2011: a massive earthquake followed by powerful tsunamis which led to a serious nuclear accident.
Book thumbnail image The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: A look back 100 years By Marjorie C. Malley This weekend we remember a tragic, terrifying accident that potentially affected not only Japanese citizens, but the entire planet. Dangerous radioactive substances were released into the atmosphere, making the region around the plant uninhabitable, and contaminating the drinking water and the food chain.
Book thumbnail image Robert Sherman, songwriter and storyteller By Philip Furia Next to George and Ira Gershwin, the only major fraternal songwriting team in the history of American popular music has been Robert and Richard Sherman. Together, the Sherman brothers wrote songs for such film musicals as Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Tom Sawyer, The Jungle Book, and The Aristocats. Richard Sherman composed the music for their songs, and both he and Robert wrote the lyrics.
Book thumbnail image Alexander Graham Bell makes world’s first telephone call This Day in World History “Mr. Watson,” Alexander Graham Bell said into the mouthpiece, “come here — I want to see you.” Thomas Watson, Bell’s collaborator, heard the words in another room over the receiver. And the world’s first telephone call was complete.
Book thumbnail image Lavatory and Liberty: The Secret History of the Bathroom Break By Corey Robin Inspired by all this libertarian talk, I dug out an old piece of mine from 2002, in the Boston Globe, that talks about a little known fact: many workers in the United States aren’t able to exercise their right to pee on the job—due to lack of government enforcement—and it wasn’t until 1998 (!) that they even got that right, thanks to the federal government. The piece pivots from there to a more general discussion about coercion in the workplace and its history.
Book thumbnail image Syria: The Post-Assad Unknowns By Steven A. Cook With all the discussion of diplomacy (and its limits) and the robust debate about military action in Syria, the issue that haunts both is the nature of post-Assad Syria. Will Syria end up like Iraq? Like Lebanon of the 1970s-1980s? Both countries have suffered much from sectarian and ethnic differences that politicians have manipulated for their own ends. Or might Syria suffer far worse?
Book thumbnail image Rural culture in Victorian England Lark Rise to Candleford is Flora Thompson’s classic evocation of a vanished world of agricultural customs and rural culture. The trilogy of Lark Rise, Over to Candleford, and Candleford Green tells the story of Flora’s childhood and youth during the 1880s in Lark Rise, in reality Juniper Hill, the hamlet in Oxfordshire where she was born. Through the eyes of Laura, the author’s fictional counterpart, Flora describes the cottages, characters, and way of life of the agricultural labourers and their families with whom she grew up; seasonal celebrations, schooling, church-going, entertainment and story-telling are described in fond and documentary detail.
Book thumbnail image Can employment opportunities transform women’s work and family lives? By Robert Jensen In many developing countries, women often leave school, marry and start having children at a young age. For example, in India, less than half of girls aged 11-18 are enrolled in school. By age 18, nearly 60 percent of women are married and over a quarter have given birth. These outcomes are powerful indicators of the low social and economic progress of women, and may have consequences for poverty and income growth. It is therefore important to understand what factors can help improve these outcomes.
Book thumbnail image International Women’s Day celebrated around the world This Day in World History Each year, women and men around the world honor the achievements of women and seek to promote women’s rights by celebrating International Women’s Day. The day’s origin can be traced to the National Woman’s Day staged by the Socialist Party of America from 1909 to 1913. Its goal was to advance the cause of women’s suffrage.
Book thumbnail image Story time with the Brothers Grimm… Part Two Read the second installment of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Selected Tales: The Water of Life. What happens to the scheming elder princes and their sea-water goblet next? And will the youngest prince live happily ever after with his beautiful princess?
Monthly Gleanings, February 2012, part 2 By Anatoly Liberman The Infamous C-Word. This is the letter I received soon after the publication of the post devoted to our (formerly) most unpronounceable word: “…I am writing to ask you if you have run across it [this word] as a nautical term. I am a former sailing ship mariner (a.k.a. “tall ships”) and sailmaker and currently maritime historian/editor for the National Maritime Historical Society.
Book thumbnail image Sudoku and the Pace of Mathematics Among mathematicians, it is always a happy moment when a long-standing problem is suddenly solved. The year 2012 started with such a moment, when an Irish mathematician named Gary McGuire announced a solution to the minimal-clue problem for Sudoku puzzles.
Book thumbnail image Story time with the Brothers Grimm… Part One We’ve picked one of our favourite stories from the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s Selected Tales: The Water of Life. Read on for part one, and come back for the final twist in the tale tomorrow!
Book thumbnail image Romney’s double score in Arizona and Michigan By Elvin Lim Mitt Romney had an ok Tuesday night, no better or worse than the ones he’s had so far. But it is still a story because Romney needed his wins in Arizona and especially Michigan. No news is great news for a campaign’s whose raison d’être has consistently been “take whoever is the anti-Romney candidate down.”
Book thumbnail image Mendeleev’s Periodic Table presented in public This Day in World History On March 6, 1869, Dmitri Mendeleev’s breakthrough discovery was presented to the Russian Chemical Society. The chemist had determined that the known elements—70 at the time—could be arranged by their atomic weights into a table that revealed that their physical properties followed regular patterns. He had invented the periodic table of elements.
Book thumbnail image Charles Cushman and the discovery of Old World color By Eric Sandweiss Charles Cushman has gotten me into some pretty tight spots. He’s dragged me through green pastures and led me beside still alleys. He’s drawn me closer than I cared to come to the shadow of death, as I weaved my car through freeway traffic with one eye on the road and the other on my map, one hand balancing a camera and the other tending to the steering wheel.
Book thumbnail image Public pensions, private equity, and the mythical 8% return By Edward Zelinsky Public pension plans should not invest in private equity deals. These deals lack both transparency and the discipline of market forces. Private equity investments allow elected officials to assume unrealistically high rates of return for public pension plans and to make correspondingly low contributions to such plans. This is a recipe for inadequately funded pensions, an outcome good for neither public employees nor taxpayers.
Book thumbnail image Memo From Manhattan: Town vs. Gown in Gotham By Sharon Zukin On a recent Saturday afternoon, along with 200 other two-legged residents of Greenwich Village and an equal number of their four-legged friends, I attended a protest meeting against New York University’s Plan 2031, a 20-year strategy to increase the size of NYU’s physical presence in New York City by 6 million square feet, 2 million of those to be newly built in the heart of our neighborhood.
Book thumbnail image The difficulties of shaping a stable world By Julian Richards As the world wrings its hands at the slaughter in Syria and ponders what, if anything, it can do, the precedent of intervention in Libya constantly raises its head. Why was it right and proper for us to intervene in Libya to prevent humanitarian catastrophe, but we are choosing not to do so now in Syria?
Book thumbnail image Questions about the evolution of music criticism In February 2012, Grove Music’s Editor in Chief Deane Root talked to contemporary music scholar Paul Griffiths about his multi-faceted career and his involvement with Grove in print and online. Grove Music Online has been the leading online resource for music research since its inception in 2001, a compendium of music scholarship offering full texts with numerous subsequent updates and emendations, more than 50,000 signed articles, and 30,000 biographies contributed by over 6,000 scholars from around the world.
Book thumbnail image Alexander II Becomes Czar of Russia This Day in World History When his father, Nicholas I, died of pneumonia, Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov succeeded to the throne of emperor of Russia, becoming Czar Alexander II. While his 36-year rule was marked by substantial reforms, it was also dogged by unrest and several assassination attempts.
Book thumbnail image New books, old story? By Natalia Nowakowska As the Catholic Church embarks this month upon its observance of Lent, many congregations will be holding in their hands brand new, bright red liturgical books — copies of the new English translation of the Roman Missal (the service book for Catholic Mass), introduced throughout the English-speaking world at the end of 2011 on the instructions of the Vatican.
Book thumbnail image “Davy” Jones, actor and musician By Gordon Thompson As the Beatles made their historic debut on American television in February 1964, the cast of Oliver!, the actor playing the role of the Artful Dodger, and other acts on the show watched from the wings as the hysteria unfolded. Davy Jones had started his acting career on British television, making his debut appearance in the venerable Coronation Street followed by the gritty Liverpool police drama, Z-Cars.
Book thumbnail image Retirement plans and the sexes By Rosemary Wright In 2011, the oldest Baby Boom workers reached the age of 65 — an age that more than 60 million Baby Boomers will reach by 2030. The issue of retirement weighs particularly on women, who are likely to outlive men and therefore have a longer period of retirement to finance.
Book thumbnail image A history of the book By Michael Suarez and Henry Woudhuysen ‘And yet the books’ by Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz’s great poem (1986) brilliantly captures the relationship ?between the book as a universal, world-wide object, a thing that exists by the millions and yet is so ?individual, and the single, solitary writer or reader. How can such a ubiquitous, material phenomenon ?be at the same time so personal and so transcendent?
Book thumbnail image “Music in your blood and poetry in your soul”: the beauty of Welsh English By Bethan Tovey To be born Welsh requires the genes of a chameleon. You must be a geographer (how many maps have I drawn to explain to anyone not from our little island the difference between “Britain” and “England”?), a musician (try singing “Bread of Heaven” in a Welsh pub: I give you two bars before you’re accompanied by full four-part harmony), a diplomat (not punching the hundred-and-first person to make a sheep joke takes some restraint), and above all, a linguist. The Welsh have a way with words.
February 2012 (72))
Monthly Gleanings for February 2012, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman There has been a good deal to glean this month because the comments and responses have been numerous and also because, although February is a short month even in a leap year, in 2012 it had five Wednesdays. Among the questions was one about the profession and qualifications of an etymologist. It is a recurring question from young correspondents, and I have answered it briefly more than once, but always in the “gleanings.” It occurred to me that perhaps I should write a short essay on this subject and, if someone else asks me about such things in the future, I will be able to refer to this post. The rest will be discussed next week.
Book thumbnail image David Gascoyne and the missing portrait By Robert Fraser I am often asked to name my favourite poem by the British writer David Gascoyne (1916-2001), my biography of whom appears with OUP this month. Bearing in mind Gascoyne was in his time an interpreter of Surrealism, an existentialist of a religious variety and a proponent of ecology, you might expect me to go for a poem along these lines. Instead, I usually choose a poem of the early 1940s entitled “Odeur de Pensée.”
Book thumbnail image What is a leap year? Today, 29 February 2012, is a ‘leap day’. To understand more about the leap phenomenon, and the significance of 29 February in history, we turn to The Oxford Companion to the Year: an exploration of calendar customs and time-reckoning.
Book thumbnail image A brokered Republican Convention? By Elvin Lim The Republican nomination race is still Mitt Romney’s to lose, but he is in trouble yet again, and his cloak of inevitability is fast disappearing.
Book thumbnail image Final episode of TV series M*A*S*H airs This Day in World History On February 28, 1983, at the end of its eleventh season, M*A*S*H said goodbye to television. More than 105 million Americans in about 51 million homes watched the series finale, a two-and-a-half-hour-long movie directed by star Alan Alda that featured the show’s characteristic blend of comedy and drama.
Book thumbnail image Alejandrina Cabrera should be on the San Luis city council ballot By Dennis Barron For perhaps the first time ever, a candidate was struck from an Arizona ballot for poor English. Judge John Nelson, of the Yuma County Superior Court, ruled that Alejandrina Cabrera cannot run for city council in the border town of San Luis because she doesn’t know enough English to fulfill her duties.
Book thumbnail image Robert Moses and the Second Avenue Subway By Joan Marans Dim The world was allegedly created in seven days, so why is it taking New York City so long — some 90 years, or possibly longer — to create the Second Avenue Subway? According to the MTA, proposals to build a north-south subway line along Second Avenue date back to 1929. But it wasn’t until March 2007 — 78 years later — that the first construction contract for Phase One of the Second Avenue Subway was awarded.
Book thumbnail image Why Memoir Matters By G. Thomas Couser Memoir gained sudden prominence in the mid 1990s, when a few memoirs by unheralded authors–Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, Mary Karr’s Liars’ Club, and Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted–had spectacular sales and favorable reviews. The memoir boom was underway.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: a cure for Carys? Part Two By Jonathan Crowe Using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In my last post and in this one, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.
Book thumbnail image Adolf Hitler’s treason trial begins in Munich This Day in World History On February 26, 1924, Adolf Hitler and nine associates stood trial in a Munich courtroom. The charge was treason — they were accused of trying to overthrow the German republic. That day, Hitler turned the tables to accuse the German leaders who had surrendered in 1918, ending World War I, and created the republican government he so despised: “There is no such thing as high treason against the traitors of 1918,” he proclaimed.
Book thumbnail image Khrushchev denounces Stalin in speech to Soviet communists This Day in World History For thirty years, Joseph Stalin had ruled the Soviet Union unchallenged. Less than three years after his death, new Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev shocked the Twentieth Communist Party Congress with a long, angry speech that denounced Stalin.
Book thumbnail image Debate: What is the origin of “buckaroo”? OED Editor responds We (unintentionally) started a debate about the origin of the word “buckaroo” with our quiz Can you speak American? last week. Richard Bailey, author of Speaking American, argues that it comes from the West African language Efik. Here OED editor Katrin Thier argues that the origin isn’t quite so clear.
Book thumbnail image Debate: What is the origin of “buckaroo”? Richard Bailey writes We (unintentionally) started a debate about the origin of the word “buckaroo” with our quiz Can you speak American? last week. In an excerpt from Richard Bailey’s Speaking American, he argues that it comes from the West African language Efik. A response from OED editor Dr. Katrin Thier will follow.
Book thumbnail image Slang evolution = lush In these videos, The Life of Slang author Julie Coleman tells us how — and how fast — slang can spread from one side of the globe to another, and gives us 26 ways of saying ‘groovy’.
Book thumbnail image Presidential Pigmies By Frank Prochaska What would the Founding Fathers think of the candidates in the Republican primaries? If the remaining presidential hopefuls were to be asked this question in a televised debate, the ignorant and dissembling replies would be a sorry spectacle.
Book thumbnail image Israel and Iran at the eleventh hour Professor Louis René Beres and General John T. Chain (USAF/ret.) In world politics, irrational does not mean “crazy.” It does mean valuing certain goals or objectives even more highly than national survival. In such rare but not unprecedented circumstances, the irrational country leadership may still maintain a distinct rank-order of preferences. Unlike trying to influence a “crazy” state, therefore, it is possible to effectively deter an irrational adversary.
A post-quantum world By Vlatko Vedral Most of you science buffs out there will, of course, know that science progresses in abrupt jumps, and every once in a while a new theory gets discovered that forces a radical departure from previously held views. I indeed viewed the evolution of science, through what the philosopher Karl Popper called the process of “conjectures and refutations”, as another instance of information processing. But if it’s not unlikely that quantum physics will one day be surpassed, then what confidence should you have in my main thesis? Could it be that the new theory will claim that some other entity – and not a bit of information – is yet more fundamental? In other words, will the post-quantum reality be made up of some other stuff?
Oh Dude, you are so welcome By Anatoly Liberman I borrowed the title of this post from an ad for an alcoholic beverage whose taste remains unknown to me. The picture shows two sparsely clad very young females sitting in a bar on both sides of a decently dressed but bewildered youngster. I assume their age allows all three characters to drink legally and as much as they want. My concern is not with their thirst but with the word dude. After all, this blog is about the origin of nouns, verbs, and adjectives, rather than the early stages of alcoholism.
Book thumbnail image Empress of China becomes first US ship to trade with China This Day in World History Carrying a full load of goods, including 30 tons of ginseng, and finally free of the ice that had choked the harbor for weeks, the Empress of China set out from New York on February 22, 1784 for China. Just months after the British had finally evacuated the city after the Revolutionary War, American merchants were seizing the opportunity afforded by independence to enter the China trade.
Book thumbnail image Once upon a life story… By Denis Sampson ‘Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road.’ It is one of the most celebrated of all fictional beginnings, evoking the essence and tradition of narrative itself, telling a first story to a child, and at the same time the beginning of a very sophisticated kind of biographical fiction, the childhood and youth of an artist.
Book thumbnail image OUP NYC Poetry Reading Series with Paty, Schoonebeek, Dimitrov, & Landau On February 23rd, Oxford University Press in New York will host four poets reading together on one night. Their poems span a broad range of forms and aesthetics, from collaborative short poems and plainspoken lyrics to a sequence of post-apocalyptic epistles. A wine reception will begin the evening at 6 p.m., with readings from the poets afterward. Oxford University Press associate editor Kristin Maffei will host the event and read a selection from her own poems. If you are a poetry fan/lover please join us. To wet your appetite for the event, we have a few selections of poetry below.
Book thumbnail image Martin Scorsese, 3D, and Hugo By Robert Kolker “That’s that,” quoting Ace Rothstein at the end of Casino. I didn’t end the Martin Scorsese chapter on an optimistic note in the fourth edition of A Cinema of Loneliness. There is more than a hint that the Scorsese’s creative energies might be flagging. With this in mind, I went to see Hugo with a lot of skepticism.
Book thumbnail image Cherokee Phoenix begins publication This Day in World History On February 21, 1828, the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, began publication. Editor Elias Boudinot explained the paper’s purpose—to promote anything that will be to “the benefit of the Cherokees” and to prevent the tribe from “dwindl[ing] into oblivion.” Boudinot concluded his opening editorial by declaring his hope “for that happy period, when all the Indian tribes of America shall arise, Phoenix like, from their ashes.”
Questions about Santa Muerte and Mexicans’ relationship with death By R. Andrew Chesnut It’s Mardi Gras today and revellers may recognize skull and skeleton decorations also used on the Day of the Dead. Santa Muerte is the skeleton saint whose cult has attracted millions of devotees over the past decade. We wanted to ask R. Andrew Chestnut about this folk saint’s impact today.
Book thumbnail image The Oxford Companion to Downton Abbey Now that Series One and Two, plus the Christmas Special, of Downton Abbey have aired in the US and Canada, we’ve decided to compile a reading list for those serious-minded viewers who’d like to learn more about Edwardian England, World War I, life in an aristocratic household, and what lies ahead for the Crawleys and their servants. Warning: Spoilers ahead.
Book thumbnail image Teddy, Teddy, enough already By Lewis L. Gould When President Obama invoked the name of “Teddy” Roosevelt in his speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, in December, he seemed on safe ground in referring to his predecessor by that familiar nickname. In the world of the talking head and the political pro, everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was called “Teddy” by one and all. What better way to establish credentials as a keeper of the presidential heritage than to refer to “Teddy”?
Book thumbnail image Making space for well-being? By Mia Gray, Linda Lobao, and Ron Martin “There is a paradox at the heart of our lives. As Western societies have got richer, their people have become no happier” (Layard, 2005). Layard has not been alone in questioning the relationship between economic growth and well-being. Theoretically, empirically, and politically, there is increasing dissatisfaction with growth as the main indicator of well-being. As such, there is renewed interest in analysing the institutions and conventions through which the economy and society are measured and understood.
Book thumbnail image Can you speak American? A wide-ranging account of American English, Richard Bailey’s Speaking American investigates the history and continuing evolution of our language from the sixteenth century to the present. Now it’s time to ask yourself how well you really know your American English. We’ve composed a quiz for some Friday fun. Can you speak American?
Book thumbnail image Antiquity and newfangleness By Andrew Zurcher The “Februarie” eclogue of Edmund Spenser’s pastoral collection, The Shepheardes Calender, was first published in 1579. It presents a conversation between two shepherds, a brash “Heardmans boye” called Cuddie and an old stick-in-the-mud named Thenot.
Book thumbnail image Ben Jonson, Governor By Ian Donaldson During his early forties Ben Jonson was invited to act as tutor or “governor” to a couple of notoriously difficult young men. He may have won these commissions on account of his sheer physical strength as much as his equally formidable intellectual qualities.
Book thumbnail image Public unions: What’s the big deal? By Joseph A. McCartin Over the course of the last 30 years, bipartisan support for public sector bargaining has eroded. And it was Reagan’s breaking of the 1981 strike by PATCO, the union of air traffic controllers, that contributed to this shift. More recently, Gov. Scott Walker in 2011 cited that action as an inspiration for his effort to strip government workers of bargaining rights in Wisconsin.
Book thumbnail image Fidel Castro becomes Prime Minister of Cuba This Day in World History Dressed in army fatigues and surrounded by supporters and reporters, 32-year old Fidel Castro took the oath of office as Cuba’s prime minister on February 16, 1959. He would remain in power for nearly fifty years.
SciWhys: a cure for Carys? By Jonathan Crowe Using science to understand our world can help to improve our lives. In this post and the next, I want to illustrate this point with an example of how progress in science is providing hope for the future for one family, and many others like them.
Balderdash: A no-nonsense word By Anatoly Liberman Unlike hogwash or, for example, flapdoodle, the noun balderdash is a word of “uncertain” (some authorities even say of “unknown”) origin. However, what is “known” about it is probably sufficient for questioning the disparaging epithets.
Book thumbnail image An academic librarian without a library By Michael Levine-Clark I’m sitting in a dorm room—complete with the uncontrollable blast heat I remember from college — the space that has been my office since June, when the library shut down for a major renovation. Besides having to get used to a somewhat uncomfortable and isolated space, my colleagues and I have had to learn to be librarians without a library building, and our students and faculty have had to learn to use physical collections that are entirely offsite. And the campus community has had to think about the question of what a library is and should be, particularly the question of how to find and use our physical monographs.
Book thumbnail image The real lessons of the Cuban Cold War crisis By John Gittings This year we shall recall, with a very nervous shudder, the 50th anniversary of the greatest crisis in the Cold War – and with the knowledge that but for good fortune none of us would be here to recall it at all.
Book thumbnail image The Road To Super Tuesday By Elvin Lim The Republican party has traditionally been the more conservative party not only in terms of values but also in terms of organization reform. Leaders tend to be slower than their Democratic counterparts in reforming the nomination process, and voters tend to be more deferential to the last cycle’s runner-up to the winner.
Book thumbnail image Turning Data into Dates By Sydney Beveridge Cupid scours a trove of demographic data to guide his arrows. This Valentine’s Day, let Social Explorer help you map your way to love.
Book thumbnail image ENIAC unveiled to public This Day in World History On February 14, 1946, officials from the army and the University of Pennsylvania assembled at that institution’s Moore School of Engineering to reveal the results of a secret government project. They unveiled the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC), the world’s first general function, programmable electronic computer.
Book thumbnail image London Fashion Week is fast approaching By Emily Ardizzone and Anna Wright 2012 will be a momentous year for the UK capital, and the new collections presented in London in this week will no doubt add to the growing feeling of excitement in the run up to the Olympic Games. London’s Fashion Royalty will all be present, from established design houses such as Aquascutum and Paul Smith, to new and emerging talent in the form of the Central St Martins’ Graduate show.
Book thumbnail image Brian Epstein and the quest for a contract By Gordon Thompson On a cold winter’s day in early 1962, Brian Epstein and the Beatles huddled together contemplating their failed bid for a Decca recording contract and the bitter aftertaste of rejection that left emptiness in their stomachs. But hunger can feed ambition. Disappointments would ensue, but almost immediately Epstein would be the proverbial right man in the right place at the right time and meet a string of people who were looking for something not quite exactly unlike the Beatles.
Book thumbnail image Galileo arrives in Rome for trial before Inquisition This Day in World History Sixty-nine years old, wracked by sciatica, weary of controversy, Galileo Galilei entered Rome on February 13, 1633. He had been summoned by Pope Urban VIII to an Inquisition investigating his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. The charge was heresy. The cause was Galileo’s support of the Copernican theory that the planets, including Earth, revolved around the sun.
(Homo)sexuality in Shakespeare’s Sonnets By Stanley Wells The great actor Sir Ian McKellen, who is also well-known as a gay activist, was recently quoted in the press as saying that Shakespeare himself was probably gay. Invited to comment on this, I pointed out that there was nothing new in the idea, which for a long time has been frequently expressed especially because some of his sonnets are clearly addressed to a male.
Book thumbnail image Remembering Anti-Lynching Day On the evening of February 12, 1937, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) commemorated its twenty-eighth anniversary at Mother AME Zion Church in Harlem. The grand, grey, neo-Gothic structure was recent to 137th Street—it had been completed in 1925—but Mother AME Zion was one of the nation’s oldest black churches, dating to the late 18th century and a reputed stop along the Underground Railroad.
Book thumbnail image Understanding evolution on Darwin Day By Karl S. Rosengren, Sarah K. Brem, E. Margaret Evans and Gale M. Sinatra Today is Darwin’s birthday. It’s doubtful that any scientist would deny Darwin’s importance, that his work provides the field of biology with its core structure, by providing a beautiful, powerful mechanism to explain the diversity of form and function that we see all around us in the living world. But being of importance to one’s field is only one way we judge a scientist’s contributions.
Book thumbnail image Emperor Meiji issues new constitution of Japan This Day in World History On February 11, 1889, Japan’s Emperor Meiji furthered his plan to modernize and westernize his nation by promulgating a new constitution. The new plan of government created a western-style two-house parliament, called the Diet, and a constitutional monarchy — though one with a Japanese character.
Book thumbnail image Nelson Mandela, 22 years after his release from prison By Kenneth S. Broun Twenty-two years ago, on the 11th of February 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of a South African prison, a free man for the first time in twenty-seven years. He immediately assumed the leadership role that would move South Africa from a system of apartheid to a struggling but viable democracy. No one person, not even Nelson Mandela, was solely responsible for this miracle.
Book thumbnail image Strategic implications of a “nuclear weapons free world” By Louis René Beres Barack Obama still favors the creation of a “nuclear weapons free world.” This high-minded preference is more than infeasible; it is also undesirable. For Israel, in particular, a beleaguered microstate that could ultimately suffer the full fury of this American president’s misplaced idealism, a denuclearization “solution” in any form could not be tolerated.
Book thumbnail image Homophobic bullying Recently I learned of yet another suicide of a young gay may which has been attributed to sustained bullying at school. Phillip Parker was 14 years old when he took his own life on Friday January 20th, 2012. Surely it has to be wrong for any young person to feel so helpless that the only way to be freed from the torment of the bullies is to commit suicide.
Book thumbnail image Charles Dickens and garbage By Talia Schaffer Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago this week, but he is very much alive in our culture, having become associated with two ways of seeing the world: “Dickensian” is now shorthand for filthy urban misery, but it is also linked to domestic bliss, the cozy armchair with the rubicund host, the plump goose and the fragrant, steaming punch. The man whose attack on the workhouses has resonated for two centuries is the same man who popularized the modern Christmas.
Book thumbnail image Denim venom: future products in the style of jweats By Mark Peters Word blends are the bunnies of language: they breed like motherfathers. During the recent American Dialect Society meeting in Portland, plenty of blends were singled out. Assholocracy is an apt description of America, especially in an election year. Botoxionist refers to a doctor specializing in the forehead region of vain people. A brony is a bro who loves The Little Pony. That word was voted Least Likely to Succeed, but you can bet similar words will keep sprouting: particularly in the world of fashion.
Book thumbnail image Europe: it’s not all bad This is the very time to remind ourselves of the achievements of the EU, because if we are to make sensible choices about where we go from here, we will need to have a clear idea of both its successes and its failures.
The Dawes Act: How Congress tried to destroy Indian reservations By Stephen Pevar How would you feel if the government confiscated your land, sold it to someone else, and tried to force you to change your way of life, all the while telling you it’s for your own good? That’s what Congress did to Indian tribes 125 years ago today when, with devastating results, it passed the Dawes Act.
Odd man out, a militant Gepid, and other etymological oddities By Anatoly Liberman I usually try to discuss words whose origin is so uncertain that, when it comes to etymology, dictionaries refuse to commit themselves. But every now and then words occur whose history has been investigated most convincingly, and their history is worth recounting. Such is the word odd. Everything is odd about it, including the fact that its original form has not survived in English.
Book thumbnail image Japanese attack Port Arthur, starting Russo-Japanese War This Day in World History On February 8, 1904, just before midnight, Japanese destroyers entered the harbor of Port Arthur (now Lü-shun, China). Soon after, they unleashed torpedoes against Russian ships in a surprise attack that began the Russo-Japanese War.
Book thumbnail image Dickens: The Loving Couple vs The Formal Couple Dickens dissects the characteristics of familiar types of person such as ‘The Bashful Young Gentleman’, ‘The Literary Young Lady’, and ‘The Couple who Coddle themselves’.
Book thumbnail image From Personhood to Patienthood by Harvey Max Chochinov A senior colleague recently shared with me the trials of going through a bout of cancer treatment. Physicians are not known to make the best patients and the transition he described was not an easy one. At one point he said, “I wanted to hang a sign over my bed saying ‘P.I.P.’ – Previously Important Person.”
Book thumbnail image Questions about the Tea Party In the The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson go beyond images of protesters in Colonial costumes to provide a nuanced portrait of the Tea Party. We asked Vanessa Williamson about her research, and what was behind the grassroots protests and national movement.
Book thumbnail image Dickens’ Oliver Twist: an excerpt With the bicentenary of Charles Dickens‘ birth on the 7th February, here is an excerpt from one of his most popular novels, Oliver Twist, part of our Oxford World Classics series. The story of Oliver, who suffers a miserable existence in a workhouse and later escapes to London, is an unromantic portrayal of criminals, gangs, and the cruel treatment of orphans in Victorian London. Here we see Oliver in a vulnerable state in the workhouse before he is made aware of what his future holds.
Book thumbnail image Mitt Romney’s IRA By Edward Zelinsky On a personal level, I enjoyed the news reports that Governor Romney holds assets worth tens of millions of dollars in his individual retirement account (IRA). These reports confirm a central thesis of The Origins of the Ownership Society, namely, the extent to which defined contribution accounts, such as IRAs and 401(k) accounts, have become central features of American life.
Book thumbnail image Turkey holds first election that allows women to vote This Day in World History On February 6, 1935, the women of Turkey were allowed to vote in national elections for the first time. Women were even allowed to stand for office — and eighteen female candidates were elected to Turkey’s parliament.
Book thumbnail image Dickens at two hundred By Jenny Hartley Dickens loved birthdays and always celebrated his own in style. So, in the face of those who are complaining about being Dickensed-out already, my view is that we can’t party enough.
Book thumbnail image World Cancer Day: Q&A On World Cancer Day 2012, we speak with Dr Lauren Pecorino, author of Why Millions Survive Cancer: the successes of science, to learn the latest in the field of cancer research. – Nicola
Book thumbnail image Organ donor shortage versus transplant rates By David Talbot The article in this week’s Times with the commentary written by Chris Watson illustrates the significant changes that have happened in transplantation over the last two years. In 2008, the Organ Donor Taskforce (ODTF) came up with 14 recommendations to address the problem of donor shortage, and then UK Transplant (which then changed to Blood Transplant) acted upon these.
Book thumbnail image Hey everybody! Meet Alice! Not one, but two new blog editors! Alice Northover joined the OUPblog in January 2012 as our New York-based Editor-in-Chief. And now on to a quick self-interview for you blog readers…
Book thumbnail image Hey everybody! Meet Nicola! Hawk-eyed OUPblog readers may have noticed a few changes recently and it’s high time we came out with them. May I present UK blog editor Nicola Burton, who joined the UK publicity team at Oxford University Press in August 2011. Here’s a quick Q&A for all your readers to get to know her.
Book thumbnail image Ulysses: 90 years on… On this day in 1922, James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in its entirety, although the publication history of the book is nearly as complex as the novel itself. Here, we’ve picked one of our favourite extracts from the Oxford World’s Classics edition.
Book thumbnail image Buenos Aires founded This Day in World History On February 2, 1536, Spanish explorer Pedro de Mendoza founded the city he named Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Aire—Buenos Aires, Argentina. The new town was meant to spearhead the Spanish effort to colonize the interior of South America. It came less than two years after conquistadors had returned to Spain from Peru with treasures seized from the Inca empire.
What mushrooms have taught me about the meaning of life By Nicholas P. Money Once upon a time, I spent 30 years studying mushrooms and other fungi. Now, as my scientific interests broaden with my waistline, I would like to share three things that I have learned about the meaning of life from thinking about these extraordinary sex organs and the microbes that produce them.
The deep roots of gaiety by Anatoly Liberman The question about the origin of gay “homosexual” has been asked and answered many times (and always correctly), so that we needn’t expect sensational discoveries in this area. The adjective gay, first attested in Middle English, is of French descent; in the fourteenth century it meant both “joyous” and “bright; showy.” The OED gives no attestations of gay “immoral” before 1637.
Book thumbnail image Iceland’s Sigurðardóttir becomes the first openly gay world leader This Day in World History On February 1, 2009, Johanna Siguroardottir made double history: she became the first woman to serve as Iceland’s prime minister and she became the first openly gay person to become leader of any nation.
Book thumbnail image Fat, fate, and disease By Mark Hanson We are failing to deal with one of the most important issues of our time – in every country we are getting fatter. Although being fat is not automatically linked to illness, it does increase dramatically the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other so-called non-communicable diseases.
January 2012 (61))
The Republican establishment steps in By Elvin Lim The very reason why Gingrich appeals to primary voters is the reason why he will not do well with independents voters in the fall. (And that’s an assessment coming from Anne Coulter.) Gingrich has fire, but placed alongside No Drama Obama, he’s going to look like a very unlikeable candidate. There’s hardly anyone who has worked closely with the former Speaker who has endorsed him — which tells us a lot about the guy.
Book thumbnail image Gingrich becomes the Anti-Romney Candidate by Elvin Lim Newt Gingrich has won the biggest primary prize up for grabs so far. Romney’s win in New Hampshire has been discounted because he’s from neighboring Massachusetts, while poor Rick Santorum’s newly recently declared victory in Iowa was quickly eclipsed by the news about Rick Perry dropping put of the race, ABC’s interview with Gingrich’s ex-wife, and the scuffle over Romney’s tax returns. This is a huge victory for Gingrich because every winner in South Carolina since 1980 has gone on to win the nomination.
Book thumbnail image Hating Democracy in the Middle East? By Steven A. Cook Has the Washington foreign policy establishment disavowed democracy in the Middle East? According to Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald the answer is a resounding yes.
Book thumbnail image Solving the Mystery of Sherlock Holmes by Michael Saler Holmes was the first “virtual reality” character in Western literature, the model for innumerable other fictional beings and worlds that have transcended the printed page to assume an autonomous life, from The Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter.
Book thumbnail image Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated This Day in World History The 78-year-old man was walking to a prayer meeting with the support of two grandnieces. A man stepped out of the crowd and greeted him. The old man returned the salutation when, suddenly, the other man pulled out a pistol and shot three times. Half an hour later, Mohandas Gandhi—the leading figure of India’s independentce movement and the leading exponent of nonviolent resistance—was dead.
SciWhys: Why do we eat food? By Jonathan Crowe We all know that we eat food to keep ourselves alive. But why do we find ourselves slaves to our appetites and rumbling stomachs? What’s happening inside each of us that couldn’t happen without another slice of toast or piece of fruit, or the sneakily-consumed mid-afternoon bar of chocolate?
Book thumbnail image Egypt’s Revolution a Year Later Nearly a year has passed since the huge crowds in Cairo’s Tahrir Square rallied to overthrow former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Yet, the Egyptian public remains loathe to articulate a coherent vision for Egypt, and “that is the challenge going forward,” says Steven A. Cook, CFR’s top Egypt expert.
Putting scholarly editions online “The text that scholars read matters everything to them because all their interpretations are based on what’s in the text. And so if the text is defective, the interpretations are going to be affected.”
Book thumbnail image Ron Paul has two problems By Corey Robin Ron Paul has two problems. One is his and the larger conservative movement of which he is a part. The other is ours—by which I mean a left that is committed to both economic democracy and anti-imperialism.
Book thumbnail image Pinzón becomes first European to land in Brazil On January 26, 1500, Spanish sailor Vincente Yáñez Pinzón spotted land. He named the cape the Cabo de Santa María de la Consolación. The site was near modern-day Recife, Brazil, making Pinzón the first European to explore Brazil.
Book thumbnail image Can delirium be prevented? By Anayo Akunne Delirium is a common but serious condition that affects many older people admitted to hospital. It is characterised by disturbed consciousness and changes in cognitive function or perception that develop over a short period of time. This condition is sometimes called “acute confusional state”.
Monthly Gleanings: January 2012 In the post on the C-word, I made two mistakes, for both of which I am sorry, though neither was due to chance. In Middle High German, the word klotze “vagina” existed, and I was going to write that, given such a noun, the verb klotzen “copulate” can also be reconstructed.
Book thumbnail image Idi Amin takes power in Uganda On January 25, 1971, General Idi Amin took advantage of the absence of President Milton Obote to stage a coup and seize power in Uganda. Amin’s turbulent rule lasted only eight years, but in that time he earned him the nickname the “Butcher of Uganda.”
Book thumbnail image The hunt for the missing link In these videos, John Reader, author of Missing Links: In Search of Human Origins talks about the treasure hunt that is the search for the missing link.
Book thumbnail image International Climate Policy: The Durban Platform Opens a Window In late November and early December of last year, some 195 national delegations met in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the latest in a series of international negotiations intended to address the threat of global climate change due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHSs) in the atmosphere, largely a consequence of the worldwide combustion of fossil fuels, as well as ongoing deforestation.
Book thumbnail image Dictionary droids write definitions untouched by human hands There’s a new breed of dictionary, untouched by human hands. The New York Times reports that teams of programmers have developed software that automates the making of dictionaries, eliminating the need for human lexicographers, who may favor some words and neglect others.
Heart of Buddha A century ago, Tanxu used his temples to establish physical links between Buddhism and Chinese nationalism. At the same time, though, he was guided by the belief that the physical world was illusory. The title of his memoir, “Recollections of Shadows and Dust,” uses a common Buddhist phrase meant to convey the impermanence and illusion of the material world, hardly the theological emphasis one might expect from a man who transformed cityscapes with his work in brick and mortar. I tried to understand this apparent paradox as I researched Tanxu’s career, but my connection to him remained impersonal, even distant, and strictly academic.
Book thumbnail image One Voyage, Two Thousand Stories Downton Abbey opens with the telegram announcing that the Earl of Grantham’s heir, James Crawley, and his son Patrick, have perished in the sinking of the Titanic. Since Lady Mary was supposed to marry Patrick, the succession plans go awry, and this sets off a chain of events. But how likely is it that an English aristocrat would have perished in the disaster?
Book thumbnail image Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman to receive a medical degree On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell strode to the front of the Presbyterian church in Geneva, New York, to receive her diploma from Benjamin Hale, president of Geneva Medical College. The ceremony made Blackwell—who graduated first in her class —the first woman in the modern world to receive a medical degree.
Book thumbnail image How to communicate like a Neandertal… By Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge Neandertal communication must have been different from modern language. Neandertals were not a stage of evolution that preceded modern humans. They were a distinct population that had a separate evolutionary history for several hundred thousand years.
Book thumbnail image Story of a Tuskegee Airman The new George Lucas produced film RED TAILS reminds American audiences of the heroics of the African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program. In historian J. Todd Moye’s book FREEDOM FLYERS: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, Moye captures the challenges and triumphs of these brave pilots in their own words, drawing on more than 800 interviews recorded for the National Park Service’s Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project.
Book thumbnail image Newt Gingrich, Chameleon Politician Veteran Gingrich-watchers wouldn’t have predicted the latest Newt incarnation, either, but they probably weren’t too surprised. Over the course of his long political career – he first ran for Congress almost four decades ago – Gingrich has been consistently inconsistent and predictably unpredictable. Whatever the issue, he has been on all sides of it.
Book thumbnail image I Believe! The Origin of “Strange” Mormon Beliefs Many discussions of the Mormon tradition emphasize the utter absurdity of their beliefs. The average reader is left wondering how on earth Mormons could be so incredulous. In context, though, these caricatured beliefs make a certain kind of sense.
Book thumbnail image The invented languages of Clockwork Apples and Oranges By Michael Adams Belinda Webb’s futuristic, dystopian novel, A Clockwork Apple (2008), follows Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962) closely in many details…
Book thumbnail image The First Two-Way Transatlantic Wireless Message This Day in World History As you look for wireless hot-spots to connect to the Internet, thank Guglielmo Marconi. The Italian inventor championed wireless communication at the turn of the twentieth century—and demonstrated it on January 19, 1903, when he sent and received the first transatlantic wireless messages.
Book thumbnail image Tibullus’ Elegies: an excerpt Tibullus was one of a group of poets known as the Latin elegists, whose number included Ovid and Propertius. Living in the age of Augustus, his poems reflect Augustan ideals, but they are above all notable for their emphasis on the personal, and for their subject-matter, love.
Book thumbnail image Altruism versus social pressure in charitable giving Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. There is at least one capital campaign to raise $25 million or more underway in virtually every major population center in North America. Smaller capital campaigns are even more numerous, with phone-a-thons, door-to-door drives, and mail solicitations increasing in popularity. Despite the ubiquity of fund-raising, we still have an imperfect understanding of the motivations for giving and the welfare implications for the giver. One may wonder: what moves all of these people to donate? Is such generosity necessarily welfare-enhancing for the giver?
An Etymological Headache To an etymologist ache is one of the most enigmatic words. Although it has been attested in Old English, its unquestionable cognates in other languages are few.
Book thumbnail image Would Antonin Scalia convict Jack Bauer? By Corey Robin Next to Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia is the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court. He also loves the television show 24. “Boy, those early seasons,” he tells his biographer, “I’d be up to two o’clock, because you’re at the end of one [episode], and you’d say, ‘No, I’ve got to see the next.’”
Book thumbnail image Imagining depression “There was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness.”
Book thumbnail image Questions about religion on the American frontier Though largely forgotten today, their rivalry determined the future of westward expansion and shaped the War of 1812. In 1806, the Shawnee leader Tenskwatawa declared himself to be in direct contact with the Master of Life, and therefore, the supreme religious authority for all Native Americans. William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory and future American president, scoffed.
Book thumbnail image Optimism and false hope By Hanna Oldsman In Voltaire’s Candide, the title character wanders through a life of brutal executions and natural disasters and angry mobs, and yet believes that he lives in the best of all possible worlds. When I think of misguided optimism, I think of those who are disinclined to do anything to change the world or their lives because (a) they believe all things serve some greater good or (b) they optimistically and passively wait for their god(s), or the people around them, to change their lives for the better.
Martin Luther King, Jr., Rhetorically Speaking Each year on the third Monday of January, we’re reminded of the practice of civil disobedience, of overcoming (and sometimes succumbing to) overwhelming adversities over which we have but marginal control, and of the power that language has to effect change in the world.
Book thumbnail image Iran’s Reza Shah Pahlavi Flees the Country This Day in World History In the mid-1970s, few rulers seemed more secure than Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the shah of Iran. He had oil wealth, a powerful military, and the friendship of the United States and other western nations. Yet on January 16, 1979, he and his family were forced to flee. What toppled this powerful ruler?
Book thumbnail image Obama, take a page from Reagan By Steven J. Ross Once upon a time, Barack Obama understood the power of a good story. His campaign mantras — “Yes we can” and “Change we can believe in” — inspired voters, especially young people, blacks and Latinos, and propelled him into the White House. But once in office, Obama lost the thread of the plot. He abandoned his original message and embraced compromise and bipartisanship rather than pushing for dramatic change. That narrative hasn’t gotten far with a recalcitrant Congress, especially Republicans, who have their own high concept to pitch: Just say no to Obama.
Book thumbnail image Elizabeth I Crowned Queen of England This Day in World History The day was frosty, and some snow lay on the ground. Nevertheless, thousands of Londoners and visitors turned out to see the 25-year-old Elizabeth I’s coronation in Westminster Abbey.
Book thumbnail image The Night Man (Or Why I’m Not a Novelist) By Arthur Krystal I didn’t know I wasn’t cut out to be a novelist until I began to write a novella in the late Seventies about a writer who lived in a seedy hotel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It was only then I realized that I knew practically nothing about the people who lived there. Let me amend that: I did know something about one of the tenants, although it was not information I went out of my way to find. It was handed to me on a small china plate with, if I recall correctly, pale blue filigree.
Book thumbnail image Zola publishes J’Accuse, exposing Dreyfus affair This Day in World History On January 13, 1898, the French newspaper L’Aurore (The Dawn) published a sensational open letter addressed to French president Félix Faure. The article—titled J’Accuse (I Accuse) was written by famed novelist Emile Zola, and his charges—perjury, conspiracy, and injustice in the court-martial of Captain Alfred Dreyfus—rocked France and gave renewed vigor to the efforts to clear Dreyfus’s name.
Book thumbnail image The Story of Black Mesa By Theda Perdue and Michael D. Green After World War II, economic development was at the top of the agendas of virtually every reservation. Unemployment was almost universal, family incomes were virtually nil, and the tribes had no income beyond government appropriations to the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs]. Some reservations did have natural resources. Some tribes own important timber reserves, but mineral resources attracted most postwar attention. Thirty percent of the low-sulfur coal west of the Mississippi is on Indian land, as is 5 to 10 percent of the oil and gas and some 50 to 80 percent of the uranium. Congress enacted legislation in 1918 and again in 1938 to authorize the secretary of the interior to negotiate leases to develop tribal mineral resources.
Book thumbnail image Winning the interview when switching from law to business By Jerald Jellison Despite your legal training, you’ve decided to pursue a career in business. This career change will immediately raise a red flag for business employers. Your answer can make or break your chance of employment. Why do you want to work in business rather than law? The question is especially vexing if your heart has been set on working as an attorney. That’s the reason you went to law school. Even today, if you a law firm offered you a job, you’d choose it over business. But, legal jobs are scarce in this economy.
Book thumbnail image Al Qaeda and the Arab Spring In this video, Professor Fawaz Gerges, author of The Rise and Fall of Al-Qaeda, discusses why Al-Qaeda did not feature in the Arab Spring of 2011.
The infamous C-word By Anatoly Liberman Like all word columnists, I keep receiving the same questions again and again. Approximately once a month someone asks me about the origin of the F-word, the C-word, and gay. Well, the C-word has been investigated in great detail, and a few conjectures are not so bad.
Book thumbnail image Earhart becomes first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California This Day in World History Taking off from Wheeler Field, on Oahu, Hawaii, on January 11, 1935, and reaching Oakland, California, the next day, Amelia Earhart achieved a milestone. She was the first person to fly solo between Hawaii and the continental United States.
Book thumbnail image Algeria’s televised coup d’état By Martin Evans On 11 January 1992 the Algerian President, the white-haired sixty-one year old Chadli Bendjedid, announced live on television that he was standing down as head of state with immediate effect. Nervous and ill at ease, the president read out a brief prepared statement. In it he explained his decision as a necessary one. Why? Because the democratic process which he had put in place two years earlier could no longer guarantee law and order on the streets.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles wait, January 1962 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago in January 1962, British popular music crept toward the brink of success. Notably, the coming months would see Britain’s Decca Records release the UK’s first international rock hit Telstar created by the quirky iconoclast Joe Meek with his studio band the Tornados. That recording declared Meek’s infatuation with the first telecommunications satellite and proved that London’s recording industry had the potential to compete in the United States.
Book thumbnail image Romney’s still on top By Elvin Lim The first votes for the 2012 elections have been cast. Clearly the headline from last week’s Iowa caucuses is the Santorum surge in the last couple of days, better timed than any of the other candidates who had had their day in the sun. Oh, and Mitt Romney eked out about an 8-votes win matching his own performance by percentage points in 2008.
Book thumbnail image United Nations General Assembly meets for first time This Day in World History On January 10, 1946, Zuleta Angel of Colombia called to order delegates from fifty-one nations. The historic gathering, held in London’s Central Hall, marked the first meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations.
Book thumbnail image “Moderate” is an obscenity for conservatives By Geoffrey Kabaservice It’s hard not to feel at least a little sorry for Iowa’s conservative Republicans. Although three-quarters of the votes in Tuesday night’s caucus went to conservatives of one stripe or another, the winner by a bare eight votes was Mitt Romney, the most moderate candidate running – and “moderate” is an obscenity for conservatives.
2012: The year that the Higgs boson is discovered By Jim Baggott The new year is a time for bold and often foolhardy predictions. Certainly, most of us will take the prophesy of impending doom on 21 December, 2012 with a large pinch of salt. This date may represent the end of a 5,125-year cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, but it doesn’t necessarily signal the end of all things (not even in Mayan history, contrary to popular belief). I think that when the time comes, we can plan for Christmas 2012 with a reasonably clear conscience. But, despite the obvious pitfalls, I am prepared to stick my neck out and make a prediction. I predict that this will be the year that the Higgs boson is discovered.
Book thumbnail image What is a caucus, anyway? By Katherine Connor Martin On January 3, America’s quadrennial race for the White House began in earnest with the Iowa caucuses. If you find yourself wondering precisely what a caucus is, you’re not alone. The Byzantine process by which the US political parties choose their presidential nominees has a jargon all its own.
Book thumbnail image Are Biblical laws about homosexuality eternal? By Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky One of the reviews of The Bible Now that was favorable on the whole criticized us on one point in our chapter on homosexuality. The reviewer said that we were liberals, with a liberal agenda, and that we had twisted the clear meaning of the biblical law to fulfill that agenda. Others have criticized us at times in our careers for being conservative.
Book thumbnail image Whose Tea Party is it? By Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson Newt Gingrich’s brief turn as presidential front-runner was only the latest paroxysm of a tumultuous Republican primary season. What’s going on? Tensions within the Tea Party help explain the volatility of the Republican primary campaign, as candidates seek to appeal to competing elements of the Tea Party with varying success.
Book thumbnail image Private schools and public benefit By Simon Baughen The charitable status of private schools raises strong passions, both for and against. Those in the ‘anti’ camp were heartened by the Charity Act 2006. Section 3(2) explicitly provided that there was to be no presumption that purposes in the first three headings listed in s.2(2) – education, religion, prevention and relief of poverty – were for the public benefit. The Act also required the Charity Commission to provide Guidelines on what amounted to public benefit.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: J. Lynn Helms J. Lynn Helms, who served as Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) during the first years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, died on December 11, 2011. Helms played an instrumental role in breaking the 1981 strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). A former Marine Corps fighter pilot and business executive, who had little sympathy for labor unions in general and who believed that there was no place for a union organization of air traffic controllers at the FAA, he helped persuade President Ronald Reagan and top administration officials that they could weather a controllers’ strike, even if it meant firing more than two-thirds of the workforce.
Beginning one way in the New Year By Anatoly Liberman As promised, the first of the fifty-two posts due to appear in 2012 will be devoted to the verb begin, whose siblings have been attested in all the West Germanic languages (English is one of them) and Gothic. Surprisingly, they did not turn up in Old Scandinavian, except for Danish (under the influence of German?). Old Icelandic for “begin” was byrja, and its cognates continued into Norwegian and Swedish, let alone Modern Icelandic and Faroese. The etymology of begin has not been explained to everybody’s satisfaction, but such is the history of most etymological flesh.
Book thumbnail image Giving up smoking? Put your mind to it By Cecilia Westbrook Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. Yet quitting smoking is a challenging endeavour – insurmountable for some. Even smokers who get the best help available still have a 50% chance of relapsing. Clearly, the more options we have to help with cessation, the better. Recent research suggests that meditation and mindfulness may be beneficial for smokers looking to extinguish the habit.
Book thumbnail image Albert Pujols, Occupy Wall Street, and the Buffett Rule By Edward Zelinsky As every baseball fan knows, Albert Pujols has signed a ten year, $254 million contract with the Los Angeles Angels. Pujols, a three-time MVP who has hit 445 home runs so far in his major league career, deserves every penny he is paid. The competition for Pujols demonstrated meritocracy and markets at their best.
Book thumbnail image Romney back on top By Elvin Lim The Republican game of musical chairs continues. One thing remains: Mitt Romney has held on to his seat as a leading contender for the nomination in the last four years.
Book thumbnail image Luther excommunicated by Catholic Church This Day in World History On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issued the papal bull Decet Romanum pontificem (“It pleases the Roman Pontiff”), which excommunicated Martin Luther, a German theologian and monk who had been causing the Roman Catholic Church no end of trouble since 1517. With that, the Pope cast Luther out of the Catholic Church—and thereby helped spur the development of the Lutheran church and the Protestant Reformation.
Book thumbnail image On the street where Dickens lived In this video, author and historian Ruth Richardson takes us on of the London street that inspired Oliver Twist. Just a stone’s throw away from where Charles Dickens lived as a child and a young man, Ruth Richardson explains the significance of the Cleveland Street workhouse, which was saved from demolition in 2011.
Book thumbnail image US law abolishing transatlantic slave trade takes effect This Day in World History On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was formally, and finally, abolished. The story behind this ban begins at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when slavery lurked beneath several debates and figured in several compromises fashioned to win the support of Southern delegates for the Constitution. One such compromise was a constitutional clause preventing Congress from banning the importation of slaves from Africa for twenty years.
December 2011 (58))
Murder most foul? By Elizabeth Knowles David Bevington’s Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages gives an engrossing account of Hamlet through the centuries, with delightful glimpses of great theatrical moments, and actors, of the past. We learn of the tragic actor John Philip Kemble that his Hamlet took twenty minutes longer than anyone else’s because of the pauses he inserted for emphasis (Bevington tells us that the wit and writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan suggested filling up the intervals with music).
Book thumbnail image Soviet Union proclaimed… and dissolved This Day in World History “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, December 20, 1922–December 31, 1991.” So might read the epitaph of one of the dominant political forces of the twentieth century, the world’s first communist state and, after World War II, one of two world superpowers.
Book thumbnail image The Oxford English Dictionary: “my favorite book ever” By Michael P. Adams As the year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on all the wonderful books we’ve read in 2011, and in doing so, we’ve also realized there are some classics worth revisiting. The authors and friends of Oxford University Press are proud to present this series of essays, which will appear regularly until the New Year, drawing our attention to books both new and old. Here, Michael Adams, author of From Elvish to Klingon, writes about the 1961 print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Book thumbnail image 1850: David Copperfield and Pendennis By Anatoly Liberman As the year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on all the wonderful books we’ve read in 2011, and in doing so, we’ve also realized there are some classics worth revisiting. The authors and friends of Oxford University Press are proud to present this series of essays, which will appear regularly […]
Book thumbnail image Sun Yat-sen becomes first President of Republic of China This Day in World History Nearly four dozen delegates gathered in Nanjing, a city in east-central China. Representing seventeen Chinese provinces, they were supporters of the Wuhan Revolution against the Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China. On December 25, Sun Yat-sen, the spearhead behind the revolution, returned to China after sixteen years of exile to join the meetings. Four days later, he was elected the provisional president of the Republic of China.
Book thumbnail image My 9 favorite bars in America By Christine Sismondo 1. Marie’s Crisis – 59 Grove St, West Village, Manhattan. Located in the basement of the building that Thomas Paine died in, patrons keep liberty alive by singing show tunes around a piano bar `til all hours of the night at Marie’s. Not to put too fine a point on this, but this place is a dive. That said, it’s been named “best bar in the world” by everyone I’ve ever taken there.
Meditations in the process of Winter Gleanings By Anatoly Liberman Last Wednesday, in anticipation of the inevitable calendar leap, I discussed the origin of the word end. The end has come. This post happens to be the last in 2011 — not really a rite of passage, for a week from now another Wednesday will bring the world another post, dated January 4, 2012. As announced, it will be devoted to the verb begin. One should not take December or oneself too seriously, but I am pleased to say that this blog is read and quoted by many and that I continue to receive letters and comments from all over the world.
Book thumbnail image Who brews your beer? By Johan F. M. Swinnen After two centuries of consolidation and closing down of small breweries, a counter-revolution is under way. Fed up with the lack of variety and the control of large brewing holdings over their favorite drinks, beer lovers have taken their beverage back into their own hands. All over the world, new beers and breweries are emerging every day. What started as the micro-brewery movement in the USA has spread to other countries and created a remarkable turnaround in convention.
Book thumbnail image Hagia Sophia consecrated This Day in World History Impatient, the Emperor Justinian did not wait for the arrival of Menas, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church. Rather than entering the new cathedral jointly with the religious leader, he went in alone. Dazzled by the beauty of his structure, particularly its massive dome with a 105-foot diameter—meant to echo the vault of heaven—circled by forty windows at the base, the emperor is said to have proclaimed that he had outdone Solomon, builder of the famous temple of Jerusalem more than a thousand years before.
Book thumbnail image What is Boxing Day? In the UK and some other parts of the English-speaking world December 26th is known as Boxing Day, while in other places it is also called St. Stephen’s Day. But what’s the history behind it? I turned to the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore to find out.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: holiday special By Nicola Burton If you’ve got a few hours to while away in the office before you head off on your holidays, here’s a festive treat for you: a veritable selection of merry internet treasures. Season’s greetings to one and all!
Book thumbnail image Madam C. J. Walker born This Day in World History Madam C. J. Walker tells her own story: “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparation… I have built my own factory on my own ground.”
Book thumbnail image Anne of Green Gables, the Spirit of 1783, and World War I By Thomas Weber Canada’s almost complete absence of the drama, disasters, and revolutions that have been the hallmark of much of European and Asian history makes Canadian history a tough sell. And yet one of the greatest and most successful reads of the last century was a Canadian story, the one of young freckled Anne Shirley, immortalized by Lucy Maud Montgomery in her Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908.
Book thumbnail image No one Tebows after Bucknering By Mark Peters Tebow is one of the most successful words of 2011, referring mainly to the post-touchdown pose of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow: just as people plank, they Tebow too. However, the verbing of Tebow’s name is just one example of the popular sport of eponymization. Sports fans love turning athletes into eponyms: words derived from names, like boycott and shrapnel.
Book thumbnail image The controversy of the neutrino In these videos, Frank Close, author of Neutrino, talks about the successes and controversies of neutrino research.
Book thumbnail image Home for the holidays By Susan J. Matt It’s that time of year again, the season when It’s A Wonderful Life pops up on every single television channel. Viewers seem not to tire of watching the story of George Bailey, the man who never left home but still managed to find meaning and a measure of success among friends and family in Bedford Falls. For Americans, known for their restlessness, George Bailey seems an improbable hero, and It’s a Wonderful Life an unlikely hit.
All’s well that ends well By Anatoly Liberman The year 2011 is coming to an end. Strange that we say “come to an end,” even though a year, unlike a rope, a street, and even life, in which it is hard to make ends (or both ends) meet, can have only one end, but such are the caprices of usage. In any case, the end of the year is close at hand. Those interested in such tricks may recollect that year sometimes needs neither the definite nor the indefinite article when we speak about this time of year, and so it has been for centuries.
Book thumbnail image Curies discover radium This Day in World History Working in an old shed on a sample of pitchblende, or uraninite, using chemical processes to separate different elements, the wife and husband team finally reached their breakthrough. They isolated a new element more radioactive than the uranium studied two years before and called it radium.
Book thumbnail image Born to be a sacred midwife Born with the destiny of becoming a Mayan sacred midwife, Chona Perez has carried on centuries-old traditional Indigenous American birth and healing practices over her 85 years. At the same time, Chona developed new approaches to the care of pregnancy, newborns, and mothers based on her own experience and ideas. In this way, Chona has contributed to both the cultural continuities and cultural changes of her town over the decades.
Book thumbnail image Occupy Wall Street, Adam Smith, and the Wealth of Nations By Louis René Beres “Eat the rich.” This palpably unappetizing sign can still be seen at certain Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Although obviously silly at a literally gastronomic level, the uncompromising message’s sub-text remains deeply serious. Above all, it reaffirms the steadily hardening polarities of growing class warfare in the United States. Plainly, America’s Edenic myth of “equality” continues to unravel before the sobering and relentless statistics of a continuously-entrenched plutocracy.
Our Antonia By Edward A. Zelinsky The first time I read My Antonia, I hated it. That was to be expected: It was required reading in my sophomore English course at Omaha Central High. This was during the Sixties. In the Age of Aquarius, no one was supposed to like assigned reading. That’s why it had to be assigned. I next confronted My Antonia in college. Like Jim Burden, Willa Cather’s narrator, I had left Nebraska to go to east to continue my education.
Book thumbnail image Dickens publishes A Christmas Carol This Day in World History “Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it.” So begins a staple of Christmas celebrations, Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol.
Book thumbnail image Verily, this tomfoolery must be quashed! By Catherine Soanes ‘Cripes! What bally tomfoolery are those diabolical cads in the media coming up with now?’ I asked my betrothed, when confronted with a spate of recent news reports. ‘Verily, I must quash this balderdash forthwith.’
Book thumbnail image America’s next frontier: Burma It all began in November of 2010 when the military regime decided to release opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi who, since 1989, had been on house arrest under charges of attempting to divide the military.
Book thumbnail image Persian Sufi poet Rumi dies This Day in World History As the poet and mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi lay on his deathbed, his wife pleaded with him not to die. “Am I a thief?” he replied. “Have I stolen someone’s goods? Is this why you would confine me here and keep me from being rejoined with my Love?” The love that Rumi sought was for Allah; the poet, a Sufi, or mystic, yearned to achieve union with Allah.
Book thumbnail image Nothing says ‘holidays’ like beer & cheese You’ve heard of the ever-popular wine and cheese pairing – perhaps you’re even a big fan. But you may not know that even wine experts says you haven’t tried a good pairing until you’ve had cheese and beer. While the combinations of beers and cheese are seemingly infinite, Garrett Oliver points us in the right directions with a few suggestions. The pairings listed below were excerpted from The Oxford Companion to Beer.
Book thumbnail image Justinian launches second section of Code This Day in World History One of the great projects of the Byzantine Empire was the creation of a revised law code during the rule of the Emperor Justinian. The emperor ordered the creation of this Code soon after taking the throne and entrusted the first task to Tribonian, a court official.
Book thumbnail image Women, sex, and the anonymous changers of history Women were not liberated in legislatures, claims Leif Jerram, but liberated themselves in factories, homes, nightclubs, and shops. Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini made themselves powerful by making cities ungovernable with riots rampaging through streets, bars occupied one-by-one. New forms of privacy and isolation were not simply a by-product of prosperity, but because people planned new ways of living, new forms of housing in suburbs and estates across the continent. Our proudest cultural achievements lie not in our galleries or state theatres, but in our suburban TV sets, the dance halls, pop music played in garages, and hip hop sung on our estates.
Book thumbnail image Brian Epstein transforms the Beatles, December 1961 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago in December 1961, Brian Epstein made a leap of faith that he could change his life and the lives of four young musicians. He could not foresee that he would change Western civilization. A few weeks earlier, the Liverpool businessman had heard the din of the Beatles in a claustrophobic former vegetable cellar and had seized upon the idea of transforming the band into something the world could embrace. He seems to have had few second thoughts about his decision, even as he allowed that he might fail.
Rotten Row By Anatoly Liberman Some time ago, a colleague asked me what materials I have on the place name Rotten Row; she was going to write an article on this subject. But her plans changed, and the article did not appear. My folders contain a sizable batch of letters to Notes and Queries and essays from other popular sources dealing with Rotten Row. I am not a specialist in onomastics, and, if I am not mistaken, the question about the etymology of Rotten Row has never been answered to everybody’s satisfaction.
Book thumbnail image The UK Bribery Act 2010 and its impact on Mergers & Aquisitions transactions By Nigel Boardman An organisation should also be alert to the increased risk of bribery in deals which involve any form of competitive process (such as the auction of a business) and those in which completion depends on obtaining governmental or administrative consents. In this regard, it is important to note that, while corporate hospitality which seeks to improve the image of a business does not necessarily attract liability, “facilitation payments” are an offence under the Bribery Act.
Book thumbnail image Five myths about church and state in America By David Sehat Liberals claim that the founding fathers separated church and state, while conservatives argue that the founders made faith a foundation of our government. Both sides argue that America once enjoyed a freedom to worship that they seek to preserve. Yet neither side gets it right.
Book thumbnail image Eleventh hour reconfigurations in the Republican primary race By Elvin Lim With so many candidates moving in and out of frontrunner status in the Republican nomination race in the past months, it would appear that the winner of the game of musical chairs could simply be determined by when the music stops. And it stops on January 3, when the Iowa caucuses meet.
Book thumbnail image Seeing complexity in U.S. public education By Donald J. Peurach Education reform is among the great American pastimes. This is activity that plays out continuously in public discourse everywhere from corner bars to capitol buildings, as well as in the day-to-day work of government agencies, university-based project teams, and private organizations. Current wrangling over the reauthorization of the federal No Child Left Act will surely throw fuel on the fire.
Book thumbnail image Virgin of Guadalupe appears to Mexican peasant This Day in World History According to the tradition accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, a fifty-five-year old Native American who had converted to Christianity was moving down Tepeyac Hill to a church in Mexico City to attend mass. Suddenly, he beheld a vision of the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus Christ and an iconic figure in the Catholic Church.
Book thumbnail image Ageing, diabetes, and the risk of falling Whilst browsing the Oxford journal Age and Ageing last week, I came across a paper focusing on diabetes in the elderly. Interestingly, it noted that men and women with diabetes aged 65 or over are one and half times more likely to have recurrent falls than people in the same age bracket without diabetes. Having two sets of grandparents in their seventies, one pair with diabetes and one without, I wanted to know about this correlation between diabetes and falling, and how it might apply to them. Here, I speak with Ms. Evelien Pijpers, author of this paper, to learn more.
Book thumbnail image Frantz Fanon: Third world revolutionary By Martin Evans Frantz Fanon died of leukaemia on 6 December 1961 at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA where he had sought treatment for his cancer. At Fanon’s request, his body was returned to Algeria and buried with full military honours by the Algerian National Army of Liberation, shortly after the publication of his most influential work, The Wretched of the Earth.
Book thumbnail image In your face in Cairo By Brian K. Barber I had learned from Kholoud that Aly would be in Cairo this week. So, as soon as I arrived on Monday night I called while walking through Tahrir Square. He picked up but the reception wasn’t good. He said he was also in the Square, that he was headed to drop off his bags, and would call later. I didn’t hear back from him.
Book thumbnail image Alfred Nobel dies This Day in World History Stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage, wealthy industrialist Alfred Nobel died on December 10, 1896. That date is still commemorated as the day on which the famous prizes issued in his name—perhaps the most prestigious prizes in the world—are officially awarded each year.
Book thumbnail image The food and drink we’re wishing for this holiday season We asked both bloggers and OUP staffers which food and drink related items they’d most like to receive this holiday season.
Book thumbnail image Commemorating Tippecanoe: The start of an American holy war By Adam Jortner The weather in Tippecanoe County, Indiana, played along and delivered a dreary, wet morning—just as it had on November 7, 1811, when a hodgepodge collection of frontier whites exchanged fire with Native American forces. The Americans “won” the Battle of Tippecanoe when the Indian soldiers retreated, but U.S. forces under William Henry Harrison had to evacuate their position the next day.
Book thumbnail image Does my dog see in color? By Ivan R. Schwab Well, yes, sort of. Dogs see colors, but their span of color vision closely resembles the array of colors seen by “color blind” males. About 8%, or 1 out of 12 males (humans) and about 1 out of 200 females are “color blind.” We use that term to describe individuals that are color deficient, but they are not truly color blind.
Coffee or tea? By Anatoly Liberman It will be seen that the main question about tea is the same as about coffee, namely: How did the form tea conquer its numerous rivals?
Book thumbnail image Ambrose consecrated Bishop of Milan This Day in World History On December 7, 374, after a quickly arranged baptism and eight days of instruction, Ambrose was consecrated as a bishop. No one, perhaps, was more surprised by this turn of events than the new bishop himself.
Book thumbnail image Why the climate negotiations matter By Matthew J. Hoffmann Though any breakthrough in negotiations is unlikely, the multilateral meetings remain a pivotal space for the growth of innovative approaches to the coming climate crisis.
Book thumbnail image Reflections on Libya and atrocity prevention By Jared Genser With the recent end of the NATO mission in Libya, it is an opportune moment to reflect on what took place and what it may mean for global efforts to prevent mass atrocities. Protests demanding an end to Muammar Gaddafi’s 41-year reign began on February 14th and spread across the country. The Libyan government immediately dispatched the army to crush the unrest. In a speech a week later, Gaddafi said he would rather die a martyr than to step down, and called on his supporters to attack and “cleanse Libya house by house” until protestors surrender.
Book thumbnail image Extractive industries, intellectual property, and the health of indigenous peoples By William H. Wiist Because the corporate goal is to obtain the highest profit possible, not social welfare, public health or environmental sustainability, business interests often give little or no consideration to the effects of corporate practices on indigenous peoples. Thus, the estimated 257 to 370 million indigenous peoples in about 5,000 communities in 70 countries, speaking 5,000 of the 6,000 existing languages, often experience severe detrimental consequences from commercial activity.
Book thumbnail image Edison demonstrates the phonograph This Day in World History While he cranked the handle on the device, inventor Thomas Edison watched the faces of the editors from the journal Scientific American. He was in the magazine’s offices to demonstrate one of his newest inventions. As he cranked, indentations made on a tinfoil cylinder sent signals to a diaphragm, and the editors heard the machine ask after their health.
Book thumbnail image How to save an endangered language By Dennis Baron There are roughly 7,000 languages spoken around the globe today. Five hundred years ago there were twice as many, but the rate of language death is accelerating. With languages disappearing at the rate of one every two weeks, in ninety years half of today’s languages will be gone.
Book thumbnail image The case against pension-financed infrastructure By Edward Zelinsky Media reports have indicated that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been considering the use of public pension funds to finance the replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge and to underwrite other infrastructure investments in the Empire State. This is a bad idea, harmful both to the governmental employees of the Empire State and to New York’s taxpayers. Using public pension monies in this fashion trades the immediate benefits of public construction for the long-term cost of underfunded public retirement plans.
Book thumbnail image The medieval pilgrimage business By Adrian R Bell and Richard S. Dale Pilgrimages, saints, shrines, indulgences and miracles were central to western medieval culture and religious experience. Yet, although much has been written, what has often been overlooked by historians is the economic underpinning of medieval religious beliefs and practices.
Book thumbnail image Let’s talk economic policy… Recently, Professor Ian Sheldon spoke with three eminent economists about some key economic issues of the day, including the views of Professor Robert Hall of Stanford University on the current slow recovery of the US economy; University of Queensland Professor John Quiggin’s thoughts on climate change and policy; and World Bank economist Dr Martin Ravallion’s recent findings on poverty and economic growth.
Book thumbnail image Another lesson from Garrett Oliver: rice in beer Rice is not the first thing that comes to mind when you are drinking a nice, cold beer. And if you’re a beer connoisseur, even less so. For many years, it has been considered to be an affront to the institution of craft beer making to use rice. However, some beer makers are toying with the use of rice in beer again as homage to the practices that occurred before the Prohibition. This counterculture attitude reflects how beer brewers are looking to the past to evolve current drinkers’ palates. The following excerpt from the The Oxford Companion to Beer goes into detail on exactly how rice is used. Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image Barnard performs first heart transplant This Day in World History For five hours, the thirty-person surgical team worked in an operating room in Cape Town, South Africa. The head surgeon, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, was leading the team into uncharted territory, transplanting the heart of a young woman killed in a car accident into the chest of 55-year-old Louis Washkansky.
Book thumbnail image Hosting a holiday party with special guest Christmas ale Now that the calendar has turned the page to December, holiday season is in full swing. Aside from the lights and decorations flooding streets and buildings everywhere, this is the season of holiday parties! We will be celebrating The Oxford Companion to Beer through the month of December, and to kick off the month, we are turning our attention to hosting a holiday beer tasting.
Book thumbnail image Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 3) By Nicholas Rankin On 27th June 1941, in Washington D.C., Lt-Commander Ian Fleming RNVR drafted a short ‘Memorandum to Colonel Donovan’ on how to structure and staff the headquarters of his new American intelligence agency, COI, to be set up by Christmas 1941. Fleming suggested taking over a section of the FBI building and liaising closely with the Attorney-General and J. Edgar Hoover; Donovan would need to make friends with both the State Department and the FBI and enlist their full help ‘by cajolery and other means’.
Book thumbnail image Rosa Parks refuses to change her seat This Day in World History On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move—and became the mother of the civil rights movement.
Book thumbnail image World AIDS Day: Q&A On World AIDS Day 2011, we speak with Dr Martin S. Hirsch, MD, FIDSA to find out the latest news on the global fight against AIDS. Dr. Hirsch is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, professor of infectious diseases and immunology at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. -Nicola Burton, Blog Editor
November 2011 (62))
Book thumbnail image Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 2) By Nicholas Rankin In May 1941, Ian Fleming and his boss, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, were touching base in New York City with William Stephenson, the British Secret Service’s representative in North America as head of British Security Co-Ordination, whose headquarters occupied the 34th and 35th floors of the Rockefeller Center. The place later went into Fleming’s fiction. In chapter 20 of the very first Bond book, Casino Royale, James Bond confesses to the assassination of a Japanese cipher expert cracking British codes
Monthly Gleanings: November 2011 By Anatoly Liberman It was good to hear from Masha Bell, an ally in the losing battle for reformed spelling. Her remarks can be found at the end of the previous post (it was about su– in sure and sugar), and here I’ll comment briefly only on her questions.
Book thumbnail image The periodic table: matter matters By Eric Scerri As far back as I can remember I have always liked sorting and classifying things. As a boy I was an avid stamp collector. I would sort my stamps into countries, particular sets, then arrange them in order of increasing monetary value shown on the face of the stamp. I would go to great lengths to select the best possible copy of any stamp that I had several versions of. It’s not altogether surprising that I have therefore ended up doing research and writing books on what is perhaps the finest example of a scientific system of classification – the periodic table of the elements.
Book thumbnail image Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 1) By Nicholas Rankin On 15 May 1941, two Englishmen flew from London to Lisbon, at the start of a ten-day wartime journey to New York City. Though they wore civilian clothes they were, in fact, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral John Godfrey, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming RNVR, the future author of the James Bond novels. What followed was to change American intelligence forever.
Book thumbnail image The disconnect between democracy and Republicanism By Elvin Lim It should now be clear to all that the highly polarized environment that is Washington is dysfunctional, and the disillusionment it is causing portends yet more headlocks and cynicism to come. Here is the all-too-familiar cycle of American electoral politics in the last few decades. Campaign gurus draw sharp distinctions to get […]
Book thumbnail image Haitian leaders declare independence This Day in World History On November 29, 1803, Haitian leaders Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henri Christophe, and a General Clerveaux joined together to sign a preliminary proclamation of independence for St. Domingo, the former French colony that soon after took the name Haiti. The proclamation came just ten days after French forces under the Vicomte de Rochambeau had surrendered to the Haitian rebels.
Book thumbnail image Should we use the PSA test to screen for prostate cancer? By Halley S. Faust, MD, MPH, MA and Paul T. Menzel, PhD The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends against prostate-specific antigen (PSA)-based screening for prostate cancer (a grade D recommendation).
Book thumbnail image Occupy Wall Street: Can the revolution be trademarked? By Dennis Baron Psst, wanna buy a hot slogan? “Occupy Wall Street,” the protest that put “occupy” on track to become the 2011 word of the year, could be derailed by a Long Island couple seeking to trademark the movement’s name. The rapidly-spreading Occupy Wall Street protests target the huge gap between rich and poor in America and elsewhere, so on Oct. 18, Robert and Diane Maresca tried to erase their own personal income gap by filing trademark application 85449710 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office so they could start selling Occupy Wall St.™
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: Why are plants green? By Jonathan Crowe After the greyness of winter, the arrival of spring is heralded by a splash of colour as plants emerge from the soil, and trees seemingly erupt with leaves. Soon, much of the countryside has moved from being something of a grey, barren wasteland to a sea of verdant green. But why is it that so much vegetation is green? Why not a sea of red, or blue? To answer this question let me take you on a colourful journey from the sun to within the cells of plant leaves.
Book thumbnail image Trendspotting: the future of the computer By Darrel Ince I’m typing this blog entry on a desktop computer. It’s two years old, but I’m already looking at it and my laptop wondering how long they will be around in their current form. There are three fast-moving trends that may change computing over the next five years, affect the way that we use computers, and perhaps make desktop and laptop computers the computing equivalent of the now almost defunct record player.
Do bugs feel pain? By Jeff Lockwood It’s hard to know what any organism experiences. For that matter, I’m not even sure that you feel pain—or at least that your internal, mental states are the same as mine. This is the “other minds” problem in philosophy. At least other people can tell us what they feel (even if we can’t be certain that their experience is the same as ours), but we can’t even ask insects.
Book thumbnail image We also give thanks for beer Thanksgiving is all about tradition, and if you are like my family, your dinner will probably be served with wine. But having recently spent some time with The Oxford Companion to Beer and its Editor-in-Chief Garrett Oliver, I am thinking about adding a little twist to the end of the meal.
Book thumbnail image Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species This Day in World History On the day it was published, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species sold out—eager readers bought every single copy. This alone is not remarkable: the print run was a mere 1,250 copies. But in presenting to the world his theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin’s tome made history.
Book thumbnail image Honest Ben By Ian Donaldson ‘Of all styles he loved most to be named honest, and hath of that an hundred letters so naming him’, wrote Ben Jonson’s Scottish friend, William Drummond, after Jonson had visited him at his castle at Hawthornden on the River Esk, seven miles south of Edinburgh, in 1618. ‘Honest’ seems a reasonable […]
The phonetic taste of coffee By Anatoly Liberman All sources inform us about the Arabic-Turkish home of the word coffee, though in the European languages some forms were taken over directly from Arabic, so that the etymological part of the relevant entry in dictionaries and encyclopedias needs modification. There is a possibility of coffee being connected with the name of the kingdom of Kaffa, but this question need not bother us at the moment. The main puzzle is the development of the form coffee rather than its distant origin.
Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2011: squeezed middle Squeezed middle: the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those people on low or middle incomes.
The simile of St Paul’s By Brian Cummings Like many people I first came across the Book of Common Prayer in a church pew; I must have been in my late teens. But it felt as if I already knew the book: many things in it were already familiar, like the marriage vows ‘for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.’
Book thumbnail image Professor Frank Close talks neutrinos Neutrinos: what are they and why does nature need them? In a recent lecture Professor Frank Close gave an overview of the discovery of neutrinos, discussing how we are becoming increasingly aware of their significance and speculating over ways in which we may utilise them.
Book thumbnail image On losing Evelyn Lauder to cancer By Lauren Pecorino Cancer is managed throughout the world by teams of people, most notably those made up of doctors, nurses, hospice workers and scientists. But it took one powerful and astute businesswoman to use a successful marketing campaign to raise awareness of breast health around the world. In 1992, Evelyn Lauder, daughter-in-law of Estee Lauder, along with Alexandra Penny, former Editor of SELF magazine, created the pink ribbon as a symbol of breast health.
Book thumbnail image China Clipper makes first trans-Pacific flight This Day in World History Holding more than 110,000 pieces of mail, the mammoth plane that weighed more than 52,000 pounds and had a 130-foot wingspan lifted from the waters of San Francisco Bay. The plane, the China Clipper, was beginning the first flight across the Pacific Ocean on November 22, 1935—just eight years after Charles Lindbergh had flown alone across the Atlantic.
Book thumbnail image Religious tolerance: karma, Christ, whatever? By Christian Smith There was a time in American culture, only a few generations ago, when religious differences were major. Baptists were not Methodists, and both were definitely not Presbyterians. Catholics were absolutely not Protestant, and Protestants doubted that Catholics were even Christians. Jews and Mormons were whole other species. Non-religious Americans were beyond the pale. And Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus were heathen living in faraway places. The problem with that world, we now see, was the destructive bigotry, misunderstanding, conflict and sometimes hatred that went with it. Let us call that world one of sectarian conflict.
Book thumbnail image No fooling with the republic The “need for public servants who can negotiate . . . moral minefields with wisdom and integrity is more urgent than ever,” says Mary Ann Glendon, author of the new book The Forum and the Tower: How Scholars and Politicians Have Imagined the World, from Plato to Eleanor Roosevelt. “It is hard to resist,” she continues, “the conclusion of the classical philosophers that no polity can afford to neglect the nurture and education of future citizens and statespersons.”
Book thumbnail image Austerity: we are not all in it together By Michael Kitson, Ron Martin, and Peter Tyler Europe has a Greek tragedy; the US is grappling with a Tea Party; and in the UK we have the economic consequences of austerity. The focus is budget deficits, public expenditure cuts and being ‘all in it together’. But, of course, we are not all in it together. The impact of austerity is very unequal: the whole mess was started by the financial sector driven by avarice and hiding behind the convenient veil of ‘free markets’; but the burden is being felt by the poor, the unemployed and the destitute. And the inequality is being felt in different parts of the UK, Europe and the USA.
Book thumbnail image Performing the triple By Colin McGinn This fall OUP will publish three books by me. They are substantial new works of academic philosophy, on unrelated subjects. How did I manage to produce three books in such a short time when one is usually regarded as quite enough by itself?
Are daddy-longlegs really as venomous as I’ve heard? By Jeff Lockwood If people have told you that daddy-longlegs are deadly, then those people are dead wrong. This tale is debunked on the website of the University of California Riverside, and I trust my colleagues at UCR. I know a several of the entomologists there, and they’re a really smart bunch of scientists (a claim that one might question, given that they chose to live in Riverside, but my concern is for their entomological acumen, not their geographic aesthetics). So, I’m going to use what they say about daddy-longlegs and if you end up dying from a bite, then it’s on them.
Book thumbnail image Egypt’s President Sadat addresses Israeli Knesset This Day in World History On November 20, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat made an historic speech before Israel’s Knesset, or Parliament, becoming the first leader of an Arab nation to speak there. He was also the first of Israel’s Arab neighbors to publicly say anything like these words: “Today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice.”
Book thumbnail image Fake squid, psychiatric patients, and other Muppet meanings By Mark Peters With the arrival of the new Muppet movie, Kermit, Miss Piggy, Beaker, and our other felt friends are everywhere. There’s no escaping Jim Henson’s creations, and few of us would want to (unless the movie happens to suck, which is doubtful, given the stewardship of Jason Segel, who showed major Muppet mojo in the heartbreaking and spit-taking Forgetting Sarah Marshall). It’s a good time to look at the history of the word Muppet, which has some meanings that would make the Swedish Chef bork with outrage.
Book thumbnail image Elizabeth I becomes England’s Queen This Day in World History The twenty-five-year-old princess was seated beneath an oak tree on the lawn of her home, Hatfield House. Suddenly, several courtiers hurried across the lawn until they reached her location, stopped, and bowed. The queen has died, they told her. You are now queen of England. Young Elizabeth, it is said, fell to her knees and quoted a line from Psalm 118: “It is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
Book thumbnail image Gods and priests By Christian Meier Hesiod and Homer brought order to the world of the gods for the Greeks, describing their genealogical connections, allocating honours, powers, and areas of responsibility among them, and giving them distinct appearances. This is how Herodotus put it.
Book thumbnail image Memo from Manhattan: Occupying Wall Street—and Fifth Avenue By Sharon Zukin Until the early morning of November 15, a few hundred Occupy Wall Street protesters spent the chilly nights of a glorious autumn camping out in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Despite Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s disapproval with their politics and under the New York City Police Department’s anxious eye, the occupiers captured public attention in a remarkably peaceful way. Regrouping for the winter, they will take stock of what they have achieved so far and the work that remains.
The oddest English spellings, part 18: Why sure and sugar? By Anatoly Liberman The spelling of those two words does not bother us only because both are so common and learned early in life. Yet why not shure and shugar? There is a parallel case, and it too leaves us indifferent, though for a different reason.
Book thumbnail image Your good = my bad: When helping hurts By Barbara Oakley Pathological altruism is, in a great sense, the study of the onramps to the well-intentioned road to hell. That is, it is the study of truly well-meaning behavior that worsens instead of improves a situation, or creates more problems than it solves. Does the concept of pathological altruism then provide a license to steal—as long as it was done for a good cause? Not so fast.
Book thumbnail image His Eminence of Los Angeles The American Catholic Church of today is a product of many dramatic transformations, especially those that took place in the 1960s. Here is an excerpt from The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever where Mark S. Massa recounts some of the practices Archbishop James Francis McIntyre instituted in Los Angeles.
Book thumbnail image OCD treatment through storytelling Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an often misunderstood anxiety disorder. It’s treatment of choice, a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy known as Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), is likewise difficult to grasp and properly use in therapy for both consumers and their therapists. This is in part because of the counter-intuitive nature of ERP, as well as the subtle twists and turns that OCD can take during the course of treatment.
Book thumbnail image Why Republicans can’t find their candidate By Elvin Lim Mitt Romney must be the happiest Republican in the world. His political rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Herman Cain and Rick Perry, seem to be trying to out-do the other in terms of whose campaign can implode faster.
Book thumbnail image Keeping nonviolent resistance real Our world is filled with conflicts. They often cause us grave problems. However, conflicts themselves are not the real problem. Conflicts are often positive and a given conflict can have meritorious purposes. Problems arise principally from the means by which conflicts are often waged: through violence.
Book thumbnail image Nellie Bly begins record round-the-world trip This Day in World History At 9:40:30 in the morning of November 14, 1889, an American woman began a trip abroad. It was not just any trip, though: journalist Nellie Bly was out to best the legendary journey of Phileas Fogg, the British gentleman who was the hero of Victor Hugo’s bestselling novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Bly’s whirlwind world trip was heavily promoted by Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper the New York World.
Book thumbnail image Work in the home and the market By Alexander M. Gelber When tax incentives draw single women into the labour force, what activities do they sacrifice? Do they spend less time enjoying leisure? Do they cut back on household chores? Do they give up time with their children?
Book thumbnail image Our words remember them: the language of the First World War By Charlotte Buxton The First World War may be famed for poets such as Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Edmund Blunden (most of whom were officers), but the rank and file also made their own vigorous contribution to the English language. Remembrance, after all, isn’t just in the two minute silence. It’s in the talk that follows; the memories of those who gave their lives woven into the very words we use every day.
Book thumbnail image Augustine of Hippo born This Day in World History On November 13, 354, in a small town named Tagaste in Roman Numidia (modern Algeria) near the port of Hippo (now Annaba), Augustine—one of the preeminent early Christian thinkers—was born. Though his mother was a devout Christian, he was not baptized as an infant.
Book thumbnail image Working women By Sarah Damaske October was National Work-Family Month and, while we have a ways to go to making work-family balance a reality for all, I also think that we have a lot to celebrate. Women’s portion of the labor force hit an all-time high in the last decade and it remains at historically high levels today. And women’s employment has helped to bolster families in these hard economic times.
Book thumbnail image Sesame Street premieres This Day in World History November 10, 1969, was a sunny day for children around the world—children of all ages. That was the day that Sesame Street, the groundbreaking brainchild of Children’s Television Workshop, debuted on public television.
Book thumbnail image From Murdoch to Trollope: a familiar intrigue By John Bowen The Murdoch ‘phone-hacking’ affair, being investigated today by a House of Commons select committee, seems the most contemporary of stories, chock-full of hacked mobile phones, high-tech surveillance equipment and secret video-recordings. But although the technology might have changed, it is a world that would have been only too familiar to nineteenth-century author Anthony Trollope. He was as fascinated as we are by what lies behind the public face of politics: the personal passions, rivalries and love affairs, the ins and outs of office, the spectacular rises and equally rapid falls.
Book thumbnail image “What Brings Mr. Epstein Here?” 9 November 1961 By Gordon Thompson The transformation of the Beatles from four musicians with humble roots into British cultural icons (second only to Shakespeare in some minds) began in Liverpool, even if a recent decision by the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board of the United States Patent and Trademark Office may attempt to shape how we remember those roots in the future. Ironically, that decision comes shortly before a relevant anniversary in Beatles history.
Monthly Gleanings, Part 2: October 2011 By Anatoly Liberman Last week I answered only the questions that needed relatively detailed answers. Today’s “issue” will be devoted to shorter queries.
Book thumbnail image Przewalski’s horses not ancestors of modern domestic horses By Danielle Venton For millions of years, the stout, muscular Przewalski’s horse freely roamed the high grasslands of Central Asia. By the mid-1960s, these, the last of the wild horses, were virtually extinct: a result of hunting, habitat loss, and cross breeding with domestic horses.
Book thumbnail image Refuting Sunstein Ideological Segregation in Various Media Channels Democracy is most effective when citizens have accurate beliefs (Downs 1957; Becker 1958). To form such beliefs, individuals must encounter information that will sometimes contradict their preexisting views. Guaranteeing exposure to information from diverse viewpoints has been a central goal of media policy in the United States and around the world (Gentzkow and Shapiro 2008). New technologies such as the Internet could either increase or decrease the likelihood that consumers are exposed to diverse news and opinion.
Book thumbnail image Sports fanaticism: Present and past By David Potter The streets are packed. People are singing and shouting. They are wearing team colors; they are drinking, eating, fighting and betting. These fans are not in Green Bay, East Lansing, Philadelphia or Madison. They are in Constantinople, capital of the Roman Empire in 500 AD.
Book thumbnail image The Buffett Rule debate: A guide for the perplexed By Edward Zelinsky Although he had said it before, Warren Buffett struck a nerve with his most recent observation that his effective federal tax rate is lower than or equal to the effective federal tax rates of the other employees who work at Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha office. Mr. Buffett’s observations have provoked extensive comments both from those supporting his position (e.g., President Obama) and those critical (e.g., the editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal). In response to Mr. Buffett’s remarks, President Obama has promulgated what he calls “the Buffett Rule,” namely, that those making
Book thumbnail image Machiavelli dismissed from Florentine office This Day in World History From 1507 to 1512, Niccoló Machiavelli led the foreign policy of the Republic of Florence. In September of 1512, however, the republican government was overthrown and the powerful Medici family returned from years in exile to resume control of the city-state. Machiavelli spent the first week in November imploring the Medici to continue with a republican government.
Book thumbnail image Government policy vs alcohol dependence By Laura Williams Early in 2011 the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) published guidance intended to improve treatment for alcohol dependence and harmful use in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Yet under the coalition government, the stigmatisation of alcohol dependence has worsened and become increasingly explicit in England.
Book thumbnail image Sudan: A personal note 2011 Place of the Year By Andrew S. Natsios My first meeting with a Sudanese national was with Dr. John Garang, then commander of the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), founded to fight against the Sudanese state—located in the country’s north, with its capital in Khartoum—and to advance the rights of the southern part of the country. It was June 1989. By this point, Garang and the SPLA had been in open war against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, then led by Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, for six years.
Book thumbnail image Carter finds King Tut’s tomb This Day in World History – For years, archeologist Howard Carter had poked and probed in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, hoping to repeat the success he had enjoyed in 1902, when he discovered the tombs of the pharaohs Hapshetsut and Thutmose IV. On November 4, 1922, he discovered his first sign of his greatest success. His crews had been digging among a cluster of ancient stone huts that had housed Egyptian workers thousands of years before. In the morning of Saturday, November 4, Carter found an ancient step.
Book thumbnail image What you need to know about Sudan: A slideshow This week, we announced that South Sudan is the 2011 Place of the Year and quizzed you about how much you know. Now, we present a slideshow of photos provided courtesy of Lucian Perkins and the United States Holocaust Museum.
Book thumbnail image Soon facing Iranian nuclear missiles By Professor Louis René Beres Admiral Leon “Bud” Edney General Thomas G. McInerney For now, the “Arab Spring” and its aftermath still occupy center-stage in the Middle East and North Africa. Nonetheless, from a regional and perhaps even global security perspective, the genuinely core threat to peace and stability remains Iran. Whatever else might determinably shape ongoing transformations of power and authority in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia, it is apt to pale in urgency beside the steadily expanding prospect of a nuclear Iran.
Book thumbnail image Following the army ant-following birds By Corina Logan It’s 4:00 am and I can’t believe I’m (just barely) awake. Not only that, but I have to go out there in the cold and rain. It’s so cold! I’m in the tropics – it’s not supposed to be cold in the tropics. I pull on my clothes (quickly, while still hiding under the covers), grab my gear, and head out into the darkness. I hurriedly walk up the muddy path; time is of the essence.
Book thumbnail image Sudan: How much do you know? 2011 Place of the Year Yesterday, we announced that South Sudan is the 2011 Place of the Year. How much do you know about Sudan, South Sudan, and Darfur? Test your knowledge with this quiz by Andrew S. Natsios.
Monthly Gleanings, Part 1: October 2011 By Anatoly Liberman This has been a long month, and I was very pleased to have such generous feedback. Today I’ll only respond to the comments and will deal with the questions next Wednesday. Many thanks to our correspondents who take the time to agree and disagree with me and suggest new topics. In one comment, my responses were called derogatory. God forbid! Why should they even sound such to anyone? I may misunderstand an opponent or refuse to go all the way with him or her (“them”), but I am truly grateful for the attention my blog receives, and I like to hear counterarguments, even though no one’s opinion has ever changed as a result of discussion.
Book thumbnail image Haile Selassie I takes throne of Ethiopia This Day in World History – On Sunday, November 2, 1930, thirty-eight-year old Ras (Prince) Tafari Makonnen was proclaimed emperor of Ethiopia, taking the name Haile Selassie I, which means “Power of the Trinity.” Though taking place in the twentieth century, the ceremony reached back thousands of years, as Ethiopia’s Menelik dynasty claimed descent from Solomon, ancient king of Israel, and the Queen of Sheba, one of his wives. To prepare for the coronation, seven groups of seven priests gathered in the seven corners of the national cathedral and chanted for seven days and seven nights psalms written by King David. The morning of the coronation, priests chanted and drummers drummed.
SciWhys: Why are we told always to finish a course of antibiotics? By Jonathan Crowe Most of us have at one time or another been prescribed a course of antibiotics by our GP. But how many of us heed the instruction to finish the course; to continue taking the tablets or capsules until none remain? Very often, our strict adherence to the prescription fades in line with our symptoms.
Book thumbnail image Why should anyone care about Sudan? 2011 Place of the Year By Andrew S. Natsios For more than two centuries, Sudan has attracted an unusual level of attention beyond its own borders. This international interest converged in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century as four independent forces met. First, there is the rebellion in Darfur, which has generated greater international concern than any other recent humanitarian crisis. This long-neglected western region has been intermittently at war since the 1980s and claimed the lives of 300,000 Darfuris in its most recent phase. The rebellion beginning in 2002 led to an ongoing humanitarian emergency, costing Western governments
Book thumbnail image Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling first opens to public This Day in World History – On November 1, All Saint’s Day, Pope Julius II celebrated a mass in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City for the first time in at least four years. Those who attended were the first people to see one of the most celebrated works of Western art—the magnificent frescoes painted by Michelangelo Buonarroti on the chapel’s ceiling.
October 2011 (58))
The marriage of lobbying and charitable efforts By Gayle Sulik Telecom giant AT&T is currently proposing a $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile. The purchase, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ), would have negative implications for the telecommunications market, so much so that the DOJ filed a civil antitrust lawsuit on August 31st to block the proposed acquisition, stating that it would “substantially lessen competition…resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products.” AT&T vowed to “vigorously contest” the matter. In addition to hiring 99 lobbyists and spending $11.7 million
Book thumbnail image Roger Luckhurst on Dracula The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. In the video below Roger Luckhurst, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Dracula, talks about why we’re still enthralled by the original novel.
Contagion, terrifying because it’s accurate By Charles B. Smith, Jay A. Jacobson, Leslie P. Francis, and Margaret P. Battin Contagion,” the extraordinary film portraying the outbreak of lethal virus that spreads rapidly around the world, may seem eerily familiar: from the medieval plague to the Spanish flu of 1918-19 to more recent fears of avian influenza, SARS, and H1N1 “swine flu”, contagions have long characterized the human condition. The film captures almost perfectly what a contemporary worst-case scenario might look like, and is eerily familiar because it trades on realistic fears. Contagion, the transmission of communicable infectious disease from one person to another (either by direct contact, as in this film — sneezing or coughing or touching one’s nose or mouth, then a surface like a tabletop or doorknob that someone else then touches
Egypt’s democratic quest: From Nasser to Tahrir Square Egypt’s 2011 revolution marks the latest chapter in Egyptians’ longtime struggle for greater democratic freedoms. In this video, Steven A. Cook, CFR’s Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies and author of The Struggle for Egypt: From Nasser to Tahrir Square, identifies the lessons that Egypt’s emerging leadership must learn from the Nasser, Sadat, and Mubarak regimes. Egypt’s new leaders “need to develop a coherent and compelling, emotionally satisfying vision of Egyptian society, and answer the question what Egypt stands for and what its place in the world is,” argues Cook.
Book thumbnail image Constantine wins control of Roman Empire This Day in World History – Control of the Roman Empire was in the balance when the armies of Constantine and his brother-in-law Maxentius clashed near the Milvian Bridge, north of Rome. Despite having a smaller army, Constantine triumphed—a victory made secure when Maxentius drowned in the Tiber River while trying to escape. Constantine’s victory left him in command of the western half of the Roman Empire—but it also had more significant consequences.
Book thumbnail image “We are in this to win” Outdated goals of war in the 21st century By Louis René Beres Even now, when the “fog of war” in Iraq and Afghanistan is likely at its thickest point, our leaders and military commanders still speak in starkly traditional terms. Such ordinary emphases on “victory” and “defeat” belie the profound and critically-nuanced transformations of war […]
Book thumbnail image The origin of Reactions By Peter Atkins There are three major problems associated with the challenge of reaching out to the general public with chemistry. One is its collective disagreeable memory of how in many cases it was taught. Another is the association of the subject with harmful effects on humanity and the environment. The third is what is perceived as the intrinsically abstract nature of its explanations. If chemistry, and all its marvellous contributions to the joy of being alive, is to be appreciated by the general public
Book thumbnail image Neutrinos: faster than the speed of light? By Frank Close To readers of Neutrino, rest assured: there is no need yet for a rewrite based on news that neutrinos might travel faster than light. I have already advertised my caution in The Observer, and a month later nothing has changed. If anything, concerns about the result have increased.
Book thumbnail image Factoids & impressions from breast cancer awareness ads By Gayle Sulik One might assume that anything involving breast cancer awareness would be based on the best available evidence. Unfortunately, this assumption would be wrong. I’ve evaluated hundreds of campaigns, advertisements, websites, educational brochures, and other sundry materials related to breast cancer awareness only to find information that is inaccurate, incomplete, irrelevant, or out of context. We could spend the whole year analyzing them. For now, consider a print advertisement for mammograms by CENTRA Mammography Services.
Nobody wants to be called a bigot By Anatoly Liberman Nobody wants to be called a bigot, but accusations of bigotry are hurled at political opponents with great regularity, because (obviously) everyone who disagrees with us is a bigot, and it is to the popularity of this ignominious word that I ascribe the frequency with which I am asked about its origin. Rather long ago I wrote about bigot in the “gleanings,” but answers in the “gleanings” tend to be lost, while a separate essay will pop up in the Internet every time someone will ask: “Where did bigot come from?”
Book thumbnail image Margaret Sanger arrested This Day in World History – Birth-control champion Margaret Sanger and two other women were arrested on October 26, 1916, when police entered the Brooklyn, New York, birth-control clinic that Sanger had started. Sanger began working as an obstetric nurse in New York’s poverty-ridden Lower East Side early in the 1900s. There, she became aware of the connection between poverty, high fertility, and high death rates for infants and mothers. Convinced that something needed to be done, Sanger became a crusader for birth control—and the coiner of that term.
Book thumbnail image 198 methods of nonviolent action In light of the growing momentum of Occupy Wall Street and the international riots this summer, we’ve decided to share the following excerpt from Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle: Language of Civil Resistance in Conflicts. These 198 methods of nonviolent action have all been used in historical instances of nonviolent struggle. Without doubt, a large number of additional methods have already been used but have not been classified
Book thumbnail image Does Obama lead when he does not speak? By Elvin Lim When the dust settles on the history of the Obama presidency, a major theme historians will have to consider and explain, is the startling contrast in his record in domestic policy versus his successes in foreign policy, which now include the assassination of Bin Laden and the toppling of Qaddafi. To put the matter in another way: if 2012 were 2004, and Obama would be judged purely on his foreign policy alone, he wouldn’t have to be doing any bus tours in the battleground states now.
Book thumbnail image The League of Nations We usually think of international organizations as a twentieth-century phenomenon that started with the establishment of the League of Nations in 1919. This is, for the most part, true. However, in the late nineteenth century nations had already established international organizations for dealing with specific issues. The foremost among them were the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), founded in 1865 (originally called the International Telegraph Union), and the Universal Postal Union, which dates back to 1874. Today, both of these organizations are part of the UN system. The International Peace Conference held in The Hague in 1899 established the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which started its work in 1902.
Book thumbnail image World created (according to Bishop Ussher) This Day in World History – Ever wonder when the universe began? Bishop James Ussher, a seventeenth-century Anglican cleric and biblical scholar had the answer. God created the world, he said in a 1658 chronology titled The Annals of the World, on October 23, 4004 BCE.
Book thumbnail image The missing link in human evolution? By John Reader A blaze of media attention recently greeted the claim that a newly discovered hominid species, , marked the transition between an older ape-like ancestor, such as Australopithecus afarensis, and a more recent representative of the human line, Homo erectus. As well as extensive TV, radio and front-page coverage, the fossils found by Lee Berger and his team at a site near Pretoria in South Africa featured prominently in National Geographic, with an illustration of the three species striding manfully across the page. In the middle, Au. sediba was marked with twelve points of similarity: six linking it to Au. afarensis on the left and six to H. erectus on the right. Though Berger did not explicitly describe Au. sediba as a link between the two species, the inference was clear and not discouraged. The Missing Link was in the news again.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Prohibition Prohibition, or “the Noble Experiment,” refers to the period between 1919 and 1933 when the sale, manufacture, and distribution of alcohol were illegal in the United States. Although it may have lasted only 14 years, Prohibition was the culmination of decades of protest and lobbying and has ramifications that are still felt today. It remains the focal point of the ongoing debate surrounding the potential dangers and benefits of alcohol and people’s right to drink as they please.
Book thumbnail image Abina and the Important Men: A Graphic History By Trevor Getz By Trevor Getz Abina and the Important Men is an interpretation of the testimony of a young, enslaved woman who won her way to freedom in late nineteenth century West Africa and then prosecuted her former master for illegally enslaving her. October 21 marks the 155th anniversary of the date that she forced a British magistrate and a jury of eleven affluent and powerful men to hear the charges she was making against an influential male land-owner.
Book thumbnail image Apple announces iPod This Week in World History – After weeks of speculation about what, exactly, Apple had up its sleeve, Steve Jobs made an appearance on October 23, 2001, that ended the mystery. Jobs announced Apple’s newest product, a portable digital music player that would, he said, put “1,000 songs in your pocket.” The iPod was born.
Book thumbnail image Egypt’s anti-Christian violence: How things got so bad By Steven A. Cook If February 11, 2011 demonstrated the very best of Egypt, then October 9, 2011 demonstrated the very worst of Egypt. The only way to describe what unfolded in front of the state television building (and subsequently Tahrir Square), where Copts were protesting over not-so-subtle official efforts to stoke sectarian tension over a church being constructed in Aswan, was an anti-Christian pogrom. The death toll stands at 25 with 300 injured. There have been scattered reports of soldiers and policemen injured, but by far the Copts took the brunt of the violence.
Book thumbnail image Sydney Opera House opens This Day in World History – One of the twentieth century’s most recognizable buildings, the Sydney Opera House, officially opened on October 20, 1973. The Opera House, situated on the shores of Sydney Harbor and with a striking roof line, has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with the comment that the building “brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design.”
Book thumbnail image 17 October 1961: Fifty years on By Martin Evans On 17 October 1961 at 5.30 am 30,000 unarmed Algerians converged on the centre of Paris in the light rain, flooding in from the surrounding shanty towns and poor suburbs – Nanterre, Colombe and Gennevilliers. Mostly made up of young men and women, but also a scattering of older people and some mothers with young children, the demonstration was organised by the National Liberation Front (FLN) which had been engaged in war for Algerian national independence against France since November 1954.
Book thumbnail image What Occupy Wall Street learned from the tea party By David S. Meyer The Occupy Wall Street movement, several weeks strong and gaining momentum, reminds us that tea partyers aren’t the only people unhappy with the state of the nation. The two groups are angry about some of the same things, too, especially the government bailouts for big banks — a similarity that Vice President Biden observed in remarks. They’ve taken different tacks for expressing their anger. The Occupiers camp out in New York’s Financial District, while
Notes and Queries: jubilees and jubilation By Anatoly Liberman During five and a half years of its existence, this blog has featured the periodical Notes and Queries twice. Why I am turning to this subject again (now probably for the last time) will become clear at the end of the post. Notes and Queries appeared on November 3, 1849. In a series of short notes (naturally, notes) spread over the years 1876-1877, its first editor William John Thoms (1803-1885) told the world how the periodical had become a reality and how almost overnight
Book thumbnail image What is the history of science for, and who should write it? By Frank James I have been pondering these questions recently in the course of researching and writing the biographical memoir for the British Academy of the distinguished and influential historians of science Rupert Hall (1920-2009) and his wife Marie Boas Hall (1919-2009). Before the 1939-1945 war history of science was practiced almost exclusively by scientists of one form or another such as Charles Singer (1876-1960) in England and George Sarton (1884–1956) in the United States.
Book thumbnail image Corporate influence on trade agreements continues By Bill Wiist As in many other aspects of the global economy, corporations continue to exert inordinate influence over aspects of trade agreements that control life and death, and the rule of democracy particularly in low and middle-income countries. Corporations are able to disproportionately influence provisions of trade agreements to a far greater extent than public health, labor, other citizen representatives, and low-income countries. Corporations are allowed greater access to the trade agreement development process. For example, in the U.S. the memberships of the advisory committees to the
Book thumbnail image Occupy Wall Street: Why the rage? Paul Woodruff As thousands continue their march on Wall Street for a fifth straight week, an ancient story has much to tell us about the demands of justice. The occupation of Wall Street is about a colossal failure of justice. When justice fails, anger grows into rage. And rage can tear a community into shreds. When a few people reap huge rewards they do not deserve, while others get nothing but insults — even though they have worked hard and been loyal to their workplace –- justice has failed. Bankers carry away huge bonuses, while more and more of the workers who do the heavy lifting are laid off.
Book thumbnail image Capone found guilty of tax evasion This Day in World History – While federal and state officials knew Capone was guilty of bootlegging, running prostitution rings, and ordering these and other murders, they could not get the evidence to convict him. Their break came in May 1929, when Capone was arrested in Philadelphia for carrying a concealed weapon. While he served his prison sentence, federal authorities combed his homes for evidence. Their efforts produced the desired results. In 1931, officials leveled more than 5,000 counts of violating the Prohibition law against Capone and dozens of followers. They also indicted Capone on twenty-two counts of evading income taxes.
Book thumbnail image From hospital to nursing home What percentage of long-term care nursing home admissions is precipitated by a hospitalization? How is this changing over time? How does the risk for long-term care placement vary by patient, disease, and health system characteristics? The hypothesis is that most institutionalization is triggered by an acute event requiring hospitalization, which then interacts with underlying risk factors to result in long-term nursing home care. Differences in percentage of patients in a nursing home 6 months post-hospitalization, by age, gender, etc. were tested.
Book thumbnail image How Himmler’s personality shaped the SS As head of the SS, chief of police, ‘Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of Germanness’, and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that characterized the Third Reich.
Cockroaches, who needs ’em? By Jeffrey Lockwood In this article, Professor Jeff Lockwood answers a query regarding the possibility of exterminating all cockroaches. He replies: ‘A world without cockroaches would pretty much keep on doing what it’s doing now. Probably. At least if by ‘all cockroaches’ you mean the species that share our homes.’
Book thumbnail image Use of Gregorian calendar begins This Day in World History – In Roman times, Julius Caesar instituted a calendar reform based on a solar year of 365 and one-quarter days. To accommodate the quarter day, the Julian calendar added an extra day to every fourth year, creating leap years. Unfortunately, a solar year is really a few minutes shorter than 365 days and 6 hours. The Julian calendar’s overestimate meant that over the course of a century, more or less, the beginning of each of the four seasons moved back a day. By the late 1500s, the spring equinox fell on March 11, rather than around March 21.
Linked Up: BlackBerry, Toilet 2.0, and vintage Bill Gates By Nicola Burton I have no qualms in admitting that this Linked Up post is entirely inspired by the clip I found this week of Bill Gates, circa 1994, demonstrating his circus skills. How can I get this on OUPblog, I wondered to myself? I know; let’s have a TECHNOLOGY LINKED UP SPECIAL.
Book thumbnail image Why labor warms to the Wall Street protests By Joseph McCartin As the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement gathers momentum in New York and around the country, one of its most interesting features has been the growing number of union members at the protests. For understandable reasons, unions have traditionally avoided close involvement with demonstrations as spontaneous as OWS.
Book thumbnail image Conference setting international time begins This Day in World History – Why does most every country in the world agree on how to determine what time it is? You can thank the International Prime Meridian Conference, which began on October 13, 1884, and lasted nearly ten days. The twenty-five countries that gathered in Washington , D.C., agreed to accept the line of longitude that passed through Britain’s Royal Observatory as the prime meridian—the line of 0° longitude (just as the Equator is 0° latitude). The nations also agreed that the time at Greenwich would be the standard time against which all other times would be compared—Greenwich Mean Time.
Book thumbnail image Geography matters: The impact of austerity and the path to recovery By Vassilis Monastiriotis After fifteen years of fast growth and, by Greek standards, monumental achievements (from EMU accession in 2001 to winning the UEFA Championship in 2004), Greece has found itself at the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008/09 again at the epicentre of global attention. But this time the publicity is unintended and for all the wrong reasons.
Were ancient ‘wives’ women? By Anatoly Liberman When we deal with the origin of ship and boat (the names of things pertaining to material culture), problems are almost predictable. Such words may have been borrowed from an unknown language (or from an attested language, but definitive proof of the connection is wanting) or coined in a way we are unable to reconstruct, but wife? Yet its etymology is no less obscure. My proposal will add to the existing stock of conjectures, and the future will show whether it has any chance of survival, let alone acceptance.
Book thumbnail image Nature’s building blocks By John Emsley I am sometimes asked the question: how many elements are there? I reply that there are several answers to that question. Should it include only those we know about? Then the answer is probably around 120 and I say ‘probably’ because some have been claimed but not confirmed. There are definitely 114 elements, although that includes some very transient ones.
How to play Oxford Fortune Cookie on Twitter By Lauren Appelwick After re-explaining how this works so many times, I decided it would be easier to jot off a quick post. #OxfordFortuneCookie is a game I like to play with the followers of @OUPAcademic.
Book thumbnail image Mark Twain’s conflict with America By Susan K. Harris My respect for Mark Twain has soared lately. I started looking seriously at his political side in 2003, when I taught his anti-imperialist essay “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” the week the U.S. invaded Iraq. For the first time, Twain’s anger resonated with me, but I didn’t know what drove it. I’d always accepted the prevailing biographical narrative that personal disasters fueled Twain’s temper tantrums in his last decade. That didn’t really work for “Person,” however; the essay indicts the U.S. for complicity in imperialist aggressions throughout the world. Twain’s anger is political, not personal, and it’s based on a definition
Book thumbnail image What Occupy Wall Street stands for By Elvin Lim To understand the Occupy Wall Street movement, it is helpful to understand that it is the antithesis of the Tea Party movement, though for now, much smaller in scale. Occupy Wall Street protesters are, like the Tea Party protesters, disenchanted at the state of the economy, and impatient for solutions. But unlike their compatriots on the Right, their animus is directed at corporate America (Wall Street), not at government (Washington, DC).
Book thumbnail image Resistance may be futile: Are there alternatives to Global English? By Dennis Baron English is a world language. Once an insignificant set of immigrant dialects on an obscure island in the rainswept North Sea, English is now the de facto language of multinational business, of science and technology, and of rock ‘n’ roll. Non-English speakers around the globe seem to be learning English as fast as they can. Plus there are more than three times as many English articles in Wikipedia as there are German, the second-biggest language of the online encyclopedia. When it comes to the global domination of English, resistance may be futile.
Book thumbnail image Hussein ibn Ali killed at Karbala This Day in World History – October 10 marks a signal date in Islamic history. On that day, Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was defeated and killed at Karbala, in modern Iraq. His death cemented deep and lasting division among Muslims that persist to this day. In Iran, where the population is overwhelmingly Shia, the death of Hussein—“leader of the martyrs”—is regularly commemorated in passion plays.
Book thumbnail image Derrida and the promise of democracy By Simon Glendinning Not so long ago Europe was not merely a recurrent theme for philosophy; it was central to the traditional discourse of “philosophy of the history of the world”. Taking in work by such giants as Kant, Hegel, and Husserl, the basic idea was that the history of “Man” can be related as a movement between an original “savage” condition and a final “fully human” condition. This construal of human history was not only European in origin, but also “Eurocentric”. Its centre was the idea that the transition for “Man” in history is a movement towards an end with European humanity at the head.
Book thumbnail image The Great American Beer Festival By Max Sinsheimer The Oxford Companion to Beer in hand, I took off for three days at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last week. This beer-lovers Mecca boasts the largest collection of American beer ever served, its popularity growing with each passing year. In 1982, the festival’s first year, there were 800 attendees in a 5,000 square foot festival hall. This year
Book thumbnail image Mortality through the lens of a pair of reading glasses By Janice Lynch Schuster Like all the mothers and grandmothers I knew when I was a child, my grandmother had a purse that was more a small suitcase, from which she pulled any number of essential items: tissues and mints, powder and lipstick. For reasons that puzzled me — I was only 4 or 5 — she also carried two pairs of eyeglasses, one of which she used for distance, the other for reading. As far as I was concerned, eyes were eyes and glasses were glasses, and having to search for certain glasses for a specific activity made no sense. Yet whenever she misplaced her reading glasses, a frenzied search would ensue.
Book thumbnail image Chicago burns This Day in World History – At eight o’clock at night on October 8, 1871, a fire broke out in Patrick and Catherine O’Leary’s barn. Winds were strong that night in the Windy City, and the city itself was largely made of wood—not just the buildings, but even the sidewalks and signs. Every structure served as kindling, and the ferocious fire burned out of control for thirty-six hours, not stopping until it had destroyed 18,000 buildings over an area of three-and-a-half square miles. Three hundred people lost their lives in the fire, and a third of the city’s people were made homeless.
Book thumbnail image OSO, UPSO, and XML By Lenny Allen The title of the classic Philip K. Dick story asks whether androids dream of electric sheep. I don’t know the answer to that particular question, but I do know that we’re all–at this very moment, asleep or awake–dreaming of a digital monograph platform that is financially viable, intuitive, sustainable from the perspective of a rapidly shifting market environment, and adaptable enough to be able to meet both the short and long-term needs of scholarly research at all levels as well as the development of new business and acquisition models.
Carlson receives patent for Xerography This Day in World History – Chester Carlson had everything he needed to invent a xerography machine, or photocopier. He had been interested in printing and chemistry since childhood. He perceived a need—in his job, he found that he always needed more copies of documents than he could obtain cheaply. He reasoned that other businesses would also love to have a way of copying documents inexpensively. He had incentive to invent—he had just gotten married and did not think his job offered much chance for getting ahead. Finally, he had an inspiration.
Book thumbnail image ‘The seed of a story’: The Hidden Kingdom By Ian Beck By Ian Beck It is often difficult to remember exactly the initial seed, the faint stirrings of an idea that sets off the beginning of writing a long story. The root of the idea for The Hidden Kingdom is certainly muddled but it must surely begin with my long interest in Oriental art; in particular, Japanese woodblock prints and the anime films of Hiyao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
Book thumbnail image A core anxiety: Fear and trembling on the social networks By Louis René Beres A visibly deep pleasure is embraced by cell phone talkers. For tens of millions of Americans, there is almost nothing that can compare to the ringing ecstasy of a message. It also seems that nothing can bring down a deeper sense of despair than the palpable suffering of cellular silence. Perhaps half of the American adult population is literally addicted to cell phones. For them, a cell, now also offering access to an expanding host of related social networks, offers much more than suitable business contact
From ship to boat By Anatoly Liberman The history of boat is no less obscure than the history of ship. Britain was colonized by Germanic-speakers in the fifth century CE from northern Germany and Denmark. It is hard to imagine that the invaders, who became known to history as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes and who must have known a good deal about navigation, stopped using boats after they crossed the Channel. But a cognate of boat has not turned up in any modern dialect spoken on the southern coast of the North Sea.
Book thumbnail image Downton Abbey: a national love affair? By Lucy Delap Downton Abbey specialises in dramatic twists and love affairs at all social levels. The world of domestic service provides an ideal backdrop for thwarted passions and sexual machinations of all sorts.
Book thumbnail image A fetching snowclone: Stop trying to make X happen By Mark Peters A few weeks ago, I spotted this tweet by Braden Graeber: “Dear white guys, stop trying to make camouflage cargo shorts happen.” Minutes later—in a moment of true synchronicity—I saw a white dude in camouflage cargo pants. Whoa. As a fashion-challenged, oft-confused doofus, I appreciated the heads-up to two facts: 1) those shorts are an atrocity, and 2) this phrase is a snowclone that’s invaluable in mocking anything fake or contrived that annoys or pains us.
Book thumbnail image No longer loveable, the White House presents a fiesty candidate By Elvin Lim Republicans waited and they waited for Sarah Palin, but all she is is a tease. They tried Michelle Bachmann, and she had her day in the sun (or on Newsweek’s cover). They tried Rick Perry, and he had his day in the polls until his debate performances revealed certain holes (he would say “heart”) in his conservative armor. And now people are asking if Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey might be the last (“portly“) standing man between Romney and the Republican presidential nomination.
Book thumbnail image As Maine goes, so goes Pennsylvania? By Edward Zelinsky In presidential elections, Nebraska and Maine today allocate one elector to the candidate who prevails in each congressional district in the state and award the remaining two electors (corresponding to the states’ U.S. Senators) to the statewide popular vote winner. All other states bestow their electoral votes as a bloc on a winner-take-all basis. In Pennsylvania, the Republican governor, senate majority leader, and speaker of the state house of representatives propose that, starting in 2012, the Keystone State emulate Nebraska and Maine and apportion one electoral vote to each of
Book thumbnail image Birth of Dangun, legendary founder of Korea This Day in World History – According to Korean tradition, Dangun, the founder of Korea’s first dynasty, was born on October 3, more than 4,000 years ago. The legend of his birth indicates why this king is so important. Hwanung, the son of the king of heaven, wanted to live among men rather than among the gods. He came down the earth with 3,000 followers and settled in what is now North Korea, ruling the humans who lived in the area.
Book thumbnail image What makes an image an icon? Image, branding, and logos are obsessions of our age. Iconic images dominate the media. In his new book, Christ to Coke, art historian Professor Martin Kemp examines eleven mega-famous examples of icons, including the American flag, the image of Christ’s face, the double helix of DNA, and the heart.
September 2011 (59))
Book thumbnail image Monumental decisions By Margot Minardi The new Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, DC, attracted criticism from an unlikely corner recently when poet Maya Angelou complained that one of the inscriptions made the civil rights leader seem like an “arrogant twit.” In a sermon on “The Drum Major Instinct,” delivered two months before
The teal before the pink: ovarian cancer awareness month By Gayle A. Sulik September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Will the White House be lighted in teal just as it’s been lighted in pink to commemorate National Breast Cancer Awareness Month? Will grocery stores line shelves with teal ribbon products? Will schools give out teal t-shirts or pins? Probably not. Pink has been the color of choice when it comes to cause support…
Book thumbnail image Mitchell discovers a comet This Day in World History – Each evening that weather permitted, Maria (pronounced Mah-RYE-uh) Mitchell mounted the stairs to the roof of her family’s Nantucket home to sweep the sky with a telescope looking for a comet. Mitchell—who had been taught mathematics and astronomy by her father—began the practice in 1836. Eleven years later, on October 1, 1847, her long labors finally paid off. When she saw the comet, she quickly summoned her father, who agreed with her conclusion.
Book thumbnail image Is coffee the greatest addiction ever? By Lauren Appelwick Some of you may know that today is National Coffee Day. I’ve, personally, been trying to ignore the free/discounted offers around New York City since I’m trying to cut back, and decided to distract myself by putting together this quick video post about coffee and caffeine. Now, I would be reimiss if I did not first mention the fantastic book Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine by Stephen Braun. This is a
Book thumbnail image Some questions about the Great Sea Situated at the intersection of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the Mediterranean Sea has been for millenia the place where religions, economies, and political systems met, clashed, influenced and absorbed one another. Ranging from prehistory to the 21st century, The Great Sea is above all the history of human interaction across a region that has brought together many of the great civilizations of antiquity as well as the rival empires of medieval and modern times.
Book thumbnail image Once again, “the people” prepare to elect an American president By Louis René Beres Apart from their obvious differences, all of the candidates, both Democrat (President Obama) and Republican, have one overriding chant in common. For each aspirant, every pitch is prefaced by sanctimonious appeals to “the people.” Whether openly, or with a quiet nod to a presumably more subtle strategy, “I want to be the people’s president” is always their conspicuously shared mantra. This is not hard to understand. To suggest otherwise
Book thumbnail image A life we have reason to value By Nigel Crisp I suspect that most people if asked would describe the aim of the NHS as being about curing illness, helping people be healthy and providing good health services when needed. All of these are of course crucial and what the NHS does daily. I believe, however, that we need to go deeper and wider than this and suggest that the NHS shares in a wider aim to help people to have as much independence as possible so that they can live a life they have reason to value.
Monthly Gleanings: September 2011 By Anatoly Liberman Ingle is usually derived from Celtic. The Scots form is the same as the English one, while Irish Gaelic has aingeal. The Celtic word is a borrowing of Latin ignis “fire” (cf. Engl. ignite, ignition). Therefore, some etymologists derive Engl. ingle directly from the Latin diminutive igniculus; ingle nook gives this derivation some support. Be that as it may, no path leads from ingle to inkling.
Book thumbnail image Chinese philosopher Kongfuzi born This Day in World History – Few people in history can justly claim the impact of Kongfuzi (often called Confucius), whose teachings have influenced hundreds of millions of people across Asia. Like so many important figures in the world of ideas, the historical Kongfuzi is an elusive figure. While precise date of the sage’s birth is unknown, the Chinese have long celebrated September 28, and to this day, members of the Kong family still live in the family compound in Qufu, China.
Book thumbnail image Serendipity in science By Dorothy Crawford Chance is a fine thing, especially when it leads to a major new discovery. Remarkably, this often seems to be the case with scientific discoveries, at least in my field – tumour virology. We now know that around 20% of cancers are caused by microbes but without chance this figure might be substantially lower. The first human tumour virus was discovered in 1964 by Anthony Epstein and Yvonne Barr at the Middlesex Hospital in London with the virus being named Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) after its discoverers.
Book thumbnail image Rest in peace, Troy Anthony Davis By Elizabeth Beck Neither Sarah nor I have met Troy Anthony Davis. I first met his family in about 2003, which was about 18 years into his death sentence when Sarah and I were working on In the Shadow of Death: Restorative Justice and Death Row Families. At the time, his sister
Book thumbnail image Perry v. Romney By Elvin Lim The two front-runners in the Republican nomination contest, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, narrowed the distance between them in the last debate in Florida sponsored by Fox and Google. This is a debate that showcased both their Achilles’ heels. Perry’s problem is not the “ponzi scheme” comment about Social Security. Most conservatives agree with him, and the consistent conservative would actually agree with him that Social Security is a matter that should be sent back to the states to handle. Perry’s problem is his
Book thumbnail image Champollion reveals decipherment of the Rosetta Stone This Day in World History – On September 27, 1822, Jean François Champollion announced a long-awaited discovery: he could decipher the Rosetta Stone. The stone, a document written in 196 BCE during the reign of Ptolemy V, had been discovered in Rashid (Rosetta in French), Egypt in 1799 by French troops involved in a military campaign against the British. Deciphering hieroglyphics had frustrated scholars for centuries. Arab scholars, beginning in the ninth century, CE, made unsuccessful attempts, as did Europeans in the fifteenth.
Book thumbnail image The Battle of Midway: a narrated slideshow There are few moments in American history in which the course of events tipped so suddenly and so dramatically as at the Battle of Midway. At dawn of June 4, 1942, a rampaging Japanese navy ruled the Pacific. By sunset, their vaunted carrier force (the Kido Butai) had been sunk and their grip on the Pacific had been loosened forever.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: What happens when our immune system doesn’t work as it should? This is the latest post in our regular OUPblog column SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: what happens when our immune system doesn’t work as it should?
Book thumbnail image ‘Nerd’ is the word By Adam Rosen By Adam Rosen A little over three weeks ago, Hurricane Irene passed through New York City. Although residents greeted warnings from authorities with wildly varying degrees of seriousness, their response was nearly uniform: hunker down. Even for those types relishing the chance to buck official admonishment, there wasn’t much point. Concerts were canceled, beaches were closed, and untold numbers of brunches went unserved. I wasn’t, in truth, all that bothered by the state of affairs.
Book thumbnail image Marking the autumnal equinox in the ancient world This Day in World History – Sometime around September 23 each year, Earth reaches the autumnal equinox, the point when the sun stands directly above the Equator and daylight and dark are roughly equal. (The day, of course, marks the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. South of the Equator, it is the vernal, or spring, equinox. March 23 is the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the Southern.) These astronomical events did not go unnoticed by ancient peoples.
Book thumbnail image Professor Peter Atkins: On Being Below, you can listen to Professor Peter Atkins of Lincoln College, Oxford, talk about On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence. This podcast is recorded by the Oxfordshire Branch of the British Science Association, whose regular SciBars podcasts can be found here.
Book thumbnail image Erdogan’s victory lap: Turkish domestic politics after the uprisings By Steven A. Cook As Cairo’s citizens drove along the Autostrad [last] week, they were greeted with four enormous billboards featuring pictures of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With Turkish and Egyptian flags, the signs bore the message, “With United Hands for the Future.” Erdogan’s visit marks a bold development in Turkey’s leadership in the region. The hero’s welcome he received at the airport reinforced the popular perception: Turkey is a positive force, uniquely positioned to guide the Middle East’s ongoing transformation.
Book thumbnail image Six women, two men hanged for witchcraft This Day in World History – In the fatal climax of months of turmoil, six women and two men were hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, after having been found guilty of witchcraft. The eight were the last victims of a witchcraft hysteria that gripped Salem and other towns in Massachusetts in 1692. The tumult began in February 1692, when several young girls began to behave strangely and complained of physical torments. Soon, the girls were accusing women in the village of being witches. Witchcraft was a capital offense at the time, and colonial leaders set up a court to investigate. In all, about 140 people—86% of whom were women—were accused of witchcraft in Salem.
Book thumbnail image Beside the seaside: Blackpool and national biography By Sue Arthur Memories of your summer holiday may be fading, but the latest update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography seeks to rekindle the summer—or at least summers past—with one of the new additions from its latest update, published today. For forty years Reginald Dixon (1904-1985) played the Wurlitzer at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, turning a former cinema organist into a recording star, known worldwide for his signature tune, ‘I do like to be beside the seaside.’ Here Dixon’s biographer, Sue Arthur, describes the man who became ‘Mr Blackpool’, and the interwar resort he helped to make a national attraction.
Actor, receptor, witness We all play three roles in every moment of our lives. As actors we move, speak, push and pull, make decisions, and otherwise engage in any number of activities animated by our goals and desires. As receptors we use our senses to listen, smell, touch, get pushed and pulled, and react emotionally to other people. As witnesses we observe everything going on around us, analyzing, synthesizing, describing, explaining, and understanding the world in which we live.
The undiscovered origin of frigate By Anatoly Liberman I decided to stay at sea for at least two more weeks. The history of the word frigate is expected to comfort Germanic scholars, who may not know that, regardless of the language, the names of ships invariably give etymologists grief. In English, frigate is from French, and in French it is from Italian, so that the question is: Where did Italian fregata come from? Naturally, nobody knows. Although the literature
Book thumbnail image A journey through spin By Lynda Mugglestone Spin is one of those words which could perhaps now do with a bit of ‘spin’ in its own right. From its beginnings in the idea of honest labour and toil (in terms of etymology, spin descends from the spinning of fabric or thread), it has come to suggest the twisting of words rather than fibres – a verbal untrustworthiness intended to deceive and disguise. Often associated with newspapers and politicians, to use spin is to manipulate meaning, to twist truth for particular ends – usually with the aim of persuading readers or listeners that things are other than they are.
Book thumbnail image What the Right really thinks about sex By Corey Robin Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, and Dan Savage, the liberal sex columnist, recently had a Bloggingheads conversation about sex, lies, and videotape. It’s a fascinating discussion, mostly because of what it reveals about the conservative mind and its attitude toward sex.
Book thumbnail image Back to school special Part 2: Education on the rise By Sydney Beveridge Some of the earliest detailed census data on education came from 1850 when the census reported information about school attendance. For many decades, the census focused on literacy rates, which we discussed in part two of the back to school series. By the mid-1900s, data on educational attainment emerged (elementary school, high school, college, etc.), adding new insight into education
Book thumbnail image 5,000-year-old mummy found in Alps This Day in World History – While hiking through the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, Erika and Helmut Simon, a German couple, spotted a brown shape in a watery gully below them. Scrambling down to investigate, they realized that they were looking at a human head and shoulder. Assuming the body was a climber who had been killed in a fall, they reported their find to authorities. The body was removed with a jackhammer and tourists made off with some of its clothing and the tools that were found with it.
Book thumbnail image From ‘safety net’ to ‘trampoline’: the reform of the welfare state By Julie MacLeavy In recent years, governments of both the right and left have been involved in debates over the best way to deliver public services. Whereas during the post-war period it was widely accepted that state provisioning of infrastructure, health, education and social services was the best way to ensure the well being of citizens, in the latter decades of the twentieth century the market was claimed to be a better way of delivering public goods and services because it was associated with competition, economic efficiency and consumer choice. Commitment to the market entailed a qualitative shift in welfare provision, whereby welfare was based less on a model in which the state counters the market and more on a model where the state serves the market.
Book thumbnail image A concise overview of the Press We, the editors of OUPblog, field a lot of questions about “the Press.” Sometimes, these questions aren’t even questions, just statements of misinformation or confusion such as: I thought you just published textbooks… But Oxford University Press is in Oxford… OUPblog is amazing! (Oops, how’d that one slip in there…)
What the bejeebers are cave crickets? By Jeffrey Lockwood Professor Jeff Lockwood answers a reader’s question regarding Cave Crickets: ‘The cave crickets belong to the Family Rhaphidophoridae. Technically they’re not ‘true’ crickets (like field crickets), but they’re close enough. In fact, they’re truer crickets than beasts like the Mormon cricket.’
Book thumbnail image 9/11 and the dysfunctional “aughts” By Richard Landes In the years before 2000, as the director of the ephemeral Center for Millennial Studies, I scanned the global horizon for signs of apocalyptic activity, that is, for movements of people who believed that now was the time of a total global transformation. As I did so, I became aware of such currents of belief among Muslims, some specifically linked to the year 2000, all predominantly expressing the most dangerous of all apocalyptic
In appreciation of bats By John D. Altringham 2011-12 is the International Year of the Bat sponsored by the United Nations Environment Programme. Yes, that’s right – we are devoting a whole year to these neglected and largely misunderstood creatures. Perhaps if I give you a few bat facts and figures you might begin to see why.
Book thumbnail image Political Analysis and social media: A case study for journals By R. Michael Alvarez After my co-editor, Jonathan N. Katz, and I took over editorship of Political Analysis in January 2010, one of our primary goals was to extend the readership and intellectual reach of our journal. We wished to grow our readership internationally, and to also deepen our reach outside of political science, into other social sciences.
Ship and the rings it leaves in etymological waters (Part 2) By Anatoly Liberman Alongside Old Icelandic skip “ship,” we find the verb skipa “arrange; assign.” It is tempting to suggest that the unattested meaning of this verb was either “arrange things on a ship; prepare a ship for a voyage; make it secure and shipshape” or even “board a ship, travel by ship,” because the connection between skip and skipa can hardly be doubted. However, not improbably, the earliest meaning of ship was simply “thing made, artifact,” rather than “vessel,” with skipa reminding us of that sense.
Book thumbnail image The Black and Tans in black and white By D. M. Leeson In September 2010, when my book was just about to enter production, my editor asked me if I had any ideas about an image for the cover.
Book thumbnail image A nation divided, a president chastened By Elvin Lim On 9/11 each year, the media reenacts the trauma the American people experienced in 2001. Images already burnished in our minds are replayed. Memorials services are held, moments of silence are observed, and the national anthem is sung. National myth-making occurs at the very site where national disaster occurs, so that a new birth of freedom rises phoenix-like from the ashes of ruin.
Book thumbnail image That old centrist magic: Jonathan Stein responds to Jonathan Chait In the New York Times Magazine, Jonathan Chait roiled the waters of progressive opinion by claiming that the left is a little delusional in its criticism of Obama for failing to do more to improve the economy. Accusing liberals and leftists of “magical thinking,” Chait wrote that the left overlooks a major obstacle Obama would have faced had he pursued a larger stimulus plan in early
Book thumbnail image “That’s it. I’m not a Beatle anymore.” By Gordon Thompson
Book thumbnail image The linguistic impact of 9/11 By Dennis Baron The terrorist attacks on 9/11 happened ten years ago, and although everybody remembers what they were doing at that flashbulb moment, and many aspects of our lives were changed by those attacks, from traveling to shopping to going online, one thing stands out: the only significant impact that 9/11 has had on the English language is 9/11 itself.
Book thumbnail image Yeats, faeries, and the Irish occult tradition W. B. Yeats is usually seen as a great innovator who put his stamp so decisively on modern Irish literature that most of his successors worked in his shadow. R. F. Foster’s new book, Words Alone: Yeats and his Inheritances, weaves together literature and history to present an alternative perspective.
10 years on, we remember
Book thumbnail image Because it is gone now By Claire Potter As a citizen, it is sometimes a jolt to realize that September 11 is now a decade in the past. As a teacher of modern United States history who ended her twentieth-century survey last fall with the attack on the twin towers, it was even more of a jolt to realize that a first-year college student who had matriculated in September 2010 might recall only the faint outlines of an event that definitively altered the course of our century. A student who entered high school in that same month would likely have been familiar with images of the smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center towers
Book thumbnail image Technological progress and human barbarism: An unheroic coupling By Louis René Beres Every time I get on an airplane, I am struck by the contradictions. As a species, we can take tons of heavy metal, and transform them into a once-unfathomable vehicle of travel. At the same time, we are required to take off our shoes, and discard our bottled water, before being allowed to board. The point, of course, is not to make us more comfortable (those days are long gone), but to ensure that we don’t blow up the aircraft.
Book thumbnail image How 9/11 made “History” By Mary Dudziak In classrooms across the country on September 11, 2001, lesson plans were abruptly abandoned. Students and teachers gathered around televisions, sharing the sense that “history” was being made before their eyes. Patricia Latessa, a Cincinnati high school teacher, turned on the cafeteria television “and watched history unfold.” She reflected as she watched about how the scenes of airplanes flying into buildings would impact her students
Book thumbnail image Taking liberties By Susan Herman Post-9/11 surveillance measures have made it far too easy for the government to review our personal and business records, telephone and e-mail conversations, and virtually all aspects of our lives. For example, Under the so-called “library provision” of the
Book thumbnail image Decennium 9/11: Learning the lessons By Andrew Staniforth For Americans, no act of terrorism compares to the attacks and from that moment the history of the United States has been divided into ‘Before 9/11’ and ‘After 9/11’. In lower Manhattan, on a field in Pennsylvania, and along the banks of the Potomac, the United States suffered its largest loss of life from an enemy attack on its own soil. Within just 102 minutes, four commercial jets would be simultaneously hijacked and used as weapons of mass destruction to kill ordinary citizens as part of a coordinated attack that would shape the first decade of a new century.
Book thumbnail image 9/11 and 3/11 Carl R. Weinberg Editor, Magazine of History On Tuesday March 11, 2003, I was working in my office at North Georgia College and State University (NGCSU), when I received an email that I will never forget. It was sent to all faculty and staff on the campus listserv from one of my colleagues on the subject of “America’s Defense.” His email noted that some of our
Ship and the rings it leaves in etymological waters (Part 1) By Anatoly Liberman We are in deep waters here. A first puzzle is that ship has exact cognates in Frisian, Dutch, German, Scandinavian, and Gothic, but nowhere outside Germanic. The ancient Indo-Europeans called their floating vessel something else, and we know what they called it. The modern echo of that word can be seen in Latin navis (from whose root we have navigation; and remember Captain Nemo’s Nautilus “little ship” and the Argonauts?), as well as in several other languages. So why ship?
Book thumbnail image The English riots and tough sentencing By Christine Piper The riots which occurred in London and several other major cities early in August have provoked a debate, still on-going, around a range of crucial sentencing issues. Two developments have most interested me. First has been the tension between the government and the judiciary and, second, the apparent mark-up because the offending took place in the context of a riot.
Book thumbnail image Back to school special Part 2: Early literacy data By Sydney Beveridge, Social Explorer With the new school year approaching, Social Explorer is taking a closer look at education data today and over the years. In this installment, we are looking at some of the earliest reported census data related to education. The Census Bureau first reported literacy data on reading and writing in 1840. At the time, 91.5 percent of the adult white population (over the age of 20) was literate.
Book thumbnail image Warren Buffett, Taxes, FICA and Social Security By Edward Zelinsky Warren Buffett has again called on Congress to raise federal taxes on affluent taxpayers. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Mr. Buffett urged Congress to increase federal taxes on taxpayers with annual incomes greater than $1,000,000. As he has in the past, Mr. Buffett contrasted his effective tax rate with
Book thumbnail image What is Sjögren’s? By Steven Taylor CEO – Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation The Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation (SSF) was saddened to hear about U.S. tennis star Venus Williams’ diagnosis of Sjögren’s syndrome and supports her courageous decision to step forward and share her diagnosis with the public. On behalf of the 4 million Americans with Sjögren’s
Book thumbnail image Strikes low, unemployment high By Joseph McCartin As Americans celebrate Labor Day 2012, the movement whose struggles led to the creation of this national holiday – the union movement – arguably faces its most profound crisis since Congress declared this national holiday in 1894. Indeed with the labor market weakened by the Great Recession and unemployment stubbornly high according the just released
Book thumbnail image From First Impressions to Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice has delighted generations of readers with its unforgettable cast of characters, carefully choreographed plot, and a hugely entertaining view of the world and its absurdities. With the arrival of eligible young men in their neighbourhood, the lives of Mr and Mrs Bennet and their five daughters are turned inside out and upside down.
Book thumbnail image A note to the White House By Michael Otto Dear First Lady Obama: I am writing this letter in support of your Let’s Move campaign against obesity. As you well know, traditional recommendations for physical activity and good nutrition have met with failure in the United States. According to the Center for Disease Control, rates of adults who engage in no leisure time physical activity have been in the range of 20-30% for over 20 years. Moreover, over 75% of individuals do not
Book thumbnail image Memo from Manhattan: Eye of the storm By Sharon Zukin Everyone knows by now that Tropical Storm Irene, which blew through the East Coast last weekend, flooded the beaches, suburbs and some inland towns but did little lasting damage in New York City. I have seldom felt so lucky to live on a high floor with no river view and on a street with very few trees.
Book thumbnail image New words are great for back to school By Dennis Baron It’s back to school, and that means it’s time for dictionaries to trot out their annual lists of new words. Dictionary-maker Merriam-Webster released a list of 150 words just added to its New Collegiate Dictionary for 2011, including “cougar,” a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man, “boomerang child,” a young adult who returns to live at home for financial reasons, and “social media” — if you don’t know what that means, then you’re still living in the last century.
Book thumbnail image Ethiopia and the BBC: The politics of development assistance By Peter Gill In the course of 17 minutes, Newsnight managed to review six years’ worth of all that had gone wrong in Ethiopia, from post-election violence in 2005, to the intensified anti-insurgency operations in Somali Region after 2007, to more recent opposition complaints that their supporters were being deprived of international development assistance. To emphasise the British aid connection, the film concluded: ‘The purpose of development aid is to help Ethiopia on to its feet, to establish democracy, justice and the rule of law. The evidence we’ve gathered suggests it is failing.’
August 2011 (54))
The non-fiction class action By Andrew Trask The non-fiction author has all kinds of worries. He may get his facts seriously wrong, in a very public forum. His books may not sell. Even if his books do sell, he may be sued for libel (the print version of slander), especially in Europe. And, in the past few years, a new threat
Monthly Gleanings: August 2011 By Anatoly Liberman One of our most faithful correspondents writes: “According to the Wall Street Journal, Indiana now outlawed teaching script in schools, so the kids can concentrate on their typing.” He was saddened by the news, and so was I. He asked me about non-cursive writing in old times, especially in the days of Chaucer. Here is a
Book thumbnail image On Chaucer and marriage By Peter Brown If Prince William and Catherine Middleton took to heart the wedding sermon delivered in Westminster Abbey by Richard Chartres, bishop of London, then Chaucer is on the royal reading list. The good bishop quoted two lines from the Franklin’s Tale to emphasize that successful relationships should be based on ‘space and freedom’ rather than coercion: ‘Whan maistrie [mastery] comth, the god of Love anon | Beteth his wynges, and farewell, he is gon’.
Book thumbnail image Care-less America By John Tirman The American public is essentially indifferent to the victims of wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The native populations that U.S. troops intervened on behalf of, or who were under the thumb of dictators we were trying to depose, suffered greatly in those wars, with millions dead and additional millions made homeless, impoverished, widowed, injured, or deprived of a normal life. This staggering human toll was and is not America’s responsibility alone, of course. But what is remarkable is how little the American public sympathizes with these victims, how little concern is registered.
Book thumbnail image Back to school special part 1: education data today By Sydney Beveridge With the new school year approaching, Social Explorer is taking a closer look at education data today and over the years. The most recent available data (from the 2009 American Community Survey) reveal education levels and distinctions among groups, as well as the correlations between educational attainment, income and employment. The most recent available data (from the 2009 American Community Survey) reveal education levels and distinctions among groups, as well as the correlations between educational attainment, income and employment.
Book thumbnail image Nary a “philosopher king”: The long road from Plato to American politics By Louis René Beres In Plato’s Republic, a canonic centerpiece of all Western thought, we first read of the “philosopher king,” a visionary leader who would impressively combine deep learning with effective governance. Today, almost 2400 years later, such leadership is nowhere to be found, either in Washington, or in any other major world capital.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: What’s the difference between bacteria and viruses? This is the latest post in our regular OUPblog column SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Today: what’s the difference between bacteria and viruses?
Book thumbnail image Health Talk: After prostate cancer Arnold Melman is a leading urologist with an extensive history treating men with prostate cancer. His book After Prostate Cancer, co-written with Rosemary Newnham, is a guide for the many men who survive prostate cancer, yet find themselves facing challenges
Book thumbnail image We can’t teach students to love reading By Alan Jacobs While virtually anyone who wants to do so can train his or her brain to the habits of long-form reading, in any given culture, few people will want to. And that’s to be expected. Serious “deep attention” reading has always been and will always be a minority pursuit, a fact that has been obscured in the past half-century, especially in the United States, by the dramatic increase in the percentage of the population attending college, and by the idea (only about 150 years old) that modern literature in vernacular languages should be taught at the university level.
Book thumbnail image The skinny on fat cats By Bianca Haase Cats are among the most common household pets and they share the same environment with humans and thus many of the risk factors. Obesity is a growing problem for feline health for the same reasons as it is in humans and has become a serious veterinary problem. Multiple diseases, such as type II diabetes mellitus and dermatosis, are associated with excess body weight and obesity in cats and may result in a lowered quality of life and potentially lead to an early death. Appleton et al. demonstrated that about 44% of cats developed impaired
Book thumbnail image Making an example of rioters By Susan Easton In the wake of the recent riots, much attention has been given to the causes of the riots but an issue now at the forefront of press and public concern is the level of punishment being meted out to those convicted of riot-related offences. Reports of first offenders being convicted and imprisoned for thefts of items of small value have raised questions about the purposes of sentencing, the problems of giving exemplary sentences and of inconsistency, as well as the issue of political pressure on sentencers.
Professor Wright and Professor Skeat By Anatoly Liberman From time to time I mention the unsung heroes of English etymology, but only once have I devoted a post to such a hero (Frank Chance), though I regularly sing praises to Charles P.G. Scott, the etymologist for The Century Dictionary. Today I would like to speak about Joseph Wright (1855-1930). He was not an etymologist in the strict sense of this term, but no article on the origin of English words can do without consulting The English Dialect Dictionary he edited.
Book thumbnail image Sound bites: how sound can affect taste The senses are a vital source of knowledge about the objects and events in the world, as well as for insights into our private sensations and feelings. Below is an excerpt from Art and the Senses, edited by Francesca Bacci and David Melcher, in which Charles Spence, Maya U. Shankar, and Heston Blumenthal look at the ways in which environmental sounds can affect the perceived flavour of food.
Book thumbnail image “Her home contains tens of thousands of pieces of clothing…” By Christiana Bratiotis Sharon is a 53-year-old white woman who is unmarried and lives alone in a multi-family home in a northeastern suburb. Sharon recently lost her job due to her multiple mental and physical health disabilities. Because of her job loss, Sharon is unable to afford her rent. She is now 3 months in the rears and her landlord is demanding payment. He recently stopped by to talk with Sharon. She was home but did not answer the door.
Book thumbnail image The rise of Rick Perry By Elvin Lim Rick Perry’s star is on the rise. And the reason is that he is as authentically conservative as President Barack Obama is apologetically liberal. Already some polls are showing him edging ahead of previous frontrunner, Mitt Romney. This is not a post-announcement bounce, but a game-changer in the Republican race.
Book thumbnail image The suspicious revolution: an interview with Talal Asad By Nathan Schneider Not long after his return from Cairo, where he was doing fieldwork, I spoke with Talal Asad at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center, where he is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology. Distinguished indeed: with books like Genealogies of Religion and Formations of the Secular, as well as numerous articles, Asad’s work has been formative for current scholarly conversation about religion and secularity, stressing both
Why read Plato? Plato’s Republic is the central work of the Western world’s most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. In these videos Robin Waterfield, editor of the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Republic, explains why we should read it, and what makes Plato so interesting.
Book thumbnail image Where are all the Islamic terrorists? By Charles Kurzman Last month, a few hours after a bomb exploded in downtown Oslo, I got a call from a journalist seeking comment. Why did Al Qaeda attack Norway? Why not a European country with a larger Muslim community, or a significant military presence in Muslim societies? I said I didn’t know. A second media inquiry soon followed: Given NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the number of disaffected Muslims in Europe, why don’t we see more attacks like the one in Norway? This question was more up my alley. I recently
Book thumbnail image For some orcas, inbreeding is a whale of a problem It’s being called “a whale of a problem,” and not just by me. According to research published in the Journal of Heredity, endangered Southern Resident orcas are mating within their family groups. This “genetic bottleneck” means the whales could be more susceptible to diseases, early mortality or failure to produce calves. The study’s lead author is Michael J. Ford, a scientist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle.
Book thumbnail image Woot woot–get ready to retweet this breaking news. Due to the incredible response to Angus Stevenson’s morning post, we’ve decided to share a little bit more about the brand new Concise Oxford English Dictionary, which is celebrating its 100th birthday. This fully updated 12th edition contains more than 240,000
Book thumbnail image Phantom states and rebels with a cause By Daniel Byman and Charles King Three years ago this month, Russia and Georgia fought a brief and brutal war over an obscure slice of mountainous land called South Ossetia that had declared its independence from Georgia. Flouting international law, Russia stepped in to defend South Ossetia and later formally recognized the secessionists as a […]
Book thumbnail image Defining our language for 100 years By Angus Stevenson Since the publication of its first edition in 1911, the revolutionary Concise Oxford Dictionary has remained in print and gained fame around the world over the course of eleven editions. This month heralds the publication of the centenary edition: the new 12th edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary contains some 400 new entries, including cyberbullying, domestic goddess, gastric band, sexting, slow food, and textspeak.
Book thumbnail image Web of Language fifth anniversary By Dennis Baron The Web of Language is five years old today. The first post—“Farsi Farce: Iran to deport all foreign words”—appeared on August 17, 2006, which in digital years makes it practically Neolithic. To protest American meddling in the Middle East, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad banned all foreign words from Farsi: pizza would become “elastic bread,” and internet
Tennis By Anatoly Liberman Suggestions on the origin of tennis go back to the beginning of English etymological lexicography, and one can teach a semester-long course by using only the attempts to discover who, where, when, and why called the game this. The game of tennis is not called tennis in any other language, unless a borrowing from English is used (as happened to hockey and football among others), and some people thought this was reason enough to insist on the English origin of the word. They asked questions like: “Why should we go
Book thumbnail image Editing Shakespeare By Stanley Wells In 1979 Oxford University Press appointed me as the founding head of a Shakespeare department. The Oxford Shakespeare, first published in 1891, had been rendered seriously out of date by advances in scholarship.
Book thumbnail image Philanthropic foundations and the public health agenda By Bill Wiist In 2009, there were 2,733 corporate foundations with assets of more than $10 billion and an annual donation of $2.5 billion. In that year foundations made grants of more than $38 billion of which $15.41 billion was from family foundations. In 2009, the 50 largest contributors to health donated more than $3 billion through almost 5,000 grants. The extent of corporate-based foundation funding in public health raises two critical questions for public health policy, research, and programming. First, should corporate-based foundations be setting the public health research and program agenda?
Book thumbnail image Memo from Manhattan: Main Street, Greenwich Village By Sharon Zukin E. B. White was correct when he wrote more than sixty years ago that New York is a city of neighborhoods, and he was even more correct that every neighborhood has its own “little main street.” “No matter where you live,” he says, “you will find within a block or two a grocery store, a barbershop, a newsstand and shoeshine shack, an ice-coal-and-wood cellar.., a dry cleaner, a laundry, a delicatessen” and on to the “hardware store, a liquor store, a shoe-repair shop.” Except for the coal
Book thumbnail image The deep wound By Nigel Young Rioting in English cities can be written off as the same mindless looting and burning that spread in US cities such as Los Angeles in the past. (I’m reminded of the 1965 Watts riots.) But then as now, context is everything. In a simplistic analysis, a feral elite has bred a “feral” urban mob in a classic, centuries-old repetition of patterns of social discontent, bubbling to the surface in a sudden expression of blind undirected rage. The young, the jobless and the marginal, in particular, sense at least their displacement and invisibility.
Book thumbnail image Nazis on the run Gerald Steinacher is the first person to uncover the full extent of the secret escape routes and hiding places ‘ratlines’ that smuggled Nazis out of Europe, through South Tyrol, across the Alps into Italy, and onward to Argentina and elsewhere. His ground-breaking research in the archives of the ICRC in Geneva brought to light the fact that the Red Cross supplied travel papers to war criminals – amongst them Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.
Book thumbnail image Are riots normal? Or, ‘Don’t panic, Captain Mainwaring!’ By Leif Jerram As we watch riots tear through the centres of British cities, many people have (instinctively and understandably) tried to see something of profound importance in them. For Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, they show why the budget for his police force should not be cut. For those on the left, the riots have been an essay in the perils of vacuous consumerism on the one hand, and shameless abandonment of the poor by the state on the other. And for our Conservative prime minister, it is confirmation that parts of our society are sick and evil.
Book thumbnail image Feral capitalism hits the streets By David Harvey “Nihilistic and feral teenagers” the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
Book thumbnail image The King of Showmen By Rebecca Alpert Today, Harlem Globetrotter star Reece “Goose” Tatum will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. But Tatum also deserves consideration for induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Baseball was Tatum’s first sport and first love. Tatum was a gifted pantomime artist and comedian.
Book thumbnail image Coups, corporations, and classified information By Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 under the National Security Act. The act allowed for “functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security,” in addition to intelligence gathering. Initially, the scope of the CIA was relegated to intelligence, though a substantial and vocal group advocated for a more active role for the agency. This culminated in National Security Council Directive No. 4, which ordered the CIA to undertake covert actions against communism.
Book thumbnail image A Facebook roundtable of the Left Who said academics don’t know how to use social media? Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, has certainly proved them wrong. After reading this article by Glenn Greenwald, Robin turned to Facebook.
Book thumbnail image Raining sand By Michael Welland It was a double-dose of adrenalin: watching a violently growing volcanic eruption while retaining a firm grip on my twelve-year old daughter to prevent her sliding off the rolling boat and plummeting into the turbulent waters of the Sunda Strait. The boat was a rickety old tub, the Sumatran helmsman grinning cheerfully. The volcano was Anak Krakatoa.
Kneading bread for the needy By Anatoly Liberman In those rare cases in which people ask my advice about good writing, I tell them not to begin (to not begin?) their works with epigraphs from Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde, for the rest will look like an insipid anticlimax, and, disdainful of ground-to-dust buzzwords and familiar quotations, I also suggest that people avoid (naturally, like the plague) such titles as “A Tale of Two Friendships/ Losses/ Wars,” etc. and resist the temptation to
Book thumbnail image A call to reason By Elvin Lim America’s economy is not in crisis, but its political system is, or so thinks the S&P. The real problem, however, is not the political system per se, but its infection with populism. Even though the S&P has downgraded the US’s credit rating, it did so from an exaggerated understanding of American politics based on its shrillness, and not its constitutional fundamentals. This is why on the first trading day after the downgrade, American bonds are still the place to go.
Book thumbnail image The justification of punishment By Victor Tadros When an offender commits a crime most of us think that the state is justified, and perhaps also required, to punish him or her. But punishment causes offenders a great deal of harm, it costs a lot of money, and it not only harms offenders, it also harms their family and friends. What could possibly justify doing these things?
Book thumbnail image When men are left alone By Phyllis R. Silverman, Ph.D. It was with some excitement that I read the article on men and grief in the July 25th edition of the New York Times. It mentioned Widower: When Men Are Left Alone, which I had written with Scott Campbell, a text that is now 20 years old and still very relevant. I was pleased for another reason that took me a while to recognize. The article
Book thumbnail image The Catholics have won. (Or so it seems.) By Thomas A. Tweed Whose country is this? It’s ours. That’s been the recurring answer to that persistent question. Of course, in religiously and ethnically plural America that means many groups have claimed the nation as their own. As Reverend Josiah Strong did in his 1885 book Our Country, some have proposed that this is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation. But others have proclaimed primacy too. There was already a grid of tribal nations here when Europeans started planting flags and raising crosses.
Book thumbnail image Why history says gay people can’t marry…nor can anyone else* By Helen Berry I happened to be in New York at the end of June this year when the State legislature passed the Marriage Equality Act to legalise same-sex marriage. By coincidence, it was Gay Pride weekend, and a million people waved rainbow flags in the streets of Manhattan, celebrating this landmark ruling in the campaign for gay rights, and I was one of them. What struck me as a visitor from the UK – where civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal since 2004 – was the way in which gay marriage is still such a divisive issue in American politics.
Book thumbnail image How cats land on their feet By Ian Stewart Falling cats can turn over in mid-air. Well, most cats can. Our first cat, Seamus, didn’t have a clue. My wife, worried he might fall off a fence and hurt himself, tried to train him by holding him over a cushion and letting go. He enjoyed the game, but he never learned how to flip himself over.
Book thumbnail image Have you heard of René Blum? Well? Have you? If not, it’s probably because René Blum’s lifelong career in the arts has been safely hidden from the history books. Only his brother Léon Blum, the first Socialist and Jewish Prime Minister of France, received enormous attention. But Judith Chazin-Bennahum knows why René Blum deserves to be remembered: because he was an extraordinary man. Chazin-Bennahum’s book introduces the reader to the world of the Belle Epoque artists and writers, the Dreyfus Affair, the playwrights and painters who reigned supreme during the late 19th century and early 20th century period in Paris. Below she provides us with just a few of his most impressive accomplishments.
Book thumbnail image That ugly Americanism? It may well be British. By Dennis Baron Matthew Engel is a British journalist who doesn’t like Americanisms. The Financial Times columnist told BBC listeners that American English is an unstoppable force whose vile, ugly, and pointless new usages are invading England “in battalions.” He warned readers of his regular FT column that American imports like truck, apartment, and movies are well on their way to ousting native lorries, flats, and films. Engel’s tirade against the American “faze, hospitalise, heads-up, rookie, listen up” and “park up” got several million page views
Book thumbnail image 1 million dead in Iraq? By John Tirman As the U.S. war in Iraq winds down, we are entering a familiar phase, the season of forgetting—forgetting the harsh realities of the war. Mostly we forget the victims of the war, the Iraqi civilians whose lives and society have been devastated by eight years of armed conflict. The act of forgetting is a social and political act, abetted by the American news media. Throughout the war, but especially now, the minimal news we get from Iraq consistently devalues the death toll of Iraqi civilians.
Book thumbnail image Executive pay: are the days of golden packages numbered? By Christine Mallin The disquiet over excessive executive remuneration packages and a lack of appropriate links with relevant performance measures has been a matter of concern in recent years. After the financial crisis, there is even more of a focus on this aspect with shareholders becoming increasingly frustrated with both the amount and the design of executive remuneration packages.
Book thumbnail image Do evangelical Christian politicians help evangelicals? By David Sehat On Aug. 6, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will lead a prayer rally in Houston despite criticism that his event violates the separation of church and state. Though Perry said recently that he felt “called” to run for the presidency, he also told a Christian radio show that the rally will not be political. “This is simply people calling out to God,” he said.
Not an inkling By Anatoly Liberman Inkling: English is full of such cozy, homey words. There is the noun inkle “linen tape or thread” and the verb inkle “to whisper.” The noun is still listed as current, while the verb, which was extremely rare in the past, has survived only in dialectal use. Both, as well as inkling, were first recorded in Middle English, but little can be said about them. Winkle, twinkle, and crinkle shed no light on their past. Inkle “tape” and inkle “whisper” don’t seem to belong together. Dutch has enkel “simple,” and Swedish has enkel “single.”
Why Captain Marryat would have disapproved of Treasure Island By Peter Hunt Captain Frederick Marryat, an experienced Naval Officer, was a pioneering writer of sea-and-island adventure stories, such as Peter Simple (1834) and Mr Midshipman Easy (1836). One day his children asked him to write a sequel to The Swiss Family Robinson, Johann Wyss’s extravagant embroidering of the Robinson Crusoe story, which had found its circuitous way into English via William Godwin’s translation of a French version in 1816. Marryat was not amused.
Book thumbnail image Crowds and the slow death of America By Louis René Beres “The crowd is untruth.” –Soren Kierkegaard Sometimes, seeing requires distance. Now, suffocating daily in political and economic rants from both the Right and the Left, we Americans must promptly confront a critical need to look beyond the historical moment, to seek both meaning and truth behind the news. There, suitably distant […]
Book thumbnail image Egypt: Her Excellency, Madame President? By Bassem Sabry In early April, Bothaina Kamel, a female television presenter and media figure, announced that she would run for the office of the presidency. In a society where the idea of a woman leading a country, the judiciary, or serving any similar role is discouraged by both culture and religion (indeed, it is often outright banned), the presence of a woman in elections stirs up strong reactions from the public. A cursory glance at the news articles that have mentioned her after she declared her candidacy feature such statements as: “Are we so out of men that we would be run by a woman?”
Book thumbnail image Spielberg’s shallow redemption of the ET “other” in Super 8 By Richard Landes On a warm summer night earlier this month I sat at the grand opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival in the Sultan’s Pool just below Saladin’s walls, about to see Super 8 projected onto a giant screen. More than a decade after the second Intifada, it seemed a fitting place to see the latest contribution of one of the greatest storytellers of our age, to his work on Extra-Terrestrials. After all, Stephen Spielberg
Book thumbnail image Arab Spring, Israeli reality By Edward Zelinsky The world watches events in Libya, Egypt, Syria and other parts of the Arab world with a mixture of hope and trepidation. Slogans promising the quick and easy reform of an Arab Spring have given way to the harsh reality that violent autocracies are not easily overthrown. A fundamental, but politically incorrect, truth of this combustible situation is that only one Middle Eastern nation has created a functioning democratic society: Israel. Arab reformers, if they wish to create free, modern states, must terminate the Arab boycott of Israel and must instead emulate Israel.
Book thumbnail image A Merciless Place A Merciless Place is a story lost to history for over two hundred years; a dirty secret of failure, fatal misjudgement and desperate measures which the British Empire chose to forget almost as soon as it was over.
July 2011 (49))
The gods are on Twitter By Mark Peters I’ve been seeing gods everywhere lately. Not gods like Thor, Ganesha, and God. My cinnamon rolls have been deity-free, if not gluten-free. It’s lexical gods I can’t seem to escape. Everywhere I look someone is thanking, cursing, or begging some specific group of supreme beings. For example, I’ve recently spotted the following religious invocations: • […]
Book thumbnail image So you want to be a rebel? After 1951, if a person wanted to be a rebel she could just read the book. Later there would be other things to read—Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice, and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. But J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye was the first best seller to imagine a striking shift in the meaning of alienation in the postwar period, a sense that something besides Europe still needed saving.
Book thumbnail image In memoriam: Amy Winehouse By Nigel Young Following the funeral, the British radio waves are full of Amy Winehouse music. Those of us who learned as teenagers about great women blues and soul singers from listening to the voices of Billie Holliday and Bessie Smith, had no such contemporary singers of our own generation, white or black.
Book thumbnail image Computers remember so you don’t have to By Dennis Baron A research report in the journal Science suggests that smartphones, along with computers, tablets, and the internet, are weakening our memories. This has implications not just for the future of quiz shows–most of us can’t compete against computers on Jeopardy–but also for the way we deal with information: instead of remembering something, we remember how to look it up. Good luck with that when the internet is down.
Book thumbnail image Cancer is personal By Lauren Pecorino The statement “cancer is personal” can have several meanings. The fact that cancer affects one in three people over their lifetimes means that it is a disease that will hit close to home for everyone. Everyone will have family or friends that will be affected and loved ones will become cancer patients. Cancer is personal. Luckily, we are living in a new age when cancer patients are more likely than ever to be cancer survivors. There are 28 million cancer survivors in the world today. Out of approximately 12 million cancer survivors in the United States, 4.7 million received their diagnosis at least ten years ago. The good news that everyone should know is that there is progress in cancer management.
Bludgeoning oneself into a corner By Anatoly Liberman When asked about the origin of a certain word, I often answer: “I have no idea” (in addition, of course, to “I don’t remember” and “I have to look it up in a good dictionary”). Sometimes, after consulting a dictionary, I add: “No one knows.” The questioners express surprise: a doctor should be able to diagnose patients, a plumber is called to fix the leak, and etymologists are evidently paid for explaining the origin of words. There may or might be a fat living in
Book thumbnail image How do you write a history of Hamlet? By David Bevington How could I tell this story in relatively brief compass, taking also into account the many depictions of important scenes by artists like Joshua Reynolds and John Everett Millais, parodies and spoofs, Spaghetti westerns, meditations on Hamlet in the fiction of George Eliot and James Joyce and others, and Hamlet’s impact on the very language we speak without collapsing into a welter of information lacking critical direction? What is this story all about?
Book thumbnail image Art, love, and the terror in Norway By Toril Moi Like other Norwegians I am in shock at the terrible events in Oslo and at Utøya on 22 July. My heart goes out to the victims and their families. I was not in Norway when the horror happened. On 22 July, I was giving a talk about Ibsen’s 1873 play Emperor and Galilean at the National Theatre in London. I only learned about the bombing in Oslo and the massacre at Utøya later that night. When I discovered that the terrorist in Norway saw himself as
Book thumbnail image C’mon, Mr. Capote. Tell us what you really think. Even today, Truman Capote remains one of most America’s most controversial authors. Following early literary success his flamboyant became well-documented at the many parties and restaurants he frequented. Always claiming to be researching his next book, Capote was a social celebrity and may have had just as many strong opinions about other people as they had about him. In the quiz below, you’ll find a series of quotes from
Book thumbnail image The triumph of politics By Elvin Lim America is the only country in the world that that has the luxury of creating an economic crisis when there isn’t one. Ours is the only democracy with a debt ceiling, with the exception of Denmark, which raises its ceiling well in advance of when it would be reached. Economists say that our “debt crisis” is an unforced error, because people are more than willing to lend us money, at pretty good rates. This is the benefit of having a really good credit score.
Book thumbnail image Still don’t understand the Affordable Care Act? You’re not alone. I recently stumbled across the site Act of Law, on which an anonymous woman is reading the entire ACA aloud. “I will read the law for two hours each week and post videos of each reading here on this site,” she writes. “It is 906 pages long (table of contents included) and I estimate that it will take about 60 hours to read.” The most recent video she posted covers hours 23 and 24 of this project. It appears below with permission.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: How does the immune system work? By Jonathan Crowe Each day of our lives is a battle for survival against an army of invaders so vast in size that it outnumbers the human population hugely. Yet, despite its vastness, this army is an invisible threat, each individual so small that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. These are the microbes – among them the bacteria and viruses – that surround us every day, and could in one way or another kill us were it not for our immune system, an ingenious defence mechanism that protects us from these invisible foes.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Oslo, Somalia, sinkholes Tweet BREAKING: The first videos from today’s explosion in Oslo The UN has officially declared a state of famine in Somalia, 10 million affected by drought What is the heat index, exactly? It was developed in 1978 by George Winterling and was originally called “humiture.” This man is the world’s foremost gnome collector COLOR pictures […]
Book thumbnail image 5 greatest bar brawls in American history 1. The Philadelphia Election Riots, 1742 No reported deaths, several injured, one election lost. Never piss off your bartender. That’s a time-honored rule understood by all regular drinkers. Obviously, this wouldn’t include Quakers Thomas Lloyd and Israel Pemberton, Jr., who had headed off to Philadelphia’s Indian King Tavern one election-day morning to see what they could do about defusing a potentially violent situation.
Book thumbnail image Lizzie Eustace: pathological liar? By Helen Small Pathological lying, the philosopher Sissela Bok tells us, ‘is to all the rest of lying what kleptomania is to stealing’. In its most extreme form, the liar (or ‘pseudologue’) ‘tells involved stories about life circumstances, both present and past’.
Book thumbnail image “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” By Jeffrey Wasserstrom As my friends know, it doesn’t take much to make me think of Mark Twain. And even people I’ve never met who have followed my writings on China know about my obsession with Twain, since I’ve managed to bring him into discussions of a wide range of China-related topics, from Shanghai history (he never went
Are laws requiring English signs discriminatory? By Dennis Baron English on business signs? It’s the law in New York City. According to the “true name law,” passed back in 1933, the name of any store must “be publicly revealed and prominently and legibly displayed in the English language either upon a window . . . or upon a sign conspicuously placed upon the exterior of the building” (General Business Laws, Sec. 9-b, Art. 131). Failure to comply is technically a misdemeanor, but violations
Book thumbnail image Sexuality in older age By Abi Taylor Old people having sex…funny? embarrassing? disgusting? Or a normal part of healthy ageing? Most people don’t tend to think about the sexuality of older people. There are general assumptions that older people aren’t having sex, aren’t interested in sex, and couldn’t do it even if they wanted to. And, if they were interested in sex they
Club ‘an association’ By Anatoly Liberman It is inevitable that after dealing with club “cudgel” we should ask ourselves where club “group of members” came from. Some people think that the explanation is natural and easy. Skeat was among them. Following his etymology of club “cudgel,” he also derived this club from a Scandinavian source and commented: “Lit[erally] ‘a clump of people’.
Book thumbnail image What consumers think about caging livestock By F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk After fighting each other for over a decade, the egg industry and the largest animal advocacy organization came to an agreement, one which will increase the welfare of egg-laying hens but also increase egg prices. The United Egg Producers, under persistent pressure from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), has agreed to transition hens out of battery cages and into enriched colony cages. The HSUS certainly believes the higher welfare standards are worth the increase in egg prices, but do consumers agree?
Book thumbnail image Dancing in shackles Beginning in the early 1980s, the structure of Chinese media changed. Newspapers, magazines, and television stations received cuts in their government subsidies and were driven to enter the market and to earn revenue. In 1979 they were permitted to sell advertising, and in 1983 they were allowed to retain the profits from the sale of ads. Because people were eager for information and businesses wanted to advertise their products, profits were good and the number of publications grew rapidly.
Book thumbnail image What people know about drugs is wrong While there have always been norms and customs around the use of drugs, explicit public policies designed to control drug abuse are a more recent phenomenon. Neither a drug-free world nor a world of free drugs seems to be on offer, leaving citizens and officials to face the age-old problem: What are we going to do about drugs? A good first step might be to learn more about them. In this Bloggingheads.tv video, The New Republic’s John McWhorter discusses the controversial topic with Mark Kleiman,
Book thumbnail image Listening to the Victorians “The best Victorian poetry is complex, challenging, and experimental,” Hughes says, and it enjoyed a wide readership as part of “the first era of mass media.” As literacy increased and printing technology advanced, the Victorians witnessed a media explosion during which more books, journals, magazines, and newspapers were published and read than ever before. The Victorian period, in this sense, was a forerunner to the Information Age, and much of the excitement, empowerment, bewilderment, and concern they felt as a result of revolutions in communication resembles our own.
Book thumbnail image William Makepeace Thackeray: Racist? By John Sutherland We can never know the Victorians as well as they knew themselves. Nor–however well we annotate our texts–can we read Victorian novels as responsively as Victorians read them. They, not we, own their fiction. Thackeray and his original readers shared a common ground so familiar that there was no need for it to be spelled out. The challenge for the modern reader is to reconstruct that background as fully as we can. To ‘Victorianize’ ourselves, one might say.
Book thumbnail image Do you know your legalese? “Even after an author has produced 23 books, the publication of a new edition remains a matter of some excitement—especially when it is a newly renamed eponymous work, said A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage (1987) was my very first book, and Oxford University Press is about to release the third edition as Garner’s Dictionary of Legal Usage.” –Bryan Garner
Book thumbnail image The broken promises of education The impact of education on individual and national prosperity has long been debated by politicians, policy advisers, business consultants and academics. However, Professor Hugh Lauder explains, “the links between education and a modern economy are much more complex than policy makers would have us believe. Education will no longer be the route to good jobs unless we fundamentally rethink the purpose of education. Rounded students are better suited to the modern economy. If we focused on creativity versus rote learning and exam passing we just might surprise ourselves”.
Book thumbnail image Republicans will pay for the Tea Party’s ideological purity By Elvin Lim Tea Party Republicans are about to be force-fed a slice of humble pie. In the first test of their political acumen since sweeping into Congress last year, they showed an ignorance of the first rule of democratic politics: never say never, because a politician’s got to be a politician. Especially on an issue, the federal debt ceiling, with stakes as high
Book thumbnail image So you got into law school. Now what? By Nancy Levit and Douglas O. Linder So you’re going to law school this fall. Congratulations! Getting in wasn’t easy. Last year 155,000 people took the LSAT. The 201 ABA accredited law schools across the country received about 88,000 applications. Only 49,700 students matriculated. Obviously you’re a hard worker (or you wouldn’t be coming to law school and you wouldn’t have read past the first paragraph), so you may be wondering what you can do the summer before to prepare yourself for law school.
Club ‘cudgel’ By Anatoly Liberman Where there is golf, there are clubs; hence this post. But club is an intriguing word regardless of the association. It surfaced only in Middle English. Since the noun believed to be its etymon, namely klubba, has been attested in Old Icelandic, dictionaries say that club came to English with the Vikings or their descendants. Perhaps it did. In Icelandic, klubba coexists with its synonym klumba, and the opinion prevails that bb developed from mb, which later became mp.
Book thumbnail image The food crisis in the Horn of Africa By Peter Gill International responsiveness to the food crisis in the Horn of Africa has relied again on the art of managing the headlines. Sophisticated early warning systems that foresee the onset of famine have been in place for years, but still the world waits until it is very nearly too late before taking real action – and then paying for it.
Book thumbnail image The long, strange journey From the Long March to the massive, glittering spectacle of the Beijing Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony in 2008, what a long, strange journey it has been for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). On July 1, the party celebrated its 90th birthday, marking the occasion with everything from a splashy, star-studded cinematic tribute to the party’s early years to a “praise concert” staged by two of the country’s officially sanctioned Christian groups.
Book thumbnail image If the public debt robs our children, we robbed the WWII generation By Elvin Lim It is often said that the public debt is a burden we leave to our children and grandchildren. Even Barack Obama said the same when he was a Senator. Invoking children is a great way to make a moral argument without sounding moralistic, but it is a spurious way to make an economic argument in committing the fallacy that all borrowing is deferred charge.
Six Iraqis in Strasbourg By Marko Milanovic Last week the European Court of Human Rights produced a landmark decision in Al-Skeini v. UK, a case dealing with the extraterritorial application of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). What a mouthful of legalese this is, you might think – so let me try to clarify things a bit. The main purpose of human rights treaties like the ECHR is to require the states that sign up to them, say the UK, France or Turkey, to respect such things as the right to life and legal due process, and prohibit the torture, of people living within the UK, France or Turkey.
Book thumbnail image Proud to be AARP. Kinda. By Edward Zelinsky Receiving my AARP membership card was one of the truly traumatic events of my life. I had marched for civil rights. I had protested the war in Vietnam. I walked the streets for Gene McCarthy. I was a legitimate Baby Boomer. How could this have happened to me? My wiser and more self-confident spouse took it in better stride. Doris quickly became adept at pulling out her AARP card and demanding old-age discounts, as I stood sheepishly aside.
Book thumbnail image Simon Winchester on Charles Dodgson This past weekend saw Oxford’s annual Alice’s Day take place, featuring lots of Alice in Wonderland themed events and exhibitions. With that in mind, today we bring you two videos of Simon Winchester talking about Charles Dodgson (AKA Lewis Carroll) and both his love of photography and his relationship with Alice Liddell and her family.
Book thumbnail image 7 degrees to Truman Capote I’d like to take this moment and introduce you all to Frannie Laughner, this summer’s intern extraordinaire. She and I were discussing William Todd Schultz’s Tiny Terror: Why Truman Capote (Almost) Wrote Answered Prayers, and the conversation somehow collided with The Oracle of Bacon. An idea was born. Frannie seemed up to the challenge, so I told her I would pick three public figures at random and she had to connect them to Truman Capote in seven degrees or less.
Book thumbnail image Content-free prose: The latest threat to writing or the next big thing? By Dennis Baron There’s a new online threat to writing. Critics of the web like to blame email, texts, and chat for killing prose. Even blogs—present company included—don’t escape their wrath. But in fact the opposite is true: thanks to computers, writing is thriving. More people are writing more than ever, and this new wave of everyone’s-an-author bodes well for the future of writing, even if not all that makes its way online is interesting or high in quality.
Book thumbnail image The multitasking mind By Dario Salvucci If the mind is a society, as philosopher-scientist Marvin Minsky has argued, then multitasking has become its persona non grata. In polite company, mere mention of “multitasking” can evoke a disparaging frown and a wagging finger. We shouldn’t multitask, they say – our brains can’t handle multiple tasks, and multitasking drains us of cognitive resources and makes us unable to focus on the critical tasks around us. Multitasking makes us, in a word, stupid.
Book thumbnail image A fairer future for social care? By Tom Dening Social care remains high on the political agenda as the Commission on Funding of Care and Support has this week presented its report to the Chancellor and to the Secretary of State for Health. The Commission comprised the commendably small number of three members – Andrew Dilnot, an economist and Principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford; Dame Jo Williams, Chair of the Care Quality Commission; and Lord Norman Warner, former Health Minister and erstwhile head of Kent Social Services. In their report, Fairer Care Funding, the Commission has proposed major changes to the current system.
Golf By Anatoly Liberman Before we embark on the etymology of golf, something should be said about the pronunciation of the word. Golf does not rhyme with wolf (because long ago w changed the vowel following it), but in the speech of some people it rhymes with oaf, and “goafers” despises everyone who would allow l to creep in
Book thumbnail image Rising powers, rising rivals in East Asia? By Rana Mitter This week, the foreign ministers of Japan and China shook hands in public in Beijing, pledging better relations in the years to come. It was a reminder to westerners that we still don’t know nearly enough about the relationship between the world’s second and third biggest economies (Japan and China having recently switched places, so that Beijing now holds the no. 2 spot, riding hard on the heels of the US).
Book thumbnail image A Paris invented for the American imagination By Brooke Blower Thanks to Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris and David McCullough’s book The Greater Journey, summer crowds are again satisfying their appetite for that guilty pleasure: the Americans-in-Paris romp. Such celebrations of the adventures of Americans in the City of Lights are certainly fun. But they evoke a version of the city that’s rooted as much in fantasy as fact. Like many
Book thumbnail image Rethinking July 4th By Elvin Lim Yesterday was Independence Day, we correctly note. But most Americans do not merely think of July 4 as a day for celebrating Independence. We are told, especially by the Tea Partying crowd, that we are celebrating the birth of a nation. Not quite. Independence, the liberation of the 13 original colonies form British rule, did not create a nation any more than a teenager leaving home becomes an adult. Far from it, even the Declaration of Independence (which incidentally
On the need for an avant-garde in strategic studies In an important work of contemporary philosophy and social science, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn articulates the vital idea of “paradigm.” By this idea, which has obvious parallels in the arts, Kuhn refers to certain examples of scientific practice that provide theoretical models for further inquiry: Ptolemaic or Copernican astronomy; Aristotelian dynamics; Newtonian mechanics, and so on. At any given moment in history, we learn, the prevailing paradigm within a given discipline defines the basic contours of all subsequent investigation.
Book thumbnail image As American as apple pie Ever heard the phrase “as American as apple pie”? Chances are you have. But how “American” is apple pie, really? And furthermore, when did McDonald’s begin serving them? How could Ritz crackers be a substitute for the apples? Why would Ralph Waldo Emerson ask what pie was for? The answers to these questions and more lie in the pages of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, edited by renowned food historian Andrew F. Smith. In honor of Independence Day, I present the
Book thumbnail image Marketing in the 21st century Despite the criticism leveled at marketing, why has marketing continued its inexorable march into every aspect of life? Since the end of World War II, two major trends have been affecting the practice of marketing: customer power and self-service. Both trends have been accelerated by the Internet.
Book thumbnail image Mao’s (red) star is on the rise What kinds of historical echoes sound loudest in today’s China? And which past leaders deserve the most credit — and blame — for setting the country on its current trajectory? These are timely questions as the Chinese Communist Party celebrates it’s 90th birthday today. For in China, as elsewhere, milestone moments are fitting times for backward glances and often accompanied by symbolic gestures that invite scrutiny.
Book thumbnail image Will the real John Quincy Adams please stand up? By R. B. Bernstein Historians these days regularly have to brace themselves for some new, hallucinatory version of the American past. The latest example is Representative Michele Bachmann’s claim that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery. Really?
Book thumbnail image On writing biography By Ian Ker The only reason I have for writing the lives of writers and thinkers like Newman and Chesterton is because I think they are important writers and thinkers and I assume that is, if not the only, certainly the, or a major part of, the reason why anyone would wish to read their biographies. I therefore do attempt to bring to life both their thought and their writings for the reader. A reader of a biography of Jane Austen, say, can be assumed to have read all the relatively few novels she wrote, but very few readers of a biography of Newman and Chesterton can be assumed to have read anything more than a tiny portion of their voluminous works.
June 2011 (51))
Book thumbnail image Defining art and sexuality As LGBT Pride Month draws to a close, there’s a lot left to think about. Just last Friday, New York became the 6th (and largest) state to legalize same-sex marriage. It was not a Pride Month many New Yorkers will forget.
Book thumbnail image Beach body brief By Erik N. Jensen Summer officially arrived on June 21, and as Americans anticipate lounging by pools and vacationing on beaches, they also look in the mirror and worry about how that midriff will look, once it’s squeezed into a swimsuit. Despite the country’s rising obesity rates, our society has not grown more accepting of different body types and sizes. We seem, if anything, to have become less accepting of them. Women in the 1950s and
Book thumbnail image Conscience today By Paul Strohm Among ethical concepts, conscience is a remarkable survivor. During the 2000 years of its existence it has had ups and downs, but has never gone away. Originating as Roman conscientia, it was adopted by the Catholic Church, redefined and competitively claimed by Luther and the Protestants during the Reformation, adapted to secular philosophy during the Enlightenment, and is still actively abroad in the world today. Yet the last few decades have been cloudy ones for conscience, a unique time of trial.
Monthly Gleanings: June 2011 By Anatoly Liberman Half of 2011 is behind us. This is reason enough for looking through one’s notes and offering a retrospect. Old Business Once again many thanks to those who responded to my question about the difference between in future and in the future. I am sure
Book thumbnail image Eat your potatoes and grow big and strong As a proud potato-eater of Irish descent, I was often told by my grandmother Rafferty, “Eat all your potatoes if you want to grow tall and strong.” It seems my grandmother was on to something. Between 1000 and 1900, world population grew from under 300 million to 1.6 billion, and the share of population living in urban areas more than quadrupled, increasing from two to over nine percent. The increase in population accelerated dramatically over time and occurred almost entirely towards the end of the period. Many demographers, historians, and economists alike have speculated as to the reasons for such growth on a global scale. The authors of
Book thumbnail image Lead pollution and industrial opportunism in China By Tee L. Guidotti Mengxi Village, in Zhejiang province, in eastern coastal China, is an obscure rural hamlet not far geographically but far removed socially from the beauty, history, and glory of Hangzhou, the capital. Now it is the unlikely center of a an environmental health awakening in which citizens took direct action by storming the gates of a lead battery recycling plant that has caused lead poisoning among both children and adults in the village.
Book thumbnail image Same-sex marriage, state by state By Elvin Lim New York has just become the sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage, together with Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, and the District of Columbia. New Jersey, Maryland, and Rhode Island have not legalized same-sex marriage, but they do recognize those performed in other states. State by state, the dominoes against same-sex marriage are falling away as surely as reason must conquer unreason. President Barack Obama has been accused of allowing a state governor
Book thumbnail image But the dictionary says… By Dennis Baron The Supreme Court is using dictionaries to interpret the Constitution. Both conservative justices, who believe the Constitution means today exactly what the Framers meant in the 18th century, and liberal ones, who see the Constitution as a living, breathing document changing with the times, are turning to dictionaries more than ever to interpret our laws: a new report shows that the justices have looked up almost 300 words
America Walks into a Bar – Episode 18 – The Oxford Comment As our nation’s birthday approaches, The Oxford Comment pays tribute to an institution that has influenced American identity from the very beginning: the bar. Over lunch at The Ginger Man in New York City, Christine Sismondo discusses American vs. Canadian drinking culture (can you guess whose is better?) and why prohibition doesn’t actually increase drinking.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: How does an organism evolve? By Jonathan Crowe The world around us has been in a state of constant change for millions of years: mountains have been thrust skywards as the plates that make up the Earth’s surface crash against each other; huge glaciers have sculpted valleys into the landscape; arid deserts have replaced fertile grasslands as rain patterns have changed. But the living organisms that populate this world are just as dynamic: as environments have changed, so too has the plethora of creatures inhabiting them. But how do creatures change to keep step with the world in which they live? The answer lies in the process of evolution.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Coffee, Legos, Betty White Apparently this is what happens when a small branch falls on a power line. Interesting information about coffee and caffeine Infographic: income levels of America’s major religious groups This was surely an expensive Inception wedding reception. The new FDA anti-smoking warnings are graphic. Lego my car. This woman is reading the entire Patient Protection and […]
Book thumbnail image 5 habits of highly effective terrorist organizations By Daniel Byman On paper, Egyptian jihadist Ayman al-Zawahiri, who just formally filled Osama bin Ladin’s shoes as al Qaeda’s emir, seems a perfect replacement for the late Saudi terrorist. Zawahiri formed his own terrorist group as a teenager, and ever since he has fought autocratic Muslim regimes and the United States with both tenacity and intelligence. As bin Ladin’s number two, he learned at the feet of the master, and by some accounts taught his boss much of what he knew about how to run an underground organization.
Book thumbnail image Explaining world politics: Death, courage, and human survival By Louis René Beres Here on earth, tragedy and disappointment seemingly afflict every life that is consecrated to serious thought. This is especially true in matters of world politics where every self-styled blogger is now an “expert” and where any careful search for deeper meanings is bound to fall upon deaf ears. Nonetheless, if we wish to better understand war, terror and genocide, we must finally be willing to search beyond the endlessly clichéd babble of politicians, professors and pundits.
Book thumbnail image Flummadiddle, skimble-skamble, and other arkymalarky Tweet By Mark Peters I love bullshit. Perhaps I should clarify. It’s not pure, unadulterated bullshit I enjoy (or even the hard-to-find alternative, adulterated bullshit). I agree with the great George Carlin, who said, “It’s all bullshit, and it’s bad for ya.” Hard to argue with that. What I love is the enormous lexicon of […]
Book thumbnail image The Beatles and “My Bonnie”: 23 June 1961 By Gordon Thompson To many adolescents fifty years ago, the future seemed bleak: the “King” had become preoccupied with refurbished Italian schmaltz while the world drew closer to Armageddon. But hope buzzed in the heart of an ungrounded amplifier in a West German high school. Goodwill had floundered between the recently elected American president, John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union’s premier, Nikita Khrushchev over the Soviet blockade of Berlin and America’s support of the failed
‘Pretty’ is as pretty does By Anatoly Liberman The adjective pretty had such a tempestuous history that it deserves an essay, even though no new facts are likely to shed light on the obscurities of its development. We will move from Old English tricks to Jack Sprat (surely, you remember: “Jack Sprat could eat no fat, / His wife could eat no lean; / and so betwixt them both, you see, / They licked the plate clean”), from Welsh praith “act, deed” to Russian bred “delirium” and end up pretty much where we were at the beginning.
Privacy law: a 10 minute tutorial By Mark Warby My mum told me the other day that she found all this publicity about privacy, super-injunctions, and Twitter most confusing. So do I, because the way it is reported seems to bear little resemblance to the world I thought I worked in and knew.
Book thumbnail image Forbidden images By Justyna Zajac and Michelle Rafferty The world recoiled when the gay community started receiving credit for its influence in fashion and culture, but at least, according to Christopher Reed, they were being acknowledged. In his new book Art and Homosexuality: A History of Ideas, Reed argues that for some time, the professional art world plain ignored the gay presence. We had the chance to speak with Reed a few weeks back at his Williams Club talk, where he laid out the tumultuous relationship between art and activism. Below we present a few of the controversial things we learned.
Book thumbnail image The politics of pessimism By Elvin Lim The election of 2012 will turn on the economy and jobs. But jobs or the lack thereof are only a component of a more pervasive sentiment in American politics today. That sentiment is pessimism, because Horatio Alger has become Joe the Plumber. The pessimism in American politics is concentrated in one part of the electorate — the white working class, also the group which has pulled most sharply from Obama’s support. Understanding the disaffection of the
Israel – Episode 17 – The Oxford Comment Are Israel and the United States still a dynamic duo? According to Daniel Byman the debate isn’t about whether or not the United States should support Israel, but how we can encourage them with “tough support.”
Librarians in the United States from 1880-2009 By Andrew A. Beveridge, Susan Weber, and Sydney Beveridge The U.S. Census first collected data on librarians in 1880, a year after the launch of the American Library Association. They only counted 636 librarians nationwide. Indeed, one respondent stated that he was the ‘Librarian of Congress.’ The number of librarians grew over the next 100 years however.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Epic photos, koalas, Richard Dreyfuss I was writing a short introduction about how summer has finally come to New York, and how lovely it’s been, but I went to a meeting and by the time I came back to this post, it was raining. At least I have my links:
Book thumbnail image The indictment of John Edwards: What is a campaign contribution? By Peter J. Henning The felony indictment of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards on six counts of conspiracy, false statement, and campaign finance violations contains many tawdry details of his affair with Rielle Hunter and subsequent payments and benefits of over $900,000 she received as part of an effort to hide her from the media while she bore his child. The key question is not whether the affair
Book thumbnail image The battle for “progress” By Gregory A. Daddis David Ignatius of The Washington Post recently highlighted several “positive signs in Afghanistan,” citing progress on the diplomatic front, in relations between India and Pakistan, and on the battlefield itself. Of note, Ignatius stressed how U.S.-led coalition forces had cleared several Taliban strongholds in Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The enemy, according to the opinion piece, was “feeling the pressure.”
Book thumbnail image In search of hot jazz By Kevin Whitehead Music journalist Bill Wyman wrote an article for Slate recently that has resonated with me, pondering an age when vast quantities of music have become instantly available to anyone with an internet connection. Every year my wish list of elusive rarities gets shorter and shorter. Research is getting a lot easier, for the historically-minded; so has just poking around, for curious listeners.
Book thumbnail image An archaeologists’s reflections on the Hay Festival By David Wengrow I have never spoken at anything like the Hay Festival before, but I had visited as a spectator, and remembered the buzz. So when the invitation to speak arrived I was delighted, and nervous. It is not your ordinary academic line up. On arrival I was ushered to the Green Room, where the likes of Simon Schama, Bob Geldof, Melvyn Bragg, and Rosie Boycott glide in and out.
Book thumbnail image Happy Bloomsday It’s a holiday for James Joyce fans, a holiday known as Bloomsday. Joyce’s seminal 1922 novel Ulysses spans only a single day in Dublin (1904), and now we know every 16th of June as Bloomsday, so named after the novel’s protagonist Leopold Bloom. Typical Bloomsday activities involve including Ulysses-themed pub crawls, dramatizations, and readings. Some committed fans even hold marathon readings of the entire book.
Book thumbnail image The pro-business court and class action security By Andrew Trask The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down another class-action decision, Erica John Fund v. Halliburton. On one side was Halliburton, the multi-national energy company, that has assumed the status of a pop-culture villain for many. On the other was the class action trial bar, for whom securities class actions are a billion-dollar business.
“Jump” and related matters By Anatoly Liberman Like the previous post on penguin, this one has been written in response to a question from our correspondent. His surname is Jump, and he has investigated the origin of the homonymous verb quite well. My task consists in adding a few details to what can be found in the Internet and easily available dictionaries.
Book thumbnail image Rick Perry 2012 By Elvin Lim A lackluster field of Republican candidates for president will receive a significant jolt if Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, decides to throw his hat in the ring. There is significant buzz now to take this possibility seriously. The big story about Newt Gingrich’s campaign implosion wasn’t that 16 of his staff members walked out
Book thumbnail image Teaching commas won’t help By Dennis Baron A rant in Salon by Kim Brooks complains, “My college students don’t understand commas, far less how to write an essay,” and asks the perennial question, “Is it time to rethink how we teach?” While it’s always time to rethink how we teach, teaching commas won’t help.
Book thumbnail image Orwell and Huxley at the Shanghai World’s Fair Tweet Who, we sometimes ask, at the dinners and debates of the intelligentsia, was the 20th century’s more insightful prophet — Aldous Huxley or George Orwell? Each is best known for his dystopian fantasy — Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984 — and both feared where modern technology might lead, for authorities and individuals alike. […]
Book thumbnail image From Gilgamesh to Wall Street In Economics of Good and Evil, Tomas Sedlacek asks: does it pay to be good? In order to answer this question, he looks at the way societies have reconciled their moral values with economic forces. He explores economic ideas in world literature, from concepts of productivity and employment in Gilgamesh to consumerism in Fight Club.
Book thumbnail image Vietnam’s lessons…and Afghanistan Daddis’ book focuses on how the U.S. tried to figure out if it were winning in Vietnam. Then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s “whiz kids” emphasized “body counts” and other countable things over fuzzier indications of the morale and support each side had. In this email exchange with Battleland, Daddis talks about such yardsticks, and how they might apply today.
Book thumbnail image What’s on your sesquicentennial playlist? Looking for something good to put on your iPod for the next four years? When Louis Masur stopped by I learned that in addition to being able to summarize the entire Civil War in less than 100 pages (see: The Civil War: A Concise History), he also happens to be a huge music buff, having written his previous book on some guy called The Boss. I asked if he wouldn’t mind making us something special for the big 1-5-0 and he kindly obliged. Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image The Sleaze Factor By Elvin Lim If Congressman Anthony Weiner loses his job because of a few lewd pictures, he would probably have lost the most among a long line of unfaithful politicians for having sinned the least. Bill Clinton’s encounters happened in the Oval Office (among other places). At least Larry Craig managed to graze another foot at a bathroom stall. But Anthony Weiner didn’t even go much beyond Twitter. There is a chance that Weiner would endure the political storm (as Senator David Vitter and President Bill Clinton did), by waiting the scandal out and hoping that the uproar subsides. But two things stand in the way.
The Oxford Comment Challenge By Michelle Rafferty Are you capable of listening to a podcast? Are you also capable of taking a quiz? Great. That means you have a chance to win a copy of Elizabeth Knowles’ How to Read a Word.
Book thumbnail image Last refuge or no hiding place? The last scene of all. By David Jolley As young fit people, few of us have ambition to spend our last days with others in a Home shared with others who have become impaired, disabled and dependent on care from others. Older and nearer this reality we may find that it has its attractions.
Penguin By Anatoly Liberman Practically everything that can be said about the origin of penguin has been said in the OED, and in what follows I will only touch on three later works on the subject. It must be admitted that these works are almost as flightless as the bird they discuss. Here is the relevant part of the digest of the OED’s long note, as it appears in The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology: “…of unknown origin; first recorded in both applications [that is, as “great auk” and as “penguin”] in reports
Book thumbnail image Superinjunctions, privacy, and social media By David Banks When I began training as a journalist in 1987 and bought the requisite copy of McNae it was a slim volume that could be folded into your pocket on visits to court. The last edition, the 20th came in a shade under 700 pages, despite the best efforts of Mark Hanna and myself to slim it down. As well as successive governments’ enthusiasm for legislation that impinges on the media, one of the other reasons for its growth in size has been the emergence of new legal threats like privacy.
Book thumbnail image The Bible: As relevant (and misunderstood) as ever By Richard Elliott Friedman and Shawna Dolansky More than 20 centuries after the Bible’s production, people still bring it to bear on practically every important social and political issue in the Western world (and much of the Eastern world). In the 18th and 19th centuries, both proponents and opponents of African slavery quoted chapters and verses to support their positions. In the 20th and 21st centuries
Book thumbnail image On the future of medical textbooks By John Firth Medical textbooks are often spoken of as dinosaurs – they may have dominated the medical world years ago, but things have moved on, and they’re now out-of-date and heading towards extinction with the Dodo. While there is some truth in this, it’s not the whole truth, and it’s my feeling that medical textbooks will continue to play a big part in the future of medical publishing, albeit in a different form.
Book thumbnail image NY’s Irrational Income Taxation of Nonresidents: The Barker Decision By Edward Zelinsky I may be losing my status as the poster boy for New York’s irrational income taxation of nonresidents. The recent decision of New York’s Tax Appeals Tribunal threatens to bestow this dubious honor upon Mr. John J. Barker.
Book thumbnail image Long term care and older people By Tom Dening Suddenly care homes are hot news. As I drove to work this week, the two leading national stories were both on this topic. First was the shocking care provided to the residents of Winterbourne View in Bristol. As one scene of abuse was followed by another, the whole effect was increasingly distressing and I could only watch to the end in order to ensure that action was going to follow. ‘Call the police’ was going through my head throughout. The second story was about Southern Cross, the care home provider that expanded rapidly but has now run into trouble as its income can no longer finance the rents for the homes.
Book thumbnail image Eileen Watts Welch Welch, Eileen Watts (March 28, 1946–), activist, educator, and business and administrative leader, was born Constance Eileen Watts in Durham, North Carolina, to Constance Merrick and Dr. Charles DeWitt Watts. Dr. Watts was North Carolina’s first black surgeon, and it was
Book thumbnail image Kate Brown Brown, Kate (1840 – Mar. 1883), retiring room attendant, activist, most renowned for winning the 1873 Supreme Court Case Railroad Company v. Brown, was born Katherine Brown in Virginia. There are many variations of her name; in some documents, she is referred to as “Catherine Brown,” “Katherine Brown,” “Kate Brown,” or “Kate Dodson.” In the New York Times article “Washington, Affairs at the National Capital,” her name appears as “Kate Dostie.”
Book thumbnail image Q & A with Ted Gioia Technology has changed everything that’s taking place surrounding the music. Not just how it is played, but even more how it is produced, disseminated, marketed, sold and heard. Few jazz musicians are prepared for these changes—which present both opportunities and risks. You can know your horn inside and out, but will find your career prospects severely limited if you don’t understand and address this new state of affairs.
Book thumbnail image Congratulations, young historians In an effort to broaden its outreach to American high schools, the Oxford African American Studies Center, in conjunction with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, initiated a research project competition exclusively for high school students in the Fall of 2010. Participating students researched and wrote biographies on prominent African Americans, with the top articles being selected for publication in the online African American National Biography.
Neuromania By Paolo Legrenzi and Carlo Umlitá Increasingly often, the press offers explanations of human behaviour by drawings, photographs, and graphic descriptions of sections of the brain which show that part of our grey matter that is activated when we think about something or plan an action. We are told that how we behave depends on the functioning of certain neurons. We hear about new disciplines such as neuroeconomics, neuroaesthetics, neuroethics, neuropolitics, neuromarketing, and even neurotheology (over 20,000 results on Google!).
Book thumbnail image Calling Hamas the al Qaeda of Palestine isn’t just wrong, it’s stupid By Daniel Byman In a rousing speech before Congress on May 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected peace talks with the newly unified Palestinian government because it now includes — on paper at least — officials from the terrorist (or, in its own eyes, “resistance”) group Hamas. In a striking moment, Netanyahu defiantly declared, “Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of al Qaeda,” a statement
Monthly Gleanings: May 2011 By Anatoly Liberman I was delighted to hear from a fellow journalist that his experience matches mine: no reaction when one’s work is good and immediate rebuke when one errs. However, critics save us from complacency, so may they keep their vigil. I am particularly grateful for the explanation about the difference between in future “from now on” and in the future “in days to come,” because
May 2011 (54))
Book thumbnail image Courage to Dissent Much scholarship about the legal aspects behind the Civil Rights Movement centers around the work of Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court. In a discussion on this topic, Tomiko Brown-Nagin asks what this history would look like if the Supreme Court wasn’t the main focus, and examines the unsung heroes of desegregation.
Book thumbnail image Fertility and the full moon By Allen J. Wilcox In her novel, Prodigal Summer, Barbara Kingsolver celebrates the lush fecundity of nature. The main character marvels at the way her ovulation dependably comes with the full moon. It’s a poetic image – but is there any evidence for it? Actually, no. It’s true that the length of the average menstrual cycle is close to the length of the lunar cycle. But like
Book thumbnail image The world we could lose By Rod Rhodes Ministers want to make a difference. Prime ministers talk about their legacy. Governments are always trying to reform something. They ask ‘what can we change?’ They should also ask ‘what could we lose?’
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: What is gene mutation? By Jonathan Crowe In my last three posts I’ve introduced you to the world of biological information, taking you from the storage of biological information in libraries called genomes, which house information in individual books called chromosomes (themselves divided into chapters called genes), to the way the cell makes use of that stored information to manufacture the molecular machines called proteins.
Book thumbnail image A Sisyphean fate for Israel (part 2) By Louis René Beres Today, Israel’s leadership, continuing to more or less disregard the nation’s special history, still acts in ways that are neither tragic nor heroic. Unwilling to accept the almost certain future of protracted war and terror, one deluded prime minister after another has sought to deny Israel’s special situation in the world. Hence, he or she has always been ready to embrace, unwittingly, then-currently-fashionable codifications of collective suicide.
Book thumbnail image A Sisyphean fate for Israel (part 1) By Louis René Beres Israel, after President Barack Obama’s May 2011 speech on “Palestinian self-determination” and regional “democracy,” awaits a potentially tragic fate. Nonetheless, to the extent that Prime Minister Netanyahu should become complicit in the expected territorial dismemberments, this already doleful fate could quickly turn from genuine tragedy to pathos and abject farce.
Book thumbnail image A reason to vote along racial lines By Rebecca Alpert Growing up as a baseball fan in the 1950s and 60s, I could not wait until the All-Star game rolled around every July. (Imagine my delight during the years when there was a second game in August!) Back then, fans didn’t choose the players, so I would eagerly anticipate the announcement of the teams in the newspapers. Then I would rummage through my baseball card collection to pull out the All-Stars and admire their accomplishments. Watching the game on television was thrilling to me, no matter the outcome. If I was in
Book thumbnail image Wales and the Oxford DNB: writing the biography of a ‘non-historic’ nation By Chris Williams Friedrich Engels once dismissed the Welsh, amongst others, as a ‘non-historic’ people, destined to be absorbed into the grander story of the English nation-state. Much of the subsequent history of Wales has proven him wrong, at least on that point, but carving out a distinct niche for the written history has always been a challenge.
Book thumbnail image In Memoriam: Bruce Haynes We bid a sad farewell to one of our most dear authors and friends, Bruce Haynes. An Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal and McGill University, Bruce was a pioneer and champion of historical performance practice with numerous solo and ensemble recordings to his credit. He was a founding member of the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, alongside his wife and
The oddest English spellings, part 17: The letter H By Anatoly Liberman Because of the frequency of the words the, this, that, these, those, them, their, there, then, and with, the letter h probably occurs in our texts more often than any other (for Shakespeare’s epoch thee and thou should have been added). But then of course we have think, three, though, through, thousand, and words with ch, sh,
The Bard’s beasts By Andreas Höfele What to do on a summer afternoon in London? Around 1600 you could cross the Thames by bridge or boat and take in a show in Southwark, the Elizabethan entertainment district. Once there, you had a choice. You could either see the latest play by Shakespeare, Dekker or Jonson or watch bears with names like Sackerson, Harry Hunks, Nan Stiles or Bess of Bromley be chained to a stake and set upon by specially trained mastiff dogs.
Book thumbnail image Q&A with Matthew Gallaway Have you heard the Word…for Word? Oxford University Press is proud to partner with the Bryant Park Reading Room in support of the Word for Word Book Club. The series kicks off today, with six more Clubs scheduled for the summer. Be sure to stop by the Reading Room early for a FREE* copy of the book club selections.
Book thumbnail image Why celebrities do not leaders make By Elvin Lim The tragic flaw of American democracy is that we seek the same qualities in candidates for political office as we do in the movies. Arnold Schwarzenegger is the most recent case in point. Celebrities have name recognition. They are easy on the eyes. And they pretend really well.
Book thumbnail image A penny for your thoughts… According to some, today is ‘Lucky Penny Day’. The OED describes a ‘lucky penny’ as usually one that is bent or perforated, or sometimes an old or foreign coin. In the early nineteenth century, a ‘luck-penny’ was defined as ‘the cash which the seller gives back to the buyer after the latter has paid him; it is given back with the hope that it may prove a lucky’. It’s also recorded that the participants would usually also spit on their palms to seal the deal.
Words – Episode 16 – The Oxford Comment The Oxford Comment speaks with a teenage crossword genius and then takes you on a tour of the OED archive.
Book thumbnail image Dracula: an audio guide The most famous of all vampire stories, Dracula is a mirror of its age, its underlying themes of race, religion, science, superstition, and sexuality never far from the surface. Here is a sequence of podcasts with Roger Luckhurst, who has edited a new edition of Dracula for Oxford World’s Classics, recorded by George Miller of Podularity.
Linked Up: Possible end of the world edition Perhaps you haven’t heard, but the world will end tomorrow. That is, according to Harold Camping and the “Family Radio” network, who have been warning us that the rapture will take place at 6 p.m. on May 21st.
Book thumbnail image A passionate “green” Calvinism By Belden C. Lane Who would think to find a green theology, celebrating the earth’s startling beauty, in somber, Calvinist Geneva? Who would expect lusty commentaries on the Song of Songs, delighting in sex and natural beauty, in the austere meeting houses of Puritan New England? Who would imagine a vibrant nature mysticism in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, author
Book thumbnail image The foundations of British rock: Archer Street By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, on Monday 22 May 1961, London’s constabulary attempted to terminate a British musical tradition. For as long as most of them could remember, musicians had gathered Monday afternoons on the short stretch of pavement between Rupert Street and Great Windmill Street in Soho to collect their pay from previous engagements and to pick up work for the coming week. A local merchant had probably complained about the disparate crowd blocking the street, so the police
Book thumbnail image The Same Ole Party for now By Elvin Lim In 2010, the Tea Party movement was out and about. Newly christened and newly outraged, they created the enthusiasm gap that creates victories in an age of evenly split bipolarized politics. This year, the rage has sizzled out to disgruntled listlessness. Even for those still against Obamacare, the memory of its passage has waned because the promised effects of its eventual implementation will not become evident for
Book thumbnail image Strong women: hitting the streets By David Wallace Jewish and Christian traditions alike praise the strong woman, a colossus of work and ingenuity who, according to Proverbs 31, rises early and prepares food, plants vineyards, conveyances land, feeds the poor, manufactures and sells linen garments, weaves tapestries, and speaks wisdom.
Two hard L-words, second word: Lunker By Anatoly Liberman Lunker seems to be well-known in the United States and very little in British English. Mark Twain used lunkhead “blockhead.” Lunker surfaced in books later, but lunkhead must have been preceded by lunk, whatever it meant. In today’s American English, lunker has several unappetizing and gross connotations, and we will let them be: one cannot constantly deal with turd and genitals.
Book thumbnail image The Scottish Election 2011 By Michael Keating The Scottish Election of 2011 represents a watershed in Scottish politics. For the first time the Scottish National Party has come convincingly in first place, securing the absolute majority that was supposed to be impossible under proportional representation. Labour, having dominated Scottish politics for over fifty years, suffered a crushing defeat, losing seats even in its industrial heartland of Clydeside. Both of the parties of the ruling coalition of Westminster are reduced to minor players at Holyrood, without even the leverage that small parties enjoyed in the last parliament.
Book thumbnail image Former Senator John Ensign in hot water By Peter J. Henning A report filed by the Special Counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics accuses former Nevada Senator John Ensign of a number of violations related to the end of an affair he had with the wife of a top aide who was also a long-time friend of his family.
Book thumbnail image The Catonsville Nine At 12:30 on the afternoon of May 17, 1968, an unlikely crew of seven men and two women arrived at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Catonsville, Maryland, a tidy suburb of Baltimore. Their appearance at 1010 Frederick Road, however, was only tangentially related to the Knights. The target of their pilgrimage was Selective Service Board 33, housed on the second floor of the K. of C. Hall. The nondescript parcel they
Book thumbnail image Freedom Ride dispatch: Days 6-8 Day 8–May 15: Montgomery, AL, to Jackson, MS We left Montgomery early in the morning, bound for Selma on Route 80, just as the Freedom Riders did on May 24, 1961. Fortunately, we didn’t have (or need) the protective ring of National Guardsmen with fixed bayonets, FBI agents, police cars, and military helicopters–“the apparatus of protection,” to use Jim Lawson’s words. We passed by
Book thumbnail image Washington City: paradise of paradoxes By Charles Lockwood and John Lockwood By John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood The Washington of April 1861—also commonly known as “Washington City”—was a compact town. Due to the cost of draining marshy land and the lack of reliable omnibus service, development was focused around Pennsylvania Avenue between the Capitol and White House. When the equestrian statue of George Washington was dedicated at
Book thumbnail image Mary, Mary… How does your garden keep growing? By Peter Hunt The fact that The Secret Garden taps into such a powerful theme does not mean that the book is not profoundly a product of its time – and for us to ignore the more immediate sources and stimuli of the book is to miss a lot of its richness. The book – like all classics – needs to be appreciated and understood in its contemporary terms if it is to be savoured.
Book thumbnail image Freedom Ride dispatch: Day 5 Day 5–May 12: Anniston, AL, to Nashville, TN Our fifth day on the road started with the dedication of two murals in Anniston, at the old Greyhound and Trailways stations. I worked with the local committee on the text, and I was pleased with the results. In the past, there was nothing to signify that anything historic had happened at these sites. The turnout of both blacks and whites was
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: healthcare, crashing kittens, Helvetica This girl is reading the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act out loud. [Act of Law] Why no smoking signs actually ENCOURAGE smokers to light up [Daily Mail] Think there’s no point in keeping print books around? I respectfully disagree. [Unshelved]
Book thumbnail image The ODNB’s 125th podcast: George Orwell This week sees the release of the 125th episode of the biography podcast from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. To mark the occasion we’re telling the life story of the author George Orwell (1903-50) in a special 30-minute episode. Every fortnight since 2007, the podcast has provided a single biography—drawn from the pages of the ODNB—which introduces new audiences to some of the shapers of British history, society, and culture.
Book thumbnail image Freedom Ride dispatch: Day 4 Day 4–May 11: Augusta, GA, to Anniston, AL As we left Augusta, I gave a brief lecture on Augusta’s cultural, political, and racial history–emphasizing several of the region’s most colorful and infamous characters, notably Tom Watson and J. B. Stoner. Then we settled in for the long bus ride from Augusta to Atlanta, a journey that the students soon turned into a musical and creative extravaganza featuring new renditions of freedom songs, original rap songs, a poetry slam–all dedicated to the original Freedom Riders. These kids are quite remarkable.
Book thumbnail image Bismarck spat ‘blood and iron’ By George Walden Everything about Otto von Bismarck was off the scale: his rages, his disloyalty, his mendacity, his gargantuan appetite and his colossal chamber pots. So, too, was the political genius of the greatest, if least lovable, statesman 19th-century Europe had to offer.
Book thumbnail image Was Iraq a just war? By David Fisher There has been much recent debate about whether the 2003 Iraq War was legal, with both Tony Blair and his Attorney General summoned before the Chilcot enquiry to give evidence on this. But a more fundamental question is whether the war was moral?
Book thumbnail image Freedom Ride dispatch: Day 3 Day 3–May 10: Charlotte, NC, to Augusta, GA The next stop, a few blocks away, was West Charlotte High School, an important site in the school desegregation saga in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. Since our freedom bus was temporarily out of commission (the AC was being fixed), we drove up in a red, doubled-decker, London-style “party bus.” Some of the kids rushed out to greet us, perplexing the school security guards, who
Book thumbnail image For ‘in vitro’, 15 is the perfect number By Dr Sesh Kamal Sunkara In vitro fertilization (IVF) involves the retrieval of an egg and fertilization with sperm in the laboratory (in vitro) as opposed to the process happening within the human body (in vivo), with a natural conception. IVF was first introduced to overcome tubal factor infertility but has since been used to alleviate all types of infertility and nearly four million babies have been born worldwide as a result of assisted reproductive technology.
Two hard L-words, first word: Larrup By Anatoly Liberman For this essay I have to thank Walter Turner, who asked me about the origin of larrup. The verb means “beat, thrash, whip, flog.” Long before my database became available in printed form as A Bibliography of English Etymology, I described in a special post what kind of lexical fish my small-meshed net had caught. (Sorry for the florid style. I remember a dean saying in irritation to one of the speakers at
Book thumbnail image Freedom Ride dispatch: Days 1 & 2 Raymond Arsenault was just 19 years old when he started researching the 1961 Freedom Rides. He became so interested in the topic, he dedicated 10 years of his life to telling the stories of the Riders—brave men and women who fought for equality. Arsenault’s book, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, is tied to the much-anticipated PBS/American Experience documentary “Freedom Riders,” which premiers on May 16th.
Book thumbnail image Slouching toward “Palestine”: Anti-Israel terrorism, aggression, and the law of war OPINION · Tweet By Louis René Beres Intra-Palestinian politics remain on a steady course. Following a carefully-choreographed rapprochement with Hamas, the more “moderate” Fatah forces, still trained and funded by millions of U.S. tax dollars, will quickly resume their ritualized terror attacks against Israel. More or less simultaneously, Hamas will do the same. In Lebanon, […]
Book thumbnail image They called themselves “Freedom Riders” By Adam Phillips The American South was a segregated society 50 years ago. In 1960, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in restaurants and bus terminals serving interstate travel, but African-Americans who tried to sit in the “whites only” section risked injury or even death at the hands of white mobs. In May of 1961, groups of black and white civil rights activists set out together to change all that.
Book thumbnail image Osama’s dead. Now what? By John Esposito The killing of bin Laden in Abbottabad is a major psychological blow to al Qaeda, who lost a charismatic leader, viewed by both his supporters and his enemies as the true symbol of global terrorism and militancy. For many around the world it is a victory in the war against extremist violence which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Book thumbnail image Read Bossypants like a fancypants Summer heralds many important things: 3D movies, involuntary camping trips, and sidewalk distribution of ice cream samples in tiny disposable cups. But the greatest tradition of all is, of course, book club (or your local library’s summer reading program). If, like me, you’re the weakest link in your coterie, you’re probably looking to contribute more than, “The ending was awesome,” or “Favorite character. Ok…go!”
Book thumbnail image ‘Nobody should doubt the importance of the killing of Osama bin Laden’ By Richard English There has been much talk of revenge attacks in the wake of bin Laden’s death, and doubtless there will be both the desire and the labelled actions to follow, on occasion. But the truth is that jihadi terrorists represent a largely limited threat to the west, in practice. They certainly show no signs of succeeding in their central war aims.
Book thumbnail image Does exercise really boost your mood? By Michael Otto In the New York Times, Gretchen Reynolds posed the question, “Does exercise really boost your mood?” There is a clear, clean answer to this question – yes! In fact, the evidence that regular, moderate exercise can boost your mood is overwhelming. From population-based studies to well-controlled clinical trials – exercise is associated with better mood. Specifically, exercise is
Book thumbnail image When life hands you lemon-ology By Mark Peters If I had a lemon for every time I heard “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” I’d have enough lemons to open a lemons-only Wal-Mart. If I had another lemon for every time I heard a variation like, “When life hands you lemons, run straight home and hide them because the apocalypse is upon us and soon everyone will want them,” I’d have an absolute monopoly on the lemon market, fulfilling my boyhood dreams. This expression and its variations are everywhere, nowhere more so than on Twitter, the richest source of jokes
Book thumbnail image The most human computer? By Dennis Baron Each year there’s a contest at the University of Exeter to find the most human computer. Not the computer that looks most like you and me, or the computer that can beat all comers on Jeopardy, but the one that can convince you that you’re talking to another human being instead of a machine. To be considered most human, the computer has to pass a Turing test, named after the British mathematician Alan Turing, who suggested that if someone talking to another person and to a computer couldn’t tell which was which, then that computer could be said to think. And thinking, in turn, is a sign of being human.
Book thumbnail image Explaining membership in the British National Party By Michael Biggs and Steven Knauss The BNP’s membership list was leaked in November 2008 by a disgruntled activist who had been expelled late in 2007; he has since admitted responsibility and been convicted. The BNP never challenged the list’s authenticity, merely stating that it was out of date. The list is apparently a complete record of membership at November–December 2007. Of the 13,009 individuals listed, 30 were missing a current address, 138 had a foreign address, and 41 lived in Northern Ireland. Of the remaining members, 12,536 (97.9 per cent) can be precisely located in Britain using the postcode field of their address (Office of National Statistics, 2004, 2008).
Book thumbnail image Assassinating terrorist leaders: A matter of international law By Louis René Beres Osama bin Laden was assassinated by U.S. special forces on May 1, 2011. Although media emphasis thus far has been focused almost entirely on the pertinent operational and political issues surrounding this “high value” killing, there are also important jurisprudential aspects to the case. These aspects require similar attention. Whether or not killing Osama was a genuinely purposeful assassination from a strategic perspective, a question that will be debated for years to come, we should now also inquire: Was it legal?
Monthly Gleanings: April 2011 By Anatoly Liberman The best way of finding out whether “the world” is watching you is to err. The moment I deviate from the path of etymological virtue I am rebuffed, and this keeps me on my toes. Even an innocent typo “causes disappointment” (as it should). Walter W. Skeat: “But the dictionary-maker must expect, on the one hand, to be snubbed when he makes a mistake, and on the other, to be neglected when he is right” (1890). Apparently, this blog does not exist in a vacuum, though I would welcome more questions and comments in addition to rebuttals and neglect. Among other things, I noticed that
Book thumbnail image What matters now is how the succession battle within Al-Qaeda pans out By Elvin Lim Osama bin Laden was reported to have been killed by US forces late Sunday night EDT at a compound in Abbottabad, just outside Islamabad. This will be a tremendous morale boost for the US, and it would be a crushing blow to Al Qaeda’s. Sure, bin Laden is just a figurehead of an organization which has now sprouted branches all over the world, and sure his death will likely provoke retaliatory attacks by his followers seeking to revenge his “martyrdom,” but there is little doubt that this development is a net gain for the US.
Book thumbnail image “Free”dom and consumer rights By Andrew Trask In 2002, the Concepcion family received a “free” cell phone when they signed up with AT&T. Unfortunately, the free phone was not as free as the Concepcions thought; AT&T charged them sales tax for it. The Concepcions were angry, and sued. Their case was merged with a large class action. AT&T invoked its right (hidden in the fine print of its cell-phone contract) to arbitrate the case. The arbitration provision was pretty generous: the Concepcions would not have to pay any costs, and if they won more from the arbitrator than AT&T offered in settlement, AT&T would give them $7,500.
Book thumbnail image The belated revenge of the health care Grinches By Edward Zelinsky It hasn’t been fun being a health care Grinch. Until recently, we health care Grinches have been the objects of bi-partisan scorn. We have been warning that health care cost control will be painful and will entail reduced medical services and lower payments to health care providers. “Nonsense,” retorted President Obama. Taking a page from the Republican book of bromides as he plugged his health care reforms, Mr. Obama assured the nation that health care costs can be controlled painlessly, by purging “waste” and “fraud.”
Book thumbnail image Dividing the Spoils In Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander’s Empire Robin Waterfield revives the memories of Alexander the Great’s Successors, whose fame has been dimmed only because they stand in Alexander’s enormous shadow. Alexander’s legacy was turmoil, and in the videos below Waterfield explains firstly what happened to the Empire after Alexander’s death and why the book came to be written, and secondly, the role of women in the war for Alexander’s Empire.
Book thumbnail image Rising generation of al-Qaeda poses threat in wake of bin Laden’s death Michael Scheuer, former chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit, wrote in the biography Osama bin Laden that Mr. bin Laden’s “has anticipated a war of attrition, one that might last decades” and “has given no indication that he expects to live long enough to finish the job.” Mr. Scheuer believes that younger al-Qaeda activists have already been well groomed for the future. Here we present an exclusive excerpt from Osama bin Laden that considers the threat
April 2011 (57))
Linked Up: Royal Wedding poetry edition I’m delighted at how many readers have sent in Royal Wedding poems, proving that they are up to the challenge. Please keep sending them, and remember you can also enter to win Oxford World’s Classics by simply tweeting. Here are just a few I’d like to share today, but now that you’ve all watched the ceremony (with undivided attention, of course) I expect many more to come.
Book thumbnail image English-only in the exit row By Dennis Baron The USAir emergency exit row seating card reads, “Please contact a USAir Express crewmember if you are not able to read, speak, or understand English.” That’s because the airline won’t let non-English-speaking passengers sit in the emergency exit row, and it requires all passengers who want to sit there to acknowledge that they’re qualified to do so verbally, in English.
Book thumbnail image Royal Wedding music has ‘martial swagger’ Sir William Walton’s Crown Imperial has been chosen as the Recessional for the Royal Wedding of HRH Prince William and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. A specially abridged version of the piece will be performed at the end of the Service by the London Chamber Orchestra, marking the bride’s entrance into the royal family.
Book thumbnail image Royal wedding poetry challenge National Poetry Month, is nearing its end, and the royal wedding is just around the corner, so let’s write poems about it. I’ve made some suggestions below, but all forms are welcome. (If you really want to win me over, I suggest attempting my favorite poetic form, the sestina.) Send your poem to me care of blog@oup.com and I’ll post what I can tomorrow. (Keep it clean, please. Humor, satire and effusive excitement are welcome, insults are not.)
Book thumbnail image Boobies, for fun & profit By Gayle Sulik A blogger who goes by the name of The Accidental Amazon recently asked: “When did breast cancer awareness become more focused on our breasts than on cancer? Is it because our culture is so obsessed with breasts that it slides right past the C word?” The Amazon’s questions are important — but they are inconvenient; blasphemous to the pink consumption machine, disruptive to the strong societal focus on pink entertainment,
Book thumbnail image Royal weddings: looking at a Queen By Helen Berry The purpose of British royalty is for people to look at them. Successful monarchs throughout history have understood this basic necessity and exploited it. Elizabeth I failed to marry, and thus denied her subjects the greatest of all opportunities for royal spectacle. However, she made up for it with a queenly progress around England. As the house guest of the local gentry and nobility, she cleverly deferred upon her hosts the expense of providing bed, breakfast and lavish entertainment for her vast entourage, in return for getting up close and personal with her royal personage. It was not enough to be queen: she had to be seen to be queen.
Book thumbnail image Inside the vacuum of ignorance By Karen Greenberg The most amazing fact about the more than 700 previously unseen classified Guantánamo documents released by WikiLeaks and several unaffiliated news organizations the night of Sunday, April 24, is how little in them is new. The information in these documents — admittedly not classified “top secret” but merely “secret” — spells out details that buttress what we already knew, which is this: From day one at Guantánamo, the U.S. national security apparatus has known very little about
An etymologist looks at habits and customs By Anatoly Liberman Habit, in addition to the meaning that is universally known (“settled disposition of mind and body”), can also designate “apparel,” even though in restricted contexts, such as monk’s habit or riding habit. At first sight, these senses do not belong together, and yet they do. The word is, of course, a “loan” from French. (I have mentioned more than once that linguistic loans are permanent, for they are never returned, except when, for example, an ancient Germanic, that is, Franconian word
Book thumbnail image Chernobyl disaster, 25 years on On April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power station. Now, 25 years later, the current crisis in Fukushima is being called the “worst since Chernobyl.” Will we avoid another disaster? And further more, in another 25 years, how will we feel about nuclear energy?
Book thumbnail image Campaign fund-raising and the pre-primaries for elections 2012 By Elvin Lim Something of a myth of American democracy is that decisions are made in the ballot box by voters on election day. Actually, these outcomes are structured by fundraising efforts by would-be candidates years in advance. Aspirants to the GOP presidential nomination, now entering the crucial second quarter before election year and on the eve of their formal declarations of candidacies, are now racing for credibility by racing for cash. And those without name recognition, in particular, have to rake in
Book thumbnail image Happy 300th Birthday, David Hume! By Simon Blackburn David Hume was born three hundred years ago, on 26th April 1711. He lived most of his life in Edinburgh, with only a few improbable interludes: one as tutor to a lunatic, one assisting in a comic-operatic military adventure, and one somewhat more successfully as Embassy Secretary, being a lion in the literary salons of Paris. Apart from these his life was devoted to philosophy, history, literature, and conversation. He is the greatest, and the best-loved, of British philosophers, as well as the emblem and presiding genius of the great flowering of arts and letters that took place in the Edinburgh of the eighteenth century—the Scottish Enlightenment. As with all philosophers, his reputation has gone through peaks and troughs, but today it probably stands higher than it ever has.
Book thumbnail image John Swenson on Treme By Michelle Rafferty How real is the HBO series Treme? Here John Swenson reflects on what it was like watching the first season as a resident of New Orleans (he has yet to comment on the second, which premiered last night), as well as what the culture of the city means to its people. As a writer for OffBeat Swenson has written about the musicians returning to NOLA after Katrina, and in his forthcoming book New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans he talks about their crusade to save the endangered city. Swenson himself suggested the song in the video,”Dogs Chase Cats,” from Andy J. Forest’s NOtown Story (2010).
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: How is a gene’s information used by a cell? By Jonathan Crowe In my last two posts I’ve introduced the notion that DNA acts as a store of biological information; this information is stored in a series of chromosomes, each of which are divided into a number of genes. Each gene in turn contains one ‘snippet’ of biological information. But how are these genes actually used? How is the information stored in these genes actually extracted to do something useful (if ‘useful’ isn’t too flippant a term for something that the very continuation of life depends upon).
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: MoMA, Oprah, marshmallows Last Friday, I challenged all of our readers to write a sestina. I expect many of you discovered just how difficult this form can be. I’d like to highlight the poem I received from Paul Gallear of Wolverhampton, UK. Paul is one of the voices behind the Artsy Does It blog and you can follow him @paulgallear.
Book thumbnail image Five dresses for Kate By Justyna Zajac and Michelle Rafferty The Royal Wedding is days away and every detail – from the regal breakfast to the honeymoon – is under scrutiny. But we think there’s only one thing that really matters: the dress. So, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to select a few options for Miss Kate. In the off-chance she turns us down, we’ve paired up other celebrity brides-to-be with these charming gowns. Pictures and historical facts courtesy of The Berg Fashion Library.
Book thumbnail image Do not phase out nuclear power — yet Tweet By Charles D. Ferguson The ongoing Japanese nuclear crisis underscores yet again the risks inherent in this essential energy source. But it should not divert nations from using or pursuing nuclear power to generate electricity, given the threat from climate change, the health hazards of fossil fuels, and the undeveloped state of renewable energy. […]
Is free will required for moral accountability? By Joshua Knobe Imagine that tomorrow’s newspaper comes with a surprising headline: ‘Scientists Discover that Human Behavior is Entirely Determined.’ Reading through the article, you learn more about precisely what this determinism entails. It turns out that everything you do – every behavior, thought and decision – is completely caused by prior events, which are in turn caused by earlier events… and so forth, stretching back in a long chain all the way to the beginning of the universe.
Book thumbnail image Making sure children in military families are not left behind By Ron Avi Astor Imagine attending nine schools before graduating from high school. Dealing with the emotional strain of having to end and restart friendships every year. Never establishing a lasting relationship with a favorite teacher. Being barred from participating in a favorite sport because you don’t meet residency requirements. Further imagine the frustration of falling academically behind because completed courses in one state aren’t credited in another. And all this is happening while mom or dad is on his or her fourth tour of military duty overseas.
Book thumbnail image Diabetes: big problem, little confidence By Rowan Hillson The first time I increased a patient’s insulin dose I lay awake all night worrying that his blood sugar might fall too low. I was a house officer, and insulin was scary! The patient slept well and safely.
Book thumbnail image Studying the Civil War through the American National Biography By Mark C. Carnes General Editor, ANB The 150th anniversary of the Civil War will be commemorated in the usual ways. But a truly unique approach is provided by the online—and thus searchable—version of the American National Biography, a 27-million word collection of biographical essays on some 18,731 deceased Americans who played a significant role in the nation’s past.
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 6) By Anatoly Liberman The word beestings once had its day in court. About half a century ago, American linguists were busy discussing whether there is something they called juncture, a boundary signal that supposedly helps people to distinguish ice cream from I scream when they hear such combinations. A special sign (#) was introduced in transcription: /ais#krim/ as opposed to /ai#skrim/. The two crown examples for the existence of juncture in Modern English were nitrate versus night rate and beestings versus bee stings. I remember asking
Book thumbnail image Carroll’s first Alice On a summer’s day in 1858, in a garden behind Christ Church, Oxford, Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll, photographed six-year-old Alice Liddell, the daughter of the college dean, with a Thomas Ottewill Registered Double Folding Camera, recently purchased in London. In The Alice Behind Wonderland, Simon Winchester uses the resulting image as the vehicle for a brief excursion behind the lens, a focal point on the origins of a classic work of literature. In the short excerpt from the book, below, Winchester writes about the pictures of children he took in the years before he photographed Alice Liddell.
Book thumbnail image Taco Tuesday If you’re anything like me, then when a friend asks, “Hey, do you wanna go to Taco Tuesday at that new place over by–” you interrupt with, “Whoa whoa whoa. You had me at taco.” I was flipping through one of my favorite Oxford volumes, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink edited by renowned food historian Andrew F. Smith, and came across
Book thumbnail image What’s driving the Republican position on the budget battles? By Elvin Lim What exactly, for Republicans, is the budget debate about? It is not primarily about the public debt; it is not even about economic growth. The last two Democratic presidents, Carter, and Clinton both reduced the size of the public debt as a percentage of our GDP. On the other hand, Richard Nixon was the last fiscally conservative Republican. Every Republican president since has contributed to the rise of the public debt’s share of GDP. Indeed, between Reagan and the first Bush, the gross public debt in nominal terms increased fourfold.
Book thumbnail image Congratulations, Zhou Long! Please join us in congratulating composer Zhou Long, as he has been awarded with the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Madame White Snake. The opera (written by Cerise Lim Jacobs) premiered on February 26, 2010 at Boston’s Cutler Majestic Theatre. Drawing on a Chinese folk tale, this opera blends musical traditions from the East and the West to tell the story of a powerful white snake demon who longs to become human so she can experience love – but she meets with deceit, doubt and distrust.
Book thumbnail image Citizens United: a first anniversary update By Bill Wiist Little more than a year after the January 21, 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission, it is already apparent that the effects of the ruling are widespread, contaminate the democratic processes, and could be long-lasting. Because the effects of the ruling on the 2010 election campaign were significant, the potential effects on public health could be pervasive. Finding new ways to undo its pernicious consequences is an important public health goal.
We heart Matty G – Episode 15 – The Oxford Comment How do you write a smash first novel? Author (and OUP Law Editor) Matthew Gallaway comes to Oxford book club to discuss his book The Metropolis Case (Crown Publishers). Topics include: Pittsburgh, advice for writers…and what’s up with the incest scene?
Book thumbnail image Quantum computers – have birds got there first? By Vlatko Vedral European robins are crafty little creatures. Each year they make a round trip from the cold Scandinavian Peninsula to the warm equatorial planes of Africa, a hazardous trip of about four thousand miles each way. Armed with only their internal sense of direction these diligent birds regularly make the journey without any fuss.
Book thumbnail image What might be a constructive vision for the US? By Ervin Staub In difficult times like today, people need a vision or ideology that gives them hope for the future. Unfortunately, groups often adopt destructive visions, which identify other groups as enemies who supposedly stand in the way of creating a better future. A constructive, shared vision, which joins groups, reduces the chance of hostility and violence in a society. A serious failure of the Obama administration has been not to offer, and help people embrace, such a vision. Policies by themselves, such as health care and limited regulation of
Book thumbnail image Sestina (today’s poetry challenge) My favorite poetry form is the sestina. I like them, I think, because they are incredibly difficult to compose and require a fair bit of calculation. This being National Poetry Month, I thought I’d challenge you all to write one. Not sure what a sestina is?
Book thumbnail image Trends in European life expectancy: a salutary view By David A. Leon Making a difference to the health of populations, however small, is what most people in public health hope they are doing. Epidemiologists are no exception. But often caught up in the minutiae of our day-to-day work, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Is health improving, mortality declining, are things moving in a positive direction? Getting out and taking in the view (metaphorically as well as literally) can have a salutary effect. It broadens our perspectives and challenges our assumptions. Looking at recent trends in European life expectancy is a case in point.
Book thumbnail image High-rise heroes and the big society By Leif Jerram We all know that ‘our inner city estates’ are places of despair, desperation and architectural idiocy, right? We know that we need a ‘big society’, and that ‘society’ and ‘the state’ are not the same thing, right? But there are other questions to ask. Let’s start with the most basic one: where will your children live? And with current rates of house-building and house prices where will any working-class person be able to get a house in 2012, let alone 2025? Because when the Liberal, Labour and Tory city fathers of 1920s Liverpool, 1930s Manchester or 1950s Birmingham asked these questions, they came up with robust, vivacious, dynamic answers. For them, the ‘big society’ meant great houses, lots of houses, cheap houses, built in their millions by the private sector and town councils.
In Memoriam: Director Sidney Lumet By Stanley Corkin Sidney Lumet never won an academy award and was rarely placed in the company of the elite Hollywood directors, like Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola. Yet, his body of work suggests the need for a re-evaluation. I have long appreciated Lumet’s mastery of his craft and particularly his ability to use New York’s urban landscape as a character in his films. But it was while working on
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 5: Toast) By Anatoly Liberman Toasting, a noble art, deserves the attention of all those (etymologists included) who drink for joy, rather than for getting drunk. The origin of the verb to toast “parch,” which has been with us since the end of the 14th century, poses no problems. Old French had toster “roast, grill,” and Italian tostare seems to be an unaltered continuation of the Romance protoform. Tost- is the root of the past participle of Latin torrere (the second conjugation) “parch.” English has the same root in torrid and less obviously
Book thumbnail image Horace and free speech in the age of WikiLeaks By Robert Cowan “Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.” So wrote Salman Rushdie and he should know. Certainly free speech is routinely held up, often unreflectively, as an unambiguous, uncontroversial good – one of Franklin Roosevelt’s four freedoms, the right for which Voltaire would famously die, even if he disapproved of what was being said. In the age of WikiLeaks, the freedom to disseminate information and its corollary, the freedom to know what those in power have said or done in secret, have found ever more vigorous proponents, but also those who ask whether it has its limits.
Book thumbnail image On Equal Pay Day, Busting 4 Top Myths About the Wage Gap By Mariko Lin Chang This year’s Equal Pay Day falls on April 12, marking how far into 2011 the average woman must work in order to earn what the average man had by the end of 2010. In the 15 years since Equal Pay Day was established, the gender wage gap has barely budged, moving from 74 percent in 1996 to 77 percent in 2010. This amounts to a three-cent increase in women’s wages for every dollar earned by men. Given that women make up half of the workforce, the gender wage gap does not generate the outrage that it should, as is clear from the failure of the Paycheck Fairness Act last November.
Book thumbnail image Conducting interviews with undocumented workers? By John A. Neuenschwander In a recent posting on Oral History listserv a submitter indicated that she was about to begin an oral history project with undocumented workers and wished to put some safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access. To protect the identities of the narrators several respondents suggested that pseudonyms should be created for each interviewee. One of these respondents recommended that the document containing the pseudonym/real identity matchup be transmitted for safekeeping to a location abroad. Another responder indicated that in addition to the use of pseudonyms the transcripts of the interviews should be stripped of all identifying information and the recordings
Book thumbnail image More sound than fury in the budget battles ahead By Elvin Lim The strategic gamesmanship leading up to the budget compromise that was reached late last week suggests a blueprint for the budget battles to come. But while many observers believe that Washington is bracing for even more epic battles to come, when Congress considers the budget for the rest of the fiscal year and legislation to raise the debt ceiling, my guess is that there will be more sabre-rattling than a serious effort to avoid raising the debt ceiling. Here are three reasons why.
Book thumbnail image “Our Severest Crisis since World War II”: the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 By Andrew Gordon On the afternoon of March 11, 2011, people in Japan experienced the most powerful earthquake in the recorded history of the archipelago, and the fifth most powerful ever recorded. Measured at magnitude 9, with an epicenter just off the coast of Miyagi prefecture in northeast Japan, this earthquake unleashed one hundred times the destructive force of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, which took well over one hundred thousand lives. Thanks in large part to strict building codes and technologies designed to allow high-rise buildings to absorb the shocks, the destruction of homes and offices was relatively modest in proportion to the immensity of the earthquake.
Book thumbnail image To have been a muppet in that nightclub… By Michelle Rafferty What made Louis Armstrong embarrassed? Why was Cab Calloway on Sesame Street? To learn a little more about these two legends check out the podcast below with BBC Producer Alyn Shipton and the talented interviewer Annie Shipton (yes that would be Alyn’s daughter).
Book thumbnail image Eichmann in Jerusalem By Gerald Steinacher April 11, 1961 marked the beginning of the trial against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the course of the trial, the world came face to face with the reality of the Holocaust or what the Nazis called the “final solution of the Jewish problem” – the killing of 6 million people. Newspapers around the world published thousands of articles about Eichmann and his role in the Holocaust. But what none of the international journalists touched upon was probably the most intriguing aspect of Eichmann’s story: the way in which he, the bureaucrat of the Holocaust, managed to escape justice soon after the war and flee to Argentina.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Best of the Blogs In the name of giving credit where it’s due, I’d like to do something a little different today and highlight some quality content on other university press blogs. Long live academic publishing!
Book thumbnail image “I dressed like a farmer.” By Justyna Zajac and Michelle Rafferty This week we went to the Berg Fashion Library launch event at the New York Public Library where the talented Ada Calhoun spoke about using Berg for her own fashion research. She co-authored Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making it Work and is now working on another book with Tim Gunn, the forthcoming Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible.
Book thumbnail image “The Start of a Solo Career”: Paul McCartney, 10 April 1970 By Gordon Thompson Even in the storm’s dawning, both fans and defamers alike recognized magic in the Beatles’ ability to collaborate and to adapt in pursuit of a shared vision, and at the heart of this quest lay the desire to make great recordings. In the beginning of their career with EMI, their willingness to subvert their individual identities to a common cause (and the joy with which they did so) contributed to their success. In the
Book thumbnail image Five lessons from Japan By Anthony Scioli Recently Japan’s 77 year old Emperor Akihito implored his people “not to abandon hope”. This may have struck some Westerners as odd since Japan is an Eastern country largely dominated by Buddhism and Shinto, faith traditions that many associate with mindfulness, acceptance and renunciation rather than hope for the future, transformation, or worldly pursuits. In fact, it is not uncommon to find Westerners who believe that “hope” does not even exist in the East. For many American intellectuals, particularly
Book thumbnail image Why is Darwin still controversial? By George Levine How could Darwin still be controversial? We do not worry a lot about Isaac Newton, nor even about Albert Einstein, whose ideas have been among the powerful shapers of modern Western culture. Yet for many people, undisturbed by the law of gravity or by the theories of relativity that, I would venture, 99% of us don’t really understand, Darwin remains darkly threatening. One of the great figures in the history of Western thought, he was respectable and revered enough even in his own time to be buried in Westminster Abbey, of all places. He supported his local church; he was a Justice of the Peace; and he never was photographed as a working scientist, only as a gentleman and a family man. Yet a significant proportion of people in the English-speaking world vociferously do not “believe” in him.
Book thumbnail image “Tomorrow Never Knows”: The Beatles sample the future, April 1966 By Gordon Thompson Forty-five years ago, at the beginning of April 1966, on the almost anniversary of a London dentist surreptitiously spiking his and George Harrison’s coffees with Lysergic acid diethylamide, John Lennon visited Barry Miles’ Indica Books and picked up a copy of Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert’s The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In its pseudo-mystical prose, Lennon found partial inspiration for one of the most audacious recordings the Beatles would ever attempt.
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 4: Booze) By Anatoly Liberman Booze is an enigmatic word, but not the way ale, beer and mead are. Those emerged centuries ago, and it does not come as a surprise that we have doubts about their ultimate origin. The noun booze is different: it does not seem to predate the beginning or the 18th century, with the verb booze “to tipple, guzzle” making its way into a written text as early as 1300 (which means that it turned up in everyday speech some time earlier). The riddles connected with booze are two.
Hachi the Dog, Debt, and Japanese Language By Lisa Shoreland Despite its reputation for outlandish costumes and outrageous practical jokes, traditional Japanese culture is one of nearly unmatched gravity and obsession with honor. Although tourists can easily learn simple phrases like “Thank you” (arigato) and “Excuse me” (sumimasen), serious Japanese language learners benefit from understanding the history of the nation’s shame culture.
Book thumbnail image Obama $et to announce re-election bid By Elvin Lim For weeks, President Barack Obama seemed consumed with the challenges in governing. With the turmoil in the Middle-East taking one unanticipated turn after another, the White House has been in crisis management mode for the past several weeks. Decisions that matter to millions of people around the world, as well as to our allies, who want more of us than we are willing give in Libya, have had to be made. Despite our democratic fantasy, leadership occurs behind a barricade of confidentiality. Both Obama and George Bush well know that leaders must sometimes push on behind the scenes, with or without public and congressional support.
Book thumbnail image Wal-Mart v. Dukes: Procedure Matters By Andrew Trask A decade ago, Betty Dukes, a Wal-Mart greeter (one of the folks in blue vests who welcome you to the store), filed a lawsuit against her employer. She alleged that her supervisors had treated her harshly and, once she complained, had retaliated by demoting her. Rather than sue Wal-Mart on her own, she joined with six other women who also (allegedly) suffered discrimination at the company. These women included one who had been passed over for promotion, one who could not transfer to day shifts, and one who had been sexually harassed by coworkers. Together, these women claimed to represent all women at Wal-Mart, and asked for damages on all their behalf.
Alternative Media – Episode 14 – The Oxford Comment Are we living in the “anti-60s”? This episode compares the counterculture movement to the blogosphere and pop music today….Bieber vs. Beatles! Hippies vs. Hipsters! Let the showdown begin.
Book thumbnail image The Westboro Church and Justice Alito: the other side of the story By Edward Zelinsky It is noteworthy when eight ideologically diverse justices of the U.S. Supreme Court all decide a First Amendment case the same way. Thus, Snyder v. Phelps is a noteworthy decision. The Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for its demonstrations at military funerals. Indeed, the Westboro Church, led by (and, some say, principally consisting of) the Phelps family, has the rare distinction of having been denounced by both Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee.
Book thumbnail image The art of political quotation ‘Politics feeds your vanity and starves your self-respect,’ according to the journalist Matthew Parris. In the video below, filmed by George Miller, Antony Jay discusses what makes a good political quotation.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: April Foolery, Escaped Cobra, Peanuts By Kirsty Doole and Lauren Appelwick DISCLAIMER: None of these links are in the spirit of April Fools, so worry not. You’re not going to click anything that will cause a startling pop-up or download something you don’t want on your computer. We wouldn’t do that to you. (Or would we?) (No, we would not.) -Lauren & Kirsty
Book thumbnail image The Yosemite Sam Book of Revised Quotations By Mark Peters Some people and characters are forever associated with a word. I dare you to say refudiate, malaise, nanu-nanu, despicable, winning, and meep without thinking of Sarah Palin, Jimmy Carter, Mork, Daffy Duck, Charlie Sheen, and the Road Runner (or Beaker). Without a doubt, the poster boy for varmint is Yosemite Sam, the rootin’-tootin’, razzin’-frazzin’ cowboy who
Book thumbnail image Hey everybody! Meet Kirsty! Kirsty Doole has been part of the OUPblog team since…possibly forever, and yet I don’t know that we’ve ever properly introduced her to all of you. Formerly known as the ‘UK Early Bird,’ she is our UK Contributing Editor and keeps me on my toes at every turn. To my great delight, she’s also joined me on the @OUPblog twitter account! Without further adieu, I present this (fantastic) Q&A.
March 2011 (60))
Omar is no Ozzie By Michael Humphreys Baseball fans love to compare the players of today to the players who came before, but one must wonder how great the margin of error in these comparisons is. Is there any way of knowing who the real baseball greats are, and whose legend should stand the test of time? Let’s take Omar Vizquel as an example. So says Wikipedia, “Vizquel is considered one of baseball’s
Book thumbnail image Political violence and PRI The conversation in the new and old media over the last several weeks has been dominated by reports about uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and violent clashes in Bahrain, Yemen, the Ivory Coast, Iraq and elsewhere. In Libya, fighting currently is reported to take place close to strategic oil installations. Because of the scarcity of claims arising out of similar events in investor-state arbitration, political risk insurance claims determinations by the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) can play an important role to develop this area of law and fill these gaps in future investor-state arbitral arbitrations.
Book thumbnail image Thoughts of Pi By Jason Rosenhouse A recent satirical essay in the Huffington Post reports that congressional Republicans are trying to legislate the value of pi. Fearing that the complexity of modern geometry is hurting America’s performance on international measures of mathematical knowledge, they have decreed that from now on pi shall be equal to three. It is a sad commentary on American culture that you must read slowly and carefully to be certain the essay is just satire.
Monthly Gleanings: March 2011 Question: How large is an average fluent speaker’s vocabulary? Answer: I have often heard this question, including its variant: “Is it true that English contains more words than any other (European) language?” The problem is that “an average fluent speaker” does not exist. Also, it is important to distinguish between how many words we recognize (our so-called passive vocabulary) and how many we use in everyday communication (active vocabulary).
Book thumbnail image The way of the abstract “Physics, most of us would agree, is the basic science of nature. Its purpose is to discover the laws of the natural world. Do such laws exist? Well, the success of physics at identifying some of them proves, in retrospect, that they do exist. Or, at least, it proves that there are Laws of Physics, which we can safely assume to be Laws of Nature.”
Book thumbnail image The Isolationist Shift within Conservatism By Elvin Lim What is it about conservative opposition to Obama’s policy in Libya? It appears conservative critics think he has done both too little too late in Libya, and also too much. While there is agreement on the Right that whatever Obama does is bad policy, the divergent critical voices are not so much evidence of
Book thumbnail image Who’s winning in the sexual market? As most of you probably know by now, there’s a new stage in life – emerging adulthood, or for the purposes of this post, the unmarried young adult. Marriage is getting pushed off (26 is the average age for women, 28 for men) which means…more premarital sex than ever! According to sociologists, emerging adults are all part of a sexual market in which the “cost” of sex for men and women in heterosexual relationships is pretty different. Out of this disparity has risen the theory of “sexual economics,” which I recently
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: What are genes and genomes? By Jonathan Crowe I described in my last blog post how DNA acts as a store of biological information – information that serves as a set of instructions that direct our growth and function. Indeed, we could consider DNA to be the biological equivalent of a library – another repository of information with which we’re all probably much more familiar. The information we find in a library isn’t present in one huge tome, however. Rather, it is divided into discrete packages of information – namely books. And so it is with DNA: the biological information it stores isn’t captured in a single, huge molecule, but is divided into separate entities called chromosomes – the biological equivalent of individual books in a library.
Book thumbnail image On Being By Peter Atkins Deep questions of existence have entertained both sharp and dull minds throughout the history of humanity. Where did it all come from? What is the point of it? What happens after you die? Great mounds of implausible speculation have been tipped on these pressing questions by theologians and philosophers; whole churches have been founded as a result of the institutionalization of the answers. But all those answers were guided by speculation and sentiment and typically expressed in compelling language that captured minds but concealed emptiness. They were emperor’s new clothes with no emperor within.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Subway Cars, Poetry, Rebecca Black Dearest readers, I think this might be the best collection of links I’ve ever gathered. So, you’re welcome. Have a wonderful weekend! Next Stop Atlantic: a photo series documenting the hurling of MTA subway cars into the Atlantic Ocean to create artificial reefs for sea creatures. [My Modern Met] “He doesn’t like George Michael! Boo!” […]
Book thumbnail image A short (and incomplete) history of Friday Yesterday I was sitting at my desk, pondering…normal things that bloggers ponder…when my friend Cassie shared this link with me. If you haven’t seen the “Friday” music video, then perhaps the forecast just seems silly, but it inspired me to think about how fast the senses and connotations of words change. For most people, Friday is just the name of a day of the week, but for the moment it’s also the source of many inside jokes and references to Rebecca Black.
Book thumbnail image Mysteries of the OED There is a lot of mystery behind the Oxford English Dictionary, but I can tell you for sure that it is not compiled in a Gringotts-style castle, all the word slips hidden in secret stone wall compartments, with a team of bearded, vitamin D-deficient lexicographers hunched over great dusty volumes. Today, the OED team is releasing new batch of updates, so I thought I’d share some videos that shed light into the revision process.
Book thumbnail image The letters of W.B. and George Yeats By Ann Saddlemyer It doesn’t seem that long since a friend chastised me for writing a long, newsy, e-mail. ‘It’s not meant to be a letter, you know – it’s just an instant message.’ Yet another friend insists on a genuine hand-written letter; texting or e-mailing simply won’t do. In an earlier age, I can recall when one apologized for typing rather than writing by hand. Condolences could not be sent any other way.
Book thumbnail image Why Operation Odyssey Dawn may become another protracted odyssey By Elvin Lim The Obama administration is having a hard time responding to critics who disagree with its decision to intervene in Libya. Some on the Left do not want another war; while some on the Right don’t want a multilateral approach to war and one authorized by the UN. Both sides, of course, are using a “separation of powers” line, charging that the President failed to seek congressional approval, but the procedural objection disguises a substantive disagreement. The fact is
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 3.5: Mead, concluded) By Anatoly Liberman We may assume that people, wherever they lived, learned to use honey and even practiced apiculture before dairy products became part of their diet, for honey can be found and consumed in its natural state, while milk, cheese, butter, and the rest presuppose the existence of domesticated animals, be it horses, cows, sheep, or goats, and of a developed industry. However, humans are mammals, so that the word for “milk” is probably contemporaneous with language, even though no Common Indo-European term for it existed (for example, the word
Book thumbnail image Happy birthday OK: the world’s most-popular word turns 172 Tweet By Dennis Baron By rights, OK should not have become the world’s most popular word. It was first used as a joke in the Boston Morning Post on March 23, 1839, a shortening of the phrase “oll korrect,” itself an incorrect spelling of “all correct.” The joke should have run its course, and OK […]
Dispatch from Tokyo Last week we received a message from Miki Matoba, Director of Global Academic Business at OUP Tokyo, confirming that her staff is safe and well. This was a relief to hear, and also a reminder that although many of us are tied to the people of Japan in some way, our perspective of the human impact is relatively small. So I asked Miki if she wouldn’t mind sharing some of her experiences, and she kindly agreed.
Book thumbnail image Will John Edwards be indicted? By Peter J. Henning The criminal investigation of former Senator and presidential candidate John Edwards for secretly funneling money to his ex-lover Rielle Hunter is moving toward a conclusion, and there is a good chance he will be indicted if federal prosecutors can link the payments to his campaign committee or find that contributors were deceived about the purpose of the donations. Voicemails released by North Carolina television station WTVD show Edwards’ connection to keeping his affair with Ms. Hunter secret.
Book thumbnail image Why some people hate god By Bernard Schweizer There’s a lost tribe of religious believers who have suffered a lasting identity crisis. I am referring to the category-defying species of believers who accept the existence of the creator God and yet refuse to worship him. In fact they may go so far as to say that they hate God. No, I’m not talking about atheists. Non-believers may say contemptuous things about God, but when they do so, they are
Book thumbnail image The ‘Cinderella’ Brontë: An audio guide Josephine McDonagh, who has written the introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, discusses the novel and its reception in a series of podcasts recorded by Podularity.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: on Japan Those of us with family and friends in Japan feel quite helpless right now. Yesterday, the Guardian reported: The Japanese government revised the estimated disaster death toll up from 10,000 to 15,000. It confirmed that 5,178 people had died and 2,285 were injured. The number of missing was increased to 8,913 from 7,844. Almost 200,000 households regained electricity, but this left more than 450,000 without power. Approximately 2.5m households still do not have access to water.
Book thumbnail image It’s time for English teachers to stop teaching that the earth is flat By Dennis Baron When I asked a class of prospective teachers to discuss the impact on students of prescriptive rules like “Don’t split infinitives,” “Don’t end sentences with prepositions,” and “Don’t use contractions,” one student ignored the descriptive grammar we had been studying and instead equated correctness in language with intelligent design: I think I support prescriptivism. I believe that some words are absolutely unacceptable in any situation. I think there should be an accepted way of speaking and deviation would not be tolerated. I believe in a set of absolute
Book thumbnail image Is God woman’s greatest nemesis? (Part 2) In the second part of my conversation with David Sehat, author of The Myth of American Religious Freedom, we discuss the influence of the moral establishment today – on women as well as the gay community. Read on to find out why evangelical Christian families like to keep “sexy” in the family (i.e. the Sarah Palin effect)! For the back-story, go to Part 1.
Book thumbnail image Is God woman’s greatest nemesis? (Part 1) God vs. Woman. One of the world’s longest rivalries and something I wanted to learn a little bit more about this Women’s History Month. So I spoke with author David Sehat, who discusses the influence of the moral establishment on the women’s rights movement in his new book The Myth of American Religious Freedom. See g-chat conversation below!
Book thumbnail image Who’s next? Digital media and the inevitable surprise of political unrest By Philip Howard Political discontent has cascaded across North Africa and the Middle East. Entrenched dictators with decades of experience controlling political life have fallen or had to make major concessions. In the West, some observers discount the role of digital media in political change, others give it too much emphasis. Digitally enabled protesters in Tunisia and Egypt tossed out their dictator. The protests in Libya have posed the first
17 March and all that By S. J. Connolly The approach of St Patrick’s day brings to mind once again the ambivalent relationship that historians have with festivals and anniversaries. On the one hand they are our bread and butter. Regular commemorations are what keep the past alive in the public mind. And big anniversaries, like 1989 for historians of the French Revolution, or 2009 for historians of Darwinism, can provide the occasion of conferences, exhibitions, publishers’ contracts, and even invitations to appear on television.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday, James Madison! Today would be the 260th birthday of the 4th American president, James Madison. Long honored as the “Father of the Constitution” for his role at the Federal Convention of 1787, Madison is also regarded as the most thoughtful and creative constitutional theorist of his generation. This reputation owes much to his celebrated contributions to The Federalist, the set of essays that he wrote with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in support of the Constitution. Two of these essays, the 10th and 51st, are widely viewed as paradigmatic statements of the general theory of the Constitution.
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 3: Mead) By Anatoly Liberman Tales that explain the origin of things are called etiological. All etymologies are etiological tales by definition. It seems that one of the main features of Homo sapiens has always been his unquenchable desire to get drunk. Sapiens indeed! The most ancient intoxicating drink of the Indo-Europeans was mead. Moreover, it seems that several neighboring tribes borrowed the name of this drink from them (and undoubtedly the drink itself: otherwise, what would have been the point of taking over the word?), for we have Finnish mesi, Proto-Chinese
Book thumbnail image Revolution in the Metro By Helen Constantine Travelling on Line 3 out to the Pont de Levallois in the North West of the Paris metro you pass through a station called Louise Michel. It is named after a feisty, brave woman, sometimes known as the Red Virgin, born in the revolutionary year of 1830, the July Revolution, less bloody than the one with which she herself was to be associated, the uprising of the Commune at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871.
Book thumbnail image Japan’s earthquake could shake public trust in the safety of nuclear power By Charles D. Ferguson Is nuclear power too risky in earthquake-prone countries such as Japan? On March 11, a massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake shook Japan and caused widespread damage especially in the northeastern region of Honshu, the largest Japanese island. Nuclear power plants throughout that region automatically shut down when the plants’ seismometers registered ground accelerations above safety thresholds. But all the shutdowns did not go perfectly.
Book thumbnail image How to donate to Japan Just look at the photos. Friday’s magnitude 9.0 earthquake generated a tsunami that has all but destroyed much of eastern Honshu, the largest island of Japan. This is the biggest recorded quake to hit Japan since records dating back to the 1800s. Today the National Police Agency reports that the disaster has claimed 3,373 lives and left 6,746 others unaccounted for, and those numbers are on the rise.
Book thumbnail image Re-learning the lessons from Elizabeth Edwards’ death By Gayle A. Sulik Elizabeth Edwards died from stage 4 breast cancer (also known as metastatic breast cancer) on December 7th, 2010 at the age of 61. Ms. Edwards was a well-known public figure, notably the wife of former Senator John Edwards, and an accomplished lawyer, author, and health advocate. Her death inspired new
The mind works in mysterious ways: unconscious race bias & Obama By Gregory S. Parks & Matthew W. Hughey On Tuesday, January 25, 2010, Arab television network Alhurra interviewed Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA). During the interview, Congressman Moran stated that Republicans made big gains this past November because “a lot of people in this country . . . don’t want to be governed by an African American.” To some, these statements were not only controversial, but false. This is because we live in a supposedly post-racial America since
Harlan County – Episode 13 – The Oxford Comment This week the IFC is playing Barbara Kopple’s Oscar winning film Harlan County USA, so we thought it would be a good time to share an interview with Alessandro Portelli, the oral historian who spent 25 years gathering the stories of the Appalachian community subject in Kopple’s film. The people of Harlan are mostly known for their history of intense labor battles.
Book thumbnail image In conversation with Peter Atkins Peter Atkins is the author of almost 60 books, including Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, Four Laws that Drive the Universe, and the world-renowned textbook Physical Chemistry. His latest book is On Being, which is a scientist’s exploration of the great questions of existence. In the below video, Atkins is in conversation about the book with Meet the Author‘s David Freeman.
Book thumbnail image The Constitution in 2020: the Caesars or the Tudors? By Adrian Vermeule A trope of tyrannophobic political discourse compares the American presidency with the government of the Caesars. T.B. Macaulay addressed a comparison between the Caesars and the Tudor monarchs (Henry VII, his son, and his grandchildren) in terms both withering and illuminating: It has been said … that the Tudors were as absolute as the Caesars. Never was a parallel so unfortunate. The Caesars ruled despotically, by means of a great standing army, under the decent
Book thumbnail image Smoking Typewriters and the New Left rebellion Following the lead of papers like the Los Angeles Free Press, the East Village Other, and the Berkeley Barb, young Americans in the 1960s launched hundreds of mimeographed pamphlets and flyers, small press magazines, and underground newspapers. New, cheaper printing technologies democratized the publishing process and by the decade’s end the combined circulation of underground papers stretched into the millions. Though not technically illegal, these papers were often genuinely subversive, and many of those who produced and sold them-on street-corners, at poetry readings, gallery openings, and coffeehouses-became targets of
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Inspirational women, NSEW, Spaderman For the 100th International Women’s Day this week, The Guardian chose their Top 100 inspirational women living today from a range of backgrounds and subjects. This is possibly the only time you’ll see Lady Gaga and Margaret Thatcher in the same list. [The Guardian]
Book thumbnail image Beyond reciprocal violence: morality, relationships and effective self-defense By Ervin Staub A few hours after the 9/11 attacks, speaking on our local public radio station in Western Massachusetts, struggling with my tears and my voice, I said that this horrible attack can help us understand people’s suffering around the world, and be a tool for us to unite with others to create a better world. Others also said similar things. But that is not how events progressed. Our response to that attack led to three wars we are still fighting, including the war on terror. How we fight these wars and what we do to bring them to an end will shape
Book thumbnail image Diversity on corporate boards and the rejection of quotas By Christine Mallin In late February, Lord Davies’ report on ‘Women on Boards’ was published. The report was awaited with much speculation especially as to whether he would recommend quotas whereby listed companies would have to have a certain proportion of female board members. Brian Groom reported that Lord Davies, had rejected quotas and that ‘only 11 per cent of submissions were in favour of quotas and the vast majority of women were vehemently opposed’ to quotas.
Osama bin Laden – Episode 12 – The Oxford Comment What does Osama bin Laden really want from us? Listen to this podcast and find out.
A drinking bout in several parts (Part 2: Beer) By Anatoly Liberman At the beginning of the previous post, I promised to say more about some strange names of beverages. The time has come to make good on my promise. In a note dated December 1892, we can read the following: “Shandygaff is the name of a mixture of beer and ginger-beer…, and according to evidence given at the recent trial of the East Manchester election petition, a mixture of bitter beer and lemonade is in Manchester called a smiler.” Shandygaff and especially its shortened form shandy are still well-known words
Book thumbnail image Does marriage close the wealth gap between men and women? Some may wonder if gender differences in wealth are important. After all, don’t most men and women marry, rendering any gender wealth difference relatively unimportant? Actually, about half of all households are headed by single (never-married, widowed, or divorced) persons, which makes the wealth gap between men and women a reality for a large percentage of people. Also, prominent social circumstances prevent women from closing the wealth gap through marriage. First, the protection that is offered by marriage will disappear for large groups of women, since about half of all marriages end in divorce. Second, men and women are marrying at later ages, leaving women with more years in which they are self-supporting. In fact, women now spend more of their adult years single than married.
Book thumbnail image Patterns in Presidential Politics By Elvin Lim As the race for the Republican nomination warms up, it is too early to tell who would head the party’s ticket next Fall. But there is more to understanding politics than predicting the horse races, and for those ready to look, there are already patterns emerging from the available field of potential candidates. First, the next Republican nominee is not likely to come from the other end of Pennsylvania avenue. With the announcement of Senator John Thune (SD) that he would not be running, there are no more
Book thumbnail image International Women’s Day: Charlotte Perkins Gilman For me, one of the most interesting lines of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” appears near the very beginning of the story. The words are an aside, a nervous excuse—and the only part of this rambling, uncomfortable tale to be quartered off by parentheses: “John is a physician,” the narrator writes furtively, “and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind—) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.”
Book thumbnail image International Women’s Day: Mona Caird These days, not many people outside of academia seem to know who Mona Caird was. I certainly didn’t until I was studying for my Masters degree and decided to write on the New Woman writers of the late 19th century. Through that I came to read her novel, The Daughters of Danaus (1894), which is the story of Hadria, a girl from the Scottish Borders who wants to be a composer. However, the pressure to fulfil the traditional roles of wife and mother is insurmountable and her musical ambitions are ultimately sacrificed to her family obligations. The book is rightly regarded as something of a feminist classic, and it has become one of my very favourite books.
Book thumbnail image International Women’s Day: Émilie du Châtelet By Patricia Fara Émilie du Châtelet, wrote Voltaire, ‘was a great man whose only fault was being a woman.’ Du Châtelet has paid the penalty for being a woman twice over. During her life, she was denied the educational opportunities and freedom that she craved. ‘Judge me for my own merits,’ she protested: ‘do not look upon me as a mere appendage to this great general or that renowned scholar’ – but since her death, she has been demoted to subsidiary status as Voltaire’s mistress and Isaac Newton’s translator.
Book thumbnail image The Legal and Practical Futility of State “Amazon” Laws By Edward Zelinsky As they scramble for tax revenue in a challenging environment, the states increasingly turn to so-called “Amazon” laws to force out-of-state internet and mail order retailers to collect tax on their sales. The Illinois General Assembly is the most recent state legislature to pass an Amazon statute. New York, Colorado, Rhode Island, North Carolina and Oklahoma have already enacted such laws while Amazon acts are pending in other state legislatures. While they differ in important respects, all of these proposed and enacted laws share the premise that goods which are taxed when purchased in a conventional, bricks-and-mortar store should also be taxed when bought from an online or mail order retailer. This premise is compelling.
Book thumbnail image The Difficulty of Being Good Gurcharan Das is the author of several books, including the much-acclaimed India Unbound (which has been translated into many languages and filmed by the BBC) and most recently The Difficulty of Being Good: On The Subtle Art of Dharma. He writes a regular column for six Indian newspapers, including the Times of India, and also contributes to Newsweek, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Affairs. In the two-part podcast below, Das talks with none other than the brilliant Kamla Bhatt.
Book thumbnail image Hamlet, and his secret names By Lisa Collinson In this new article, I conclude that Hamlet probably came ultimately from Gaelic Admlithi: a name attached to a player (or ‘mocker’) in a strange and violent medieval Irish tale known in English as ‘The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel’. If I’m right, this means that some version of the Hamlet-name was associated with players hundreds of years before Shakespeare lived or wrote.
Book thumbnail image Who cares about National Grammar Day? Or is it whom? By Dennis Baron March 4 is National Grammar Day. According to its sponsor, the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG, they call themselves, though between you and me, it’s not the sort of acronym to roll trippingly off the tongue), National Grammar Day is “an imperative . . . . to speak well, write well, and help others do the same!” The National Grammar Day website is full of imperatives about correct punctuation, pronoun use, and dangling participles. In the spirit of good sportsmanship, it points out
John Lennon and Jesus, 4 March 1966 By Gordon Thompson Forty-five years ago, in the spring of 1966, as swinging London and its colorful denizens attracted the attention of ‘Time’, the publishers of an American teen magazine found part of a recent interview with John Lennon to be of particular interest. A rapid disintegration ensued of the complex identity that the Beatles management, the media, the fans, and even the musicians themselves had constructed, setting in motion a number of dark forces.
Book thumbnail image Translating Gulag Boss Unfortunately, there’s no doubting the fact that oppression and cruelty has existed and will indeed continue to remain in society. The question that does need to be asked, however, is how ordinary people can commit these extreme and vicious acts of evil upon their fellow man? In Gulag Boss: A Soviet Memoir by Fyodor Vasilevich Mochulsky, and translated by Deborah Kaple, that question is explored through the lens of one normal man who eventually ran one of Stalin’s most notorious prison camps.
Book thumbnail image What can the Norman Conquest teach us about regime change? By George Garnett The Norman Conquest of England, recently examined in Rob Bartlett’s television series, offers some striking parallels. The term is jargon, of a type beloved by politicians, because it attempts to foreclose on reflection and debate. The manner of the ‘change’ – by armed force – is veiled, and the agent unspecified, even though both are always obvious.
Book thumbnail image Michael Scheuer sits down with Stephen Colbert Michael Scheuer was the chief of the CIA’s bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 and remained a counterterrorism analyst until 2004. He is the author of many books, including the bestselling Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terrorism. His latest book is the biography Osama bin Laden, a much-needed corrective, hard-headed, closely reasoned portrait that tracks the man’s evolution from peaceful Saudi dissident to America’s Most Wanted. Among the extensive media attention both the book and Scheuer have received so far, he was interviewed on The Colbert Report just this week.
A Drinking Bout in Several Parts (Part 1.5: Ale continued) By Anatoly Liberman The surprising thing about the runic alu (on which see the last January post), the probable etymon of ale, is its shortness. The protoform was a bit longer and had t after u, but the missing part contributed nothing to the word’s meaning. To show how unpredictable the name of a drink may be (before we get back to ale), I’ll quote a passage from Ralph Thomas’s letter to Notes and Queries for 1897 (Series 8, volume XII, p. 506). It is about the word fives, as in a pint of fives, which means “…‘four ale’ and ‘six ale’ mixed, that is, ale at fourpence a quart and sixpence a quart.
Book thumbnail image Shari’a Law and the Archbishop of Canterbury Over the first two weeks of February 2008 in the United Kingdom, a sizable controversy was stirred up by a lecture given to the Royal Courts of Justice by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Rev Rowan Williams, entitled ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective’, and a prior interview which he gave to the BBC Radio 4 news programme, ‘The World at One’. In the course of both the talk and the interview, the Archbishop suggested that certain extensions of Shari’a law in Britain were both ‘unavoidable’ and also desirable from the double point of view of civil cohesion and the defence of the ‘group rights’ of religious bodies.
Book thumbnail image Democracy and Predictability in the Middle East By Elvin Lim American foreign policy elites are now facing the difficult choice of deciding if our short-term goals are in fostering democracy in the Middle East, or in quietly propping up authoritarian allies in the region. Even if policy-makers have a choice, it not an easy one to make. Certainly, in the long run, democracy in the Middle East would likely remove the breeding conditions for terrorism and resentment towards the West, but in the short run, transitioning toward democracy is a highly volatile project and in the meantime our strategic interests in the region could be compromised.
Oscar Pool Results are In! The winners of the prestigious First Annual Oxford Oscar Pool were announced this morning: 1st Place: Julia Pentz, Marketing Coordinator, Distribution 2nd Place: Jeff Shoup, Institutional Sales Representative 3rd Place: Debbie Farinella, Network/Consortia Sales Manager According to Jessica Chesnutt, Online Product Specialist and pool organizer, everyone’s picks were quite varied with the exception of the […]
Book thumbnail image Is the Brotherhood part of Egypt’s future, or just its past? By Geneive Abdo Over the past several weeks, leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood have placed on public display the lessons they have learned as Egypt’s officially banned but most influential social and political movement by trying to pre-empt alarmist declarations that the country is now headed for an Iran-style theocracy. Members of the venerable Brotherhood, founded in 1928 by an Egyptian school teacher to revitalize Islam and oppose British colonial rule, have so far stated no plans to run a candidate in the next presidential election, and they surprised many by their halting participation in the transitional government, after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.
February 2011 (54))
Book thumbnail image Hollywood and The Dude Last week we prepared for the Academy Awards by discussing words and phrases coined from film (twitterpated, bogart, party on) as well as linguistic choices in film this year (Winkelvii, ballerina lingo, The Kids are All Right, not Alright) . While watching the awards last night it occurred to me that we failed to address one of the most important cinematic words of all time: dude. Or in the parlance of our time: The Dude.
Book thumbnail image The government’s definition of writing is seriously out of date By Dennis Baron There’s a federal law that defines writing. Because the meaning of the words in our laws isn’t always clear, the very first of our federal laws, the Dictionary Act–the name for Title 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, of the U.S. Code–defines what some of the words in the rest of the Code mean, both to guide legal interpretation and to eliminate the need to explain those words each time they appear. Writing is one of the words it defines, but the definition needs an upgrade. The Dictionary Act consists of a single sentence, an introduction and ten short clauses defining a minute subset of our legal vocabulary, words like person, officer, signature, oath, and last but not least, writing.
Book thumbnail image SciWhys: What is DNA and what does it do? Today we’d like to introduce our latest regular OUPblog column: SciWhys. Every month OUP editor and author Jonathan Crowe will be answering your science questions. Got a burning question about science that you’d like answered? Just email it to us, and Jonathan will answer what he can. Kicking us off: What is DNA and what does it do?
Book thumbnail image And the winners are…language lovers! By Grace Labatt The 2011 Academy Awards® take place this Sunday, February 27, the culmination of months of speculation about who will wear what, who will have the hardest time with the TelePrompTer, and, of course, who will win. But regardless of who goes home with an Oscar—whether it’s Natalie Portman for playing a tormented ballerina or Annette Bening for playing a tormented wife—language lovers already have plenty to celebrate with this year’s honorees. Films in 2010 had an array of unusual linguistic choices that highlighted their screenwriters’ unique skills.
Book thumbnail image Best Original Score: What will win (and what *should* win) By Kathryn Kalinak This year’s Oscar Best Original Score nominations are as notable for who didn’t get nominated as for who did: no Carter Burwell for True Grit, no Clint Mansell for Black Swan, no Danny Elfman (and what a return to form) for Alice in Wonderland. There’s not much of a horse race this year.
Book thumbnail image You’ve Been McGuggenized! By Michelle Rafferty When my friend sent me a link with the subject line: Carmel in WSJ! I clicked with trepidation. The last time my hometown made national news it involved a sodomy hazing incident and the high school basketball team. Phew. It was only a minor dispute over an expensive new piece of suburban architecture:
Book thumbnail image Words, words, words By Elizabeth Knowles ‘Is it in the dictionary?’ is a formulation suggesting that there is a single lexical authority: ‘The Dictionary’. As the British academic Rosamund Moon has commented, ‘The dictionary most cited in such cases is the UAD: the Unidentified Authorizing Dictionary, usually referred to as “the dictionary”, but very occasionally as “my dictionary”.’ The American scholar John Algeo has coined the term lexicographicolatry for a reverence for dictionary authority amounting to idolatry. As he explained:
Book thumbnail image ‘Women do not count, neither shall they be counted’ By Jill Liddington Elizabeth Crawford and I, suffrage historians both, watched with keen interest in early 2009 as the 1911 census began to go online. On Tuesday 13 January selected English counties became fully searchable by the public. Excitement was palpable. By midnight, there had been 3.4m searches and 17.4m pages viewed, particularly by family historians. But it was suffragettes who grabbed attention – with headlines like ‘1911 Census: the secret suffragettes who refused to be counted’.
Book thumbnail image Why Wisconsin Democrats are Fumbling on their Message By Elvin Lim Something is afoot in American politics. There was a time when the rights of workers, even government workers, to collectively bargain, was taken for granted. There was a time when federal budget deficits were accepted as a necessarily evil but it was only a problem talked about and no one addressed. There was a time when it was political suicide to talk about extending the retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits. Whatever that is left of the political consensus of the last half-century is unraveling today into a cantankerous politics in which settled issues are now up for political re-litigation.
Monthly Gleanings: February 2011 By Anatoly Liberman As I said, when I first broached this subject, discussing the merits and demerits of the split infinitive is an unprofitable occupation: all the arguments have been repeated many times. But an ironic comment on my post made me return to splitting. The differences between me and a huge segment of the world (a look at British newspapers shows that the infection is not limited to American usage) can be formulated so: my principle is “split if you must,” while many others seem to stick to the principle “split at all costs.” Our correspondent asserted that nothing justifies keeping the particle to and the verbal form in close proximity. Not quite so.
Bada-Bing! – Episode 11 – The Oxford Comment With the Academy Awards right around the corner, we thought it might be fun to look at the lexical impact of films and some words that were actually coined by movies.
Book thumbnail image Tchaikovsky is No One-Trick Pony I’d argue our Black Swan fever peaked at Jim Carey’s SNL performance, but we might see a resurgence this weekend at the Oscars. In anticipation I contacted Roland John Wiley, author of Tchaikovsky and Professor of Music at the University of Michigan, for his thoughts on his subject’s recent omnipresence. Turns out Wiley’s a bit of an outsider in the academic community, where the composer hasn’t always been taken seriously. Here, Wiley explains the trappings of music snobbery – and why Tchaikovsky’s popularity among the “muggles” is no reason to discount his brilliance. (Oh, and, he dishes on the original Swan Lake ballerina dra-ma!)
Book thumbnail image The Limits of Legal Agreements as Security for Israel By Louis René Beres For millennia, states and empires have negotiated formal agreements to protect themselves. Usually known as treaties, these agreements are always in written form, and are always fashioned and evaluated according to pertinent international law. Problems arise, however, whenever particular signatories decide that continued compliance is no longer in their own “national interest.” It follows that treaties can be useful when there exists an enduring mutuality of interest, but can become more or less useless whenever such mutuality is presumed to disappear.
Why the President Got Sexified By Michelle Rafferty When did the commander-in-chief become a sex icon? That was the question I pursued this Presidents’ Day. And of course the more people I spoke with, the more complex the question became. By the end of the investigation I learned some Americans continue to preserve a “pure” image of presidents past, while many find their sex lives highly relevant to our political history. Check out the slideshow below to see exactly what our authors had to say!
Book thumbnail image 100+ Eskimo words for snow? Not so. By Dave Wilton Having just moved to Toronto, Ontario from Berkeley, California, one thing that is on my mind, as well as on my front yard, is snow. Crunching through the drifts on my way to the subway, or when I walk my dog Dexter, gives me a lot of time to contemplate the unfamiliar white stuff. One of those thoughts is how familiarity with snow figures into one of the more persistent false beliefs about language—the one that says, “Eskimos have X number of words for snow,” with X being a number ranging from several dozen to as many as four hundred.
Book thumbnail image Patriarchal Feudalism Greed, Lust and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas by Nancy Folbre describes a spiralling process of economic and cultural change in Britain, the US, and France since the 18th century that shaped both the evolution of patriarchal capitalism and the larger relationship between production and reproduction. This short excerpt from the first chapter of the book, Folbre explains the notion of patriarchal feudalism.
Linked Up: Arcade Fire, Las Vegas, James Cameron All week, Beliebers have raged on about Arcade Fire, a band they’ve apparently never heard of. I’d like to introduce them to you. If you don’t have time to take a listen now, don’t worry, they’re going to make a record in the month of May. (That’s a little joke.) [Myspace] And speaking of Justin Bieber, the young pop star’s remarks in an interview are the subject of widespread anger and controversy. [Rolling Stone] Mr. Graham discovers the extreme fear of conducting a professional orchestra. [Morning News] Looking for a totally normal cabinet? Then look elsewhere. [Like Cool]
Book thumbnail image How to Get Pregnant (so your baby can be born on 11-11-11!) By Allen J. Wilcox You already know where babies come from – the business about sperm and eggs, and getting them together. You also know something about birth control – after all, people spend most of their reproductive years trying NOT to get pregnant. But there comes a time for many women when they ready to have a baby. That’s when some interesting questions arise. – Once you stop using birth control, how long does it take to get pregnant? – Is there something women should do to increase their chances of getting pregnant? – What can a woman do to help make sure her baby will be healthy?
Book thumbnail image The View from Cairo: Dispatch 3 The mood of celebration in Egypt after the resignation of the president is uncontainable. Egyptians know there are unanswered questions and uncertain times ahead, and the country’s woes have not been wiped out overnight, but they have achieved something that a few weeks ago was unthinkable, and they are proud not just of that achievement but of the way they did it: The 25 January Revolution, as it is being called here (from the date of the first protests), has been an incredibly impressive peaceful mass movement (sometimes confronted with sickening violence) of young and old, men and
Book thumbnail image #twitterrevolution reforming Egypt in 140 characters? By Dennis Baron Western observers have been celebrating the role of Twitter, Facebook, smartphones, and the internet in general in facilitating the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt last week. An Egyptian Google employee, imprisoned for rallying the opposition on Facebook, even became for a time a hero of the insurgency. The Twitter Revolution was similarly credited with fostering the earlier ousting of Tunisia’s Ben Ali, and supporting Iran’s green protests
Book thumbnail image Phone-Hacking, Muck-Raking, and the Future of Surveillance By Simon Chesterman “This is the paradox of today’s media: investigative journalism is often key to revealing abuses of surveillance powers, yet the commercial reality of today’s market drives unscrupulous journalists themselves towards ever more dubious methods.”
Book thumbnail image Economic Volatility, Hyper Consumption, and the “Wealth of Nations” By Louis René Beres Adam Smith published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. A revolutionary book, Wealth did not aim to support the interests of any one particular class, but rather the overall well-being of an entire nation. He sought, as every American high-school student learns, “an invisible hand,” whereby “the private interests and passions of men” will lead to “that which is most agreeable to the interest of a whole society.”
A Drinking Bout in Several Parts (Part 1: Ale) By Anatoly Liberman English lacks a convenient word for “ancestors of Germanic speaking people.” Teutons, an obsolete English gloss for German Germanen, is hardly ever used today. The adjective Germanic has wide currency, and, when pressed for the noun, some people translate Germanen as “Germans” (not a good solution). I needed this introduction as an apology for asking the question: “What did the ancient Teutons drink?” The “wine card” contained many items, for, as usual, not everybody drank the same, and different occasions called for different beverages and required
Book thumbnail image Mexico’s Struggle to “Vivir Mejor” By Susan Pick With all the ambitious international goals and targets that developing countries have committed to, from poverty reduction to universal education and access to health care, we’ve observed a not uncommon response by the governments: too strong a focus on the public image of the new programs, not strong enough a focus on making the programs truly accessible. Here’s an example to illustrate our point: On a daily basis, Mexicans are exposed to immeasurable social development propaganda from government agencies. The propaganda is unavoidable because these messages are disseminated via commercials on public transportation, highway billboards, TV and radio, and
Book thumbnail image Fissures in the Conservative Movement By Elvin Lim In recent weeks, factions within the Republican party have begun jostling for power within the conservative movement. This is the bitter-sweet inevitability of being more than the party in opposition, but also a party recently co-opted into power. Whether the disagreement is between Rick Santorum versus Sarah Palin, or the Family Research Council versus GOProud , or Tea Party members of Congress and moderate Republicans debating the budget, or
Book thumbnail image Eating eggshells and other Valentine’s Day silliness By Lauren Appelwick, Blog Editor Raise your hand if you celebrate Valentine’s Day! OK…no one… Raise your hand if you like fun facts and history! Yay! Everyone! No matter how you feel about this holiday (or non-holiday, as it might be), I think the following might be of interest. Let’s start off with an excerpt from The Oxford Companion to the Year:
Jazz – Episode 10 – The Oxford Comment Romance your date with a Monk-inspired duet, or have a private boogie-woogie party in honor of your singledom. This Valentine’s Day, The Oxford Commentpresents a crash course on the music that speaks all kinds of love, from one of the men that knows it best.
Quantum Theory: If a tree falls in the forest… By Jim Baggott Philosophers have long argued that sound, colour, taste, smell and touch, exist only in our minds. We have little basis for our assumption that these qualities represent reality as it really is. So, if we interpret the word ‘sound’ to mean a human experience, then the falling tree really is silent.
Book thumbnail image It’s a Zombie Double Rainbow! The announcement of another zombie tv show, exhibits our intensifying zombie love, but why do we dig this monster so much? He’s everywhere: in our novels, on television, and even the stage, but why? I decided to investigate and narrowed it down to the following:
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: the Trenta, Pirate Talk, Kobe Bryant It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a Linked Up, but with releasing a new episode of The Oxford Comment, working “frak” into my daily vocabulary, and trying to keep up on developments in Egypt, I’ve not found the time! Hopefully, today’s will make up for it. Have a wonderful weekend everyone! P.S. I promised our Twitter followers that if they came up with at least 5 good questions about insects I would have an entomologist answer them, so send in yours!
Book thumbnail image Memo From Amsterdam: On Living in an Old City By Sharon Zukin This winter I left my inland loft in Greenwich Village for an apartment on a canal in Amsterdam. From my desk in the living room I look out over the cold gray water and also, with a slight swivel of gaze, over the Amstel River itself. On this river at the beginning of December I saw Sint Niklaas, dressed less like a jolly Santa Claus and more like a stern Catholic bishop, arrive with a flotilla of small boats for the holiday season. On New Year’s Eve, my fellow city dwellers set off amateur fireworks that lighted the sky over the river for several hours.
Book thumbnail image The View from Cairo: Dispatch 2 The protesters are standing firm, and are not impressed by the concessions the government is offering. Yesterday we watched the growing line—halfway back onto the Qasr al-Nil Bridge—of people queuing to get through the double security cordon (army first, protesters’ popular committee volunteers next) into Tahrir Square. The first thing that struck me was that people were prepared to stand in line to join the protest: standing in line is not a common phenomenon in Egypt—people normally form a scrum, and push—but here they were lining up (in the rain), flags and banners in hand, for their right to protest. The second thing was the diversity: a lot of young
Is Biography Proper History? By Jonathan Steinberg When I began my career in academic life as an historian, the answer was a loud No. Biography fell into the category of ‘unserious’ stuff, written by amateurs. Not any more. Big biographies of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Churchill, Lyndon Johnson and many others pour from the pens of the most distinguished academic historians.
Book thumbnail image Cab Calloway Gets Animated Cab Calloway was never a classically trained dancer. In fact, he learned movement by studying a rooster he brought with him on tour. Check out this clip from Levin’s documentary, in which cartoon Cab dances alongside Alvin Ailey dancer Matthew Rushing (think Gene Kelly and Jerry Mouse)
Book thumbnail image The Beatles at the Cavern Club, 9 February 1961 By Gordon Thompson Fifty years ago, one of the great stories in pop music began when the Beatles debuted in a dank arched subterranean Liverpool club dedicated to music. Located in the narrow lane called Mathew Street, just of North John Street, the Cavern Club had opened as a jazz haven that enfolded blues and skiffle, which was how the Quarry Men, John Lennon’s precursor to the Beatles, had first descended the steps and climbed the tiny stage in August 1957. Three-and-a-half years later, the Beatles had evolved into a
The Short and the Long of it By Anatoly Liberman There are two questions here. First, why does again rhyme with den, fen, ten rather than gain? Second, where did -t in against come from? I’ll begin with against. Old English had a ramified system of endings. The most common ending of the genitive was -s, which also occurred as a suffix of adverbs, or in words that, by definition, had no case forms at all (adverbs are not declined!). It is easy to detect the traces of the adverbial -s in such modern words as
Book thumbnail image Ali, Aliens, and Athena By C. W. Marshall Working in popular culture as an academic can mean turning one’s guilty pleasures into an object of study. So it was for me when I read the 2010 re-release of DC’s 1978 comic, Superman vs. Muhammad Ali (written by Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams). Along with the Rumble in the Jungle (his 1974 fight against George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire, in which he regained the Heavyweight title) and the Thrilla in Manilla (his 1975 fight against in the Philippines against Joe Frazier), Muhammad Ali’s fight against Superman would surely rank as a highpoint in his 1970s boxing career. I wasn’t reading this for its classical content.
Book thumbnail image How Publius Might Counsel Egypt By Elvin Lim As the situation continues to unfold in Egypt, and as the White House continues to walk a fine line between support for democracy and support for a new regime which may not be as pro-American as Hosni Mubarak‘s was, Publius, the author of the Federalist Papers may lend us some wisdom. It may surprise some people, but Publius was no fan of democracy. “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention,” Publius wrote in Number 10. The mob cannot rule, though the mob may
Book thumbnail image The Nine Lives of Ronald Reagan By Gil Troy As we mark the centennial (Feb. 6th, 2011) of Ronald Reagan’s birth, the tug of war over his legacy continues. Reagan’s popular image – and popularity — have fluctuated as wildly as the stock market. One way to make sense of this is to think of Ronald Reagan as having nine public lives. Central to the Reagan legend is this conservative Republican president’s origins as a Hollywood Democrat. Ronald Reagan was a New Deal Democrat who by the 1950s felt that the Democratic Party had lost its way. He always insisted: “Maybe my party changed. I didn’t.” And yes, Reagan was an actor.
Book thumbnail image Legislators’ Pension Spikes as Broken Windows: The Connecticut Example By Edward Zelinsky Connecticut’s new governor, Dannel P. Malloy, has appointed six sitting members of the Nutmeg State’s General Assembly to positions in the executive branch. These gubernatorial appointments have engendered a fair amount of discussion since special elections will be required to fill the legislative vacancies resulting from these appointments. There has, however, been no public discussion of the pension implications of these appointments. Under Connecticut’s retirement plans for government employees, relatively brief service in executive positions results in significant spikes in legislators’ state pensions.
Book thumbnail image Phone-hacking: The law may be difficult to understand but that’s no excuse By Simon McKay In 1928 the iconic United States Supreme Court Justices Holmes and Brandeis dissented in a judgment that ruled the product of telephone conversations derived from “wiretapping” admissible. With characteristic eloquence, Mr Justice Brandeis held that “the confined criminal is as much entitled to redress as his most virtuous fellow citizen; no record of crime, however long, makes one an outlaw”. The judges could be forgiven for thinking that, at least in terms of the English law, eighty years on, things haven’t changed much.
Book thumbnail image The View from Cairo We are all fine. Many dramatic events over the last few days. Particularly disturbing was the battle for the Interior Ministry just up the road from my house, which went on for eight hours on Saturday: we heard and watched the police firing tear gas and live fire (including automatic weapons) and the protesters ducking into back alleys to make and throw Molotov cocktails. Also very disturbing the violent clashes that are happening right now on Tahrir Square, while the army stand and watch.
Book thumbnail image A post-racial NFL? With Mike Tomlin on his way to his second Super Bowl in three years and with Black History Month upon us, this is an ideal time to examine the movement that broke down the color barrier at the top of National Football League’s coaching hierarchy and transformed the NFL into an unlikely equal opportunity trailblazer. Moreover, as American institutions of all sorts, from the Association of Art Museum Directors to the National Urban League, contemplate the merits of emulating the NFL’s Rooney Rule, it is important to
Book thumbnail image Happy 100th Birthday, Ronald Reagan! During his eight years as president, and especially after, supporters praised Reagan as a transformative leader who, like Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt, used his power to alter fundamentally the nation’s direction. Even many Americans who disliked Reagan’s policies agreed that he might well be the most influential president since Roosevelt, turning the nation away from many of the “big government” programs initiated during the New Deal. Reagan received widespread praise for restoring national pride and an unembarrassed muscular patriotism that had lapsed after the debacles of the Vietnam War, the Watergate Scandals, and the economic reversals of the 1970s.
Beauty – Episode 9 – The Oxford Comment In this, the 10th Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle investigate what makes a classic beauty icon, learn about appearance-based discrimination, talk body politics, and discover the threads that tie fashion to beauty.
The Oxford Comment Archive In Spring 2010, Lauren and Michelle decided it was time Oxford University Press got a podcast, and by September, The Oxford Comment was born. Reporting at special events, live on the street, and from the “studio,” each episode features commentary from Oxford authors and friends of the Press.
Book thumbnail image Happy Chinese New Year, Rabbit! This year the Chinese New Year begin today, February 3rd, and people all around the world will be ringing in the year of the Rabbit. Oxford Chinese Dictionary editor Julie Kleeman shares some insight into the traditions associated with the Chinese New Year celebrations.
Book thumbnail image Why we all love Mrs Beeton By Nicola Humble BBC 2 has rediscovered Mrs Beeton, with Sophie Dahl tramping the streets of Cheapside and Epsom looking for the real woman behind Household Management. It is worth the shoe leather – Mrs Beeton’s is certainly a story well worth telling. The author of the most famous cook book ever published began work on it at the age of twenty-one and finished it at four years later. Her book was first published in volume form in 1861 and has never been out of print since. Isabella herself died seven years after its publication of puerperal fever, contracted during the birth of her fourth child. She was 28.
Outbreak: Cholera in Haiti The recent Cholera outbreak in Haiti reminds us that this is not simply a disease of the distant and unsanitary past. The current outbreak is both unique and typical. Caused by a disease that has a long and devastating history, this Haiti outbreak has much in common with the outbreaks of the nineteenth century and twentieth century. History helps us keep in mind five key factors:
Book thumbnail image In Memoriam: Composer John Barry By Kathryn Kalinak The world of film lost one of the greats on Sunday: composer John Barry. British by birth, he carved a place for himself in Hollywood, winning five Oscars over the course of his career. He cut his teeth on James Bond films – Dr. No, (1962), From Russia With Love (1963), Goldfinger (1964), Thunderball (1965) – and went on to compose seven more. There was something both elegant and hip about these scores, a kind of jazzy sophistication that connoted fast cars, beautiful women, and martinis, shaken not stirred, that is.
Infidels and Etymologists By Anatoly Liberman Today hardly anyone would have remembered the meaning of the word giaour “infidel” (the spellchecker does not know it and, most helpfully, suggests glamour and Igor among four variants) but for the title of Byron’s once immensely popular 1813 poem: many editions; ten thousand copies sold on the first day, an unprecedented event in the history of 19th-century publishing. Nowadays, at best a handful of specialists in English romanticism
Book thumbnail image Frak is a Shibboleth! 127 years ago today the Oxford English Dictionary published its first volume (A to ANT), so I thought I’d pay tribute with the story of how I recently learned the word “shibboleth.” While rubbing elbows with fancy people at the recent OED re-launch party, I had the chance to meet contributors Matt Kohl and Katherine Connor Martin. Naturally the topic of conversation came to words, and I brought up one I had been using a lot lately: frak (the fictional version of “fuck” on Battlestar Galactica). I explained that I just started watching the show (better late than never, no?) and had been testing “frak” out in conversation to pick up other fans. Matt said, oh that’s a “shibboleth.”
Book thumbnail image Why a Democratic Egypt must Dismantle its Military Establishment By Elvin Lim Two contested frames are now emerging from the “chaos” in Egypt. Either the popular revolution has created chaos, including looting and the escape of inmates from prisons, or the government has constructed an image of chaos, so that its turn to emergency powers would be justified and necessary. It is telling, and not a little sad, that both sides are courting the military – a fundamental and embedded institution of Egyptian life and politics. On the one hand, state television in Egypt depicted President Hosni Mubarak visiting an army operations center, showing that he
Book thumbnail image Happy Anniversary to the Oxford English Dictionary Originally estimated to be a ten-year project, the first portion (or ‘fascicle’, to use the technical term) of the Oxford English Dictionary appeared this day in 1884, only covering up to the word ant. It was then clear to James A. H. Murray and his team that the New English Dictionary (as it was then known) would amount to much more than the originally planned four-volume, 6,400-page work designed to include all English language vocabulary from the Early Middle English period (1150 AD) onward, plus some earlier words. Now, over 150 years after the idea for the OED was born, we’ve relaunched the online iteration of this authoritative and comprehensive record of the English language at http://oed.com/
January 2011 (53))
Because We all Share the Sledding Instinct After a nice little afternoon in Central Park yesterday, I consulted the AIA Guide to New York City to read up on the history of the 840 acre playground (which, I learned, is larger than Monaco). I share with you now my gleanings on how the park came to be the funky hybrid of leisure and active sport it is today, as well as my own thoughts on why parks prove we all really aren’t that different.
Book thumbnail image This Day in History: Abolition Today is a very important day in American history, the anniversary of when the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was passed by Congress, that which formally abolished slavery in the U.S. in 1865. The Thirteenth provides that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” It was ratified later that year on December 6. In honor of this anniversary, we offer an excerpt from The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions, which provides an overview of the Civil Rights Cases.
Book thumbnail image Entropy: Should we just go with the flow? By Jonathan Crowe It began with the sound of a tyre rim grinding on the surface of the cycle path I’d been travelling along, and a sudden sensation of being on a bike that was moving through treacle rather than through air. My rear tyre had punctured and, not for the first time of late, I found myself resenting the seeming futility of life: of having the bad luck to get the puncture, of having to spend time and effort buying and fitting a new inner tube – of my life being enriched not one iota by the whole experience.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Egypt, Dancers, Advertising Tweet ON EGYPT Watch the Al Jazeera live stream Nick Baumann is keeping us updated on what’s happening in Egypt [Mother Jones] State department spokesman says US wants peaceful change and more freedoms in Egypt. [Al Jazeera] Friday of Wrath [CNN] “Egypt unrest” live updates [BBC] The Guardian’s live updates Map of Cairo’s “day of […]
Book thumbnail image Galileo and the Church By John Heilbron What Galileo believed about providence, miracles, and salvation, is hard to say. It may not matter. Throughout his life he functioned as the good Catholic he claimed to be; and he received many benefits from the church before and after the affair that brought him to his knees before the Holy Inquisition in 1633. First among these benefits was education. Galileo studied for a few years at the convent of Vallombrosa (a Benedictine order) near Florence. He loved the place and had entered his novitiate when his father removed him from the temptation. Later the Vallombrosans gave him his first important job teaching mathematics. He probably lived briefly at the Benedictine convent of
Book thumbnail image The Government Does Not Control Your Grammar By Dennis Baron Despite the claims of mass murderers and freepers, the government does not control your grammar. The government has no desire to control your grammar, and even if it did, it has no mechanism for exerting control: the schools, which are an arm of government, have proved singularly ineffective in shaping students’ grammar. Plus every time he opened his mouth, Pres. George W. Bush proved that the government can’t even control its own grammar.
Book thumbnail image Up the Wazoo and Into the Abyss: Words I Love By Mark Peters It’s easy to find articles about words people hate. Just google for a nanominute and you’ll find rants against moist, like, whom, irregardless, retarded, synergy, and hordes of other offending lexical items. Word-hating is rampant. So if that’s the kind of thing that yanks your lexical crank, look elsewhere: this column is all about word love, word lust, word like, word kissy-face, and word making-sweet-love-down-by-the-fire, as South Park’s Chef would put it.
Book thumbnail image Freedom from Religion: Protecting Society Against Religious Extremist Inciters By Amos N. Guiora Religious extremism poses the greatest danger to contemporary civil society. The threat comes from religious extremists, not people of moderate faith. The recent suicide bombing by Islamic extremists killing 21 Copts in Egypt is a prime example. Decision makers, the general public and people of moderate faith – whose faith does not lead them to kill others in the name of their god – must address how to minimize this palpable threat. Step one is recognizing the threat, although it may make us uncomfortable. Step two is involves proactive, concrete measures to protect society. Society can say a collective “woe is me” or take aggressive proactive measures.
Book thumbnail image On Religious Revival By William K. Kay Evan Roberts was [a] ‘revivalist’ whose preaching triggered off intense religious reaction. In the pubs and factories mysterious powers are attributed to him.
Book thumbnail image Economics: A Rogue Profession By George DeMartino At the annual meetings of the American Economic Association (AEA), held the first weekend of January in Denver, the association’s leadership established a committee to explore whether there is a need for rules in the profession to govern disclosure of apparent or real conflicts of interest. The issue arose in reaction to Charles Ferguson’s new documentary Inside Job, which exposes what appear to be stunning failures of leading academic economists to reveal the large incomes they received from business interests when writing reports and taking positions on policy matters of direct concern to those interests.
Monthly Gleanings: January 2011 By Anatoly Liberman I have collected many examples about which I would like to hear the opinion of our correspondents. Perhaps I should even start an occasional column under the title “A Word Lover’s Complaint.” Hanging as. Everybody must have seen sentences like the following: “…as the president, our cares must be your concern.” This syntax seems to be acceptable in American English, for it occurs everywhere, from the most carefully edited newspapers to essays by undergraduate students. The idea of the sentence given above is obvious: “you, being the president…” or “since you are the president…” but doesn’t the whole sound odd? Don’t we expect something like “as the president, you should (are expected to)….”
Book thumbnail image Leaky Diplomacy and Arab Anxiety By Dana H. Allin and Steven Simon The Wikileaks trove of diplomatic documents confirms what many have known for a long time: Israel is not the only Middle Eastern country that fears a nuclear armed Iran and wants Washington to do something about it. If Tehran was listening, the truth of this fear was apparent last month in Bahrain, where the International Institute for Strategic Studies organized a large meeting of Gulf Arab ministers, King Abdullah of Jordan, Iran’s foreign minister Mottaki, and top officials from outside powers including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The convocation was polite: no one said it was time to “cut off the head of the snake,” as Saudi Arabia’s King was reported, in one of the Wikileaks cables,
Book thumbnail image A GOP Front-runner Emerges By Elvin Lim The Republican party has traditionally been a more ordered, hierarchical organization, one in which the norm of waiting for one’s turn has been entrenched through the decades. When there is no consensus on the available candidates in the field, the runner-up to the last nomination contest becomes, by default, the front-runner. Today, Palin, Pawlenty, Thune, Huckabee, Gingerich, and Santorum are all names being mentioned. Yet no name stands out the way Mitt Romney‘s does.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday Virginia Woolf! This day in 1882, the brilliant and talented Virginia Woolf was born, and to celebrate it, a few lucky tweeters will win a copy of one of her books. When you see, “It’s Virginia Woolf’s birthday!” just retweet it, along with the answer to this trivia question: What was Virginia’s mother’s maiden name? International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and RT before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET.
Book thumbnail image Saved! Exotic Bird on Upper West Side The Oxford Comment guest star Jon (featured on Episodes 1 and 4.5) recently wrote in with this shocking, yet true story:
Book thumbnail image Why the Trenta? “So, why did we launch the Trenta? We listened to you,” says Starbucks. Really? Looking for more answers, I asked my friend Greg Dietrich for his thoughts on the matter. Greg works at Paragon Coffee Trading, which means he imports coffee and collaborates with members of the New York commodities coffee trade. Oh and he gets to roast beans and cup all day (see picture below on right). Below is a conversation (via Gmail’s instant messaging service) we had about the Bucks’ latest creation.
Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Sells Out the Pink to Get the Green By Gayle A. Sulik In response to increased publicity surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s questionable trademark and marketing activities, the organization published an official statement on its website, titled: “Susan G. Komen for the Cure® Sees Trademark Protection as Responsible Stewardship of Donor Funds.” According to the statement, Susan G. Komen for the Cure® has never sued other charities or put other non-profits out of business, and the organization does not have plans to do so in the future. Apparently knitters, sandwich makers, and kite fliers who want to raise money for breast cancer or other causes should breathe easier now!
Book thumbnail image Ourselves Unborn: The Legacy of Roe v. Wade This Saturday is the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Believe me when I say that I could write for days on the significance of the decision, and even more about recent news and the current state of reproductive rights. If I tried, I could probably recount verbatim the conversation I once had with Sarah Weddington (the lawyer who argued Roe at the young age of 26!). But I won’t. For now, I will simply offer the following excerpts from Ourselves Unborn: A History of the Fetus in Modern America by Sara Dubow. To those of you who celebrate it, I wish you the happiest of Roe Days.
Book thumbnail image A War & Peace podcast Amy Mandelker has taught at UCLA, University of Southern California, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton Universities. Her books include Framing ‘Anna Karenina’: Tolstoy, the Woman Question & the Victorian Novel and Approaches to World Literature: Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’. She has revised the acclaimed Maude translation of War and Peace and recently sat down with Podularity to talk about it. (Read the audio guide breakdown here, where you can also get excerpts from this podcast.) Once you’re done, we welcome you to look back at Amy Mandelker’s blog posts and discover why Nick thinks you should read Tolstoy.
Book thumbnail image Ask not what your country can do for you… Tweet It’s inauguration day here in the US, and also the 50th anniversary of JFK’s famous inaugural address. (“Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”) So today, the American National Biography is proud to spotlight the life of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy, John Fitzgerald […]
Book thumbnail image 2011: A year for War & Peace By Nick Mafi, Publicity Assistant To further praise Count Leo Tolstoy’s monumental novel War & Peace is about as necessary as adding another Duane Reade in Manhattan. But that’s still not going to stop me from telling you why you should must read my all-time favorite book this year.
Book thumbnail image ‘Spider-Man’ is little more than spectacle By Robin S. Rosenberg I recently saw a preview for the musical Spider-Man: Turn Out the Dark. It’s not really a musical; it’s a spectacle. It succeeds as a spectacle, fails as a musical, and hangs itself as a Spider-Man origin story. It’s easier to find good things to say about the spectacle aspect, so I’ll start by reviewing that aspect of the play.
Book thumbnail image Meet the Author: Tariq Ramadan Tariq Ramadan is Professor of Islamic Studies on the Faculty of Theology at Oxford University, Visiting Professor at Erasmus University (Netherlands), Senior Research Fellow at St Antony’s College (Oxford), Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan), and the President of the European think tank European Muslim Network (EMN) in Brussels. He is the author of many books on Islam and the West, including Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, Radical Reform, and What I Believe.
Book thumbnail image Sixties British Pop in the Classroom By Gordon Thompson Baby boomers have not only fundamentally shaped our modern world, but also how their children (and grandchildren) perceive that world. The generation that gyrated with hula hoops and rock ‘n’ roll also embraced British pop music (among other things) and have bequeathed this aesthetic to today’s college students. On campuses across North America, students amble to classes with “Beatles” patches on their book bags while their college radio programs often include music by the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Kinks. At Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York a few years ago, a Facebook survey identified the Beatles as the favorite campus musical artists, followed closely by Bob Dylan. Given the continuing importance of a band that dissolved in acrimony over forty years ago, a question arises: does this subject merit inclusion in the college curriculum? The answer is clearly, yes.
Book thumbnail image Philosophy Bites Scientists’ Ankles By Dave Edmonds and Nigel Warburton Doctors have long been able to heal the body: now scientists are developing radical ways of altering the mind. Governments must determine what practices to permit – and for this they need rational arguments to draw relevant distinctions. Time to call on the philosophers…?
Book thumbnail image Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy: Phenomenon and Enigma By Jeanne Munn Bracken Move over, Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark. For the year 2010, the hottest buzz in popular literature was Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. Released over the past couple of years, the three novels are available in a wide array of formats: hardcover and paperback books, e-books, audiobooks, and now in Swedish films with English subtitles. Millions of books in dozens of countries and languages have brought the late author immense fame and fortune, although he did not live to enjoy it.
Book thumbnail image Conservative Anger and Liberal Condescension By Elvin Lim The vitriol that liberals and conservatives perceive in each other is only the symptom of a larger cause. There is something rooted in the two ideologies that generates anger and condescension respectively, and that is why a simple call by the President for participants to be more civil will find few adherents. Liberals are thinking, what is it about conservatism that it can produce its own antithesis, radicalism? Whether these be conservatives of the anti-government variety, such as Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City bomber) or Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), or conservatives of the anti-abortion variety such as Clayton Waagner, Eric Rudolph, or
Book thumbnail image Martin Luther King Jr., Standing with Lincoln Martin Luther King, Jr., had helped organize the SCLC (the Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Its appeal was to the mass of moderate churchgoing blacks; most of its leaders were ministers. But many young people were impatient with both of these approaches, which seemed too slow-moving. They formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), known as SNICK. SNCC and the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) organized many of the sit-ins in college communities. Some black groups wanted to fight with fists, weapons, and anger. Everyone knew that if they got their way, much of the high purpose of the civil rights movement would be lost. Leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., had made civil rights a cause for all Americans. It was about quality. It was about justice and freedom for all. It wasn’t just for blacks—although most of the leadership was black.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Flooding, Caves, Basketball Tweet I just wanted to extend a hello to our new readers, many of whom I had the pleasure of meeting at ALA in San Diego earlier this week. As always, if you have suggestions, questions, ideas about/for OUPblog, I more than welcome them. You can email me at blog[at]oup[dot]com. And now, I present the […]
Book thumbnail image Defending the Language with Bullets By Dennis Baron The bumper sticker on the back of a construction worker’s pickup truck caught my eye: “If you can read this, thank a teacher.” This homage to education wasn’t what I expected from someone whose bitterness typically manifests itself in vehicle art celebrating guns and religion, but there was more: “If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.” It was a “support our troops” bumper sticker that takes language and literacy out of the classroom and puts them squarely in the hands of the military. It’s one thing to say that we owe our national security and the survival of the free world to military might. It’s something else again to be told that we need soldiers to protect the English language.
Book thumbnail image One Minute Word Histories Historical lexicographer Elizabeth Knowles introduces her new book, How to Read a Word, which aims to introduce anyone with an interest in language to the pleasures of researching word histories. Yesterday I brought you an interview filmed by George Miller of Podularity, in which she suggested some ways to get started with word research. In the following three videos, Elizabeth gives us three one minute word histories.
Not enough grit? By Kathryn Kalinak The Oscar for Best Original Score has been in the news recently—and not in a good way. Three excellent film scores have been disqualified for Oscar nomination because in one way or another, all were deemed not “original” enough: Clint Mansell’s score for Black Swan (too much Tschaikovsky) and Carter Burwell’s scores for The Kids Are Alright (too many songs) and True Grit (too dependent on pre-existing music). As a great fan of the western and its film scores, I was truly disappointed by the True Grit disqualification. Burwell’s score is a gem, harking back to the classic western film scores of the studio era while simultaneously updating them.
Religion (Part 2) – Episode 7.1 – The Oxford Comment What do scientists say about the “soul”? How does Richard Dawkins answer the question: “why are we here?”
Erstwhile Slang: ‘Masher’… By Anatoly Liberman Mash has nothing to do with mass or mess, but it sounds like them, and since I have been meaning to write about masher ‘lady killer, etc.’ for a long time (see the last sentence of the previous post), I decided that this is the proper moment to do so. Some of our best dictionaries say that the origin of masher is unknown. However, if we disregard a few insupportable conjectures, the conclusion at which we will arrive won’t surprise anyone: masher is mash plus -er. Only mash poses problems. Masher enjoyed tremendous popularity during the last two decades of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, before it more or less faded from people’s memory.
Book thumbnail image Researching Words Historical lexicographer Elizabeth Knowles introduces her new book, How to Read a Word, which aims to introduce anyone with an interest in language to the pleasures of researching word histories. In this interview filmed by George Miller of Podularity in the library here at Oxford University Press in the UK she suggests some resources and techniques to get you started.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday Jack London! Yes, today would be Jack London’s 135th birthday, and to celebrate it, we’ll be doing a giveaway to 6 lucky tweeters. International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and when you see, “It’s Jack London’s 135th birthday!” just retweet it before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET. Winners will be announced on Thursday
Book thumbnail image John Gross: A Tribute We were all very sorry to hear that OUP author and former TLS editor John Gross has died at the age of 75. Judith Luna, Senior Editor, who worked with him for over 25 years on a range of titles, pays tribute to him in this post.
Book thumbnail image John Boehner and Jared Loughner say: Read the US Constitution, but do they get it? By Elvin Lim The new House rules require that bills be posted online for 72 hours before they come to the floor for a vote. If this is a nod to the Tea Party movement, either the nodders are naive or the Tea Party movement has no clue what the Constitution really means. One needs quite a lot more than a public reading of the US Constitution to unpack its meaning. For to understand the Constitution is not only know what it says, but how it works. The more the House succeeds as a check against itself, the less it would be able to be a part the original checks and balances the Framers invented. The checks they envisioned were mostly inter-branch, not intra-branch. Consider the various rules the House has now adopted to constrain its own powers.
Book thumbnail image Overcoming Evil with Hope By Ervin Staub In difficult times people need a vision of a better future to give them hope. The U.S. is experiencing difficult times. The majority of people are poorer and many are out of work, the political system is frozen and corrupted by lobbyists and institutions that have gone awry, and there are constant changes in the world that create uncertainty. We are also at war, and face the danger of attack. While pluralism – the openness and public space to express varied ideas, and for all groups in society to have access to the public domain – is important for a free society, the cacophony of shrill voices creates confusion and makes it difficult for constructive visions and policies to emerge.
Time to get Wilde By Anatoly Liberman Oscar Wilde is most often quoted for his infinite wit, and those who know him are mainly aware of his comedies. Some people are still charmed by his fairy tales (“The Happy Prince” and a few others; you should have seen how my undergraduate students – those poor products of popular culture – listen to this story!) and cannot shake off the attraction of The Picture of Dorian Gray. But usually he is mentioned, if at all, in the context of his innumerable mannerisms, the overblown cult of the beautiful, homosexuality, and tragic imprisonment. The Ballad of Reading Gaol is a famous title, but I wonder who reads the poem today. More than anything else, Wilde wanted to sound brilliant, which did not cost him the least effort, because he was brilliant. His paradoxes have become proverbial.
Book thumbnail image Failures of the Modern Discovery Mission In his latest book Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao’s China, journalist and author Patrick Wright tells the story of the British delegations that took up Prime Minister En-lai’s invitation to ‘come and see’ the New China on the fifth anniversary of the communist victory in 1954. Here, Wright answers a few questions I had about this intense era of diplomacy – when it ended and how it went wrong.
Book thumbnail image The Dollar: Dominant No More? By Barry Eichengreen If the euro’s crisis has a silver lining, it is that it has diverted attention away from risks to the dollar. It was not that long ago that confident observers were all predicting that the dollar was about to lose its “exorbitant privilege” as the leading international currency. First there was financial crisis, born and bred in the United States. Then there was QE2, which seemed designed to drive down the dollar on foreign exchange markets. All this made the dollar’s loss of preeminence seem inevitable. The tables have turned. Now it is Europe that has deep economic and financial problems. Now it is the European Central Bank that seems certain to have to ramp up its bond-buying program.
Book thumbnail image Spies for Peace? By Nigel Young By the time I first moved into peace research in 1963, I had become aware of the State’s interests (or often several States’ interests) in the anti-war movement: McCarthyist informers, Cold War agent provocateurs, intelligence sniffers, as well as plain opportunists, con-men, the confused, and mavericks – it was not only phone taps and men in macs. And then there were some odd characters in the peace movement itself, like Bertrand Russell’s secretary, R. Schoenman, and on the margins Pergamon Press’ Robert Maxwell, or the MP John Stonehouse in the U.K. The Quakerly dictum, “think the best of everyone you meet”, was certainly the one that many of us aspired to, but how many “strikes” before someone was out of the reach of trust and credibility? During the anti-draft movement in the U.S.A., the “plants” were obvious, their jeans and denim didn’t fit, they were awkward and not very with it, and their sunglasses were not cool. But they sowed mutual suspicion and that was enough. Many groups broke up. And during and after McCarthyism, in the 1960s, I directly experienced the entry of agents, often ex-military, into peace studies and action roles – not so much to gain information as much as to disrupt, divide and dismantle.
Books by the Numbers By Dennis Baron People judge you by the words you use. This warning, once the slogan of a vocabulary building course, is now the mantra of the new science of culturomics. In “Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books” (Michel, et al., Science, Dec. 17, 2010), a Harvard-led research team introduces “culturomics” as “the application of high throughput data collection and analysis to the study of human culture.” In plain English, they crunched a database of 500 billion words contained in 5 million books published between 1500 and 2008 in English and several other languages and digitized by Google. The resulting analysis provides insight into the state of these languages, how they change, and how they reflect culture at any given point in time.
Book thumbnail image Lark Rise to Candleford and Rural England “Unlike many of her contemporaries, Thompson has little to say of Nature with a capital ‘N’. It is the detail of the natural world, the more or less minute, which preoccupies her. Laura cannot remember a time when she and her brother had to ask the names of birds, trees, and flowers. This knowledge, unconsciously acquired, rings with authenticity.”
Book thumbnail image Here We Go Again By Elvin Lim A new year, a new Congress. But, in all likelihood, we shall soon be witnessing the same politics. 2010 was a year of promises. Promises to return to common sense, to the American creed, to a simpler and better time before old and tired stratagems were tried ad nauseam on seemingly insurmountable problems. The world was black and white (or red and blue), politics was dice play, and there was a right answer and a wrong answer. So was 2008. 2009 was a year of hubris, of dissension within political ranks, and ultimately of political learning. A year when the promisers went about trying to fulfill their promises, only to find out that what was presented to the electorate as new had already been tried before, so that what was cast as novel during the elections was quickly cast by the opposition
‘Mass,’ ‘Mess,’ ‘Miss,’ and their kin: Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Two weeks ago, I devoted a post to the history of the word mass “service.” While explaining how missa was abstracted from the Latin phrase missa est “is dismissed” and then turned into a noun, I quoted a bit ironically The Century Dictionary. In its opinion, the word for dismissal was applied to the entire service “by an easy transfer.” The transfer is far from easy, but I did not want to make a long post even longer and stopped there. As a result, I received two questions: one about the special literature on the etymology of mass and one just on this “easy transfer.” First the literature. Some titles are mentioned in my bibliography of English etymology. Perhaps the most interesting of them is the oldest, by John Bruce, “On the Word ‘Mass’” in Archaeologia 21, 1826, 113-16. In those days and even much later, journals on archeology, local antiquities, ethnology, and folklore often accepted contributions on the history of words (some of them still do).
Recently restored portraits uncover new questions about the Renaissance By Ulinka Rublack Unusually so, Bronzino depicted Morgante completely nude from the front and from behind. Later generations added vine-leaves, but these have now gone, while the owl Morgante carries on his shoulder has been cleaned up to startle us with its forthright gaze. The paintings lead us back into the world of the Renaissance, which closely linked the question of who we are to how we look.
Book thumbnail image This Day in History: Burmese Independence By David A. Steinberg London essentially determined Burmese independence, although the cry for an independent Burma by the Burmese was long, loud, and clear. Following World War II, there were thousands of Burmese with arms who might have made retention of British control very tenuous. Winston Churchill said he was not about to see the dissolution of the British Empire, but the Labour Party won the postwar elections. India was bound to become independent, and Burma would certainly follow. England was exhausted by the war; holding onto their colonies in the face of rising nationalism seemed impossible. Inevitable independence, then, should be gracefully granted. What kind of independence, and whether independent Burma would be divided between Burma Proper and a separate minority area was unclear. Some in England wanted to try Aung San as a traitor because he backed the Japanese before and during most of the war,
Book thumbnail image In Brown’s Wake The New York City public school system, in conjunction with a private organization established to support gay and lesbian youth, founded the Harvey Milk High School in 1985 for gay and lesbian teenagers. Its goal was to create a supportive, safe place for students who faced violence, harassment, or intimidation in mainstream schools. Enrollment from the start has been voluntary. Students apply to transfer to the school, which includes transgendered teens and teens who may be perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered.
A look back at Snowpocalypse 2010 I was (luckily) in Seattle during the most recent 2010 snowpocalypse, when over 30 inches of snow dumped over parts of New York and New Jersey. I got my first taste of what everyone was going through by watching this incredible time-lapse video by Michael Black. I’m also very grateful to all of our Twitter followers who sent me their photos, some of which I have the privilege of displaying here. To all our wonderful readers, OUPblog wishes you a warm and happy New Year!
Book thumbnail image Amend the “Giving Pledge” to Include the Federal Treasury By Edward Zelinsky Sixteen more billionaires have signed the “Giving Pledge” sponsored by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Signers of the Pledge commit to donating to philanthropy a majority of their wealth. New signers of the Pledge include the founders of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Critics of the Giving Pledge denounce it as a public relations gimmick. Even if each Pledge signer donates a majority of his fortune to charity, his heirs will still inherent substantial wealth from what remains. I am not one of these critics. I take Mr. Buffett, Mr. Gates and the other signers at face value and applaud their charitable intentions. I do find it interesting that certain names are absent from the Pledge. For example, despite their
December 2010 (49))
Essays to read with fear and delight By Sharon Zukin I have yet to hold the full collection in my hands, but like many North Americans I have read with fear and delight the essays from Tony Judt’s Memory Chalet, published in the New York Review of Books and the New York Times over the past two years. These are the most significant pieces of writing I read in 2010 and perhaps the most significant writing I am likely to read for the rest of my life. Memory Chalet is Judt’s memoir, composed, dictated and published between his diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2010, and his death soon after in 2010. It seems he did not write these essays for publication, but they speak to so many lives and concerns that this may be his most universal, most meaningful book. Certainly the essays are a memory chest for Judt’s children, but they are also a reckoning with his complicated heritage: privileged by intellect, promoted by
Book thumbnail image The Much Maligned Twentieth Amendment By Donald A. Ritchie The 111th Congress began in January 2009 amid complaints about the long wait for the inauguration of the new president, and ended amid complaints about the long the lame duck session at its tail. Critics, who lament that transitions in the American government do not move as efficiently as in a parliamentary system, have declared the Twentieth Amendment a failure. While it is true that the U.S. Constitution set up a system that is anything but speedy, the Twentieth Amendment was actually a reform that reset the calendar and moved up the clock. Hang on because this gets complicated: Back in 1788, after enough states had ratified the Constitution, the outgoing Congress under the Articles of Confederation set the first Wednesday in January as the date for the first presidential election.
Monthly Gleanings: December 2010 By Anatoly Liberman This is the last time I go gleaning in 2010. We are snowed in in the American Midwest (but so is everybody else), and, while looking for linguistic crumbs, I feel like the girl in the fairy tale who was sent by her evil stepmother to the forest in the middle of winter to return with a basket of wild strawberries. She met Father Frost (January). The old man, who had often seen the girl before, was touched by her sweet meekness and asked his brothers to help her. For one hour January gave way to his younger brothers, and “in May” the girl gathered the berries and returned home with a full basket and wearing a dress of incomparable beauty. Father Frost is around, the berries are on display in supermarkets, May will certainly come, and in the meantime I’ll go ahead and comment on the questions still unanswered in the previous twelve months.
Book thumbnail image December 1960: A wild time for the Beatles By Gordon Thompson The Beatles reinvented themselves several times over their career, from comic mop-tops to psychedelic gurus to post-modern self-directed artistes; but perhaps one of their most remarkable transformations occurred before most of Britain or the world even knew they existed. Fifty years ago, as the winter 1960 seeped into Britain, the Beatles returned from a little over three months on the stage boards of Hamburg’s Kaiserkeller where they had put in hundreds of hours of performance. Back in August, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Stu Sutcliffe had recruited Pete Best (and his relatively new drum kit) at the last minute for their very first club residency in the St. Pauli District of West Germany’s busiest port.
Book thumbnail image The kind of intellect we most urgently need By David Sehat Prior to this year, I was familiar with Tony Judt as the director of the Remarque Institute at New York University and as a controversial public intellectual: his stands against the politics of Israel and the current state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process made him an object of scorn or celebration, depending on one’s politics. Judt’s presence in the public sphere as both an engaged intellectual and a deeply serious historian was comforting if rare proof that some in the United States still take seriously the life of the mind. But earlier this year, with the announcement that he had Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), his work took profound new directions that extended and deepened his intellectual example.
Book thumbnail image The Repeal of DADT By Elvin Lim “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” has finally been repealed. It is time now to look back on the hypocrisy of those who maintained a “separate but equal” philosophy regarding gays and lesbians serving in the military. Remember the “unit cohesion” argument? That was a popular and prevailing argument in the 1990s. It appears ridiculous to most people today, but it is worth reminding ourselves that we have had our fair share of ridiculous convictions in our past. Consider “separate but equal,” the jurisprudential doctrine that upheld Jim Crow laws in the South for over half a century. There is actually a common thread linking “separate but equal” of the 1890s with the “unit cohesion” argument of the 1990s. Those arguing for racial segregation a century ago believed that people of different races should not interact with each other, and the nation’s highest court codified this belief.
Book thumbnail image Rocks alive? Yeah, right! By Steve Paulson Each year, I seem to have the good fortune to read one book that absolutely mesmerizes me. Last year, it was “The Age of Wonder” by Richard Holmes. It’s a riveting account of how science and art converged in early 18th century England, not only shaping the Romantic movement but also launching a second scientific revolution. This year, the book has been David Abram’s “Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology.” Abram is a cultural ecologist and environmental philosopher…with a twist. He’s an animist. I confess, I’ve always been intrigued by animism, but I never gave it serious thought until I read Abram’s book. Sure, we may think of our dog – or even our house – as having some kind of personality or living presence. But it’s all just metaphor, right? Not according to Abram. He wants us to feel the presence of grass, wood, the wind, even the buildings we live in.
Book thumbnail image A Journey Through the Afterlife By Andrew Robinson Everyone knows that the ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death. The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are decorated with elaborate paintings and hieroglyphic writings about death and the afterlife. But what is not so familiar is that ancient Egypt was the first civilization to picture and put in writing an ethical connection between earthly behaviour and an individual’s existence after death—so crucial in the later development of Christianity.
Merry (almost) Christmas! Tweet View from Oxford University Press (UK) quad, our own winter wonderland. Photo credit @OxfordJournals
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Pug, Magnets, Photos Tweet I’m in a giving mood, so here are some links. And it’s not even Friday, you lucky reader, you. ;) Pug-in-boots-shaped present. [YouTube] Books-for-Christmas-shaped present. [Gawker TV] Awesome-magnetic-table-shaped present. [Wired] Fascinating-facts-from-Twitter-shaped present. [Twitter] Cats-playing-pattycake-shaped present. [Best Roof Talk Ever] Eclipse-shaped present. [Megan Lives] If anyone would like to get me one of these when […]
Book thumbnail image Hand-me-down Gospels By Charles E. Hill Once there were many Gospels. Then there were just four. Who was it that first suggested Christians should have the four accounts of the life of Jesus attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and only these four, in their Bibles? Scholars often bestow the honor (if it may be called such) on Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Gaul, who wrote in the 180s CE. There is certainly no mistaking Irenaeus’ stance on the subject. He claimed that just these four Gospels had been delivered to the church and he rejected all others, naming two of the imposters – the Gospel of Judas and ‘the so-called Gospel of Truth’ – by name. But in his selectivity, say many scholars today, Irenaeus was far ahead of his time. Irenaeus’ idea of a limitation on the number of Gospels did not really catch on in the church until much later, and ultimate agreement on the four would be stalled until the fourth century, when it could be backed by governmental force. This has become a familiar account of the rise of the Christian Gospels. But is it true?
Book thumbnail image Clarifying the Climate Conundrum By F. W. Taylor There are few more important issues at the present time than that of climate change – whether it is real, what we can expect to happen, when and what if anything we can do to prevent or at least ameliorate it. Climate is a ‘crossover’ topic: the facts are mostly in the domain of the scientist, and need special training before they can be understood. However, everyone faces the consequences, perhaps especially people in poor, relatively illiterate counties who already survive on the ragged edge of sustainable agriculture. Finally, if the scientists are to be believed, the politicians must act, and not just by fiddling around the edges of the problem: the changes required are almost unbelievably extensive, expensive, and disruptive. George W. Bush came across as a climate skeptic not because he didn’t believe the science (he wasn’t sure, one way or the other) but mainly because he didn’t want to stifle his nation’s competitiveness by curbing its carbon emissions on the draconian scale the green activists were calling for.
A Missionary Imposition (or a rambling sermon on miss/mess/mass and their kin) By Anatoly Liberman Probably everybody knows that Christmas, despite one s at the end, is a compound made up of Christ and mass. But few, unless they are word or church historians, have followed the intricate development of the word mass. In the 16th century, Martin Luther and the theologian Claudius de Sainctes derived mass from Hebrew missah “oblation; sacrifice”; this derivation still has supporters. Their opponents pointed out that such New Testament words as were coined in Hebrew (for instance, messiah and amen) came to Europe from Greek, but the Greek authors of the Christian epoch did not use missah. Closer to our time, opinions were divided over the original meaning of mass: did it designate “service” or (since mass mainly occurred in situations connected with the Eucharist) “feast”? Here mess “dish of food” gave trouble to etymologists. Is it a doublet of mass? And where does mass “a body of matter” (as in massive) come in?
Book thumbnail image Bad Bananas Make Great Stocking Stuffers By Mark Peters At some point, I think we’ve all asked ourselves, “When is the best time to start training a kitten to hold a knife?” That question—written by Tim Siedell, a.k.a Twitter’s badbanana – is one of the expertly crafted one-liners you can find in his new book Marching Bands Are Just Homeless Orchestras: Half-empty Thoughts Vol 1. It’s the funnest/funniest book I’ve picked up in donkey’s years, and it’s also pretty and shiny and full of cool illustrations by Brian Andreas. Unless you hate puppies and America, you should give yourself and your minions this tremendous book, which offers pertinent dietary observations such as: “That Indian dinner was so authentic I think I hate Pakistan.”
Book thumbnail image Obama’s Silent Reset By Elvin Lim President Barack Obama, who had taken a backseat to allow the First Branch to set the health-care reform legislative agenda last year, has now moved into the driver’s seat of American government. An electoral shellacking was all it took to for a former constitutional law professor who once espoused the separateness and equality of branches to stop practicing what he once taught. The irony is that it was united Democratic party control of all branches of government that allowed Obama the luxury of taking the back seat. When before, he could have relied on Pelosi and Reid, Obama has recently learnt that he can only rely on himself. The Oval Office is a lonely place, but he who realizes it quickly learns that as a result, it is also a powerful place.
Cab Calloway – Episode 8 – The Oxford Comment The jazz icon Cab Calloway would be turning 103 this Saturday, December 25th. In this episode Michelle explores Cab’s legend and the Jazz Age – alive and well in New York City (and a new hit HBO show).
4 Lessons from the Legacies of Washington & Lincoln Tweet As the year draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on all the wonderful books published in 2010, and in doing so, we’ve also realized there are some classics worth revisiting. The authors and friends of Oxford University Press are proud to present this series of essays, which will appear regularly until the New […]
Book thumbnail image The Battle “For the Cure” – The Phrase, That Is By Gayle A. Sulik Laura Bassett wrote a scathing essay in Huffington Post about Susan G. Komen for the Cure‘s legal dealings to win control over the phrase “for the cure.” According to Bassett, “Komen has identified and filed legal trademark oppositions against more than a hundred…charities, including Kites for a Cure, Par for The Cure, Surfing for a Cure and Cupcakes for a Cure – and many of the organizations are too small and underfunded to hold their ground.” Why would the largest, best funded, most visible breast cancer organization put so much energy
Book thumbnail image The Greatest Monument of English Prose By Gordon Campbell Of the current Oxford World’s Classics, the best Christmas gift this year would be The Bible: Authorized King James Version, which has been skillfully edited with an elegant introduction and really helpful notes by Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett.
Book thumbnail image Why We Can’t Manage Without Fowler By Duane W. Roller Sitting on my desk, never out of reach, is one of the most durable of the Oxford World’s Classics: H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage. First published in 1926, and now in its third revised edition, it has been a staple of writers for nearly a century. Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) was an English schoolmaster who turned to lexicography and worked on a number of Oxford University Press dictionary projects. But he will be forever remembered for his Dictionary of Modern English Usage, usually known by professional writers just as “Fowler.” And what is Fowler? It is basically an encyclopedia of the usage of the English language. It provides a variety of nuggets on how to write English properly. If, like this writer, you can be
Book thumbnail image When a Language Dies By David Crystal There’s a language dying out somewhere in the world every two weeks or so. It’s a far greater crisis, proportionately speaking, than the threat of extinction facing plants and animals. Half the world’s languages are so seriously endangered that they are likely to disappear this century. That’s 3000 languages, maybe.
Book thumbnail image Go ahead. Raise the retirement age. Who can afford to retire anyway? By Mariko Lin Chang Any day now the Senate will decide whether to raise the retirement age to 69. Proponents argue that raising the retirement age is necessary to save Social Security. Opponents argue that raising the retirement age will disproportionately hurt low-income and minority workers. But this is all irrelevant to many because recent actions by the Senate and current economic realities have already helped to ensure that most people won’t be able to fund their “golden years.” Take women, for example. Given the Senate’s failure to pass the Equal Paycheck Act, it’s unlikely that the persistently stubborn wage gap will decline on its own, leaving women earning only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. Assuming that the typical person works about 40 years
Book thumbnail image 2030: A Health Science Odyssey By Richard Barker Depending on our age, 20 years can seem an endless future or a quick march to old age. What will the next twenty years bring the young and the old in the world of health? Journeying into the future of medicine, what do we see? Implanted cells replacing medicines? Personalized therapy? Miniature devices roaming the body to seek and destroy rogue cells? It’s becoming possible to answer such questions.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday Jane Austen! Yes, today would be Jane Austen’s birthday, and to celebrate it, we’ll be doing a giveaway to 6 lucky tweeters. International readers, keep your eyes on @OWC_Oxford and when you see, “It’s Jane Austen’s 235th birthday!” just retweet it before 3pm GMT! Live in the US? Follow @OUPblogUSA. You’ll have until 3pm ET. Winners will be announced on Friday
Book thumbnail image Doesn’t it make you wanna dance? The new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Dance, by Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell, informs readers about all things dance, from Fred Astaire and George Balanchine, to Japanese butoh, krumping, and tap dancing. At this time of year, theaters are full of wonderful dance productions from The Nutcracker to Swan Lake (and even Black Swan, in a different way, is making a splash). Here are a few entries about choreographers, works, and dance styles that I especially enjoy – with links to videos of some of the works described to further your dance education. –Hanna Oldsman, Publicity Intern
A “Basket” Case of Etymology By Anatoly Liberman Words related to material culture often end up in a trashcan labeled “origin unknown.” This is not surprising, for things are regularly imported with their names, and those may be hard to trace to their roots. The number of English words for “basket” (some of them local and little used outside their dialects) is great, and the etymology of some has not been ascertained. For example, we have maund, strongly reminiscent of Dutch mand and possibly a borrowing from Dutch (“of debatable origin”), creel, from Old French (also “of uncertain origin,” perhaps ultimately from Latin craticulum, that is, a little cratis “wickerwork”), and punnet “a chip basket” (it surfaced only in the 19th century and appears to be a diminutive of pun, a dialectal variant of pound, for punnets, like other baskets, were in some places used as a measure; compare a basketful of…
Book thumbnail image Measure for Measure: Student fees under-researched? By Nigel Bradley “Knowledge is Power” is a quotation that dates back to 1597 and is attributed to Sir Francis Bacon. And there lies the reason to conduct market and social research. Surveys, focus groups and observation allow us to build gaps in our knowledge, to identify demand and thereby supply what is needed (or wanted). Research information minimises risks in decision making, it saves money, increases productivity and is generally valuable.
Book thumbnail image Are the UN’s Millennium Development Goals missing the point? By Susan Pick and Jenna T. Sirkin In September, our world leaders met in New York for the Summit on the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. They congratulated one another for lower child mortality rates, the increase in women’s empowerment and a reduction in the number of new HIV/AIDS cases; they lamented how far we are from reaching the eight goals we established ten years ago. But are they missing the point? One of the Millennium Development Goals is particularly complex: achievement of universal primary education. We measure the progress made toward this goal with net enrollment ratios, the proportion of pupils who finish primary school, and literacy rates. We know that according to the UN’s 2010 report, “enrollment in primary education
Book thumbnail image Obama’s Deal with Jon Kyl By Elvin Lim Obama is a politician, and that’s why he’s made an estate tax deal with Jon Kyl in return for Kyl’s support for ratifying the START treaty. As Senator Chuck Schumer has suggested, the Democratic party would probably benefit by allowing the Bush era tax cuts to expire, but this is not what Obama is proposing because he has something up his sleeve. Consider if Democrats allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire. People would be angry for a few days, but then come 2011, Democrats would be in a better bargaining position to play chicken with Republicans. Democrats would then be able to dare Republicans to
Book thumbnail image Perceiving Death in the News Images of people about to die surface repeatedly in the news and their appearance raises questions: What equips an image to deliver the news; how much does the public need to know to make sense of what they see; and what do these images contribute to historical memory? These images call on us to rethink both journalism and its public response, and in so doing they suggest both an alternative voice in the news – a subjunctive voice of the visual that pushes the ‘as if’ of news over its ‘as is’ dimensions – and an alternative mode of public engagement with journalism – an engagement fueled not by reason and understanding but by imagination and emotion. In About to Die: How News Images Move the Public, Barbie Zelizer suggests that a different kind of news relay, producing a different kind of public response, has settled into our information environment. Click through to watch a video from the Annenberg School for Communication.
Book thumbnail image “Undercover Boss”: Lying to Tell the Truth Clayton P. Alderfer Undercover Boss, one of reality TV’s newest additions, is based on a truth that many thoughtful CEOs grasp: they do not have a thorough understanding of what goes on at the middle and bottom of their organizations. There are multiple reasons why. Immediate subordinates do not know either. Middle and lower ranking managers withhold their understanding from those above them. First level managers cut deals with hourly workers that permit the employees to do well enough financially while not working too hard – lest the employees act disruptively. CEOs hired from outside have even less of an idea about what goes on, as insiders feel resentful about being subject to outsider rule and choose not to tell what they know. The reasons why CEOs face this predicament are thus far reaching. The question for CEOs who grasp this tough reality is whether they can do anything about it.
Book thumbnail image The Noun Game – A Simple Grammar Lesson Leads to a Clash of Civilizations By Dennis Baron Everybody knows that a noun is the name of a person, place, or thing. It’s one of those undeniable facts of daily life, a fact we seldom question until we meet up with a case that doesn’t quite fit the way we’re used to viewing things. That’s exactly what happened to a student in Ohio when his English teacher decided to play the noun game. To the teacher, the noun game seemed a fun way to take the drudgery out of grammar. To the student it forced a metaphysical crisis. To me it shows what happens when cultures clash and children get lost in the tyranny of school. That’s a lot to get from a grammar game.
Linked Up: Actors, Wordplay, Boo the Puppy 14 actors acting. [New York Times] Triumph of the week: I finally learned how to fold a fitted sheet! [Nag on the Lake] If this doesn’t make you smile, I give up. [Best Roof Talk Ever] Amazing video created for the German shortfilm competition “Kurzundschön” (Short & Nice). [Vimeo] Did you know Jesse Eisenberg has a wordplay website? [One Up Me]
Book thumbnail image The Lion, the Witch, and the Wordbook By Jeremy Marshall Many dictionaries and guides are careful to warn readers about the difference between a faun and a fawn. However, anyone familiar with the tales of C. S. Lewis is unlikely to confuse these two shy inhabitants of woodland glades, since the goat-footed, part-human faun of classical Roman mythology is the first strange creature we encounter when reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Those who know the film/movie version will be flocking back to the theaters this month to see more fantastical creatures in Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Book thumbnail image Is the current run of severe European winters caused by global warming? By Arnold H. Taylor At the time of writing, the British Isles and much of Europe are experiencing their second cold winter with record low temperatures. Roads are blocked by snow, trains are disrupted and airports closed. Meanwhile, conditions over the other side of the Atlantic Ocean are unusually mild. The reason for this is that the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), a great swaying of the weather patterns over the region, is currently in a weak phase.
Religion – Episode 7 – The Oxford Comment In this two-part series, Michelle and Lauren explore some of the most hot-button issues in religion this past year.
Low-Key Thoughts on ‘Highfalutin’ By Anatoly Liberman Allegedly a nineteenth-century Americanism, highfalutin is now known everywhere in the English speaking world, but, as could be expected, its etymology has not been discovered—“as could be expected,” because the origin of such words is almost impossible to trace. Many years ago, while investigating the history of skedaddle, I think I found a reasonable source of this verb. I was neither the first nor the second to discover it, but I put some polish (“kibosh,” as sculptors said 150 years ago) on it. My thoughts on highfalutin are low-key for an obvious reason. As will be seen, I have only one feeble idea and am offering it in the hope that, despite the lack of a persuasive solution, it may redirect the search for the source of this enigmatic adjective. But before sharing my small treasure with the world, I would like to quote the explanation given in John Hotten’s Slang Dictionary (the spelling and punctuation of
Book thumbnail image Hunting the Neutrino By Frank Close Ray Davis was the first person to look into the heart of a star. He did so by capturing neutrinos, ghostly particles that are produced in the centre of the Sun and stream out across space. As you read this, billions of them are hurtling through your eyeballs at almost the speed of light, unseen.
Book thumbnail image WikiLeaks, Anarchism, and the State By Elvin Lim WikiLeaks affirms on its website that “democracy and transparency go hand in hand.” This may be true in the abstract, but in the world in which we live, it is not, because the only democracies we know of operate within the confines of the nation-state, and nation-states are not comfortable with transparency. That is why the campaign by the nation-states of the world to shut the site down is proceeding with such ferocity. Individuals – at least those who live in states committed to the rule of law – enjoy a presumptive respect for our privacy. There is no reason why anyone or any institution should have access to details of our private life. We do not owe anyone a transparent account of our lives.
Book thumbnail image The Death Penalty: My Personal Journey By Edward Zelinsky Like most Connecticut residents, I watched with a mixture of fascination and horror the trial of Steven J. Hayes. Hayes is one of two defendants accused of the particularly gruesome home invasion murders in July, 2007 in suburban Cheshire, Connecticut. Hayes has been found guilty; the jury has sentenced Hayes to receive the death penalty. Like everyone who followed this trial, I have both admired and sympathized with Dr. William Petit, Jr. whose wife and two daughters were brutalized and killed by Hayes. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Petit wanted the death penalty in this case as would I had I been in Dr. Petit‘s position. So compelling have been the facts exposed at Hayes’ trial that many normally outspoken opponents of the death penalty have remained silent as the jury assigned that penalty to Hayes for his truly evil crimes.
Cleopatra’s true racial background (and does it really matter?) By Duane W. Roller Racial profiling and manipulation have existed for a long time. It has become an issue in modern politics, and over 2500 years ago the Greek historian Herodotos wrote that ethnicity was often turned to political ends. Cleopatra VII, the last queen of Egypt, is often a victim of racial profiling.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Kevin Bacon, Jay Pharoah, Justin Bieber I always enjoy doing Linked Up because it gives me a chance to reflect on how I spend my free time on the internet. Apparently this week, I was a bit celebrity-obsessed.
Book thumbnail image Genius! Where do geniuses come from? What makes a genius? Are all geniuses interesting people? Who’s more amazing, Shakespeare, Darwin or Einstein? There are many questions about genius, and in his newest book, Sudden Genius? The Gradual Path to Creative Breakthroughs, Andrew Robinson answers all these and more. Click through to view the videos.
Book thumbnail image Surprise! “Men are Hornier than Women.” By Roy F. Baumeister The problem of recognizing the reality of the male sex drive was brought home to me in a rather amusing experience I had some years ago. I was writing a paper weighing the relative influence of cultural and social factors on sexual behavior, and the influence consistently turned out to be stronger on women than on men. In any scientific field, observing a significant difference raises the question of why it happens. We had to consider several possible explanations, and one was that the sex drive is milder in women than in men. Women might be more willing to adapt their sexuality to local norms and contexts and different situations, because they aren’t quite so driven by strong urges and cravings as men are.
Book thumbnail image Robert Douglas-Fairhurst on London Labour and the London Poor London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew is an extraordinary work of investigative journalism, a work of literature, and a groundbreaking work of sociology. It centres on hundreds of interviews conducted by Mayhew with London’s street traders, beggars, and thieves, which provide unprecedented insight into the day-to-day struggle for survival on London’s streets in the 19th century.
Book thumbnail image “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” Tweet Today is the 55th anniversary of Rosa Parks’ infamous stand sit during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Her daring refusal to move to the back of the bus was not a decision made lightly because she was simply “too tired.” “The only tired I was,” Parks wrote in Rosa Parks: My Story (1992), “was tired […]
Book thumbnail image The Cave of Mattathias In a village near the city of Riminov there was a Hasid whose custom it was to bring newly made oil to Reb Menachem Mendel of Riminov, and the rabbi would light the first candle of Hanukah in his presence. One year the winter was hard, the land covered with snow, and everyone was locked in his home. But when the eve of Hanukah arrived, the Hasid was still planning to deliver the oil. His family pleaded with him not to go, but he was determined, and in the end he set out across the deep snow. That morning he entered the forest that separated his village from Riminov, and the moment he did, it began to snow. The snow fell so fast that it covered every landmark, and when at last it stopped, the Hasid found that he was lost. The whole world was covered with snow.
Monthly Gleanings: November 2010 By Anatoly Liberman Many thanks for the letters, questions, and corrections. I am especially grateful to Benjamin Slade for calling my attention to the post on rum (beverage) in his blog and to Michael Quinion, who grappled with dilemna long before me, came to similar conclusions, and cited 18th-century examples of this horrific spelling. It seems to be ineradicable, and the sad thing is that some teachers insist on writing -mn- in this word, to the despair of their literate charges and the charges’ parents. It is also a pleasure to receive irrelevant personal letters telling me, for example, about a visit of a fox in the correspondent’s garden (in connection with my post on foxglove). Guilty of what Shakespeare in Sonnet 62 called the sin of self-love, I particularly relish letters that begin with introductions like: “I enjoy reading your blog.” I enjoy writing it, but aging actors need constant encouragement. So now that Thanksgiving is behind, thank you all very much.
The Reputations of Mark Twain By Peter Stoneley The last couple of years have been an up-and-down period for the reputation of Mark Twain (1835-1910). It started well with a special issue of Time Magazine in 2008 which reminded readers of Twain’s goodness, and of the fact that the “buddy story of Huck and Jim was not only a model of American adventure and literature but also of deep friendship and loyalty.”
November 2010 (49))
Book thumbnail image I want to be an advocate for racial justice. Now what? Mark R. Warren is Associate Professor of Education at Harvard University. He is a sociologist and has published widely on community organizing and on efforts to build alliances across race and class to revitalize urban communities, reform public education and expand democracy. Warren is the author of Fire in the Heart: How White Activists Embrace Racial Justice and you can read his previous OUPblog post on racism here. In these videos, he discusses his book, race relations in schools, and activism.
Book thumbnail image California and the East Coast: A Love Story By Alex McGinn, Publicity Intern It’s no secret that East Coasters are skeptical of the West Coast. Southern California seems particularly peculiar to most inhabitants of the northeastern seaboard; perhaps its picturesque landscape, balmy weather, and laid back lifestyle seem out of touch with the realities of fast-paced East Coast cities. But what some of these West Coast cynics may not know is that SoCal’s most influential “boosters” were refugees of the northeast. Thinking about this, I turned to The Frontier of Leisure: Southern California and the Shaping of Modern America by Lawrence Culver. Here are a few important Yankees who escaped their overworked and seemingly miserable East Coast fates to become the earliest developers of some of Southern California’s most iconic getaways.
Book thumbnail image Why Racial Profiling is like Affirmative Action By Elvin Lim The Transportation and Security Administration‘s new video screening and pat-down procedures has given new fuel to advocates of racial profiling at airports around the nation. Opponents of racial profiling argue that treating an individual differently simply because of his or her race is wrong because discrimination, even for noble intentions, is just plain wrong. Let’s call this the principle of formal equality. Oddly enough, this is exactly what opponents of affirmative action say. They typically argue that some other signifier, for example class, can be a more efficient, and less discriminatory way of achieving similar outcomes if affirmative action policies were in place.
Book thumbnail image Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: A Love Story By E. Stanly Godbold, Jr. In the hot, dusty summer of 1945, people in Plains talked about the heat, the crops, and the war, unaware of an event on Main Street that three decades later would catapult their town onto the world stage. Jimmy Carter, the twenty-year-old eldest child of a prominent local family, was visiting his hometown before returning for his final year at the Naval Academy. As he drove down Main Street in a Ford car with a rumble seat, accompanied by his sister Ruth and her boyfriend, he glanced toward the Methodist church. There he spied a pretty young woman loitering on the steps. Petite Rosalynn Smith, with her large, warm, intelligent eyes, exuded a seductive shyness that captivated the Academy man. Graduated as valedictorian of her class at Plains High School, she had completed one year at a nearby junior college. Jimmy stopped the car, not knowing that Ruth and Rosalynn had conspired to set up the meeting. He invited Rosalynn to attend the movie at the Rylander Theater in nearby Americus that night. She accepted.
Book thumbnail image On the internet, nobody knows you can’t spell By Dennis Baron The English Spelling Society has released a report blaming the internet for what it sees as the current epidemic of bad spelling: “The increasing use of variant spellings . . . has been brought about by people typing at speed in chatrooms and on social networking sites where the general attitude is that there isn’t a need to correct typos or conform to spelling rules.” Many people have come to the same conclusion, despite the fact that, by popular demand, almost all of our digital devices come equipped with unforgiving spell-checkers that mark every mistake with bright red lynes lines.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Cliff Richard, Garfield, Smartphone Hacking Kirsty in the UK here, holding the fort while Lauren is off celebrating Thanksgiving. Here are my favourite links of the week. Enjoy, and a Happy Thanksgiving to our American readers.
Book thumbnail image On queen honeybees and epigenetics By Jonathan Crowe What links a queen honeybee to a particular group of four atoms (one carbon and three hydrogen atoms, to be precise)? The answer lies in the burgeoning field of epigenetics, which has revolutionized our understanding of how biological information is transmitted from one generation to the next.
Book thumbnail image Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth Young children in the US are often taught that the tradition of Thanksgiving began with a friendly meal between the Pilgrims and Native Americans. In school, they make buckle hats out of construction paper and trace their hands to make turkey drawings, all in anticipation of the great Thursday feast. If asked, I’m sure most Americans wouldn’t actually know the origins of the Thanksgiving tradition as we practice it today. Below is an excerpt from The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (edited by renowned food historian Andrew F. Smith) which explains just how the modern holiday came to be. Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone!
On Giving Thought and Giving Thanks By Anatoly Liberman Every year, at the end of November some newspaper asks me about the history of the word turkey or about the origin of the idioms cold turkey and talk turkey. While waiting for the unavoidable query, I decided to devote a post to the history of the verbs think and thank. Their history is well-known, but it is not simple and not entirely trivial. “Think” is an abstract concept that must have grown from some more concrete one. For example, Latin cogitare “think” goes back to co- + -agitare, that is, “put in motion, turn over in the mind.” Think may perhaps be compared with archaic and rare Latin tongere “to know” (the second conjugation) and another verb meaning “weigh.” If the proposed correspondence is valid, the senses “know” and “think” evolved from the idea of weighing things in the mind, taking weighty decisions, or something similar.
Book thumbnail image OUP UK 2010 Word of the Year: Big Society By Susie Dent Our final choice for the word of 2010, the coalition’s new dream of the big society, is no less a mirror of the times, in this case of the extraordinary political events of the year. The term’s success within a short period of time has been impressive, underscored by the ease with which it is now played upon: when the new PM visited China, both the Times and the Guardian headlined his challenge as ‘Cameron confronts the biggest society’.
Book thumbnail image OK, OK, let’s do a Q & A. Q. Why write a whole book about OK? I mean, it’s just…OK. A. Ah, but it’s OK the Great: the most successful and influential word ever invented in America. It’s our most important export to languages around the world—best known and most used, though used sometimes in weird ways. It expresses the pragmatic American outlook on life, the American philosophy if you will, in two letters. And in the twenty-first century, inspired by the 1967 book title I’m OK, You’re OK (which is the only famous quotation involving OK), it also has taught us to be tolerant of those who are different from us. On top of all that, its origin almost defies belief (it was a joke misspelling of “all correct”) and its survival after that inauspicious origin was miraculous. And strangely, though we use it all the time, we carefully avoid it when we’re making important documents and speeches. So, wouldn’t you say OK deserves a book?
Book thumbnail image Obama is Attempting a Reset By Elvin Lim For all the talk of a presidential reset button, the truth is that formal, public, dramatic resets don’t work. They never have. Not when Nixon fired Joseph Califano, or when Carter fired four of his cabinet secretaries. The American presidency works best when it works silently, and the power exercised is invisible. It doesn’t matter which party is in control of the White House; when foreign policy becomes issue number one, the executive becomes branch number one. Something has crept up on us under an invisibility cloak. It is the new agenda in Washington. How quickly Washington has forgotten about jobs now that the elections are over. (Politicians won’t have to pander to voters for another year or so.) Check out any newspaper, or cable channel: the bait and switch from jobs to national security is nothing short of astounding. Washington is abuzz with talk of TSA pat-downs, the NATO summit, North Korea’ uranium-enriching facility, and, most prominently, ratification of the new START treaty.
Book thumbnail image Paycheck Fairness Act Fails in Senate By Mariko Lin Chang Last week, the Senate Republicans defeated the Paycheck Fairness Act. The bill would have strengthened the Equal Pay Act by providing more effective protections and remedies to victims of sex discrimination in wages, including prohibiting employers from retaliating against employees who discuss their wages with another employee, requiring employers to prove that wage differences between women and men doing the same work are the result of education, training, experience, or other job-related factors, and providing victims of sex discrimination in wages the same legal remedies currently available to those experiencing pay discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. Was the bill perfect? Probably not (few, if any bills could be considered perfect). But the Republican senators threw the baby out with the bath water.
Book thumbnail image A Deliciously Rich Year for Language (nom nom!) By Christine Lindberg Popular culture . . . In 2010, much of our uneasy fascination turned from zombie banks to plain old zombies. Well, maybe not “plain old.” It’s been a phenomenal year for zombies, who have commanded huge markets in the entertainment industry and a seemingly insatiable fan base. As zombies roamed the planet, another breed of “outsiders”—nerds and geeks—continued to transcend the “lowliness” assigned to them in the 1950s. Just a generation ago, the word gleek (a fan of TV’s Glee) would have been considered a putdown, but now it is more a term of affection and is wholly embraced by the gleeks themselves. One of television’s most familiar out-of-step characters will be missed when Michael Scott exits The Office at the end of this season, leaving us to wonder if there’s anyone else who can make the totally resistible phrase “that’s what she said” so irresistible?
Book thumbnail image ” :) when you say that, pardner” – the tweet police are watching By Dennis Baron Last Spring the New York Times reported that more and more grammar vigilantes are showing up on Twitter to police the typos and grammar mistakes that they find on users’ tweets. According to the Times, the tweet police “see themselves as the guardians of an emerging behavior code: Twetiquette,” and some of them go so far as to write algorithms that seek out tweets gone wrong (John Metcalfe, “The Self-Appointed Twitter Scolds,” April 28, 2010). Twitter users post “tweets,” short messages no longer than 140 characters (spaces included). That length restriction can lead to beautifully-crafted, allusive, high-compression tweets where every word counts, a sort of digital haiku. But most tweets are not art. Instead, most users use Twitter to tell friends what they’re up to, send notes, and make offhand comments, so they squeeze as much text as possible into that limited space by resorting to abbreviations, acronyms, symbols, and numbers for letters, the kind of shorthand also found, and often criticized, in texting on a mobile phone.
Book thumbnail image The Centennial of the World’s First Social Revolution in Mexico Tweet By William H. Beezley November 20, Mexicans everywhere will celebrate the centennial of their epic revolution. A century ago, a generation of young, largely provincial Mexican men and women initiated and carried out a social revolution that preceded the Russian Revolution (1917), had greater educational and public health successes than the Chinese Revolution (1948), […]
Memo From Las Vegas: What’s the Matter with Casino Capitalism? Tweet By Sharon Zukin Taking a position on Las Vegas is like taking an option on a company’s stock: if you like the place, you’re betting that free markets, human power over nature and boundless shopping opportunities will continue to rule the world. If you don’t like it, you’re a killjoy…or a sociologist. I made […]
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Margaret Atwood, Curious Penguin, Cupcakes This week I had the pleasure of visiting the OUP UK office and spending face time with my wonderful counterpart, Kirsty. [*Waves*]In honor of this, we have done a team Linked Up. (Go team!) Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image Hitler’s Real First World War story By Thomas Weber For two years I had been working through pile after pile of archive documents in Bavaria, Northern France, the U.S., and Israel. As I did so, it had become increasingly clear to me that Hitler’s own version of his war experiences – which had never seriously been challenged by Hitler’s many biographers – were close to fictional.
Book thumbnail image “Refudiate” Didn’t Start with Sarah Palin By Ammon Shea Every year, a group of people at OUP USA put our heads together and come up with a Word of the Year. This is an example of a word (or expression) that we feel has attracted a great deal of new interest in the year to date. It need not have been coined within the past twelve months (although it generally is a new word). It does not have to be a word that will stick around for a good length of time (it is very difficult to accurately predict which new words will have staying power). It does not even have to be a word that we plan on introducing into the dictionary (at least, not unless it seems fairly certain that it will stick around for a while).
Book thumbnail image George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream By Dan P. McAdams In the spring of 2003, President George W. Bush launched an American military invasion of Iraq. From a psychological standpoint, why did he do it? Bush’s momentous decision resulted from a perfect psychological storm, wherein world events came to activate a set of dispositional traits and family goals that had long occupied key positions in Bush’s personality. At the center of the storm was a singularly redemptive story that, around the age of 40, George W. Bush began to construct to make sense of his life. After years of drinking and waywardness, Bush fashioned a story in his mind about how, though self-discipline and God’s guidance, he had triumphed over chaos, enabling him to recover the freedom, control, and goodness of his youth. In the days after 9/11, President Bush projected
Book thumbnail image Daniel Defoe and the Plague Defoe’s interest in the subject knew no bounds; natural disaster was for him a favourite ground on which to explore questions of faith and history. In The Storm (1704) he had described the devastation wrought by extreme weather the previous year and the book was in many ways an early dress rehearsal for the Journal, assembling ‘the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters’ that arose from a single, terrifying event.
Book thumbnail image Racism and Antiracism By Mark R. Warren We seem to be facing a new wave of racial animosity in our country right now, from the Florida preacher who threatened to burn a Koran unless the Manhattan Islamic center was moved, to Arizona’s new immigration law legalizing racial profiling; from Glenn Beck high-jacking Dr. King’s march anniversary on the Mall in DC with an overwhelmingly white Tea Party crowd, to the New York gubernatorial candidate who won the Republican nomination after sending monkey pictures and tribal dance emails mocking President Obama. In the face of this divisiveness, we have an urgent need to better understand how to bring Americans together across racial and religious lines.
Walter W. Skeat Faces the World By Anatoly Liberman Last week I wrote that one day I would reproduce some memorable statements from Skeat’s letters to the editors. This day has arrived. I have several cartons full of paper clippings, the fruit of the loom that has been whirring incessantly for more than twenty years: hundreds of short and long articles about lexicographers, with Skeat occupying a place of honor. A self-educated man in everything that concerned the history of Germanic, he became the greatest expert in Old and Middle English and an incomparable etymologist. In England, only Murray, the editor of the OED, and Henry Sweet were his equals, and in Germany, only Eduard Sievers. Joseph Wright, another autodidact
Refudiate – Episode 6 – The Oxford Comment If you haven’t heard – well, how haven’t you heard? “Refudiate” is the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2010 Word of the Year.
Book thumbnail image Article 2 of the Constitution is a Paradoxical Thing By Elvin Lim These are deliquescent days in Washington. As the Democratic party works out a deal to keep both Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn in the leadership hierarchy, and the Republican party takes stock of what it means to welcome 35 new Tea Party members into its caucus, the President must be wondering, what now? Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen are advising Obama to not seek re-election. Others are simply predicting a one-term presidency whether or not Obama likes it.
OUP USA 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate Refudiate has been named the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2010 Word of the Year! Now, does that mean that ‘refudiate’ has been added to the Dictionary? No it does not. Currently, there are no definite plans to include ‘refudiate’ in the NOAD, the OED, or any of our other dictionaries.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Billy Collins, Time Lapse Construction, Cat Island This week I decided not to make the interns do my work. Here’s a Linked Up with a lot of videos and pictures. (Yippee!)
Meet the Interns! All season, the publicity department has been graced with the presence of two wonderful interns, Hanna Oldsman and Alexandra McGinn. (I tried to do a photoshoot, but they ran and hid in the bookroom.) Hopefully this (incredibly witty and well-written) Q&A will show you just how lucky we are to have them.
Book thumbnail image On the Horrors of the Guatemala Syphilis Study By Lorna Speid The news that prisoners and the mentally ill were deliberately infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in experiments conducted by the US in the late 1940s has sent shock waves around the world. What is most shocking is that this experiment occurred in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials which brought to light the Nazi experiments that were so abhorrent. The Nuremberg Code of 1948 set basic standards for studies to be conducted in humans. We are told that there may be 40 additional experiments yet to come to light which involved experimentation on people on US soil that were never told that they were taking part in experiments.
Book thumbnail image China: Behind the bamboo curtain By Patrick Wright On 1 October 1954, Sir Hugh Casson, the urbane professor of interior design who had been director of architecture at the Festival of Britain, found himself standing by the Tiananmen Gate in the ancient and still walled city of Peking. In China to present a statement of friendship signed by nearly 700 British scientists and artists, he was watching a parade that the reporter James Cameron reckoned to be “the greatest show on earth”.
Complexity – Episode 5 – The Oxford Comment Congratulations to Melanie Mitchell, who received the 2010 FBK Science Book Award for her book Complexity: A Guided Tour! In honor of this, Michelle and Lauren talk with Mitchell about ants, robots, the economy, and more.
Memo From Las Vegas: What’s the Matter with Casino Capitalism? Tweet By Sharon Zukin Taking a position on Las Vegas is like taking an option on a company’s stock: if you like the place, you’re betting that free markets, human power over nature and boundless shopping opportunities will continue to rule the world. If you don’t like it, you’re a killjoy…or a sociologist. I made […]
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Margaret Atwood, Curious Penguin, Cupcakes This week I had the pleasure of visiting the OUP UK office and spending face time with my wonderful counterpart, Kirsty. [*Waves*]In honor of this, we have done a team Linked Up. (Go team!) Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image Hitler’s Real First World War story By Thomas Weber For two years I had been working through pile after pile of archive documents in Bavaria, Northern France, the U.S., and Israel. As I did so, it had become increasingly clear to me that Hitler’s own version of his war experiences – which had never seriously been challenged by Hitler’s many biographers – were close to fictional.
Book thumbnail image “Refudiate” Didn’t Start with Sarah Palin By Ammon Shea Every year, a group of people at OUP USA put our heads together and come up with a Word of the Year. This is an example of a word (or expression) that we feel has attracted a great deal of new interest in the year to date. It need not have been coined within the past twelve months (although it generally is a new word). It does not have to be a word that will stick around for a good length of time (it is very difficult to accurately predict which new words will have staying power). It does not even have to be a word that we plan on introducing into the dictionary (at least, not unless it seems fairly certain that it will stick around for a while).
Book thumbnail image George W. Bush and the Redemptive Dream By Dan P. McAdams In the spring of 2003, President George W. Bush launched an American military invasion of Iraq. From a psychological standpoint, why did he do it? Bush’s momentous decision resulted from a perfect psychological storm, wherein world events came to activate a set of dispositional traits and family goals that had long occupied key positions in Bush’s personality. At the center of the storm was a singularly redemptive story that, around the age of 40, George W. Bush began to construct to make sense of his life. After years of drinking and waywardness, Bush fashioned a story in his mind about how, though self-discipline and God’s guidance, he had triumphed over chaos, enabling him to recover the freedom, control, and goodness of his youth. In the days after 9/11, President Bush projected
Book thumbnail image Daniel Defoe and the Plague Defoe’s interest in the subject knew no bounds; natural disaster was for him a favourite ground on which to explore questions of faith and history. In The Storm (1704) he had described the devastation wrought by extreme weather the previous year and the book was in many ways an early dress rehearsal for the Journal, assembling ‘the most Remarkable Casualties and Disasters’ that arose from a single, terrifying event.
Book thumbnail image Racism and Antiracism By Mark R. Warren We seem to be facing a new wave of racial animosity in our country right now, from the Florida preacher who threatened to burn a Koran unless the Manhattan Islamic center was moved, to Arizona’s new immigration law legalizing racial profiling; from Glenn Beck high-jacking Dr. King’s march anniversary on the Mall in DC with an overwhelmingly white Tea Party crowd, to the New York gubernatorial candidate who won the Republican nomination after sending monkey pictures and tribal dance emails mocking President Obama. In the face of this divisiveness, we have an urgent need to better understand how to bring Americans together across racial and religious lines.
Walter W. Skeat Faces the World By Anatoly Liberman Last week I wrote that one day I would reproduce some memorable statements from Skeat’s letters to the editors. This day has arrived. I have several cartons full of paper clippings, the fruit of the loom that has been whirring incessantly for more than twenty years: hundreds of short and long articles about lexicographers, with Skeat occupying a place of honor. A self-educated man in everything that concerned the history of Germanic, he became the greatest expert in Old and Middle English and an incomparable etymologist. In England, only Murray, the editor of the OED, and Henry Sweet were his equals, and in Germany, only Eduard Sievers. Joseph Wright, another autodidact
Refudiate – Episode 6 – The Oxford Comment If you haven’t heard – well, how haven’t you heard? “Refudiate” is the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2010 Word of the Year.
Book thumbnail image Article 2 of the Constitution is a Paradoxical Thing By Elvin Lim These are deliquescent days in Washington. As the Democratic party works out a deal to keep both Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn in the leadership hierarchy, and the Republican party takes stock of what it means to welcome 35 new Tea Party members into its caucus, the President must be wondering, what now? Pat Caddell and Douglas Schoen are advising Obama to not seek re-election. Others are simply predicting a one-term presidency whether or not Obama likes it.
OUP USA 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate Refudiate has been named the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2010 Word of the Year! Now, does that mean that ‘refudiate’ has been added to the Dictionary? No it does not. Currently, there are no definite plans to include ‘refudiate’ in the NOAD, the OED, or any of our other dictionaries.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Billy Collins, Time Lapse Construction, Cat Island This week I decided not to make the interns do my work. Here’s a Linked Up with a lot of videos and pictures. (Yippee!)
Meet the Interns! All season, the publicity department has been graced with the presence of two wonderful interns, Hanna Oldsman and Alexandra McGinn. (I tried to do a photoshoot, but they ran and hid in the bookroom.) Hopefully this (incredibly witty and well-written) Q&A will show you just how lucky we are to have them.
Book thumbnail image On the Horrors of the Guatemala Syphilis Study By Lorna Speid The news that prisoners and the mentally ill were deliberately infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in experiments conducted by the US in the late 1940s has sent shock waves around the world. What is most shocking is that this experiment occurred in the aftermath of the Nuremberg Trials which brought to light the Nazi experiments that were so abhorrent. The Nuremberg Code of 1948 set basic standards for studies to be conducted in humans. We are told that there may be 40 additional experiments yet to come to light which involved experimentation on people on US soil that were never told that they were taking part in experiments.
Book thumbnail image China: Behind the bamboo curtain By Patrick Wright On 1 October 1954, Sir Hugh Casson, the urbane professor of interior design who had been director of architecture at the Festival of Britain, found himself standing by the Tiananmen Gate in the ancient and still walled city of Peking. In China to present a statement of friendship signed by nearly 700 British scientists and artists, he was watching a parade that the reporter James Cameron reckoned to be “the greatest show on earth”.
Complexity – Episode 5 – The Oxford Comment Congratulations to Melanie Mitchell, who received the 2010 FBK Science Book Award for her book Complexity: A Guided Tour! In honor of this, Michelle and Lauren talk with Mitchell about ants, robots, the economy, and more.
Book thumbnail image And the Place of the Year is… Yes, you have to click through to find out…
October 2010 (47))
Happy Birthday, Ezra Pound! By A. David Moody [Pound] was going back to his old master not so much to learn as to argue with him and assert his independence. He was taking Browning’s Sordello as a point of departure for his cantos, as ‘the thing to go on from’. He had to start there because he thought it ‘the best long poem in English since Chaucer’, and the only one with a ‘live form’. But that form was not right for what he had to do, and he would be finding his own in breaking free from Browning’s.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Book Dominoes, Vegans, Ghosts Tweet [Insert witticism here.] Book Dominoes FTW! [Urlesque] This week in unnecessarily large versions of unhealthy foods… [Good] Esquire thinks we can balance the federal budget in 3 days. Good luck with that one, guys. [Esquire] Type in your own handwriting! [Pilot via GalleyCat] If you didn’t already know, being vegan is hard. [Gizmodo] A […]
Book thumbnail image “Fiddlers” to Take a Bow By Philip Lambert They never had the marquee allure of Rodgers and Hammerstein. They didn’t enjoy the longevity of their contemporaries Kander and Ebb, who wrote songs for shows like Cabaret and Chicago for almost forty-two years. But they are one of Broadway’s most critically acclaimed and commercially successful songwriting teams, and on November 1, 2010, composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick will be honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Dramatists Guild, at a ceremony in New York.
Book thumbnail image A literal paradox: “literally” generally means ‘figuratively’ By Dennis Baron The English language is full of paradoxes, like the fact that “literally” pretty much always means ‘figuratively.’ Other words mean their opposites as well – “scan” means both ‘read closely’ and ‘skim.’ “Restive” originally meant ‘standing still’ but now it often means ‘antsy.’ “Dust” can mean ‘to sprinkle with dust’ and ‘to remove the dust from something.’ “Oversight” means both looking closely at something and ignoring it. “Sanction” sometimes means ‘forbid,’ sometimes, ‘allow.’ And then there’s “ravel,” which means ‘ravel, or tangle’ as well as its opposite, ‘unravel,’ as when Macbeth evokes “Sleepe that knits up the rauel’d Sleeue of Care.” No one objects to these paradoxes. But if you say “I literally jumped out of my skin,” critics will jump on your lack of literacy. Their insistence that literally can only mean, well, ‘literally,’ ignores the fact that word has meant ‘figuratively’ for centuries.
Book thumbnail image The Proposed New Copyright Crime of “Aiding and Abetting” Tweet By Michael A. Carrier The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has caused concern for many reasons, such as secret negotiations and controversial provisions. Today, more than 70 law professors sent a letter to President Obama asking that he “direct the [U.S. Trade Representative] to halt its public endorsement of ACTA and subject the text to […]
Book thumbnail image Witchcraft! In 2004, workmen digging in Greenwich, near London, uncovered a sealed stone bottle that rattled and splashed when they shook it. It was sent to a laboratory where X-rays revealed metal objects wedged in the neck, suggesting that it had been buried upside down, and a scan showed it to be half filled with liquid. Chemical analysis confirmed this was human urine containing nicotine and brimstone. When the cork was removed, scientists discovered iron nails, brass pins, hair, fingernail parings, a pierced leather heart, and what they believed might be navel fluff.
Book thumbnail image Memo From Manhattan: On the Waterfront By Sharon Zukin The world’s biggest cities often spawn disaster scenarios—those end-of-the-world, escape-from-New-York exaggerations of urban dystopia. Once limited to printed texts and paintings, visions of urban apocalypse have become ever more accessible in newspaper photographs, movies and video games. They form a collective urban imaginary, shaping the dark side of local identity and civic pride. New York is especially attractive as a site of imagined disaster. Maybe it’s payback for the city’s hubris and chutzpah, or perhaps there’s something in the American character that yearns for and fears creative destruction. If there is a general hunger for destruction stories, it is fed by the knowledge that the cities we build are vulnerable.
Book thumbnail image How to Read a Word By Elizabeth Knowles When I began working for Oxford Dictionaries over thirty years ago, it was as a library researcher for the Supplement to OED. Volume 3, O–Scz, was then in preparation, and the key part of my job was to find earlier examples of the words and phrases for which entries were being written. Armed with a degree in English (Old Norse and Old English a speciality) and a diploma in librarianship, I was one of a group of privileged people given access to the closed stacks of the Bodleian Library.
Monthly Gleanings: October 2010 By Anatoly Liberman In 1984, old newspapers were regularly rewritten, to conform to the political demands of the day. With the Internet, the past is easy to alter. In a recent post, I mentioned C. Sweet, the man who discovered the origin of the word pedigree, and added (most imprudently) that I know nothing about this person and that he was no relative of the famous Henry Sweet. Stephen Goranson pointed out right away that in Skeat’s article devoted to the subject, C. was expanded to Charles and that Charles Sweet was Henry’s brother. I have the article in my office, which means I, too, at one time read it and knew who C. Sweet was. Grieved and
Book thumbnail image London Labour and the London Poor By Robert Douglas-Fairhurst It was an ordinary enough London winter’s evening: chilly, damp, and churning with crowds. I’d arranged to meet a friend at the Curzon Mayfair cinema, and after my packed tube had been held up between stations – ten sweaty minutes during which my fellow passengers had fumed silently, tutted audibly, and in one or two cases struck up tentative conversations with the person whose shopping was digging into their shins – I was late.
Book thumbnail image What was it like to work with Tony Hillerman? Like most authors, when Rosemary Herbert speaks at book events about the mystery fiction anthologies she edited with Tony Hillerman, A New Omnibus of Crime and The Oxford Book of American Detective Stories and about her own new first novel, Front Page Teaser: A Liz Higgins Mystery, she always makes sure that she allows plenty of opportunity to for people to ask her questions. Lots of times authors become tired of the questions they are most frequently asked, but that it not true for Herbert, especially when the question is, “What was it like to work with Tony Hillerman?” Today – the second anniversary of Hillerman’s death – she reflects on this question.
Book thumbnail image NPR’s Firing of Juan Williams By Elvin Lim If NPR values public deliberation as the highest virtue of a democratic polity, it did its own ideals a disservice last week when it fired Juan Williams without offering a plausible justification why it did so. On October 20, Williams had uttered these fateful words on the O’ Reilly Factor: “…when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.” Anxiety and worry make for poor public reasons. Quite often discomfort is a façade for prejudice – an emotion that knows no reasonable defense.
Book thumbnail image Treating America’s Foster Youth like They Are Our Own By Mark E. Courtney For most young people, the transition to adulthood is a gradual process. Many continue to receive financial and emotional support from their parents or other family members well past age 18. This is in stark contrast to the situation confronting youth who must navigate the transition to adulthood from the U.S. foster care system. Too old for the child welfare system but often not yet prepared to live as independent young adults, the approximately 29,000 foster youth who “age out” of foster care each year are expected to make it on their own long before the vast majority of their peers.
Book thumbnail image The Great Cannabis Divide By Marcello Pennacchio Few plants have generated as much debate and controversy as cannabis (Cannabis sativa). Throughout the ages, it has been labelled both a dangerous drug and potent medicine. Where the former is concerned, law-enforcement agents and governments spend millions of dollars fighting what many consider to be a losing battle, while fortunes are being pocketed by those who sell it illegally. This is in spite of the fact that cannabis produces a number of natural pharmacologically-active substances, the medicinal potential of which were recognized thousands of years ago. Chinese Emperor, Shên Nung, for example, prescribed cannabis elixirs for a variety of illnesses as early as 3000 BC. It was equally prized as a medicine in other ancient civilisations, including India, Egypt, Assyria, Palestine, Judea and Rome and may have been instrumental in helping Ancient Greece’s Delphian Oracle during her divinations.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Amazing Aidan, Lite-Brites, Cannabis U I have set a new record! Latest-in-the-day Linked Up ever! (I think I need some new personal goals…so if anyone has recommendations…)
Book thumbnail image “Gatz” at the Public: A Great Gatsby or Just an Elitist One? By Keith Gandal Want a quick, but apparently reliable measure of how elitist you are? Go see the 7-hour production of Gatz, in which all 47,000 words of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby are, in the course of the play, enunciated on stage. (If you dare and can afford to.) If you love every minute of it and find time flying by, you’re probably, well, an arts snob; if you find your reaction mixed, your mind drifting in and out, and your body just plain giving out, well, you’re likely more of a populist.
Book thumbnail image Ten Things WE WON’T Have by 2030 Tweet By Bram Vermeer Overoptimism and overpessimism sells. But let’s face reality. Here are 10 things we won’t have by 2030: 1. Asteroid bomb Asteroids with a diameter of more than 100 m (109 yd) reach our planet once every 2000 years. Distressing as that may be, their impact remains local. Bad luck if this […]
Book thumbnail image Terriers are People Too: Dog Breeds as Metaphors Tweet By Mark Peters My newest obsession is Terriers, an FX show created by Ted Griffin (who wrote Ocean’s Eleven) and Shawn Ryan (creator of The Shield, the best TV show ever). This show has deliciously Seinfeldian dialogue, effortless and charming acting, plus plots that are unpredictable and fresh. It’s even heart-wrenching at times, and […]
Book thumbnail image What’s the Problem with Maths? By David Acheson For what it’s worth, my own big picture of mathematics can be summed up in just six words: (i) surprising theorems, (ii) beautiful proofs and (iii) great applications.
Book thumbnail image A Reflection on the OHA’s New Code of Ethics By John A. Neuenschwander Last fall the Oral History Association approved a new set of ethical guidelines. The goal of the task force that prepared the new General Principles for Oral History and Best Practices for Oral History was to provide a more condensed and usable set of guidelines. The leadership of the Association stressed that the new ethical guidelines would be reviewed periodically to determine if they needed to be amended and/or expanded. To that end
From “Breast” to “Brisket” (Not Counting Dessert) By Anatoly Liberman It seems reasonable that brisket should in some way be related to breast: after all, brisket is the breast of an animal. But the path leading from one word to the other is neither straight nor narrow. Most probably, it does not even exist. In what follows I am greatly indebted to the Swedish scholar Bertil Sandahl, who published an article on brisket and its cognates in 1964. The Oxford English Dictionary has no citations of brisket prior to 1450, but Sandahl discovered bresket in a document written in 1328-1329, and if his interpretation is correct, the date should be pushed back quite considerably. Before 1535, the favored (possibly, the only) form in English was bruchet(te).
Book thumbnail image Dressing Up, Then and Now By Ulinka Rublack I will never forget the day when a friend’s husband returned home to Paris from one of his business trips. She and I were having coffee in the huge sun-light living-room overlooking the Seine. We heard his key turn the big iron door. Next a pair of beautiful, shiny black shoes flew through the long corridor with its beautiful parquet floor. Finally the man himself appeared. “My feet are killing me!”, he exclaimed with a veritable sense of pain. The shoes were by Gucci.
Drama – Episode 4 – The Oxford Comment This time around, Lauren and Michelle deal with drama! They talk with the Toy Box Theatre Company, learn about politics in musical theater, and go behind-the-scenes on the set of Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson.
Book thumbnail image How to Arrest a Spiral of Cynicism By Elvin Lim For the third election in a row, voters will be throwing incumbents out of office. In 2006, the national wave against Bush and the Bush wars gave Democrats control of both houses of Congress. In 2008, the same wave swept Obama into the White House. In 2010, incumbents are yet again in trouble. At least some of them will be expelled from Washington, and if so, the vicious cycle of perpetual personnel turnover and ensuing cynicism in Washington will continue. This is what happens when we become a government of men.
Book thumbnail image Killer app: Seven dirty words you can’t say on your iPhone By Dennis Baron Apple’s latest iPhone app will clean up your text messages and force you to brush up your French, or Spanish, or Japanese, all at the same time. This week the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office approved patent 7,814,163, an Apple invention that can censor obscene or offensive words in text messages whie doubling as a foreign-language tutor with the power to require, for example, “that a certain number of Spanish words per day be included in e-mails for a child learning Spanish.”
Book thumbnail image Black Youth, the Tea Party, & American Politics Yesterday, Cathy Cohen published an article with the Washington Post titled, Another Tea Party, led by black youth?” In it, she shares, In my own representative national survey, I found that only 42 percent of black youth 18-25 felt like “a full and equal citizen in this country with all the rights and protections that other people have,” compared to a majority (66%) of young whites. Sadly, young Latinos felt similarly disconnected with only 43 percent believing themselves to be full and equal citizens. In the video below, Cohen further discusses the involvement of black youth in American politics.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Comic Con, Neon Signs, Phonebook Art Today’s poem is brought to you by Random. Haikus are easy But sometimes they don’t make sense Refrigerator
Book thumbnail image The Synoptic Problem By Jen Vafidis, Editorial Assistant For a week, a Florida pastor’s threat to burn copies of the Koran to mark the most recent anniversary of September 11 had an almost disastrous momentum. Before he eventually acquiesced, Pastor Terry Jones provoked a hot-blooded global response. Protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Indonesia, not to mention an insinuating statement from Hezbollah, gave off the persistent impression of danger. One of the pastor’s many vocal critics was President Goodluck Jonathan in Nigeria, a country plagued with violent in-fighting between Christians and Muslims. In a Facebook post the President condemned Jones’ plans and implored him to be “mindful of the Golden Rule taught by Jesus Christ: Do unto others as you would want others to do unto you.”
Book thumbnail image War and Peace Part Three: Deprivation By Amy Mandelker I am proofing the galleys for this new edition of the Maude translation of War and Peace when a freak storm with gale force winds takes out three towering pines on my neighbor’s property, topples a venerable oak crushing a friend’s roof, and downs trees and power lines all over Princeton township and beyond, leaving the southern part of the state deprived of electricity for several days.
Why pay through the nose? By Anatoly Liberman Why indeed? But despite our financial woes, I am interested in the origin of the idiom, not in exorbitant prices. On the face of it (and the nose cannot be separated from the face), the idiom pay through the nose makes no sense. Current since the second half of the 17th century and probably transparent to the contemporaries, it later joined such puzzling phrases as kick the bucket and bees’ knees. Idioms are harder to trace to their “roots” than words. Etymology, though not an exact science, is governed by certain regularities (sound correspondences, patterns of semantic change, and so forth), but a search for the origin of idioms rarely needs the expertise of historical linguists. They will offer good
Book thumbnail image Questioning Alternative Medicine By Roberta Bivins As a historian who writes about the controversial topic of ‘alternative medicine’, I get a lot of questions about whether this or that therapy ‘works’. Sometimes, these questions are a test of my objectivity as a researcher.
Book thumbnail image Turnover at the White House and a Crisis of Confidence By Elvin Lim The Obama White House has announced a series of personnel changes in recent weeks, ahead of the November elections. The aim is to push the reset button, but not to time it as if the button was plunged at the same time that voters signal their repudiation on election day. But the headline is the same as that of the Carter cabinet reshuffle in 1979: there is a crisis of confidence in the Oval Office.
Comic Con – Episode 3 – The Oxford Comment This weekend, Michelle and Lauren took on New York Comic Con & Anime Festival to bring you superheros, speed dating, light sabers, and more.
Book thumbnail image It’s alive! New computer learns language like a human, almost. By Dennis Baron A computer at Carnegie Mellon University is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge, by soaking it all up and figuring it out in our heads. People’s brains work better some days than others, and eventually we will all run out of steam, but the creators of NELL, the Never Ending Language Learner, want it to run forever, getting better every day in every way, until it becomes the largest repository imaginable of all that’s e’er been thought or writ.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: James Franco, Willy Wonka, NPR By the time you read this, I will be at Comic Con. Don’t be sad. I’ll take photos. Lots and lots of photos. Lots.
Book thumbnail image Tariq Ramadan & Christopher Hitchens: Is Islam a Religion of Peace? With the Obama administration in its nascent years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proving as intractable as ever, relations with Iran reaching a boiling point and the political landscape changing rapidly both in the United States and the Middle East, wrestling with the issue of Islam is more crucial than ever and will be a defining feature of the 21st century. In this video clip, famous atheist and prolific author Christopher Hitchens and the accomplished and controversial scholar Tariq Ramadan debate one of the most pertinent questions of our modern age.
Book thumbnail image Memo From Manhattan: Age and the City By Sharon Zukin I’ll tell you what’s “very strange”: the population of New York City is going to get a whole lot older very fast. The city’s age spread is now about the same as that of the U.S. population. Around 7% are children too young to go to school, almost 25% are under eighteen years of age and half as many (fewer than 12%) are over sixty-five. But according to demographers’ projections, after 2010 New York will be a rapidly aging city. Some reasons for this are natural (baby boomers aging), others are social (medicine and changes in cultural practices keeping us alive longer) while still others are a mix of both (fertility rates declining). All in all, though, the city’s older population will increase dramatically in the next twenty years.
Book thumbnail image John Winston Ono Lennon, Everyman By Gordon Thompson On 9 October, many in the world will remember John Winston Ono Lennon, born on this date in 1940. He, of course, would have been amused, although part of him (the part that self-identified as “genius”) would have anticipated the attention. However, he might also have questioned why the Beatles and their music, and this Beatle in particular, would remain so current in our cultural thinking. When Lennon described the Beatles as just a band that made it very, very big, why did we doubt him?
Book thumbnail image War and Peace Part Two: Earthquakes By Amy Mandelker The earthquake in China. The school that collapsed, crushing students and teachers, was established and funded by the charitable organization for which my ex-husband works. He is a conservationist and social activist, and for several days following the first shocks, he is only able to contact one of his co-workers at the scene, who digs alone at the site of the school with his chilled, bare hands for an entire day. By evening he uncovers the dead body of a teacher.
The Rum History of the Word “Rum” By Anatoly Liberman The most universal law of etymology is that we cannot explain the origin of a word unless we have a reasonably good idea of what the thing designated by the word means. For quite some time people pointed to India as the land in which rum was first consumed and did not realize that in other European languages rum was a borrowing from English. The misleading French spelling rhum suggested a connection with Greek rheum “stream, flow” (as in rheumatism). According to other old conjectures, rum is derived from aroma or saccharum. India led researchers to Sanskrit roma “water” as the word’s etymon, and this is what many otherwise solid 19th-century dictionaries said. Webster gave the vague, even meaningless reference “American,” but on the whole, the choice appeared to be between East and West Indies. Skeat, in the first edition of his dictionary (1882), suggested Malayan origins (from beram “alcoholic drink,” with the loss of the first syllable) and used his habitual eloquence to boost this hypothesis.
Book thumbnail image How do you write a Very Short Introduction to English Literature? By Jonathan Bate My last three books have been a 670 page life of the agricultural labouring poet John Clare, a two and half thousand page edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, and a 500 page “intellectual biography” of Shakespeare in the context of his age. So how could I resist an invitation from OUP to write a VERY SHORT book!
Book thumbnail image Who is YOUR god? Take the test and find out! According to surveys, 95% of Americans believe in God. Although it can sometimes feel that the greatest rifts are between believers and non-believers, disputes are more often caused between groups of believers who simply don’t agree about what God is like. In America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God – and What That Says About Us, Paul Froese and Christopher Bader use original survey data, in-depth interviews, and “The God Test” to reveal the four types of god most American’s believe in. Indeed, this is the most comprehensive and illuminating survey of Americans’ religious beliefs ever conducted.
Book thumbnail image Democrats Don’t Do Unity Well By Elvin Lim The generic Democratic ballot appeared to rebound a little last week, in part because of the Republican Pledge to America, the story of Christine O’Donnell of Delaware spreading in the liberal base, and in part because of anticipation of the One Nation march on the National Mall this weekend. Could it be that Democrats may actually be able to keep their majorities in Congress if this trend continues?A cold look at history tells us that the odds are still low. One of the iron laws of American politics is that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the House in off-year, mid-term elections. Since 1870, there have been 35 mid-term elections and on all but four occasions, the president’s party lost seats in the House (the average loss is 34 seats).
Book thumbnail image 10 Things that Should Exist by 2030 Tweet By Bram Vermeer Science can create a better world. We are no playthings in the Earth’s fate. Here are my personal top 10 breakthroughs that are badly needed to ensure our future. 1. Smart irrigation When farmers irrigate their land, they usually water it 100 percent of the time. But isn’t it silly for […]
Book thumbnail image The Free Lunch Campaign: A Lost Opportunity By Edward Zelinsky The United States is in the midst of a “free lunch” campaign in which Republicans and Democrats alike promise painless resolution of our budgetary problems. As a result, neither party will have an electoral mandate for the hard choices necessary to tackle our fiscal quandaries. Both parties are squandering an important opportunity to mold public opinion and set the stage for meaningful budgetary discipline.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Hyper-Realism, Infinite Jest, OK Go OK, OK. I’m sorry. I haven’t done Linked Up in a while and I didn’t think anyone would notice. But you did (which I appreciate) and I’m sorry (but not that sorry) for letting you down (I think you’ll recover). Please forgive me (Jen).
Book thumbnail image This post has been flagged for controversy. DO NOT READ. When I was in 4th grade, we read Julie of the Wolves aloud, each of my classmates taking turns. At a certain point in the book, my teacher told us to flip ahead, as we would be skipping a chapter. There was the lazy shuffle of pages, and then we continued. I remember counting how many people had to read before it was my turn. Could I possibly get through the extra chapter and still catch up? I decided yes. And there, alone at my desk, I learned how
September 2010 (41))
Bromance: It’s a Beautiful Thing By Geoffrey Greif Can you believe the word “bromance” has now made it into the accepted lexicon through its addition to the New Oxford American Dictionary? I, for one, could not be more tickled. Imagine: men now have their own word that captures our platonic affection for each other. Will “manfriend” be far behind?
Book thumbnail image War and Peace Part One: Tolstoy and Moscow By Amy Mandelker Moscow is choked with smoke from surrounding fires. I follow developments online, reading over the weekend that they have been digging trenches to cut off the path of the blaze before it detonates nuclear stockpiles.
Monthly Gleanings: September 2010 By Anatoly Liberman Is Standard English pronunciation a viable concept? I think it is, even if only to a point. People’s accents differ, but some expectation of a more or less leveled pronunciation (that is, of the opposite of a broad dialect) in great public figures and media personalities probably exists. Jimmy Carter seems to have made an effort to sound less Georgian after he became President. If I am not mistaken, John Kennedy tried to suppress some of the most noticeable features of his Bostonian accent. But perhaps those changes happened under the influence of the new environment. In some countries, the idea of “Standard” has a stronger grip
Book thumbnail image Science, religion, and magic By Alec Ryrie My book started out as a bit of fun, trying to tell a rollicking good story. I did that, I hope, but I also ended up somewhere more controversial than I expected: caught in the ongoing crossfire between science and religion. What I realised is that you can’t make sense of their relationship without inviting a third ugly sister to the party: magic.
Book thumbnail image 6 Things You May Not Know About the Passport By Craig Robertson 1) The passport in its modern form is a product of World War I. During the war most countries introduced emergency passport requirements that became permanent in the 1920s under the guidance of the League of Nations. Prior to World War I in the absence of required passports and visas immigration and government officials along the U.S. border used people’s physical appearance to determine if they were entitled to enter the country. Inspectors were confident they
Book thumbnail image A Pledge to Do Nothing By Elvin Lim The Republican “Pledge to America” is an attempt to show that the Republicans are more than a Party of No. The Pledge to America, however, is just a clever way to disguise a set of promises to undo or not do; but it is not ultimately a pledge to do anything. Party platforms make a little more sense in the British parliamentary system, from whence they developed, because parliamentary sovereignty there does not have to contend with the separation of powers. But the Republican’s watered-down platform is a stunt if only for one reason alone. It’s called the presidential veto, and the Pledge exaggerates what Republican takeovers in one or both chambers of Congress in November could achieve. This is a Pledge of faux intentions because Republicans know full well that
Book thumbnail image How much oil is left? The world’s total annual consumption of crude oil is one cubic mile of oil (CMO). The world’s total annual energy consumption – from all energy sources – is currently 3 CMO. By the middle of this century the world will need between 6 and 9 CMO of energy per year to provide for its citizens. In their new book, Hewitt Crane, Edwin Kinderman, and Ripudaman Malhotra introduce this brand new measuring unit and show that the use of CMO replaces mind-numbing multipliers (such as billions, trillions, and quadrillions) with an easy-to-understand volumetric unit. It evokes a visceral response and allows experts, policy makers and the general public alike to form a mental picture of the magnitude of the challenge we face.
Book thumbnail image Invaluable Lessons in Book Marketing By Dennis Meredith Since Oxford published my book Explaining Research in February, I’ve learned a great deal about book marketing. And since the success of a book depends so critically on adept marketing, I’d like to share those lessons. First of all, authors should always consider themselves critically important marketers of their own books. After all, it’s your book, so who else would know the most about it and care most about its success? Begin by
Book thumbnail image The English Language Unity Act: Big Government Only a Tea Partier Could Love By Dennis Baron Tea Partiers seem intent on throwing more and more of the American government overboard. Yet there’s one area where both these wing nuts and many ordinary conservatives support more big government, not less: they want the government to make everyone in America speak English.
Geeks – Episode 2 – The Oxford Comment In the second episode of The Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle celebrate geekdom. They interview a Jeopardy champion, talk sex & attraction with a cockatoo, discover what makes an underdog a hero, and “geek out” with some locals.
Book thumbnail image Memo from Manhattan: The High Line at Dusk By Sharon Zukin Shortly before 8 p.m. on a warm September evening the High Line, Manhattan’s newest public park and the only one located above street level, is crowded. Men and women, old and young, tourists from overseas and longtime New Yorkers have climbed the winding metal stairs to the former railroad freight line, now a mile-long, landscaped walkway, just to view the sunset over the Hudson River. There are more people up on the High Line than down on the streets.
Book thumbnail image What is the point of agnosticism? By Robin Le Poidevin Do we really need agnosticism nowadays? The inventor of the name ‘agnosticism’, the Victorian evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley, certainly found it useful to have a word describing his lack of certainty when he was surrounded by those who seemed to have no such doubt. But then he lived in a period of transition.
Book thumbnail image Beck Plays Prophet – Politics Pervade By Andrew R. Murphy There are any number of ways to interpret the [recent] events on the National Mall: the dueling rallies, the competition over the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “dream,” the intertwining of piety, politics, and patriotism. Many of these have already been blogged and commented on ad infinitum. And so first, to the obvious
The Sinister Influence of the Left Hand By Anatoly Liberman There is something righteous about the right hand: it is supposed to point in the right direction and do everything right. In older Indo-European, even a special word existed for “right hand,” as evidenced by Greek dexios (stress on the last syllable), Latin dexter, and others. A strong association connects the right hand with the south and the left hand with the north. Someone standing with his face turned to the rising sun (for example, while praying), will have his right hand stretched to the south and his left hand to the north. Old Irish tuath meant both “north” and “left” (when facing east). This case is not unique.
Book thumbnail image The Tea Party movement and Elections 2010 By Elvin Lim For Republicans to take over 10 seats to gain control of the Senate, 2010 Republican voters must not see themselves as voting the Bush/Rove Republicans (who were kicked out in 2006 and 2008) back in, but for a new type of Republican newly infused with Tea Party sentiments. The question then is, can the Tea Party be synergistically incorporated into the Republican electoral machine?
Book thumbnail image Atlantic City: Empire or Fantasyland? The Atlantic City celebrated in “Boardwalk Empire” was not just a city of mobsters, speakeasies, and brothels. It was, in the words of a longtime resident born in Georgia, a “Jim Crow for sure.” Its schools, clubs, neighborhoods, and movie houses were segregated. In 1923, just three years after the start of Prohibition, the city opened a brand new school that included a 1,000-seat auditorium and a 6,000-pipe organ, at a total cost of over $1.75 million. It also included an indoor pool, but rather than have whites and African Americans swim together, officials covered it up.
Photographs on Passports Craig Robertson is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. His new book, The Passport in America: The History of A Document, examines how “proof of identity” became so crucial in America. Through addressing questions of identification and surveillance, the history of the passport is revealed. In the excerpt below we learn about photographs on passports.
Book thumbnail image Hold the phone! It’s quiz time! By Alexander Humez Phone (from Greek f??? ‘sound [of the voice], voice, sound, tone’) shows up in English as a prefix (in, e.g., phonograph), a root form (in, e.g., phonetics), a free-standing word (phone), and as a suffix (in, e.g., gramophone) of which A. F. Brown lists well over a hundred in his monumental Normal and Reverse English Word List, though considering that -phone in the sense of “-speaker of” can be tacked onto the end of any combining root that designates a language (as in Francophone), the list of possibilities is considerably greater.
Book thumbnail image A Modest Addition to the Lexicon of Excuses By Mark Peters Before reading, I want you to know, just in case you hate this column, it is not my column. Not my column! These are not my words, not even the prepositions. I think my cousin wrote this—or one of his creepy pals. Sorry, I guess I just wanted to be as cool as famous folk who use the “not my X” routine whenever the long arm of the law threatens to burst their celebububble. In a nifty blog piece, Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger suggest that “not my X” has become a kind of snowclone
My BFF just told me “TTYL” is in the dictionary. LMAO. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. New words, senses, and phrases have been added to the New Oxford American Dictionary! I’m not going to list every addition, but here’s a sampling I think you’ll all find interesting…. BFF, Big Media, Bromance, Carbon Credit, Cloud Computing and Eggcorn.
Book thumbnail image Celebrating the King James Bible By Gordon Campbell Why all the fuss about an old translation of an ancient book? There are two reasons: first, it is the founding text of the British Empire (including breakaway colonies such as the United States), and was carried to every corner of the English-speaking world by migrants and missionaries; second, it matters now, both as a religious text and as the finest embodiment of English prose. Its history in the intervening centuries has been complex. The text has evolved…
Book thumbnail image Every week should be fashion week! By Justyna Zajac, Associate Publicist New York City’s Fashion Week may have officially kicked off last Thursday, September 9th, but it was Fashion’s Night Out (Friday, Sept. 10th) that really seemed to launch festivities. Serving as a celebration of the industry and of anyone with an affinity for dress, FNO encouraged stores and boutiques to partake in one glorious garment party and gift clientele with a variety of freebies and fun. You could listen to DJs spin tunes and play foosball
An Exercise in Material Culture, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Last week I discussed the origin of the word cushion. Our correspondent wonders whether we are perhaps talking about bedrolls here. Judging by medieval miniatures from the East, old cushions were like those known to us, but the broad scope of referents, with the same word serving as the name of a cushion, bedcover, and mattress, does pose the question of the original object’s form and uses. The reconstructed sense “bundle”
Book thumbnail image Does Obama See a Silver Lining in Losing the House? By Elvin Lim The “Summer of Recovery” has failed to materialize, and with that, the White House has had to start planning for 2012 earlier than expected. After all, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had already conceded this summer that the House may fall to Republican hands. (Nancy Pelosi didn’t like the sound of his prescience then, but Gibbs was merely thinking strategically for his boss.) The one thing Democrats have going for them is
Book thumbnail image Death to Humans! (The Apocalypse Remix) By Robert M. Geraci Scientific American recently rocked the Internet with its editors’ piece “Death to Humans! Visions of the Apocalypse in Movies and Literature” but, in doing so, have missed half of the fun. In an article where the sublime (The Matrix) meets the atrocious (The Postman), the chief problem that SciAm’s editors suffer is that, to be honest, they do not know what an apocalypse is.
Book thumbnail image 6 Myths about Teens & Christian Faith in America By Kenda Creasy Dean Have you heard this one? Mom is angling to get 16-year-old Tony to come to church on Sunday, and Tony will have none of it. “Don’t you get it?” he yells, pushing his chair away from the table. “I hate church! I am not like you! The church is full of hypocrites!” Dramatic exit, stage right. This story sounds true – but it isn’t.
Book thumbnail image This Week in History: Happy Birthday, Jane Addams By Katherine van Wormer She had no children, but for those of us who are social workers, she was the mother of us all. The social action focus, empathy with people in poverty, campaigning for human rights—these priorities of social work had their origins in the work and teachings of Jane Addams. Unlike the “friendly visitors” before her, Addams came to realize, in her work with immigrants and the poor, that poverty stems not from character defects but from social conditions that need to be changed…
Did you catch the premiere of The Oxford Comment? We’re excited to announce that it has finally launched – we now have a podcast! It’s called The Oxford Comment (get it?) and each episode we’ll talk to people smarter than us in hopes that it rubs off.
Book thumbnail image 20-somethings: NOT lazy, spoiled, or selfish By Jeffrey Arnett How do you know when you’ve reached adulthood? This is one of the first questions I asked when I began my research on people in their twenties, and it remains among the most fascinating to me. I expected that people would mostly respond in terms of the traditional transition events that take place for most people in the 18-29 age period: moving out of parents’ household, finishing education, marriage, and parenthood. To my surprise, none of these…
Book thumbnail image End Of Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research? By Frederick Grinnell On August 23, 2010, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia granted a preliminary injunction blocking NIH-funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESC). According to Judge Lamberth’s ruling, NIH-funded research on hESC violates the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, originally passed by Congress in 1996, which prohibits use of federal funds for research in which human embryos are destroyed. The judge rejected the…
Book thumbnail image Memo from Lower Manhattan: The Mosque By Sharon Zukin Of all the mosques, in all the towns, in all the world, why did this mosque cause a furor in this town? I’m speaking about Park51, an Islamic “community center promoting tolerance and understanding,” as its website says, which is being planned to replace an old five-story building in Lower Manhattan that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory store with a modern, thirteen-story multi-service facility modeled on Jewish community centers and the YMCA. The burning issue…
Book thumbnail image The Changing Face of the AIDS Epidemic By Alan Whiteside In Russia, Ukraine and some of the other former Soviet countries HIV transmission through injecting drug users is affecting significant proportions of young men and is spreading quickly. They in turn pass the disease on to their partners, who may then transmit it to their children. While the absolute numbers are not high, the proportionate impact will be significant. In Africa AIDS is again different. There are some…
An Exercise in Material Culture, Part 1 By Anatoly Liberman Borrowed words usually come to us with borrowed things, whether it is melon, pear, pumpkin, potato or church, piano, and sputnik. Yet this is more or less true of the names of things. Outside the world of nouns, people often borrow words they either do not need or may have dispensed with. For example, bold is native, but its numerous synonyms (brave, courageous, intrepid, and quite a few others) are of Romance origin. Subtleties multiply until the embarrassment of riches chokes the speakers who no longer know which near synonym to choose. The infamous F-word was taken over from Low (= northern) German and superseded its English rivals, though nothing changed in the islanders’ habits and the old verbs were equally expressive and equally frequent. It is anybody’s guess why such a strange substitution happened.
Booze! – Episode 1 – The Oxford Comment In the premiere episode of The Oxford Comment, Lauren and Michelle talk to Benjamin Carp about the drinking habits of the Founding Fathers and visit brewmaster Garrett Oliver at the Brooklyn Brewery.
Book thumbnail image Obama: Graying, but None the Wiser By Elvin Lim President Barack Obama’s second Oval Office address to the nation wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the game-changer to his declining approval ratings which despondent Democrats were hoping for. The speech was a valiant attempt to connect Iraq with unemployment (guns with butter), but it came off to many as meandering and confused.
Book thumbnail image Advice to President Obama’s Deficit Commission: Tax Social Security Payments By Edward Zelinsky President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is reportedly forging an internal consensus concerning the federal Social Security system. The President’s bi-partisan deficit reduction commission is purportedly developing a package of reforms including higher retirement ages for Social Security eligibility, reduced cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security payments, and higher taxes.
Book thumbnail image California’s Channel Island Kelp Forests — Are They Recovering? By Christopher Wills As my blood thins with age, I tend to SCUBA dive in the tropics. But in July of 2010, loaded with twenty-four pounds of lead weights to overcome the buoyancy of my thick wet suit and the dense salty water of the frigid Japanese Current, I found myself plunging into cold water to investigate an ecological success story off California’s Channel Islands. I wanted to see what happens when a damaged ecosystem recovers. Can it ever return to its former self?
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: UK Edition Why would adults want to play with water pistols?
Book thumbnail image George Martin Goes Independent, 2 Sept 1965 By Gordon Thompson When George Martin first entered the recording industry in the early 1950s, assisting Oscar Preuss at EMI’s Parlophone, he encountered the end of the mechanical era. The company’s facilities on Abbey Road in genteel St. John’s Wood still used lathes to record sound by cutting grooves in warm wax with energy provided by weights and pulleys, like a child of Big Ben. The sheer mechanics of this kind of professional recording demanded large…
Book thumbnail image Corporate science: The good, the bad, and those in between By Roderick D. Buchanan The corporate corruption of science is a familiar theme to anyone whose reading stretches beyond celebrity tattle-tale. The well-documented venality of Big Tobacco and Big Pharma have become cautionary fairy tales for modern times.
How Old is the Parasite “Like”? By Anatoly Liberman When did people begin to say: “I will, like, come tomorrow” and why do they say so? It may seem that the filler “like”, along with its twin “you know”, are of recent date, but this impression is wrong. It is, however, true that both became the plague in recent memory. Occasionally an etymologist discovers a word that was current in Middle or early Modern English, disappeared from view, and then seemingly resurfaced in the modern language. One wonders whether this is the same word…
August 2010 (49))
Facebook says, “All your face are belong to us.” By Dennis Baron Facebook wants to trademark the word “face.” The social networker which connects more than 500 million users has already shown how we can all live together as one big happy set of FBF’s by forcing other sites to drop “book” from their names, and now, in application no. 78980756 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Facebook is asserting its ownership of the word “face” as well.
Book thumbnail image The Secret Behind Glenn Beck’s Magic By Elvin Lim Nolstalgia is the selective invocation of the past. It is probably the worst kind of historical reasoning used by romantics who glorify what we remember to be good (Mom and pie) and conveniently forget all that was bad (Jim and Crow). Because nostalgia is history without the guilt, it is the most comforting kind of political appeal. And since there is no guilt without details, Beck’s bumper-sticker speech communicated offensive content without offending.
Book thumbnail image Missing sleep can make you fat, sad, and stupid A new school year is about to start, and we all know how sleep-deprived students can be. Parents and teachers may sound like broken records, but Dr. Rosalind Cartwright can tell you that good sleeping habits are nothing to roll your eyes at.
In Case You Missed It: Tech & Social Media It might just be me (and it often times is), but I could hardly blink this weekend without seeing yet another article announcing, discussing, or otherwise pointing to a big development in the world of technology/social media. So – since I find it difficult to keep anything to myself anyway – I decided to share them with you. Below, I’ve highlighted several stories of note, and I hope that if there are others that even I missed, you will comment and us know.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Plastic Bags, Rivers Cuomo, 20-Somethings They call it the Snazzy Napper, but it’s more like the Snazzy You’re-about-to-have-your-purse-stolen-while-looking-ridiculous-er.
The gender-neutral pronoun: 150 years later, still an epic fail By Dennis Baron Every once in a while someone decides to do something about the fact that English has no gender-neutral pronoun. They either call for such a pronoun to be invented, or they invent one and champion its adoption. Wordsmiths have been coining gender-neutral pronouns for over a century and a half.
Book thumbnail image Are We Masters of Our Own Destiny? On Friday, 20th August, I joined the panel for a Great Debate entitled “Are We Masters Of Our Own Destiny?” at the University of Newcastle, organized as part of the Green Phoenix Festival, 2010. My fellow panelists were science writer Rita Carter, and local philosopher David Large. As we suspected, this pitted two biology-oriented commentators against a more conventional philosopher…
Book thumbnail image BOOYAH! Yesterday, I was flipping through my (very heavy) copy of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, and I found…an entry on BOOYAH! What is booyah? I’m glad you asked.
Etymological Pettifoggery By Anatoly Liberman In regards to the sphere of application, pettifogger belongs with huckster, hawker, and their synonym badger. All of them are obscure, badger being the hardest. Pettifoggers, shysters, and all kinds of hagglers have humble antecedents and usually live up to their names, which tend to be coined by their bearers. At one time it was customary to say that words like hullabaloo are as undignified as the things they designate. Today we call a marked correspondence between words’ meaning and their form iconicity
Book thumbnail image What is Energy? By Jennifer Coopersmith Energy is the go of things, the driver of engines, devices and all physical processes. It can come in various forms (electrical, chemical, rest mass, curvature of spacetime, light, heat and so on) and change between these forms, but the total is always conserved.
Book thumbnail image When the Stasi Came for the Doctor Gary Bruce is Associate Professor of History at the University of Waterloo. His newest book is The Firm: The Inside Story of the Stasi. The book is based on previously classified documents and interviews with former secret police officers and ordinary citizens and is the first comprehensive history of East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, at the grassroots level. In the excerpt below Bruce looks at how the Stasi impacted one ordinary man’s life.
Book thumbnail image Obama’s Leadership Gap By Elvin Lim For after endorsing the idea of the mosque near Ground Zero and resisting the path of least resistance, a day later, the President back-tracked, saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.” (As Kerry was for the Iraq war before he was against it.) Well done, Polonius.
Book thumbnail image To Be a Child Soldier By Susan C. Mapp The United States is currently in the process of trying a child soldier who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for the past 8 years. Omar Khadr, a Canadian citizen, is accused of throwing a grenade that killed an American soldier, Sgt. Christopher Speer. Omar was 15 years old at the time, well below the minimum age for child soldiers. The head of UNICEF, a former U.S. national security advisor, has stated…
Book thumbnail image Those All-Important First Teachers By Amy Nathan “I only want to play cartoon music!” That was the pre-condition my older son made at age seven for being willing to begin piano lessons. He loved music, having become a fan of the Empire Brass Quintet after seeing them on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood on TV, and was waiting eagerly until he was old enough to toot a trumpet. But learning something about the basics of music in the meantime by taking piano lessons — that he wasn’t sure about. So he made his cartoon-music demand.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: a Shell, a Puffin, and a Parking Garage Yes, those are all items Lauren obsessed over this week, and then some.
Book thumbnail image Good grammar leads to violence at Starbucks? Apparently an English professor was ejected from a Starbucks on Manhattan’s Upper West Side for–she claims–not deploying Starbucks’ mandatory corporate-speak. The story immediately lit up the internet, turning her into an instant celebrity. Just as Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who couldn’t take it anymore, became the heroic employee who finally bucked the system when he cursed out nasty passengers over the intercom and deployed the emergency slide to make his escape, Lynne Rosenthal was the customer who cared so much about good English that she finally stood up to the coffee giant and got run off the premises by New York’s finest for her troubles. Well, at least that’s what she says happened.
Book thumbnail image For The Love Of Bob Marley Something about summertime makes Bob Marley music pop up everywhere, but I recently realized I don’t actually know very much about Marley. The following is from The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin.
Book thumbnail image The End of Discovery By Russell Stannard How many of us appreciate just how fortunate we are to be living at a time of scientific discovery? How many realise that the scientific age is but a brief, transitory phase in the evolution and development of humankind? One day it will all come to an end.
Book thumbnail image Suffering for Suffrage, 90 Years Since I have a younger brother, so as a little girl, I was the boss. The authority I exerted was based on age and size, so it never occurred to me that gender could be an influencing factor. I think it was actually School House Rock or Mary Poppins that taught me women had to fight […]
The Price of Praise and Prizes, or Prizing up an Etymological Bottle By Anatoly Liberman In an essay posted a few months ago, I spoke about the origin of the verb allow and noted its insecure ties with Latin laudare “to praise.” “Allow” and “praise,” as it turned out, form a union not only in English. At that that time, I promised to return to the idea underlying the concept of praise and the etymology of the verb praise. Every man, it is said, has his price, and so does every praise.
Book thumbnail image What on Earth is The Wind in the Willows? By Peter Hunt To judge from a quick poll of friends, acquaintances, students, and the ladies in the village shop, The Wind in the Willows is fondly remembered, even by those who don’t actually remember reading it. It is a children’s book, it is about small animals – and it is somehow quintessentially English: for almost everyone I spoke to, it conjured up endless summer, boating on a quiet river, large hampers of food, a peaceful, unthreatening way of life.
Book thumbnail image While You Are/n’t Sleeping Dr. Rosalind Cartwright has dedicated her life’s work to the study of sleep, and in her new book The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives she proposes a new theory on the confluence of our dreaming and waking selves. Cartwright discussed the film Inception with us a few weeks ago, and here she answers a few more questions I had about the unconscious mind.
Book thumbnail image The “Ground Zero Mosque” and An Ode to Political Correctness By Elvin Lim Last Friday, President Barack Obama communicated his support for the building of a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero, saying, “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.” This seemed harmless enough until he found out that over two-thirds of America disagreed with him. Chastened, the President went off-message…saying, “I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” Tsk, Tsk, Barack Obama.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles Arrive in Hamburg, August 1960 By Gordon Thompson Although Americans often talk about a “British Invasion” that started in February 1964, the groundwork for that cultural phenomenon may actually have begun fifty years ago this month when, on 17 August 1960, the Beatles began performing at the Indra, a small club in red-light district of the West German city of Hamburg. The van and ferry ride to Hamburg with manager Allan Williams had the Beatles arriving at night in one of Europe’s most decadent enclaves. The St. Pauli district thrived on sex
Book thumbnail image Is it “Ms.” or “Miss”? By Dennis Baron A rare occurrence of “Ms.” in 1885 suggests that the term is an abbreviation of “Miss.” Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.”
Book thumbnail image The Appeal of Prop 8 and the Long Road Ahead By William N. Eskridge Jr. and Darren Spedale “Judge Walker’s opinion exposes these longstanding claims for that they have always been—desperate efforts to justify a longstanding discrimination that a persecuted minority was no longer willing to tolerate. Every American should read Judge Walker’s opinion, not so much for its fine constitutional analysis, but rather for its remarkable factual findings. These findings are profound and ought to be debated publicly as well as judicially.”
Book thumbnail image Lives of the Artists By Alana Salguero, Grove Art Editorial Assistant From van Gogh and his notorious left ear to Salvador Dalí with his legendary moustache, the art world boasts a colorful cast of characters whose unorthodox behavior has generated as much public interest as its artistic oeuvre. It appears that creativity often begets eccentricity (or vice versa, the age old chicken-and-egg conundrum), blurring the boundaries between art, performance, and life.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Kittens, Tattoos, Pop-Up Books Today is Friday the 13th AND Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday (1899) AND Fidel Castro’s birthday (1926) AND William Goldman’s birthday (1931) (y’know, he wrote The Princess Bride) AND Annie Oakley’s birthday (1860). Craz-ay. Here are some other tidbits I found amusing.
Book thumbnail image Technology Update: Flying Books Can Be Dangerous One of the big news stories this week was about JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who famously unleashed an expletive-ridden rant over his plane’s PA system, then pulled emergency-evacuation chute lever and made a dramatic sliding exit onto the JFK tarmac. It is only appropriate, I think, that we take this moment to consider the intersection between e-readers and airplane safety. Please pull your desk chairs into the full, upright position and enjoy the following musings from Dennis Baron.
OMG IT’S FRIDAY THE 13TH!!! In case you didn’t know.
Book thumbnail image The State of ‘Judenpolitik’ Before the Beginning of the War Peter Longerich is Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London and founder of the College’s Holocaust Research Centre. His book, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, shows the steps taken by the Nazis that would ultimately lead to the Final Solution. He argues that anti-Semitism was not a mere by-product of Nazi political mobilization or an attempt to deflect the attention of the masses. Rather, from 1933 onwards, anti-Jewish policy was a central tenet of the Nazi movement’s attempts to implement, disseminate, and secure National Socialist rule. In the excerpt below Longerich analyzes the state of Jewish citizens of Germany right before the start of the war.
Book thumbnail image Are you ready for rebuses? By Alexander Humez Largely gone from the funny pages but alive and well on the rear bumper of the car, the rebus is a visual puzzle that, in its various forms, encapsulates the history of alphabetic writing from ideograms (pictures designating concepts or things) to pictographs (pictures representing specific words or phrases) to phonograms (pictures representing specific sounds or series of sounds). Dictionaries struggle to define the term in such a way as to capture the range of shapes a rebus can take, typically focussing on its pictographic and phonogrammic attributes, forgoing mention of the ideographic.
The Edinburgh International Festival This week the world famous Edinburgh International Festival kicks off, beginning three weeks of the best the arts world has to offer. The Fringe Festival has already begun in earnest with countless alternative, weird, and wacky events happening all over the city. Later in August sees the Edinburgh International Book Festival and there will be several OUP authors giving talks over a fortnight, including David Crystal, Tariq Ramadan, Frank Close, Ian Glynn, and Robin Hanbury-Tenison.
Book thumbnail image Gypsy Rose Lee Vindicated by Catalina Ban on Bull Fighting By Noralee Frankel In late July, Catalonia a region in Spain outlawed bull fighting. The vote in parliament was spurred by a petition signed by 180,000 people. The burlesque queen and author, Gypsy Rose Lee would have been pleased. What has a famous strip tease artist have to do with bull fighting? In 1950, Gypsy Rose Lee was blacklisted from radio and television, not for sexuality, but for her liberal politics. She had been a very successful moderator of two silly game shows, all the rage in the fifties. Unable to work on the new media, she left for Europe where she performed her strip tease.
The Oddest English Spellings, Part 17 By Anatoly Liberman Even the staunchest opponents of spelling reform should feel dismayed. How is it possible to sustain such chaos, now that sustainable has become the chief buzzword in our vocabulary? Never mind foreigners—they chose to study English and should pay for their decision, but what have native speakers done to deserve this torture? The answer is clear: they are too loyal to a fickle tradition.
Book thumbnail image What has become of genius? By Andrew Robinson “In the early 21st century, talent appears to be on the increase, genius on the decrease. More scientists, writers, composers, and artists than ever before earn a living from their creative output. During the 20th century, performance standards and records continually improved in all fields—from music and singing to chess and sports. But where is the Darwin or the Einstein, the Mozart or the Beethoven, the Chekhov or the Shaw, the Cézanne or the Picasso or the Cartier-Bresson of today?”
Book thumbnail image The Deep Politics of the 14th Amendment By Elvin Lim In 2004, the Republican’s hot button political issue du jour was same-sex marriage. 11 states approved ballot measures that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Last week, a federal judge struck down California’s Proposition 8 (passed in 2008) because it “fails to advance any rational basis for singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license.” However, Republicans politicians are not taking the bait to revisit this hot button political issue, despite Rush Limbaugh’s encouragement.
Book thumbnail image Struggling for the American Soul at Ground Zero By Edward E. Curtis IV Like Gettysburg, the National Mall, and other historic sites, Ground Zero is a place whose symbolic importance extends well beyond local zoning disputes and real estate deals. The recent controversy over a proposal to build a Muslim community center two blocks away from the former World Trade Center shows it clearly: the geography of Lower Manhattan has become a sacred ground on which religious and political battles of national importance are being waged.
Book thumbnail image QUIZ: How well do you know your -nyms? By Alexander Humez Do you fancy yourself to be a grammarian extraordinaire? Prove it and take THIS QUIZ! Now is the opportunity to dazzle your friends and confound your enemies with a test of your –nym knowledge. The test consists of a list of ten words, each beginning with the letter k, each serving as an example of a –nym that you are asked to identify from a set of choices. Immediate feedback is provided for each choice, and you can display your final score when you’re done.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Pop-Tarts, Beatboxing, Robots If you don’t know what a spam queue is, I envy you. Everyday, this blog receives hundreds of bot-generated comments that I have to sift through while sighing dramatically so my coworkers know how annoyed I am. It’s a tedious task, but once in a while I get a gem like this one: Hello, I […]
Book thumbnail image Remembering Hiroshima Today, it is 65 years since the United States first dropped the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” on Hiroshima. Soon after, on August 9th, 1945, the United States released “Fat Man” over Nagasaki. The aftermath, of course, was predictably horrific.
Book thumbnail image Special Envoys in the Middle East, Thousands of Years Ago By Amanda H. Podany In President Obama’s speech last December when he received the Nobel Prize, he observed that, “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease—the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.” This comment almost seems to need no supporting evidence; it’s just common knowledge and common sense. And, for the most part, it’s true. That point, though, about war being the way that ancient civilizations “settled their differences”—that isn’t in fact the whole story. Ancient kings could, and did, send their armies into battle against one another. But some of them also talked to one another, wrote letters, sent ambassadors back and forth between their capitals, and drew up peace treaties. Sometimes, as a result, they avoided war and benefited from peaceful alliances, often for decades at a time.
Book thumbnail image Norman Names I couldn’t help noticing this story, which states that many of the names still popular in English-speaking countries originate from the Normans, who won control of England in 1066. Meanwhile, names that were popular in England at the time – such as Aethelred, Eadric, and Leofric – have disappeared. With that in mind, I turned to Babies’ Names, by Patrick Hanks and Kate Hardcastle, to find out more about Norman names.
Deceptive Compounds, Part 2 By Anatoly Liberman Part 1 appeared long ago and dealt with blackguard, blackleg, and blackmail, three words whose history is unclear despite the seeming transparency of their structure. Were those guards as black as they were painted? Who had black legs, and did anyone ever receive black mail? As I then noted, the etymology of compounds may be evasive. One begins with obvious words (doormat, for example), passes by dormouse with its impenetrable first element, wonders at moonstone (does it have anything to do with the moon?), moonlighting, and moonshine (be it “foolish talk” or “illegally distilled whiskey”), experiences a temporary relief at the sight of roommate, and stops in bewilderment at mushroom. The way from dormouse to mushroom is full of pitfalls. (And shouldn’t pitfall be fallpit? Originally a pitfall was a trapdoor, a snare, a device for catching birds, but then why pit?).
Book thumbnail image On the Practitioners of Science “Physics is rather hard to blog, so I’ll write instead about the practitioners of science – what are they like? Are there certain personality types that do science? Does the science from different countries end up being different?”
Book thumbnail image God’s Polity: Faith and Power Bernard Lewis is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Easter Studies Emeritus at Princeton University. His new book, Faith and Power: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, illuminates the role of religion in the Middle East, revealing how it has shaped society for good and for ill. In the excerpt below, which looks at Islamic government, we learn about the long history of religion intertwining with governmental authority.
Book thumbnail image The Mysteries of Summer By Rosemary Herbert Henry James was a man of many words. But when it came to selecting just a pair that he would define as “the two most beautiful words in the English language,” he chose the words, “summer afternoon.” If you are an avid reader setting out for a weekend — or better yet, an extended vacation — with a stack of books or a well-loaded electronic reader in hand, you may speculate that James saw summer afternoons as beautiful because they are especially congenial times to spend reading. Voracious readers know that the prospect of extended leisure time to spend with their books is one of the great joys of summer.
Book thumbnail image Obama on “The View” By Elvin Lim President Barack Obama knew that he needed to help his party out as Washington gears up for the November elections. And so, he went on daytime television. According to Nielsen ratings, Obama had 6.5 million people tuning in to The View last Thursday. In his last Oval Office address on the BP oil spill at primetime on June 16, he enticed only 5.3 million to listen in. As a pure matter of strategy, the decision to go on The View would have been a no-brainer. With a bigger audience in a relaxed atmosphere and soft-ball questions, Obama had little to lose and much to gain by going on daytime TV. In fact, because people are tired of speeches from behind a desk (which is why speeches from the Oval Office garner smaller and smaller audiences the further we are from Inauguration day), people rarely get to see a president taking questions on a couch (which is why The View got .4 million more viewers on July 31, 2010 than on November 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected).
Book thumbnail image Public Offices for Sale: The Emerging Dominance of Multimillionaire Candidates by Edward Zelinsky I live in Connecticut. The Nutmeg State’s 2010 election campaign is a prime example of the emerging domination of American politics by self-funding multimillionaires. This troubling trend has been exacerbated by what is euphemistically called campaign finance reform. The law of unintended consequences strikes again. There is, I suggest, a better way. Former Connecticut congressman Rob Simmons had been the front-runner for the GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate until Linda McMahon declared her candidacy. Mrs. McMahon has never held public office. She is, however, along with her husband Vince, a founder of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and a multimillionaire.
July 2010 (53))
Politics & Paine: Part 4 Welcome to the final installment the Politics & Paine series. Harvey Kaye and Elvin Lim are corresponding about Thomas Paine, American politics, and beyond. Read the first post here, and the second post here, and the third post here. Kaye is the author of the award-winning book, Thomas Paine: Firebrand of Revolution, as well as […]
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: William Carlos Williams, Goats, NASA Yesterday, I tried to start a #mathbattle on Twitter, but it proved too geeky to take. (Go figure.) I was having a nostalgic moment, remembering back in middle school when we had to write date equations. Everyday. Because each day, my friends, is different. A new day, full of new possibilities, opportunities, and numbers. Today is 7/30/2010. That means two things: 1) It will be August very, very soon. 2) We have the numbers 7, 3, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0 to work with. (Or, you can leave out a 2 and a 0. That is the cheater’s way.) LET’S DO IT! —> 7 – ((3+0)(2 + 0)) = (1 + 0) Yessssss. Math is awesome. Got a better equation? Prove it. Until then, here are some interesting things.
Book thumbnail image Friday Pet Blogging: Bentley Did you guys see that movie The Blind Side? I’m a huge Michael Lewis fan—MONEYBALL WHAT!—plus I’ve been a huge Sandra Bullock buff ever since her performance in Speed 2. So needless to say, Blind Side was a must-see for me last year. Anyway, I was SHOCKED by how much that movie resonates with my real life. Consider these similarities between me and the protagonist, Michael Oher: 1. Oher lived in poverty for 16 years; I lived in a cage for 6 years 2. Oher was adopted by a southern lady with strong opinions; my mommy is southern and has very strong opinions about me eating chicken bones in the park (SPOILER ALERT: she’s against it)
Book thumbnail image Politics & Paine: Part 3 Welcome back to the Politics & Paine series. Harvey Kaye and Elvin Lim are corresponding about Thomas Paine, American politics, and beyond. Kaye is the author of the award-winning book, Thomas Paine: Firebrand of Revolution, as well as Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change & Development and Director, Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. Lim is author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, and a regular contributor to OUPBlog.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles, Orientalism, and Help! By Gordon Thompson At the July 29, 1965 premiere of the Beatles’ second film, Help!, most viewers understood the farce as a send-up of British flicks that played on the exoticism of India, while at the same time spoofing the popularity of James Bond. Parallel with this cinematic escapism, a post-colonial discourse began that questioned how colonial powers justified their economic exploitation of the world. Eventually, Edward Said’s Orientalism would describe the purpose of this objectification as “dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (1978: 3). In effect, Said and others argued that portrayals of the non-Western other
Book thumbnail image Philosophy Bites: A Podcast What does Simon Blackburn have to say about morality? What does A.C. Grayling think about atheism? Alain de Botton about the aesthetics of architecture? Adrian Moore about infinity? Will Kymlicka about minority rights? For the last three years, David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton have challenged some of the world’s leading philosophers to hold forth on their favourite topics for the highly successful Philosophy Bites podcast. Now 25 of these entertaining, personal, and illuminating conversations are presented in print for the first time.
Book thumbnail image Politics & Paine: Part 2 Welcome back to the Politics & Paine series. Harvey Kaye and Elvin Lim are corresponding about Thomas Paine, American politics, and beyond. Kaye is the author of the award-winning book, Thomas Paine: Firebrand of Revolution, as well as Thomas Paine and the Promise of America. He is the Ben & Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Social Change & Development and Director, Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. Lim is author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University, and a regular contributor to OUPBlog.
Book thumbnail image Let the Decision Fall By LeeAnna Keith Associate Justice Clarence Thomas took dead aim at Supreme Court tradition in his recent concurring opinion on gun control in the city of Chicago. McDonald v. Chicago, named for an African American plaintiff, raised the question of whether the 2nd Amendment’s guarantee of the right to bear arms imposed limitations against the states. A plurality of justices insisted
Monthly Gleanings: July 2010 by Anatoly Liberman HOOSIER. Almost exactly two years ago, on July 30, 2008, I posted an essay on the origin of the nickname Hoosier. In it I expressed my cautious support of R. Hooser, who derived the “moniker” for an inhabitant of Indiana from a family name. I was cautious not because I found fault […]
Book thumbnail image Politics & Paine: Part 1 Earlier this month, Harvey Kaye led a discussion of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings at the Bryant Park Reading Room. It got me thinking: what is the influence of Paine on Americans today? Who among us are the devotees? Are we over-quoting, over-citing, over-appropriating his politics? So, I decided to introduce Harvey Kaye to Elvin Lim, and ask if they wouldn’t mind corresponding about this matter. They readily agreed. Below is the first of four installments of this conversation; the second of which will appear tomorrow.
Book thumbnail image Looking for Robinson Crusoe Shipwreck: But it wasn’t. It was much more mundane, though no less violent. “Lie Like the truth” —Daniel DeFoe Why do I need to circle around and invent, when a list of facts could do just as well or better: On an evening in October, your father dies suddenly of a heart attack. Eight weeks later, you find that the reason your husband has been almost completely absent through this abrupt shock into mourning has not been because of his work. Turns out he has another life in another country and another language. A woman with her own daughter the same age as our youngest. What he doesn’t have is an income and apparently he hasn’t had one for quite a while now. Turns out he is in love.
Book thumbnail image Elections 2010: Politics at a Time of Uncertainty By Elvin Lim We have 99 Days to go before Election Day. How different things look today compared to Obama’s first 100 days. In the last year and a half, the national mood has turned from hope to uncertainty. The sluggish job market is the economic representation of this psychological state. Business are not expanding […]
Book thumbnail image The Man Who Did Not Take His Medicine “Some memories are more vivid than others, some experiences more profound. Pedro’s story is one of those. I remember the morning Pedro told me in the stroke clinic that his greatest pain since his stroke was his physical inability to care for Lucy, his dog. I remember the noose of hopelessness dangling around his neck; the way he sat in front of me, scratching frenziedly at his paralyzed right arm, the deep excoriation marks, the trails of oozing blood from under his skin, my concerns about a drug allergy, and the way he talked about Lucy. I remember watching tears fall from his heavy eyes and the relief in my heart that he was opening up for the first time in months since his stroke. I remember not knowing what to do; a momentary lapse that seemed infinitely long.”
Book thumbnail image Friday Pet Blogging: Redford & Nikita Welcome to round two. Last week you met Redford and Nikita. Two brave souls attempting to bridge the gap between dogs and cats. As our two volunteers continue to explore their common love of literature, we are quickly learning that the written word does more than just spark conversation for your book club.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Gary Vaynerchuk, Stonehenge, Sad Keith Gessen Looking at what I’m choosing to share this week, one might call this the brand-placement edition of Linked Up. But it’s actually the accidental-brand-placement edition. Lucky them. (P.S. I think Lucky Brand Jeans is having a sale.)
Book thumbnail image The Essential Stonehenge Stonehenge was begun about 2800 B.C. by a people who had no written language, no wheeled vehicles, no draft animals, and no metal tools. To dig holes in the ground, they used the antlers of deer. The initial Stonehenge consisted of a circular embankment 350 feet (107 meters) in diameter, four marker stones set in a rectangle, some postholes, and the Heel Stone. The Heel Stone was apparently the first of the great boulders brought to this site as construction commenced. But it may not have stood alone. A similar huge stone stood just to its left as seen from the center of Stonehenge. In that ancient time, the Sun at the beginning of summer probably rose between the famed Heel Stone and its now-vanished companion, and the alignment with sunrise at the summer solstice was probably exact.
Bouncy-ball-ectomies, God complex-ectomies and Other Suffix Surgeries I’m no doctor, but Facebook-ectomy is a helluva creative word, and it occurs to me that I’ve been taking -ectomy for granted as a wild and wooly word-producer. Well, I haven’t completed ignored it, as my nonce-word blog has included ponytail-ectomy, butthole-ectomy, homework-ectomy, and who-knows-what-ectomy. My favorite finds are right-side-of-my-head-ectomy and alien-head-ectomy. I’m pretty sure either surgery would qualify as an ouchie…
Book thumbnail image Psychopathy and Beyond David Canter is Professor of Psychology at the University of Hudderfield. Widely known for developing systemic offender profiling in Britain and creating the emerging field of Investigative Psychology, he also provides evidence to government enquiries and major court cases. His new book is Forensic Psychology: A Very Short Introduction, and in the short excerpt below he looks at what a ‘psychpath’ really is.
Book thumbnail image Sleep Science and Inception Rosalind Cartwright has dedicated her entire career’s work to studying sleep, and in her new book The Twenty-four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives she proposes a new theory on the confluence of our dream and waking selves. Here Cartwright reveals the scientific truths behind Inception and why, once we resolve Leo’s unconscious self, we should start tending to our own.
Book thumbnail image Military Strategy at the Battle of Bull Run Donald Stoker is Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College‘s program at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His most recent book is The Grand Design: Strategy and the U.S. Civil War, and in the original post below, he dismantles a common myth about the Battle of Bull Run–the first major land battle of the Civil War–which was fought 149 years ago, today.
An Etymological Raft When a journalist on a prestigious paper happens to use a word, it becomes common property almost at once. Suddenly I began noticing raft everywhere: a raft of shabby houses, a raft of proposals, and so forth. Whether raft will attain the status of a buzzword the future will show (it has such potential). Now is the time for all good writers to avoid it. Raft “multitude,” supposedly an Americanism, has slighting or disparaging overtones, though nowadays it sounds more like a colloquialism (“a whole bunch of…”). Its origin is unknown, but in search of help it may be useful to look at the other raft and its environment.
Book thumbnail image “Refudiate this, word snobs!” Here at Oxford, we love words. We love when they have ancient histories, we love when they have double-meanings, we love when they appear in alphabet soup, and we love when they are made up.
Book thumbnail image Liking (or at least understanding) like: Part 2 In my last post I discussed how the word like has a long history in English. I also talked about its perception as a scourge on the language. But there isn’t just one like—there’s an array of likes. The thing is, they all sound the same. This makes it seem as though like is being used often (some will say too often), but those likes aren’t all doing the same thing. Each one has a specialized job.
Book thumbnail image Racism, the NAACP and the Tea Party Movement The NAACP was doing its job when it accused the Tea Party movement of harboring “racist elements,” but it didn’t necessarily go about it in the most productive way. All it took was for supporters of the Tea Party movement like Sarah Palin to write, “All decent Americans abhor racism,” and that with the election of Barack Obama we became a “post-racial” society, and the NAACP’s charge was soundly “refudiated.” Or, as Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell put it to Candy Crowley on CNN on Sunday, he’s “got better things to do” than weigh in on the debate. He was elected to deal with real problems, not problems made up in people’s heads. Case closed.
Book thumbnail image This Day in History: Rosetta Stone Found This day in 1799, the Rosetta Stone was found during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign about 35 miles north of Alexandria. To learn more about this famous artifact, I turned to Oxford Reference Online and discovered this entry, taken from Carol A. R. Andrews’ article “Rosetta Stone” in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology edited by Brian […]
Book thumbnail image Obesity or “Globesity”? Sander L. Gilman is a distinguished professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences as well as Professor Psychiatry at Emory University where he is the Director of the Program in Psychoanalysis and the Health Science Initiative. His new book, Obesity: The Biography, traces the history of obesity from the ancient Greeks to the present day, acknowledging that its history is shaped by the meanings attached to the obese body, defined in part by society and culture. In the excerpt below we learn about “globesity”.
Book thumbnail image Friday Pet Blogging: Nikita & Redford Though typically considered enemies and many times relegated to different parts of the yard, we are here today to take the first steps to bridge the gap between our species. Representing for canines will be Redford, and weighing in for the feline perspective will be Nikita. Redford and Nikita have agreed to meet on neutral territory to open up a dialogue and see if they can find some common ground for their people to run around on.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Old Spice, Drunk Hulk, Caffeine Q: What do you call a leafy green rock star? A: Elvis Parsley. Enough of that. Here are some other items I found amusing this week.
Book thumbnail image The War on Poverty Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History, pieces together oral history interviews with former president Lyndon B. Johnson and his team of advisers as they undertook the Great Society’s greatest challenge. This excerpt is taken from an interview with Robert J. Lampman, a staff member of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 1962 to 1963 who worked in the Kennedy Administration along with Walter Heller, chairman of the CEA. The Saturday Group, called so because of their Saturday “brown bag” lunches, would meet informally (at first) to discuss how they could approach the problem of poverty and solutions that could be brought about with assistance from the government. Their luncheons were the beginnings of a social movement that would become pivotal in giving assistance where it was needed. Their work is still seen today, in the forms of public assistance that we once never had an option of choosing when survival was the only thing that was of importance.
Book thumbnail image Rembrandt Through His Own Eyes Today marks the would-be 404th birthday of prolific Dutch painter/etcher Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, who was born in Leiden in 1606, and passed away in Amsterdam on October 4, 1669. Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston. Her most recent book is Portraits and Persons, and in the excerpt below, she considers Rembrandt’s many self-portraits, and speculates as to why he was so attracted to this art form.
Book thumbnail image What Do Angels Look Like? Guardians, messengers, protectors… what are angels? In Angels: A History, David Albert Jones, Director of the Centre for Bioethics and Emerging Technologies at St Mary’s University College, explores the enduring power of angels over the human imagination. He argues that they teach us something about our own existence, whether or not we believe in theirs. In this excerpt from the book, Professor Jones talks about what different religious texts tells us about what angels look like.
Book thumbnail image Quantum mechanics? That’s child’s play. Vlatko Vedral is Professor of Quantum Information Science at the Universities of Oxford and Singapore. He has published more than 130 research papers, two textbooks, and is the author of Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information. Here, Vedral makes the case for why four-year-olds just might be the best students of quantum mechanics.
The Long Arm of Calumny The word libel has perfectly innocent antecedents. Its etymon is Latin libellus, the diminutive of liber “book,” whose root we can see in library. When libel (later also libelle) appeared in English toward the end of the 14th century—a borrowing from Old French—it meant exactly what one expects, that is, “a little book, pamphlet.” The rest is a classic example of a process called in works on historical semantics the deterioration of meaning. The OED traces every step of the downfall. “Little book” ? “a formal document, a written declaration or statement” ? “the document of the plaintiff containing his allegations and instituting a suit” ? “a leaflet assailing or defaming someone’s character” ? “any published statement damaging to the character of a person” ? “any false or defamatory statement” (the last stage had been reached by the beginning of the 17th century).
Book thumbnail image Walter Lord: Story-teller or Social Historian? John Welshman is the author of Churchill’s Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain. He is currently working on a book provisionally entitled Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town (forthcoming, 2012). Below he talks about Walter Lord, who wrote the acclaimed book A Night to Remember about the Titantic. You can read his previous OUPblog posts here.
Book thumbnail image Robot Teachers! (Coming Soon to a Classroom Near You) They’re coming, and they’ll be here by September! Robot teachers, programmed with a single mission: to save our failing schools. Funded by the Frankenstein Foundation, computer engineers in secret mountain laboratories and workshops hidden deep below the desert floor are feverishly soldering chips and circuit boards onto bits of aluminum to create mechanical life forms whose sole purpose is to teach English. We need this invasion of English-teaching robots because, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego, “an unprecedented number of children in the US start public school with major deficits in basic academic skills, including vocabulary skills.”
Book thumbnail image Why Obama is Losing Independents Gallup reported last week that President Obama’s job approval among Independent voters dipped to 38 percent, the lowest support he has ever received from this group of voters. It would be too easy for Democrats to blame these numbers on the Tea Party movement. Some Independents are Tea Partiers – and those the President has forever lost – but not all Independents are Tea Partiers. To understand why Obama has lost so many other Independents, we need to understand that Independents are a curious bunch. They don’t believe in partisan loyalty, yet they are notoriously fickle. They may be fairer than Fox and more balanced than MSNBC, and yet because they are beholden neither to personalities nor parties, but to issues, their love for a politician can be vanquished as quickly as s/he fails to perform.
Book thumbnail image You could quit smoking–and not gain weight! “You’ve given me new hope.” So read the e-mail that arrived shortly after Parade Magazine published a story about my research showing that trying to manage weight gain while stopping smoking can help rather than hurt successful quitting. A steady stream of similar messages flowed in, taking my mind back to the days when I first started to study weight gain after quitting smoking. I still flinch at the memories.
Book thumbnail image Is Greece Relevant? Seven Lessons for the U.S. From the Greek Fiscal Crisis Are Greece’s fiscal woes relevant to the United States? Responding to the simmering national debate on this issue, Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, answers with an emphatic “no.” “America isn’t Greece,” Professor Krugman confidently tells us. With equal assurance, Charles Krauthammer on Fox News comes to the opposite conclusion. Given current trends in U.S. public finance, Dr. Krauthammer contends, Greece is our “future.” In a similar vein, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan approvingly cites the analogy between Greece and the U.S. as setting “the stage for a serious response” to the United States’ budgetary challenges. The Greek experience is not inevitable, but it is instructive.
Book thumbnail image Friday Pet Blogging: Stuie I’m often understandably mistaken for a Pomeranian. We are cousins. I am a 4 year-old German Spitz Klein [small Spitz] and I was adopted by my human friend at BARC Shelter in Williamsburg. It was love at first sight. But don’t let my silky fur and cute, little cookie face fool you, when it comes to reading I’m dead serious. Life is too short and there’s no time for fiction. I’m a true crime lover. There’s nothing better than curling up on my pillow spending hours lost in the fervor of a terrifying crime spree and its aftermath. The excitement, the fear, the victim/s, the suspect/s, the cops, the investigation, I love it. Then ultimately the trial and surprise verdict keeps me turning the pages.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Speedos, Underwear, Insults The heat wave! It broke! Now it’s only…in the high 80’s! To be honest, it was very hard to focus this week when all we New Yorkers could do was sweat, and complain about the garbage smells, and whine about how it was only 67° in Los Angeles. Other than that, though, I had a fabulous week. I learned about Meg Cabot’s crush on Michael Nourri, tweeted about #DraculaOnTwitter, and publicly embarrassed our new assistants, so I’m pretty darned pleased with myself. Below are some other things that kept me distracted from the heat.
Book thumbnail image Revising Our Freedom In a list of the colonies’ grievances against King George III Jefferson wrote, “he has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-subjects, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.” But the future president, whose image now graces the two-dollar bill, must have realized right away that “fellow-subjects” was the language of monarchy, not democracy, because “while the ink was still wet” Jefferson took out “subjects” and put in “citizens.”
Book thumbnail image Meet the New Assistants! A few weeks ago, we were joined by two wonderful new publicity assistants, Nick and Bobby. Now that they’re settled in, I decided it was time to harass properly introduce them to you. Hopefully this (incredibly interesting) Q&A will show how lucky we are to have them on board.
Book thumbnail image OBO Recommends: Shakespeare Oxford Bibliographies Online is a series of intuitive and easy-to-use “ultimate reading lists” designed to help users navigate the vast seas of information that exist today. To introduce you to this new online tool, Andrew Herrmann, Associate Editor of OBO, has some suggested reading related to Shakespeare. Use his study guide below to impress your friends this summer.
Book thumbnail image Ethiopia Since Live Aid, Part III: On Africa, aid, and the West This third and final part of our ‘Ethiopia Since Live Aid’ blog feature is an original post by Peter Gill, in which he discusses the West’s view of aid and Africa. If you missed it, on Tuesday we read an excerpt from the book, and yesterday we ran an exclusive Q&A with Peter.
Book thumbnail image Meg Cabot Sinks her Teeth into Dracula Meg Cabot (of Princess Diaries fame) is the author of over twenty-five series and books for both adults and teens. Her most recent book is the paranormal romance Insatiable, a modern sequel to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Armed with the Oxford World Classics edition, she launched a Dracula reading group earlier this summer, and now–in an exclusive Q&A–shares her thoughts on all things vampire. Read on for the chance to test your knowledge and win prizes!
Bamboozle Two circumstances have induced me to turn to bamboozle. First, I am constantly asked about its origin and have to confess my ignorance (with the disclaimer: “No one knows where it came from”; my acquaintances seldom understand this statement, for I have a reputation to live up to and am expected to provide final answers about the derivation of all words). Second, the Internet recycles the same meager information at our disposal again and again (I am not the only recipient of the fateful question). Since the etymology of bamboozle is guesswork from beginning to end, it matters little how often the uninspiring truth is repeated. Below I will say what little I can about the verb.
Book thumbnail image Ethiopia Since Live Aid, Part II: A few questions for Peter Gill This exclusive Q&A is the second of three OUPblog posts from Peter Gill. Yesterday we read an excerpt from his book, and check back tomorrow for an original post by him.
Book thumbnail image The Meaning of Independence Day Americans celebrate Independence Day on July 4, the day the words of the Declaration of Independence were set on parchment. John Adams had famously predicted that this day “ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” Because these celebrations have become annual rituals, we have stopped thinking about exactly what it is we are celebrating.
Book thumbnail image “I am Troy Davis” Troy Davis has been on death row since 1991 for the alleged 1989 murder of a police officer in Savannah, Georgia. Now, key prosecution witnesses have come forward and admitted that their original testimonies were not truthful. On June 23, an evidentiary hearing began, and a ruling on Troy Davis is expected not long after legal briefs are filed on July 7th. Here, Elizabeth Beck and Sarah Britto remember the death row sentencing of Troy Davis, the ongoing controversies, and consider what it means to be the man accused of a crime he may not have committed.
Book thumbnail image Ethiopia Since Live Aid, Part I: An Excerpt Kicking off three great OUPblog posts on Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid is a short excerpt from the first chapter. Come back tomorrow for an exclusive Q&A with Peter Gill, followed by an original post by him on Thursday.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Pokémon, Tuna, KFC This has been a fantastic week for me. I didn’t spill my coffee once, I (almost) cleaned my desk, and I finished Mad Men season 1. (Yes, I know I’m way behind.) Here in the States, it’s the 4th of July this weekend. Well, I suppose it will be the 4th of July everywhere, but for us it’s Independence Day, and I’m headed to Washington DC. How will you be celebrating? Leave a comment and let me know! In the meantime, here are some items that caught my attention this week.
Book thumbnail image The Fourth of July and the Separation of Powers Donald A. Ritchie is Historian of the Senate and the author of Our Constitution, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government, Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps, and most recently The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction. In this original post, he reflects on the legacy of the Declaration of Independence on the U.S. Government.
Mustang – Podictionary Word of the Day Around 500 years ago the Spanish brought horses to the Americas and in the ensuing mêlée enough of those horses escaped captivity that they reestablished themselves as wild animals in the new world. Evidently more than 50 million years ago they evolved here but had become extinct. Although the name for wild horses in North America only emerged into English as mustang in 1808 this name was actually in the works by those same Spanish speakers before they ever shipped the horses across from Europe.
June 2010 (55))
On Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portraits Cynthia Freeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Texas. Her new book, Portraits and Persons, shows that portraits have served two fundamental fuctions throughout the ages. Firstly, they preserve identity, bringing us closer to loved ones who are either absent or dear. And secondly, they tell us something about the subject being portrayed: not just external things, but also the subject’s emotions and inner state. In the excerpt below Freeland analyzes self-portraits, specifically the work of Frida Kahlo.
Monthly Gleanings: June 2010 I often mention the fact that the questions I get tend to recur, and I do not feel obliged to answer them again and again. Among the favorites is the pronunciation of forte “loudly” and forte “a strong point.” Those who realize that the first word is from Italian and the second from French will have no difficulty keeping them apart, though I wonder why anyone would want to say forte instead of strong point or strong feature: in today’s intellectual climate, elegant foreignisms are paste rather than diamonds. Very common is the query about the difference between “I could care less” and “I could not care less.” The “classic” variant is with the negation. Perhaps someone decided that “I could not care less” means “I do care for it” and removed not.
Book thumbnail image King Arthur: Most Successful Brand in English Literature? King Arthur has some claim to be the most successful commercial brand in the history of English literature, ahead even of Shakespeare. He has certainly been famous for much longer: his reputation has been growing for some fifteen centuries, against Shakespeare’s mere four.
Book thumbnail image Measuring Progress in Afghanistan David Kilcullen is a former Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Patraeus in Iraq as well as a former advisor to General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan. Kilcullen is also Adjunct Professor of Security Studies, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and the author of The Accidental Guerrilla (2009). His new book, Counterinsurgency, is a no-nonsense picture of modern warfare informed by his experiences on the ground in some of today’s worst trouble spots–including Iraq and Afghanistan. In this excerpt, Kilcullen shares a few insights as to how progress in the Afghan campaign can be properly tracked and assessed.
Book thumbnail image Why McChrystal’s Out, but Obama’s Still Down Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Book thumbnail image Diplomatic Marriages Amanda H. Podany is Professor of History at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Her new book, Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East, is a vivid tour of a thousand years of ancient Near Eastern history, from 2300 to 1300 BCE. She focuses on the establishment of international diplomacy, how the great kings of the day devised diplomacy and trade. In the excerpt below we learn about a marriage contract between two kings, one of the ways countries sealed alliances.
Book thumbnail image Science and the “Me Test” Neuroscientist Simon LeVay has served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, and is well-known for a 1991 study in which he reported on a difference in brain structure between gay and straight men. His forthcoming book Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation examines the evidence that suggests sexual orientation results primarily from an interaction between genes, sex hormones, and the cells of the developing body and brain. In this original post, LeVay explains how he initially reacts to new reported findings in this field.
Book thumbnail image The Unsung: Lost Stories of New York Urban Renewal Samuel Zipp is Assistant Professor of American Civilization and Urban Studies at Brown University, and author of Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. In this original post, Zipp moves beyond the well-known personalities of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, profiling another cast of characters who molded and shaped the city we know today. For fun facts, media bites, and more about the evolution of New York City, check out the Manhattan Projects Facebook page.
Book thumbnail image Linked Up: Vuvuzelas, Trains, Kale Phew. I’ve made it through the first week as blog editor, and I have to tell you: I’ve enjoyed every minute! Thanks so much for all your comments, retweets, likes, etc. New York has been sweltering, but editing OUPBlog has made me feel soooo cool. (Bad wordplay? Yes it was.) Here are some items that caught my attention this week.
Book thumbnail image Natural Relationships and Supernatural Relationships Matt J. Rossano is head of the Psychology department at Southeastern Louisiana University. His new book, Supernatural Selection: How Religion Evolved, presents an evolutionary history of religion, drawing together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show the valuable adaptive purpose served by systemic belief in the supernatural. In the excerpt below, Rossano reminds us of the comfort of believing in things that may be irrational.
Book thumbnail image On This Day In History: Roth v. United States On this day, June 24th, in 1957, the Supreme Court decided Roth v. United States, a case in which Samuel Roth was accused of publishing obscene materials. I wanted to find out more about the decision so I turned to Oxford Reference Online which led me to The Oxford Guide to United States Supreme Court Decisions. The article below, written by Frederick Schauer, provides the details of this important free speech case.
Book thumbnail image What Makes Civilization? In What Makes Civilization?, archaeologist David Wengrow provides a vivid new account of the ‘birth of civilization’ in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). These two regions, where many foundations of modern life were laid, are usually treated in isolation. This book aims to bring them together within a unified history of how people first created cities, kingdoms, and monumental temples to the gods. In the original blog post below, David Wengrow writes about that isolated view of the Near and Middle East.
Book thumbnail image Empire in Muslim Spain Timothy H. Parsons is Professor of African History at Washington University. His new book, The Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fail, illuminates the features common to all empires and lays bare the rationalization of imperialists and their apologists and exposes the true goals, and limits, of hard power. In the excerpt below, from the beginning of a chapter on Muslim Spain, we learn about the conquest of Spain.
Break and Other Br- Words Given how many words that refer to breaking begin with br-, to what extent is classifying break with sound imitative words justified?
Book thumbnail image Some pictures from Hay A couple of weeks ago I brought you a post on the Hay Festival by OUP UK’s Head of Publicity Kate Farquhar-Thomson. Today, for those of you who couldn’t make it to the Festival (like me), here are some of Kate’s photos from the few days she spent there.
Book thumbnail image Urban Renewal from NYC to Amsterdam: A Podcast The forces of real estate development and rebranding campaigns are transforming urban landscapes around the world-and Sharon Zukin has seen much of it first hand. In the following podcast she explains what happens to the people when a city gains financial capital or decides to change its image. Zukin teaches sociology at Brooklyn College and the City University Graduate Center, and is author of this year’s Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.
The President Doth Gesture Too Much Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Obama’s gestures. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Book thumbnail image The Power of Names Barry Blake is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at La Trobe University, and his books include Playing with Words, All About Language, and this May’s Secret Language: Codes, Tricks, Spies, Thieves, and Symbols. In the following piece he reveals the mysterious significance of the name in societies past.
Book thumbnail image Helping Children with Selective Mutism: Breathing and Muscle Relaxation Christopher A. Kearney is a Professor of Psychology and Director of UNLV Child School Refusal and Anxiety Disorders Clinic, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His new book, Helping Children with Selective Mutism and their Parents, provides information that can help readers better understand and combat selective mutism. In the excerpt below, Kearney provides some techniques to help children cope with their anxiety about speaking.
Friday Procrastination: A Goodbye Link Love Well the time has come for me to say goodbye to all of you lovely readers. Running the OUPblog has been a dream job and leaving is very bittersweet. So I thought before I left we could take a trip down memory lane and review some of the best blog posts of the past. This list certainly is not conclusive, just a few of the thousands of posts I had the honor of sharing with you. Please keep in touch. You can follow my adventures on twitter @FordBecca. Ciao!
Book thumbnail image Wednesday Morning at the Apollo By Lauren Appelwick The morning of June 9th, I and about 500 NYC elementary school students gathered at the Apollo theater to dance, gawk at rap music icons, and…learn about healthy eating. Hip Hop HEALS (Healthy Eating and Living in Schools) is a program that seeks to teach young people the rules for healthy living, ways to prevent heart disease and strokes, and curb the incidences of childhood obesity.
Book thumbnail image Hey Everybody! Meet Lauren When I first took over the OUPblog I gave our readers a chance to ask me questions so they could get to know me. Since Lauren will be in charge starting Monday (get excited!), I decided to ask her a few questions before I go. I think her answers will give you a taste of how lucky we are to have her on-board. Don’t worry I plan on saying a proper goodbye tomorrow (Friday).
Book thumbnail image Remembering Exodus and Defeat 70 Years On… 70 years ago, this month, France was thrown into turmoil by the dramatic turn of events of the Second World War. From May 1940, the Germans advanced successfully through the North of the country and the Allies were routed. The British Expeditionary Forces were evacuated at Dunkerque leaving the French populations, both civilian and military, terrified and exposed to invasion.
Book thumbnail image ‘Worst is beginning’: Reading Ulysses Wednesday 16 June was Bloomsday, when fans of James Joyce’s seminal 1922 novel Ulysses celebrate the author’s work. In Ulysses, the action takes place within a single day – 16 June 1904 – in Dublin. As my own nod to Bloomsday, I’m bringing you a short excerpt from Jeri Johnson‘s Introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition of Ulysses, in which she talks about the novel’s formidable reputation and the intimidation readers coming to the novel for the first time might feel.
Book thumbnail image Here’s Looking at You, New York By Michelle Rafferty This month Oxford celebrated the publication of the newest edition of the landmark AIA Guide to New York City with a launch party in the largest architectural exhibit in the world-The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum of Art. Where can you find an apartment for $50 in New York City? The ego of Robert Moses?
Break and Brake Are break and brake related? Yes, they are, but the nature of their relationship deserves a detailed explanation. Break is an ancient word. It has cognates in all the Germanic languages, and Latin frango, whose root shows up in the borrowed words fragile, fragment, and refract, is believed to be allied to it (the infix n may be disregarded for reconstructing the protoform). The principal parts of break in Old English were brecan (infinitive), bræc (preterit singular; æ, as in Modern Engl. man), and brocen (past participle). At that time, verbs like break (so-called strong verbs, which displayed such alternations) had four principal parts.
Book thumbnail image ‘Life Cheapens’: On Bloody Sunday and the Troubles Yesterday the Saville Report, which looked into the events of and surrounding Bloody Sunday in 1972, was published after 12 years. It is the longest and most expensive public inquiry in UK history, costing £195m ($288m). Today I bring you a short excerpt from Northern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction by Marc Mulholland, which talks about Bloody Sunday and other incidents from the Northern Irish Troubles.
Book thumbnail image Two Fundamentals of Counterinsurgency David Kilcullen was formerly the Senior Counterinsurgency Advisor to General David Petraeus in Iraq and is currently advising General Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan. Killcullen is also Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. His new book, Counterinsurgency, is a picture of modern warfare filled with down-to-earth, common-sense insights which helps makes sense of our world in an age of terror. In the excerpt below, from the beginning of the book, Kilcullen explains the two fundamentals of counterinsurgency warfare.
Book thumbnail image Tony Quiz: The Answers Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history. In the post below we provide the answers to last week’s Tony quiz. How many did you get correct?
Book thumbnail image Tim Parsons Podcast: Do Empires Exist Today? Recently Tim Parsons, author of this month’s Rule of Empires: Those Who Built Them, Those Who Endured Them, and Why They Always Fall, stopped by Oxford with his wife Ann. Here Ann asks Tim a few questions about his book and what empires past tell us about the present.
Book thumbnail image Elementary Brain Dysfunction in Schizophrenia Robert Freedman, MD, is Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado and the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Psychiatry. His new book, The Madness Within Us: Schizophrenia as a Neuronal Process, is a discussion of these two aspects of the illness. Freedman outlines the emerging understanding of schizophrenia as a neurobiological illness. In the excerpt below we learn about the basic brain dysfunction in schizophrenia.
Friday procrastination: link love – Ben Zimmer, Copenhagen and late night bands We’ve made it to Friday, everyone! From now on, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me as I transition into the role of Blog Editor after next week. To let you know a little about myself, Rebecca has graciously let me share some items that caught my attention this week.
World Cup Wonders Who would Fabio Capello, England manager, have picked with the whole of British history to choose from?
Happy Birthday Irving Howe On this day in history, June 11, 1920, Irving Howe was born. To celebrate his birth I turned to the American National Biography which led me to an entry by Shirley Laird. The ANB offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women – from all eras and walks of life – whose lives have shaped the nation. Learn about Irving Howe below.
Book thumbnail image On Pregnancy Contracts Debra Satz is Marta Sutton Weeks Professor of Ethics in Society and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. Her new book, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets, is a critical look at the commodity exchanges that strike us as most problematic. What considerations, she asks, ought to guide the debates about such markets? She offers a broader and more nuanced view of markets – one that goes beyond the usual discussions of efficiency and distributional equality – to show how particular markets shape our culture, foster or thwart human development, and support or undermine structures of power. In the excerpt below, from the chapter on women’s reproductive labor, Satz begins to tackle the questions involved in pregnancy contracts.
Book thumbnail image Foundations of British Rock: “Shakin’ All Over,” 10 June 1960 Gordon Thompson is Professor of Music at Skidmore College. His book, Please Please Me: Sixties British Pop, Inside Out, offers an insider’s view of the British pop-music recording industry. In the post below he looks at the 10th of June, 1960. Check out Thompson’s other posts here.
Book thumbnail image London Place Names: Some Origins From Garlick Hill to Pratt’s Bottom, London is full of weird and wonderful place names. We’ve just published the second edition of A.D. Mills’s A Dictionary of London Place Names, so I thought I would check out the roots of some of London’s most famous addresses.
Book thumbnail image The Tony Quiz Geoffrey Block, Distinguished Professor of Music History at the University of Puget Sound, is the author of Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical From Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. The book offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America’s best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals, as well as a riveting history. In the original post Block challenges readers to test their Tony knowledge. We will post the answers next Wednesday so be sure to check back.
Spelling and Swelling: Bosom, Breast, And Others In today’s English, the letters u and o have the same value in mutter and mother, and we have long since resigned ourselves to the fact that lover, clover, and mover are spelled alike but do not rhyme. (Therefore, every less familiar word, like plover, is a problem even to native speakers.) Those who want to know more about the causes of this madness will find an answer in any introduction to the history of English. I will state only a few essentials. For example, the vowel of mother was once long, as in school, but, unlike what happened in school, it became short and later acquired its modern pronunciation, as happened, for example, in but.
Book thumbnail image On Eavesdropping Eavesdropping has a bad name. It is a form of human communication in which the information gained is stolen, and where such words as cheating and spying come into play. But eavesdropping may also be an attempt to understand what goes on in the lives of others so as to know better how to live one’s own. John L. Locke’s entertaining and disturbing new book, Eavesdropping: An Intimate History, explores everything from sixteenth-century voyeurism to Facebook and Twitter. Below is a short excerpt from the book’s prologue, explaining why he finds eavesdropping so fascinating.
Book thumbnail image Why Go Into Journalism?: A Video A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA that happened last week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. This week I have posted a clip in which Kevin shares why he choose journalism as a career. Read Kevin’s blog here. Watch the other videos in this series here and here.
Book thumbnail image The Limits of Presidental Leadership Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at Obama’s leadership. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Book thumbnail image Gaza, France, Monaco and the Double Standard for Israel Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, has condemned as “disproportionate” Israel’s response to the flotilla bringing cargo to Gaza. Gaza today is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and which has repeatedly launched attacks on Israel and its civilian population. Israel had told the flotilla’s organizers to bring their goods to the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection, with all civilian goods to be trucked subsequently from Ashdod to Gaza. The Israeli offer was rejected.
Book thumbnail image Are You Getting Enough Sleep? Rosalind D. Cartwright is Professor Emeritus of Rush University Medical Center’s Graduate College Neuroscience Division, and was chair of the College’s Department of Behavioral Sciences until 2008. In her new book, The Twenty-Four Hour Mind: The Role of Sleep and Dreaming in Our Emotional Lives, Cartwright brings together decades of research into the bizarre sleep disorders known as parasomnias to propose a new theory of how the human mind works consistently throughout waking and sleeping hours. In the excerpt below we learn how important it is to slow down and get the appropriate amount of sleep.
Book thumbnail image On This Day in History: Tiananmen Square Protests On this day in 1989, 100,000 Chinese citizens gathered in Tiananmen Square. I wanted to learn more about the event so I turned to Oxford Reference Online which led me to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics edited by Iain McLean and Allistair McMillan. Below the entry on Tiananmen Square is excerpted.
Book thumbnail image Roman Toilets J. C. McKeown is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new book, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World’s Greatest Empire, is a collection carefully gleaned from the wide body of evidence left to us by the Romans themselves. Each fact or opinion highlights a curious feature of life in ancient Rome. Below we have excerpted some tidbits from the chapter on Roman toilets.
Book thumbnail image Summer Read Throwback: Two Classics for Your List Don’t know what to read this summer? Swore off ye olde canon after high school? Associate Editor Andrew Herrmann insists that literary classics are a necessary foundation for any pop cultural enthusiast,and he has just the two for us: a bawdy ancient novel and a sweeping swashbuckling adventure. (Don’t worry, no plot spoilers here!)
Book thumbnail image Science vs. Relgion Elaine Howard Ecklund is a member of the sociology faculty at Rice University, where she is also Director of the Program on Religion and Public Outreach, Institute for Urban Research. Her new book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, investigates the unexamined assumption of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. Surprisingly she discovered that nearly 50 percent of the scientific community is religious. In the excerpt below we learn how religious scientists incorporate their faith into teaching.
Parliament and Congress in 2010 William McKay and Charles W. Johnson discuss procedural and institutional developments in the UK and the US over the last few months: in the UK, the new Parliament and coalition government, and in the US, the procedural complexities of the heath care reform bill.
Book thumbnail image The 800-Pound Gorilla: Tenure Track Jerald M. Jellison has been a Professor of Psychology at the University of Southern California for three decades. His book, Life After Grad School: Getting From A to B, looks at the unspoken truth that less than 5 percent of the 2.5 million graduate students in the U.S. will realize their dream of becoming a professor. Jellison looks at what the other 95 percent should do, illuminating the transition from academia to a satisfying and well-paying job with a company, government agency, or not-for-profit organization. In the excerpt below Jellison addresses how students should find out if they are destined to become a tenure track professor.
Book thumbnail image The Other Side of Hay It would be easy to make a list of the stars that I have spotted here at the Hay Festival since I arrived, or indeed the past colleagues I have worked with, but actually what strikes me more, on this visit, is what is going on outside the boundaries of the festival.
From Week To Weak This is a weekly blog, and ever since it began I have been meaning to write a post about the word week. Now that we are in the middle of the first week of the first summer month, the time appears to be ripe for my overdue project.
Book thumbnail image Journalism is Hard Work: A Video A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA that happened last week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access to the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. This week I have posted a clip which emphasizes the true hard work that journalism involves. Read Kevin’s blog here. Watch last week’s video here.
Book thumbnail image North Korea’s Menace, China’s Collusion Harm de Blij is the John A. Hannah Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. The author of more than 30 books he is an honorary life member of the National Geographic Society and was for seven years the Geography Editor on ABC’s Good Morning America. His most recent book, The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape, he reveals the rugged contours of our world that keep all but 3% of “mobals” stationary in the country where they were born. He argues that where we start our journey has much to do with our destiny, and thus with our chances of overcoming obstacles in our way. In the article below he looks at North Korea and China. Read his other OUPblog posts here.
Book thumbnail image The White House’s “Quid Pro Quo” with Sestak Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at quid pro quo. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
May 2010 (55))
Book thumbnail image What Everyone Needs To Know About China: The Answers Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His new book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, covers everything form Confucius and Mao to Internet censorship. Yesterday we posted a China quiz. Below are the answers. For more China questions check out another quiz by Wasserstrom that appeared on The China Beat.
Friday procrastination: link love – bookshelves, bugs and blogs Is it me or does the week before a long weekend always go particularly slowly? Wednesday feels like a month ago. Luckily, despite my whining, Friday has arrived and so has Memorial Day Weekend. I hope you have lovely weather, delicious barbecues, and some time to relax with a good book. Below are some links to get you through the day. See you all on Tuesday!
Book thumbnail image Cleopatra Podcast Series: Day 3 Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her famous for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.
Book thumbnail image What Everyone Needs To Know About China: A Quiz Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is a Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. His new book, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, covers everything form Confucius and Mao to Internet censorship. In the post below Wasserstrom poses some questions about China that you can find the answers to in his book. See if you can answer them in the comments. We will post the answers tomorrow. For more China questions check out another quiz by Wasserstrom that appeared on The China Beat.
Book thumbnail image What Makes a Hero? The latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, published on 27 May, includes a special focus on people remembered for acts of civilian heroism. Here, Philip Carter, one of the ODNB’s editors, considers what these and other lives tell us about changing attitudes to popular heroism over the last 250 years.
Book thumbnail image Cleopatra Podcast Series: Day 2 Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her for famous being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.
Book thumbnail image Oxford Bibliographies Online Recommends Oxford Bibliographies Online is a series of intuitive and easy-to-use “ultimate reading lists” designed to help users navigate the vast seas of information that exist today. To introduce you to the doors this new online tool opens Andrew Herrmann, Associate Editor of OBO, has excerpted some suggested reading related to Greek mythology. Use his study guide below to impress the date you bring to see the Immortals.
Monthly Gleanings: May 2010 Dickens and non-standard speech. In connection with wash-up for worship in Pickwick, it has been noted that, according to some, Dickens’s phonetic spelling cannot be trusted. I am aware of this verdict (compare, among others, his enigmatic kyebosk for kibosh). His rendering of the Yorkshire dialect (in Nicholas Nickleby) and even of Cockney has been challenged more than once.
Book thumbnail image The Cameron-Clegg Coalition: Day One It’s the morning of Wednesday 12 May, and I’m in London to be interviewed by Laurie Taylor on the Radio 4 programme ‘Thinking Allowed’. Selina Todd, from Manchester University, has been asked to contribute her assessment of my book, and so will also be on the show. I know of her work, but haven’t met her previously. The researchers have assured me that Selina likes the book, but she has a formidable reputation, and I worry what she might say.
Book thumbnail image Tap Into Your Inner Dancer! In honor of National Tap Dance Day (May 25) Oxford is celebrating with Constance Valis Hill, author of Tap Dancing America. In this excerpt Hill shares a contemporary tap dance scene full of rich choreography.
Book thumbnail image The Politics of the Gulf Oil Spill Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the gulf oil spill. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here
Book thumbnail image Cleopatra Podcast Series: Day 1 Cleopatra’s sexual liaisons have made her for being the femme fatale of classical antiquity and a heroine in the greatest love affair of all time. In Cleopatra: A Biography historian, archaeologist, and classical scholar Duane Roller aims to clear up the infamous queen’s identity—from the propaganda in the Roman Republic all the way to her representations in film today. And what, according to Roller, do the cold hard facts reveal? A pragmatic leader trying to save her kingdom as the reality of a full blown empire loomed ahead.
Book thumbnail image Truth in Journalism: A Video A few weeks ago I had the honor of attending BEA2010 (no not the BEA happening this week) which was part of the 2010NAB conference. I was there to celebrate the launch of the BBC College of Journalism Website (COJO) a collaboration between OUP and the BBC. The site allows citizens outside of the UK access the online learning and development materials created for BBC journalists. It is a vast resource filled to the brim with videos, audio clips, discussion pages, interactive modules and text pages covering every aspect of TV, radio, and online journalism. At the conference I had a chance to talk with Kevin Marsh, the Executive Editor of COJO, and I will be sharing clips from our conversation for the next few weeks. To start us off I have posted a clip which emphasizes the value of truth in journalism. Read Kevin’s blog here
Book thumbnail image Kafka Vents About His Father In Kafka: A Very Short Introduction, author Ritchie Robertson dedicates an entire section of the (very short) book to Kafka’s famous Letter to His Father. When reading the letter and the VSI together, it’s almost as if Franz rests on the couch and Robertson takes notes.
Book thumbnail image Lower’s Dogs Rom Harre is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Linacre College, Oxford, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, Washington, DC. In his book, Pavlov’s Dogs and Schrodinger’s Cat: Scenes from the Living Laboratory, we get an enlightening look at the use of plants and animals–including humans–in scientific experiments. In the excerpt below we see how dogs were essential to figuring out heart transplants.
Book thumbnail image Kick-Ass Podcast: Day 2 Thanks to early screenings and leaked footage, the much-anticipated movie Kick-Ass gained massive buzz among fanboys, bloggers (and pretty much everyone else under the age of 30) months before it hit movie theaters, poising itself to possibly be the best superhero move ever made. But when the feature finally released last month–replete with glorified violence and a young girl with the dirtiest mouth since Bob Saget–it was met with formidable resistance from parents and critics alike.
On The Definition of “Siphon” Recently much ado has been made about the definition of siphon in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Below the editors of the OED respond to the controversy.
Book thumbnail image Do Farm Subsidies Cause Obesity? Robert Paarlberg, author of Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, is a leading authority on food policy, and one of the most prominent scholars writing on agricultural issues today. He is B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. He was invited to testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture on May 13th, and shared his thoughts with us here last week. Now, after presenting his testimony on obesity, Paarlberg reflects on the experience.
Book thumbnail image The Beatles Are Dead. Long Live the Beatles For Beatles fans, it was like watching mortality embrace a loved one. The spring of 1970 brought news of the dissolution of the Beatles and, with the release of Michael Lindsey-Hogg’s Let It Be in May, fans could see the disestablishment for themselves.
Book thumbnail image Kick-Ass Podcast: Day 1 Thanks to early screenings and leaked footage, the much-anticipated movie Kick-Ass gained massive buzz among fanboys, bloggers (and pretty much everyone else under the age of 30) months before it hit movie theaters, poising itself to possibly be the best superhero move ever made. But when the feature finally released last month–replete with glorified violence and a young girl with the dirtiest mouth since Bob Saget–it was met with formidable resistance from parents and critics alike.
Book thumbnail image The Sand Man The journey of a sand grain tumbling in the wind is a complex one, and while many of the aspects of that journey are understood, there is much, again, that is not. The foundation of what we do know, and of the research desert landscapes that continues today, is entirely the result of the pioneering work of one man (of whom we have already heard)—Ralph Bagnold. Today’s academic textbooks on sand transport often include advice along the lines of ‘for inspiration, read Bagnold (1941)’.
Book thumbnail image Jewish Heritage Month: Serious Jokes Philip Davis is a professor of English literature at Liverpool University, author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life, and editor of The Reader. Since it is Jewish Heritage Month here in the United States we asked him to reflect on his own Jewish heritage. Below we learn about serious jokes.
Book thumbnail image Will the new Robin Hood Score … score? Kathryn Kalinak is Professor of English and Film Studies at Rhode Island College. Her extensive writing on film music includes numerous articles and several books, the most recent of which is Film Music: A Very Short Introduction. You may remember her from an Oscar season interview on WNYC’s Soundcheck, when she accurately predicted a win for Michael Giacchino’s score in Up. Now, she has been asked back to the show (today at 2pm ET) to discuss the score in the new Robin Hood movie, starring Russell Crowe. Kalinak shares her thoughts after the jump.
Unable to Put the Kibosh on a Hard Word The young Dickens was the first to record the word kibosh. We don’t know for sure how it sounded in the 1830’s, but, judging by the spelling ky(e)-, it must always have been pronounced with long i. The main 19th-century English etymologists (Eduard Mueller, Hensleigh Wedgwood, and Walter W. Skeat) did not include kibosh in their dictionaries. They probably had nothing to say about it, though Mueller, a German, hardly ever saw such a rare and insignificant word.
Book thumbnail image Have these Allusions Eluded You? Have you ever wondered where the titles of novels, plays, films and the like come from? Some are obvious, at least after you’ve read the book or seen the movie, as with Star Wars and The English Patient, but many titles are not transparent and leave you wondering just why the author chose them. These are usually allusive, they refer to something in history or literature or they take their wording from a text. These allusions are often quite esoteric, and authors must know that only some of the audience or readership will pick up on them. Presumably they get satisfaction from choosing a title with some kind of hidden significance and some theatregoers or readers probably find gratification in spotting the allusion. Surveys I have conducted over the years reveal that many allusions are lost on university students, so I’ve rounded up some examples I find to be the most “elusive”:
Book thumbnail image On Super Tuesday, Anti-Incumbent really Means Anti-Moderate It has become the conventional wisdom that this is a bad year for incumbents on the ballot. There is an anti-Washington wave on the horizon headed for the scums in Capitol Hill. This conventional wisdom is a parallel script close enough to the truth, but it is not the whole truth because many of the challengers on the ballot next Tuesday aren’t exactly non-incumbents who haven’t had any dalliance with power or Washington.
Book thumbnail image Edna Foa On Being A Time Magazine Honoree Edna Foa is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety. Her most recent book, Prolonged Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Emotional Processing of Traumatic Experiences, was written with Elizabeth Hembree and Barbara Olaslov Rothbaum. The guide gives clinicians the information they need to treat clients who exhibit the symptoms of PTSD. Recently Foa was name by Time Magazine as one of the most influential people in 2010. Below she reacts to the honor.
Book thumbnail image Son Biden’s Stroke: Waiting For Beau John Galbraith Simmons studied philosophy at Northwestern University, graduating with honors, and also holds a degree in developmental studies from Long Island University. His newest book, written with Justin Zivin, is tPA for Stroke: The Story of a Controversial Drug. The book, which will be published in November, looks at the history of tPA which can drastically reduce the long-term disability associated with stroke if it is administered within the first three hours after the event occurs. In the original article below Simmons looks at Beau Biden’s recent stroke.
Book thumbnail image The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 5 Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.
In Memory: Lena Horne I would never pretend to be an expert on Lena Horne, but my research prompts me to make a few observations on her career as a singer of popular songs. Perhaps the most striking thing about her stellar career is that Lena Horne, alone among the great singers of her era, never introduced a hit song. The songs she is associated with are the “standards” of what’s been termed The Great American Song Book. In the television obituaries, for example, she was heard singing the classic songs of Cole Porter, Ira and George Gershwin, and Lorenz Hart and Richard Rodgers. Even her signature song, “Stormy Weather,” was originally written by Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen for Ethel Waters in the 1933 Cotton Club Revue. (Waters, supposedly, always resented the fact that Lena Horne had co-opted “her” song).
Friday procrastination: link love – museums, Shakespeare and sugar pills Happy Friday to everyone and congratulations for making it through a rather rainy and dreary week. Friday is here, there is sun in the forecast and hopefully a return of spring weather. Enjoy the links below and I’ll see you all on Monday.
Book thumbnail image Writing Emerald Cities Joan Fitzgerald is Professor and Director of the Law, Policy and Society Program at Northeastern University. Her new book, Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development, is a refreshing look at how American cities are leading the way toward greener, cleaner, and more sustainable forms of economic development. Emerald Cities is very readable and Marco Trbovich of the Huffington Post wrote, “Fitzgerald combines the academic discipline of an urban planner with the rigors of shoe-leather journalism in crafting a book that documents where real progress is being made….” In the original post below Fitzgerald shares how she found the fine balance between “academic discipline” and “shoe-leather journalism”.
The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 4 Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.
Varnish – Podictionary Word of the Day As much as 700 years ago English got the word varnish from French. The French word had come from a Latin source which in turn seems to have come from a Greek word that is said to have arisen because there was a city on the Mediterranean famed for its varnishes; or perhaps the first place that varnishes were sourced.
Book thumbnail image Jack and Jill… by Walt Whitman? Well, I don’t know about any of the other Brits in the audience, but I could do with some light relief after a week of political intrigue! Hopefully this will be the very thing to cheer us up. From the Oxford Book of Parodies, edited by John Gross, here is the nursey rhyme Jack and Jill, as Walt Whitman might have written it.
Book thumbnail image Food Politics: Invited to Testify Robert Paarlberg, author of Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, is a leading authority on food policy, and one of the most prominent scholars writing on agricultural issues today. He is B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Soon after his “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers” article in the May/June 2010 issue of Foreign Policy, Paarlberg was asked to testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture. Below, he shares his thoughts on this invitation.
Book thumbnail image The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 3 Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.
Old Slang: Rogue Slang words are so hard to etymologize because they are usually isolated, while language historians prefer to work with sound correspondences, cognates, and protoforms. Most modern “thick” dictionaries tell us that rogue, the subject of this post, is of unknown origin. This conclusion could be expected, for rogue, a 16th-century creation, meant “a wandering mendicant.” (Skeat attributes the original sense “a surly fellow” to it but does not adduce sufficient evidence in support of his statement.)
Book thumbnail image What does ‘hung parliament’ mean? For the first time in over 30 years, the British general election last week resulted in a hung parliament. The news is full of the latest rounds of negotiations between the Conservatives, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats, and at the time of writing, we still don’t know who will form the next government. But what does ‘hung parliament’ actually mean? I turned to the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics to find out.
Book thumbnail image The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 2 Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. A former director of Development Research at the World Bank and author of the widely acclaimed and award winning The Bottom Billion, Collier’s The Plundered Planet continues his life mission of advocating for the world’s poorest billion people.
Book thumbnail image Obama to Nominate Elena Kagan to Supreme Court Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Book thumbnail image The Plundered Planet Podcast Series: Day 1 Which is more important: saving the environment or fixing global poverty? Economist Paul Collier argues that we can find a middle ground and do both in his new book The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity.
Book thumbnail image Primates Reveal the Value of Grandmothers In honor of Mother’s Day we are taking a closer look at grandmothers. In the post below is an excerpt from Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health.
Book thumbnail image Behind Nancy Pelosi’s Approval Ratings In the excerpt below, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics, Pelosi goes under the microscope and is compared to both the Energizer Bunny and the Big Bad Wolf .
Friday procrastination: link love – Bill Murray, laptops and the library of congress I hope you all have something lovely planned for your mothers this weekend. I am cooking mine brunch Sunday morning, which could be a lovely treat or a culinary disaster. But since she is my mother I’m pretty confident she will love whatever ends up on her plate. Enjoy the links below and I’ll see you all on Monday.
Book thumbnail image Folk Duet: Writing Discord and Folk Music “Apathetic,” he scoffs. “Naïve and romantic,” I counter defensively. “These songs are so self-absorbed!” “Those songs were so self-righteous!” This is Pete Seeger-biographer David Dunaway and I debating the evolution of American folk music from our distinct generational perspectives, and we aren’t, technically, arguing. Beyond the pot-shots, we are engaging in academic discourse born out of the ever-shifting debate over purity, authenticity, and activism in folk music.
Client – Podictionary Word of the Day Charles Hodgson presents his weekly podcast. This week he looks at the word “client”. [display_podcast]
Book thumbnail image Walter Bagehot on the English Constituition Written in 1867, The English Constitution is generally accepted to be the best account of the history and working of the British political system ever written. As arguments raged in mid-Victorian Britain about giving the working man the vote, and democracies overseas were pitched into despotism and civil war, Bagehot took a long, cool look at the ‘dignified’ and ‘efficient’ elements which made the English system the envy of the world.
The Tuskegee Flight Begins In Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, Moye tells the story of the Tuskegee airmen of World War II, a group of African Americans that fought the Axis powers in the skies and racism in their homeland. The following excerpt depicts Charles Alfred Anderson’s fight against discrimination to become a licensed pilot, instructor and eventually, a key figure for the most improbable squad of aviators.
Yes, Your Wash-Up The title is from The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (wash-up is the way one of the characters pronounces worship), but I owe the idea of this post to two questions. I decided not to wait for the next set of “gleanings,” because my summer schedule will prevent me from answering questions and responding to comments with the regularity one could wish for. Both questions concern Engl. r.
Book thumbnail image Vote Early and Vote Often Tom Stoppard’s line: ‘It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting’ is well known, but is in fact closely paralled by a remark of Stalin’s in 1923: ‘I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how’. The importance of counting was recognized long ago: in the early nineteenth century the American politician William Porcher Miles described seeing election banners with the advice: ‘Vote early and vote often’.
Book thumbnail image The National Consequences of Arizona’s Crackdown on Illegal Immigration Immigration is likely to become the new theater of the culture wars because Arizona’s new immigration law has further nationalized the immigration issue. Illegal immigrants in the state would be more likely to move to nearby states like Texas and California, and especially to those cities where sanctuary ordinances have been passed. Since immigrants settle disproportionately in California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois, we would expect these states to be most affected by Arizona’s new law.
Book thumbnail image Icy Disaster in the Andes, Climate Lesson for the World Although some US senators may resist discussion of the new climate and energy bill this week, people around the world continue to live with incessant dangers that disrupt their daily lives and threaten their existence. A recent glacier avalanche in Peru, for example, unleashed a powerful outburst flood that caused significant destruction. It was the same kind of flood that increasingly endangers people living near melting glaciers worldwide, from Switzerland and Norway to Canada and New Zealand, China and Nepal.
Book thumbnail image Against a VAT A federal value-added tax (VAT) is today’s magic bullet for slaying the federal budget deficit. A federal VAT would be a veritable cash cow, obviating the need for painful measures like serious spending reductions and middle class income tax hikes. A VAT would be more regressive and complex than its proponents acknowledge. Like most putative panaceas, a VAT should be rejected.
Book thumbnail image Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer to Eat? Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape. Politics in this area have become polarized and Robert Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food. In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.
April 2010 (56))
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Partake Bryan A. Garner is the award-winning author or editor of more than 20 books. Garner’s Modern American Usage has established itself as the preeminent contemporary guide to the effective use of the English language. The 3rd edition, which was just published, has been thoroughly updated with new material on nearly every page. Below we have posted one of his daily usage tips about the word “partake”. To subscribe to his daily tips click here.
Friday procrastination: link love – homemade maps, poet laureates and professors Some links to get you through the day.
Book thumbnail image After Cipro A tidal wave of high drug prices has recently crashed across the U.S. economy. One of the primary culprits: agreements by which brand-name drug manufacturers pay generic firms to stay off the market. This issue has been raging in the halls of Congress, the courts, and the government agencies.
Book thumbnail image Doha Blues Why have the Doha negotiations been so painfully slow and unsuccessful so far? A review of recent commentary and analysis seems to indicate that the difficulty has many roots, as shown by the following list of contributing factors:
Volcano – Podictionary Word of the Day The volcano that spewed ash into the Icelandic skies and disrupted world air travel has a name that’s pretty difficult to pronounce and pretty difficult to spell; it’s Eyjafjallajökull. This evidently means “island mountain glacier.” Nothing about volcanoes, fire or ash in that word.
Book thumbnail image Broken Britain and Big Society: Back to the 1930s? The phrase ‘Broken Britain’ is well known to British newspaper readers; it’s a phrase commonly used across the media to describe society’s problems. Here, historian John Welshman traces this identification of a broken society back to around the time of the Second World War, and argues that the real answer is – and was then – to address society’s inequalities rather than ‘Big Society’ and a retreat from state involvement.
Book thumbnail image Plunder and the Musée Napoléon Wayne Sandholtz, author of Prohibiting Plunder, examines the Napoleonic practice of seizing art from conquered territories and the appointing a specialist for this very purpose.
Monthly Gleanings: April 2010 I notice that my posts on usage, including spelling, invite livelier comments than those on word origins, and most questions I receive also concern usage. This is natural, and, as always, I am grateful for questions, suggestions, and criticism. Today I will take care of about half of my backlog but will try to get rid of the other half in May.
Book thumbnail image Much Ado About Voting “In this pre-election period television plays a big role. On Sky News, at the bottom of the screen, you will see four colours: red, blue, yellow and grey. These represent Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and other. There are numbers in each colour and these represent the latest survey results of voting intention. Watch carefully and the percentages change. The numbers change because they show results according to Mori, then YouGov, then ICM, then ComRes, then Populus. The results are not “true” because they are samples – the only true result would be a full count.”
Book thumbnail image Did an Omnifidel Steal Your Obscenometer? A Nonce-word-a-palooza Mark Peters, a language columnist for Good and Visual Thesaurus, as well as the blogger behind The Pancake Proverbs, The Rosa Parks of Blogs, and Wordlustitude is our guest blogger this week. In this post, he looks at nonce words in the Oxford English Dictionary
Book thumbnail image Democrats Should Look Before they Leap into Immigration Reform Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at immigration reform. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Book thumbnail image Mark Twain and World Literature Shelley Fisher Fishkin looks at the international impact of Mark Twain in honor the centennial of Twain’s death, the 175th anniversary of his birth, and the 125th anniversary of the U.S. publication of his most celebrated book.
Book thumbnail image Solving the Riddle of Melancholia Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia, traces the enthusiasm of biological efforts to solve the mystery of melancholia and proposes that a useful, and a potentially life-saving, connection between medicine and psychiatry has been lost. Below we have excerpted the preface which explains why endocrine psychiatry deserves a second look.
Book thumbnail image Liking (or at least understanding) Like: Part 1 Alexandra D’Arcy is a sociolinguist by training and specializes in the study of language variation and change. This is the third installation in her new monthly column so be sure to check back next month.
Book thumbnail image A History of US: Part I In honor of the History Channel’s new series, America: The Story of Us, we have pulled some American history questions from Joy Hakim’s A History of US.
Ten things you might not know about Cleopatra By Anne Zaccardelli Most of my knowledge on ancient Greece and Rome comes from watching the TV show ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’. Xena not only encounters Julius Caesar, Pompeius, and Octavian in her quests, but Marc Antony and Cleopatra as well. I was thus eager to learn more of the historical, ‘real-life’ Cleopatra.
Friday procrastination: link love – baby sitting, cat humour and earth day This has been such a fun week with the launch of our new blog design that it is hard to believe Friday is already here. Below are some links to get you just a little bit closer to the weekend. Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image Several Fronts, Two Universes, One Discourse Tariq Ramadan is a very public figure, named one of Time magazine’s most important innovators of the twenty-first century, he is among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West. But he has also been a lightening rod for controversy. In his new book, What I Believe, he attempts to set the record straight, laying out the basic ideas he stands for in clear and accessible prose.
Entropy – Podictionary Word of the Day Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog.
Book thumbnail image Plantagenet Palliser vs. Gordon Brown Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels offer many fascinating parallels with today’s political scene, none more so than the fifth novel in the sequence, The Prime Minister. Nicholas Shrimpton, of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, will be editing the new edition of the novel for Oxford World’s Classics (out next year). His profile of Trollope’s fictional hero, Plantagenet Palliser, finds some uncanny resemblances between fiction and reality.
The Oddest English Spellings, Part 16: Wistful Whistplayers and Other Wherry Important Words By Anatoly Liberman The number of people in the English speaking world who distinguish in pronunciation between witch and which, wine and whine, wen and when is relatively small, and those who make this distinction do not say w-hitch, w-hine, and w-hen, but rather hwitch, hwine, and hwen. What follows is a breathtaking story of the hw-sound and the wh-spelling.
Welcome to the New and Improved OUPblog We are so excited to welcome you to the 2010 redesign of the OUPblog. A lot of thought and love has gone into creating a fresh home for our friends and authors who contribute to the site. We hope you will appreciate the ability to see more content on the homepage as well as the easy access to our video and twitter offerings.
Book thumbnail image Keeping the Hustings Alive Dr Jon Lawrence, author of Electing Our Masters, on the spirit of the hustings in this year’s general election campaign.
Book thumbnail image Head Start: Management Issues Edward Zigler is a developmental scientist and a pioneer and leader in the field of applied developmental psychology. He served on the committee that planned Head Start and was the federal official responsible for the program during the Nixon administration. Sally J. Styfco is a writer and social policy analyst specializing in issues pertaining to children and families. Together they wrote, The Hidden History Of Head Start, which looks at this remarkable social program that has served 25 million children and their families since it was established 44 years ago. We get an insider’s view of the program’s decades of services and an idea of what the future may hold.
Book thumbnail image Obama means Business Elvin Lim looks at the implications of the charges against Goldman Sachs.
In Memory: Shirlee Emmons Baldwin Oxford University Press joins a large community of friends, colleagues, performers, and students in mourning the passing of Shirlee Emmons Baldwin, one of the most beloved and strongest voices in the education, nurturing, and career development of singers. Having been trained as a classical singer myself, it was with great pride that I “inherited” Shirlee’s three titles when I began work at the Press—Power Performance for Singers (1998), Prescriptions for Choral Excellence (with Constance Chase; 2006), and Researching the Song (with Wilbur Watkins Lewis; also 2006). Through these books and others, and in the hearts of all those she touched, Shirlee’s voice will continue to resound and enlighten.
Book thumbnail image Travel Tips Grace Labatt helps us travel well in 2010.
Book thumbnail image The Impact of Social Injustice on Nutrition An excerpt from Social Injustice and Public Health.
Friday procrastination: link love – odd book titles, Doctor Who and Royal Mail What Kirsty has been reading.
Book thumbnail image A Few Questions For R. Larry Todd An interview with R. Larry Todd author of Fanny Hensel.
Book thumbnail image Presidents and Congress as Seen Through a New Deal Prism Donald Ritchie looks at common misperceptions about Roosevelt and Congress.
Pent Up – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “pent up”.
“I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter” Jason Haslam on the Tarzan as cultural icon.
To Love, To Praise; To Promise, To Permit Anatoly Liberman’s weekly column.
Book thumbnail image A Few Questions for Roger Farmer An interview with author Roger Farmer.
Book thumbnail image Plimsolls, Poverty, and Policy John Welshman on plimsolls, poverty, and policy during the Second World War.
Book thumbnail image Vacancy in the SCOTUS and the Politics to Come Elvin Lim looks at the vacancy on the Supreme Court.
Book thumbnail image Eddie Cochran and the Rise of British Rock, April 1960 Did Eddie Cochran’s tour of the UK and death fifty years ago lead to the Beatles?
Book thumbnail image Reducing Arms Without Agreement John Mueller explains why we don’t need formal nuclear arms reduction agreements.
Book thumbnail image Utilizing the Body to Address Emotions: Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work An excerpt from Integrative Body-Mind-Spirit Social Work.
Book thumbnail image Baby Names: Nature A list of spring-inspired baby names.
Friday procrastination: link love – bankruptcy, Pinocchio paradoxes and Bob Dylan What Rebecca has been reading.
Book thumbnail image The iPad: What is a Gutenberg moment, Anyway? Dennis Baron looks at “Gutenberg moments”.
Pariah – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “pariah”.
Book thumbnail image The 1987 General Election and Aftermath An exerpt from The Oxford History of Britain.
Book thumbnail image 10 Ways World of Warcraft Will Help You Survive the End of Humanity Robert M. Geraci shares 10 ways World of Warcraft could help us survive the end of the world as we know it.
Between Dodge and Kitsch Anatoly Liberman looks at the words “dodge” and “kitsch”.
The Obama Presidency 2.0 How has Obama’s agenda changed since the passage of health-care reform?
Policing Counterfeits on eBay Charles R. Macedo reflects on the Tiffany v. eBay case.
Book thumbnail image Pediatric Research Contraints When is it okay to include a child in a medical research study?
The Bi-Partisan Rhetoric of Health Care Apocalypse is Wrong Edward Zelinsky looks at the bi-partisan rhetoric on health care and what the changes really mean.
Book thumbnail image The Book, the Scroll, and the Web Dennis Baron looks at how we read.
Friday procrastination: link love – Singapore, the New Yorker, and apocalyptic novels What Rebecca has been reading.
Book thumbnail image Adam and the Animals An excerpt from The Seven Pillars of Creation.
Fool – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “fool”.
Book thumbnail image Defining Easter A look at Easter-related terms in the Oxford Dictionary of the Bible.
March 2010 (59))
Should Trees Have Standing? Christopher D. Stone argues that in order to make a case for the environment, nature must be bestowed legal rights.
Monthly Gleanings: March 2010 Anatoly Liberman answers questions.
Book thumbnail image The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook: Hints on Camp Life An excerpt from 1888’s The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, recently reprinted in the Oxford World’s Classics series.
Book thumbnail image On Ants An excerpt from The Lives of Ants.
On the Republican Politics of Reaction Elvin Lim looks at the Republican party.
Book thumbnail image Let Them Read Whole Books Author Joy Hakim looks at how we educate our children.
Book thumbnail image Silencing the Self Theory An excerpt from Silencing the Self Across Cultures: Depression and Gender in the Social World.
Happy Birthday Tennessee Williams A birthday salute to Tennessee Williams.
Friday procrastination: link love – Salman Rushdie, Lady Gaga, and quantum mechanics What Rebecca has been reading.
Book thumbnail image The Origins of the Fundamentalist Mindset The Fundamentalist Mindset sheds light on the psychology of fundamentalism, with a particular focus on those who become extremists and fanatics. The collection is edited by Charles B. Strozier, a Professor of History at John Jay College, CUNY, and a practicing psychoanalyst, David M. Terman, Director of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, James W. Jones, a Professor of Religion and adjunct Professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University and Katharine A. Boyd a doctoral student at John Jay College, CUNY.
Innuendo – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “innuendo”.
Book thumbnail image Churchill’s Children at Words by the Water Churchill’s Children author John Welshman reflects on his first literary festival
Book thumbnail image Vague Measurements Who decides how long a metre is?
A Postscript to the Series on Unpleasant People: Humbug Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “humbug”.
Book thumbnail image Bridges, and What They Can Teach Us Professor David Blockely on the lessons he believes the wider world can learn from bridge-building.
Book thumbnail image A Monumental Achievement Elvin Lim looks at health-care reform.
Book thumbnail image Traditionalism v. Individualism: The Struggle of the Conservative Youth. Cahn and Carbone explore the challenges a conservative-minded youth face in an liberal-acting world.
Book thumbnail image Wikipedia: Write First, Ask Questions Later Dennis Baron looks at Wikipedia.
Book thumbnail image Dietary Blindness: The Many Ways We Cannot See An excerpt from Blindspots: The May Ways We Cannont See.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday Philip Roth! An excerpt in honor of Philip Roth’s birthday.
Friday procrastination: link love – Franz Kafka, the FBI, and bingo What Lana’s been reading.
The Infinite and the Indefinite Why is infinity important?
Mascot – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “mascot”.
On Experimenting with Living Creatures Rom Harré on the use of living things in scientific experiments throughout history.
The Rising: An Excerpt An excerpt from The Rising.
Unpleasant People Part 3: Swindler For the third part of his Unpleasant People series, Anatoly Liberman discusses the recent origins of the word swindler.
Shakespeare, sex, and love: Recording sexual behaviour in the sixteenth century By Stanley Wells It is in the nature of things that sexual behaviour that does not offend agreed norms makes no special stir. Even so it may be revealing. People masturbate, woo, marry, copulate, and give birth. Of these events the law requires only that marriages and, in Shakespeare’s time, baptisms rather than births be recorded. Analysis of such records may in itself illuminate the sexual mores of the period and, indeed, of Shakespeare and his family.
Book thumbnail image Should Everybody Write? Or is There Enough Junk on the Internet Already? Dennis Baron looks at the destabilizing technologies of communication.
A Week of Politics Elvin Lim leads us through the current political landscape.
False Light Lawsuit Targets Authors of Ohio Travel Book and Website Author John A. Neuenschwander looks at false light lawsuits against the Weird Ohio book and blog.
Panic, Hysteria and Tight Corsets Goodwin and Guze’s Psychiatric Diagnosis gives us a historical background to panic disorders and hysteria.
Back To Engua Foo: An Excerpt From China Marine An excerpt from China Marine.
Friday procrastination: link love – abstract cities, typography jokes and Star Wars What Rebecca has been reading.
China Marine: A Son’s Perspective John Sledge reflects on his father’s book.
Book thumbnail image The Oxford Companion to the Book Taking a look at how the ebook format compares and contrasts with various book formats throughout history.
Role – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “role.”
The Lives of the Pennine Miners Geoff Coyle tells us about the lives of the miners who worked in the Pennines.
Book thumbnail image Off With Their Heads! How does Alice in Wonderland mirror our own political world?
Unpleasant People. Part 2: Scoundrel In this post, the second part in his Unpleasant People series, Anatoly Liberman considers the word “Scoundrel.”
Two Heads Are Not Always Better Than One: Labour’s Poster attacking David Cameron James Hall, author of The Sinister Side, on the left-right symbolism in one of the Labour Party’s new election posters.
Book thumbnail image An American Aristocracy Elvin Lim reflects on politics and the Oscars.
Book thumbnail image And the Oscar goes to “Up,” of course. Kathryn Kalinak reflects on the the 2010 Oscar “Original Score” presentations and results.
Book thumbnail image What Is It You Do? Alexandra D’Arcy explains what she does.
How To Fight Obesity Leslie Martin looks at how we should tackle America’s obesity problem.
The Beatles and “Let It Be,” 6 March 1970 Gordon Thompson’s monthly music post.
Settling the Scores: 2010 Oscar Music Predictions Kathryn Kalinak makes her predictions for the 2010 Oscar “Original Score” category, and a chance to submit your guesses.
Friday procrastination: link love – the Abu Dhabi book fair, ‘lols’ and Lewis Carroll What Rebecca has been reading.
Murder and the Boston Massacre In honor of the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, Richard Archer defends his belief that the Boston Massacre was in fact a purposeful killing by British soldiers.
Limerick – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “limerick”.
Michael Foot in Quotations Following yesterday’s sad news that Michael Foot, left wing firebrand, passionate campaigner for nuclear disarmament, and former leader of the UK’s Labour party, has died at the age of 96, I today bring you some of his best quotations from the Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations.
The Role of the Stage An excerpt from Paul Woodruff’s book The Necessity of Theater.
Unpleasant People. Part 1: Culprit Anatoly Liberman discusses the word “culprit” as the first part of his Unpleasant People series.
Biting off more than you can chew On coral reefs, cleaner fish remove skin parasites from client fish. But the cleaner-client relationship is rife with deception and reprimand – and even a battle of the sexes.
Reconciling Republicans and Democrats on Health-Care Reform Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
Reckoning with the Ghost of Jim Williams: The Supreme Court and the Burdens of History Saul Cornell looks at the 2nd amendment.
Human Rights and the United States: Through a Mirror but Darkly David P. Forsythe looks critically at the U.S.
Book thumbnail image Reducing the Deficit Through the No COLA Year Edward Zelinsky’s monthly column.
Book thumbnail image Happy Birthday Theodor “Dr. Seuss” Geisel! Professor Donald E. Pease, author of Theodore Seuss Geisel, chronicles how Dr. Seuss got his name.
Book thumbnail image The Psychology of Judicial Decision Making What is the psychology behind judicial decisions?
February 2010 (47))
Fantabulous Portmanteaus Bryan Garner reflects on portmanteaus.
Friday procrastination: link love – heroin, aliens, and the Dalai Lama What Rebecca has been reading.
Should Your Genetics Be Considered In the Workplace? Scott Shane considers the pros and cons of genetic testing in the workplace.
Book thumbnail image Cheney’s Tortured World : Terrorism, Torture and Preemption A look at torture in America.
Bully – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “bully”.
Beauty Imagined: Boom Time for Natural Cosmetics Professor Geoffrey Jones, author of Beauty Imagined: A History of the Global Beauty Industry, writes about the boom in natural cosmetics.
Sliced Bread 2.0 Dennis Baron evaluates the success of the internet.
Monthly Gleanings: February 2010 Anatoly Liberman ponders what he learned this month, “especially” the “buzzword” “neologist.”
Islamagic? Adam Silverstein compares the study of Islamic history to the performance of magic.
Book thumbnail image Torture and Impunity A look at what happened to former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee and his deputy John Yoo.
Health-care Reform is Making a Comeback Elvin Lim looks at health-care reform.
Happy Birthday Arthur Schopenhauer A look at Arthur Schopenhauer.
The Role of Play in Human Development An excerpt from Anthony D. Pellegrini’s The Role of Play in Human Development.
Book thumbnail image Medicine and The Bible An excerpt from The Oxford Companion to the Bible.
Friday procrastination: link love – the Olympics, expiry dates, and presidential daughters What Rebecca has been reading this week.
The Philosophy of Society An excerpt from John R. Searle’s book Making The Social World.
Ramshackle – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “ramshackle”.
Why It’s Good to Be Vague About the Weather Kees van Deemter, author of Not Exactly, writes in praise of vagueness.
The Dude Abides. This is not Nam! Nice Marmot: The Lingo of “The Big Lebowski” Mark Peters looks at the language of The Big Lebowski.
Squeamish Between Native Soil, Scandinavia, and France Anatoly Liberman discusses the origins of the word “squeamish.”
On Sleep and Beauty Is there really such a thing as beauty sleep?
Avatar Is a Blast From Our Military Past What do Iraq and Avatar have in common?
Why Bad News for Dems in 2010 Could be Good News for the President Elvin Lim looks at Congress and the President.
Adams on Washington: “Charming” and “Noble” In honor of Presidents Day, we present the following excerpt from John Adams: A Live, in which John Ferling details John Adams’ first impressions of George Washington, and what ultimately led to Washington’s nomination for Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.
Bioethics and Healthcare An excerpt from Worst Case Bioethics.
Love and Marriage in Antebellum African America In this excerpt from her book, ‘Til Death or Distance Do Us Part, Frances Smith Foster discusses the desire for love and marriage within the African American slave community in the antebellum South.
Friday procrastination: link love – facebook, valentines and book clubs What Rebecca has been reading.
The Best Valentine’s Day Gift On OUP USA’s adventures with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
Prince– Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “prince”.
Flight from Monticello Michael Kranish takes us behind the scenes.
The Dubious History of Pun (Pun Among Other Pungent Words) Anatoly Liberman examines the origins and meanings of the word “pun.”
How Not to Tweet Twaddle How to use twitter to your advantage.
Ronald Reagan v. the Tea Party Movement Elvin Lim’s weekly column looks at Reagan and Sarah Palin.
The Who, Herman’s Hermits, and the Ivy League: Studio Myth, February 1965 Gordon Thompson on February 1965.
On Nurses and Doctors An excerpt from Ethics in Nursing.
The Many Legacies of Aids An excerpt from Erotic City.
Friday procrastination: link love – the British pint glass, steampunk and stepmothers What Kirsty in Oxford has been reading this week.
Waiting for the Supreme Court to Decide Bilski Recommended interim steps to be implemented in patent prosecution involving business-related and computer-related inventions in order to minimize risk for the future and increase the likelihood of a patent issuing and ultimately being enforceable down the road.
Geisha – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “geisha”.
Reasons to Believe that there is a God Professor Richard Swinburne examines the philosophical argument to believe in God.
Ursula von Rydingsvard An excerpt about Ursula von Rydingsvard.
Dross, Dregs, Trash, and Other Important Substances Part 3: Trash Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “trash”.
Happy Birthday Anton Chekhov! Rosamund Bartlett celebrate’s Chekhov’s 150th birthday.
Ode to a Prescriptivist Introducing Alexandra D’Arcy.
Obama is Liked but Not Supported Elvin Lim looks at President Obama.
Health Care and the Massachusetts Senate Election Edward Zelinsky looks at health care cost control.
Disproving the Notion of Random Chance in Evolution If evolution is the opposite of Intelligent Design, can there be such a thing as non-random chance in evolution? In this passage, John C. Avise discusses how natural selection in genes is as precise as if it were planned, and further debunks the argument for Intelligent Design.
January 2010 (45))
On High Art John Carey has been at various points in his life a soldier, a barman, a television critic, a beekeeper, a printmaker, and a professor of literature at Oxford. He is the Chief Book Reviewer for The Sunday Times in London. His book, What Good are the Arts? offers a delightfully skeptical look at the claims […]
Friday procrastination: link love – art with salt, bubble wrap, and Obama What Rebecca has been reading.
Will the iPad Change Your Life? A look at the iPad.
Reptile – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “reptile”.
The Arsenic Century: The Case of the Poisoned Partridges A short extract from James C. Whorton’s The Arsenic Century: How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, and Play.
Empire of Liberty: An Excerpt The author of Empire of Liberty, Gordon S. Wood, explains how the story of Rip Van Winkle epitomizes the cultural shift in American life from British colony to independent nation just a generation after the Revolution
Monthly Gleanings: January 2010 Anatoly answers questions.
Alcohol: The World’s Oldest Recreational Drug An excerpt from Drugs: A Very Short Introduction by Prof. Les Iversen, the new chairman of the UK’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.
The State of the Union and the State of the Obama Presidency Elvin Lim’s weekly post looks at Obama’s problems.
Freedom Riders: The Film Premiere Author Raymond Arsenault sees his book turned into a film.
A Selective Review of Defamation Cases in 2009 Involving Professional Reputation John A. Neuenschwander looks at defamation cases that involve professional responsibility.
Multitasking: Learning to Teach and Text at the Same Time Dennis Baron looks at multitasking.
The Role of Emotion in Familicide An excerpt from Familicidal Hearts.
Friday procrastination: link love – the peanuts gang, Pulitzer, twitter and Cicero What Rebecca has been reading.
Cat Blogging: Nikita’s Top 7 Books to Beat the Winter Woes Our favorite cat recommends some good winter reads.
In Memory: John Irwin In memory of John Irwin.
Number – Podictionary Word of the Day The Podictionary word of the week is “number”.
Dross, Dregs, Trash, and Other Important Substances Part 2: Dregs Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “dregs”.
Wild Men: Ishi in San Francisco An excerpt from Wild Men: Ishi and Kroeber in the Wilderness of Modern America.
Book thumbnail image Risk Management and Corporate Governance Chris Mallin on risk management and corporate governance.
On the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Hustle Elvin Lim looks at compromises.
Sexual Orientation and Religion An excerpt from From Disgust to Humanity.
Friday procrastination: link love – bedbugs, books and William S. Burroughs What Rebecca has been reading.
Tired of Waiting, I Can’t Explain: Friday 15 January 1965 An original post from Gordon Thompson.
Brief – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “brief”.
Literary Snow Some snowy excerpts from classic literature to suit Oxford’s current climate.
Why Republicans were Offended by Reid’s Comments on Race Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
Dross, Dregs, Trash, and Other Important Substances Part 1: Dross Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “dross”.
The enduring popularity of Sherlock Holmes A look at the original reviews of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt An excerpt from Alan Brinkley’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
A Continent Divided An excerpt from Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India.
On Math An excerpt from The Monty Hall Problem.
Words Coined Backwards A closer look at the word “ventilated”.
Ancient Greece: Mycenae An excerpt from Paul Cartledge’s Ancient Greece.
Friday procrastination: link love – Jack Kerouac, crayons, and see-through goldfish What Rebecca has been reading.
Editing and Framing in Robert Bresson’s Films An excerpt from Robert Bresson: A Passion for Film.
Bulb – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “bulb”.
Meeting Muriel Spark Martin Stannard, author of the ODNB’s new entry on Muriel Spark, and of Muriel Spark: The Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009), writes about how he first met Spark.
Insanity: An Excerpt An excerpt from Insanity: Murder, Madness, and the Law.
English Etymology and a Happy New Year Anatoly Liberman’s weekly post.
Book thumbnail image Institutional Investors and Corporate Governance Reform Professor Chris Mallin on institutional investors and corporate governance reform.
Wealth As Fulfillment? Can wealth make us happy?
Book thumbnail image Hatha Yoga An excerpt from Yoga Body by Mark Singleton.
The Lesson of the 2009 Holiday Shopping Season: Tax Internet Sales Edward Zelinsky looks at taxes on online sales.
Sex Appeal: The First Principle is “Do No Harm” An excerpt from Sex Appeal.
December 2009 (63))
New Year’s Eve Folklore What are your New Year’s Eve traditions?
A Guide To The Good Life: Letting Go of the Past…and the Present Some advice on how to live the “good life”.
Superman Promoted the “American Way” An excerpt from Inventing the “American Way”.
Monthly Gleanings: December 2009 Anatoly Liberman’s monthly gleanings.
After Khomeini: President Ahmadinejad’s Hardliner Populism and Nuclear Policy An excerpt from After Khomeini.
Sean Sime on A Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil Sean Sime talks birds.
The ABC’s of Health Education Some entries from The Dictionary of Health Education.
The Challenges of Teaching Introductory Psychology Courses An excerpt from Best Practices for Teaching Beginnings and Endings in the Psychology Major: Research, Cases, and Recommendations
On Santa Claus A closer look at Santa Claus.
Brooklyn: “The Hippest Part of New York City” Sharon Zukin offers readers a glimpse of Brooklyn.
Winter Harvest Anatoly Liberman looks at usage and spelling.
A Few Questions For Sally McMillen Sally McMillen answers our questions about the days when it was scandalous for a woman to speak in public.
William Faulkner’s Inner Demons An excerpt from Philip Weinstein’s Becoming Faulkner.
To Howard Dean: It is 2009, not 1965 Elvin Lim addresses Howard Dean.
Video Interviews with Gustav Meier Four video interviews with Gustav Meier.
Legal and Illegal Drugs of Abuse: Both are Hurting Our Country Authors Eugene M. Rubin MD, PhD and Charles F. Zorumski MD argue that that efforts aimed at prevention and more effective early interventions for addictive disorders could have much greater impact on our country and health care economics than new treatments for the medical problems that result from these addictions.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Elliott Gorn Elliott J. Gorn shares his favorite books with the OUPblog.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Gordon Thompson Gordon Thompson shares his favorite books.
Friday procrastination: link love – haggis, rude cartoons and Led Zeppelin What Kirsty has been reading in OUP UK.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Donald Ritchie Donald Ritchie’s favorite book is True Compass.
Gorilla – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “gorilla”.
Holiday Book Bonanaza ’09: Reb Williams Author Reb Williams shares her favorite books.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: The UK Book Bloggers, Part II The second batch of UK book bloggers talk about their favourite books.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Sharon Zukin Sharon Zukin shares her favorite books.
Wedlock and After Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of “wedlock.”
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Harvey J. Kaye Harvey J. Kaye shares his favorite books with us.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: The UK Book Bloggers, Part I Some UK book bloggers tell us about their favourite books of 2009.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Mark Peters Mark Peters shares his favorite books.
Assessing Obama’s Nobel Acceptance Speech Elvin Lim looks at Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Edward Zelinsky Edward Zelinsky shares two of his favorite books, The Federalist Papers and Casey at Bat.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Elleke Boehmer OUP author Elleke Boehmer chooses her favourite books.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Sally G. McMillen Sally G. McMillen shares her favorite books.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Daniel Walker Howe Daniel Walker Howe’s favorite children’s book is The Little Engine That Could.
Consequences of Diabetes: Complications and Costs An excerpt from Diabetes and Ocular Disease.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Noralee Frankel Noralee Frankel shares her favorite books.
Friday procrastination: link love – Louisa May Alcott, marriage, and Santa Claus. What Rebecca has been reading.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Benjamin Moser Benjamin Moser shares his favorite books.
In Memory: John Storm Roberts In memory of John Storm Roberts.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Anatoly Liberman Anatoly Liberman’s favorite book is Martin Eden by Jack London and his favorite children’s book is Karlsson-on-the-Roof by Astrid Lindgren.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Robert J. Wicks It has become a holiday tradition on the OUPblog to ask our favorite people about their favorite books. This year we asked authors to participate (OUP authors and non-OUP authors). For the next two weeks we will be posting their responses which reflect a wide variety of tastes and interests, in fiction, non-fiction and children’s […]
Rodent – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “rodent”.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Louise Harwood Novelist Louise Harwood recommends Restoration by Rose Tremain.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Elvin Lim Elvin Lim recommends Rejecting Rights.
A Cooked-Goose Chase, or the Murky History of Wayzgoose Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of “wayzgoose.”
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: David Bosco David L. Bosco recommends The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, and One Morning in Maine.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Rupert Thomson Novelist Rupert Thomson chooses his book of 2009.
Holiday Book Bonanza ’09: Simon Winchester Simon Winchester explains why Georges Perec’s Life A User’s Manual is his favorite book.
From Los Alamos to Oslo (Via Reykjavik): A Vision Beyond Nuclearism Nigel Young explains why this Nobel Peace Prize marks a major turning point in peace studies and nuclear disarmament.
Understanding “Broad Partisan Support” for Health-care Reform Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
Interpreting Future Use Clauses: Law and Ethics Author John A. Neuenschwander looks closely at a question posed to the H-ORALHIST list serve.
Bend The Cost Curve: Raise the Medicare Eligibility Age to 67 Edward Zelinsky looks at a way to control future Medicare costs.
The Virtuous Psychiatrist: Patient Autonomy An excerpt from The Virtuous Psychiatrist.
Friday procrastination: link love – play-doh, beer, and Jane Austen What Rebecca has been reading.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Gordon Wilson Gordon Wilson blogs for OUPblog’s Countdown to Copenhagen week.
When Right is Not Easy: Social Work and Moral Courage Allan Barsky looks at moral courage.
Prevaricate – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the weekis “prevaricate”.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Jan Zalasiewicz Geologist Jan Zalasiewicz talks about the new epoch we live in and what the human legacy might look like in future Earth’s strata.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Donald N. Zillman Donald N. Zillman contributes to OUPblog’s Countdown to Copenhagen week.
Rare and Medium Rare Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of the word “rare.”
From Garland to Zellweger: The Ten Best Musical Films Richard Barrios shares his list of the ten best musical films of all time.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Joe Smith Joe Smith writes about ‘truth’ and climate change in the light of media reports of emails by climate change experts being hacked.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Deborah Gordon and Daniel Sperling Deborah Gordon and Daniel Sperling contribute a post to our Countdown To Copenhagen series.
Unconscious Sexism and Racism in New Moon Elvin Lim looks at The Twilight Saga: New Moon.
November 2009 (61))
Place of the Year Contest Winners Announced! “Place of the Year” contest winners announced! See what cool prizes they won.
Book thumbnail image The Mammography Furor: Why Both Opponents and Proponents of Screening Are Wrong Robert M. Veatch looks at the mammography debate and why both sides are wrong.
Countdown to Copenhagen: Mark Maslin Mark Maslin kicks off the OUPblog Countdown to Copenhagen.
Eastern and Western Approaches to the Treatment of Cholera An excerpt from Cholera: The Biography
Thanksgiving Bliss Hello OUPblog readers. We all had a little too much to eat yesterday and plan on spending today firmly planted on our couches reading books. Don’t worry though, we will back Monday with tons of new posts. Have a great weekend!
Chauvinist – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “chauvinist”.
Historical Thesaurus: On Sounds and Sense Christian Kay on sounds and sense in the HTOED.
Book thumbnail image Cranberries: A Thanksgiving Favorite A celebration of Thanksgiving and cranberries!
Monthly Gleanings: November 2009 Anatoly Liberman responds to readers’ questions and comments.
Cash is King: Proverbs about money Some money-related entries from The Little Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs.
More Than Genes: An Excerpt An excerpt from More Than Genes by Dan Agin.
On Scientists v. Politicians on Mammograms Elvin Lim looks at the new recommendation that women only undergo routine mammograms after the age of 50
The Origins of Tintin An excerpt from Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin.
How Common Are Psychiatric Disorders? An excerpt from Demystifying Psychiatry: A Resource For Patients and Families.
National Book Award Contest: Winners! Who won our NBA contest?
Friday procrastination: link love – Epstein, Didion, and water on the moon! What Rebecca has been reading.
Yes Justice Scalia, There Were Patents Relating To Training Horses in the 1890s; But More Importantly, We Need Them Today Can you patent horse training?
Eight reasons to unfriend someone on Facebook If you haven’t already heard, ‘unfriend’ is the New Oxford American Dictionary ‘Word of the Year’. In honor of this announcement, I surveyed Facebook users across the country about why they would choose to unfriend someone. The results ranged from robots and rages, to baby photos and politics.
Ponytail Pulling is Bad (but awfully good for women’s sports) Laura Pappano discusses Elizabeth Lambert’s hair-pulling and sportsmanship in women’s athletics.
Midwife – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “midwife”.
Historical Thesaurus: On dealing with the press interest Professor Christian Kay on the press interest in the HTOED.
Finding the Word of the Year Ammon Shea reveals how the Oxford Word of the Year is chosen.
Etymology as a Battlefield: Whitsunday Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of Whitsunday.
The Killer Trail: The Voulet-Chanoine Mission An excerpt from The Killer Trail by Bertrand Taithe.
Five Things You Never Knew about West Side Story Geoffrey Block share five facts about West Side Story.
On whether KSM deserves Vengeance or Justice Elvin Lim comments on the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s upcoming trial in New York for the September 11th attacks within the context of justice in our legal system.
Hysteria: A Circus An excerpt from Hysteria: The Biography.
Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend Birds are singing, the sun is shining and I am joyful in the morning without caffeine. Why? Because it is Word of the Year time (or WOTY as we refer to it around the office). Every year the ‘New Oxford American Dictionary’ celebrates the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year.
Gillian Saunders Podcast: Place of the Year 2009 Get some first hand perspective on the changes South Africa has seen since winning the 2010 World Cup bid.
Three South African Exports: Place of the Year 2009 Jake Kraft looks at one of South Africa’s biggest exports: its people.
Friday procrastination: link love – cloud computing, vaccines and fall poetry What Rebecca has been reading.
A Photo Journal of South Africa: Place of the Year 2009 Helen Eaton and Dewi Jackson share photos of their trip to South Africa.
A Toast to South African Wine: Place of The Year 2009 Nothing says classy like incredible acumen in wine industry knowledge. Read about one of the world’s top ten wine producers here.
Justice Sotomayor, Perhaps “Speed Dating” Should Be Patent-Eligible After All In light of Bilski v. Kappas Charles R. Macedo questions whether speed dating can by patented.
Net – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “net”.
Historical Thesaurus: On Categories Professor Christian Kay on categorization in the HTOED.
The Blue Dress Place of the Year 2009 15 years ago Albie Sachs was appointed by Nelson Mandela to South Africa’s first Constitutional Court. Here he talks about one of the most important buildings in the post-apartheid era and the artwork that makes its visitors pause.
When the People Speak By Lauren Appelwick Watch the trailer of “Europe in One Room.”
The Future is Another Country: Place of the Year 2009 Author Peter McDonald was the first to investigate the newly opened archives of South Africa’s apartheid censorship bureaucracy in 1999. He was astounded at what he found…
Technology Reduces the Value of Old People, Warns MIT Computer Guru Dennis Baron looks at the dilemma of being old in the internet age.
Fine and Dandy (In All Except Etymology) Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of “dandy.”
Calling Out All Former Carmen Sandiego Gumshoes! Place of the Year 2009 Take the “Place of the Year” challenge and win books! Loot, warrant, crook.
On the Playing Fields of Politics: Place of the Year 2009 On September 22, 1981 Iris Berger joined Pete Seger and 1,000 other demonstrators to protest one of the most politically loaded events in athletic history. Here Berger looks at the influence of sports on the progression of a shared South African national identity.
The Bittersweet Beauty of South Africa: Place of the Year 2009 Rathbone writes, “I had fallen in love with a tart, a very pretty tart, but a tart with stony heart.” Read why South Africa has been his “Place of the Year” for quite some time.
On The Disrupted Sequence of Health-Care Reform Elvin Lim looks at the health-care reform bill that passed in the House.
The Ring of Words: From Winterfilth to Blotmath Senior OED editor Edmund Weiner, one of the authors of The Ring of Words, on Tolkien’s language.
South Africa: Place Of The Year 2009 Oxford announces its annual “Place of the Year”!
The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 20th Anniversary An excerpt to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Inhalation Treatment for Asthma: Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company An excerpt from Asthma: The Biography.
Friday procrastination: link love – Sesame Street, Walt Whitman and the Yankees What Rebecca has been reading.
From Jolson to Mariah: The Ten Worst Musical Films Ever Made A top-ten-list.
Brick – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “brick”.
Historical Thesaurus: On Kinship Professor Christian Kay from the HTOED team blogs about one of her favourite sections of the Historical Thesaurus.
What is Art? Roger Scruton argues that there are universal standards by which to judge art.
Good God and Etymology Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymologies of “good” and “god” and demonstrates the two words are not related.
Gaspard de Coligny and the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre An excerpt from Martyrs and Murderers by Stuart Carroll.
Happy Belated 40th Birthday To The Internet! Dennis Baron wishes the internet a happy birthday!
Keith Bardwell: Wrong But Not Alone Peggy Pascoe looks at Justice of Pece Keith Bardwell’s refusal to marry Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay.
All Politics is Not Local Elvin Lim looks at the upcoming elections.
$250 Checks to Seniors: Just Say No Edward Zelinsky looks at the Obama Administration’s plan to send an additional $250 to social security recipients.
The Discovery of Insulin An excerpt from Diabetes: The Biography.
October 2009 (61))
How to Call Someone “Stupid” in Old English By Lauren Appelwick Judy Pearsall (OUP’s Reference Publishing Manager) explains how you might call someone “stupid” in Old English.
Book thumbnail image Riddle Me When? Something. The answer to Gordon Thompson’s riddle.
Friday Cat Blogging: Jennifer Weber Cats brighten our days.
Friday procrastination: link love – Asterix, owls, and old dogs What Kirsty has been reading in Oxford this week.
Ammon Shea Digs Into the Historical Thesaurus By Lauren Appelwick Ammon Shea explores the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Mr. Manners’ Guide to The F-Word Mark Peters explains when and how to properly use the f-word and its variations.
Glass – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “glass”.
Historical Thesaurus Week – Christian Kay reflects Professor Christian Kay reflects on her 40 years’ work on the HTOED.
Riddle Me When, Riddle Me Why… A tricky riddle from Gordon Thompson.
Rewriting The Gettysburg Address: Historical Thesaurus Week How could you use the HTOED to rewrite the Gettysburg Address?
Monthly Gleanings: October 2009 Anatoly Liberman responds to readers’ questions and comments.
No peace for a Cambridge Classics don Professor Paul Cartledge on the cities of Ancient Greece.
Two thumbs up? Researchers predict that by 2013 we’ll all be tweeting Dennis Baron, author of A Better Pencil, talks about whether or not we’ll all be authors by 2013.
Afghanistan and Vietnam: On Presidents and Pitfalls Harm de Blij looks at Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Sarah Palin Goes Rogue in New York Elvin Lim on Sarah Palin.
The Historical Thesarus of the Oxford English Dictionary: Some fun facts and figures Historial Thesaurus Week Some facts and figures about the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Book thumbnail image Introducing The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary Historical Thesaurus Week The Timeline for the HTOED.
Not Just Another (Black Is) Beautiful Face LeeAnna Keith reflects on the role race may have played in the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.
Golgi: An Excerpt An excerpt from Golgi: A Biography of the Founder of Modern Neuroscience.
National Book Award Contest: Win Prizes! OUP is giving it away to celebrate the National Book Awards!
Friday procrastination: link love – toads, tweets, and travel tips What Rebecca has been reading.
Why Republicans Shouldn’t “dance” Jennifer Fisher looks at Tom DeLay’s appearance on “Dancing with the Stars”.
Ketchup – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “ketchup”.
The Oddest and Dumbest English Spellings, Part 15, With a Note on Words and Things Anatoly Liberman discusses the etymology of words with silent letters.
How We Look At Health Care A post about health care from author Rosemarie Garland-Thomson.
Book thumbnail image Divide and Conquer? Splitting the Roles of Chair and CEO Chris Mallin, author of Corporate Finance, blogs about companies splitting the role of Chair and CEO.
Top three questions about my interview on The Daily Show Last week Jennifer Burns, author of Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, appeared on The Daily Show. Below you can watch her interview with Jon Stewart. Then scroll down and read the top three questions everyone has been asking her since her appearance.
On the Balloon Side Show, The Infotaining Media, and Representative Democracy Elvin Lim weighs in on Balloon-Boy.
How Ferrets Identified a Virus An excerpt from Viruses, Plagues, and History, showing how pigs, dogs, and ferrets helped identify influenza as a virus.
Redefining Death — Again How do we define death?
Not a Chimp, Not Even Close Jeremy Taylor on how “Ardi” proves chimps and humans are far less similar than we have been led to believe.
Friday procrastination: link love – blogging, bookcases, and boiled eggs What Rebecca has been reading.
Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market An excerpt from Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
Monsters and Wild Things Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters looks at Where the Wild Things Are.
Podictionary Interview – Philip Durkin A special podictionary episode with Philip Durkin.
What Made the Crocodile Cry? …And other language questions Susie Dent answers some of your language questions.
Mario Savio: Freedom’s Orator An excerpt from Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s.
Ethnic Slurs. Part III: Another Derogatory Name for the Jew: Kike Anatoly Liberman examines meaning of the word Kike.
A Linguistic Archaeology of the Mind Julia Cresswell, author of The Insect that Stole Butter? on the puzzling history of the word ‘sack’.
Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson OUP celebrates the Nobel Prizes of Ostrom and Williamson!
A Paradox of Love: Why Some Campaign Promises Matter more than Others Elvin Lim looks at why sometimes you need to play hard to get.
Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know An excerpt from Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know.
Coming To Understand Obsession An excerpt from The Thought That Counts by James Douglas Kant with Martin Franklin, PH.D., and Linda Wasmer Andrews.
F is for F*%# By Lauren Appelwick Jesse Sheidlower is Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F-Word. Recognized as one of the foremost authorities on obscenity in English, he has written about language for a great many publications, including a recent article on Slate. Here, Jesse discusses the criteria for including certain words or obscenities in […]
Friday procrastination: link love – Michelle Obama, Superman, and yogurt What Rebecca has been reading.
Blogging For Pay Dennis Baron, author of A Better Pencil, looks at the new FTC regulations regarding bloggers.
Duck – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “duck”.
The English Girl and the Tsunami An excerpt from Megadisasters by Florin Diacu
Watered Down Etymologies (Ocean and Sea) Anatoly Liberman examines the history behind the words ocean and sea.
Congratulations to Charles Kao OUP congratulates Charles Kao, Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith on their Nobel Prize.
Did Director Steven Soderbergh Get The Chemistry Right…Again? A chemical look at The Informant!.
A Selection of 18th Century Verse Some of Kirsty’s favourite short poems from The New Oxford Book of Eighteenth-Century Verse.
The Peak-Performance Myth How can you perform your best?
A Defense of Armchair Generals Elvin Lim looks at General Stanley McChrystal.
Bioterrorism Beginnings: The Rajneesh Cult, Oregon, 1985 An excerpt from Bracing For Armageddon?
Three Cheers for the IRS – Really Edward Zelinsky applauds the IRS.
Garner’s Usage Tip Of The Day: Nouveau Riche Bryan A. Garner’s tip of the day.
Friday procrastination: link love – Little Women, werewolves and banned books What Cassie has been reading this week.
Fantasy and Reality: What is the Truth? An excerpt from How Fantasy Becomes Reality.
Karaoke – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “Karaoke”.
Tennyson in The Quickening Maze Tennyson expert Adam Roberts reviews The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, which features Tennyson as a main character
September 2009 (46))
Humorous Quotations Quotes to bring a smile to your face.
Monthly Gleanings: September 2009 Anatoly Liberman’s monthly gleanings.
At last, progress in developing an AIDS vaccine HIV/AIDS expert Alan Whiteside on the recent HIV vaccine trails in Thailand.
On Hammerstein and Sondheim How Hammerstein mentored Sondheim.
A Case for Bravado: A Critique of Obama’s Performance at the UN Elvin Lim takes a close look at President Barack Obama.
In Memory: William Safire Bryan Garner remembers William Safire.
Nauseating or Nauseous Phil Sefton, ELS, weighs in on the difference between “nauseating” and “nauseous”.
Amazon Sales Rank: I’m being outsold by a book on tattoos Dennis Baron, author of A Better Pencil, looks at Amazon sales rankings.
Friday procrastination: link love – sukkahs, slush, and Dr Seuss What Rebecca has been reading.
Five to Rule Them All: An Excerpt David Bosco explains the development of the U.N. Security Council in this introduction to his latest book, Five to Rule Them All.
Walrus – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “walrus”.
Albie Sachs: The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law An excerpt from Albie Sach’s book The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law.
Obama At The UN General Assembly Bosco reflects on Obama’s speech at the UN.
Clobber, Cobbler, and their Ilk Anatoly Liberman discovers connections between the origins of the words cobbler and clobber.
John Muir and the National Parks Donald Worster looks at the new Ken Burns documentary.
What is it about Keats? Sue Brown, author of Joseph Severn, A Life wonders what it was about Keats that brought out the best in people.
Scattering The Lost Tribes of Israel A look at the lost tribes and how they got lost.
The Republican Party is Not the Conservative Movement Elvin Lim looks at the Republican Party.
Paris Hilton immortalized in Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. That’s hot. Oxford Dictionary of Quotations editor Elizabeth Knowles reflects on the history of the almost 70-year-old treasury, and how new entries are chosen.
Friday procrastination: link love – Neil Patrick Harris, Malcolm Gladwell, and friends for sale What Rebecca has been reading.
Instrument-Switching: A Good Idea? Should you let your child switch instruments?
Hobbit – Podictionary Word of the Day A podcast about the word “hobbit”.
The Ever-Green Chestnut Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “chestnut.”
You Really Got Me, Bobby Graham: In Memory In memory of Bobby Graham.
The Glamour of Princess Diana An excerpt from Glamour: A History by Stephen Gundle, discussing the glamour of Diana, Princess of Wales
The Prophecy: Vietnam At War An excerpt from Vietnam at War.
The Tea Party Movement and its Controversial Roots in American History Elvin Lim looks at the tea party movement.
The Case for Michael Jackson’s Doctor Was Michael Jackson’s doctor responsible?
Riddle Me Then, Riddle Me Now: Solution The answer to last week’s riddle.
Friday procrastination: link love – science, singing and sculpture What Rebecca has been reading.
Riddle Me Then, Riddle Me Now Can you solve this month’s riddle?
Tragus – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “tragus”.
What’s the UK’s favourite quotation? We’re celebrating the publication of the new edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, and we want to know what the nation’s favourite memorable quotation is.
Confronting Climate Collapse An excerpt from Down to the Wire.
British Slang of Jewish Origin (?): Oof and Fefnicute Anatoly looks at oof and .
Meet the Author: Paul Cartledge A video of Professor Paul Cartledge talking about his new book Ancient Greece: A History in Eleven Cities.
Speeches are about Strategy, not Poetry Elvin Lim looks at Obama’s efforts towards health care reform.
Why I Am For Death Panels Edward Zelinsky looks at death panels.
Friday procrastination: link love – ‘new literacy’, airline seating, and solar panels What Cassie has been reading this week.
Translating Clarice Lispector: A Video A video of Benjamin Moser.
Class – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “class”.
The Smallest Medicine Chest in the World Frances Larson writes about the world’s smallest medicine case, as devised by Sir Henry Wellcome.
Going To Extremes An excerpt from Going to Extremes.
Monthly Gleanings, Part Two: (August 2009) Anatoly Liberman’s gleanings.
Typing Politics: Trent Lott An excerpt from Typing Politics introduced by the author Richard Davis.
When Justice and Politics Part Company Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
August 2009 (46))
Book thumbnail image Tools for Innovation II: Analogy is the Essence of Innovation How can analogies inspire innovation?
So You Want To Be A Scientist? Philip A. Schwartzkroin talks about how to be a scientist.
Friday procrastination: link love – brains, berries, and beachwear What Rebecca has been reading.
Book thumbnail image Directions for the Gardiner: Top Tips Juliet Evans from OUP UK selects some top gardening tips from John Evelyn’s Directions for the Gardiner and Other Horticultural Advice.
A Journey to Lake Baikal An excerpt from Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal.
Frolic – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “frolic”.
Why David Sometimes Wins An excerpt from Why David Sometimes Wins.
Monthly Gleanings, Part I: (August 2009) By Anatoly Liberman Squaw. My post on squaw produced some ripples. Three lawyers from Michigan gave me the lashing of their tongue(s). (I am sorry for the parentheses, but I always feel uncomfortable when I have to say something like: “Three people put their foot in their mouth.” Should it be feet and mouths?) Their […]
Communication Power How are communication and power related?
Why the President Needs to Re-frame Health-care Reform: What’s in it for us? What we talk about when we talk about health-care.
Tools for Innovation I: Normal psychology and economic recovery How do goals drive behavior?
How To Support Graduate Education in the Sciences? How should we fund graduate research?
Friday procrastination: link love – jazz albums, Ivy-league classes, and graffiti What Rebecca has been reading.
Defining Terrorism An excerpt from How Terrorism is Wrong.
Elbow – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “elbow”.
How should we respond to terrorist violence? Richard English, author of Terrorism: How to Respond, lays out the seven key elements in responding to terrorist violence.
Book thumbnail image On This Day In History: In Memory of Blind Willie McTell A post in honor of this great musician.
Why Skate but Scathe? Or, The Oddest English Spellings. Part 14 Anatoly looks at spelling reform, specifically at “sk” and “sc”.
Here comes the rain again… Damp Squid author Jeremy Butterfield talks to OUP UK Publicity Manager Juliet Evans about different ways to talk about rain.
How Barack Obama can Pacify the Ghosts of Anti-Federalism to Advance the Health-care Debate Elvin looks at the health-care debate through a historical lens.
Musing the News An excerpt from Losing The News.
Why Should We Care About Disappearing Frogs? An excerpt from Extinction In Our Times, explain why we should care about amphibians disappearing.
Meaning and Health An excerpt from Hope in the Age of Anxiety, looking at the relationship between meaning and health.
Rail Travel in The Andes: An Excerpt An excerpt about rail travel through the Andes from Jason Wilson’s The Andes: A Cultural History.
Friday procrastination: link love – festivals, fiction, and Stephen Fry What Kirsty has been reading in Oxford this week.
Send in the Hench-poodles! An Underrated Prefix for Underlings Mark Peters looks at the various uses of “hench” as a prefix.
Chardonnay – Podictionary Word of the Day [display_podcast] iTunes users can subscribe to this podcast The heavyweights of the English dictionary world (The Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam Webster for instance) can trace the use of the word Chardonnay back only to 1911 in English when it appeared in the Encyclopedia Britannica. These English dictionaries haven’t made too much progress for this […]
The demise of the humble bumblebee Professor Dave Goulson writes about declining bumblebee numbers, and why we should care.
Haydn: An Acrostic An acrostic using terms from Oxford Composer Companions: Haydn.
The Deceptive Transparency of Compounds Anatoly Liberman explains the etymology of compound words, notably, blackguard.
Will the Internet Create a Universal Writing System? Andrew Robinson, author of Writing and Script: A Very Short Introduction on the internet and language.
The Power of Reconciliation in the Health-Care Reform Debate Elvin Lim looks at reconciliation.
Chop Suey: An Excerpt An excerpt from Andrew Coe’s Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States.
A Few Questions for Dr. Robert J. Wicks A q&a with Dr. Robert J. Wicks, author of Bounce:Living the Resilient Life.
Meet the Author: Hermione Lee Professor Hermione Lee talks about her new book Biography: A Very Short Introduction.
Friday procrastination: link love – literary tattoos, edible haikus, and sandcastles Why not take a look at some of these fantastic articles we’ve found from around the web? From literary tattoos, to edible haikus, sunny umbrellas, to goody-goody hormones and their links to envy, not to mention POTUS and sandcastles… there’s something to keep any procrastinator entertained.
Four Friends You’ll Want in Your Life Today Dr. Robert J. Wicks, author of Bounce: Living the Resilient Life writes about the four types of friends everyone needs in their life.
Opera Names: The Answers The answers to our Opera Names quiz.
Darwin’s Religious Odyssey An excerpt from Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction, which was recently awarded The Dingle Prize.
Opera Names: A Quiz A quiz about some of opera’s star figures.
A Derailed Myth, or, a Story of the Word Tram Anatoly Liberman tours the history of the word tram.
Riddle Me Now, Riddle Me Then…:The Answer The solution to Gordon Thompson’s riddle.
Professor Gates v. Sargeant Crowley Elvin Lim looks at what happens when you jump to conclusions.
Confusing Suds with Substance Edward Zelinsky looks at disorderly conduct.
Riddle Me Now, Riddle Me Then… Can you answer Gordon Thompson’s riddle?
Behind the scenes at JAMA and the Archives journals: top ten mistakes authors make, part III By Brenda Gregoline Today, Brenda Gregoline discusses the final four points on her ‘top ten list’ of most frequent mistakes authors make when submitting manuscripts – including duplicate submissions, failing to protect patient identity, not ‘matching-up data’ and forgetting to read the instructions for authors!
July 2009 (52))
David Michaels Nominated for OSHA David Michaels is the author of Doubt is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health which explains how many of the scientists who spun science for tobacco have become practitioners in the lucrative world of product defense. Whatever the story- global warming, toxic chemicals, sugar and obesity, secondhand smoke- these scientists generate […]
Friday procrastination: link love – Alice in Wonderland, Hamlet, and The Hobbit What Rebecca has been reading.
John Dillinger Goes to the Movies Author Elliott J. Gorn looks at John Dillinger films.
Bus – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “bus”.
Rain, rain, go away… Some rain-related quotes from a rain-soaked Oxford.
Gypsy Rose Lee Entertained Troops in Her Own Style A look at Gypsy Rose Lee.
Around ethnic slurs part 2: Sheeny By Anatoly Liberman Probably no other ethnic group has been vilified with so much linguistic ingenuity as the Jews. For the moment I will leave out of account Kike and Smouch and say what little I can about Sheeny, a word first recorded in English in 1824 (so the OED).
Augustine of Hippo: The Making of a Professor An excerpt from the late Professor Henry Chadwick’s recently-discovered biography of Augustine of Hippo.
Virtual Asymmetry: The Private Law of Apple Douglas Phillips answers the question: Can I legally make my PC think it’s a Mac?
A Fond Farewell to Michael Steinberg A look at Michael Steinberg’s love of music in his own words.
Talking About Health Care Elvin Lim looks at Obama’s actions to support his health care plan.
Behind the scenes at JAMA and the Archives journals: top ten mistakes authors make, part II By Brenda Gregoline It’s impossible to expect authors to absorb all of the 1000-page ‘AMA Manual of Style’; they’re just trying to get published, and it’s our job to help them. Today, we discuss three of the top-ten most frequent mistakes, including punctuation and style, ‘errors of grandiosity’ and wacky references.
Friday procrastination: link love – Doctor Who, David Tennant and the Daily Show What Cassie has been reading this week.
The Constitution in 2020 An excerpt from The Constitution in 2020.
Mumbo-Jumbo – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “mumbo-jumbo”.
Droll but Harmless: The Word Scallywag Anatoly Liberman explores various cultural forms and meanings of the term “scalawag.”
Is it true what they said about John Dillinger? By Elliot J. Gorn I’m reasonably sure that most American boys who reached adolescence in the 1960s knew Dillinger’s dick. It was enormous, preserved in formaldehyde at the Smithsonian Institution. Friends of mine who grew up on the east coast told me years later that on high school trips to Washington, the boys would spread out and look for it.
Remembering Walter Cronkite Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article […]
Walter Cronkite and the Decline of the Evening News Donald Ritchie says goodbye to Walter Cronkite.
Amazon Fail 2.0: Bookseller’s Big Brother removes Orwell’s Big Brother from Kindles everywhere Dennis Barron looks at Amazon’s decision to pull copies of Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” from individual’s Kindle libraries.
Behind the scenes at JAMA and the Archives journals: top ten mistakes authors make, part I By Brenda Gregoline Publishing a new edition of a style manual, particularly a lengthy, detailed manual that covers a ridiculous amount of technical material (Hello, ‘AMA Manual of Style’!), is a gruelling process. In our case, it involved ten people meeting for at least an hour every week for more than a year.
The Legacy of Harper’s Magazine, William Dean Howells and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer John R. MacArthur gives us a preview of Tuesday’s Bryant Park Reading Room discussion.
Friday procrastination: link love – the FBI, Apollo 11, and the Krugman Blues What Rebecca has been reading.
Chrome OS: A Shiny New Model for the Software License? Douglas E. Phillips looks at Google’s new operating system.
Moving House: An Excerpt An excerpt from On Living in an Old Country by Patrick Wright.
Camera – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “camera”.
Voting and Corporate Governance: Having a Say Chris Mallin writes on voting and corporate governance.
Moving Beyond War Douglas P. Fry looks at the North Korea nuclear crisis in a new light.
What Did The Vikings Do Before They Began to Play Football? Anatoly Liberman explores the history of the word Viking.
Family Strategies and Nuns without Vocation An excerpt from Nuns: A History of Convent Life by Silvia Evangelisti.
Why Empathy is Important Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
The Beach Boys and Mythic California An excerpt from Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance, 1950-1963 by Kevin Starr.
Questions That Critical Thinking Will Help You Answer An excerpt from Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals.
Critical Thinking For Helping Professionals An introductory excerpt from Critical Thinking for Helping Professionals.
A New Guinea Slideshow By Vojtech Novotny In Notebooks from New Guinea, author Vojtech Novotny colorfully illuminates life in the rainforest. Novotny provides an engaging look into the natural history, people, and cultures of one of the last wild frontiers in the world, as he studies and researches the local biodiversity. Today Novotny has provided a visual component to his fascinating anecdotes and experiences.
Friday procrastination: link love – Dan Brown, Harry Potter and Vladmir Nabokov What Cassie has been reading this week.
Book thumbnail image How Cannibalism Caused a New Guinean Epidemic Can an ancient disease be linked to cannibalism?
Sarcophagus – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “Sarcophagus”.
The Iran-Syria Alliance An excerpt from Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age o Ayatollahs.
Around Ethnic Slurs Part 1: Squaw Anatoly Liberman describes how “misspent political zeal turned ‘squaw’ into an ethnic slur.”
Why You Won’t Find an Ambulance in the Jungle Vojtech Novotny, author of Notebooks from New Guinea, writes about a medical emergency in the village where he was researching.
In Defense of Sarah Palin Elvin Lim defends Sarah Palin.
A Few Questions for Vojtech Novotny A look into the research and work of Czech author and scientist, Vojtech Novotny in New Guinea.
Character Matters How does a scientist measure personality?
Filling Supreme Court Vacancies Edward Zelinsky explains why he supports the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.
July 4th Weekend Happy 4th of July!!
Riddle Me That, Riddle Me This…: The Solution The answer to yesterday’s riddle.
Celebrate – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “celebrate”.
Meet the Author: Owen Davies Watch Owen Davies talk about his book Grimoires: A History of Magic Books.
Riddle Me That, Riddle Me This… Can you solve the riddle?
Monthly Gleanings, Part Two Anatoly Liberman’s monthy gleanings.
Henry Ford Learns the Most Expensive Art Lesson in History An excerpt from Design in the USA by Jeffrey L. Meikle.
June 2009 (56))
Book thumbnail image Michael Jackson, Nostalgia, and the 1980s Elvin Lim looks at 80’s nostalgia.
Work, Life, Balance: Blondin over Niagara On this day in history…
American War Propaganda Top Ten The top ten propaganda messages of the last century.
The ABC’s of Law Some excerpts from the Oxford Dictionary of Law.
OUP USA on The AAP/ Authors Guild Settlement With Google OUP USA President Tim Barton has published a detailed overview and position statement regarding the AAP/Authors Guild Settlement with Google which can be found here. Below is a brief excerpt from the piece. “…What once seemed at least debatable has now become irrefutable: If it’s not online, it’s invisible. While increasing numbers of long-out-of-date, public-domain […]
What is Paranoia? An excerpt from Paranoia: The 21st-century Fear.
Red Snow: Tokyo A Cultural History An excerpt from Tokyo: A Cultural History.
Friday procrastination: link love – pork pies, British libraries, and Dame Judi Dench What Kirsty from OUP UK has been reading this week.
Set Phasers on Tweet: A Star Trek Snowclone Blizzard on Twitter Mark Peters looks at all the variations of the snowclone “set phasers to x” on Twitter.
Daisy – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “daisy”.
Anyone for Tennis? A selection of tennis-related words of wisdom from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Dancing With A Cockatoo Can birds keep a beat?
June Ends (and so did May) Anatoly Liberman chronicles the development of the “American variety of English” from its colonial origins through today.
Terrorism: How to Respond Watch a video of Richard English talk about his forthcoming book Terrorism: How to Respond.
The Park That Lost its Name An excerpt from A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London by Patrick Wright.
The ABC’s of Education Some excerpts from the Oxford Dictionary of Education.
Why Obama Must Treat DOMA with Care Elvin Lim looks at Presidents Obama and Bush.
This Day In History: The GI Bill Was Passed On this day in history the G.I. Bill was passed.
Deciding To Die: The Case of Karen Quinlan An excerpt from The Woman Who Decided to Die: Challenges and Choices at the Edges of Medicine.
Friday procrastination: link love – Iran, New York, and social media What Cassie has been reading this week.
From nom de plume to el cheapo: Pseudo-foreign words Not all foreign-sounding words are quite what they seem.
Immigrants and Native Americans Kevin Kenny looks at why it is important that we study Native American history.
Expo – Podictionary Word of the Day This week’s podictionary looks at the word “expo.”
10 Facts About the Father of Country Music Ten of the most interesting things about Jimmie Rodgers.
The Evasive Yeoman Oxford Etymologist, Anatoly Liberman, traces the roots of the word “yeomen.”
On Iran Elvin Lim looks at the election results in Iran.
The ABC’s of Math Some entry excerpts from The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Mathematics
Weighing The World: Christopher Columbus An excerpt from Weighing the World.
FAQ’s About Raising Grieving Children The authors of A Parent’s Guide to Raising Grieving Children: Rebuilding Your Family after the Death of a Loved One share the answers to some frequently asked questions.
Two Looks At Writing: From Writer’s Block to ‘Word Factory’ Are you the kind of writer who struggles through a page or who writes twenty in an afternoon?
Friday procrastination: link love – 30 Rock, the Muppets, and literary losers What Rebecca has been reading.
June 12th is Loving Day Peggy Pascoe shares the history of the holiday Loving Day, happening June 12th.
Technology – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “technology”.
Widening and some deepening: How Britain joined the EU An excerpt from The European Union: A Very Short Introduction.
Can You Trust Your (Etymological) Dictionary? Anatoly Liberman demonstrates the difficulty of tracing the origins of every day words–especially considering the lack of consensus among linguists.
Health-care Reform: A Litmus Test for a President and his Proposed Epoch What health care reform means to Obama’s legacy.
Meet the Author: Nigel Warburton Nigel Warburton talks about his book Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction.
Slang Words: Not What You Think Ten slang words so hip they don’t even sound like slang.
Global Warming: Can We Turn Back the Clock? Science historian Patricia Fara looks at environmentalism.
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: The Answer The riddle answer!
Odyssey with Animals Author Adrian Morrison looks at animal welfare/animal rights debate
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: Clue Three The third and final clue in Gordon Thompson’s riddle.
Book Models A look at two very personal cover images.
The Prop 8 Decision: What is a Constitution For? William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Darren R. Spedale comment on the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold Prop 8.
DSNA 2009, or, Why don’t more people go to conferences? Ammon Shea reports on the Dictionary Society of North America Conference.
RT this: OUP Dictionary Team monitors Twitterer’s tweets By Purdy A recent study out of Harvard confirms Twitter is all vanity. This is not a big surprise to the dictionary team at Oxford University Press. OUP lexicographers have been monitoring more than 1.5 million random tweets Since January 2009 and have noticed any number of interesting facts about the impact of Twitter on language usage. For example the 500 words most frequently used on Twitter are significantly different from the top 500 in general English text.
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: Clue Two Gordon Thompson provides clue number two.
Bikini – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “bikini”.
English Is Astoundingly Like Russian, But What About French? (The Origin of the Word Bistro) Anatoly looks at the word “bistro”.
Waves of Woolf: 19th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference By Megan Branch Princeton is playing at the 19th Annual Virginia Woolf Conference. What’s it all about?
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That: Clue One Gordon Thompson’s first riddle clue.
Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That… Will you be able to solve Gordon Thompson’s riddle?
Fanspeak: The Lingo of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Fandom Jeff Prucher looks at words coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.
Potential Role of Vitamin D in Multiple Sclerosis Susan Epstein explains why vitamin D is important in MS treatment.
Supreme Court Politics for the Sake of Politics Elvin Lim looks at Supreme Court politics.
The Torture Debate: Getting Beyond Dick and Nancy Edward Zelinsky looks at the torture debate.
May 2009 (51))
Friday procrastination: link love – manhattanhenge, metaphors and Alice Munro What Rebecca has been reading.
How the New York Times (and Almost Everyone Else) Missed the Watergate Scandal Donald Ritchie looks at the reporting of Watergate.
Tarmac – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “tarmac”.
How Did Your Garden Grow? Gardening the Seventeenth-Century Way OUP UK Publicity Manager Juliet Evans snags some bargains at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, and looks to 17th century gardener John Evelyn for some tips on how to make the most of them.
The Dirty Dozen: Top 12 Helen Gurley Brown-isms Advice from Helen Gurley Brown.
Monthly Gleanings: May 2009 Anatoly’s monthly gleanings.
Book thumbnail image The Aftermath: Rwanda in 1995 A look at Rwanda after the genocide and the violence that led to the Kibeho massacre.
Like Grimoires?
! Owen Davies, professor of social history at the University of Hertfordshire, has written extensively about the history of magic, witchcraft and ghosts. His most recent book, Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, is a history of magic books that takes us from ancient Eygpt, through Kabbalah, Scandinavian witchcraft, 19th-century Egyptology, West African folk religion, a […]
Reflections on A Check-Room Romance Michelle discusses the premiere of A Check-Room Romance–and what happens when music and graphic art merge into one theatrical genre.
A Memorial Day Tribute To The G.I. Bill An excerpt from The G.I. Bill: A New Deal For Veterans.
Scientists Without Beards Patricia Fara looks at women in science who have inspired her.
A mystery-y-ish-y word trend: the –y suffix has gone bananas By Mark Peters Many lessons can be gleaned from watching reruns of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’: Indirect sunlight is not an unlife-ender for vampires. Some small-town mayors may yearn to become giant unholy snake things (no surprise there). As Cordelia Chase said, “People, you’ve got to leave your tombs earthed.” (Whoops, that was on the Buffy spinoff Angel—but whatever).
Hurricane – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “hurricane”.
Obama, Notre Dame, and Abortion Elvin Lim looks at Obama and abortion.
Star Trek: Terminology Rebooted Cassie looks at how her favorite Star Trek terms were used in the new movie.
The Spirit of the Hustings Returns Dr Jon Lawrence reflects on the history of the public facing politicians in light of the recent MPs’ expenses scandal in the UK.
Seething in Etymological Vacuity (The Story of Theodolite) Anatoly looks at the word “theodolite”.
The International Impact on Africa’s Past A quick look at the guilt associated with Africa’s past.
Southeast Asia and the Kingdom of Angkor: The New Oxford World History Series An excerpt from Southeast Asia in World History.
Antimatter and ‘Angels and Demons’: A fiction thought to be fact Oxford University Professor of Physics, Frank Close, explains the antimatter errors in ‘Angels and Demons’.
A Few Questions for Lawrence M. Scheier: Part Two Lawrence M. Scheier answers questions.
Word window: week twelve This week is the twelfth instalment of our ‘Word Window’ series, in which we present some of the Oxford English Dictionary’s more remarkable words. Last week, we discussed the triple meaning of ‘Big Apple’. This week we have chosen a rather mysterious term; ‘Cruciverbalist’…
Friday procrastination: link love – Sarah Palin, Stephanie Meyer, and space shuttles A look at what Cassie has been reading this week.
All That Jazz Michelle and Justyna’s excellent adventure at WNYC’s Jazz Loft Live
Hanging Noodles Ammon Shea reviews I’m Not Hanging Noodles On Your Ears.
Lieutenant – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “lieutenant”.
Chimps are not us! Jeremy Taylor on why chimps and humans are far less similar than we have been led to believe.
Wednesday’s Father Anatoly looks at the origin of the word “Wednesday”.
Shaking paper intricacies out of his sleeve: The young Mendelssohn Celebrating the 200th anniversary of Felix Mendelssohn’s birth.
The Invasion of Chad (Act III) A look that the third attemped invasion of Chad and the division of the Zaghawa tribe.
South Africa and The Story of Eva (Krotoa): The New Oxford World History Series An excerpt from South Africa in World History.
A Few Questions For Lawrence M. Scheier: Part One Lawrence Scheier answers questions.
Word Window: Week Eleven The word in our window this week is…
The Who, Tommy, and a Pop Classic, May 1969 The 40th anniversary of Tommy.
Neil Gaiman is for Readers on Both Sides of the Divide In the spirit of breaking genre walls, Michelle talks about what she learned from SFF writer Neil Gaiman.
Friday procrastination: link love – kindles, klingon and kaleidoscopes What Rebecca has been reading.
Star Trek terminology By Cassie Ammerman The 11th Star Trek film is opening this Friday, and I don’t know about you, but I’ve already bought my ticket. It’s a reboot of the original, meaning more James Tiberius Kirk, Spock, and the rest of the gang. It’s enough to make me jump up and down in excitement – and not just for terminology.
Miniature – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “miniature”.
Swine Flu: Whatever next? Dorothy H. Crawford, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Edinburgh, on the H1N1 swine flu outbreak.
A Look at Michael Oren A look at Michael Oren.
Swine Flu: Victims and Vectors Leslie Francis looks at H1N1.
I Say Draft, You Say Draught, Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 13) Anatoly analyzes some interesting differences in spelling and pronunciation between American and British English.
Living With Germs: On Infectious Diseases John Playfair reminds us that infectious diseases don’t stand still for long.
Swine Flu or H1N1? Elvin Lim looks at the problems behind calling H1N1 “Swine Flu.”
Somali Pirate Update With one man being tried in New York, and another eleven captured, check out the latest update on the Somali Pirates.
The Ancient Balkans: The New Oxford World History Series An excerpt from The Balkans in World History.
The History of Spinal Cord Stimulation The history of electrical stimulation to treat pain.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Ten The word in Oxford’s window this week is…
Swine Flu, Telecommuting and New York’s Extraterritorial Taxation of Nonresidents’ Incomes Edward Zelinsky argues that Swine Flu is just another reason workers should not be penalized for working from home.
Paying a Lawyer How do lawyers get paid?
Friday procrastination: link love – swine flu, hobbits, and hair What Rebecca has been reading and a call for BEA.
April 2009 (75))
Unloved Books Ammon wonders about the future of books.
Embarrass – Podictionary Word of the Day The Podictionary word of the day is “Embarrass”.
Say hello to OUP’s newest additions! Meet the OUP ducklings.
Monthly Gleanings: April 2009 Anatoly answers questions.
McPherson and Symonds: A Conversation An email conversation.
Mrs Duberly’s War An excerpt from Frances Duberly’s diary of the Crimean War.
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Cassie shares her favorite parts of the Rubaiyat Of Omar Khayyam for National Poetry Month.
Congo: Peace at Last? Has Congo finally found peace? If so, a look at what must be done to keep things on track.
Genetics of Obesity Syndromes How do we measure obesity?
Walking the Tightrope: Barack Obama on the Choice between our Safety and our Ideals Elvin Lim looks closely at President Obama.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Nine What is in Oxford’s Word Window this week?
The Week Twitter Entered My Life Michelle talks about finally getting hooked on Twitter and what it means for Book Publicists.
Leaps of Faith: Or Word Myths Marc, our intern, learns a personal lesson from Word Myths.
Friday Procrastination: Some British Link Love What Kirsty has been reading in Oxford.
First Contact How would you communicate with an alien? A look at how Science Fiction authors tackled the problem.
The Ghost of Tea Parties Past Benjamin Carp looks at tea parties in historical perspective.
Counting words How many words are in the English language?
Crass – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “crass”.
On Budgets, Recession, and Money: Political Quotations A selection of entries from The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations around budgets, recession, and money.
Terry Riley’s In C A look inside the writing process of Terry Riley’s In C.
The Oxford Etymologist Looks at Race, Class and Sex (but not Gender), or, Beating a Willing Horse Anatoly investigates the origin of the word ‘race.’
Earth Day: Are Restoration Efforts Enough? A look at environmental restoration and the way these attempts at bringing back healthy ecosystems are succeeding and failing.
Planet Narnia: A Fully Worked Out Idea An excerpt from ‘Planet Narnia’ by Michael Ward, the basis for the recent BBC documentary ‘The Narnia Code’.
Science and Conflict of Interest Frederick Grinnell looks at conflict-of-interest in scientific research.
The Somali Pirates and the World A look at how the Somali Pirates fit into Africa and the world.
100 days What do the first 100 days of a Presidency tell us?
Central Issues in the Comparative Study of Cognition A look at comparative cognition.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Eight The word in the window this week is…
Being the Perfect Feminist Michelle remembers reading Eve Sedgwick. She discusses the “erotic triangle” in Shakespeare’s Sonnets and the pressure to be the perfect feminist today.
BitTorrent: Legal Nightmare or Future Business Model? A look at a BitTorrent ruling in Sweden.
Library Love 2009: Identify that Library, Answers! Libraries all over the world each have their own individual qualities and sadly, we only got to hint at a couple of them in our library quiz, but please find the answers revealed and don’t forget to show love for your local library.
“Get Back” and Late Sixties Britain A look at The Beatles in the late 60’s.
Library Love 2009: Identify that Library! In the spirit of Library Week 2009, OUP is challenging readers to identify that library with a quiz that provides clues to some of the most intriguing libraries around the world. Test your library knowledge.
Friday procrastination: link love – Reabecca Guayaramerin, google, and gaming What Rebecca has been reading.
Library Love 2009: From a Librarian’s Perspective Maura Smale she shares her love for libraries with OUP.
Gray Markets and Globalization David Sugden explains technology’s impact on the gray and black markets.
Internet – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “internet”.
A Very Special Video Playlist Justin takes on a music video tour.
Library Love 2009: OUP Staffers Lust After Libraries In honor of National Library Week 2009, OUP staffers discuss the first time they fell in love, with libraries that is.
Peace and War (Two Gifts from France) Anatoly muses on the origins of the words ‘peace’ and ‘war.’
Top 10 Grimoires Owen Davies chooses his Top 10 grimoires.
We’re Number One!…Depending On Who You Ask Chris Smith wonders why humans obsess over lists.
Library Love 2009: An Archivist Reveals the Charm of Libraries Martin Maw, an Archivist at Oxford University Press, UK; discusses how he was completely charmed by libraries at a young age.
Mugged In Cyberspace A warning to be careful online.
Strategic Musical Chairs The game of switching stances continues in countries around the Horn.
Library Love 2009: Scavenger Hunt Answers Finally, the answers to our Library Love 2009: Scavenger Hunt are revealed!
Textbook of Family Medicine A look at the basic principles of family medicine.
The President’s Church Elvin Lim looks at American Presidents and Church.
Library Love 2009: Scavenger Hunt To get Library Week, 2009 started Oxford is granting free access to Oxford Reference Online. Start exploring with this great ORO quiz.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Seven The word in Oxford’s window this week is…
On Love Letters Past and Present In honor of Poetry Month, Michelle talks about the love letters of poet Edna St.Vincent Millay and how they compare to courtship in an online era.
Friday procrastination: link love – pirates, hieroglyphs and the CIA What Rebecca has been reading.
Poetry Link Love Purdy shares his poetry link love.
A Few Questions For Stefan Aust A Q&A with Stefan Aust author of Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the R.A.F.
Building Names Ammon Shea looks at a series of buildings named after Oliver Cromwell.
Memory – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “memory”.
Discovering the Narnia Code Michael Ward, author of Planet Narnia, on discovering the Narnia Code.
Marcus Daniel On Backstory An audio excerpt from Daniel’s Backstory interview.
On Spoons, Forks, and Knives Anatoly deliberates the origins of the words ‘spoon,’ ‘fork,’ and ‘knife.’
Feeding Crocodiles Stephen Specter looks at the contrast between Bush and Obama’s views on Israel and Islamic extremists.
Say on Pay Corporate Governance author Chris Mallin writes about recent calls for more ‘say on pay’ in the US.
Guantanamo: In The Public Eye Karen Greenberg responds to Guantanamo on television.
Africa’s Arab Leaders Unite A look at the confusion surrounding al-Bashir’s indictment by the International Criminal Court, and the Arab leaders’ rally to support him.
Will Anyone Help My Parents? A look at how you can help out an elder who is being mistreated.
President Obama’s Latent Realism Elvin Lim looks at Obama’s trip to the G-20 Summit.
President Obama Embraces the Defined Contribution Paradigm Edward Zelinsky looks closely at Obama’s budget.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Six The word in the window this week is…
Meeting David Sedaris Michelle shares her experiences from a David Sedaris reading she attended Thursday night.
Friday procrastination: link love – clip art, comfort, and board games Ah Friday! I’m not sure how this week is over already but I have to admit that I am happy it is. With the sun starting to appear and Spring making itself known, good things simply must be on the way. So cheers to a good weekend and a great April. Enjoy the links below. […]
Interning Ammon Shea looks at the role of interns.
The VSIs at the Oxford Literary Festival 2009 Some photographs from the Oxford Literary Festival.
Happy Birthday: Gil Scott-Heron Happy Birthday to Gil Scott-Heron!
A Perspective On Change A look at change.
No Subject is Too Petty for an Etymologist, Or, Pets from North to South Anatoly explores the origins of the word ‘pet.’
March 2009 (70))
Nine words you might think came from science but which are really from science fiction?? By Jeff Prucher We were pretty excited when ‘Brave New Words’ won the Hugo Award. Now that ‘Brave New Words’ is available in paperback we asked Jeff Prucher, freelance lexicographer and editor for the Oxford English Dictionary’s science fiction project, to revisit the blog. Below are Prucher’s picks of words.
Announcing Black Plastic Glasses: Evan Schnittman Blogs Schnittman’s new blog.
Book thumbnail image To Regulate or Not to Regulate, that is American Exceptionalism Elvin Lim wonders if, “decades after we have weathered the current crisis, we will still be debating whether or not what Obama did helped or worsened the problem.”
A Brief History: Sudan and Somalia A brief overview of some key people and groups in Somalia and Sudan.
Filling Up With Fruits and Vegetables A look at how you can incorporate fruits and vegetables in your diet.
John Hope Franklin Oxford mourns the passing of John Hope Franklin, a most extraordinary man and a great historian. Our condolences to his family and his many friends. He will be missed.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Five The word of the week is….
10 Literary Terms You Might Not Know The top 10 hard-to-define literary terms.
Perspectives From Inside the “Show” Michelle looks at life on the editorial side.
Friday procrastination: link love – blogging, book jackets, and big sellers What Kirsty has been reading in the UK this week.
At Least He Got My Name Right What do you do when your work is distorted to make or support political claims you don’t accept in the service of an agenda that you don’t share?
A Prodigal Nation, Still A blog post from Andrew Murphy author of Prodigal Nation.
War of the Thesauri Do thesauruses fight?
Amendment – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “amendment”.
Do nuclear weapons make the world a safer place? Joseph Siracusa on whether nuclear weapons make us safer or not.
Monthly Gleanings: March 2009 Anatoly answers questions about word origins.
Spring Training and Senatorial Appointments Donald Ritchie looks at the connection between spring training rookies and Senatorial appointees.
Why are more women active in the Christian church than men? Linda Goodhead on women and the Christian Church.
A Report Card on Post-Kelo Eminent Domain Reforms James Ely looks at Eminent Domain Reform.
Explore Africa: Top Africa Blogs Check out our selection of some of the best Africa-focused blogs.
Outrage in Washington Elvin Lim looks at the AIG bonuses.
Parkinson’s Disease and Hallucinations An excerpt from Parkinson’s Disease Treatment Guide.
Oxford’s word window: week four We are now in week four of our ‘Word Window’ series, in which we display an Oxford Word of the Week, in the windows of our New York Offices. Last week’s word was: ‘Rashomon’ n.: ‘Designating something resembling or suggestive of the film Rashomon.’ This week’s word is ‘Mondegreen’…
This Day In History: Relativity On this day in history, March 20, 1916…
Friday procrastination: link love – eavesdropping, spacebats, and anger management What Cassie has been reading this week.
Spacemen and Anonymuncles Attack! Old Words for Writers Mark Peters resurrects some old words to describe writers.
Office – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “office.”
Antimatter: An Excerpt An excerpt from Frank Close’s book Antimatter.
Afghanistan: A Campaign at a Crossroads An excerpt from The Accidental Guerrilla.
Beating About the Gooseberry Bush Anatoly explores the origins of the word ‘gooseberry,’ and its related phrases.
Directions for the Gardiner: On Moles and Worms Maggie Campell-Culver gives some 17th century tips on keeping your garden mole-free.
Dick Cheney’s Interview with John King Elvin Lim looks at Dick Cheney’s Interview with John King.
Sudan: A Coward’s Revenge The quiet and cowardly way that Sudan chose to restart the genocide.
Live from the New York Yankees’ Spring Training A first-hand report from Yankee’s spring training.
What Causes Parkinson’s Disease? A look at the origins of Parkinson’s Disease.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Three This week’s word is: Rashomon.
Newspaper Datelines On the importance of a newspaper dateline.
How Books Build our Relationships Michelle looks at the way books connect us personally.
Friday procrastination: link love – smiley faces, secret messages and Stone Prairie Farm What Rebecca has been reading.
A British Invasion Amasses, March 1964 Gordon Thompson looks at The Beatles.
Reading Obituaries Ammon Shea shares his love of obituaries.
The Best Spring Training Site A look at the best baseball training site.
Stew – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word is “stew.”
Rights Issues: Shareholders ‘over the barrel’ Professor Chris Mallin highlights the volume of rights issues coming to the market and the corporate governance implications for investors, both institutional and private.
Top Five: Shakespearean Women of Mythological Proportions The myths behind Shakespeare’s women.
21st Century Spring Training Arrives in W. Phoenix Suburbs. But Will Planned-For Commerce Follow in this Economy? Will the economy effect the baseball spring training business model?
Everything is Tiptop By Anatoly Liberman Long ago I wrote a column with the title “Tit for Tat.” Engl. tip for tap also existed at one time. Words like tip, tap, top, tick, tack, tock, tit, tat, tot, as well as those with voiced endings like tid– (compare tidbit), tad, and tod (“bush; fox”), are ideal candidates for sound imitative coinages.
Free Speech: Liberty not Licence An excerpt from Free Speech: A Very Short Introduction by Nigel Warburton.
Love Hurts A look at a common assumption in wife killing; that it is rooted in masculine possessiveness.
Get the AMISOM Soldiers Out of Somalia! A look at why the AMISOM soldiers are causing more harm than good in Somalia.
Does Rush Limbaugh Lead the Republican Party? Lim looks at who the leader of the Republican Party is?
Field Research Tips A look at some field research tips.
President Obama: Shareholders, Workers — Let Everyone Vote Zelinsky responds to President Obama’s recent endorsement of the Employee Free Choice Act which would eliminate the legal requirement of a secret ballot vote before workers unionize. Zelinsky argues that Democrats and Republicans alike should simultaneously affirm Americans’ right as shareholders to vote on matters of corporate policy including managerial compensation and Americans’ right as workers to vote whether to belong to a union. At the most basic level, the secret ballot is the American way.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week Two This week’s word widow displays…
Living in the Town of Giants Michelle talks about New Yorker identity and the spectacular resilience of “the greatest city in the world.”
Friday procrastination: link love – serotonin, skittles, and The Wizard of Oz What Rebecca has been reading.
The Ultimate Book Of Knowledge: Knights and Castles An excerpt for kids.
Bill Veeck and O.P.M: Two catalysts of the Cactus League A look at the beginning of the Cactus League.
Using your Librarians Ammon considers the help of librarians.
Hostage – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “hostage”.
How do you get into the Oxford DNB? Lawrence Goldman, Editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, reveals some of the process behind choosing people to include in the Dictionary.
Federalism and “the Right…to Keep and Bear Arms” An excerpt from The Invisible Constitution by Laurence H. Tribe.
Why Don’t We Know the Origin of the Word Ghetto? Anatoly reviews possible origins of the word ‘ghetto.’
The ongoing financial crisis: Where were the auditors? Bob Tricker offers a controversial solution to the regulation of corporate entities and the role of auditors.
It’s all spring training, but Florida and Arizona have their differences A look at the differences between spring training in Arizona and Florida.
A Day with Old Abe Craig Symonds recounts his day with Lincoln.
Doha’s Violent Cocktail Party A look at what came out of the Darfur peace talks in Doha.
India Through A Western Lens A reflection on Slumdog Millionaire’s Oscar win.
Easeful Death: An Excerpt An excerpt from Easeful Death, looking at the case for assisted suicide and euthanasia.
Oxford’s Word Window: Week One Think you are good with words? See if you know what the definition for this week’s “Word of the Week”.
February 2009 (65))
Early American Journalists: The Answers The answers to our quiz on early American journalists, from Scandal and Civility.
Musical Mania Michelle looks at the statement “musicals are back.”
Friday procrastination: link love – spring training, second hand books, and the ISS What Cassie has been reading this week.
Early American Journalists: A Quiz A quiz about early American journalists.
Is A Book In The Library Worth Two in the Offsite Storage Facility? Ammon ponders the fate of libraries.
Kudos – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “kudos”.
The Art of Public Strategy Public strategy expert and OUP author Geoff Mulgan offers advice on how to be a successful President.
International Internet Law How should we govern the internet?
Monthly Gleanings: February 2009 Anatoly answers questions.
Geert Wilders: The Necessary Limits of Free Speech? Nigel Warburton blogs about Geert Wilders and free speech.
Somalia, Give Sheikh Sharif a Chance! A look at the results of Somalia elections, and why the newly appointed leader, Sheikh Sharif, deserves a chance.
How to Plan for Retirement David Bach explains seven guidelines for successful retirement planning.
Slovenly Words and Foolish Deeds Elvin Lim compares Bush and Obama’s speaking styles.
Before Prozac: An Excerpt An excerpt from Edward Shorter’s Before Prozac.
And the Award Goes To… India? A look an India’s film and Slumdog Millionaire.
“Flackalism”: Where Heroes and Headlines are Born Michelle looks at how publicity works in the real world.
Friday procrastination: link love – the Life of Pi, autopilot and Paul’s Boutique What Rebecca has been reading.
The Yangtze River Dolphin What happened to the Yangtzee River Dolphin?
Rostropovich’s Recollections Simon Morrison looks at Prokofiev’s supposed relationship with fellow Russian composer Mstislav Rostropovich.
Comfortable – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “comfortable”.
Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen: An Excerpt An excerpt from Nets, Puzzles, and Postmen by Peter M. Higgins.
Pete Seeger and the Inauguration A look at Peter Seeger.
Grass Widows and Straw Men Anatoly considers the origins of the phrases ‘grass widow’ and ‘straw man.’
The Literature Police Peter D. McDonald, author of The Literature Police, blogs about what he found in the archives.
How to Create a Financial Plan Creating a financial plan that will really work.
The Internet and Jefferson’s Moose David Post shows us how Jefferson’s moose can guide us towards an understanding of the internet.
Obama’s Honeymoon Continues Elvin Lim’s weekly post.
Epilepsy Explained: Talking to Your Child’s Teacher An excerpt from Epilepsy Explained.
Friday procrastination: link love – Darwin, dogs, and dictionaries What Rebecca has been reading.
New York Comic Con A quick recap of Cassie’s favorite bits of Sunday at Comic Con.
Is Romance Back?: Notes on love from the publicity desk Introducing Michelle Rafferty.
Darwin Day: Darwin and his Principles of Expression An excerpt from Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, looking at his three general principles of expression.
Post Daily Show: Daniel Sperling Daniel Sperling reflects on his Daily Show appearance.
Darwin Day: Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character OUPblog celebrates Darwin’s birthday–a day late, but very enthusiastically! Here’s an excerpt from Darwin’s Recollections of the Development of My Mind and Character, an informal autobiography.
Abraham Lincoln FAQ: Part Three Allen Guelzo answers Lincoln FAQs.
Stimulusing Ammon Shea looks at the word “stimulus”.
2009 Lincoln Prize Winner Reflects on Lincoln and Obama Craig L. Symonds winner of the 2009 Lincoln Prize pens a bicentennial post for the blog.
Laundry – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “laundry”.
Q. What does the Oxford Dictionary of English have in common with Harry Potter, A-Z Maps, and anything written by Terry Pratchett? The Oxford Dictionary of English is one of the UK’s ten most stolen books.
Pre-Daily Show: Daniel Sperling Daniel Sperling answers questions before his Daily Show appearance.
Abraham Lincoln FAQ: Part Two Lincoln FAQs.
Abraham Lincoln Almost Failed Jennnifer Weber looks at how Abraham Lincoln almost failed.
Enlightenment, Porn, and Worse: Studying Human Cruelty Kathleen Taylor talks about researching human cruelty for her new book.
Seven Years Later: The Rwandese Army Reenters the Congo The story behind the the Rwandese Army’s return to Congo, seven years after their evacuation in 2002.
The Latte Factor A good reason to skip your morning latte.
Abraham Lincoln FAQ: Part One Lincoln FAQs.
Abraham Lincoln: James M. McPherson An excerpt to kick off our Lincoln Bicentennial celebrations.
Decca, EMI, and Ed Sullivan: The Beatles Seize February Thompson celebrates the Beatles’ 45th anniversary of being on the Ed Sullivan Show.
Tax “Old” Wealth By Abolishing the GST Grandfather Exemption In this article, Zelinsky calls for the President and Congress to repeal the grandfather exemption from the federal generation skipping tax (GST) for irrevocable trusts established on or before September 25, 1985. This exemption, he argues, unfairly immunizes from federal taxation transfers at death of “old” wealth while economically equivalent transfers of new wealth are taxed.
A Few Questions For Donald Abrams Donald Abrams answers some questions about Integrative Oncology.
On the Necessity of the Economic Stimulus Bill Elvin Lim looks at the economic stimulus package.
Grammy Winners in the Sky! Yipi Yi Oh. By Justin Hargett Justin looks at Gene Autry.
Six-Legged Soldiers Part Three: Nerve Gases, Then and Now The last installment of Jeffrey Lockwood’s blog on the development of nerve gases.
I say Bonus, you say Bonum Ammon Shea looks at bonuses.
Flora and Fauna – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary words of the week is “flora and fauna”.
Six-Legged Soldiers Part Two: The Evil Trinity Part Two of Jeffrey Lockwood’s blog on the development of nerve gases.
Guantanamo Bay: The Least Worst Place An excerpt from Karen Greenberg’s The Least Worst Place.
Monthly Gleanings: January 2009: Part 2 Anatoly’s second installment of January gleanings.
Six-Legged Soldiers Part One: Killing Aphids (and Humans) Part one of a three-part blog on Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.
In Defense of Pirates An alternative look at the Somalia pirates.
The Top Ten Money Mistakes People Make The top money mistakes from The Finish Rich Dictionary by David Bach.
Place of The Week A fond farewell to Place of the Week.
A New Republican Party Elvin Lim reflects on the selection of Michael Steele to head the RNC.
What Makes Some Deaf Children (But Not Others) Good Readers? Why are some deaf children better readers than others?
January 2009 (47))
Friday procrastination: link love – secret scriptures and Scottish otters What Kirsty has been reading.
The Enormity Of It All Ammon Shea responds to his website visitors.
Cuckoo for Snowclone Puffs: An Essential Part of an Insane Vocabulary Mark Peters explores the phrase “I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”
Dumbbell – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “dumbbell”.
John Updike (1932-2009): A Publicist Remembers Sarah Russo remembers John Updike.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: Environmentalist A closer look at Governor Schwarzenegger.
Monthly Gleanings: January 2009 Anatoly’s January gleanings.
Money Can’t Buy Love Does money make you happier?
“Maybe Tomorrow”: The Beatles’ Climb to the Rooftop, January 1959-1969 Gordon Thompson looks at the Beatles in January 1959 and January 1969.
All this we can do. All this we will do. Elvin Lim looks at the beginning of Obama’s presidency.
Blessed Days of Anaesthesia Imagine a world without pain relievers…
Friday procrastination: link love – the White House, love, and Lasantha Wickrematunge What Rebecca has been reading.
Who Moved the Inauguration? Dispelling an Urban Legend Donald Ritchie looks at how the Presidential Inauguration moved from the East Front of the Capitol to the West Front.
On Encyclopedias Ammon looks at encyclopedias.
Boggle – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “boggle”.
A Very Short History of Burns Suppers Scotland: A Very Short Introduction author Rab Houston talks about the history of Burns Suppers.
Prokofiev’s Juliet’s Lives: Zora Šemberová Simon Morrison shares the story of the premier of Prokofiev’s ballet “Romeo and Juliet,” in which Romeo and Juliet live happily ever after.
The Oddest English Spellings, Part 12 Or, One, Two, Buckle Your Shoe Anatoly Liberman looks at the oddest English spellings.
A Letter to Charles Darwin from Jerry Coyne Jerry Coyne says Happy 200th Birthday to Charles Darwin.
Book thumbnail image Inaugural Post Ben looks at inaugural geography.
Islam and the Nobel Prize A look at how Islamic culture views the Nobel Prize.
Absentmindedness A look at our brains.
A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. A look at A. Leon Higginbotham Jr.
Friday procrastination: link love – tetris, twitter, and zombie invasions What Cassie’s been reading this week.
The First American Dictionary: Johnson or Webster? Ammon Shea looks at who wrote the first American dictionary.
A History of Central Africa and the Rwandan Genocide A glimpse into Gérard Prunier’s newest book on Congo and the Rwandan Genocide.
Oxymoron – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “oxymoron”.
Do Scots Need Kilts? Rab Houston, author of Scotland: A Very Short Introduction, wonders whether Scots really need kilts.
An Etymologist As Lord of the Flies, Or, Chicanery and Shenanigans All Over the Place Anatoly looks at the origin of the word “chicanery.”
A Few Questions for Gérard Prunier An interview with Gérard Prunier on his thoughts on the current struggles in Central Africa.
Women, Crime, and Character Nicola Lacey compares images of female criminality.
Book thumbnail image Mapping Robots Ben looks at robots and geography.
Killers without Borders: The LRA in the Congo A look at the history of the Lord’s Resistance Army and the resulting bloody Christmas.
On Barack Obama’s “Pragmatism” A look at Obama’s “pragmatism”.
Abolish the Minimum Required Distribution Rules In this article, Professor Zelinsky discusses the controversy surrounding the effects of the minimum required distribution (MRD) rules after the Crash of 2008. He concludes that the MRD rules, suspended by President Bush and Congress for 2009, should be abolished permanently.
Sex In The Scanner A look at the relationship between sex and our brains.
Edward Zwick on Defiance A look at Edward Zwick’s foreword from the new edition of Defiance, soon to be a major motion picture.
Friday procrastination: link love – first ladies, fashion, and followers What Rebecca has been reading.
Time for Washington to Lead How can policymakers help change the car industry?
Honest – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the day is “honest”.
Helpmeet, Or Can Stillborn Words Prosper? Anatoly Liberman looks at the story on the word “helpmeet.”
Playing by the Book: Transitioning to the 44th Presidency A look at Obama’s transition efforts.
Establishing the Public Health Bureaucracy An excerpt from The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction about the rise of public health bureaucracy.
Talkeetna, Alaska Ben’s place of the week is Talkeetna, Alaska.
Giving to Change the World Authors Christian Smith, Michael O. Emerson, and Patricia Snell look at how much American Christians really give.
In the Short Run Keynes is Right Elvin Lim’s weekly column.
The Puzzling Case of the Broken Arm An excerpt from Patient, Heal Thyself.
December 2008 (54))
New Year’s Eve Although champagne has become as de rigueur as midnight strikes – no single food epitomizes contemporary New Year’s. The menu may be luxurious caviar, or sobering hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day. Celebrations marking the inexorable march of Father Time often involve foods imbued with symbolism.
Etymology and Scandal In the course of this month, two journalists have approached me with questions related to political scandals. My answers, neither of which has been printed in full, may perhaps interest the readers of our blog. They regarded the typicality of phrases such as Ponzi schemes, and using names as verbs.
What Are Angel Investors? What is an angel investor?
President Obama and Asia Rajan Menon looks at how Obama should address Asia.
Auld Lang Syne Elvin Lim reflects on 2008.
Getting preschool right: The science behind effective learning A look at how Obama should reform preschool.
Christmas: An Excerpt From The Book of the Year An alternative look at Christmas!
Book thumbnail image “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” 26 December 1963 For many of us in the British Commonwealth, Boxing Day can bring back memories of visiting family and friends, even as modernity transforms the date from an opportunity to exchange gifts between one another into one on which you return gifts at shopping malls. For Americans, it’s an anachronism.
Jolly Yule Anatoly’s post has seasonal cheer.
A Holiday Ode To Mapping Ben presents us with an holiday ode to mapping.
Favorite Books 2008 What OUP staffers read this year.
A Few Questions for Donald Shriver Grawemeyer award winner, Donald Shriver, answers some questions.
The Referee and the Great Equivocator Lim reflects Obama’s invitation to Pator Rick Warren.
Bears and Diabetes How Polar Bears can help cure diabetes.
Throwing Insults Jerome Neu looks at the meaning of the shoes thrown at the Baghdad press conference earlier this week.
Friday procrastination: link love – Canada, college, and corrections What Rebecca has been reading.
Shoe Ammon Shea looks at expressions that use the word “shoe”.
Philately – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is philately.
Dickens’s Christmas Books: The Battle of Life An excerpt from one of Charles Dickens’s Christmas books, ‘The Battle of Life’.
What is Gibberish to One is an Etymology to Another Anatoly Liberman looks at the origins of the word “gibberish”.
Advertising in Recession By Edwin Battistella Battistella looks at advertising in economic down-turns.
Books of 2008 from OUP-UK Staff from OUP-UK choose their books of 2008.
Ben’s Place of the Week: A Christmas Special Ben’s place of the week.
Are More Heads Better Than One, or a Few? Vermeule looks the wisdom of crowds.
Defensive Reactions and Crying A close look at the act of crying.
Governor Blagojevich and the Seventeenth Amendment Professor Zelinsky discusses the recent arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and the public maneuvering in New York for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.
Did Milton Know Shakespeare? An excerpt from John Milton: Life, Work, and Thought, by Gordon Campbell and Thomas N. Corns.
Cat Blogging: Nikita Reads Nikita the cat tells us about her favorite books.
Friday procrastination: link love – Bill Murray, bombs, and basketball What Rebecca has been reading.
Protected: Slang: The People’s Poetry – Excerpt There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Best Sellers Ammon Shea looks at best seller lists.
Dashboard – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “dashboard”.
Defiance: An Excerpt An excerpt from Defiance by Nechama Tec.
As Etymologists You Depend on Look-Alikes? Cool! Anatoly Liberman looks at the origins of words that look-alike.
A Video Introduction to Experimental Philosophy A video to help us understand experimental philosophy.
Kathleen Taylor on Brainwashing Watch Kathleen Taylor talk about her book ‘Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control’.
Khurais, Saudi Arabia Khurais: The largest exporter of oil with over 20 percent of the world’s reserves, Saudi Arabia occupies roughly three quarters of the peninsula of arid land between the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. As of 2007, this desert kingdom was producing approximately 11 million barrels of petroleum daily.
The Hayek Fallacy Vermeule looks at F. A. Hayek.
An Intern’s Fond Farewell Ashley says “goodbye”.
The Calm before the Storm Elvin Lim looks at Obama’s actions before taking office and what they say about the kind of President he will be.
A Scientific Look At White-Collar Productivity The crossroad of architecture and neuroscience.
OED All Over The Place The OED is popping up all over the place!
Ten Success Principles To Help You “Make It” In Music How to be successful in the music business.
Friday procrastination: link love – peanuts, politics, and the Principles of Uncertainty What Rebecca has been reading.
What’s an expert? Ammon Shea wonders what makes an expert?
Vilipendious Pig-dog! Balatronic Dastardling! Contemptibly Obscure Words Mark Peters looks at the 263 words in the Oxford English Dictionary with contemptible in the definition.
Spinster – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “spinster”.
Shakespeare’s Undirected Letters: Critical Confusion in King Lear An excerpt from Alan Stewart’s new book ‘Shakespeare’s Letters’.
Conundrum: A Cold Spoor Warmed Up Anatoly looks at the possible origins of the word “conundrum”.
Foreign Policy Throughout History: An excerpt from From Colony to Superpower An excerpt from George C. Herring’s new book, From Colony to Superpower.
Venice, Italy Ben’s place of the week is Venice, Italy.
Why Does the Transition Take So Long? Donald Ritchie looks at the gap between the Presidential election an inauguration day.
Was it Al-Qaeda? Elvin Lim reflects on the terrorists attacks in Mumbai.
The Friendless Poor of London: An Excerpt From The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy An excerpt from The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy.
November 2008 (58))
Spa – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “spa”.
Why has Scottish Devolution Worked? Rab Houston, author of ‘Scotland: A Very Short Introduction’ looks at why Scottish devolution has worked.
Monthly Gleanings: November 2008 Anatoly’s November gleanings.
Literary Anecdotes: A Quiz Test your literary skills with our anecdotes quiz.
The Sinister Side: Titian’s Diana and Actaeon James Hall looks at Titian’s Diana and Actaeon.
Batman, Turkey Ben’s place of the week is Batman, Turkey.
Bridgeless Gaps As we approach the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, I’d like to take a moment to commemorate the anniversary of the death of another great, though under-appreciated biologist; Richard Goldschmidt, one of the preeminent geneticists of the 20th century, who died 50 years ago at the age of 80.
On Delivering the Change that We Believed In Elvin Lim looks at change.
The Role of Traditional Medicine in Drug Discovery A look at how traditional medicine has led to some of our most important modern drugs.
A 5 Under 35 Report From 2 Under 35 This year, authors Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Franzen, Francine Prose, Mary Gaitskill and Jim Shepard (former National Book Award Fiction Finalists) selected a young fiction writer “who they found particularly promising.” They chose Matthew Eck, Keith Gessen, Sana Krasikov, Nam Le, and Fiona Maazel.
Friday procrastination: link love – magic, makeup, and music What Rebecca has been reading.
The Beatles’ The Beatles: 22 November 1968 Gordon Thompson looks at the White Album.
For The Love Of Language Ammon Shea wonders about our fear of reference books.
Reflections on National Geography Awareness Week, 2008 Harm de Blij reflects on the importance of National Geography Awareness Week.
Doctor – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “doctor.”
The Oxford Book of Death: Last Words An excerpt from The Oxford Book of Death.
Some of New York’s Fastest Invite You for Drinks Michelle invites you to help the New York Athletic Club Running Team raise money.
Gosh, Mickey and Judy, It’s High School Musical 3! Thomas Hischak looks at the incredible success of the Disney franchise “High School Musical.”
A Plug-Ugly Relaxes And Plays Hookey, Or, An Unnoticed Dutch Invasion Anatoly Liberman looks into the Dutch origins of words.
The Real George Washington Mark McNeilly reviews The Real George Washington airing tonight on the National Geographic Channel.
Damp Squid: Hate Lists and Eggcorns ‘Damp Squid’ author Jeremy Butterfield on eggcorns and words we love to hate.
Why We Must Overhaul “Support Our Troops” Elvin Lim reflects on Veteran’s Day.
Oxford’s Place of the Year 2008: Kosovo Welcome to ‘Geography Awareness week’ – the perfect time to announce another ‘Place of the Year’! In all honesty, I really struggled with my decision this time, and sought the advice of several mapmakers and geographers. Looking back on 2008 – I found it difficult to settle on a single location.
Winning by Losing Edward Zelinsky reflects on why Obama doesn’t want a filibuster-proof senate.
Electroshock Resurrected Max Fink, M.D., looks at the current revival of electroconvulsive therapy.
Electroshock Explained Max Fink, M.D., explains what electroconvulsive therapy is and how it can help people with depression and bipolar disorder.
Bigger, Taller, Heavier Paranoia, childhood obesity and the future of school furniture How can paranoia affect your child’s health?
Friday Philosophy: Desire Some desires are formed from rational thought processes. Suppose I want lunch. I conclude that the best way to get it, given that my refrigerator is empty, is to drive to a restaurant. As a result, I form a desire to drive to the restaurant in question. This process is perfectly, admirably rational.
Friday procrastination: link love – dead parrots, spelling bees and ugly fruit Some British Link Love.
Slow Blog: Part Two Additional thoughts on slow blogging.
Reading Opening Lines Ammon Shea has a reading dilemma.
Random – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “random”.
The Damp Squid Quiz: The Answers The answers to yesterday’s Damp Squid quiz.
Islamists in Power Piscatori reflects on Islamists in power.
On Hobos, Hautboys, and Other Beaus Anatoly explains why it is hard to find the origins of the word “hobo”.
The Damp Squid Quiz A quiz on the original forms of common words and phrases.
Get Ready… It’s coming…
Warren Buffett and the Estate Tax Zelinsky looks at the estate tax.
Good Morning and Good Night in America Elvin Lim’s weekly blog.
Oxford Word of the Year 2008: Hypermiling Do you keep the tires on your car properly inflated to maximize your gas mileage? Have you removed the roof rack to streamline the car and reduce drag? Do you turn your engine off rather than idle at long stoplights? If you said yes to any of these questions you just might be a ‘hypermiler’.
What Is a Disability, Especially When It Affects Learning? A look at the definition of “disability”.
Friday procrastination: link love – hand washing, Halloween, and holidays What Rebecca has been reading.
Communion at the Voting Booth Carol Holmes reflects on voting.
A “Slow Blog” Or Rather, “Bright Blog” Manifesto Do you slow blog?
Winning Words and Losing Lingo Ammon Shea looks at post-election words.
The First President Who is Black Paul Finkelman writes about on the historic election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the United States of America.
Bastard – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “bastard”.
Black British History: Mary Seacole An excerpt from The Oxford Companion to Black British History
Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Obama’s Succcess Henry Louis Gates Jr. on the long path that led to Sen. Barack Obama being declared President-elect.
Monthly Gleanings: October 2008, Part Two Hello. In connection a previous post, I received two questions about the word ‘hello’. The first concerned the repertory of h-interjections in the languages of the world. In 1924 Ernst Schwentner brought out a booklet titled ‘The Primary Interjections in the Indo-European Languages’ (in German).
David Foster Wallace’s Contribution to the Writer’s Thesaurus A look at what David Foster Wallace had to say about some of the words in the Writer’s Thesaurus.
Which words do you love to hate? Tell us your least favourite words of 2008.
Another Tremor in the Iceberg An examination of the historic candidacy of Barack Obama within the context of the civil rights movement and the changing nature of black politics.
New Horizons Middle School Ben visits a school.
Elephants in the Room: The Discussion of Energy in the Presidential Debates A look at the role of energy in the 2008 Presidential Debates.
Why Are There No More Lincolns? Glen LaFantasie wonders why we don’t have leaders like Lincoln anymore.
The Arc of a Pendulum Elvin Lim looks at the historical precedent for tomorrow’s election.
Overcoming Alcohol Problems Together A look at alcohol abuse.
October 2008 (59))
Ezra Pound: Prophet? A. David Moody looks at what Pound said in the 1930s versus what pundits are saying today.
Friday procrastination: link love – novels, noise, and the New York subway What Cassie has been reading this week (and okay, a few from last week too).
Building the Ultimate Spelling Bee Ben Zimmer visits us from Visual Thesaurus.
Book thumbnail image Jesus of Oxford Ammon Shea reflects on his trip to Oxford.
Eccentric – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “eccentric”.
The She-Apostle: Luisa de Carvajal and Mother Teresa Glyn Redworth draws some interesting parallels between the lives of Luisa de Carvajal and Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
Crossing Hitler: Who Was Hans Litten? A brief look at Hans Litten.
Monthly Gleanings: October 2008, Part One Anatoly Liberman answers questions based on last month’s posts.
OUPblog sets sail on the Queen Mary 2 OUP UK’s Kate FT blogs from the Queen Mary 2.
A Very Special Ben’s Place of The Week: How To Choose an Atlas Ben’s guide to buying an atlas.
McCain and Obama: The Judges Presidents Choose A look a how the election could affect judicial appointees.
A Passion for Nature: An Excerpt An excerpt from A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir.
Meth and Children A look at children affected by methamphetamine use.
Friday procrastination: link love – Dubai, piracy, and the vanishing night What Rebecca has been reading.
The OED is 80: Ammon Shea Reports on Bicycles and Bars Ammon Shea reflects on his trip to Oxford.
CAPTCHA – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is CAPTCHA.
The Federalist Papers: America Then and Now Lawrence Goldman discusses why The Federalist Papers are still relevent today.
The OED is 80: Postcards from Oxford Like most postcards, this post comes many days after I have returned from Oxford and the 80th anniversary celebration of the OED. My last post left off on Monday after our lunch at the Eagle and Child Pub where Simon Winchester and Ammon Shea joined us for fish and chips and pints of English beer.
The OED is 80: An Interactive Crossword Puzzle An interactive crossword puzzle to celebrate the OED’s 80th birthday.
An Obscure College Professor Visits a Small Animal Farm Anatoly looks at features of Indo-European languages.
Very Short Introductions: British Politics Dr Tony Wright MP answers a few questions on British Politics: A Very Short Introduction.
Tallahassee, Florida Ben’s place of the week is Tallahassee, Florida.
Sowing the Seeds of Beatlemania The origins of Beatlemania.
The Rehabilitation of Liberalism Elvin Lim’s weekly column looks at liberalism.
Stress and Pain Some tips for reducing your chronic pain.
Friday procrastination: link love – transgender transitions and Martin Luther King’s love letters What Rebecca has been reading.
Reading the OED: A Crossword Puzzle Answers The answers to the Reading the OED crossword puzzle.
Reading the OED: A Crossword Puzzle A crossword puzzle based on Reading the OED.
Stutter – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “stutter”.
Victoria Clafin Woodhull: The Original Presidential Maverick An excerpt from the biography of Victoria Clafin Woodhull, the first woman to run for the US presidency, from the ODNB.
A Fat Talk Free Diet Rebecca hopes you will join her in “Fat Talk Free Week”.
The OED is 80: The OED at the Bodleian Library ‘The Oxford English Dictionary: Past, Present, and Future’ at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The OED is 80: The OED and the Historical Thesaurus Exciting news about the Historical Thesaurus of English, coming in late 2009.
To Be Or To Not Be, Or, The Causes of Language Change Anatoly Liberman looks at the use of the split infinitive.
Bialowieski National Park, Poland Ben’s place of the week is Bialowieski National Park, Poland.
The OED is 80: New Words and the Case of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Among the many interesting talks from senior editors of the OED, this morning we had Fiona McPherson telling us about how a new word is added, and the processes they go through to do it. Fiona and her team collect suggestions for words (or “lexical items”) to be added in a variety of ways.
The OED is 80: Sarah’s Dispatches Part One Sarah Russo’s first entry about her trip to Oxford to celebrate the OED’s 80th birthday.
The OED is 80: Some fascinating facts Some fascinating facts about the Oxford English Dictionary
On This Day In History: Battle Of Hastings On this day in history, October 14th, the Battle of Hastings was fought.
The Oxford English Dictionary is 80! Sarah Russo twitters the OED’s birthday celebrations.
What McCain is Doing Wrong This is a Democratic year, so an argument can be made that because John McCain is fortune’s knave, he just has no chance this year. But he’s definitely not helping his cause. This is a time when Americans are looking at the plunging Dow Jones, and the McCain campaign is talking about Bill Ayers?
A Mind Apart Bauer reflects on the origins of A Mind Apart.
Friday procrastination: link love – penguins, particles and phonecalls What Cassie has been reading this week.
Pandemonium – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “pandemonium”.
Frakin’ Cylontastic: Battlestar Galactica’s Other Successful Word Peters explores the word “Cylon”.
Book thumbnail image Reading Spines Ammon Shea tells us why book spines inspire him.
The Tenant’s Dilemma, or, When Did People Begin to Say They for “He (Or She)”? Anatoly Liberman relates his adventures with plurals.
The Enchanted Island: A Yom Kippur Tale A tale to help us celebrate Yom Kippur.
Who’s Who in The Ring Looking at the character of Brünnhilde from Wagner’s The Ring.
Privacy. Not Surrendered Yet Mills argues that the general public would care much more about intrusions to their privacy if they had a better idea of how often it is subtly violated.
Sarah Palin Will Not Debate Lim looks at Sarah Palin’s indirect answers in the debate last week.
Do Human Research Protections Ever Harm Humans? DuBois questions what happens when overly strict ethical guidelines hinder research.
Friday procrastination: link love – Creative Loafing, love letters and literature What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Slang 101 Cassie reads a dictionary of slang and shares some of the great words she finds.
Cleavage – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “cleavage”.
OUP UK’s Word of the Year is… ‘Credit crunch’ is OUP UK’s Word of the Year.
Hello, Hello! Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “hello”.
The Role of the “Latino Lover” An excerpt from Clara E. Rodríguez’ book, Heroes, Lovers, and Others: The Story of Latinos in Hollywood.
Jane Austen: A Literary Anecdote One of my personal favourite new releases this season in the UK is the paperback edition of The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes by John Gross. I could have chosen any one of hundreds of great anecdotes from and about authors I love, but in the end I decided to share with you this […]
September 2008 (54))
Norway Ben’s place of the week is Norway.
Proverbs for the Bloggers Some proverbial advice for bloggers.
Book thumbnail image Obama Doesn’t Understand Elvin Lim takes a look at the charge that Obama doesn’t understand.
Drawing the Wind: L’Shana Tova 5769 Long ago, on the Spanish island of Majorca, a young boy spent most of each day at the shore, sketching the ships that sailed into the harbor. Solomon was a wonderful artist, everyone agreed. His drawings seemed so real that people wondered if the waves were as wet as they seemed-or the sun as hot.
Overcoming Bulimia Nervosa A look at how daily food records can help you overcome your eating disorder.
Happy Birthday George Gershwin Happy Birthday George Gershwin!
Friday procrastination: link love – Turkey, teleporters, and the Tate Modern Happy Friday to all. It finally feels like fall outside and it definitely feels like fall inside. We are all so busy at OUP with our fall list I barely had time to procrastinate this week! Don’t fear dear reader, I made time to surf the web so that I wouldn’t disappoint you. So enjoy! […]
Politician: Compliment or Curse? Ammon Shea looks at the connotations of the word “politician”.
Placebo – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “placebo”.
Of Pliosaurs and Kings Harald V, King of Norway, seems a serious man, and he can certainly make a thoughtful speech. Hence to see him subsequently, with due ceremony, push the button to inflate a life-size model of the biggest pliosaur ever found (fifteen metres long) – makes for one of life’s more singular pleasures.
Monthly Gleanings (September 2008) Anatoly answers questions.
If Not Perfect, At Least Excellent: The Electoral College Donald Ritchie looks at the Electoral College.
Oxford goes to The Bookseller Retail Awards 2008 OUP UK’s Coleen Hatrick blogs from The Bookseller Retail Awards 2008.
The Geography of Food Ben looks at the geography of food.
The Paradox of Logocracy Elvin Lim reflects on what our politicians have said in light of our financial crisis.
A Lesson From the Crash of 2008 In this article, Zelinsky discusses the federal government’s promotion of common stock investments for 401(k) participants. He suggests that, in light of the Crash of 2008, that promotion constitutes misguided paternalism.
On The Dot A look at the dot in computing.
Seasonal Affective Disorder Symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, or seasonal depression.
Friday procrastination: link love – Oscar Wilde, Hubble, and whales with legs What Cassie’s been reading this week.
Torture: Israel’s expanding export industry Yuval Ginbar blogs on pro-torture Israeli academics.
Ryder Cup greats from the Oxford DNB Elsewhere on the internet…
Big Answers With A Big Bang Frank Close explains the importance of the Large Hadron Collider to us.
Clarifying Clarify Ammon Shea looks at the frequent use of the word “clarify”.
Marathon – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “marathon”.
Shibboleths and Traitors, or, Death and Expulsion as Categories of Historical Phonetics Anatoly Liberman recounts the times when phonetics were used to determine the death, expulsion or release of a group of people, and takes a closer at the development of homonyms.
The Disaster of FEMA A brief look at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
Very Short Introductions: Antisemitism Part 2 The second part of the Q&A with Steven Beller on antisemitism.
Where in the World is Ben? Ben is on vacation.
Concerned Women For America An excerpt about the Concerned Women For America.
What Hapened to “Nothing But the Truth?” Elvin Lim wonders about the truthfulness of our politicians.
Controlling Trichotillomania Suggestions to help control trichotillomania.
What is the Bush Doctrine? OUPblog explains the Bush Doctrine for Sarah Palin.
Trichotillomania Defined Trichotillomania is defined.
Friday procrastination: link love – tongue twisters, particle accelerators, and New York What Rebecca has been reading.
Uppity-up Ammon Shea takes a look at the word “uppity”.
From here till nano-eternity: The biggest little word-maker Mark Peters looks at the word “nano.”
Cartoon – Podictionary Word of the Day The Podictionary word of the week is cartoon.
Very Short Introductions: What is antisemitism? Steven Beller, author of Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction, examines what antisemitism actually is.
Sending the Signals D. Michael Lindsay looks at how Sarah Palin may help bring evangelicals back to the Republican Party.
Shame and Guilt: Part 2 – Guilt Anatoly Liberman looks at guilt and shame.
Congressman Rangel’s Tax Returns and the Ghost of Wilbur Mills Zelinsky discusses the failure of House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel to report on his federal income tax return Rangel’s rental income from his condominium in the Dominican Republic.
The Beatles, Robots… and a Giant Spider: OUP UK’s Kate FT heads to the BA Festival of Science OUP UK’s Head of Publicity, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, heads to the BA Festival of Science in Liverpool
Llanelli, Wales Ben’s Place of the Week is Llanelli, Wales.
Whoever Said that VP Picks Don’t Matter? Elvin Lim looks at the nomination of Sara Palin.
“Hey Jude” and the Death of Sixties British Pop Gordon Thompson looks at the end of 60’s British Pop music.
Rewards Versus Bribery Some guidance on how to use a rewards system to motivate your child.
Friday procrastination: link love – branding, build-a-bear, and the Empire State Building What Rebecca has been reading.
Hansardize: Can We Make An Old Word Modern? Can you use “Hansardize” in a sentence?
Suit – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “suit”.
OUP at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2008 OUP UK Publicity Manager Juliet Evans recounts her time at this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival.
Guilt Societies and Shame Societies or, Shame and Guilt from an Etymological Point of View, With Some Observations on Sham and Scam Thrown in for Good Measure (Part 1: Shame)
Yucatán, Mexico Ben’s place of the week is Yucatán, Mexico.
Gustav Trumps Politics A look at the effect of Gustav on the Republican Convention.
Massacre at Mountian Meadows: An Excerpt An excerpt from Massacre at Mountain Meadows.
August 2008 (45))
Thoughts on My Hugo Award Jeff Prucher reflects on winning the Hugo Award.
Friday procrastination: link love – abortion, authors, and alt-weeklies What Rebecca has been reading.
Book thumbnail image The Price of a Self-Righteous Holiday Ammon Shea reflects on Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson’s unusual editing actions.
Loot – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “loot”.
‘This is not about you’: Altruism and the Presidency Thomas Dixon examines the “outbreak of altruism” in the race for US President.
Hischak Takes on Broadway Musicals By Cassie Ammerman Thomas Hischak, author of THE OXFORD COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN MUSICAL, looks at Broadway musicals that should have stayed Off Broadway.
Bimonthly Gleanings (July – August 2008) Anatoly Liberman answers questions.
Happy Birthday Lyndon Johnson: August 27, 1908 An excerpt in honor of Lyndon Johnson’s birthday.
Xilin Gol, China Ben’s place of the week is Xilin Gol, China.
From Manhood in America to Guyland An excerpt from Manhood in America.
The Vice Presidency: From Balance to Ballast Zelinsky looks at vice presidential candidates.
Intellection and Intuition Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article […]
Medical & Health Blogs: A Special Hippocratic Oath for Medblogs? David Perlmutter explores medical blogs.
Friday procrastination: link love – Penguin, puzzles, and paying for college What Rebecca has been reading.
Precocious and Profane Ammon Shea recalls a word from his childhood.
Mess – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “mess”.
Very Short Introduction: Sexuality A few questions for Veronique Mottier, author of Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction
Bare or Bear, or, the Story of Berserk Anatoly Liberman looks at the word “Berserk”.
Does the Race Issue Hurt Obama? Domke looks at the role of race in the Presidential elections.
Nouakchott, Mauritania Ben’s place of the week is Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Russian Roulette Harm de Blij examines the effect of the collapse of the former Soviet Union.
When Pandering Isn’t a Choice Elvin Lim reflects on the candidates actions at the Faith Forum.
Treatments that Work: Mastery of Anxiety and Panic for Adolescents: Parental Involvement A look at how parental involvement in therapy can help adolescents with anxiety disorders.
Friday procrastination: link love – danger, demonstrations, and donations What Rebecca has been reading.
Help Ammon Shea: Gossypiboma Ammon wonders about the word Gossypiboma.
Yacht – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “yacht”.
Hiking the Appalachian Trail An excerpt from The Appalachian Trial Reader.
Big Problems with the Little Finger, or, A Story of Pinkie Anatoly looks at the word “pinkie”.
Both Sides Now: The Music of Joni Mitchell By Justin Hargett A look at Joni Mitchell’s song “Both Sides Now”.
Belgian Belligerence A look at Belgium.
The Revolution Within Gordon Thompson looks at a unique revolution.
Overcoming Insomnia: Sleep Improvement Guidelines Some help for your insomnia.
Friday procrastination: link love – Hitchens, Rushdie, and Randy Newman What Rebecca has been reading.
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Jingoist v. Jingo The Olympics can always bring out the Jingoist, (or is it Jingo?), in just about anyone. For ‘jingoist’ and ‘jingo’, the former has come to displace the latter as the agent noun corresponding to ‘jingoism’. A jingoist is a belligerent patriot and nationalist who favours an aggressive foreign policy.
Climax – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “climax”.
So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy: The Answers The answers to yesterday’s Thomas Hardy quiz.
The Great Terror: An Introduction An excerpt from The Great Terror.
The Haberdasher Displays His Wares and Escapes Anatoly looks at the word “haberdasher”.
So You Think You Know Thomas Hardy? See how much you know about Thomas Hardy with our tricky questions.
Unalaska, Alaska Ben considers moving to Alaska.
New Directions in Literary Criticism: Studying War and the Military Keith Gandal is Professor of English at Northern Illinois University. He is the author of The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane and the Spectacle of the Slum and Class Representation in Modern Fiction and Film. He is also the author of a novel, Cleveland Anonymous. His most recent book The Gun and […]
The Race Card The race card in our current elections.
Interest Groups and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms A look at the role interest group participation played in the recently decided U.S. Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller.
Robotic Sheepdogs: A Thought Experiment An excerpt from David McFarland’s book Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs.
Friday procrastination: link love – blogs, the Booker Prize, and Bethlem Royal Hospital What Kirsty has been reading recently.
July 2008 (57))
Architecting a Verb? Last Sunday, in the NY Times, I read a book reviewer taking an author to task for her word use. The reviewer stated that “the last time I checked the American Heritage Dictionary, in spite of how computer trade journalists might choose to use the word, “architect” was not recognized as a verb”.
Post-traumatic snowclone disorder By Mark Peters You don’t have to be an MD or a sick puppy to appreciate the enormous family of humorous medical terms, including ‘peanut butter balls’ (phenobarbitol), ‘horrendoplasty’ (an operation without a sunny forecast), or ‘duck’s disease’ (‘being short’, so-named for the non-NBA-ready stature of quackers).
Anathema – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “Anathema.”
American Nicknames Part 2: Hoosier Anatoly looks at the nickname “Hoosier”.
Inside Oxford: Questions for Casper Grathwohl A few questions for Casper Grathwohl.
Challenge Oxford! Test your wordpower against Oxford’s experts.
Kowloon Peninsula, China Ben’s Place of the Week is Kowloon Peninsula, China.
Candidates, Fortuna, and Political Regimes Elvin Lim looks at the Presidential candidates.
“Overture . . . Dim the Lights”: The Fifteen Best Broadway Overtures A look at the best overtures.
Showers in Raincoats Why is safe sex so difficult to encourage?
Sexual Pleasure- What a Concept! What is sexual pleasure? The concept denoted here is a rather slippery creature, weighted down by considerable pop psychological baggage, and subject to cross-cultural and cross-historical variation. Nevertheless, it is desirable to have some definition of this concept, as an anchor for discussion.
Friday procrastination: link love – jellyfish, jalapeños, and Gwyneth Jones What Cassie has been doing with her week.
Keeping Notes Ammon reflects on note-taking.
Mildew – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the day is “mildew”.
Advice to the Etymologist: Never Lose Heart, or, The Origin of the Word Galoot Several times a year I speak on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), a guest of Kerri Miller’s program “Midmorning News.” We usually advertise some general topic in advance, but, while I am in the studio, listeners are requested to ask any questions they like about word origins, regardless of the overarching theme. Sometimes I […]
Helpful Greek Phrases Some Greek phrases to get you started.
Dispelling the Texting Myths David Crystal tells us that txtng is nothing worry about
Gaza Strip Ben’s Place of the Week is the Gaza Strip.
“Move It” from Zero to Fifty: British Rock’s Unlikely Rise from Cliff Richard to the Rolling Stones A look at British music from Cliff Richard to The Rolling Stones.
A Battle Of Leadership Definitions Lim reflects on the way Obama and McCain define leadership.
Telling the Truth About Terminal Diseases The ethics of end of life surgery practice.
Friday procrastination: link love – academic humour, Yiddish words, and Lost in Translation What Rebecca has been reading.
Desperately Seeking Mandela On Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday, Elleke Boehmer looks at the symbolic legacies of Mandela in South Africa.
The Merriams and the Madman Ammon Shea looks at Merriam’s madman.
Richard Dawkins: Information Theory Podcast Week Seven Richard Dawkins talks about Claude Shannon and information theory.
W – Podictionary Word of the Day It seems strange that in English we call W ‘double-U’ while in French its ‘double-V’. It’s usually written to resemble two Vs, rather than two Us. At Urbandictionary, the entry for W contains plenty of slurs against George Bush, and those who decided to have 3-Ws as the start of a web address.
Who’s glamorous? The Queen or Victoria Beckham? ‘Glamour’ author Stephen Gundle compares the glamour factor of The Queen and Victoria Beckham
American Nicknames Part 1: Softies and Buckeye Anatoly looks at the word “Buckeye”.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Ben’s place of the week is Philadelphia, Pa.
Kindle & Sony Reader Update Evan revisits his ebook predictions.
New York Philharmonic In The Park: Jean Sibelius A biography of Jean Sibelius.
The Anti-Intellectual Candidates Are our presidential candidates following the lead of our anti-intellectual presidents?
Surgical Ethics: The Public’s Right To Know? Surgical Treatment of Public Figures How do doctors balance the privacy rights of a patient and the public’s right to know?
Helpful Spanish Phrases Heather introduces us to Take Off In…
Friday procrastination: link love – books, blogs, and basements What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Senators Obama and McCain confirm the malfunction of campaign finance reform A look at the failure of campaign finance reform.
Ammon’s Favorite Words, This Week Several months ago, John McGrath of Wordie interviewed me for this blog. He asked me about my favorite words that I had come across in reading the OED and I gave him a list of what they were at the time. But words can be capricious things, and the ones of which I am fondest are constantly changing.
Magnet – Podictionary Word of the Day The OED refers to two men; Pliny and Nicander—in its etymology for the word magnet. Pliny was a Roman who lived in the 1st century and wrote the ‘Natural History’. Nicander was a Greek, who lived 300 years earlier. It’s very useful in figuring out how past peoples thought of the world around them.
Launching Powers of Persuasion Photos from the launch party of Powers of Persuasion: The Inside Story of British Advertising by Winston Fletcher
Richard Dawkins: Daisy Chain Podcast Week Six This week, Dawkins talks about how he links together the scientists in his book. He provides an example while talking about three connecting scientists: Niko Tinbergen, Ernst Mayr, and Edward O. Wilson. He refers to how he treated them as a daisy chain – with a single connecting thread linking them.
Experimental Philosophy: In this Universe is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for their actions?
William John Thoms, The Man Who Invented The Word Folklore By Anatoly Liberman Anatoly celebrates a word pioneer.
When British Advertising Led The World Winstone Fletcher tells us about the time when Britain was leading the world in advertising
Great Abaco Island, Bahamas Ben’s Place of the week is Great Abaco Island, Bahamas.
Calling Hollywood! Remake These Musicals. What musicals do you think should be made into films?
Against Court Sanctioned Secrecy David Michaels is a scientist and former government regulator. During the Clinton Administration, he served as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environment, Safety and Health, responsible for protecting the health and safety of the workers, neighboring communities, and the environment surrounding the nation’s nuclear weapons factories. He currently directs the Project on Scientific Knowledge and […]
Doubt Is Their Product: An Excerpt Since 1986 every bottle of aspirin sold in the U.S. has included a label advising parents that consumption by children with viral illnesses greatly increases their risk of developing Reye’s syndrome, a serious illness that often involves sudden damage to the brain or liver – killing 1/3 diagnosed.
Veneers of Citizenship Peter J. Spiro teaches law at Temple University and is the author of Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization which charts the trajectory of American citizenship and shows how American identity is unsustainable in the face of globalization. The article below looks at citizenship in the light of July 4th. As happens every July 5th, […]
An Excerpt From Reading The OED An excerpt from Ammon Shea’s Reading The OED.
Quit squawking, fleshwad! Futurama’s human-insult-a-palooza Peters explores the vocabulary used on the show Futurama.
Truffle – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “truffle”.
Stealing thunder… OK? The origins of everyday words and phrases In celebration of the latest edition of The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, we reveal the origins of some everyday words and phrases.
Who’s Mindful of Who’s Apostrophes’? Anatoly looks at apostrophes.
In Memory of Henry Chadwick Hilary O’Shea, Senior Commissioning Editor for Classics, Ancient History, and Archaeology remembers Henry Chadwick who passed away on June 22.
Richard Dawkins: Sexual Selection Podcast Week Five Dawkins talks about Helena Cronin and the dichotomy of theories about sexual selection.
Niue, South Pacific Ben’s Place of the Week is Niue, South Pacific.
When Tony Met Oscar What musicals have been successfully translated into films?
June 2008 (50))
MetLife v. Glenn: Another Push for Defined Contribution Plans Zelinsky discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in MetLife v. Glenn.
Sports Aggression A look at the role of competition in sports violence.
Friday procrastination: link love – interviews, ice, and intellectuals What Cassie’s been reading this week.
Book thumbnail image To Bailout, or Not Ammon Shea ponders the word “bailout”.
Beef – Podictionary Word of the Day A teenager I know was recently at a weekend party up at a lake. Two of the girls there had an altercation and one pushed the other off the wharf and into the water. This was reported to me in the following terms: “Suzie and Nancy really had beef.” This was a new one on me. Did they share a steak?
Science and Religion in American Politics Thomas Dixon examines attitudes to religion and science in American politics.
Richard Dawkins: Podcast Week Four In the fourth podcast from Richard Dawkins, he talks about Fred Hoyle and the beginning of the universe.
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly answers questions.
Paarlberg and Ronald: A Food Fight Part Three Two authors debate the future of food.
Algarrobo, Chile Ben’s place of the week is Algarrobo, Chile.
Paarlberg and Ronald: A food fight – part two By Robert Paarlberg and Pamela C. Ronald Part Two of the discussion between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published ‘Starved for Science’), and Pamela Ronald (author of ‘Tomorrow’s Table’). These two experts will be debating all week how to best safeguard our food supply – with the least amount of damage to the environment.
Tante Lissy’s Pflaumenkuchen (Plum Cake) This week we’ll be featuring a discussion between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published ‘Starved For Science’) and Pamela Ronald (author of ‘Tomorrow’s Table’). Today, before discussing the plum pox virus, Ronald shares a plum cake recipe from his book – straight from the kitchen of Tante Lissy!
Paarlberg and Ronald: a food fight By Robert Paarlberg and Pamela C. Ronald A debate between leading experts Robert Paarlberg (Betty F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College) and Pamela Ronald (Professor of Plant Pathology at the University of California), regarding how to ensure a safe food supply, that is also kind to the environment.
This Week in History: June 22, 2008 Katherine Dunham On June 22…
Friday procrastination: link love – Buckham, Burnside, and Adam Bede Kirsty’s UK Link Love.
Hardcore Dictionaries Ammon Shea wonders what makes a dictionary “hardcore”.
Croissant – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is “croissant.”
Lite Beer and Donuts, or, Does Spelling Reform Have a Chance? Anatoly finds the appropriate sustenance for spelling reformers.
Richard Dawkins: Podcast Week Three Richard Dawkins talks about the origin of his selfish gene theory.
Eating Extinct Animals: Feast wins Food Book of the Year Martin Jones wins Food Book of the Year Award in London
Leopoldstadt, Vienna Ben’s place of the week is Leopoldstadt, Vienna.
Free OED will Travel to Pasadena At Book Expo America 2008 in LA, OUP held a raffle to win a free OED. Many enthusiastic attendees assured us they had sturdy a shelf that could hold the voluminous set. Let’s hope Angel Castellanos of Distant Lands, Traveler’s Bookstore & Outfitters in Pasadena, CA actually has a good sturdy bookshelf because he is […]
Understanding Religious Terrorism Jones teaches us that a little understanding can go a long way.
Russia: The New Petrostate Power A look at Russia’s role in our high energy prices.
Strategies For Overcoming Your Pathological Gambling Overcoming Your Pathological Gambling: Workbook is a hands-on workbooks which can help you take back control. It is written by researches who have spent over two decades studying the psychology of gambling. The excerpt below provides some strategies to help you on the road back towards control. Here is a list of strategies that many […]
Friday procrastination: link love – dads, death, and Dawkins What Rebecca has been reading.
The Telecommuter Tax Fairness Act: Stopping New York’s Tax Attack on Telecommuters By permitting individuals to work at home, telecommuting removes cars from the roads, thereby reducing traffic congestion, gas consumption, and automotive pollution. Telecommuting also opens job opportunities for those for whom a conventional, daily trip to the office is difficult or undesirable.
Crossed Wires Between the US and Pakistan Shuja Nawaz explains the situation with Pakistan.
A Celebration of Making Old “Make” New Ammon Shea looks at the word “make.”
Cyberspace – Podictionary Word of the Day Our podictionary podcast of the week.
Sir Walter Scott and Scotland From The Oxford Guide to Literary Britain and Ireland.
Tony Awards Quiz: Part Two Answers The answer’s to this morning’s quiz.
Germanic Hermaphrodites By Anatoly Liberman Hermaphrodites are born rarely, and it is far from clear why their mythology achieved such prominence in Antiquity. Reference to cross-dressing during certain marriage rites does not go far, but the cult of Hermaphroditus is a fact, and Ovid’s tale of the union in one body of the son of Hermes and Aphrodite is well-known.
Tony Awards Quiz: Part Two A Tony Award quiz…
Richard Dawkins: Podcast Week Two The second in a series of podcasts from Richard Dawkins.
Supreme Court Decides That Patent “Exhaustion” Doctrine Applies To Products That Include “Inventive Aspect” Of Patent (Quanta Computer, Inc. v. LG Electronics, Inc.) Mark Simon Davies is a counsel at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, where he works on appellate matters in one of the top Supreme Court and Appellate practices in the country. Davies is the author of Patent Appeals: The Elements of Effective Advocacy in the Federal Circuit. Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued another significant opinion in […]
Help Me Write: Short Stories What are the best American short stories?
The Effects of Video Game Violence Psychologists Craig Anderson and Karen Dill talk about the effects of video game violence on children and adolescents.
Looks Like a Million To Me: How I Realized that Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-Reader Were Exceeding Sales Estimates Evan Schnittman makes a bold prediction about e-readers.
Book Quotes A few book quotes.
Friday procrastination: link love – Disney, discussion, and daily life What Rebecca has been reading.
Jacob Hacker and Teresa Ghilarducci: An Email Exchange on Retirement Part Three Part three of Hacker and Ghilarducci’s exchange.
An Affair With Petrichor Noa Wheeler responds to Ammon Shea’s column on Petrichor.
Richard Dawkins: Podcast The first of a series of podcasts with Richard Dawkins.
Kettle – Podictionary Word of the Day A look at the word “kettle”.
Etymology, Serendipity, and Good Luck Anatoly gives a candid take on etymology.
Jacob Hacker and Teresa Ghilarducci: An Email Exchange on Retirement Part Two An email exchange about retirement.
Arizona Strip Find out what Ben’s Place of the Week is….
acob Hacker and Teresa Ghilarducci: An Email Exchange on Retirement An exchange about how to fix retirement in America.
The Limitations of Psychiatric Drugs: An Excerpt Joel Paris, MD, is a Professor in the McGill University Department o Psychiatry, and is Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. His new book, Prescriptions for The Mind: A Critical View of Contemporary Psychiatry provides a “state-of-the-field” assessment focusing on the diverging roles of psychopharmacology and psychotherapy in contemporary practice. In the excerpt below […]
May 2008 (66))
BEA Dispatch Purdy, Director of Publicity, is in LA this weekend at Book Expo America. He will be reporting from the action for those of us left in NYC. Live from the convention floor of BEA in LA. For those not in the know BEA stands for Book Expo America, the largest convention of publishers, media, bookstore […]
Friday procrastination: link love – calories, creativity and cartoons What Rebecca has been reading.
Talking about girls playing sports By Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano Here’s a quiz: Is it worse for a girl to tear her ACL playing soccer or for a boy to get multiple concussions playing football? Or what about a 9-year-old girl driving a go-cart head-on into a concrete wall, smacking her body into the steering column, hitting her head on pavement and – oops – having her coat catch fire? Is that the worst?
Buckle up your mirdle! Euphemisms from heck Mark Peters looks at euphemisms.
Waiting for Petrichor Ammon Shea, an expert dictionary reader, reflects on rain.
Hypochondriac – Podictionary Word of the Day [display_podcast] iTunes users can subscribe to this podcast
Last Things: Emily Brontë’s Poems An excerpt from ‘Last Things: Emily Brontë’s Poetry’ by Janet Gezari.
On Marriage Edward Zelinsky suggests that a free market in religion has made Americans a religious people, and therefore, a competitive market for marriage would strengthen marriage by unleashing the entrepreneurial energies of groups promoting their own models of marriage.
Monthly Gleanings Questions for the month are answered.
Congressional Testimony Amos N. Guiora on the importance of sharing information in preventing terrorist attacks.
Tony Award Quiz: Part One Answers The answers to the quiz from this morning.
Tony Awards Quiz: Part One A quiz about Tony award winners.
Is Print Dead? David Perlmutter explores the move from print newspapers to online-only editions.
Tomorrow in History: May 24, 1844 A celebration of the telegraph.
Friday procrastination: link love – whys, whats, and wherefores This week, in honour of Friday procrastination, we’ve selected some of our favourite links from across the web – to keep you looking busy. Why not read about Scrabble’s 60th birthday, top tourist attractions around the US, or check out Terry Gross’s commencement remarks, and some really good advice?
This Day In History: May 22 Claude McKay and Langston Hughes A closer look at Claude McKay and Langston Hughes.
Words Out of Context Ammon Shea explains an alternative use for dictionaries.
E.J. Dionne and Mickey Edwards: Bipartisan Exchange Part Three E.J. Dionne and Mickey Edwards in conversation.
Assess – Podictionary Word of the Day Charles Hodgson explores the word “Assess”.
Very Short Introductions: Modern China Rana Mitter answers a few questions on ‘Modern China: A Very Short Introduction’.
State-Administered Retirement Plans for the Private Sector: A Bad Idea Zelinsky criticizes proposals for the states to administer private sector retirement savings plans.
Severed Relations Anatoly explores why some words naturally go together.
E.J. Dionne and Mickey Edwards: Bipartisan Exchange Part Two Part two of our bipartisan exchange.
Barbados Ben’s Place of the Week is Barbados.
Who Doesn’t Tony Love? Who does Tony hate?
E.J. Dionne and Mickey Edwards: A Bipartisan Exchange E.J. Dionne and Mickey Edwards debate.
An Interview With Komomo Jennifer got a gleam in her eye – and she told me all about her favourite title ‘A Geishas Journey’. It was a book about young Japanese girl who sets out to master the ancient art of being geisha. I was fascinated about young Ruriko’s transformation from a school girl into the adult geisha, Komomo.
Breakthrough Pain A look at what breakthrough pain is.
L ve By Purdy, Director of Publicity Michael Manner and I were English majors at Plattsburgh State before the days of email, before the days of the fax. Indeed, the modern technology of the time was floppy disk computers, and the CD was quickly replacing the cassette tape. Manner and I have kept in touch through the […]
It Never Rains In Brooklyn By Purdy, Director of Publicity Michael Manner and I were English majors at Plattsburgh State before the days of email, before the days of the fax. Indeed, the modern technology of the time was floppy disk computers, and the CD was quickly replacing the cassette tape. Manner and I have kept in touch through the […]
Friday procrastination: link love – parties, presidencies, and lost sleep What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Bloomberg and “Maintain” Ammon, an expert dictionary reader, ponders Mayor Bloomberg’s dislike of the word “maintain”.
Squirrel – Podictionary Word of the Day The podictionary word of the week is squirrel.
Ten Great Recent Documentary Films Pat Aufderheide chooses ten great docs from recent years.
Snob Before and After Thackeray Anatoly seeks the origin of “snob”.
Luck and American History Mark McNeilly looks at the intricacies of luck in history.
But Is It Art? An excerpt from Cynthia Freeland’s ‘But is it Art?’.
Beyond Citizenship How has globalization changed the way we look at our nationality?
Cíbola Ben’s Place of the week is…
Who Does Tony Love? Hischak looks at Tony award favorites.
Help Me Write: Autobiographies What makes a good autobiography?
The Origins of Blogwars: Part One The origins of Blogwars.
How to Take Action How to take action.
Listen to Aaron Filler Dr. Aaron Filler, author of Do You Really Need Back Surgery and a good friend of the OUPblog, has a new radio show. Check it out here.
Crossword Puzzle Answers Earlier today we posted a Mother’s Day crossword puzzle by Adam Fromm. It was a particularly peculiar puzzle; with many literary lexicons to get the matriarchs mulling! In this post, we provide the answers, including the ‘crossed words’, and the curious path traced across the grid. Can you deliver?
Friday procrastination: link love – James Bond, books, and blogs This week, Kirsty has been reading…
Reflecting on The Daily Show David Perlmutter reflects on The Daily Show.
Prisoner Cell Block H, My Mom, and My First Crossword Puzzle A crossword puzzle for Mother’s Day.
Wasting Time and Having Fun With OED Searches. Ammon Shea on reading the OED.
Flatter – Podictionary Word of the Day A look at the word “flatter.”
David Crystal on Words, Words, Words David Crystal talks about his book ‘Words, Words, Words’.
On The Daily Show David Perlmutter reflects on The Daily Show.
The Eternal Fascination of OK Anatoly explores the history of OK.
Prince Caspian and the Planets A look at Prince Caspian.
One Nation Under God? An exceprt from Roger Trigg’s book ‘Religion in Public Life’.
Fixing Failed States Ashraf Ghani has taught at Johns Hopkins, Berkeley, and Kabul University, worked at the World Bank, served as Finance Minister of Afghanistan, and been credited with a range of successful reforms in Afghanistan in the years following 9/11. He is currently the Chairman of the Institute for State Effectiveness. Clare Lockhart is Director of the […]
Tai Lake, China Tai Lake, China Coordinates: 31 5 N 120 10 E Approximate area: 930 sq. mi (2,409 sq. km) As the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Games have crept closer, China has scrambled to prepare Beijing, its capital city, for the fans, families, athletes, trainers, and dignitaries that will attend the Olympics in August. With […]
Tony, Tony, Tony: Beloved Losers and Disdained Winners An introduction to Tony season.
Poverty and Microbes An excerpt about poverty and AIDS from Deadly Companions.
Deadly Companions: An Excerpt About SARS An excerpt from Dorothy H. Crawford’s new book Deadly Companions.
Spill the molten crust. By Purdy, Director of Publicity Michael Manner and I were English majors at Plattsburgh State before the days of email, before the days of the fax. Indeed, the modern technology of the time was floppy disk computers, and the CD was quickly replacing the cassette tape. Manner and I have kept in touch through the […]
The Counsel By Purdy, Director of Publicity Michael Manner and I were English majors at Plattsburgh State before the days of email, before the days of the fax. Indeed, the modern technology of the time was floppy disk computers, and the CD was quickly replacing the cassette tape. Manner and I have kept in touch through the […]
Friday procrastination: link love – Bill Nye, Joseph Nye, and Jurassic Park Happy Friday everyone! I’m Cassie and I am a publicity assistant at OUP. Rebecca was kind enough to let me compile link love this week, which meant I got to spend more time surfing the web than writing press releases. Oh happy week! Use the fruits of my labors to do some time wasting of […]
The National Day of Prayer Domke and Coe look at National Prayer Day.
Wienerhuahuas will inherit the earth: the blend-y world of dog breed names By Mark Peters Word blending is a full-time sport in the world of dog breeding. Any two breeds, and their appellations, might spawn a blend. Some recent designer breeds, as they are known, include ‘Beagadors’ (Beagle and Labrador), ‘Maltipon’ (Maltese and Pomeranian) and ‘Jackabees’ (Jack Russell and Beagle).
Pakistan – Podictionary Word of the Day [display_podcast] Although places like Afghanistan, Kurdistan, and Turkistan have had their names for maybe a thousand years and tend to be in the same general part of the world as Pakistan—that is, sort of north and west of India—Pakistan is a made-up name that hasn’t been around even 100 years.
April 2008 (69))
The Oddest English Spellings Anatoly explores the history of spelling with the letter w.
Book thumbnail image A Very Short Introduction to Modern China Rana Mitter talks about his Very Short Introduction to Modern China
Book thumbnail image Dachau, Germany Ben’s place of the week is Dachau, Germany.
Help Me Write: What Constitutes Literary Importance? Kevin Hayes needs help writing his book…
Love as a Force for Change Amanda Smith Barusch, PhD, has been teaching and researching in the field of aging for over 25 years. Most of those were spent on the faculty of the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. She now serves as Professor and Head of Department of Social Work and Community Development at the University […]
A Few Questions For Amanda Smith Barusch Amanda Smith Barusch, PhD, has been teaching and researching in the field of aging for over 25 years. Most of those were spent on the faculty of the College of Social Work at the University of Utah. She now serves as Professor and Head of Department of Social Work and Community Development at the University […]
Friday procrastination: link love – bumps, Brooklyn, and bravery Happy Friday everyone! Spring is in the air! Take a long lunch. Leave work early. Just don’t tell your boss it my my idea… The Colbert Bump. (via Kotke) Every effort helps. Ready to stalk the Brooklyn literati? Bravely addressing the elephant in Thomas Nelson’s room. Should Wikipedia be a book? LOLcavore? (Thanks Mike!) Achewood […]
Oxford World’s Classic Quiz: The Answers The answers to this week’s Oxford World’s Classics Quiz
Oxford World’s Classics Quiz: Part Five The last set of questions in the OWC Quiz.
Did Jimmy Carter Violate the Logan Act? Zelinsky suggests that former President Carter may have violated the federal Logan Act by meeting with officials of Hamas.
Samuel Johnson and the First English Dictionary Ammon Shea wonders who wrote the first English dictionary.
Bloggers Challenge the Rules of the Game Donald Ritchie looks at political resistance to changes in the press.
Glossary – Podictionary Word of the Day A look at the word “glossary”.
Oxford World’s Classics Quiz: Part Four Day Four of the Oxford World’s Classics Quiz.
Not All That is Paltry is Trivial Anatoly wonders why we double up on names in certain words.
Control Freaks Naomi Baron looks at modern communication.
Oxford World’s Classics Quiz: Part Three The third part of the week-long Oxford World’s Classics Quiz.
Portland, Oregon Ben’s Place of the week is Portland, Oregon.
A Pulitzer Winner Reflects Daniel Walker Howe reflects on winning The Pulitzer Prize.
Oxford World’s Classics Quiz: Part Two Part Two of the OWC Quiz.
Rising Food Prices: What Should be Done? Pamela Ronald responds to an editorial by Paul Krugman.
What is Anorexia Nervosa? An excerpt from Demystifying Anorexia Nervosa.
When Can You Say Thin Is Too Thin? Alexander R. Lucas, M.D., author of Demystifying Anorexia Nervosa is Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry and former Head of the Section of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic. For forty years he has been a recognized authority on anorexia, with a practice that drew patients from around the world. Demystifying Anorexia Nervosa defines anorexia, […]
Oxford World’s Classics Quiz: Part One Part One of the Oxford World’s Classics Quiz.
National Poetry Month: Introducing Michael Manner A poem from Michael Manner for poetry month.
Friday procrastination: link love- recycling, reviews, and remembering Link Love.
Happy Passover: The Szyk Haggadah A look at the Szyk Haggadah.
History is a Gift: The Colfax Massacre LeAnna Keith reflects on the anniversary of the Colfax Massacre.
Linguistic Pet Peeves: Or, I’d Rather Be Napping Ammon Shea shares a pet peeve.
Clique – Podictionary Word of the Day [display_podcast] The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was. Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way.
Relaunching the Oxford World’s Classics OWC editor Judith Luna tells us about the new look classics, which we have just launched at the London Book Fair.
Women Who Walk Heavily or Too Much By Anatoly Liberman In olden days women were supposed to be sweet, docile, and, if possible, incorporeal. On the other hand, men, subject to the universal law of contrasts, threw their weight about, and, once they “arrived,” demonstrated corpulence. They invented countless offensive words referring to women’s way of walking.
This Date in History: April 16, 1960 A look at this day in history.
London Book Fair 2008: Photo of the Day Kirsty’s favourite photo from the London Book Fair.
Chin Hills, Burma Ben’s Place of the Week is Chin Hills, Burma.
Safire Speaks William Safire videos.
Crack Heard Round The World: Parmigiano Reggiano Wheels ver the weekend Whole Food Market attempted to earn a Guinness World Record for “Most Parmigiano Reggiano Wheels Ever Cracked” at the same time.
Help Me Write! Who are your favorite travel writers?
London Book Fair 2008: First Impressions The first part of Kirsty’s London Book Fair diary
Bipolar Nation Today we are excited to bring you Emily Martin a professor of anthropology at New York University. In her most recent book, Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture, (published by Princeton University Press), Martin guides us into the fascinating and sometimes disturbing worlds of mental-health support groups, mood charts, psychiatric rounds, the pharmaceutical […]
Friday procrastination: link love – lists, libraries and lives What Rebecca read this week.
Scoops, Packs, and Clubs Donald Ritchie shares his National Press club speech.
The Last Word This is, I’m sad to say, the final installment of “From A to Zimmer” on OUPblog. As of next week I’m departing Oxford University Press for a new position as executive producer of ‘Visual Thesaurus’. I’ve greatly enjoyed the platform afforded me by OUPblog, but I’ve always had a niggling concern.
How Dictionaries Ruined My Scrabble Game Ammon Shea explains how dictionaries ruined his Scrabble game.
Replica – Podictionary Word of the Day Charles Hodgson looks at the word “replica.”
Very Short Introductions: Global Catastrophe Bill McGuire, author of Global Catastrophe: A Very Short Introduction, answers a few questions for OUPblog.
Feel My Pain: The Federal Taxpayers’ Subsidy of Bill Clinton Edward A. Zelinsky looks at the Clinton’s tax returns.
Still in the Bottleneck, or, Chasing for the First Fiasco Anatoly examines the origin of the word fiasco.
Inside Oxford: Questions For Niko Pfund Part Two Niko Pfund, OUP’s academic and trade publisher, answers a frequent question – how do you decide what to publish, and what not to publish? Oxford has a rigorous review process through which we vet all prospective publications. If you e-mail a proposal to an OUP editor, here’s what happens…
Lyons, Kansas Ben’s Place of the Week is Lyons, Kansas.
Hillary’s Blog Dilemma David Perlmutter looks at the influence of blogs.
Inside Oxford: Questions for Niko Pfund Today we have the honor of having Niko Pfund, publisher-extraordinaire, answer some questions he is often asked. Be sure to check back tomorrow to see part two of this series. Having worked at both a midsized press (NYU) and the world’s largest university press (OUP), and with experience as both an editor and a manager, […]
Howe Wins the Pulitzer Prize Oxford University Press is beaming with joy at the news that Daniel Walker Howe has won the Pulitzer Prize in history for What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. Read Howe’s OUPblog post here. Read Howe’s Powell’s post here. More to come after we finish celebrating.
Frequently Asked Questions about Substance Abuse Earlier today we posted an excerpt form Chasing The High: A Firsthand Account of One Young Person’s Experience With Substance Abuse by Kyle Keegan and Howard B. Moss, M.D. In the excerpt below the authors answer some tough questions about living with substance abuse in your past. Should I tell everyone about my problems with […]
Chasing The High An excerpt from Chasing The High.
Friday procrastination: link love – HBO, Hemingway, and hallucinogens Happy Friday to all! It’s been a long week, rain, sunshine, rain again but hopefully the sun will return sometime soon and stick around. Below are some links to keep you busy on this dreary Friday. What is inaccurate about the HBO John Adams series? Hemingway had March Madness? Billy Bragg on royalties. Isabel Allende […]
Where are the New Social Movements in German collective memory? Paul Hockenos looks at the criticism of the 1968 German student movement.
What Every beginning Dictionary Reader Should Know Ammon Shea shares some advice for beginning dictionary readers.
The First Blogger William Safire blogs about blogs.
Know Your Nonsense–A Lexical Guide to Horse Apples Mark Peters looks at synonyms for “bullshit”.
Lotus – Podictionary Word of the Day Welcome to podictionary. My name is Charles Hodgson For almost three years now I’ve been producing podictionary – the podcast for word lovers and I’m very pleased to now be able to bring a weekly episode to the OUPblog. Every Thursday I’ll be posting a word-of-the-day podcast here. There are two main differences between podictionary […]
Easeful Death: On Assisted Dying and Euthanasia Baroness Mary Warnock and Elisabeth Macdonald respond to a recent UK poll that came out in favour of assisted dying and euthanasia.
Tomorrow Be sure to read the blog tomorrow because we are going to have a bonanza of language posts! I’m so excited I’m going to pull an Ammon Shea and stay up all night reading my Shorter OED.
How the Protocharlatan Escaped Justice This story might be titled “Some Words Have a Reputation to Live Up To,” (Part Two). While tracing the convoluted history of ‘charade’, I promised to devote some space to ‘charlatan’. The element ‘char-‘ unites them, and in scholarly works they have frequently been mentioned in one breath.
The Swipe-Happy Road to Debt Stuart Vyse warns us about the dangers of buying on credit.
Blogging the Classics at the Oxford Literary Festival Kirsty looks back at OUP’s blogging event at the Oxford Literary Festival
Visiting Thomas Jefferson’s Grave Who should have the right to visit Thomas Jefferson’s grave?
Wilkins Ice Shelf, Antarctica Ben’s Place of the Week is Wilkins Ice Shelf.
Blogs and the Political Elite Perlmutter looks at the media diet of political elites.
March 2008 (48))
Book thumbnail image Choose Hope: Resources Eight Stories Up: An Adolescent Chooses Hope Over Suicide by DeQuincy A. Lezine, PH.D with David Brent, M.D., is both the touching memoir of how Lezine survived the desire to commit suicide and a useful guide that will ease the isolation and hopelessness caused by the thoughts of suicide. Earlier today we posted an excerpt. […]
Eight Stories Up: A Letter to the Reader Eight Stories Up: An Adolescent Chooses Hope Over Suicide by DeQuincy A. Lezine, PH.D with David Brent, M.D., is both the touching memoir of how Lezine survived the desire to commit suicide and a useful guide that will ease the isolation and hopelessness caused by the thoughts of suicide. The excerpt below, the preface to […]
Friday procrastination: link love – Easter poems, classic novels, and why writers write What Kirsty has been reading this week.
Book thumbnail image Don’t Know Much About Washington (or history and economics for that matter) Mark McNeilly criticizes civic knowledge of American citizens.
Family Affairs: The New Jersey Jewish Film Festival Herbert Ford introduces us to the New Jersey Jewish Film Festival.
Your cheatin’ words Ammon Shea explores cheating in the OED.
“I love the night passionately” An excerpt from Paris Tales An excerpt from Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘A Nightmare’.
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly answers questions posed in March.
A Most Holy War and Religious Violence Mark Gregory Pegg helps us understand religious violence with historical perspective.
Argungu, Nigeria Ben’s Place of the Week is Argungu, Nigeria.
Text Messaging as Toy or Tool Naomi S. Baron, author of Always On: Language in an Online and Mobile World, explains to us the generation gap in text messaging.
Helpful Parenting Strategies for Your Bipolar Child An excerpt from Living With Bipolar Disorder: A Guide For Individuals and Families.
Activities for Mood Stabilization Living With Bipolar Disorder: A Guide For Individuals and Families by Michael W. Otto, Noreen A. Reilly-Harrington, Robert O. Knauz, Aude Henin and Jane N. Kogan aims to help suffers learn how to better recognize mood shifts before they happen, minimize their impact, and move on with their lives. This book teaches individuals with bipolar […]
Into The Woods: The Oxford Companion To Fairytales An excerpt from The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales.
Press Blog Link Love The press blogs Rebecca has been reading.
Advice for Hillary Sally G. McMillen, author of Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement looks at Hillary Clinton’s run for president.
Absurd entries in the OED: an introduction by Ammon Shea By Ammon Shea All dictionaries have mistakes. Ghost words creep in, there are occasional misspellings, or perhaps the printer was hung over one day and misplaced some punctuation. In addition to these normal forms of human error there are others that are created by language, as it continues its inexorable change.
Very Short Introductions: The Quakers Pink Dandelion answers a few questions on his Very Short Introduction to The Quakers
Some Words Have A Reputation To Live Up To It is not fortuitous that many words like ‘puzzle’, ‘conundrum’, and ‘quiz’ are themselves puzzles from an etymological point of view. They arose as slang, sometimes as student slang, and as we don’t know the circumstances in which they were coined, our chances of discovering their origin is low.
“Only 22%” Political Blog Readership Is Pretty Good… Perlmutter looks at the readership of political blogs.
Traditional Polynesian Tattooing Adrienne L. Kaeppler, author of The Pacfic Arts of Polynesia and Micronesia, tells us a little about traditional Polynesian tattooing
Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles Ben’s place of the week is Sint Maarten, Netherlands Antilles.
2008 Bancroft Prize A closer look at the Bancroft Prize.
District of Columbia v. Heller: What to Look For? What should we look for in the District of Columbia v. Heller case?
Putting in Writing What You Want (and Don’t Want). An excerpt from Lawrence J. Schneiderman’s Embracing Our Mortality.
A New Approach To Health Care Reform An opinion on health care reform
Hirabayashi v. United States A look at Hiraybayashi v. United States.
Friday procrastination: link love – activism, art, and autism Happy Friday to all! It’s been quite a crazy week here in New York but fear not, I still have lots of links to distract you today. Happy surfing. Why peace activists shouldn’t get discouraged. Why you should be reading the financial news. Dirty car art (not that kind of dirty!) What you need to […]
Word Love Some word loving links.
Taking Evidence Seriously: Alan Sokal goes Beyond the Hoax Alan Sokal, author of Beyond the Hoax, discusses why we should take evidence seriously.
Wild Honey With and Without Locusts Two opposite forces act on the brain of someone who sets out to trace the origin of a word. To cite the most famous cases, coward is supposedly a “corruption” of cowherd and sirloin came into being when an English king dubbed an edible loin at table (Sir Loin). Such fantasies have tremendous appeal.
Making Money Marketing Evan Schnittman tells us a tale of past marketing success that may help publishing move forward.
Bruges, Belgium Ben’s Place of the Week is Bruges, Belgium.
Annie Lee Moss and Joe McCarthy AANB contributor Donald Ritchie writes about Annie Lee Moss and Joe McCarthy.
In Memory of William Buckley Mickey Edwards reflects on William Buckley.
You and Your Aging Parent An excerpt from You and Your Aging Parent.
Happy Birthday Fowler! Celebrating the 150th birthday of Henry Watson Fowler
Friday procrastination: link love – twitter, tours, and tributes What Rebecca has been reading this week.
So Long Huckabee Authors Domke and Coe say goodbye to Huckabee.
Calling all tonguesters: Refresh your gossip with old words Mark Peters guest blogs for Ben Zimmer.
Binge Britain: 24 hour licensing one year on Martin and Moira Plant, authors of Binge Britain, give their take on 24 hour drinking laws.
Medvedev’s Election Victory Goldman reflects on Medvedev’s recent victory in the Russian elections and on what it means for Russia.
Hubba-Hubba Anatoly searches for the origin of hubba-hubba.
Mother Leakey and the Bishop A ghostly excerpt from Mother Leakey and the Bishop
Book thumbnail image Oslo, Norway Ben’s Place of the Week is Oslo.
LaRue and 401(k): What’s The Fuss About? Zelinsky discuses the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in LaRue v. DeWolff, Boberg & Associates, Inc.
Bad Blood: U.S.-Cuban Relations after Fidel Given relations between the United States and Cuba over the last 50 years, one should not expect matters to change despite Fidel’s resignation. There is bad blood between the two countries. And no event did more to make this bad blood than the Bay of Pigs, almost routinely referred to as a “fiasco.”
Kosovo: What Everybody Needs To Know Tim Bent introduces Tim Judah.
February 2008 (49))
Friday procrastination: link love – Peru, prisoners, and ‘Prison Idol’ What Kirsty has been reading
Book thumbnail image Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Insipient v. Incipient Garner teaches us how to correctly use insipient and incipient.
Book thumbnail image Organlegging: Hold Onto Your Heart Jeff Prucher guest blogs for Ben Zimmer
Everybody’s Happy Now? Prozac and Happiness An extract on Prozac, from Happiness by Daniel Nettle
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly responds to comments on spelling reform.
Misfortunes rarely come singly: An excerpt from Scott’s Journals An excerpt from Scott’s Journals to mark International Polar Year
Book thumbnail image Hinche, Haiti Ben Keene looks at Hinche, Haiti.
Early Ideas on No-thing: An Excerpt From The Void A look into the Void.
What Does Your Credit Limit Say About You? It’s a wonderful feeling. You apply for your first MasterCard, hoping to be accepted. Finally it arrives in the mail, and you feel like a million bucks. It’s shiny and new, and it comes with a letter that tells you your credit limit. In most cases, this happy event occurs when you are quite young.
How Not To Go Broke Stuart Vyse is Professor of Psychology at Connecticut College, in New London. In his new book, Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money, he offers a unique psychological perspective on the financial behavior of the many Americans today who find they cannot make ends meet, illuminating the causes of our wildly self-destructive […]
Du Bois and Garvey Meet: No Blood Is Shed! Happy Birthday W. E. B. Du Bois.
Friday procrastination: link love – college, conclusions, and curiosity What Rebecca has been reading.
This Day in History: George Washington Was Born Mark McNeilly helps us celebrate Washington’s birthday.
Reading the OED: An Interview with Ammon Shea John McGrath the genius behind Wordie.org fills in for Ben Zimmer.
A Literary Quiz John Mullan, author of How Novels Work, poses some literary brainteasers.
An Etymologist Looks at Puck and is Not Afraid Anatoly turns puckish.
An Excerpt From Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene Bart Ehrman chairs the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene: The Followers of Jesus in History and Legend, which we have excerpted below, in addition to The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot, Truth and Fiction in the Da […]
Who You Calling Cutthroat? The Legal System, Legal Responsibility, and Sweeney Todd A legal look at Sweeney Todd.
Priština, Kosovo Ben’s place of the week is Priština, Kosovo.
Derek Jeter and New York State Income Tax Zelinksy questions why Derek Jeter’s New York tax settlement has not been made public.
Election 2008 – What Would Washington Think? Mark McNeilly, author of George Washington and the Art of Business: Leadership Principles of America’s First Commander-in-Chief, questions who Washington would have voted for.
Going Broke: Podcast A podcast with Stuart Vyse author of Going Broke: Why Americans Can’t Hold On To Their Money.
Friday procrastination: link love – banned words and bookcases Happy Friday to all! Below are some links to help you through the day. See you Monday! An interview with Orhan Pamuk. Is content king? Are embryos morally equal to people? Feeling artistic? I want this bookcase! Time for a trip to Philly? Banned words. Need a name for the main character in that novel […]
On Cannibalism An interview with Ethan Rarick.
Word Love Some word love for Valentine’s Day.
Is Huckabee’s Faith Compatible With Democracy? Authors Domke and Coe look at Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee.
Are Bloggers The People (And Does That Matter)? David Perlmutter looks at who bloggers are and what their influence is on their fellow Americans.
Coming to Grips With One’s Intelligence Anatoly explains the key to “understanding”.
Santiago, Chile Ben’s Place of the week is Santiago, Chile.
Notes From Tools Of Change Notes from Tools of Change ’08.
The History of Medicine: Early Specialization in America George Weisz is a Professor of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University. In his book, Divide and Conquer: A Comparative History of Medical Specialization he traces the origins of modern medical specialization to 1830s Paris and examines its spread to Germany, Britain, and the US, showing how it evolved from a feature of academic […]
Do I Believe in Ebooks?: Part Two Evan’s post last week, Do I Believe in Ebooks?: Part One, stimulated some interesting conversation in the blogosphere and I hope that Part Two, his bold recommendation, will encourage all of us to reconsider the potential of ebooks. I will be at the Tools of Change conference today and I hope some of my fellow […]
On Purdy, NYROB and Preparation Leon Neyfakh’s article Mr. Silvers, Will You Peek at My Books? strikes home for those of us in the publicity department at OUP. Each visit to Mr. Silvers requires preparation and much mental fortitude. If you aren’t completely prepared you may find yourself embarrassed, for example: “I remember one time, ” said Christian Purdy of […]
John McCain is a True Conservative Mickey Edwards refutes the claim that John McCain is not a real conservative.
Friday procrastination: link love – bloggers, bookstores and Brooklyn Happy Friday to all. Next week I will be at the Tools of Change Conference but have no fear, there will still be new posts on the blog. If you are at the conference please come introduce yourself to me! I’ll be the one with the laptop. David Lehman’s playlist. A co-worker sent me this […]
Following the Donner Party A podcast with Ethan Rarick.
Intractable Usage Disputes: “Less” and “None” Ben Zimmer revisits last week’s column.
Very Short Introductions: Documentary Film Patricia Aufderheide answers a few questions about her Very Short Introduction to Documentary Film
Should Book Authors Blog? Perlmutter looks at authors who blog.
Strip Them Naked, or The Robber Disrobed Anatoly looks at the connection between the words “robber” and “robe.”
Kaliningrad Ben’s Place of the week is Kalingrad.
What We Failed To Do: The George Steiner Prize Philip Davis looks at chances lost…
Freakonomics a Response Richard L. Revesz responds to an article in the N.Y. Times Magazine.
Do I Believe In Ebooks?: Part One Evan Schnittman, OUP’s VP of Business Development and Rights, wonders if he truly does believe in ebooks.
A Fond Farewell To Darren Shannon Darren Shannon bids farewell to OUP.
Obama Has God On His Side Domke and Coe look at the ways Obama has used religion in his campaign.
Protected: Kilcullen Media Page There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
It’s About the Voters…Who Show Up Mickey Edwards weighs in on the primaries.
Friday procrastination: link love – Mills & Boon, Q-Tips, and Feminism This week, Kirsty has been mostly reading…
January 2008 (59))
Constitutional Theory Does Matter Sotirios A. Barber and James E. Fleming respond to Stanley Fish’s article.
An Interview With Ethan Rarick An interview with Ethan Rarick author of Desperate Passage: The Donner Party’s Perilous Journey West.
The Super Bowl and Super Tuesday: How’d They Get So “Super”? Ben Zimmer takes a closer look at the use of the word “super.”
The Mabinogion: Story-telling and the Oral Tradition An excerpt from the introduction to The Mabinogion, translated by Sioned Davies.
Book thumbnail image Blindly Following Your Team Captain Mickey Edwards wonders why the Republican members of Congress were so enthusiastic at the SOTU Monday.
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly responds to comments on spelling reform.
Mickey Edwards on The State of The Union Address Mickey Edwards responds to the State of the Union Address.
Brasília Ben’s Place of the Week is Brasília.
Historically Black Colleges: Anecdote Doesn’t Equal Evidence To celebrate the publication of the AANB we asked Dr. Marybeth Gasman to contribute to the OUPblog.
Milblogs: Yesterday and Today David Perlmutter introduces us to Military blogs.
Sundance: Art, Politics, Business in the Slush In the post below Pat Aufderheide reports back from Sundance.
Why The Giants Should Eat Pasta Some advice to help the giants in the Superbowl.
Channeling MLK in the Democratic Primaries Domke and Coe look at the effects of MLK’s legacy on the Democratic primaries.
Friday procrastination: link love – ashes, amazon, and Alex Balk What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Thoughts on the Current Political Reality Show Morton Keller looks at the 2008 primary season.
“Big-Up” on the Rise Ben Zimmer big-ups the word “big-up”.
Scots, Wha Hae! A History of Burns Clubs In time for Burns Night, here is everything you need to know about the history of Burns Clubs.
Darkness At Noon And At All Other Times Anatoly considers the addition of suffixes.
Invisible Man: Garvey or Obama Colin Grant compares Barack Obama to Marcus Garvey.
Prypiat, Ukraine Ben’s place of the week is Prypiat, Ukraine.
Women in the News Donald Ritchie looks at the history of women reporting the news.
This Day in History: Roe v. Wade After the middle of the 19th century most states adopted laws restricting the availability of abortion. The so-called sexual revolution of the 1950s and 1960s, which fostered increased access to contraceptives, also resulted in an increasing number of situations in which women desired abortions.
When Doctors Embrace Faith An interview with author Robert Klitzman.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day The OUPblog celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Ch…Ch…Changes The OUPblog will have some regularly scheduled maintenance Sunday night.
Wu is Everywhere! OUP author Tim Wu has been very busy writing.
Friday procrastination: link love – waterfalls, writers block, and watching habits What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Academy Awards, Documentaries, and the People’s Choices Patricia Aufderheide looks at her favorite documentary films.
“Primary” Colors Ben embraces the spirit of the season and looks at the words primary and caucus.
It’s The Music, Stupid! Colin Larkin discusses how we listen to music now.
Turkey, Chocolate, and Italian Cuisine Gillian Riley looks at the role of chocolate in Italian cuisine.
The Candidates Go With God to South Carolina Domke and Coe look ahead to the South Carolina primaries.
The Oddest English Spellings, or, The Future of Spelling Reform Is the spellchecker compromising language history? Anatoly weighs in on spelling reform.
Kennett Square, Pennsylvania Ben’s Place of the Week is Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.
A New Kind of Evangelical D. Michael Lindsay looks at cosmopolitan evangelicals.
ERISA Preemption in the City by the Bay Zelinsky reflects on a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision and its affects on health care reform.
Medical Mondays Revisited A round-up of advice posts.
Congratulations Congratulations to the NBCC nominees.
Are Woman Good Public Speakers? Is being female a disadvantage in public speaking?
Friday procrastination: link love – Golden Globes, Gloria Steinem, and gastronomy What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Because it’s there: A Tribute to Sir Edmund Hillary In recent years, climbing Everest has become something of an industry, and today when I learned of Sir Edmund Hillary’s death at the age of 88, in his native New Zealand, I marvelled at his extraordinary accomplishment. ‘High Adventure’ is one of my favorite books – both unforgiving, and exciting.
Memoirs of a Film Groupie: The European Premier of Sweeney Todd Judith Luna, Commissioning Editor of the Oxford World’s Classics, tells us about the European premiere of Sweeney Todd.
Who Is The True Conservative? Mickey Edwards sheds light on the Republican candidates for President.
Book thumbnail image Pakistan at a Crossroads John L. Esposito, editor-in-chief of Oxford Islamic Studies Online looks at the effects of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
“Subprime” Ready for Prime Time Ben Zimmer looks at The American Dialect Society’s word of the year.
Very Short Introductions: Kabbalah Joseph Dan answers a few questions on his book Kabbalah: A Very Short Introduction.
The Origins of Buzzwords Anatoly looks at everyday buzzwords.
Documentaries Come Out of the Shadow at Sundance Patricia Aufderheide provides some Sundance recommendations.
Mojave, California Ben’s place of the week is Mojave, California.
Milton in 2008 Four hundred years after the birth of John Milton, he still lives, his example still inspires, his words still echo. “Paradise Lost” is played on the stage, is sung to music, is choreographed for a ballet; it is an audiobook, the subject of countless theses and dissertations – and even paintings.
A New Year, A New You? Learning how to assert yourself.
Transition Behavior What to expect when you are adopting.
Obama and Huckabee Embrace Religion, Win Iowa Domke and Coe look at the Iowa caucuses.
Sweeney Todd The trailer to Sweeney Todd.
Friday procrastination: link love – textbooks, top tens, and ‘I’m not There’ What Rebecca has been reading this week.
This Day In History: Happy Birthday Tolkien Happy birthday J.R.R. Tolkien!
Should “Decimate” be Annihilated? Ben Zimmer looks at the word “decimate”.
A Word in Season: Blizzard Anatoly looks at the origin of the word “blizzard.”
Follow the [Ad] Money Donald Ritchie takes a closer look at newspapers.
December 2007 (53))
How to Prepare To Meet Your Adopted Child Parents usually have the opportunity to meet their child’s caregivers during the adoption process. The following list includes suggested topics to discuss. It will be helpful for parents who make two trips to complete the adoption, and those who have been given little information prior to travel.
End of the Year Procrastination: Link Love End of the year link love.
A Look Back at 2007 A look back at the great posts of 2007.
Our Nameless Decade: What “Aught” We Call It? Ben Zimmer wonders what we will call this decade.
The Christmas Story, Circa 2008: Presidential Religious Politics Domke and Coe look at the presidential candidates in historical perspective.
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly answers questions that have come up throughout the month.
Redefining the word “Human” – Do Some Apes Have Human Ancestors? Aaron Filler looks at what makes humans- “human.”
Friday procrastination: link love – Borat, books, and betterment Happy Holidays to all. Now get off the computer and go spend time with your family! Clocks that put our season of excess into perspective. Major moves online at the LATimes. Some great reasons to love NYC. In memory of the 64 journalists who died on the job this year. My favorite book of the […]
Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd Robert Mack teaches us about Sweeney Todd.
Favorites: Part Thirteen Stephanie O’Cain Stephanie O’Cain’s favorite book is Written on the Body.
Favorites: Part Twelve Greg Galant Greg Galant’s favorite book is The Power Broker.
The Sweeney Todd Phenomenon The incarnations of Sweeney Todd.
Favorites: Part Eleven Erin Cox Erin Cox shares her favorite books with us.
Favorites: Part Ten Dylan Moulton Dylan Moulton’s favorite book is…
Favorites: Part Nine Noa Wheeler I have never finished reading my favorite book. This may sound incongruous, but the truth is that any time I “finish” Sartre’s ‘The Words’, I simply start it again. For many years, I have always been somewhere in the process of reading this quietly brilliant book. Sartre’s memoir is one of paradox.
Quixotic Coinages: The Failure of the Epicene Pronoun Earlier this week I spent an enjoyable hour being interviewed on the Wisconsin Public Radio show “At Issue with Ben Merens.” Though our topic was ostensibly the New Oxford American Dictionary’s choice of ‘locavore’ as Word of the Year, we soon ventured into other word-related matters, such as ‘O’.
Favourite Books of 2007 from OUP-UK The staff at OUP-UK tell you about their favourite books of 2007
Charles Dickens and Sweeney Todd Yesterday, Robert Mack, the editor of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, wrote about the unknown author of Sweeney Todd. Today Mack looks at Dickens’s influence. This post first appeared on Powell’s. The original publisher of Sweeney Todd, Edward Lloyd, in whose journal The People’s Periodical and Family Library first appeared in 1846-7, […]
Favorites: Part Eight Jaime Morganstern Jaime Morganstern’s favorite book is Love Story.
Year In, Year Out Anatoly divulges how seasons make up the year.
Favorites: Part Seven Bethany Heitman Bethany Heitman’s favorite book is In Cold Blood.
Favorites: Part Six Mark Sarvas To celebrate the holidays we asked some of our favorite people in publishing what their favorite book was. Let us know in the comments what your favorite book is and be sure to check back throughout the week for more “favorites”. Mark Sarvas runs the literary blog The Elegant Variation. His criticism has appeared in […]
Who Wrote Sweeney Todd? Who wrote Sweeney Todd?
Favorites: Part Five Andrew DeSio Andew DeSio’s favorite book is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe Ben’s Place of the Week is Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Favorites: Part Four Christine Duplessis Christine Duplessis’s favorite book is…
Favorites: Part Three Lauren Cerand Lauren Cerand tells us about her favorite books.
Lustful Cannibalism A closer look at Sweeney Todd.
Favorites: Part Two Randall Klein Randall Klein’s favorite book is The Phantom Tollbooth.
Liberty is a Gift from God?: Reflecting on Romney David Domke and Kevin Coe look at Mitt Romney’s speech in historical perspective.
Favorites: Part One Andrew Goldberg Andrew Goldberg’s favorite book is…
Friday procrastination: link love – holiday hangovers and creepy cats What Rebecca has been reading this week.
The Past is Present Morton Keller looks at our polarized political present in light of our past.
From “Nuclear Winter” to “Carbon Summer” Ben Zimmer looks at the history of the word “carbon-summer.”
Christmas Records: Annual Turkeys Colin Larkin, editor of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music, gives his guide to Christmas records.
China leads in mass surveillance. Will the West follow? James B. rule looks at how nations track their citizens.
A Few Shining Examples Anatoly looks at strong and weak past participles.
Italian Food Podcast Ben Keene talks to author Gillian Riley.
Tokaj, Hungary Ben’s Place of the Week is Tokaj, Hungary.
Creationist Politics in Texas: A Sad New Chapter in the Continuing Story of Intelligent Design Barbara Forrest reflects.
National Health Care Shouldn’t Be National Edward Zelinksy looks at health care reform.
Facing AIDS In South Africa An excerpt from Shattered Dreams?: An Oral History of the South African AIDS Epidemic.
OUP Celebrates the Holidays Pictures from the OUP-US holiday party.
On This Day In History: Pearl Harbor David Domke and Kevin Coe look at Pearl Harbor.
New Words on the Block: Back When “Movies” Were Young Ben Zimmer looks at the origin of the word “movie.”
The Word of the Century So Far is… The winner of our “Word of the Century So Far” poll is revealed.
In a State of Denial, in the Negative Mood Anatoly takes a look at negative prefixes.
He’s Not Jack Kennedy The authors of The God Strategy look at Mitt Romney’s upcoming speech.
We Wish You an Italian Christmas! Gillian Riley helps us learn about Italian Christmas.
The Little Philosophy Handbook: Consciousness For many, the beginning of philosophical curiosity might be summarized in the French exclamation Voilà! – a sudden sense of wonder at just being alive and being here. What this means, however, is not easy to spell out. What is, is you, your being here in the world – and your own self-consciousness.
Feeling Unreal: Trisha’s Experience An excerpt from Feeling Unreal.
Oxford Place Of The Year: Warming Island Ben Keene chooses the Place of the Year.
Lights, Camera, Action! A look at the film Numb.
November 2007 (47))
World AIDS Day: Africa Still Suffers We celebrate World AIDS Day.
Friday procrastination: link love – pouts, sulks, and shameless promotion What Rebecca has been reading this week.
This Day In History: King Tut’s Tomb Opened A look into ancient Egypt.
The Shocking Story of “Tase” Ben Zimmer looks at the word taze/tase.
Very Short Introductions: International Migration Khalid Koser answers a few questions on his book International Migration: A Very Short Introduction.
Sex With Mae West An excerpt from Mae West: An Icon in Black and White.
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly answers readers’ questions and looks at the origins of bigot.
Calais, Maine Ben’s Place of the Week is Calais.
On Coleridge, Faust and the Love of Books A look at Faustus translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Snake Oil Science: The Use of Placebos in Research An excerpt from Snake Oil Science.
On the Shoulders of Giants Bausell takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the battle between alternative medicine and the placebo effect.
Friday Procrastination: Link Love UK Special! Kirsty’s been left in charge of Friday link love. It’s a UK special!
Thanksgiving Procrastination We embrace our Thanksgiving induced comas.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Heroes Do you see any similarities between Beowulf and any particular modern day hero?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Book V. Movie Which do you think of changing the endings to literary masterpieces?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Beowulf Andrew Varhol helps us explore Beowulf.
Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War Patrick Wright, author of Iron Curtain, explains how he came to write a book on one of the most powerful political metaphors of the 20th century.
The Real First Thanksgiving Andrew Smith helps us explore the origins of Thanksgiving.
On Being Pretty Ugly: A Nice But Quaint Oxymoron Anatoly explores pretty’s myriad of meanings from unlikely origins.
The Birth of Locavore Jessica Prentice talks about how she coined the word of the year.
Tehuacán, Mexico Ben Keene wonders where turkeys are from?
Kindle Roundup Links to Kindle reports.
Kindle: The Holy Grail or the last gasp of eBooks? Kindle has arrived! Evan Schnittman reviews the new ereader for us.
Food Safety A look at food safety.
Friday procrastination: link love – strikes, titles, and Stone Age feminism I just love WOTY week. It seems to fly by so quickly! Next week is Thanksgiving and I am looking forward to relaxing with some good books and eating a lot of food. The couch and my sweatpants will become inseparable! Until then here are some fun links. RF went to school in A but […]
Prez and Billy Holiday Dave Gelly helps us understand Lester Young.
“Word of the Year” Mania! Ben Zimmer looks a little bit more closely at the Word of the Year.
The Art of Punctuation: What your use of quotation marks says about you An excerpt from our book ‘The Art of Punctuation’ explains that your use of quotation marks can reveal more about you than you think.
Sneak—Snack—Snuck Anatoly uncovers how sneaked became snuck.
Holiday Help David Tolin helps us prepare for the holidays
Geography Awareness Week 2007 Ben celebrates Geography Awareness Week!
Mormon Science Fiction An excerpt from Terryl Givens’s People of Paradox.
Oxford Word Of The Year 2007: Locavore It’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold, and the New Oxford American Dictionary is preparing for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) ‘locavore’; a trend in using locally grown, seasonal ingredients.
Friday procrastination: link love – books, bagels, and Belgium I would like to take a moment to say that I finally finished The Savage Detectives. I know I’m a bit behind the rest of the crowd but I am now a full Bolano convert. If you haven’t read the book yet get on it, this is one you simply cannot miss. Also, check out […]
On Women, Sports and the New York Marathon The authors of Playing With The Boys take a look at the NY Marathon.
How Do “Miss Steaks” Go Unnoticed? It’s Along Story Ben Zimmer looks at “miss steaks.”
Very Short Introductions: The American Presidency Charles O. Jones talks to OUP about his ‘The American Presidency: A Very Short Introduction’.
Michael Lindsay on the Elections Michael Lindsay looks at the upcoming elections.
People of Paradox Terryl L. Givens looks at the candidacy of Mitt Romney.
A Troubled Marriage Between A Skeptic and an Ascetic, or, The Oddest English Spellings How did we ever come up with the spelling for scythe? Anatoly looks at the history of conjoined letters “sc”.
Warming Island, Greenland Ben’s Place of the Week is Warming Island, Greenland.
Privacy in Peril? If you increasingly feel that information about your life is taking on a life of its own; collected, monitored, and transmitted by interests outside your control—you’re probably not paranoid. A recent story tells of a school in England, that’s experimenting with electronic tracking of its pupils.
On Sports and Women Laura Pappano is a former education columnist for the Boston Globe and co-author of Playing With The Boys: Why Separate is not Equal in Sports. In the op-ed below she brings her love of football to play with her love of competition. If I hadn’t committed to baking a quiche (half ham, half broccoli and […]
An Introduction to Manic-Depressive Illness Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, Second Edition by Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison chronicles the medical treatment of manic and depressive episodes, strategies for preventing future episodes, and psychotherapeutic issues common in this illness. In the excerpt below the authors introduce their second edition.
Friday procrastination: link love – riddles, writing, and mountains What Stephanie and I have been reading this week.
When Spellcheckers Attack: Perils of the Cupertino Effect Ben Zimmer looks at modern spellcheckers.
The Void: Can Nothing Really Exist? By Kirsty Doole Frank Close, author of The Void, talks about nothing.
October 2007 (54))
Monthly Gleanings Anatoly answers this month’s questions and explains the intriguing history of the words element and hocus pocus.
Book thumbnail image Halloween: The Sugar-Coated Holiday Andrew Smith helps us learn about Halloween.
Book thumbnail image Patagonia, Argentina Ben’s Place of the Week is Patagonia, Argentina.
A Few Questions for Laura Pappano Pappano talks about Playing With The Boys.
Lupus: Marriage, Family, and Sexuality An excerpt from The Lupus Book.
An Oxford Centenary – 100 Years of Medical Publishing A celebration of medical publishing.
Sermon on the Page Count Lindsay pays homage to Tanenhaus.
Friday procrastination: link love – Australia, Updike and Schlesinger What Rebecca has been reading.
Extending the History of Words: The Case of “Ms.” Ben Zimmer introduces us to the sport of antedating.
What is your Word of the Century so far? Can any word sum up the 21st century so far? You tell us in our new poll.
Prophecies: Right Here, Right Now John Brehm shares a poem on the blog.
The Oxford Etymologist goes Trick-or-Treating Anatoly prepares for Halloween with the origins of witch.
Inle Lake, Burma Houseboats and floating homes may be relatively familiar concepts to many, but entire floating villages remain unusual—at least unless sea levels rise with global warming. An exception exists however. Not far from the Thai border in Eastern Burma, the Intha people live in the middle of fresh water.
Longtail Wars Evan Schnittman explains how publishing is winning the Longtail War.
The Second Coming of Christ: October 22nd Daniel Walker Howe looks at the day Christ did not come.
When Doctors Become Patients: Researching One’s Own Disease An excerpt from Robert Klitzman’s When Doctors Become Patients.
Friday procrastination: link love – poetry, publishing, and Pumpkin Patch What Rebecca read this week.
Faith In The Halls of Power: How I Got The Interviews A podcast with D. Michael Lindsay.
Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings? Ben Zimmer responds to claims that OUP is allowing “corrupted” spellings into its dictionaries.
Ned Sherrin Remembered By Kirsty OUP-UK All of us here at OUP-UK were saddened to hear of Ned Sherrin’s death on October 1, from throat cancer, at the age of 76. He was familiar to virtually everyone in the country as the presenter of the Radio 4 programme Loose Ends, but during his many years in showbusiness he […]
“From the North So Dear To Southern Climes” Anatoly looks at north and south.
A Curse on Mean-Spirited Intellectuals: And Literary Scholars Above All Philip Davis is fed up with seeing literature treated as fodder for convoluted academic analysis.
National Dictionary Day: Italian Celebrate Dictionary Day with Italian!
Devil’s Island Ben’s Place of the Week is Devil’s Island.
National Dictionary Day: Spanish Celebrate Dictionary Day with Spanish!
National Dictionary Day: German Dictionary Day fun in German!
National Dictionary Day: French Happy Dictionary Day!
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Beowulf Listen! All ye fans of tales of yore. I hereby decree the tale of the daring feats of the Hero of Denmark is the chosen selection for this month. So raise your cups and rejoice, and bring your sword and battle-shield, as we engage in lively discussion. On this date, the twenty-second of November.
Don’t Rock the Boat A second excerpt from The Elephant in the Room
The Elephant in the Room: Fear and Embarrassment An excerpt from The Elephant in the Room.
Friday procrastination: link love – Pulitzers, painting, and prizes Friday link love.
National Coming Out Day Some resources for National Coming Out Day.
Dictionary Day is Coming… We’re just five days away from Dictionary Day, the annual celebration of all things lexicographical held every 16th of October. Commemorating the anniversary of Noah Webster’s birth in 1758, it’s largely an opportunity for US school teachers to organize classroom activities encouraging students to build their dictionary skills and to exult in the joy of […]
Very Short Introductions: Human Rights Andrew Clapham answers questions on Human Rights: A Very Short Introduction
How To Change The World: Social Entrepreneurs Over the past century, researchers have studied business entrepreneurs extensively. They have analyzed their orientation to action, to risk, and to growth; they have explored the entrepreneur’s “personal value orientation” and “internal locus of control” and searched for clues to explain change.
Convening Power D. Michael Lindsay’s second podcast.
The Light From Gig on Quiz Anatoly Liberman looks at the origin of the word “gig.”
Afyon, Turkey Ben’s Place of the Week is Afyon, Turkey.
Double Whammy for British Farmers Dorothy H. Crawford examines the recent outbreaks of disease in UK farm animals
A Blog On You Davis wishes a “blog on you!”
Behavioral Science Grants: Surefire Tips and Pointers Earlier today we introduced you to The Complete Writing Guide to NIH Behavioral Science Grants edited by Lawrence M. Scheier and William L. Dewey. Below are some additional tips from the book that should frame the way you write grants. Good luck! Here are some editorial pointers you may want to implement the next time […]
Grant Writing: Things That You Can Do To Learn Scholarship An excerpt from The Complete Writing Guide to NIH Behavioral Science Grants.
Stoic Warriors: A New Breed of Warrior Athlete An excerpt from Stoic Warriors.
Friday procrastination: link love – Howl, hippos, and the New York Times What Rebecca has been reading.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: On Cityscapes How are cities portrayed in the novel?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Ambassadors Book club discussion of The Ambassadors.
One-Hit Wonders: From Hapax to Googlewhacks Ben Zimmer looks at hapax legomena.
The Personality Survey: Results Daniel Nettle takes a look at the personality survery results.
Michael Lindsay, Bud McFarlane and Richard Nixon The story of what happened after Bud McFarlane woke up from his suicide attempt.
Quizzes and Gigs Anatoly delves into word history for our entertainment.
Northern Territory, Australia Ben’s Place of the Week is Northern Territory, Australia.
‘After a Journey’ Philip Davis blogs for Moreover.
On AIDS Psychiatry An excerpt from Comprehensive Textbook of AIDS Psychiatry by Jimmie Holland, MD.
How To Approach the AIDS Pandemic Mary Ann Cohen helps us understand the AIDS pandemic.
September 2007 (48))
Friday procrastination: link love – YouTube, controversy, and the future of publishing Ahh Friday…how I love your ways. Some fun distraction below. The New Yorker embraces YouTube. Bound to be controversial. Away with words lives! What do publishing industry folks think? “…a pot-smoking West Coast sales rep gets frustrated by the “idiots” he has to deal with at the companies he represents. An Oregonian publisher thinks the […]
Poetry: Now It:s Serious? A poem by King Otho.
Buffalo Readings: Rafael Bueno Live at the Rotisserie Gallery – The Buffalo Poets audio.
The Lowly Hyphen: Reports of Its Death are Greatly Exaggerated When a new edition of a dictionary is published, you never know what people are going to pick up on as noteworthy. Last week, when the sixth edition of the ‘Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’ was officially launched, much of the surrounding publicity had to do with the all the brand-new material.
Life on Air: BBC Radio 4’s Milestones David Hendy talks about five milestone moments in the history of BBC Radio Four
Monthly Gleanings September 2007 Anatoly looks at some questions from the past month.
The New Gay D. Michael Lindsay looks at Evangelical Americans.
Pentecost Island, Vanuatu Ben’s Place of the Week is Pentecost Island, Vanuatu.
A Letter from Liverpool: ‘All You Need Is – What?’ Philip Davis is back!
This Day In History: 50th Anniversary of the Dispatch of Federal Troops to Little Rock Michael J. Klarman reminds us why Little Rock mattered.
Fibromyalgia Questions: Part Two A look at fibromyalgia and depression.
Fibromyalgia Questions: Part One An excerpt from Fibromyalgia: An Essential Guide for Patients and Their Families.
Michael Lindsay at the Carnegie Council Evangelicals in politics get a lot of attention, much of it focusing on issues like abortion. But while everyone’s watching what James Dobson is doing in America, they’re missing what Rick Warren is doing in Africa. Last night, Michael Lindsay spoke about his new book, Faith in the Halls of Power.
Yom Kippur A Yom Kippur round-up.
Friday procrastination: link love – truth, atonement and change Friday link love.
Gun Policy in the Culture Wars: Part Four Mark V. Tushnet concludes his 2nd amendment series.
Puzzle Me This: SOED A crossword puzzle courtesy of Jonesin’.
Oomphy Wordsmithery of the Anglosphere: New Entries in the Shorter OED Welcome to the world, sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary!
Motives, Laughs and Monty Python: Blasphemy in the Christian World David Nash, author of ‘Blasphemy in the Christian World’, takes a look at the outrage surrounding Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’.
What’s Next? The Legal Questions: Part Three Tushnet looks at the 2nd amendment.
East or West… Anatoly looks at the origins of directionals.
On This Day In History: Belva Lockwood Belva Lockwood runs for President.
The Gun-Control Position: Part Two Mark Tushnet looks at gun-control argument.
Bootstrapping Philip Davis’s final post in his five-part series.
The Second Amendment and the Gun-Rights Argument: Part One With Constitution Day today, it seems a good time to talk about a constitutional issue that’s likely to get to the Supreme Court’s attention pretty soon: the Second Amendment. Shortly after it opens its term in October the Supreme Court will decide whether to hear an appeal on handgun possession.
God Goes To Harvard D. Michael Lindsay looks at the changes in faith on campus.
Read Out Loud! Below Philip Davis, author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life, combines science with literature to convince us to read out loud more often.
Friday procrastination: link love – farewells, fun, and festivals Fun links.
I Was Brodsky’s Minder Davis remembers Brodsky.
L’Shana Tova 5768 A Vigil at the Wailing Wall: In those days Rabbi Abraham Berukhim was known for performing the Midnight Vigil. He rose at midnight and walked through the streets of Safed, crying out, “Arise, for the Shekhinah is in exile, and our holy house is devoured by fire, and Israel faces great danger.”
How the OED Got Shorter Ben’s column this week looks at the fascinating history of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. He explains how the OED, quite possibly OUP’s most important book (well, series of books), got trimmed to a manageable two volumes and why this development was important.
God’s Blog Philip Davis’s second blog.
What the Deuce, Or, Etymological Devilry The Devil is in people’s thoughts, and his names are many. One of them is the obscure ‘Old Nick’. The word nicker “water sprite” explained as an old participle “washed one” – is unrelated to it. Then there is ‘nickel’. The term was easy to coin, but copper could not be obtained from the nickel ore.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Ambassadors This month’s book club pick is…
Onward Christian Soldiers D. Michael Lindsay looks at faith in the military.
Otherness Author Philip Davis begins his blog.
Sark, United Kingdom Ben’s Place of the Week is Sark, UK.
Is This It? Evan Schnittman sings the praises of CafeScribe.
Problems Getting Out of Bed Advice to help you get your teenager out of bed.
When to Keep a Child Home From School When should you allow your child to stay home from school?
Friday procrastination: link love – tabs, tango, and typewriters The joy of short weeks, Friday is here before you know it! Here are some links to distract you from your work. Finally, a balanced look at e-books. The joy of tabs. Show Tango some love. MSNBC fumbles. For the love of typewriters.
Introductions: Michael Lindsay, Karen Hughes and America Michael Lindsay shares with us how he secured an interview with Karen Hughes.
The Joy (and Sorrow) of “Schadenfreude” Ben Zimmer looks at why we love the word “schadenfreude.
Very Short Introductions: American Political Parties and Elections L. Sandy Maisel talks to OUP about American Political Parties and Elections.
In Memory: Richard Cook Oxford University Press offers our condolences to Richard Cook’s family and friends.
The Girl Whom You Think Lives Here Has Left Language changes through variation. Some people ‘sneaked’, others ‘snuck’. The two forms may coexist for a long time, or one of them may be considered snobbish. Once the snobs die out, the form will go to rest with them. Or the snobs may feel embarrassed of being in the minority and ‘go popular’.
Gog and Magog Ben’s Place of the week is Gog and Magog.
Missed Connections Or, Bottom Billion Brings Love Bottom Billion love connections.
August 2007 (57))
Why Royalties? Evan Schnittman takes the debate on royalties further by questioning the structure of advances.
Book thumbnail image African American National Biography Podcast A conversation with Dr. Gates
Poetry For The Soul See the Buffalo Poets live!
Turning Stones The Buffalo Poets.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Families in Huckleberry Finn Who is Huck’s family?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Arab Stereotypes in Huck Finn Why did Jim dress up as an Arab?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Quotes in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “Music is a good thing.”
Prepositions: “Dull Little Words” or Unsung Linguistic Heroes? Ben Zimmer takes a close look at prepositions.
Mandela: An Excerpt An excerpt from Tom Lodge’s critical biography ‘Mandela’
Monthly Gleanings (August 2007) Anatoly answers questions gleaned from your comments.
On Lesch-Nyhan Disease A look at free will and rare diseases.
Christianity: An Email Dialogue Part Two Philip Jenkins and Miranda Hassett continue their conversation.
Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn Ben’s Place of the Week is Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.
Christianity: An Email Dialogue Part One An email exchange between Miranda Hassett and Philip Jenkins.
Universal Virtues: Lessons From History An excerpt from Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification.
Is Character Real? Christopher Peterson argues that character is real.
What is a Funion? Idris Goodwin poses an excellent questions, “What is they feeding our kids?”
Friday procrastination: link love – medicine, mindsets, and Arthur Miller What Rebecca has been reading this week.
When Languages Die: Science and Sentiment An excerpt from K. David Harrison’s book.
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism! By Ben Zimmer One question I often field in my capacity as OUP’s editor for American dictionaries is, ‘What’s the longest word in the dictionary?’ I don’t hear it as often as ‘How do I get a new word in the dictionary?’ but it still comes up from time to time. My stock answer isn’t very interesting: ‘It depends…’
Meeting People: The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Quotations dictionary editor Elizabeth Knowles talks about the new edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations.
Confronting the Conflict between Fact-Based Judgments and Moral Values Robert Cherry, author of Welfare Transformed reflects on the show Chasing Amy.
Wilhelm Oehl and the butterfly When I was growing up, I read Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Hunters so many times that I still remember some pages by heart. Two chapters in the book are devoted to Pasteur. The second is called “Pasteur and the Mad Dog.” A book about great word hunters would similarly enthral the young and the old.
Sitou Forest, Taiwan Ben’s Place of the Week is Sitou Forest, Taiwan.
The Perverse Effects of Transparency? Adrian Vermeule looks at the effects of transparency in Congress.
Learning from Willy Loman: The Loss Of Sadness An excerpt from The Loss of Sadness.
A Few Questions For Allan Horwitz Allan Horwitz, co-author of The Loss of Sadness answers some questions for OUP.
On This Day In History: Gail Borden and Condensed Milk On August 19, 1856 Gail Borden patented Condensed Milk.
Friday procrastination: link love – biofuels, bars, and books What Rebecca has been reading.
“Mob” Mentality, from Jonathan Swift to Karl Rove Ben Zimmer looks at the origin of the word “mob.”
Scotland: A Turbulent Century An exceprt from ‘Scotland: A History’, edited by Jenny Wormald
Crime in the City: American Revolution Carp looks at violence in Revolutionary America.
Drinking Up Eisel, Or, the Oddest English Spellings (Part 9) Anatoly looks at weird spellings.
New and Improved OUPblog Check out our new “Feeds by Category” feature by clicking the big RSS icon or the “feeds” tab on the top right. Now you can mix and match your OUPblog content any way you would like.
Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean Ben’s Place of the Week is Lomonosov Ridge.
The Rise and Fall of the First Internet Donald Ritchie looks at the telegraph.
Fever on the Brain A look at fevers with some help from Plum and Posner.
Persistent Drooling Dysmorphology is the study of congenital malformations, in this excerpt we look at drooling.
The Bedside Dysmorphologist William Reardon, author of The Bedside Dysmorphologist: Classic Clinical Signs in Human Malformation Syndromes and their Diagnostic Significance looks at the possible genetic ramifications of deep-set eyes.
Friday procrastination: link love – books, blogs, and billboards Happy Friday to all! It’s a rainy day out there so I suggest curling up with your laptop and exploring the links below. Get clicking! Leonard Cohen on how to “speak” poetry. The most ingenious billboard in the world. Are you a good citizen? On writing too well for the internet. Did the author […]
Park Guell I spent one of the best days of my life in Park Guell in Barcelona. It was the end of a long trip and my companion and I were tired. We came to the park from the back, riding a series of escalators up to the park’s highest point, before wandering slowly towards the largest bench I have ever seen.
Phrasal Patterns 2: Electric Boogaloo By Ben Zimmer Ben Zimmer’s follows up on last week’s post, Pouring New Wine Into Old Phrasal Bottles.
The Inaugural Very Short Introductions Column: Atheism Q&A with Julian Baggini, author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction
PowerPoint for Martians? Stephen Kosslyn provides some PowerPoint tips.
Do it Real Quick, Or The Death of the Adverb Anatoly Liberman looks at the death of the adverb.
Meteor Crater, Arizona Ben’s Place of the Week is Meteor Crater, Arizona.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: On Relaxing With Huck I feel pretty sheepish admitting this but it took me a while this month to open The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I assumed that since I had read it before, the book would not hold the same magic for me. I was wrong. I spent a nice portion of last weekend relaxing in a hammock […]
Consciousness An excerpt from Plum and Posner’s Diagnosis of Stupor and Coma.
Reviving Coma Patients Craig Panner helps us understand Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).
Friday procrastination: link love – Monopoly, Ozomatli, and Poet Laureates The history of Monopoly. Congratulations to Charles Simic, the new Poet Laureate. A great look at The Book Depository. Ozomatli as Cultural Ambassadors? Books, Inq, celebrates the anniversary of Wallace Steven’s death.
Email as literature? Is the Internet good for literature? On first glance, it seems so. Between internet forums, blogs, messages and emails, nearly everyone is writing, and reading, certainly more than we did just a few years ago, when the ubiquity of television and the telephone seemed to be making literacy obsolete.
Book thumbnail image Dumbing down the Declaration of Independence Michael Ravitch looks at The Declaration of Independences.
Pouring New Wine Into Old Phrasal Bottles Ben Zimmer looks at how writers and speakers of English often use an established phrase as a template for creative variations on a theme.
Scouting for Boys: An Excerpt An excerpt from Robet Baden-Powell’s original 1908 ‘Scouting for Boys’
Molière Media A podcast of James Monaco and Laurent Tirard talking about Moliere.
When Relevance Fails Diane Ravitch looks at education.
An Embarrassment of Riches, Or, Eena, Meena, Mina, Mo Anatoly looks at the origins of words we use today.
July 2007 (49))
Banda Islands, Indonesia Ben’s Place of the Week is Banda Islands, Indonesia.
The English Reader: The Paucity of Allusion The second post in a series by Diane and Michael Ravitch.
Introducing “Moreover” and the Ravitch Guest Blog It’s a rare opportunity when I get to both introduce a wonderful new blog and announce that OUP authors will be guest blogging there all week. Moreover: Life and Art is The Economist’s new culture blog headed up by Emily Bobrow. Everyday this week Michael and Diane Ravitch, authors of The English Reader: What Every […]
Therapist Guide: Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic A look at a therapist’s point of view.
Treatments That Work: Mastery of Your Anxiety and Panic A breathing exercise to help you with your anxiety.
Friday procrastination: link love – Harry Potter, Hogwarts, and Harper’s Magazine What Rebecca has been reading this week.
Hooting Mind A poem by King Otho.
The Time Factory A video by James Honzik.
Untitled Poem A poem by David Acevedo.
On This Day In History: The FBI Turns 99 Happy 99th Birthday to the FBI.
Compounding Carbon Confusion Ben Zimmer examines carbon compounds.
Margaret Fuller: Virgin Lands (1843-1844) An excerpt from Margaret Fuller An American Romantic Life: The Public Years, by Charles Capper.
Monthly Gleanings: (July 2007) Anatoly answers this month’s questions.
Lake Baikal, Russia Ben’s Place of the Week is Lake Baikal, Russia.
Brown v. Board of Education Klarman looks at the backlash created by Brown v. Board of Education.
Guidance For People Facing Serious Illness: When Death Is Close A guide that explains what to expect When Death Is Close.
Guidance For People Facing Serious Illness: When Food Feels Like Love An excerpt from Handbook For Mortals.
A Tribute To Vera A toast to Vera!
Friday procrastination: link love – news, nature, and NYC Some fun links for a lazy Friday.
A Poptastic Geekfest for Infoholics Ben Zimmer looks at how we combine words to make new words.
What Makes Us Who We Are: The Personality Survey Take our personality survey, and find out what kind of person you are.
Looking For a Few Good Muslims Jenkins reflects on the Lancaster House conference on “Islam and Muslims in the World Today.”
Break – Broke – Broken Even a quick look at the history of words meaning “break” shows how often they begin with the sound group br-. Break has cognates in several Germanic languages. The main Old Scandinavian verb was different (compare Modern Swedish bryta, Norwegian bryte, and so forth), but it, too, began with br-.
Congrats To James McPherson! Exciting news at OUP! Jim McPherson has won the The Pritzker Military Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.
Huiricuta Ecological and Cultural Protected Area, Mexico Ben’s Place of the Week is Huiricuta Ecological and Cultural Protected Area, Mexico.
Dan Ozzi, Chuck Close and The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists Dan Ozzi looks at Chuck Close.
A Few Questions For Elizabeth Beck Elizabeth Beck has been kind enough to answer a few questions for OUP about her experiences with death row inmates and their families.
In The Shadow Of Death In the article below Beck explores the tales of two men, one who is facing imminent execution.
Literariness: How Novels Work An excerpt from John Mullan’s ‘How Novels Work’ to get you in the mood for summer reading.
A Few Questions for Peter Heather Peter Heather tells OUP that he is a sucker for Sherlock Holmes.
Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia In our last instalment, I noted that the increasingly common spelling of minuscule as miniscule is not just your average typographical error; it makes sense in a new way, since the respelling brings the word into line with ‘miniature’, ‘minimum’, and a whole host of tiny terms using the mini prefix.
Guilt-edged Insecurity Paul Collier looks at our guilty decisions.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn The summer book is Huckleberry Finn.
The Battle of Hadrianople Peter Heather, a leading authority on the late Roman Empire and on the barbarians, looks at the Battle of Hadrianople.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Guess the Summer Pick What will the summer book club pick be? Can you guess?
Does the Cock Neigh? Anatoly looks at the origin of the word cockney.
Oxford, England Ben’s Place of the Week is Oxford, England.
The Moral Force of Majority Rule Adrian Vermeule, author of Mechanisms of Democracy and co-author with Eric Posner of Terror in the Balance: Security, Liberty, and the Courts, is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
Talking Tuberculosis Some thoughts about Andrew Speaker, who traveled to Europe after being diagnosed with a drug resistant form of tuberculosis.
Friday procrastination: link love – literature, lists, and ladies Happy Friday all. For the few of you who are actually in the office here is some Friday procrastination! This link recommended by Mr. Atlas himself, Ben Keene. Do women talk too much? I want to bang on the drums all day. What is the greatest American book of all time? Great lit lists.
Sharm e- Shekh, Again… Shlomo Ben-Ami looks forward and backwards at the peace process.
Tracking the Most Miniscule, Uh, Minuscule of Errors Ben Zimmer looks at how non-standard spellings become accepted.
Fleeing Hitler: Searching For Memories Hanna Diamond talks about research for her book.
There Are More Ways Than One To Be Mad Anatoly is feeling a bit “mad” this week.
A 4th of July Barbeque Quiz Andrew Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, is here to test your knowledge of barbecuing in America.
Andorra Ben’s Place of the Week is Andorra.
The Constitution and the 4th of July Donald Ritchie helps us celebrate 4th of July.
Pot Politics: On Vaporizing Mitch Earleywine looks at vaporizers.
Marketing Health: Doctors, Public Health, and the Smoking Ban Virginia Berridge talks about public health warnings in light of the recent smoking ban in England.
June 2007 (50))
Fresh Gardens David Acevedo writes for the Buffalo Poets.
The Buffalo Return I am excited welcome back the Buffalo Poets. We had so much fun with them during Poetry Month we invited them back to share their art once a month. Enjoy!
Book thumbnail image Not a Time for Soundbites: Tony Blair in Quotations Tony Blair in quotations.
Book thumbnail image Tess of The D’Urbervilles: Nature Reflected Can you think of other places in “Tess” where descriptions of nature accurately depict the mood of the characters?
Tess of The D’Urbervilles: Purity or Freedom? Is Tess a pure woman? Why? Or does she, in losing purity, at least gain responsibility for her life?
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Tess of The D’Urbervilles Is Tess a tragic character? What did you think?
On the Front Lines of English, from “Thirdhand Smoke” to “Newsrotica” Ben Zimmer starts off his new column by looking at words like “Thirdhand Smoke” and “Newsrotica.”
Etymological Embarrassables Anatoly looks at confusables.
It’s Coming… An A To Zimmer Introduction Casper Grathwohl, Reference Publisher for OUP-USA and the Academic Division in Oxford, introduces our newest blog column.
Book thumbnail image Da Lat, Vietnam Da Lat, Vietnam Coordinates: 11 56 N 108 25 E Population: 122,400 (2000 est.)
Summer Reading Some summer reading suggestions from top authors Lesley Glaister Jan Dalley
Scleroderma: Test after Test, Doctor after Doctor Some helpful tips for dealing with a plethora of doctors.
The Weeping Willow The Weeping Willow: Encounters With Grief collects real-life stories which teach lessons about coping with grief, we have excerpted one of the stories below.
Barstow: A Poem A poem by Buffalo Poet King Otho.
Thoughts on Juneteenth A closer look at Juneteenth.
Tudor Roses, Or Happy Birthday King Henry VIII Today’s celeb gossip has nothing on Henry the VII and his six wives…
Oxford Blues The Oxford Blues introduce themselves.
This Day in History: The LP is Unvieled On this day in 1948 Dr. Peter Goldmark of CBS unvelied the LP, and by doing so, revolutionized the music industry.
How The G8 Got It Wrong: Or Why Aid Isn’t The Answer Collier, a Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, argues that the G8 did not go far enough in its efforts to assist Africa.
Lost in Music: The OUP Ball 2007 Some photos from the OUP Ball 2007.
OUPBlog’s First Podcast: Gene Autry Holly George-Warren interviews Jacqueline Autry.
The Curmudgeon and the Catawampus Anatoly weighs in on curmudgeon and catawampus.
Merowe Dam, Sudan Ben’s Place of the Week is Merowe Dam, Sudan.
The ABC’s of GBS: Part 3 Google Library, The Lawsuits, and Is Charkin Barking Up the Right Tree? Google and libraries are doing something they need a license to do – and rather than ask for one, they are asking the copyright holders to provide a list of properties they wish to protect or not include in this program.
Coercive Control: A Follow-Up A look back at the response to last week’s post about Coercive Control.
Blogging At The Press Rebecca OUP-US Happy Friday to you all! I am in Minneapolis this weekend for the American Association of University Presses Annual Meeting. If you are around you should come hear the panel I am speaking on at 3:30pm. We will be talking about my favorite topic, blogs.
Good Author Blogs What makes a good author blog?
Lives Across The Pond: Sam Wanamaker This month we feature the actor and director Sam Wanamaker, born in Chicago on 14 June 1919 and best known in Britain as the inspiration behind London’s Globe Theatre.
Clean: Part 2 – A Few Questions for Virginia Smith Virginia Smith, author of Clean, answers a few questions for the OUP blog.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Tess of The D’Urbervilles An excerpt from Tess of The D’Urbervilles.
On Faggots & Pimps Anatoly weighs in on pimps and faggots.
Clean: Part I – An Extract An excerpt from Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity, by Virginia Smith
Taku River, Alaska Ben’s Place of The Week is Taku, River.
Museum Mile: Metropolitian Museum of Art One more reason why we love NYC.
The Entrapment Enigma An excerpt from Coercive Control by Evan Stark.
Feast on Food and Sex Feast on the connection between food and sex.
Walden Pond: personal refuge Few things make me happier than spending a spring day climbing a mountain, or exploring with a kayak, or walking the shoreline at the ocean. So when summer comes, I yearn to be away from my computer and outside. I love the internet, but amidst all the voices online you can sometimes lose your own.
Friday procrastination: link love – OED, BEA and NPR! Lots of Friday link love!
Almost a Miracle: An Excerpt An excerpt from the beginning of John Ferling’s new book on the American victory in the War of Independence.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Tess of the D’Urbervilles This month’s book club pick is Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
Celebrating the completion of The New History of Western Philosophy From the party celebrtaing the completion of Anthony Kenny’s New History of Western Philosophy series.
On Pimps and Faggots Anatoly looks at where pimps and faggots come together.
In the Case of John Tierney “Fateful Voice of a Generation Still Drowns Our Science” Mark Lytle takes a closer look at the New York Times article.
A Few Questions For John Ferling John Ferling answers some questions for OUP.
BEA Roundup A look at the bloggers who are talking about BEA.
The Turning of the Tide in the Revolutionary War John Ferling looks at the Revolutionary War.
Making BEA Beautiful An Origami lesson.
On BEA Whoa, what a weekend. My first BEA has come and gone, I’ve met some amazing people, tracked down some of my favorite bloggers and gotten zero sleep. The fatigue combined with the rain makes getting out of bed this Monday particuarly difficult. Be sure to check the blog later today for my impressions of BEA […]
On Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band Play with The Beatles.
Live From BEA Party at BEA!
May 2007 (53))
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Foreshadowing Spoiler Alert!
Book thumbnail image Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Secret Agent John Lyon reflects on what it was like to introduce The Secret Agent.
Conrad and Government What do you think Conrad was saying about the interaction between government and terrorists?
Monthly Gleanings: May 2007 Anatoly reflects on his work in the past month.
Oxford World’s Classics: Book Club Reminder Tomorrow is the discussion of The Secret Agent.
Creating Black Americans Nell Painter, author of Creating Black Americans: African-American History & Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present was a winner of the 22nd annual Myers Outstanding Book Awards.
Castrillo de Murcia, Spain Ben’s Place of the Week is Castrillo de Murcia, Spain.
On My UK Adventure Rebecca’s trip to the UK.
Form an orderly queue, chaps: A quick guide to British English The UK Early Bird gives a lighthearted guide to British English.
The Unknown Gulag Part V: Another Source: The Survivors’ Testimony Lynne Viola’s final post about her research for her book.
Friday procrastination: link love – Medieval Times, Tudors, and the Twentieth Century Friday link love.
Cheeseburger in Paradise: A Quiz A Hamburger quiz for you meat-lovers.
The Unknown Gulag Part IV: Why did the Soviets Document their Crimes? Everyday this week we are posting part of a series from author Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. Check out part one and part two and part three. Luck and serendipity combined to provide unique and rich sources for the book. I was continually amazed at the degree of […]
Holy Hangover, Batman! Someone pass me four advils and a bucket of your finest coffee. If life appears sluggish around here, it’s because last night Oxford threw a launch party to celebrate the publication of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Even our ironic trucker hats can’t hide these hangovers. Contrary to popular belief, we publishing […]
The Unknown Gulag Part III: The Provincial Archives I read of the Regional Party Committee’s plans to feed the exiles’ families (including some 88,000 children) according to “starvation norms.”
If You Eat A Cake, You Are Sure To Have It Later By Anatoly Liberman What a blow to national pride: cake is a loanword from Scandinavian, and cookie has been taken over from Dutch! The story of cake is full of dangerous corners, as will become immediately obvious. Anyone who begins to learn Swedish soon discovers that the Swedish for cake is kaka.
The Unknown Gulag Part II: The Central Archives Yesterday we presented part 1 in a 5 part series about The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements by Lynn Viola. Today Viola takes us inside the archives in Moscow.
Tsukiji, Japan Ben’s Place of The Week is Tsukiji, Japan.
The Unknown Gulag Part I: Looking for the Kulaks Stalin’s reign over the Soviet Union has left many unanswered questions but in The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements Lynne Viola answers one: what happened to millions of peasants in the 1930’s.
Fat Politics: Biological Responses to the American Way of Life What are the real reasons that Americans are getting fatter?
Friday procrastination: link love – Vonnegut, Collins, and mixed metaphors Happy Friday everyone!
The Martians of Science: An Excerpt Hargittai’s book tells the story of five brilliant men born at the turn of the twentieth century in Budapest: Theodore von Kármán, Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann, and Edward Teller.
This Day in History: The New York Stock Exchange is Formed. On this day in history the NYSE was formed, we take a closer look.
Sex, Lies, and Petroleum: Lord John Browne Stuart P. Green looks at the case of Lord John Browne, once hailed as the “Sun King of the oil industry.”
Food Trends: From Fast to Slow Food, Factory to Organic Farms Andrew Smith, our go-to American Food guru is back again this week with a look at American food trends. What trend do you think has been, and will be, the most influential: Fast Food, Slow Food, Factory Farms or Organic Farms?
Make Music and Carpe Diem, Or, Etymological Fiddle-Faddle By Anatoly Liberman The names of musical instruments are often loanwords, in English they are usually from Greek (via French intermediaries) or Italian. Sometimes their original forms are transparent. Thus the medieval wind instrument shawm goes back to Greek kalamos “reed”; nothing could be simpler.
God’s Continent: An Excerpt An excerpt from the first chapter of Philip Jenkins’s God’s Continent.
Pottsville, Pennsylvania Ben’s Place of the Week shares it love of a good beer.
A Few Questions For Philip Jenkins Philip Jenkins author of God’s Continent answers some questions for OUP.
The Long Stretch Gene An excerpt from When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish… about Marfan syndrome.
When a gene makes you smell like a fish I’ve been waiting for ‘When A Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish’ to come out in paperback for a long time! It’s one of those books where you’re so immersed in the stories you only realize later, after you put it down, how much you’ve learned. Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Two; ‘Just One Bad Apple’.
Birds and Bees and Babies Eve Mason Ekman comments on the problem of balancing careers with children.
Book thumbnail image The Mother’s Day Gift I Want: Author Joyce Antler Helps Us Celebrate Joyce Antler helps us celebrate Mother’s Day.
Lives Across the Pond: Nancy Astor Nancy Astor became the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Secret Agent An excerpt from The Secret Agent to get you excited about our upcoming Book Club discussion.
American Food Personalities Andrew Smith helps us weigh in on American food personalities.
A Special Ben’s Place of The Week Can Barbara Hillary teach us about life?
“Your Sarvant, Sir,” Or The Oddest English Spellings (Part 8) Anatoly looks at some of the oddest English spellings.
Half Moon Caye, Belize Ben makes us want to travel to Belize.
A Few Questions For Geoffrey E. Hill Geoffrey Hill talks to OUP about an elusive bird.
Why Spock could never have evolved If you ever watched Star Trek, you’ll remember Spock, the pointy-eared alien. Spock was half human, half Vulcan; a species that, by some quirk of fate, happened to look remarkably human in all respects other than those tell-tale ears. The visual similarity, however, concealed a deeper difference.
The Future of the Brain: An Excerpt An excerpt from the book, The Future of the Brain.
Friday procrastination: link love – Alice in Wonderland, Niebuhr, and Igoggles Some things we have been reading.
American Slang Word of the Day The editor has a “jelly-belly.”
The Pursuit of Happiness ‘Philosophers have an infuriating habit of analysing questions rather than answering them’, writes Terry Eagleton, who, in “The Meaning of Life”, asks the most important question any of us ever ask, and attempts to answer it.
Rock The Vote: Favorite Fake Culinary Icons Who is your favorite culinary icon who never lived?
Well Regulated: The Lost Meaning of the Second Amendment By Saul Cornell Political reactions to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech have been predictable. Leading Republicans invoke the 2nd amendment, or suggest arming students, while the Democratic leadership scrambles for cover seeking to avoid the wrath of NRA. If we are to make any progress in formulating effective gun policies that will reduce America’s […]
Editor’s Note: The Power of Words A personal note from the editor.
Monthly Gleanings: April 2007 Anatoly’s April gleanings.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: The Secret Agent May’s book is The Secret Agent!
A Very Autry Christmas Okay, I know Christmas is quite far away but I couldn’t resist sharing this great video of Gene Autry on the The Statler Brothers show in 1985. To learn more about Gene Autry check out yesterday‘s post with Holly George-Warren author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry.
Glenrothes, United Kingdom Ben’s Place of the week is Glenrothes!
A Few Questions For Holly George-Warren A few questions with Holly George- Warren author of Public Cowboy No. 1: The Life and Times of Gene Autry.
April 2007 (66))
Opinion: Banning “Gruesome and Inhumane” Abortions Laurie Shrage, the author of Abortion and Social Responsibility: Depolarizing the Debate, is a Professor of Philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Below she looks at the Partial Birth Abortion Act.
Book thumbnail image National Alcohol Awareness Month: On Abstinence G. Alan Marlatt, Ph.D., is the director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center and Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington. He has written numerous books, including Overcoming Your Alcohol or Drug Problem, and holds a Senior Research Scientist Award from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Below Marlatt outlines a controversy […]
National Alcohol Awareness Month: Treatments That Work Today, with the help of Dennis C. Daley and G. Alan Marlatt, we will provide some resources for those suffering from alcohol abuse.t
Book Expo America: Party With OUP Party with OUP at BEA!
National Poetry Month: [Untitled Untangled] Farewell poetry month! Till we meet again next year here is a poem to ponder by David Acevedo.
National Poetry Month: Needed Someone A poem by King Otho.
National Poetry Month: Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut Live at Vox Pop 4.13.07 A Buffalo farewell to Vonnegut.
Alice in Wonderland: Mass Culture What do you think of mass culture reinterpretations of Alice? What is your favorite?
Alice in Wonderland: Rule 42 42 questions.
Alice in Wonderland: Talking Animals Why wasn’t Alice more startled at seeing a talking animal? Furthermore, why are all the important characters in Wonderland talking animals?
Alice in Wonderland: The Discussion Begins How many puns can you find in Alice in Wonderland?
My Repository is Bigger Than Yours: A Response to Book Widgets and Book Selling 2.0 Corey Podolsky has written an excellent essay, Book Widgets and Book Selling 2.0 that clearly explains the thinking behind the large scale repository efforts underway at a few publishing giants. But…
Accolades I am blushing again! David Rothman over at TeleRead blog wrote a very nice review of our efforts on the OUPblog. Check it out here.
The Hopeless Word Loo A stream of questions about the origin of loo never dries up…
Inside Oxford: Book Widgets and Book Selling 2.0 Cory Podolsky looks at book widgets.
Ilakaka, Madagascar Ben’s place of the week is Ilakaka, Madagascar.
A Very Merry Unblogday to You Get ready for book club discussion day!
National Autism Awareness Month: Stress and Coping Autism confounds researchers but one way of understanding it is to look through the lense of stress and coping.
National Autism Awareness Month: Helping Children With Autism Learn Helping Children With Autism Learn: Treatment Approaches for Parents and Professionals, by Bryna Siegel, is a practical guide to treating the learning differences associated with Autism. Siegel, the Director of the Autism Clinic at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute, gives practical guidance for fashioning a unique program for each child’s problem, effectively empowering families. In the excerpt below Siegel explains how to help verbal children use their words.
National Poetry Month: Fashioning Keys For Freedom An essay for National Poetry Month.
National Poetry Month: An Untitled Poem We are pleased to bring you another poem by Noah Levin (an OUP employee also!) Feast your eyes below. by Noah Levin
National Poetry Month: A Video A video for Poetry Month.
National Poetry Month: POEM FOR THE OUP A poem for Poetry Month by King Otho.
Happy Birthday to The Simpsons! I’ve been a vegetarian for over a decade and inevitably, when I meet someone new, they end up asking me questions. How and why did I stop eating meat? Do I miss it? Do I cheat? Long ago I stopped telling them the real story (which is dreadfully boring) and started recounting the scene below […]
Books and Buddies It was a typical law school classroom, long desks, stadium style seating, a whiteboard and a podium in the front, but this was far from a typical class. In fact, it was not a class at all. It was Books and Buddies, a program at the University of Miami School of Law that pairs law […]
The ABC’s of GBS: Part 2 Got Discoverability? Now what? Consumer choice and publisher dilemma in the era of Google Book Search.
Friday procrastination: link love – guns, gambling and gaffs There are so many great posts showing up in my bloglines today I had to share some of them! Check these tidbits out.
Hamlet and Other Lads and Lasses: Or, From Rags to Riches Anatoly’s weekly column.
James McCune Smith John Stauffer, the editor of The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist, has organized McCune Smith’s writings around genre and chronology. Stauffer, along with three other distinguished historians will discuss Smith’s life, work, and legacy at The New York Historical Society.
Brave New Words: Expletives & Profanity Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction is edited by Jeff Prucher. Prucher’s entertaining entries are a window to the entire science fiction genre, through the words invented and passed along throughout the years.
Memory and Birds Earlier today we mentioned that last week, Nobel-prize winning scientist Eric Kandel wrote about the five most unforgettable books on memory for The Wall Street Journal. One of the titles in the article was Memory From A to Z by Yadin Dudai. Below is an entry excerpt from the book.
Facing The Digital Reality Evan Schnittman wrote an article for Publishing News last week entitled “Facing The Digital Reality.”
An Honor For Memory Today we will look more closely at two of these titles, Memory and Brain by Larry R. Squire and Memory From A to Z by Yadin Dudai. Below is an excerpt from the beginnin of Memory and Brain. Check back later today to learn more about Memory From A to Z.
OUPblog in Publishers Weekly Some exciting news to report.
National Poetry Month: Technology and new poetic forms. The revolution will undoubtedly be televised. This blog is a piece of it.
National Poetry Month: Reflection David Acevedo, one of the Buffalo poets, presents another one of his poems for National Poetry Month. By David Acevedo
National Poetry Month: Pirates of the Avant Garde Now, with the web, and the growing number of online archives devoted to (for lack of better words) avant garde and experimental writing movements we are in a new age of access. Some of this work is up through the benevolence of the writer and creator, some of it, must belong to the true heirs of Mayakovsky. Three great resources here…
National poetry month: fairytale of reality Hailing originally from New York City, the Buffalo Poets are composed of four core members: Roger Kenny, Aaron Arnout, Noah Levin and David Acevedo. The Buffalo have many artists throughout America including, James Honzik, Michael Franklin, Kevin Callahan and the infamous activist Rafael Bueno.
Lives Across The Pond: John Muir A biographical look at John Muir.
You Never Call! You Never Write!: A Video A video interview with Joyce Antler.
Monthly Gleanings: March 2007 Anatoly’s monthly gleanings.
Mother’s Marathon Joyce Antler, author of You Never Call! You Never Write: A History of the Jewish Mother, is the Samuel Lane Professor of American Jewish History and Culture at Brandeis University. Yesterday we posted a Q and A with her daughter, comedian, Lauren Antler. Last week Joyce wrote about Passover. Today she weighs in on the […]
A Few Questions For Susan Shirk Susan Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for U.S. relations with China, is the author of China: Fragile Superpower. In her book Shirk opens up the black box of Chinese politics and finds that the real danger lies in the deep insecurity of its leaders. Below Shirk graciously answers some questions for OUP.
Linxia, China If asked to describe the architectural landscape of Chinese religion, few people would forget to include the ornate temples, sprawling monasteries, and historic shrines scattered across this Communist state’s large territory. But how many would remember to add mosques to the list?
A Few Questions For Joyce Antler Instead of asking Joyce questions ourselves, we asked her daughter, Lauren Antler to quiz her mom. Below is what Lauren found out.
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club Reminder: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Don’t forget, we are talking about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the last week in April!
Forbidden Fruit: An Excerpt The plasticity of sexuality quickly becomes evident when one moves from talking about historical doctrine to speaking with real people. Indeed, understanding biblical texts and moderns’ interpretations of them is only so helpful. It provides a clear sense of what the religious resources about sex are, but conveys nothing of how regular people draw upon them, if at all. Even survey data—of which I will make extensive use—are limited in their ability to convey just how adolescents really think about sex, how they desire its pleasure or fear its pain, how they actually go about making sexual decisions, and how they reconcile their religious faiths with the choices they make.
Forbidden Fruit: An Author Reflects Mark Regnerus is Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Faculty Research Associate in the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His new book, Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers tells the definitive story of the sexual values and practices of American teenagers.
Medical Mondays The doctor will be late today. Don’t worry though….posts are coming.
National Poetry Month: Come See the Buffalo Read Come see The Buffalo read on April 13th.
National Poetry Month: Poetical Understanding of Reality To provide some poetical meditation into the nature of reality. Buddhist philosophy is inwardly directed scientific method. Experimentation of the spirit, and as a result there are parallels between long held Buddhist descriptions of reality and some currently accepted physical ones. Metaphor as the essential tool of learning. All knowledge reflecting and scattering off the surface of reality and received and interpreted by the curled consciousness factory of the mind.
An Easter Journey Into The Silent Land In anticipation of Easter, today we are excerpting from Into The Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation by Martin Laird. Laird’s truly beautiful book shows that the Christian tradition of contemplation has its own refined meditation teachings similar to the Hindus and Buddhists. He brings together the ancient wisdom of the […]
National Poetry Month: “Epistemic Purchase” and “The Being” Earlier today we introduced The Buffalo Poets who will be helping us celebrate National Poetry Month. Below are poems by two of the groups authors, James Honzik and David Acevedo.
National Poetry Month: Fevers of Artistic Dreams Welcome to National Poetry Month! This month we have invited the Buffalo Poets (bio at bottom) to help us celebrate. Every Friday for the rest of the month they will share their essays, poetry and whatever else strikes them. This is their space for a month and we hope that they can infuse all of us with some of their enthusiasm. Without further ado…
The Media and Congressional Investigations Tune in tomorrow morning from 8 to 9 a.m. to see Donald Ritchie on C-Span’s Washington Journal. In the post below Ritchie puts the current Congressional committee investigations into the Bush administration in historical perspective.
Allen Ginsberg: A Decade Gone Today A link on the anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s death.
I Have Free Rein! Everyday I receive an email from Oxford containing a grammar tip. The last one I shared was about flaunt v. flout. Today’s tip is about having free rein, (not reign) a mistake I make all the time.
Dancing the Tarantella Sadly the movers are coming for my computer soon, but before they do, here is one last post for today. I was playing around on the electronic version of The International Encyclopedia of Dance and found this entry about the Tarantella dance. Keep reading to find out how dance and spiders are connected. Tarantella. Although […]
Moving Day “Ain’t no stopping us now, we on the move!” Yes folks, that’s right, we are moving to the 8th floor, and nothing says fun like lots of moving boxes. In the pictures below Dan Ozzi shows us the joys of moving. When we get to the new digs we will update you again.
One, Two, Three, Alairy… Girls, in some parts of England and the United States, say, or rather chant, while bouncing a ball: “One, two, three, alairy, four five, six, alairy,” and so on. According to an “eyewitness report,” they say so, while bouncing a ball on the ground, catching it with one hand, keeping the score, and accompanying each alairy with a circular swing of the leg, so as to describe a loop around but not obstruct the rising ball.
Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina Ben’s Place of the Week Visoko, Bosnia and Herzegovina Coordinates: 43 59 N 18 10 E Population: 15,310 (1991 census) There are plenty of cases where tourists have been lured to destinations to see replicas of ancient architecture, or commercial complexes masquerading as cultural monuments, but how about sites that are arguably hoaxes? Residents of Visoko, a short distance northwest […]
Oxford World’s Classics Book Club: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland “Begin at the beginning,”, the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop” Today we are launching the Oxford World’s Classics Book Club. The first week of every month we will pick a book and give you a month to read it.
Coping With Depression at School Earlier today we posted an article by Cait Irwin about art and expression. In Irwin’s book, (co-written by Dwight Evans, M.D. and Linda Wasmer Andrews), Monochrome Days, she shares her experiences as a young women suffering from depression and her road to recovery. The book also explains what is currently known about depression in adolescents, […]
Passover and Mom Joyce Antler teaches American Studies at Brandeis University and is the author of You Never Call! You Never Write!: A History of the Jewish Mother. Below Antler imparts some Passover wisdom in an article made for sharing with your mother. For those of you celebrating, “L’shana ha’ba-ah b’Yerushalayim.” While Jews everywhere in the world sit […]
Capturing the Beholder with Honest Art It is no secret that art moves us in mysterious ways. Below Cait Irwin, author of Monochrome Days: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager’s Experience With Depression, describes how art helped her cope with depression.
Rock The Vote Vote for us for “Best Literary Blog!”
March 2007 (49))
Book thumbnail image The ABC’s of GBS: Part 1 This week we present the first installment of Evan’s series on “The ABC’s of Google Book Search.” With his help, we hope to untangle the intricacies, and express our excitement, about the future of publishing.
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You Today I am proud to present the new and improved OUPBlog! This redesign project has become my obsession and I am thrilled that launch day has finally arrived. (Yes, I was up at 9 a.m. GMT, which is 4 a.m. in NYC. No, I am not insane.) Many people helped this site become a reality […]
Thank You, Thank You, Thank You Today I am proud to present the new and improved OUPBlog! This redesign project has become my obsession and I am thrilled that launch day has finally arrived.
Dreams of Africa in Alabama: an excerpt By Sylviane A. Diouf On a January night in 2002, a truck backed up to a statue in front of Union Missionary Baptist Church, north of Mobile, Alabama. One or two people got out, cut through parts of the heavy bronze bust, ripped it from its brick base, and disappeared with their loot. The theft shocked and angered the congregation of pastor A. J. Crawford, Sr.
Rachel Carson: Saint or Sinner Former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson wondered publicly why a “childless spinster” should be worried about how pesticides might affect future generations. He concluded that she was “probably a Communist.”
Tomorrow Be sure to read the blog tomorrow!
Etymological Cocktail Anatoly looks at the origin of the word “cocktail.”
Happy Birthday Raphael! A look at the architecture of Raphael.
Get Excited It’s Coming…
Murgab River, Turkmenistan Ben’s Place of The Week Ben’s Place of the Week is Murgab River, Turkmenistan.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr: William W. Freehling Remembers For me, Arthur will always stand for a finer way to be a scholarly citizen.
A Secret shh…it’s a secret!
If Your Adolescent Has an Anxiety Disorder: Some Tips An excerpt to help parents whose children suffer from anxiety disorders.
The NYTIMES and PTSD A look at PTSD in the news.
Friday procrastination: link love – Pakistan, water, and Shakespeare Friday’s links.
How to Write Arguments How to write arguments.
Women’s History Month: An Interpretation of Feminism in Africa For Women’s History Month we turn to the AASC to englighten us about Women in Africa.
Surveillance and Spying in Film: II–The Good Shepherd A closer look at The Departed.
Playing Nice With Google The opening line of William MacNamara’s story “Publishers seek to play Google at its own game” ominously portends “Publishers are racing to digitize their books as they seek to counter the threat posed by the internet giant Google.”
Raining cats and dogs By Anatoly Liberman This is an old chestnut. How did ‘Raining Cats and Dogs’ come into being, and stay, in the language? The possibilities are few. A foreign phrase is occasionally repeated verbatim or nearly so, and turns into gibberish. It is possible that the first ‘cats and dogs’ were not even animal names.
On McDonald’s Last year, as part of its employer-branding strategy to woo the best staff, it displayed posters with the slogan “McProspects — over half of our executive team started in our restaurants. Not bad for a McJob.”
Mombassa, Kenya: Ben’s Place Of The Week Ben’s Place of the Week is Mombassa, Kenya.
Lone Star Lawmen: One Texas Ranger Remembers “You know, what I remember most about that shootout was that after it was over the FBI agents backed their car out and smashed into mine.”
Why One Percent Matters Patrick E. Jamieson, author of Mind Race, argues for better health insurance.
Mind race: an excerpt This Monday I’m introducing a series of books we will revisit often on the OUPblog. The first, ‘Mind Race: A Firsthand Account of One Teenager’s Experience with Bipolar Disorder’, was written by Patrick E. Jamieson and Moira A. Rynn. It’s an indispensable book for young people with bipolar disorder.
Some Glorious Recollections Robert Middlekauff reflects…
Friday procrastination: link love – fun facts and fake news Links we like.
Women’s History Month: Feminism and Art There is no perfect marriage between feminism (as a political ideology) and art (as a cultural activity). Feminism promises at the same time to enrich the products of art, to expose the pretensions and vested interests in art and to break open the category of art altogether.
The Ides of March A celebration of the Ides of March.
A Few Questions For James T. Patterson A few questions for James T. Patterson author of Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore.
On Fourth and So Forth, Or The Oddest English Spellings (Part 7) Anatoly looks at the oddest English spellings.
Loch Morar, Scotland Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week is Loch Morar, Scotland. Book thumbnail image Out Of the Labyrinth: An Excerpt An excerpt from Out of The Labyrinth: Setting Mathematics Free.
Managing Your Mind: Relationships Part Two Managing Your Relationships.
Managing Your Mind: Relationships Relationship advice.
Friday procrastination: link love – books, bios, and blogs Friday links.
Women’s History Month: On Female Body Experience An excerpt in honor of Women’s History Month.
Lives Across The Pond: Flora MacDonald Lives across the pong from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
Web 2.0 and Text A film about web 2.0.
On A Self-Congratulatory Note It is Anatoly’s Anniversary!!!!
Scooter Libby: A Guilty Verdict in Perspective A historical look at Scooter Libby’s conviction.
On the fight for English and John Humphrys In David Crystal’s book ‘The Fight for English’, he assesses the debate over rights and wrongs in English usage. For example, which spelling is correct, ‘anemic’ or ‘anaemic’? Read on to find out! Here, Crystal weighs in on the debate between him and his contemporaries John Humphrys and Lynne Truss.
Eel River, California Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the week is Eel River, California.
Emerging Adulthood: An Excerpt An excerpt from Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s book, Emerging Adulthood.
Managing Your Mind: Two Principles Underlying Mental Fitness Valuing yourself and three conditions for fruitful change.
Friday procrastination: link love – books, babies, and ABCs Friday Link Love.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr: In Memory A memory of Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
Women’s History Month: Feminism A Women’s History Month salute!
Beyond War: A Proposal Douglad P. Fry, author of Beyond War, writes an original piece for the OUPblog.
February 2007 (40))
Monthly Gleanings: February 2007 Anatoly Liberman’s monthly gleaings.
A Few Questions For Douglas P. Fry Douglas P. Fry, author of Beyond War answers a few questions for OUP.
Prince of Wales Island, Alaska Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week is Prince of Wales Island, Alaska.
Black History Month Garrisonian Abolitionists An excerpt from the AASC for black history month.
Psychology of Terrorism: An Excerpt An excerpt from the book, Psychology of Terrorism.
Managing Your Mind: Work Tips Four ways of helping yourself get down to work.
The Academy Awards: A Look At Jessica Tandy A tribute to the Academy Awards and Jessica Tandy.
Friday procrastination: link love – Anna Karenina and the O.C.? Friday Link Love.
God At Work: An Excerpt An excerpt from David Miller’s new book, God at Work.
Surveillance and Spying in Film: I–Deja Vu Nicole Rafter looks at Deja Vu.
Happy Birthday W. H. Auden! Happy Birthday Auden!
Why is the Brain Called Brain Anatoly Liberman looks at the origin of the word “brain.”
Jesus of Hollywood: A Podcast A podcast with the author of Jesus of Hollywood.
Sahel, Africa Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week.
Black History Month Anna Murray Douglass The enigmatic first wife of Frederick Douglass, Anna Murray Douglass (1813 – 1822) has been misunderstood and misrepresented by historians as well as by her husband’s associates since he first rose to fame in 1842. Her early life, including her birth, family and parentage, remain thinly documented.
President’s Day Oxford takes the day off.
Friday procrastination: link love – pills, prose, and photos Friday link love.
Lost and Dean Acheson Lost and Dean Acheson, a closer look.
Listen to The Encyclopedia of Popular Music A podcast from The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.
The Allure of Toxic Leaders: A Film A video interview with Jean Lipman-Blumen.
Dildo: Back and Forth on a Cold Spoor of an Obscenity Anatoly Liberman looks at the origin of the word “dildo.”
Book Love Happy Valentine’s Day!
Vilanova i la Geltrú Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week returns with a look at Vilanova i la Geltrú.
Black History Month Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company A look at the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.
Justice Matters: A Response A response to Justice Matters.
Niko Pfund and Oxford Scholarship Online An interview with Niko Pfund.
Justice Matters A 14-minute documentary about a Chicago psychologist who managed to have a German family awarded the Yad Vashem “Righteous Among the Nations” title for saving her father’s life in April 1945. The recognition represents the culmination of a long, difficult personal and professional journey for Mona Sue Weissmark, psychology professor and author of “Justice Matters.” The documentary aired nationwide on WDR German television (1.channel in Germany) and was just distributed to schools and churches throughout Germany.
Friday Procrastion: Beach Bum A look at vacation.
Lincoln’s finest hour By James M. McPherson On August 23, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote the following memorandum and asked his Cabinet members to sign it on the back side of the paper without reading it (to forestall leaks): “This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards.”
Lives Across The Pond: Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse A closer look at Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse with help from the DNB.
WWII and This Mighty Scourge McPherson looks at, “the only war in modern times as to which we can be sure, first, that no skill or patience of diplomacy would have avoided it; and second, that preservation of the American Union and abolition of negro slavery were two vast triumphs of good by which even the inferno of war was justified.”
A Flourish of Strumpets A closer look at strumpets.
A Few Questions For James McPherson James McPherson answers some questions about his new book This Might Scourge.
Black History Month Frederick Douglass and American History OUP celebrates Black History Month by taking a closer look at the life of Frederick Douglass.
What Do You Think of Violent Video Games? What do you think of violent video games?
A Few Questions for Craig A. Anderson A few questions for Craig Anderson.
Friday Procrastination: Any Questions Part Two NBC video and some answers.
Friday Procrastination: Vacation in Ireland? Dreaming of Ireland.
Football mania: some history To honour that acclaimed American institution, which celebrates its biggest day on Sunday, we look at famous football players – from the Colts and the Bears. Perhaps past greatness will help these teams when they square off on Sunday. Both excerpts are from the American National Biography Online.
Sweet Sounds: Forrest Mars A podcast from the DNB.
January 2007 (49))
Monthly Gleanings: January 2007 Anatoly’s monthly gleanings.
Protected: Safire Snip There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Hiding From the Truth Philip Kitcher explores the deceiving nature of truth.
Competition or Criticism How To Best Motivate America’s Schools? Graham questions the best techniques for reforming America’s schools.
The Departed Nicole Rafter takes a closer look at the movie, “The Departed.”
Do You Really Need Back Surgery: A Video A film about back surgery.
Is There An Ethical Crisis in Spinal Surgery? Aaron Filler wonders about the ethics of spinal surgery.
Friday Procrastination: Any Questions? Friday Procrastination.
This Day in History: Greetings From Michigan Celebrating history, Michigan becomes a state.
It’s About That Time for Miles Davis’s ‘So What’ A closer look at ‘So What’ by Miles Davis.
Book thumbnail image The Oscar nominations: Philip Glass Along with Reich, Riley and Young, Glass was a principal figure in the establishment of minimalism in the 1960s. He has since become one of the most successful composers of his generation. He studied the violin at six, then at eight the flute with Britton Johnson at the Peabody Conservatory.
Cheek by jow By Anatoly Liberman English is a language of limitless opportunities. Strange things happen in it. Some words are spelled alike but pronounced differently: ‘bow’ (the bow of a ship) and ‘bow’ (bow and arrows); ‘row’ (she kicked up a row) and ‘row’ (the front row); ‘permit’ (the verb) and ‘permit’ (the noun).
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Flaunt v. Flout Garner’s usage tips.
Bickel, Jackson – and Bush Vermeule looks at the decision of the Bush administration to submit to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Ben’s Place of the Week We miss Ben!
A Few Questions for David Edgerton A few questions with the author of The Shock of the OldM.
The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change An excerpt from The Mark of Shame.
A few questions for Stephen Hinshaw By Stephen P. Hinshaw Stephen Hinshaw, author of The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change, is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley. His new book questions why the mentally ill in America are still discriminated against and what can be done about this longstanding problem.
Extreme Home Makeover and Oxford University Press OUP on Extreme Home Makeover.
Jacob Hacker Addresses Congress Jacob Hacker speaks before Congress.
Friday Procrastination An A-Z list of books to read.
A Few Questions For Christopher Ringwald Christopher Ringwald answers a few questions for OUP about his new book A Day Apart
Madison Square Park Sculpture: von Rydingsvard A closer look at the art of Von Rydingsvard.
In Jeopardy, Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 6) Anatoly Liberman’s weekly column. The Oddest English Spellings Part Six.
Truth: A Hunch? Simon Blackburn on “truth”.
T.S. Eliot: an excerpt In the New York Times Art Section today, Michiko Kakutani writes about British poet Craig Raine’s new book on T.S. Eliot, calling Raine’s description a “new, more accessible T. S. Eliot, an Eliot he describes as a virtuosic fox in terms of style, and a single-minded hedgehog when it came to themes.”
Tune In! Oup authors will appear on ABC’s Primetime.
Terror in the Balance A closer look at The Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Happiness 101: Positive Psychology A closer look at happiness.
Book thumbnail image When A Loved One Hoards David Tolin, PhD provides some advice for confronting a loved one who hoards.
Friday Procrastination: The Joy of Bloglines Friday procrastination.
Rosanna Hertz: Some Answers Rosanna Hertz, on the three questions she is asked most.
Lives Across the Pond: Happy Birthday Harry Gordon Selfridge Happy Birthday Harry Gordon Selfridge!
Story time: a closer look at Mary Norton and The Borrowers Every time I turn on the television I am bombarded by advertisements for the new movie, “Arthur and The Invisibles”. It reminds me of “The Borrowers”. Remember them? Small, ingenious creatures that live in our homes and borrow our buttons, socks, thimbles, and other items you thought were misplaced.
The Democratic Party and the War on Terror Eric Posner weighs in on H. R. 1.
The Great Risk Shift: A Video A video interview with Jacob Hacker.
An Etymologist’s Junket to the Countryside Anatoly Liberman’s weekly column.
Bangkok, Thailand Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the week is Bangkok.
Back to the Future with Magic Universe An excerpt from Magic Universe about time machines.
OED updates A closer look at the most recent OED update.
Introducing Medical Mondays An introduction to Medical Mondays.
Calling All History Fans: Oxford DNB Podcasts A Friday podcast.
This Day in History: Dreyfus Condemned This Day in History, Dreyfus condemned.
In Memory: Robert Solomon In memory of Robert Solomon.
What’s It All About? An excerpt from What’s It All About.
Between Troll and Trollop Anatoly Liberman looks at the many meanings of the word “troll.”
A Few Questions For Richard B. Patt, M.D. A few questions for author Richard B. Patt about managing Cancer pain.
Marajó Island, Brazil Ben’s Place of The Week Ben’s Place of the week is Marajó Island.
OUPblog Resolutions OUPblog’s New Year’s Resolutions
December 2006 (41))
Sleepfaring: What kind of person are you? Are you a lark, an owl, or neither?
The English Reader Quiz: Part Four Part Four of the English Reader quiz.
The English Reader Quiz: Part Three Part three of the English Reader Quiz.
The English Reader Quiz: Part Two Do you know who said ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever’, ‘death be not proud’, or ‘if you can meet with triumph and disaster… and treat those two imposters just the same’? Take our literary quiz to find out whether you know your Housman from your Hardy, and your Shakespeare from your Shelley.
Monthly Gleanings: December 2006 Anatoly Liberman’s Monthly Gleanings.
The English Reader Quiz: Part One A literature quiz from the authors of The English Reader.
Kwanzaa: An Excerpt From The AASC An excerpt from the AASC about Kwanzaa.
Babel: A Film About Responsibility Nicole Rafter looks at the film Babel.
Our Favorite Books: Part Five Our favorite books and a special surprise….
The Making of The Oxford Canon: Conclusion David Lehman’s final column of the week, “Hope Against Hope,” or “High Hopes.”
Buried In Treasures: Holiday Advice Help for compulsive acquiring in the holiday season.
The Making of The Oxford Canon: Emily Dickinson David Lehman explores the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Kissing and Dying Under the Mistletoe, With The Holly Thrown in for Good Measure Anatoly Liberman weekly column.
The making of the oxford canon: scary poetry What is the scariest poem in American poetry? I wager that many would select Poe’s “The Raven” – and it is unquestionable that Poe has the ability, in his verse and stories, to terrify. It is possible however, that Robert Frost has written the darkest and most frightening poems in our literature.
The Making of The Oxford Canon: Part Two David Lehman introduces us to the Oxford Canon.
The Great Risk Shift: A Response Jacob Hacker responds to an article in The New York Daily News.
Wallonia Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week.
Gun Rights or Gun Wrongs Cornell takes a closer look at the Parker v. District of Columbia case.
The Making of The Oxford Canon: Part One David Lehman writes about the making of the Oxford Canon.
This Day in History: Virginia Ratifies the Bill of Rights Richard Labunski reveals some surprising facts about the Bill of Rights.
Happy Hanukah! A Hanukah tale from Gabriel’s Palace.
Our Favorite Books: Part Four Oup staff picks their favorite books.
A Few Questions for Michael and Diane Ravitch A few questions about The English Reader, an interview with Michael and Diane Ravitch.
Attaboy! Or, The Male-Intimate Affectionate Overtones Questions Anatoly Liberman looks at the origins of the phrase “Attaboy!”
Dickens And Christmas A deeper look at the most famous Christmas Carol.
Kissing, Germany Ben’s Place of The Week Ben’s Place of the week, holiday style.
This Day in History: First Wireless Message Sent Across the Atlantic Ocean A closer look at Marconi, who transmitted the first wireless message.
Our Favorite Books: Part Three Oxford employees share their favorite books.
What They Didn’t Say We excerpt from What They Didn’t Say: A Book of Misquotations.
Lives Across The Pond: A Tribute To John Lennon John Lennon in the Oxford DNB.
Celebrating Walt Whitman An excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Memoranda During the War.
Our Favorite Books: Part Two Oxford University Press staff share their favorite books.
The Most Influential Americans: The Revolutionaries Based on The Atlantic’s Top 100 Most Influential Americans of All Time list, we look at George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
The Most Influential Americans: Ben Franklin and the Revolutionaries Ed Gaustad weighs in on the Atlantic’s top 100 most influential Americans.
Actually, Like Cures Like (?) Anatoly Liberman looks at filler words, like and you know.
Literary Criticism For the Masses John Mullan, author of How Novels Work looks at the rise of literary criticism among the masses.
Christmas Island Ben’s Place of the Week Christmas Island is Ben’s Place of the Week.
Our Favorite Books: Part One Our favorite books.
Colonel Oates to Ian Fleming in Less Than Six Degrees From the Civil War to James Bond.
Friday Procrastination Some great ways to waste your time.
This Day in History: Rosa Parks, Mother of the Civil Rights Movement A tribute to Rosa Parks.
November 2006 (43))
Oxford Companion to Wine ice wine vs. Icewine The Oxford Companion to Wine helps us learn about ice wine and Icewine.
Oxford Companion to Food Pie in the Sky Read the pie entry from the Oxford Companion To Food.
The Partition of Palestine An excerpt which looks at the partition of Palestine.
Monthly Gleanings: November, 2006 Anatoly Liberman answers some questions readers have submitted.
Judge Posner in Second Life Judge Richard Posner in Second Life.
A History of Violence: David Cronenberg’s Morality Play Nicole Rafter’s monthly column examines the film, A History of Violence.
Mismatch: The Modern World and Humanity A look at how our world no longer fits us.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music: An Excerpt Aimee Mann An excerpt from the Encylopedia of Popular Music’s Aimee Mann entry.
Thanksgiving in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography A link to the biography of Edward Winslow to celebrate Thankgsiving.
A Traditional American Thanksgiving By Andrew Smith Amid all the stuffing, turkey, and pumpkin pie it’s useful to reflect for a moment on precisely what we celebrate on Thanksgiving Day. Every American knows the story of the First Thanksgiving: seeking religious freedom, the Pilgrims established a colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Native Wampanoag taught them how to plant corn and hunt. When the crops were harvested, the Pilgrims celebrated the First Thanksgiving by gobbling up turkeys, saucing cranberries, mashing corn, and squashing pumpkins to make pies.
Etymological folklore or: a few subdued thoughts on hullabaloo Superstitions, unlike knowledge, spread quickly. Students’ spelling breaks every instructor’s heart, and we ask ourselves the question: How did so many people from all over the country, come to the unanimous conclusion that occurrence should be spelled occurance? It is, I believe, a huge conspiracy.
Biography From the Bottom Up: Part Three Biography From the Bottom Up, part three.
Biography From the Bottom Up: Part Two Part two of Biography From the Bottom
Leiden, Holland Ben’s Place of the Week Thanksgiving origins in Leiden.
Biography From the Bottom Up: Part One Part one of three, Biography From the Bottom Up.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music: An Excerpt Mos Def A look at the Mos Def entry in the EPM.
Sex Crime Films: A Response Sex Crime Films, a response.
Oxford Companion to Wine Rosé http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/
The Cratchit’s Christmas Dinner The Cratchit’s and Christmas Pudding.
A Special Ben’s Place of the Week: The Year in Geography The year in geography.
James A. H. Murray At First Hand Anatoly Liberman’s weekly column.
This Day in History: Moby Dick is Published Happy Birthday Moby Dick!
Encyclopedia of Popular Music: An Excerpt John Scofield An Encyclopedia of Popular Music Monday.
Carbon Neutral: Oxford Word of the Year The Oxford word of the year is…
Thank You Veterans An excerpt in honor of Veterans Day.
Lives Across the Pond: Happy Birthday Sir Jacob Epstein The biography of Jacob Epstein.
Oxford Companion to Food: Renaissance Meat Carving An excerpt from The Oxford Companion To Food.
Oxford Companion to Wine: Romanée-Conti An excerpt from the Oxford Companion to Wine.
The Sole of the Nation. Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 5) Oddest English Spellings, Part 5.
Contemplating Torture Is torture ever ethical?
Karakalpakstan Ben’s Place of The Week A look at Borat’s home.
Oxford American Studies Center Launch Party Photos Photos from the AASC launch party.
A few questions for phyllis tickle Phyllis Tickle, founding editor of the Religion Department at Publishers Weekly, is a highly respected authority on religion in America. She has recently written a new book, ‘The Night Offices: Prayer for the Hours from Sunset to Sunrise’, and was kind enough to answer a few questions on the book.
Rebecca’s Reading: The Broken Branch Rebecca is reading The Broken Branch.
Shoot the Designer Colin Larkin wants to shoot the designers.
This Day in History Linus Pauling Wins the Nobel Prize This Day in History the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to Linus Pauling.
Originalism Right or Originalism Lite: The Curious Case of the Second Amendment Part Three Part three of Originalism Right or Originalism Lite: The Curious Case of the 2nd Amendment
The Oxford Companion to Wine Serve the Perfect Wine this Holiday Season Jancis Robinson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Wine talks about holiday season wines.
Oxford Companion to Food Slow Food an Excerpt An excerpt from The Oxford Companion to Food about Slow Food.
Originalism Right or Originalism Lite: The Curious Case of the Second Amendment Part Two Part two of Originalism Right or Originalism Lite: The Curious Case of the 2nd Amendment.
Slang and Slang Anatoly weights in on Slang.
Bangalore to Bengaluru A Special Ben’s Place of the Week Bangalore changes its name to Bengaluru.
Originalism Right or Originalism Lite: The Curious Case of the Second Amendment Part One The first part in a three-part series on the 2nd amendment.
October 2006 (52))
Salt Spain Ben’s Place of The Week Ben’s place of the week is Salt, Spain.
Food, Wine and Photos Pictures from Food and Wine Events.
Steel Drivin’ Man: An Excerpt An excerpt from Steel Drivin’ Man.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music Quiz Part Three Pop music quiz part three.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music Quiz Part Two Part two of the pop music quiz.
Encyclopedia of Popular Music Quiz Part One A pop music quiz.
Friday Roundup Some free resources from OUP.
Seven Deadly Sins: Gluttony En excerpt from Gluttony.
Rebecca’s Reading The Broken Branch Rebecca’s Reading the Broken Branch
Negro Leagues: Jackie Robinson A look at Jackie Robinson
Monthly Gleaning: October 2007 Monthly Gleanings.
The Origins of Fascism: Islamic Fascism, Islamophobia, Antisemitism By Walter Laqueur Walter Laqueur looks at Islamic Fascism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism
Maasbommel Ben’s Place of the Week A certain preoccupation with water can be expected in a country located at the mouth of three major rivers and where roughly half of the total land area is at or below sea level.
Sex-crime movies By Nicole Rafter For movie-makers and viewers alike, sex-crime movies offer opportunities to explore the meanings of sexual offenses and to reflect on the boundaries that societies trace between illicit and illegal sexual behaviors. They can start transnational conversations with millions of people across the globe.
All-time worst music albums Everyone has an opinion on the best pop music albums of all time. Call us pessimists, but at OUP, we were wondering, what are the worst albums? Luckily, we have the best resource for all things music, Colin Larkin editor of the Encyclopedia of Popular Music. He tells us what makes his ears ring.
Totally Weird and Wonderful Words Weird Words!
The Runners-Up: WOTY More WOTYs.
Philip Jenkins at the Carnegie Council On October 11th, OUP author Philip Jenkins had the honor of speaking before the Carnegie Council about his new book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South.
A Few Questions for Michael Lind Michael Lind answers some questions about his new book.
Negro Leagues: Satchel Paige Satchel Paige and the Negro Leagues.
Bovvered: Word of the Year Word of the Year.
The Elements of Murder: An Excerpt A “safe” excerpt from The Elements of Murder by John Emsley.
Many Happy Returns of the Day Or, Study Etymology and Live Long Anatoly Liberman ponders longevity.
Santander Department Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the week is Santander Department.
A Few Questions for Jennifer Weber Some questions for Jennifer Weber, author of Copperheads.
Great Read in the Park Great Read in the Park
A Few Questions For Robert Beisner A Q and A with author Robert Beisner.
Rogue Regime: Excerpt Excerpt from Rogue Regime
Lives Across The Pond: Benjamin West A biography of Benjamin West.
Friday Roundup Friday Roundup
Journalism Past and Present Until the age of 50, Mencken was called “America’s Foremost Bachelor,” praised for being the patron saint of single men. When H. L. Mencken married Sara Powell Haardt in 1930, the press concluded that the author of “In Defense of Women” was probably in the most embarassing position of any fiancee in recent years. They were bent in trotting out the old quotes. How, reporters insisted with glee, will Mencken explain that he had once said “A man may be a fool and not know it –but not if he’s married.” Long before, he had defined love as “the delusion that one woman differs from another.” To these queries Mencken replied; “I formerly was not as wise as I am now….the wise man frequently revises his opinions. The fool, never.”
Negro Leagues: Cool Papa Bell The Oxford African American Studies Center looks at Cool Papa Bell.
Journalism Past and Present An Email Dialogue Between Marion Rodgers and Donald Ritchie Day One Marion Rodgers and Donald Ritchie discuss their books, journalist Henry Louis Mencken, and the state of journalism today.
Top 10 Reasons our Constitution is Undemocratic Top-ten reasons our Constitution is undemocratic.
Undetermined Scholars Confront Indeterminate Numbers The Oxford Eytmologist takes on more words.
Mourning Sheldon Meyer Oxford University Press mourns Sheldon Meyer.
Kiel Canal Ben’s Place of the Week Oxford Editor of the Atlas of the World shares his place of the week.
Why I Wrote The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot Bart Ehrman talks about why he wrote his latest book, The Lost Gospels of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed.
Book thumbnail image Stacking the Deck for Dictionaries Erin McKean reports on weird words.
Jasper Becker on North Korea Jasper Becker responds to the news about North Korea.
A Few Questions for Bart Ehrman Bart Ehrman answers some questions about his new book.
Columbus Day A Columbus Day Tribute.
Why I’m Banned in the US: Tariq Ramadan Tariq Ramadan responds.
Geneive Abdo on Ingrid Mattson Honoring Ingrid Mattson.
Negro Leagues: An Introduction An introduction to the Negro Leagues and the AASC.
In The News: The Great Risk Shift News and The Great Risk Shift.
A project in a nutshell By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford Eytmologist is at it again…
Staten Island Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the Week is Staten Island.
Gordon Corera Talks to Dina Khan Gordon Corera, author of Shopping for Bombs, has written about Dina Khan’s first statement since her father AQ Khan’s arrest in 2004. AQ Khan, a man dubbed by former CIA director George Tenet as being “at least as dangerous as Osama Bin Laden,” is known as the “Father of the Bomb” in Pakistan.
Take the Economic Risk Test The economic risk test.
An Excerpt from The New American Militarism An excerpt from The New American Militarism.
Some Questions for Jacob Hacker Jacob Hacker answers some questions for OUP.
September 2006 (33))
A Lesson for Yom Kippur The Cottage of Candles A lesson for Yom Kippur from The Tree of Souls.
Hank Greenberg and Yom Kippur A poem is excerpted from the book Jews in America by Hasia R. Diner. It recounts the tale of Hank Greenberg, a baseball legend, who put his religion before baseball when he went to synagogue instead of playing the Yankees in 1934.
Excerpt from The New Faces of Christianity An excerpt from Philip Jenkins new book, The New Faces of Christianity.
September gleanings: macabre, gully & gulch By Anatoly Liberman Some time ago I received a question about the word macabre. This adjective first appeared in Old French, in the phrase dancemacabre. The story begins with the fresco of the Dance Macabre, painted in 1424 in the Church of Innocents at Paris. The English poet and monk John Lydgate knew the fresco.
A Few Questions for Rosanna Hertz OUP author Rosanna Hertz answers some questions about her new book, Single By Chance, Mothers By Choice.
Santa Cruz Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s Place of the week is Santa Cruz, California.
Inside Man: Revival of the Heist Movie? OUP author Nicole Rafter weighs in on The Inside Man and heist films in general.
Women in Literature: Gwendolyn Brooks A profile of Gwendolyn Brooks.
The Constitution: A Debate Geoffrey Stone kicks off a debate with Judge Richard Posner.
Book thumbnail image Ramadan Ramadan begins tomorrow and will last for a month. For an explanation of the holiday we turn to John Esposito’s What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam.
Rosh Hashana A celebration of Rosh Hashana.
Golfing Greats from the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography History from the DNB for Ryder Cup weekend.
Women and Literature: In this article from Black Women in America, Second Edition, Jacquelyn Y. McLendon profiles the new generation of fiction writers.
Happy Birthday Upton Sinclair! OUP wishes Upton Sinclair a happy birhtday.
The Tongue Between the Teeth, Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 4) By Anatoly Liberman It is easy to get used to certain conventions. No characters exist for the initial consonants of the English words shin, chin, and thin, and at an early age we learn that two letters are needed to render them in spelling. In Part 3 of the series “The Oddest English Spellings,” I compared shelf, […]
Surtsey, Iceland Ben’s Place of the Week Ben’s place of the week is Surtsey, Iceland.
A Few Questions for Geneive Abdo OUP talks with author Geneive Abdo about her new book Mecca and Mainstreet.
Constitution Day OUP presents an excerpt from Richard Labunski’s James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights to celebrate Constitution Day.
Sloth: a lifestyle It’s Friday so we thought we would lighten things up and give our loyal readers something fun to kick-off the weekend with (not that our other posts aren’t fun!). So today Oxford University Press challenges you to be slothful, to lean back, sink into your couch and to remain there for 48-hours.
Protected: Oxford Companion To Italian Food Audio There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Avoiding Toxic Leaders Some advice for navigating the perils of voting.
This Day in History: The Battle of Chapultepec This Day in History and the Mexican War.
The long arm of etymology, or, longing for word origins By Anatoly Liberman Only children and foreigners express their surprise when they discover that the verb long does not mean “lengthen” or that belong has nothing to do with longing. When we grow up, we stop noticing how confusing such similarities of form coupled with differences in meaning are.
Who is Erin McKean? Totally weird words from Oxford’s word mistress.
Greetings From A Vanished World, During a 500 Mile Trek Chris Lowney reports on his travels.
Protected: Faith In The Halls of Power Audio There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
You Are What You Eat: The All-American Breakfast Cereal commercials, nutritionists, and your mother all agree—breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That’s why Congress has declared September to be "All American Breakfast Month!" That begs the question: what is the all-American breakfast, anyway? The answer to that question has changed over the years. A cowboy in the 1880s may have […]
Not A Suicide Pact Richard Posner’s new book and the headlines.
Women and literature: the dual tradition of African American fiction By Bernard W. Bell The prevailing wisdom of most African Americanists, is that due to the distinctive history and acculturation of Africans in the British colonies in North America, African-American literature is most meaningfully assessed in the context of multiple geographical, oral, and literary heritages.
Monthly gleanings By Anatoly Liberman On August 23, I appeared on the “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio. Many of you called in with questions, to some of which I could give immediate answers. But, the origin of several words I did not remember offhand and I promised to look them up in my database. Here are my responses.
The Death of Crazy Horse On this date in 1877, Chief Crazy Horse rode into Fort Robinson in what is now Nebraska. Although he had been a major force in the resistance to the white man, he had finally surrended the previous May and was trying to adapt to life on the reservation. Unfortunately he had enemies within the Lakota […]
Interview with Terence Tao “At age two I tried teaching other kids to count using number blocks” Terrence Tao, recent Fields Medal winner, is also the author of Solving Mathematical Problems, which will be published by Oxford University Press in September. Tao’s Medal was in “honor of his contributions to partial differential equations, combinatorics, harmonic analysis and additive number […]
The Murder of Polly Nichols We interrupt this academic blog for a tale of murder, murder most foul. On 31 August in 1888 Mr. Charles Cross was walking to work through Buck’s Row, a dingy and poorly-lit alleyway in the heart of London’s East End. It was around 3:40 in the morning when he spied what looked like a bundle […]
August 2006 (34))
Origins of hip hop: “If I stop, I’ll die.” By David F. Smydra Today we’ll look at the spoken word roots of hip hop by examining the life and career of one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time; Richard Pryor. Here is the entry on Richard Pryor from upcoming eight-volume ‘African American National Biography’.
Tit for tat, or, a chip off the old block? By Anatoly Liberman Many words resemble mushrooms growing on a tree stump: they don’t have common roots but are still related. I will use few examples, because if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Nothing is known about the origin of cub, which surfaced in English texts only in 1530 (that is, surprisingly late).
A Tribute to Katrina Victims “As daylight slowly returned and the wind eased during the morning of Tuesday, August 25, survivors emerged, stunned, from the debris. Some wept, some were stoic, and many were so dazed they did not recognize their profoundly altered surroundings. In many places, little but rubble stretched as far as the eye could see. What few […]
Dallol, Ethiopia Ben’s Place of the Week Dallol, Ethiopia Coordinates: 14° 14 N | 40° 18 E Elevation: -157 feet (-48 meters) If beating the heat is your goal, then Death Valley, California–the hottest location in the United States–might be one spot to avoid in late August. Dallol, Ethiopia is another. A small settlement in the state of Afar near the Eritrean […]
Excerpt from The Accidental Investment Banker Below is an excerpt from the preface of The Accidental Investment Banker.
Origins of hip hop: Ice-T and “Cop Killer” In this post, we look at rapper Ice-T, and his influence on the development of hip hop. A prolific and outspoken Rap artist, Ice-T helped pioneer the ‘gangsta’ musical style, in which the turmoil of urban street life is exposed through blunt, explicit lyrics and a bass-heavy, fluid musical style.
Tao Wins the Fields Medal Oxford University Press congratulates Terence Tao on his prodigious accomplishment, winning the Fields Medal. The Fields Medal, which is named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields and awarded by the International Mathematical Union every four years, is the most prestigious international prize a mathematician can receive. Tao, who was born in Adelaide, Austrailia and now […]
Mount Cuba Center Greenville, Delaware, USA Mount Cuba was the home of Lammot du Pont Copeland and his wife Pamela from 1937 until her death in 2001. They sited their Georgian house (Victorin and Samuel Homsey, architects) atop one of Delaware’s highest hills with magnificent views across steep hills and deep valleys of the Eastern American Piedmont, to the Delaware river […]
A Conversation with Jonathan Knee: Author of The Accidental Investment Banker OUP Staff: How did you come to write this book? Jonathan Knee: Over the years as an investment banker and a business school teacher, two related phenomena have always struck me. First, how little the general public understands what investment bankers actually do. Even other professionals and clients who deal with investment bankers often find […]
Origins of hip hop: “The hardest jack with the greatest jive in the joint!” By Barry Kernfeld Today we’ll look at the jazz roots of hip hop by examining the charismatic stage presence and dapper style of the great Cab Calloway. As a pioneer of the genre, Calloway was described by President Bill Clinton as a ‘true legend among the musicians of this century’ – and his legacy lives on today.
The much vilified ain’t By Anatoly Liberman Our egalitarian predilections have partly wiped out the difference between “vulgar” and “cool,” and the idea of being judgmental or appearing better educated than one’s neighbor scares the living daylights out of intellectuals. Dictionaries, we are told, should be descriptive, not prescriptive.
Miami Vice: Death of the Cop-Action Film? Crime Films: A Monthly Column By Nicole Rafter Miami Vice is a major disappointment in an already frustrating movie summer. I had hoped for more not only because of the stylishness of the 1980s television series on which it is based but also because director Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) and Collateral (2004) had proved him […]
Crime Cinema: An Introduction An Introduction to a New Monthly Feature By Nicole Rafter My original interest in crime films led me to introduce courses that examined the dynamic interplay of art and life in crime films at Northeastern University, and it eventually resulted in my book Shots in the Mirror: Crime Films and Society (Oxford University Press, 2d.ed. […]
South Queensferry Ben’s Place of the Week South Queensferry Coordinates: 55° 59 N | 3° 23 W Population: 9, 370 (2001 est.) Mad dogs and Englishmen may be unable to resist the midday sun, but it’s the Scottish who will venture into the heat covered head to toe in 10,000 prickly seed pods from the burdock plant. For centuries now, August in […]
The origins of hip hop: Iceberg Slim By Terri Hume Oliver Today, we’ll look at one of the literary forerunners of the hip hop revolution; Iceberg Slim. Slim’s works are marked by a criticism of American justice, devotion to the politics of the Black Panthers, frank language, and a combination of violence and sexuality. They remain influential to this day.
“Who’s the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?” By Rob Bowman Today, we’ll look at a towering figure in 1970s soul music and a forebear of modern hip hop and rap; Isaac Hayes. His classic 1969 record, the sumptuous, deep-grooving ‘Hot Buttered Soul’, made Hayes a star and cemented his image in the minds of a generation of young African Americans.
“King of the Wild Frontier” On this date in 1786 David "Davy" Crockett—hunter, frontiersman, politician, and soldier—was born in a rough-hewn cabin in Tennessee. It can be difficult to separate the myth from the man, including the famous story that he "killed him a bear when he was only three." His extraordinary life, however, hardly needs embellishment. He was a […]
The lost age of innocence By Anatoly Liberman While working on my etymological database, I looked through countless old journals and magazines. I especially enjoyed reading the reviews of etymological dictionaries published in their pages. Some were shockingly abrasive, even virulent; others delightfully chatty and unabashedly superficial.
Palm Islands Ben’s Place of the Week Palm Islands Coordinates: 25° 18 N | 55° 20 E Dubai’s Population: 1,182,439 (2006 est.) As the relative ease of international travel increases, countries seeking to compete for tourist dollars have become more creative in their efforts to market themselves as unique destinations. The United Arab Emirates, to take one example, chose to adopt the […]
Mourning Kermit Hall Oxford University Press sends its condolences to the family, friends, colleagues and students of one of our most esteemed authors, Kermit Hall, who died in a swimming accident on Sunday, August 13. Kermit Hall was the editor of The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court, The Oxford Companion to American Law, The Judicial Branch in […]
The Origins of Hip Hop: James Brown Here is a discussion of the music, biography and inspirations of the one-and-only James Brown; the legendary African American soul and funk singer – who has been invariably called the ‘Godfather of Soul’, ‘Soul Brother Number One’, ‘Mr. Dynamite’, and the ‘Hardest Working Man in Show Business’.
President Picks “Polio” President Bush will read David Oshinsky’s Polio: An American Story.
Golden Gate Park San Francisco, California, USA Golden Gate Park was established in 1872 on a site of 410 hectares/1,013 acres, and is one of the finest city parks in the country. The long rectangular park has two distinct sections. The western section adjoining the Pacific Ocean is buffeted by fierce winds and salt-laden air, while the more sheltered eastern section is […]
Napa Valley Ben’s Place of the Week Napa Valley Coordinates: 38° 30 N | 122° 20 W Area: 754 square miles (1,953 sq. km) Bavarian beer baths are fine for some, but the more sophisticated may prefer a Chardonnay massage–a truly intoxicating way to de-stress. Popular among the Parisian upper class in the eighteenth century, the long relaxing soak in a barrel […]
All Aboard and James A. H. Murray By Anatoly Liberman The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) appeared thanks to the efforts of the Philological Society. Every May the society opened its “anniversary” (that is, annual) meetings with long presidential addresses, which also graced the early volumes of the Transactions of the Philological Society (TPS). Both the society and its transactions are still very […]
Ornstein Thinks the U.N. is “Feckless.” Norman J. Ornstein, co-author of The Broken Branch, is a Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Below is an except from his recent article at the Huffington Post:
Native Sons of Liberty Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the editor in chief of The Oxford African American Studies Center. In this New York Times op-ed, Dr. Gates uses a little-known story about the Revolutionary War to demonstrate the role of black patriots in the birth of our nation: ON June 11, 1823, a man named John Redman […]
Creationism’s Trojan Horse Last year the Kansas State Board of Education adopted a new science curriculum that taught “intelligent design” as an alternative to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Last week the voters of Kansas threw out the board members that had pushed for this new unscientific approach to teaching science, virtually assuring that intelligent design will be stricken […]
Deliberation and Infotopia By Cass Sunstein What happens when people deliberate with one another? Do they arrive at the truth? Do they go toward the middle? Can we predict the effects of deliberation? A few months ago, I tried to find out, collaborating with David Schkade (of the University of San Diego) and Reid Hastie (of the University […]
Respects for Frederick G. Kilgour Frederick G. Kilgour, author of The Evolution of the Book (Oxford University Press | 1998) passed away on Monday, July 31st at his home in Chapel Hill, N.C.
In the beginning: hip hop’s early influences By Raymond Codrington In the mid-1970s the cultural shockwave known as hip hop emerged from the economic paralysis of New York City, especially the neglected neighborhoods in the Bronx. However, while hip hop music was born in New York, it speaks to a long line of black American and African diasporic cultural traditions.
Washington Park Arboretum Seattle, Washington, USA Washington Park Arboretum Designed by James Dawson (1874-1941) of the Olmsted Brothers firm, and was founded in the 1930s with funds and labour from the Works Progress Administration, which provided relief during the Depression. Covering 93 hectares/230 acres in the heart of the city, and encompassing collections of Rhododendron, Cornus, Malus, Ilex, Magnolia, Camellia, Sorbus, […]
Stone Circles of Senegambia Ben’s Place of the Week Stone Circles of Senegambia Coordinates: 13° 41 N | 15° 31 W Approximate area: 15,000 square miles (39,000 sq. km) Mention stone circles and most people probably think of the photogenic megaliths that beckon tourists to England’s Salisbury Plain. Farther to the south however, along the River Gambia in West Africa, 93 stone circles arranged […]
An Etymologist at a Moment of Soul Searching By Anatoly Liberman If you have ever written a grant proposal, the form you filled out must have had a question about your methodology. Among the many useless words invented to add ceremony or to the bureaucratic procedure, methodology occupies a place of honor. It is a synonym of method(s) but pretends to have a […]
July 2006 (16))
The New Faces of Christianity Philip Jenkins, whose latest book The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South will be out in , has an article on the rapidly changing global face of Christianity in the most recent issue of The Christian Century. Here are some of the highlights: Fifty years ago, Americans might have dismissed […]
(Bi)Monthly Gleanings By Anatoly Liberman In June and July there were several queries about word origins and a general question about the availability of linguistic information, which shows that no heat wave can dry up people’s interest in etymology. Wayzgoose. This word appeared late and is odd because it denotes an entertainment given specifically to printers at […]
Finding My Way from Stonehenge to Samarkand By Brian Fagan When I sat down to compile my latest book From Stonehenge to Samarkand, I found my greatest inspiration in the writings of a virtually forgotten English writer, Rose Macaulay. Her classic book, Pleasure of Ruins, first appeared in the 1950s and was reprinted with evocative photographs by Reny Beloff a decade later. […]
Tallinn – Ben’s Place of the Week Tallinn Coordinates: 59° 22' N | 24° 48' E Population: 401,502 (2005 est.) Novel as it may seem, some places in the world are actually attempting to make their governments more efficient, and their societies more open. Across the Gulf of Finland, not quite fifty miles from Helsinki, the Estonian cabinet conducts its paperless meetings […]
Changing the Rules in Africa By Charlayne Hunter-Gault I’m a journalist, not a poll-taker, however, over the past month, while touring the country to talk about my book New News Out of Africa, I’ve been conducting an informal, highly un-scientific survey about how much Americans know about Africa. I know that the majority of the people I talk to are […]
Enlightening the Public on Matters of Etymological Research By Anatoly Liberman There were days when anybody could write a letter to Notes and Queries, a biweekly magazine published in London, and see it in print a few days later. One correspondent, whose playful but sterile imagination suggested to him the pseudonym BUSHEY HEATH, wrote the following in Volume 12 of the Third Series, […]
Montélimar, France Coordinates: 44° 33' N | 4° 45' E Distance from Beziers: 143 miles (230 km) Geographic Theme: Movement Yellow jerseys and stuffed lions are fine prizes, sure, but after completing the longest leg of the Tour de France, wouldn’t a tired cyclist rather cross the finish line for the promise of something sweeter, say a […]
“How do politics change the way people view the world around them?” Lawrence E. Harrison directed the USAID missions in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti and Nicaragua between 1961 and 1985. He also co-edited, with Samuel Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress. In this podcast, Harrison discusses his latest book The Central Liberal Truth. Click here to listen to the podcast (Lawrence_Harrison_podcast_MD1.mp3)
Unpronounceable Words As An Object of Etymology By Anatoly Liberman Unpronounceable and unprintable English words no longer exist, and only the spellchecker turns red when smut defiles our screens for academic purposes (dictionary makers and etymologists treat all words with equanimity and, if needed, include and discuss them). Now that everything is discourse, taboo has been abolished. Strangely, the more sensitive people […]
The Second Amendment and Gun Control: A Dialogue between Mark Tushnet and Saul Cornell – Day 3 Mark Tushnet: In reading over your responses, Saul, I was struck by the proposition that the Second Amendment, properly interpreted, would encompass only long guns – the equivalent of muskets – but not handguns. I think this is a non-starter. I begin with the question, “Why long guns – a general category – rather than […]
The Second Amendment and Gun Control: An Email Dialogue between Mark Tushnet and Saul Cornell – Day 2 Mark Tushnet: A couple of things occurred to me. The less important question is this: You say that the citizen-rights view you offer “would certainly mean much more rigorous gun regulation.” Do you think that, on the view you find in the founding era, such rigorous gun regulation was thought to be required, or simply […]
The Second Amendment & Gun Control: An Email Dialogue between Mark Tushnet & Saul Cornell Mark Tushnet: Hi Saul – First, let me say that I look forward to debating the arguments in your new book on the Second Amendment, A Well-Regulated Militia. As I read it, you make two “large” arguments, backed up of course with a lot of detail and qualifications. I’m going to sketch those arguments here, […]
Authors Don’t Own Their Books By Glenn LaFantasie Authors prepare themselves for negative reviews of their books, but when critics have bad things to say about one’s writing there is no girding of the loins that really seems to work. An unfavorable review hurts, no matter what authors say to the contrary. Some writers, though, dismiss critics and criticism more […]
Uncovering Africa’s Renaissance By Charlayne Hunter-Gault The first time I went to Ethiopia was in 1990, and I was filled with a mixture of excitement and anxiety. My excitement was sparked by the prospect of visiting one of the oldest countries in the world, and as I entered the hotel where I was to stay, I was greeted […]
“Jes’ copasetic, boss,”; Being also a Note on Frank Vizetelly By Anatoly Liberman For some reason, interest in the etymology of copasetic never abates. This adjective, a synonym of the equally infantile hunky-dory, is hardly ever used today unless the speaker wants to sound funny, but I cannot remember a single talk on words without someone’s asking me about its derivation and thinking that the question is of a most imaginative kind.
Protected: Ferling Podcast There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
June 2006 (19))
Our Distant Civil War By Glenn W. LaFantasie We too often forget that the generation that fought the Civil War lived in a world very different from our own. In our attempt to personalize the past, which all too often leads us into a romanticization of that past, we see the elements of human experience that unite us with the Civil War generation—how they, as individuals, loved and lost, laughed and cried, lived and died—but we tend, in the process, to overlook how these same people spent their lifetimes in a world that, upon closer inspection, seems like an alien planet.
From War to Peace, Or, Harrying without Harrassment By Anatoly Liberman The Old Germanic word for “army” sounded approximately like harjaz. Its Modern German continuation is Heer, and nearly the same word is used in Icelandic, Norwegian, and Danish (army is a borrowing from French; the idea of this word is “armed force”). English has lost harjaz, but it is astounding how many […]
Kabylia Coordinates: 36° 40' N | 4° 55' E Number of provinces included: 8 As a descriptive category, world music succeeds in being a particularly vague label for such a wide range of sound. The musical styles and traditions rooted in specific places usually have more meaningful names. Kabylia for example, a small region along Algeria’s […]
Lawyers’ Poker at the Legal Ethics Forum David McGowan, blogging at Legal Ethics Forum yesterday, posted a very thorough review of Steven Lubet’s latest book, Lawyers’ Poker: 52 Lessons That Lawyers Can Learn from Cardplayers. Of course, we should expect thoroughness from any writer who declares his intent “to integrate legal ethics, rational choice theory, and cognitive decision theory.” Like most people […]
Between beriberi and very, very: In Praise of Useful Waste, Or, Tautological Compounds By Anatoly Liberman Language is unbelievably redundant. For example, vowels are called vowels because voice (Latin vox; compare Engl. voc-al) is an inalienable part of their production. Yet a word said in a whisper, that is, without the participation of voice, will not be lost. In a language in which the gender, number, and case of […]
Krubera Cave, Georgia Coordinates: 43° 12' N | 41° 5' E Deepest point reached: 6,824 feet (2,080 m) With the onset of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and average temperatures worldwide on the rise, the question on the minds of many is: how to beat the heat? For cavers willing to travel to Abkhazia on the eastern coast […]
Eviatar Zerubavel on The Diane Rehm Show Eviatar Zerubavel, author of The Elephant in the Room, will be on The Diane Rehm Show this morning. He goes on live at 11AM ET. You can listen online by clicking HERE
David Lehman on Donald Hall Donald Hall is a wonderful choice for US Poet Laureate. I’ve worked closely with him on such projects as “The Best American Poetry 1989,” and in 1994 he asked me to succeed him as general editor of the University of Michigan Press’s “Poets on Poetry” series. So I feel a special kinship with him. But […]
Hearing History’s Requiem By Glenn W. LaFantasie Near the High Water Mark on Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg, a massive white building shaped like a drum sits flat on the eastern slope of the ridge, obscured partially by a grove of fruit trees. Almost exactly in the center of the lines that Major General George Gordon Meade’s Army of […]
Donald Hall, poet laureate Donald Hall (b. 1928) was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He attended Phillips Exeter, Harvard, and Oxford. A friend of George Plimpton, founding editor of the Paris Review, he was the magazine’s first poetry editor (1953–1962), choosing the poems appearing in its pages and conducting interviews with such eminences as Ezra Pound and T. S. […]
Blessed Are the Learned, Or, The Erratic Behavior of -ED By Anatoly Liberman It does not surprise us that naked and wretched do not rhyme with raked and etched. But the difference between learned in I have learned a lot in this course and I have seldom met such a learned man is disturbing. In native words and in many borrowings, English has lost most […]
Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Bluff By Steven Lubet As reported by Adam Liptak in the New York Times (June 9, 2006), a federal judge in Florida has ordered two lawyers to “convene at a neutral site” and “engage in one (1) game of rock, paper, scissors” to settle a trivial dispute about the site for taking a deposition. Calling it […]
Questions and Answers About the Marriage Protection Amendment By William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Darren R. Spedale Last week, the Senate debated the Marriage Protection Amendment (MPA), which failed to achieve the two-thirds vote needed to amend the U.S. Constitution. If ratified, the MPA would have added language to the Constitution defining marriage as “the union of a man and a woman” and […]
Johnson & Boswell in Scotland, Part 6 Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Thursday, 2 September Johnson: Edinburgh We now returned to Edinburgh, where I passed some days with men of learning, whose names want no advancement from my commemoration, or with women of elegance, which perhaps disclaims a pedant’s praise. The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to […]
The Oddest English Spellings (Part 3) by Anatoly Liberman If we disregard the use of runes, we may say that literacy came to Europe with Christianity. Two exceptions are Greece and Italy. England, like its neighbors, adopted the Roman script, but the sounds of the Germanic languages (and English belongs to the Germanic group of the Indo-European family) were in many […]
The GMA Darren Spedale and William Eskridge have been all over the media this week responding to the renewed push by President Bush and Senate Republicans for a Gay Marriage Amendment. Time.com blogger, Andrew Sullivan, made this quote from their new book (via an excerpt at the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy website) his ‘quote of […]
The Federal Judiciary Raise By Steven Lubet The issue of judicial pay is back in the news, prompted by the recent resignation of federal appellate judge Michael Luttig, who left the bench to take a position as general counsel of Boeing. A very highly regarded jurist (he was widely thought to have been on the short list for the […]
Johnson & Boswell in Scotland, Part 5 Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Wednesday, 1 September Boswell: Thursday, 2 September. I had slept ill. Mr Johnson’s anger had affected me much. I considered that, without any bad intention, I might suddenly forfeit his friendship. I was impatient to see him this morning. I told him how uneasy he had made me by […]
Kissinger’s ‘decent interval’; a model for Iraq? By Jussi M. Hanhimäki American media has been exercised in the last week over “newly released” documents from Henry Kissinger’s archives that reveal his position on Vietnam. Specifically, reports have appeared on NBC news and on the pages of The New York Times about how Henry Kissinger told Chinese Premier Zhou En-lai in 1972 that […]
May 2006 (27))
Monthly Gleanings, May 2006 by Anatoly Liberman Alex, a fifth-grader and so far the youngest reader of this blog, wants to know how to start investigating one’s family name. This question interests many people who study their genealogy. (Pay attention to the spelling: in American English, genealogy rhymes with geology, biology, and philology, but its root is Latin genea […]
Johnson & Boswell in Scotland, Part 4 Continued from last week’s post: Boswell: Monday, 30 August 1773 Boswell: Wednesday, 1 September We came to a rich green valley, comparatively speaking, and stopped at Auchnashiel, a kind of rural village, a number of cottages being built together, as we saw all along in the Highlands. We passed many many miles today without seeing […]
Lawyers’ Poker: blogs–and “blawg”–join the table… Allen Barra, author most recently of a biography of Paul “Bear” Bryant, interviewed Steven Lubet for the American Heritage blog. In the interview, Lubet discusses some of the great poker players, writers, and trial lawyers that influenced the lessons in his book. Michael Webster continues his discussion of Lawyers’ Poker with a positive review on […]
Time and Tide Wait for a Good Etymologist by Anatoly Liberman In dealing with a category like time, we have every reason to suppose that in the past the word for it designated something more concrete, for instance, a measurable interval or an observable event. What interval, what event? Scholars facing such questions look for words whose meaning is similar to the one […]
Slow playing at cards and in the courtroom By Steven Lubet I recently got an email from Michael Webster, a commercial litigator in Toronto, who kindly said that he found my “trial examples interesting and useful examples of trial advocacy.” Then he continued: However, I disagree with the analogy between slow playing at poker and skillful advocacy. Slow play at poker is generally […]
6 Myths about U.S.-Saudi Relations By Rachel Bronson The United States and Saudi Arabia form one of the world’s most misunderstood partnerships. The Saudis are a longtime oil supplier for the U.S. economy but on 9/11 their kingdom accounted for 15 of the 19 hijackers. The Bush family and the House of Saud are close yet Secretary of State Condoleezza […]
What the Doctors Didn’t Say… by Jerry Menikoff The recent front-page story told of a tantalizing possibility: although almost all women with breast cancer are now advised to get treated with chemotherapy, in the future more than two-thirds of them may be able to avoid that treatment. However, as the New York Times reported, the evidence supporting this change is […]
Johnson & Boswell in Scotland, Part 3 Continued from last week’s post: Johnson: ‘Loch Ness’ Boswell: Monday, 30 August 1773 This day we were to begin our equitation, as I said, for I would needs make a word too. We might have taken a chaise to Fort Augustus. But we could not find horses after Inverness, so we resolved to begin here […]
Catching Up A whirlwind week of prepping is over and BEA is finally here! So, we’re taking a blogging mini-break and just providing some links today. Here is the Washington Post’s BEA preview and and the AP’s which focusses on the politics of publishing’s schmoozefest. Here is today’s NYTimes review of The Da Vinci Code, which devotes […]
Playing Fast and Loose with Meaning in the History of Words by Anatoly Liberman Language changes because so many people speak it and because even today it is impossible to control the norm. A community of English professors left on a desert island and allowed to breed would probably have preserved their sounds, forms, and vocabulary intact for a million years (if this group survived the […]
The Truth about Mary Magdalene by Bart Ehrman The Da Vinci Code is a murder mystery set in modern times, but its intrigue for many people has been its historical claims about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. I won’t summarize the entire plot here, as it is familiar to nearly everyone—there are only six people in the English-speaking world who have […]
Remembering Stanley Kunitz Stanley Kunitz was the oldest living poet included in The Oxford Book of American Poetry. [He is also, sadly, the second poet to have passed since the book appeared. Barbara Guest died earlier this year.] We will miss him, but the knowledge of a long life lived well is a strong consolation. Stanley’s poetry has […]
STANLEY KUNITZ (1905– 2006) Stanley Kunitz was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. During World War II he served in the Air Transport Command of the U.S. Army. He taught for many years at Columbia University, where his students revered him. As judge of the Yale Younger Poets series he chose the first books of Robert Hass […]
Darwin’s Meme by Susan Blackmore Charles Darwin’s basic insight was so simple and yet so powerful that it has been called “the best idea anybody ever had” – and I agree. Most people are familiar with the idea of evolution by natural selection as applied in biology, but part of the power of Darwin’s wonderful idea is […]
Johnson & Boswell in Scotland Continued from last week’s post: Johnson: ‘Inverness’ Johnson: ‘Loch Ness’ Near the way, by the water side, we espied a cottage. This was the first Highland hut that I had seen; and as our business was with life and manners, we were willing to visit it. To enter a habitation without leave seems to be […]
Forgotten Lessons from America’s First Gun Violence Crisis by Saul Cornell Mayor Bloomberg’s recent summit on gun violence has revived an issue that many pundits and political soothsayers have written off as moribund. Few issues in American public life are more controversial than guns. Yet, even among hot button issues in American public life there is something perverse about the dynamics of the […]
Cuckoo Birds in Gawky Park, Or, Our Etymological Ailing Tooth by Anatoly Liberman Many years ago, I participated in a meeting of Russian and British students in a town that was then called Leningrad. In the Soviet Union, everything, from theaters and community centers to parks and streets, was named after Gorky. At a certain moment, one of the British students began to giggle. When […]
Quadagno at the Democratic Senators Issues Conference Last month, Jill Quadagno was invited to present her take on the US healthcare system, specifically addressing the question ‘why do so many Americans not have healthcare?’, to a group of leading Democratic senators. Prof. Quadagno has graciously allowed us to publish the text of her presentation below. A few years ago my friend Connie’s […]
Misreading the Map of Iraq by Harm de Blij It is noteworthy that the troubling results of the National Geographic Society’s survey of geographic literacy in America were reported in the media during the same week Joseph Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, an unannounced candidate for the presidency and a former staffer of the New York Times, respectively, published their […]
Questions for Jonathan Petropoulos In his 2000 book, Faustian Bargain: The Art World in Nazi Germany, which was named one of the 25 Books to Remember by the New York Public Library, Jonathan Petropoulos laid bare the motives of the thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women who went to work for Hitler “repatriating” to Nazi Germany artwork from across […]
Serial Traveling: Johnson & Boswell in Scotland Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); James Boswell, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1773; ed. F. A. Pottle, 1961) A young and enthusiastic James Boswell befriended Samuel Johnson (1709-84), England’s most famous man of letters, in London in 1763. Soon Boswell was urging […]
Geographic illiteracy Based on the results of a survey released this week by the National Geographic Society, young people in the United States continue to struggle with geography and demonstrate a lack of understanding about our world. The consequences of this deficiency in education are serious when you consider the rising level of interconnectivity between nations and […]
The Oddest English Spellings, Or, A Lasting Tribute to Diversity, Part 2 by Anatoly Liberman The terms King’s English ~ Queen’s English are familiar to many. They presuppose that the monarch speaks in a way to be admired and emulated. Language obeys the laws of biology (to the extent that it depends on the production of sounds) and of society (since it is a means of communication) […]
Calculating “Pot Odds” in the Anna Nicole Smith Case by Steven Lubet After more than 10 years of litigation, and countless jokes by late night comics, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Anna Nicole Smith in her litigation over the estate of her late husband, J. Howard Marshall. As everyone knows, Marshall, at the age of 89, married then 26 […]
This revolutionary century by Gary Hart In my most recent book published by Oxford University Press, The Shield and the Cloak : The Security of the Commons, I endeavored to make two points: first, that security in the 21st century would be a much more encompassing concept than in the 20th century, Cold War years; and second, that […]
America’s Favorite Poem And the winner of the poetry contest is… “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot! Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” came in second. David Lehman, editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry, will be on NPR’s Morning Edition tomorrow to discuss the book and, presumably, the contest.
Kerry Emanuel Time Magazine chose Kerry Emanuel for the “Time 100: People Who Shape Our World” feature that hits newsstands today. Emanuel will surely take issue with being called “the man who saw Katrina coming,” but such conclusions are inevitable for the man who published a paper in Nature last summer just before Katrina pointing to the […]
April 2006 (22))
Angels & Demons: History vs. Dan Brown’s other thriller by John-Peter Pham Spurred on no doubt by The Da Vinci Code hoopla, Dan Brown’s fans continue to push his less intricately crafted Angels & Demons to the top of the bestseller lists. A “prequel” to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons chronicles Harvard “symbologist” Robert Langdon’s first foray into the world of the […]
DaVinci Code – the errors With the world-wide release of The DaVinci Code movie fast approaching, as a service to our readers, we post Bart Ehrman’s list of the 10 historical errors contained in the book. 1. Jesus’ life was decidedly not “recorded by thousands of followers across the land.” He didn’t even have thousands of followers, let alone literate […]
Monthly Gleanings by Anatoly Liberman Martin Chuzzlewit spent some time in America and, following the lead of his creator, Charles Dickens, formed a most unfavorable impression of the country. Soon after his arrival, he met the editors of the Watertoast Gazette, who were sure that Queen Victoria “[would] shake in her royal shoes” when she opened the […]
‘Gospel of Judas’ cagematch The discovery of the Gospel of Judas has created quite a stir at OUP. Bart Ehrman, whose book on Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene was just released, wrote significant sections for both of the best-selling books (1, 2) brought out by National Geographic on the subject. Now, Philip Jenkins has written an essay at Beliefnet […]
McKinney’s short stack by Steven Lubet Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D. Ga.) might not be your idea of a model legislator, but she may have the makings of a poker player. She is obviously willing to try a high-stakes bluff. Rather than immediately apologize for hitting a Capitol Police security officer, McKinney launched a caustic campaign to discredit the […]
The DaVinci Code has loaded At least that’s what Sony’s movie website says once you click through to it. Judging from the proliferation of websites and other promotional vehicles saturating the internet and television with DaVinciana, its probably more accurate to say that Sony is loaded, or will be by the time the cash registers stop ringing. Bookstores are cashing […]
Awards for Exposing Government Secrets by Don Ritchie It is richly ironic that during the same week the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting was awarded to Susan Schmidt, James V. Grimaldi, and R. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post, for their coverage of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, news reports also revealed that the FBI has been seeking to comb […]
Roger Gottlieb interview at American Prospect Roger Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future, was interviewed by The American Prospect this week. Gottlieb argues that in recent years religious groups have begun to recognize the moral obbligation of preserving God’s creation and taken up a host of environmental causes. How do you respond (or how would […]
The Importance of History by David Brion Davis I’m concerned with the erosion of interest in history — the view expressed by even some leading teachers and intellectuals that we should “let bygones be bygones,” “free” ourselves from the boring and oppressive past, and concentrate on a fresh and better future. I’m passionately committed to the cause that distinguishes […]
Weathering the Weather in Word History By Anatoly Liberman The shape of the word weather has changed little since it was first attested in the year 795. In Old English, it had d in place of th; the rest, if we ignore its present day spelling with ea, is the same. But its range of application has narrowed down to “condition of the atmosphere,” while at that time it also meant “air; sky; breeze; storm.”
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor […]
More on the Pulitzer Updating yesterday’s announcement that David Oshinsky won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in history for Polio: An American Story, here is today’s NYTimes piece on the “Letters, Drama and Music” winners: HISTORY: ‘Polio: An American Story,’ by David M. Oshinsky Mr. Oshinsky, 61, is George Littlefield professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. […]
Oshinsky wins the Pulitzer The Pulitzer Prizes for 2006 were just announced and Oxford has won its second straight Letters and Drama Prize for History! Congratulations to this year’s winner, David Oshinsky, author of Polio: An American Story!
To Elsie by William Carlos Williams The pure products of America go crazy– mountain folk from Kentucky or the ribbed north end of Jersey with its isolate lakes and valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves old names and promiscuity between devil-may-care men who have taken to railroading out of sheer lust of adventure– and young slatterns, bathed in filth […]
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 6 This Friday on Serial Blogging, we’re proud to present the finale of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Erin McKean, lexicographer and blogger It really wasn’t cool to keep this from you. Sorry! Erin McKean, Editor-in-Chief of Oxford’s American Dictionary program and one of our favorite people, is blogging this week at Powells.com. Read Erin’s posts HERE! P.S. – Powell’s is this blog’s newest partner – check out the new 7.5% discount for OUP Blog readers! We promise […]
Questions for Eviatar Zerubavel Eviatar Zerubavel has been writing for years about the hidden, and often unquestioned, patterns in everyday life, like the seven day week and collective memory. In his latest book Elephant in the Room: The Social Organization of Silence and Denial he tackles the “conspiracies of silence” that lead to “open secrets” among families, companies and […]
Unsung Heroes of Etymology By Anatoly Liberman Those who look up the origin of a word in a dictionary are rarely interested in the sources of the information they find there. Nor do they realize how debatable most of this information is. Yet serious research stands behind even the controversial statements in a modern etymological dictionary.
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 5 This week in Serial Blogging – part five of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
The Oddest English Spellings, Or, the Unhealing Wounds of Tradition (Part 1) by Anatoly Liberman Once out of school, we stop noticing the vagaries of English spelling and resign ourselves to the fact that rite, right, Wright (or wright in playwright), and write are homophones without being homographs. In most cases such words sounded different in the past, then changed their pronunciation, but retained their spelling. Such […]
What is “American” in American art? Thoughts on the Whitney Biennial by Barbara Novak The Whitney Biennial has been notably challenged lately for including European artists in a show at a Museum of American Art. But such critiques misunderstand the nature of the question “What is American in American Art?” “American” is not a nationally distilled “ingredient” injected into our art by virtue of birth or […]
Song of Myself, I, II, VI & LI by Walt Whitman I I Celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, […]
March 2006 (21))
Jeffery Deaver’s “Copycat” – Part 4 This week in Serial Blogging – part four of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Monthly Etymology Gleanings for March 2006 By Anatoly Liberman This blog column has existed for a month. It was launched with the idea that it would attract questions and comments. If this happens, at the end of each month the rubric “Monthly Gleanings” will appear. Although in March I have not been swamped with the mail, there is enough for a full post. Also, one question was asked privately, but in connection with the blog, so that I think I may answer it here.
Brown vs. Baigent Bart Ehrman weighed in today on the ‘Da Vinci Code lawsuit’ brought by Holy Blood, Holy Grail author Michael Baigent. You know, the brou-ha-ha that has been grabbing headlines for the last few weeks. Ehrman proposes it is much ado about nothing. From the Reuters article: [Ehrman] dismisses the more controversial theories put forward by […]
Why Dubai’s Geography Matters By Harm de Blij The debate over the prospective takeover of several U.S. port operations by a company based on the Arabian Peninsula is over. Both sides marshaled powerful arguments. Proponents favored rewarding a progressive, modernizing Arab ally in the struggle against terrorism. Opponents cited dangers of infiltration and security risks. The opponents prevailed. President […]
A Democratic Agenda As The New York Times reported yesterday, Jacob Hacker presented his view that middle-class families face “a harsh new world of economic insecurity” to former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards last week. Edwards, who did pretty well in the 2004 race by talking about “two Americas,” one for the rich and one for the […]
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 3 This week in Serial Blogging – part three of Jeffery Deaver‘s “Copycat,” which was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read from the beginning of the story by clicking here!
Pre-Word History, Or, Does the Buck Stop Here? by Anatoly Liberman Modern English is swamped with words borrowed from other languages. One does not have to be a specialist to notice the presence of the Romance element in it or to guess that samovar has come from Russian and samurai, from Japanese. It is the details that, as usual, pose problems. Not only […]
Ew-La-La Witold Rybczynski, the architecture columnist at Slate.com and Oxford author, noted in a column yesterday a disturbing trend towards “conspicuous architecture” in very exclusive zip codes. On a recent trip to Palm Beach, FL, Rybczynski was shocked to find its posh beachfront filled with “some of the least graceful buildings [he’d] seen in a long […]
Watchin’ the Bird by Brian Priestley It was a strange experience, watching a recent television documentary on Charlie Parker and the music I immersed myself in for nearly two years. Originally, I hoped my book would be finished in time for the 50th anniversary last year of its subject’s premature death. Instead, the U.S. release of my Chasin’ […]
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 2 In our second Serial Blogging post, part two of “Copycat” by famed mystery writer Jeffery Deaver. The story was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. Read last week’s installment by clicking here!
Barrow wins 2006 Templeton Prize John D. Barrow, a long-time Oxford author, has won the prestigious Templeton Prize, one of the world’s best known religious prizes. The prize recognizes Barrow’s distinguised career as a cosmologist at Cambridge and his prolific writings on time, space, the universe and the limits of science and human understanding. In announcing the award, the Templeton […]
Words and Things, Or, Not Sparing the Rod by Anatoly Liberman Etymology has a place in the world because people want to know why a certain combination of sounds carries the meaning accepted by their community but, as a rule, have no clue to the answer. However, the degree of opacity differs from word to word. Compounds like newspaper and daredevil are more […]
Congressional Lobbying Scandals: A Top Ten List As calls for “lobbying reform” resound through the halls of Congress this spring, we do well to remember this piece of wisdom from Ecclesiastes: there is nothing new under the sun. Influence peddling, lobbying scandals, and the reporters and newspapers that expose them, have been a part of American political life since the beginning. We […]
Mencken is an LATimes Book Prize Finalist Mencken: The American Iconoclast by Marion Rodgers is a Finalist for The 2005 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography! The lists of finalists was announced on Friday and the awards will be presented at a ceremony on April 28. We think there is a strong chance that Mencken will be the Crash of this […]
Serial Blogging: “Copycat” – Part 1 OUP Blog does fiction – Classic stories in serialized form In our inaugural Serial Blogging posts, we present a story by famed mystery writer, Jeffery Deaver, whose 1997 novel The Bone Collector was made into a movie starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. Our story, “Copycat,” was first published in A New Omnibus of Crime. […]
Ornstein gets “truthy” on The Colbert Report Norman Ornstein dropped in on The Colbert Report last night for a dose of Steven Colbert’s unorthodox interviewing style. Ornstein, who is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of the forthcoming book on Congress, The Broken Branch, withstood Colbert’s grilling rather well, barely flinching when Colbert determined that Ornstein is actually "a […]
Words as a Window to the Past by Anatoly Liberman The entries in the great Oxford English Dictionary (OED) reveal, although, naturally, in broad outline, the documented history of thousands of words. Some of them surfaced in texts more than a millennium ago, others emerged in Chaucer’s works and later, and still others were added to the vocabulary of English within the […]
Lincoln vs. George W. Bush by Richard Striner How will historians eventually rate our incumbent president as a wartime commander? A comparison of George W. Bush and the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, is instructive. Putting aside the issue of civil liberties in wartime —— an issue that people of good will could debate almost endlessly —— Lincoln was a […]
Poet’s Work Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade I learned to sit at desk and condense No layoff from this condensery –Lorine Niedecker, 1964 From the forthcoming Oxford Book of American Poetry.
“Whatever” and contingency On Tuesday on his blog Whatever, John Scalzi announced the arrival of the NOAD and The American Writer’s Thesaurus in his mailbox. In addition to giving the customary compliments to Erin McKean, Editor of Oxford’s US Dictionary program, Scalzi was surprised to find both books “delightful” and “fun to read.” He then turns to the […]
Etymology and the Outside World There was a time when historical linguistics was one of the most prestigious disciplines in the humanities. At school, Latin and Classical Greek were shoved down young boys’ unwilling throats, and it seemed natural to look at languages with the eyes of a historian. Early in the 19th century, regular sound correspondences between languages were […]
February 2006 (19))
Do Presidents Matter? by Philip Jenkins Presidents are the curse of American history. Or to be more precise, our interpretation of American history is bedeviled by the excessive focus on the role of the president, his character and personality. Not long ago, PBS’s “American Experience” repeated its major series on Ronald Reagan, which used a biography of Reagan as a means […]
Octavia Butler Butler, Octavia (b. 22 June 1947 – d. 24 February 2006), science-fiction author. Butler was one of the most thoughtful and imaginative authors of her time. One of the few black writers in the science-fiction field, she took full advantage of the speculative freedom that the genre allows writers to explore her interest in sociology, […]
African American Lives Whoopi Goldberg Goldberg, Whoopi (13 Nov. 1955 –), actress and comedian, was born Caryn Elaine Johnson in New York City, the second of two children of Emma Harris, a sometime teacher and nurse, and Robert Johnson, who left the family when Caryn was a toddler. Caryn attended St. Columbia School, a parochial school located several blocks from […]
Black rat, roasted After our brief Q&A session with Lizzie Collingham last week, I wanted to provide another taste of the delicious and fascinating recipes woven into her new book, Curry. Having already given out Collingham’s favorite recipe from the book, green coriander chutney, I’m strangely delighted to post the much more esoteric dish that she mentioned last […]
Turning Patients into Consumers: The Trickle-Up Economics of HSAs by Jill Quadagno Last year 46 million Americans were uninsured and health care costs continued their inexorable upward climb. These two problems, rising costs and increasing numbers of uninsured people, have bedeviled every president since Nixon, each of whom has sought solutions by regulating health care providers and insurance companies. In his State of the […]
Washington’s Crossing An excerpt for President’s Day weekend Introduction: The Painting “WASHINGTON’S CROSSING!” the stranger said with a bright smile of recognition. Then a dark frown passed across his face. “Was it like the painting?” he said. “Did it really happen that way?” The image that he had in mind is one of the folk-memories that most Americans share. It represents an event that happened on […]
African American Lives Ben Carson Carson, Ben (18 Sept. 1951 –), pediatric neurosurgeon, was born Benjamin Solomon Carson in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Robert Carson, a minister of a small Seventh-Day Adventist church, and Sonya Carson. His mother had attended school only up to the third grade and married at the age of thirteen; she was fifteen years younger […]
The Undercover Economist dispenses love advice This week, Tim Harford turned his eye towards various forms of love – and arrives, or nearly so, at some highly unconventional conclusions. Namely, getting married may or may not make you a happier person, but if you do decide to take the plunge, you could help make the rest of us happier by taking […]
Slavery: A Dehumanizing Institution By Nell Irvin Painter Slaves retained their humanity thanks to the support of families and religion, which helped them resist oppression. Nonetheless, slavery was a dehumanizing institution. Assaults on the bodies and minds of the enslaved exposed them to trauma that was both physical and psychological.
Five Questions for Lizzie Collingham Author of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors What advice would you give to all of those ‘foodies’ out there searching for an authentic Indian meal? Don’t worry about the authenticity of the food. There is no such thing as an authentic Indian dish. The stories behind Indian dishes are far more fascinating and almost always reveal that the dish is an amalgamation […]
African American Lives Mae Jemison Jemison, Mae (17 Oct. 1956 –), astronaut and physician, was born Mae Carol Jemison in Decatur, Alabama, the daughter of Charlie Jemison, a carpenter and roofer, and Dorothy Jemison, a teacher whose maiden name is unknown. After living the first three and a half years of her life in Alabama near the Marshall Space Flight […]
The Spirit of 1976 by Philip Jenkins For observers of Washington politics who remember the 1970s, the sense of déjà vu becomes stronger daily. Liberals freely compare the Iraq conflict with the latter stages of the Vietnam War, while scandals involving corruption and illegal leaks threaten the highest ranks of the Republican Party. Domestic controversies focus on intelligence abuses […]
Freedom Riders Book Tour, 2006 Professor Raymond Arsenault launched his book tour for Freedom Riders last evening at Hue-Man Bookstore in Harlem. For the second leg tonight, beginning at 7:30 PM, Arsenault will be downtown at Barnes & Noble (6th Ave. & 8th St.). In addition to hearing Arsenault tell the Freedom Rides story, this might be a perfect opportunity […]
Live Chat with Shlomo Ben-Ami Hello everyone – I am very happy to be here today and to answer your questions, so, let’s get started! At a recent Harvard-sponsored debate between Noam Chomsky and Alan Dershowitz, a major point of contention emerged concerning the nature of the concessions offered by Israel to Arafat. Dershowitz held up a map, claiming the […]
Live Chat with Shlomo Ben-Ami Monday, Feb. 6, 3:30 PM EST Shlomo Ben-Ami, the former Foreign Minister of Israel and author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace was in our office on Monday and he sat down with OUP Blog to take your questions on his book, which covers the Arab-Israeli conflict from its roots to the present day, including his eyewitness account of the […]
African American Lives Quincy Jones Jones, Quincy (14 Mar. 1933 –), jazz musician, composer, and record, television, and film producer, was born Quincy Delight Jones Jr. on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, the son of Sarah (maiden name unknown) and Quincy Jones Sr., a carpenter who worked for a black gangster ring that ran the Chicago ghetto. When Quincy […]
Celebrating Benjamin Franklin by Ed Gaustad This year of 2006 marks the tercentenary of Benjamin Franklin’s birth in Boston (January 17, 1706). And many groups have deemed this occasion as worthy of some notice or even celebration. The city of Philadelphia, for example, is giving major attention to Franklin, notably in its newly erected National Constitution Center, and […]
Green coriander chutney A recipe from Curry by Lizzie Collingham This is a fresh chutney that should be made just before it is required. It is difficult to give precise amounts for the ingredients in this sort of dish. It is best to keep tasting it and adjust the flavor as you make it. It tastes good with idlis (you can buy packet mixes from […]
Hamas, Algeria and the March of Democracy by H. J. de Blij In the current dilemma arising from the Hamas election victory, it may be useful to recall a French experience. Following the war of independence fought by Algerian Arabs against their French colonial rulers, France acknowledged Algeria’s independence in July 1962, leaving in charge a government of which Paris approved. That […]
January 2006 (25))
Coretta Scott King Coretta Scott King (27 Apr. 1927–30 January 2006) was born in Heiberger, near Marion, Alabama, the second of three children of Obadiah Scott and Bernice McMurry, who farmed their own land. Although Coretta and her siblings worked in the garden and fields, hoeing and picking cotton, the Scotts were relatively well off. Her father was […]
Health Savings Accounts & the State of the Union by Jill Quadagno Last year nearly a million more people were uninsured compared to the year before. The employer-based system that most people of working age have relied on since the 1950s is unraveling at the seams. Each year for more than a decade the percentage of employers offering health benefits has declined. The only […]
Wendy Wasserstein Oxford University Press mourns the passing of Wendy Wasserstein. LINK to her obituary in The New York Times.
The War That Made America: A Review Colin G. Calloway, author of Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of America reviews the PBS documentary “The War That Made America”: Looking back, it often seems difficult for modern-day Americans to see beyond the Revolution and understand the colonial era as much more than just a prelude to that nation-forming event. Until […]
The Palestinian Elections: 5 Questions for Shlomo Ben-Ami Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Foreign Minister of Israel and has been a key participant in many Arab-Israeli peace conferences, most notably the Camp David Summit in 2000. President Clinton says that his new book, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy, “should be read by everyone who wants a just and lasting […]
“Oh, my God, they’re going to burn us up!” An excerpt from Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Raymond Arsenault. Arsenault will soon be on tour, roughly following the route of the original Freedom Rides. Click here for a map of the Rides/his tour. On May 14, 1961, the two groups of Freedom Riders left Atlanta an hour apart. The […]
Slate picks up The Undercover Economist! Slate.com readers got a taste on Saturday of what Financial Times readers have been enjoying for a long time now. Slate picked up the latest installment of Tim Harford’s “The Undercover Economist” column from the FT. Which economic mystery of daily life does Harfod solve this week? “The Mystery of the Rude Waiter: Why my […]
Lobbying Reform Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann opined in the New York Times yesterday that Congressional Republicans should go beyond their current proposals for lobbying reform and adopt rules changes, like 15 minute time limits on all votes and credible ethics oversight, that will ensure “a return to the regular order and to a reasonable deliberative […]
Pride by Michael Eric Dyson “A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the […]
Russia and A New Dawn for Nuclear Power by Harm de Blij Since New Year’s Day, a troubling series of events has caused Europe to wonder just what kind of neighbor Russia plans to be. By virtue of a network of pipelines leading from Russian reserves to European consumers, Europe has become strongly dependent on Russian natural gas, now accounting for nearly one-quarter […]
Rebuilding Sudan Charlayne Hunter-Gault reported yesterday on a group of American women who have traveled to Southern Sudan to help build a girl’s school there. Reporting for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Hunter-Gault follows the Americans, who call their group My Sister’s Keeper, to the village of Akon in the predominantly Christian, southern part of Sudan. One of […]
Resolute We Are By Micki McGee Resolute we are, usually from January 1st, until just about now, right around Martin Luther King Day. Perhaps it is no coincidence that our individual, personal resolve founders just as we’re celebrating a holiday commemorating one of America’s great heroes—a man who was committed to combating the systemic forces at the heart of so many individual troubles.
Sharon’s legacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Questions for Shlomo Ben-Ami What are the implications of Ariel Sharon’s stroke for the Israeli government? It is clear that, even if he survives, Sharon is out of the political game. Constitutionally, there is going to be no problem. The transition to a new leader/leadership will be smooth. Israel is a solid democracy. What does the end of Sharon’s […]
Get on the Bus: Freedom Riders Ray Arsenault, the author of Freedom Riders spoke with Terry Gross on Fresh Air today. Arsenault was preceded on the show by the rebroadcast of a segment with James Farmer who was a co-founder of CORE, the Congress on Racial Equality. Arsenault’s segment ends with the CORE chorus singing a delightful version of “Hit the […]
The politics of baseball, the politics of Cuba Roberto González Echevarría, the author of The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball wrote in the NYTimes editorial page yesterday on the US refusal to allow the Cuban national team to travel to the US for the World Baseball Classic in March. Echevarría supports the ban and says that protesting it is akin […]
$2 trillion, with a “t” According to Joseph Stiglitz, the Iraq War will cost the U.S. $2 trillion, 10 times more than the original estimate of $200 billion given before the war started. Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, an economist from Harvard, whose joint paper “The Economic Costs of the Iraq War” was released last week, arrive at the larger figure […]
Hurricanes and lemmings The New York Times carried a Q&A entitled “Conversation with Kerry Emanuel” yesterday. The lead was Emanuel’s apparent shift on the connection between warmer oceans and the intensity of hurricane winds. Still, Emanuel says “not so fast” to those who see Katrina as evidence of global warming. But conservatives should take note that America’s inability […]
Higher Education in America Over most of the first half of the twentieth century, America’s public colleges and universities functioned quite autonomously. They were mostly small, enrolling less than ten percent of the nation’s eighteen to twenty-one year olds, and, for the most part, financially self-sufficient. None of the public institutions were competitive with the best international universities. Highered_purdue_univ_1900_photo_1 The barren setting in this picture of the Purdue University campus in 1900 reflects the modest beginnings of the public institutions. Now, Purdue is an internationally renowned institution, especially for scientific research. Highered_tuskeegee_mattressmaking_photo_ Black students seeking higher education during this period were most likely to find it in a segregated institution. Among the best of the segregated institutions was Tuskegee where these young women learned mattress making early in the twentieth century as part of their “higher education.”
Solving Starbucks and Fat Politics Some items of note from the weekend… Tim Harford, aka The Undercover Economist, gave Slate.com readers a peek behind the Starbucks curtain on Friday. Careful OUP Blog readers may recognize Harford’s economizing tip (we gave you a link to it back in November): Ask for a “short” at the counter and you’ll save money. Harford […]
5 Myths about Brand Names by Steve Rivkin A good brand name is golden. As a Kraft Foods executive says, “Kraft has thousands of trademarks and they are among our most treasured assets. To the outside world, they represent who we are and what we do.” But over the years, lots of false notions and fuzzy thinking have crept into […]
The Russia-Ukraine Natural Gas Squabble by Andrew Jack Much hot air has been generated in recent days by the New Year’s dispute between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices. The saga has highlighted, to misquote Winston Churchill, commercial interests wrapped up in economics, and justified by politics. On the surface, the squabble looks ugly and one-sided: the great Russian bear […]
The Year in Geography by Ben Keene Looking back at the last twelve months, the publisher’s mind reels trying to keep up with changes to borders, placenames, and shifting populations. Inspired by the multitude of year-end round ups, I decided to collect some of the most noteworthy geographical developments in a short—but incomplete—list of my own. Just to emphasize […]
Save the Mencken House! by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers Tracing the footsteps of another person becomes, in many ways, a treasure hunt: an effort to recreate, by selection, the texture of a life. When I set out to write Mencken: The American Iconoclast, I moved back to Baltimore to be in the city that Mencken loved, and walk the streets […]
Naming: The Six Deadly Sins by Steve Rivkin Naming something may be the most universal aspect of business. Whether it’s a business or a product or a service, you’ve got to call the baby something. Here are the six deadly sins of naming that every company should avoid at all costs. 1. Thou shalt not commit me-tooism. Ameriprise, Ameriquest, Americast, […]
December 2005 (21))
The Fall of Rome – an author dialogue By Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather As promised, here is part 2 of the dialogue between Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather, colleagues at Oxford University and the authors of two recent books on the collapse of the Roman Empire; ‘The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization’ and ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians’, respectively. Today they discuss the consequences of ‘the fall’ on western Europe and why they both decided to write about the fall of Rome at the same time.
Newton – “The greatest alchemist of them all” by Gale E. Christianson In the weeks following Isaac Newton’s death, in March of 1727, Dr. Thomas Pellet, a member of the Royal Society, was contracted by Newton’s heirs to inventory the voluminous papers left behind by the great man. Nothwithstanding his respected credentials, the good doctor was in well over his head. Across sheaf […]
The Fall of Rome – an author dialogue By Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather Today we present a dialogue between Bryan Ward-Perkins and Peter Heather. Ward-Perkins and Heather are colleagues at Oxford University and the authors of ‘The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization’ and ‘The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians’, respectively. Both books were published this fall and offer new explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire.
Inside Putin’s Russia by Andrew Jack Now Moscow is debating another dangerous proposal: a law that would regulate the operations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and require them to register with the government. This proposal threatens to impede groups fighting for human rights, democracy and to foster the development of a stronger civil society in Russia. Foreign NGOs are particularly under threat. The first rule for Russia watchers is to be suspicious of first drafts of parliamentary laws. These proposals may be unsolicited “initiatives from below” put forth by politicians eager to prove their loyalty to the Kremlin, even if the result may be embarrassing for their masters. At other times, they are clearly orchestrated “from above” to test the waters for change – often in an anti-democratic direction.
Schooling America: Achievement After World War II, the United States felt secure as a world power and despite the vitriolic critics of the 1950s who complained that “Johnny can’t read,” the pressure upon educators was to provide special programs for special needs. The ordinary student was largely ignored and left to the temptations of tv, adolescent culture, and, occasionally, sports. Academic study did not occupy much of their energy. The creation of a US Department of Education in 1979 was highly controversial. “Too much federal control, and we don’t need it,” Republicans claimed. However, the newly-elected Republican president, Ronald Reagan, did have to appoint a secretary and his appointee, Terrel Bell, attempting to save his department and his own job, asked his Utah neighbor, David Gardner, to chair a commission to look at the state of American education. Most improbably, this group’s 1983 report, A Nation at Risk, startled the country. Exposing the academic deficiencies of American youth, the report forced the country to pay attention to its schools. Few federal reports have had such a profound effect on the general population.
Reviews and “Best of” lists Mencken: The American Iconoclast Reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle who called it “memorable and engaging”. Picked for the “Top Biographies” list compiled by The Denver Post. Also on that list, Cushing: A Life in Surgery Stephen Goddard at Historywire.com says that Mencken “may become the definitive work on the life of this luminous personality” […]
Erin McKean on the American Writer’s Thesaurus William Safire calls The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus his “favorite new word-finder” and lists it as one of his “books on language” gift books for 2005. He goes on to say it is “chockablock with useful advice: “Novel manages to pack into five positive letters that ‘unusual,’ ‘unfamiliar,’ ‘unconventional,’ ‘untested,’ ‘untried,’ ‘unknown’ and ‘unorthodox’ have […]
The Undercover Economist goes off It was another big week for The Undercover Economist LINK and Tim Harford. The Washington Times began the week calling UE a “fetching” book, and the week ended with an equally flattering review by Roger Lowenstein in his NYTimes Business column, “Off the Shelf,” on Sunday. In between, Harford was busy writing his own editorials. […]
Restless Giant on Slate.com’s Best Books of 2005 list Slate.com picked Restless Giant by James Patterson for its Best Books of 2005 list today. David Greenberg, who writes Slate’s “History Lesson” column, made the pick – and plugged Patterson’s previous “tour de force” book, Grand Expectations along the way. Of note: Restless Giant seems to be the only history title to make the cut. […]
Great Civil War Books: An Author’s Reading List by Bruce Levine When this blog’s editor invited me to name the ten best books on the Civil War, I blanched and took a pass. There are far too many really fine ones, and too many that I still haven’t read, for me to presume to make up that kind of list. But I do […]
Schooling America: Access When the US Supreme Court decided in Brown v. Board of Education that segregation by race in public schools violated the US Constitution, the response from segregated school systems was not immediate. Rather, overcrowding was the issue most on the minds of the parents of the baby boomers. The solution to the challenges posed by the Brown decision was “Access.’’ If the mother who wanted special attention could not get that, then she wanted a special program, preferably one for her child who undoubtedly was “gifted and talented.” Such a child had likely been identified by high performance on the intelligence and achievement standardized tests that were sweeping schoolrooms. These were the children who were introduced to the “new math” and other such subjects now being designed for schoolchildren by some of America’s most notable scholars, including those at the University of Illinois, who encouraged children to use “manipulables” while learning mathematics.
Roger Williams & Church-State Separation These days, separation of church and state is in danger of becoming a hollow cliché. And on other days, it has been in danger of being regarded as a communist plot or, more recently, as a secularist one. A look back at the life of the seventeenth-century founder of Rhode Island corrects these misunderstandings as well as gives a passionate freshness to the whole subject. Roger Williams was no communist, no secularist, and above all no huckster of empty slogans. He was a deeply religious believer, in some ways even more religious than the Puritans who ejected him from Massachusetts in 1635. And he advocated religious liberty not because religion mattered so little but because it mattered so much.
“Torture” or “coercive interrogation”? the Bush Administration has through multiple acts of ineptitude made it one of the central topics of debate in the world today. Louise Arbour, a former Canadian judge who is now the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the United Nations on December 7 that “Governments are watering down the definition of torture, claiming that terrorism means established rules do not apply anymore.” The United Nations press release on her remarks further describes her as calling “on all Governments to reaffirm their commitment to the absolute prohibition of torture by condemning torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and prohibiting it in national law.” There can be little doubt that the “government” she is most trying to speak to is our own. And, not at all coincidentally, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is spending most of her time on her current tour of European capitals defending the United States with regard to the issue of “rendition,” the technical term for sending suspected terrorists to other countries for interrogation. The most notorious case involves a German national who was undoubtedly the victim of a mis-identification by which he “was disappeared” to Afghanistan for five months and, he alleges, tortured in a CIA camp there before being abruptly released in the Albanian countryside and told that no one would believe his bizarre story. (The use of such a peculiar verb form of “disappear” is a legacy of Chile and Argentina, where suspected terrorists “were disappeared” by the fascist governments of those two countries in the 1970s and early ‘80s.) For good reason, the German government believed him, and Secretary of State Rice has apparently conceded the American error. She has also repeatedly insisted, as has President Bush, that the United States does not tolerate torture.
All Hail “Podcasting”: More also-rans for the 2005 WOTY by Erin McKean You have probably heard by now (it’s one of the most-linked to items online) that the Oxford American Dictionary has selected “podcast” as the word of the year, or, as we refer to it in the lexicogging biz, the WOTY (pronounced “whoa-tee”, that is, it would be pronounced that way if anyone […]
Location, location “Location’s very important. If you think about, say, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the location of the DMV in Washington, DC, is not important at all. Basically, if you want to deal with the DMV, you have to go where they put their offices. But Starbucks realized they don’t have that kind of power. They […]
The Education Carnival is now up The Education Carnival is now up. Go read some excellent posts on American education. LINK
Schooling America: Adjustment Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Carleton Washburne, embody the Adjustment period from 1920 to 1954. Mitchell with her friend Caroline Pratt founded the City and Country School in New York City as her children entered school in the 1920s. Mitchell had tried unsuccessfully to break the formalism of the New York City schools, and having inherited family money, she decided to establish a school of her own design. Its 1922 program of arts, play, shop, rest, as well as a little reading, is revealed in this chart showing the “Greenwich Village School Program, 1922 -1923.”
Undercover Economist at Tech Central Station The feature article at Tech Central Station today is a wonderful review by Arnold Kling of Tim Harford’s book The Undercover Economist. Kling does not shrink from making the “inevitable comparison with Freakonomics.” Kling gives his “enthusiastic recommendation to The Undercover Economist” over its best-selling rival. (Click HERE to read Kling’s review of Freakonomics). Kling […]
Law & Politics The central metaphor of Richard Pacelle’s review of Advice and Consent by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal in the Law & Politics Book Review is just too entertaining to avoid posting. At the appropriate age (and, truth be told, maybe a little beyond that), I would anxiously anticipate the second or third week of the […]
The Kabbalah I couldn’t help but notice – try as I might to resist – this story from a few weeks ago in which Madonna, aka Esther, claimed that she’d likely get less grief from the media if she had become a Nazi instead of devoting herself to kabbalah. It made me think of this image from […]
Freakonomics is Gone! Marginal Revolution reports that the first signed copy of Freakonomics has been sold for $610. Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist and original owner of the book, has donated the proceeds of the Ebay auction to Levitt’s favorite charity, Smile Train, and Levitt has matched that amount with a donation of his own.
November 2005 (29))
Katrina and Healthcare Reform The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina exposed an array of glaring deficiencies in America’s infrastructure – the slow response from FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security and the fragile state of the New Orleans levees are perhaps the most prominent. But, according to Jill Quadagno, the most imposing challenge brought to light by Katrina […]
Bob Woodward and the Perils of Anonymous Sources In the afterglow of Watergate, Washington journalists’ ever-growing reliance on anonymous sources left both reporters and editors vulnerable to manipulation. As editor of the Post’s Metro section, Bob Woodward failed to challenge a promising young reporter who submitted a sensational article on an eight-year-old drug addict, based entirely on anonymous sources. After Janet Cooke won the Pulitzer Prize for “Jimmy’s World” in 1981, an internal investigation exposed the story as fictitious. The Cooke incident derailed Woodward’s rise within the Post’s management and resulted in his nebulous position as assistant managing editor.
Schooling America: Assimilation Patricia Graham provides historical context to today’s battles over public education.
Rosa Parks and Judicial Review by James C. Cobb I was alternatively puzzled and amused by the torrent of praise showered on Rosa Parks, one of the most celebrated social activists of the twentieth century, by many of the same folks who are quick to condemn other activists who allegedly operate from a lofty court bench rather than a lowly […]
A Traditional American Thanksgiving Andrew Smith, culinary guru and editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, asks “Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?” and investigates the history and culinary traditions of this most American of holidays. With detours to the creation of the turducken and other culinary oddities.
November 22, 1963 “If President John F. Kennedy had lived, he would not have sent combat troops to Vietnam and America’s longest war would never have occurred,” say Kennedy apologists. The assassination, they insist, had killed more than the president; it was responsible for the death of a generation—of more than 58,000 Americans, along with untold numbers of […]
The Undercover Economist is selling Freakonomics Tim Harford is selling his signed copy of Freakonomics on Ebay with the proceeds to go to Steven Levitt’s favorite charity, Smile Train. The story behind the auction, which is supported by Levitt, comes from an interview Harford did with Levitt in the spring. The current bid is $500, click here to get in on […]
Rosa Parks, Brown and Civil Rights James Cobb wrote in The New Republic online yesterday that this may be a watershed moment in the Civil Rights movement. He tries to unwind the knot surrounding the confluence of the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Ed. decision last year, the passing of Rosa Parks and the nomination of Samuel Alito […]
2005 Cave Canem Poetry Prize Galleycat reports today that Constance Quarterman Bridges won the 2005 Cave Canem Poetry Prize for Lions Don’t Eat Us. Everyone at OUP offers her our hearty congratulations! The following poem by Ms. Bridges was published in The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry edited by Arnold Rampersad. Gordian Knot “Great-grandfather Fray was a white man. He […]
“Leaves of Grass” – 150 Years Later In The New York Times today, Michael Frank reviews the New York Public Library exhibit “I Am With You” commemorating the 150th anniversary of Leaves of Grass. Frank writes: Drawing on the library’s extensive holdings, Mr. Gewirtz [the exhibition curator] has put on display at least one copy of every authorized American edition of “Leaves,” […]
Hurricanes & the ‘Butterfly Effect’ Kerry Emanuel, author of Divine Wind, spoke to the Miami Herald over the weekend and discussed one of the more promising ideas for pushing potentially devastating storms back out to sea. The most promising [idea] is from [atmospheric researcher] Ross Hoffman. His idea is based on the ”butterfly effect” — introducing a perturbation — a […]
“An army of liberty and freedom” Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan quoted David Hackett Fischer today in a post on “alleged mistreatment of detainees” by U.S. forces in Iraq. Sullivan writes in response to two stories that came out today; one, about abuses at an Iraqi ministry, the other, a story on alleged abuses by U.S. Army soldiers that has resulted in a […]
Harvey Cushing in NYROB It was Harvey Cushing who, while still in his early thirties, introduced the notion of routinely monitoring the blood pressure during operations, something that had never been done before. This innovation was presented at about the same time that he undertook the difficult treatment of tic douloureux-a debilitating form of facial neuralgia-by the exquisitely delicate maneuver of removing the mass of nerve tissue at the very edge of the brain, called the Gasserian ganglion, through which the agonizing pain passed.
The Future of the Brain The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT will host a powerhouse symposium on December 1 which it is calling “The Future of the Brain.” The event will be moderated by Ira Flatow of NPR’s Science Friday, who has had a number of Oxford authors on his show of late, and even though the […]
Jeffrey Rosen: It Ain’t Broke Thanks to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jeffrey Rosen’s review of recent books that address our confirmation process for SCOTUS nominees – “a messy combination of politics, ideology, and merit” – is now available to OUPblog readers. LINK Here are the first few paragraphs: In the wake of Harriet E. Miers’s withdrawal of her nomination […]
Friday is Harford Day It wouldn’t be a proper Friday without an update on the activities of The Undercover Economist. On Wednesday, Harford spoke with Robin Young on the NPR show Here & Now. You’ll have to listen to learn Harford’s advice on how to pay less than $3.10 for a latte at Starbucks. I was outraged when I […]
The Broken Congress Thoman E. Mann, writing in today’s New York Times opinion page, applauds the defeat of “Election Reform” ballot initiatives in Ohio and California on Tuesday. Both initiatives “would have required a round of redistricting in the middle of this decade” and, Mann claims, “any initiative requiring mid-decade redistricting smells like a power grab by the […]
Terrors of the Table The Wall Street Journal features a review of Terrors of the Table by Walter Gratzer today (Normally, WSJ Online is by subscription only, but it is open to anyone this week, so enjoy!). Gratzer’s book comes on a swell of anti-diet-faddism and gives the long view of how things like the Atkins and South Beach […]
Why is H.L. Mencken relevant today? In a long line that stretches from Benjamin Franklin to Mark Twain and beyond, H. L. Mencken stands as one of America’s most influential stylists and its most prominent iconoclast. “It is a sin to believe evil in others,” Mencken said, “but it is seldom a mistake.” Preachers, politicians, pundits and pedants — Mencken exposed […]
What We Owe New Orleans by Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century and the forthcoming Intelligent Design The waters that in the first days of September drowned New Orleans are the waters that established the incomparable city as a key port before the railroad replaced shipping as the primary vehicle of trade. […]
Marginal Revolution: Fat Politics is “excellent” Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution praises Eric Oliver’s Fat Politics in a post today and gives us a peek into his eating patterns. First, I have recently switched from Raisin Bran to Spelts cereal in the morning. Second, I prefer mineral water to Coke, but Szechuan restaurants do not serve the former. I am waiting […]
Why we allow gas stations to overcharge us Few costs infuriate the modern consumer more than the price at the pump. Type “fuel price riots” into Google for a list of fatal incidents from Yemen to Indonesia. US pundits have been raging against “price gouging” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s damage to the energy infrastructure, while in Britain a fuel protest never […]
NYTimes: ‘Restless Giant’ Is “First-rate History” THIS is first-rate history by a first-rate historian. Unlike many of his brethren, James T. Patterson can write, and he understands the value of vivid detail, using “Annie Hall,” “Norma Rae” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to help explain the women’s movement. What’s more, he can think, and he offers analysis and interpretation that is consistently sensible… PATTERSON captures one of the era’s most deplorable trends, the increase in individual and group selfishness that has manifested itself in, among other things, huge executive salaries and irresponsible tax cuts. He also zeroes in on one cause of this trend that few others have perceived: the “rights revolution,” which brought laudable progress for blacks, women and the disabled, but as it spread to other individuals and groups often transformed itself into a sense of entitlement without accompanying obligation, of rights without duties.
How to Improve Judicial Confirmations by Richard Davis, author of Electing Justice: Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process (Originally published in the Nov. 3 edition of Roll Call) For the third time in less than four months, the Senate is preparing for another Supreme Court confirmation, and of them, this one promises to be the most tension-filled. It is highly […]
Investment advice from The Undercover Economist John Reeves of The Motley Fool, an investment advice website, interviewed Tim Harford this week. It is a rare opportunity to hear the author of The Undercover Economist reveal his thoughts on how he would investment his money. Harford provides his analysis specifically of GM, Apple and the U.S. real estate market. Here is a […]
Presidential War Powers in the Age of Terror The brief history of America’s global war on terrorism demonstrates the folly of allowing the executive branch a free hand in determining the scope and conduct of that conflict. Deference to Mr. Bush’s fixation with Saddam Hussein has cost the United States dearly. To expand that misadventure will only drive those costs higher. Furthermore, an […]
The Legacy of Rosa Parks Rosa Parks gave us a different image—defiance that was dignified and determined. And it moved us to action—action that was immediate in Montgomery, and spread over time throughout the South. It planted in my generation the psychological seed we needed to break out of the protective cocoon of our segregated worlds, where our families—biological and extended—did everything within their limited powers to keep us out of harm’s way, echoing, for different reasons, the white mantra that we should “stay in our place.” Rosa Parks defined her place –as a first class human being—and planted the seeds that germinated in the souls of young people like myself. Within a few years, we would follow Sister/Mama Rosa, I, into a resistant, all- white University, my classmates and friends into the streets held by Atlanta’s white powers—defying their intransigence singing that old spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me’roun.” As we, each in our own ways, challenged the system that made us second class citizens, we came to “see…in a new light both our past and our future. We could see that past—the segregation, the deprivation and denial—for what it was, a system designed to keep us in our place and convince us somehow that it was our fault, as well as our destiny. Now, without either ambivalence or shame, we saw ourselves as the heirs to a legacy of struggle…ennobling…[and] enabling us to take control of our destiny.”
Atlas of the World on NPR Ben Keene, editor of Oxford’s Atlas program, made the circuit of NPR radio programs this week to discuss Atlas of the World, Deluxe Edition. He has appeared on Weekend Edition and Marketplace and both segments are available in the show archives. The Atlas of the World is the only atlas that is updated every year […]
Away Down South excerpt The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a great excerpt from James C. Cobb’s Away Down South over the weekend. Entitled “RED CLAY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE,” the excerpt addresses “the readiness, even eagerness, of African-Americans both in the South and outside it to identify themselves unequivocally as Southerners and claim the region as home.” Here is the […]
October 2005 (31))
Freakonomists on Fat Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of Freakonomics, the book / blog sensation of the year, paid Fat Politics by J. Eric Oliver their “very highest compliment” over the weekend, saying: “This reads like something that we could have written!” They also include some substance of the Oliver’s argument via a Publisher’s Weekly review: Arguing […]
The Davis-Comiskey Debate Richard Davis, author of Electing Justice, and Michael Comiskey certainly chose a propitious time to debate the judicial confirmation process. Last week, as the Bush Administration lost a nominee, Davis and Comiskey debated the limitations of the SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process, the reluctance of nominees to answer the thorniest questions for fear of revealing […]
Even more Undercover Economist Even though his book is now shipping, Tim Harford and the good folks at the Financial Times know you just can’t get enough of The Undercover Economist. So, yesterday they launched Harford’s new weekly column in the paper, ‘The Undercover Economist.’ Here is the beginning of the inaugural UE column, which addresses the mysteries of […]
Undercover Economist Podcast The Undercover Economist appeared on the Radio Economics podcast website on Thursday (click on the post title to listen to the interview). It is an engaging 30 minute dialogue between Tim Harford (‘The Undercover Economist’) and the host of the Radio Economics site, Dr. James Reese. It includes a wonderful discussion of Harford’s growth as […]
The CIA Leak Case: A Historical Object Lesson In studying two centuries of Washington reporting, I found only one instance where journalists came forward to name their anonymous sources. It occurred in 1846 after the Washington Daily Times (no relation to the current paper) printed sensational allegations that Whigs were plotting with the British minister to bring about a settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. When the Senate investigated the charges, the paper’s editor and publisher voluntarily divulged the sources of the story: a naval officer, a Senate doorkeeper, several lobbyists, and a few other journalists. Since those sources had everything to lose and nothing to gain by corroborating the Times’ allegations, every witness, under oath, denied knowledge of a plot. The committee branded the story “utterly and entirely false,” and banned anyone from the newspaper from the Senate galleries. The Washington Daily Times promptly went out of business, creating an object lesson that the rest of the press corps took very much to heart.
Qualifications Do Matter Despite the tremendous importance of politics in Supreme Court nominations, the single most important determinant of a successful confirmation is the qualifications of the nominee. We have measured the qualifications of all nominees since Hugo Black (1937) by content analyzing newspaper editorials from leading newspapers at the time of their nominations [see table below]. By this standard, Miers falls near the bottom of the stack. Thus, her withdrawal is not surprising.
Leak Inquiry – Where is the crime? With the “leak inquiry” grand jury adjouned for the day, it’s time for a breather. Gary Hart offers a fresh perspective in a piece in Tuesday’s Denver Post. Responding to the oft-repeated conservative defense that is, essentially, ‘no harm, no foul,’ Hart offers some historical context to the scene: The federal statute making it a […]
Pakistan Earthquake Relief – “Blog Quake Day” Some bloggers have declared today to be “Blog Quake Day” and are calling for online donations to agencies assisting the relief effort in Pakistan. Oxfam declared today that “rich countries” are “failing to respond generously to the UN South Asian Earthquake appeal.” In related news, Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong, wrote a […]
On the Press “…one of their clearest duties is to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who operate this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.” — H.L. Mencken
NOAD on Boing-Boing That New Yorker article on the use of phony words to protect a dictionary’s copyright got some belated play on the seminal weblog Boing-Boing today. The article focuses on the search for the phony word in the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (NOAD). Erin McKean, the editor-in-chief of NOAD, whimsically likens a lexicographer’s copyright […]
Stiglitz reviews ‘Moral Consequences of Economic Growth’ Joseph Stiglitz: As the income distribution becomes increasingly skewed, with an increasing share of the wealth and income in the hands of those at the top, the median falls further and further below the mean. That is why, even as per capita GDP has been increasing in the United States, U.S. median household income has actually been falling.
Undercover Economist on FT.com The Financial Times has published a great excerpt of the forthcoming book from Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist. Here is a representative graph from the excerpt and the book that Steven Levitt called “required reading”: Supermarkets will often produce an own-brand “value” range, displaying crude designs that don’t vary whether the product is lemonade or […]
Quality Matters in SCOTUS nominations, but will it for Harriet Miers? President Bush’s nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court has politicians and pundits questioning her qualifications for the job. But in the hyper-partisan world of Supreme Court nominations, do qualifications really matter? The answer—which may surprise those who claim the appointment process is a “mess,” “badly broken,” and “unpredictable”—is absolutely.
Reynolds responds to Coetzee in NYROB David S. Reynolds, author of Walt Whitman in the Lives and Legacies series, responded to J.M. Coetzee in the “Letters” section of the New York Review of Books this week: J.M. Coetzee concludes his review of my new book Walt Whitman [NYR, September 22] with what is evidently meant as a criticism. He writes, “Reynolds’s […]
More from Philip Pullman Philip Pullman took a breather from the ‘Narnia-gate’ media frenzy yesterday to respond to the other big literature-goes-to-Hollywood story of last week: Paradise Lost will be coming to a theatre near you in 2007! “There have been rumours about a film of Paradise Lost for a long time,” Pullman says. “There was even talk of […]
Harford values life In Friday’s ‘Dear Economist’ column for the Financial Times, Tim Harford bravely answered this puzzler from one of his loyal readers: Is the value of a British person’s life greater than the value of an Iraqi person’s life? And, speaking of bravery, check out Harford’s reaction to this terrible situation – from the ‘what would […]
Response to InsureBlog – by Jill Quadagno Hank at Insureblog has written a thought-provoking review of my book, One Nation, Uninsured. I appreciate his willingness to take on this task and welcome the opportunity to engage in a debate about how we finance health care in this country. First, let’s consider Hank’s claim that I consider our current […]
More Thomas Schelling Fred Kaplan over at Slate.com gave Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling quite a dust-up earlier this week, criticizing Schelling for the “crucial role he played in formulating the strategies of “controlled escalation” and “punitive bombing” that plunged our country into the war in Vietnam.” Tim Harford, who sang Schelling’s praises earlier this week, has responded today […]
Milton on the Silver Screen? I wonder what Milton would say to the news today that Paradise Lost is going to Hollywood. For those of you who want to experience the original before the movie comes out, Philip Pullman wrote the introduction to our most recent edition. We posted a short excerpt from Pullman’s introduction HERE. LINK to article (via […]
The New American Militarism The left must fight imperialism in the name of patriotism. Barring a revolutionary and highly unlikely transformation of American mass culture, any political party that wishes to win majority support will have to demonstrate its commitment to the defence of the country. The Bush administration has used the accusation of weakness in security policy to undermine its opponents, and then used this advantage to pursue reckless strategies that have themselves drastically weakened the US. The left needs to heed Bacevich and draw up a tough, realistic and convincing alternative. It will also have to demonstrate its identification with the respectable aspects of military culture. The Bush administration and the US establishment in general may have grossly mismanaged the threats facing us, but the threats are real, and some at least may well need at some stage to be addressed by military force. And any effective military force also requires the backing of a distinctive military ethic embracing loyalty, discipline and a capacity for both sacrifice and ruthlessness.
Economics v. Armageddon Tim Harford, author of the forthcoming book Undercover Economist, wrote a glowing appreciation of Thomas Schelling today. Schelling is, of course, the 2005 Nobel laureate in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) awarded for his work to enhance “our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.” Harford writes: No one person can claim credit, but […]
One Nation, Uninsured The good people over at InsureBlog.com have finished their review of One Nation, Uninsured by Jill Quadagno. It is, on the whole, a reasonable treatment of Prof. Quadagno’s work from the opposite side of the debate. A debate that, in the end, boils down to one fundamental question, which InsureBlog formulates this way: Where is […]
Citizen Soldier, part II David M. Kennedy was quoted extensively in a Salon.com article on the casualties and related military costs of the Iraq War. This follows on Kennedy’s Op-Ed in the NYTimes on July 26 where he said that a return to “a universal duty to service — perhaps in the form of a lottery, or of compulsory […]
Questions for Epstein & Segal: OUPblog Bookclub In this first installment of the OUPblog bookclub, Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal answer questions on the Miers nomination and the future of the Judiciary branch under Bush’s picks. Enjoy! 1) Much was made during the Roberts confirmation hearings over his ideological beliefs and their possible effects on American law. But, what effect might Roberts […]
Philip Pullman on Paradise Lost The question, “Where should my story begin?’ is, as every storyteller knows, both immensely important and immensely difficult to answer. ‘Once upon a time’, as the fairy-tale formula has it; but once upon a time there was – what? The opening governs the way you tell everything that follows, not only in terms of the […]
Global Warming and Hurricanes A Q & A with Kerry Emanuel, author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes. 1.) Q: Is global warming causing more hurricanes? A: No. The global, annual frequency of tropical cyclones (the generic, meteorological term for the storm that is called a tropical storm or hurricane in the Atlantic region) is about […]
Balkinization reviews Advice and Consent Jack M. Balkin, of Balkinization blog fame, gave a lengthy review of Advice and Consent by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal today, tying it all to the upcoming struggle to confirm Harriet Miers. From the Balkinization post: Hence the Bush Administration has two basic strategies to secure her nomination. The first is to counteract the […]
In honor of postseason baseball… If [Ty] Cobb’s base-running was often, as one observer described it, “daring to the point of dementia,” it was also successful more times than not. He left everybody stunned at Hilltop Park in New York when he crossed up Highlander first-baseman Hal Chase, who, though only in his third big-league season, was already widely regarded […]
A Return to Prehistory? This is the last of four excerpts from The Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins. The first excerpt, “The Disappearance of Comfort,” can be found here: LINK The economic change that I have outlined was an extraordinary one. What we observe at the end of the Roman world is not a ‘recession’ or – to […]
‘Neoliberalism’ – Altercation bookclub selection We were remiss in not mentioning last week that Eric Alterman had selected A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey for his ‘Altercation bookclub.’ His post includes a juicy excerpt from the book and promises a vigorous ‘argument.’ Here is just one part: The financial crises that have so frequently preceded the predatory raiding […]
Harriet Miers We had it for you last week. LINK
September 2005 (24))
Truth on NPR Simon Blackburn appeared on “Talk of the Nation” today to discuss his book Truth: A Guide. The discussion ranges from the battle between relativism and absolute truth to contemporary theology, censorship, and James Baldwin’s thoughts on the role of education. It is a smorgasbord of philosophical tastiness not to be missed. LINK
Emanuel in NYTimes Kerry Emanuel continues to be the go-to-guy for all things hurricane. From yesterday’s edition of The New York Times: A month ago, Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist who has spent decades studying how hurricanes reach their peak strength, “had this terrible feeling of dread” when he saw that Hurricane Katrina’s track in the Gulf of […]
Nomination Speculation II: Bush’s Second SCOTUS pick Who’s Next As the Senate prepares to ratify John (meet the new boss) Roberts to the position held by William (same as the old boss) Rehnquist, it’s time to start considering some of the candidates who might be nominated next. Emilio Garza. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit. Would be first Hispanic named to the Court, […]
Divine Wind website Kerry Emanuel’s companion website to Divine Wind is now up at www.divinewindbook.com! It is packed with additional reading material and links to online hurricane sources. Don’t miss the“Figures” page which contains all of the images from the book – graphs, satellite photos, wind models and photos taken by “hurricane hunters” from within the eye of […]
More ‘Dear Economist’ This week in his ‘Dear Economist’ column over at the Financial Times, Tim Harford responds to an anonymous questionner from Limerick, Ireland: Dear Economist, I recently won more than €100m on the lottery. I am terrified that the money will come between me and my friends, or that I shall make a mess of spending […]
Echoes of Camille and 1900? Bob King of the Palm Beach Post is an excellent source for all hurricane-related news and today he speculates on the potential size and path of Rita. Rita is currently a Category 4 storm – but it may go higher: The hurricane center says: “It would not be a surprise if Rita became a category […]
Giant Altercation Eric Alterman, of “What Liberal Media?” fame and noted blogger on MSNBC.com gave a short review of Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore by James T. Patterson today. He essentially defers to the judgment of his “old adviser” Paul Kennedy who wrote this review in The Washington Post Book World […]
As the DHS struggles to lead the recovery effort after Katrina, can it also adequately protect our border from those wishing to enter the US via S. America? The Triple Frontier, referred to as the Triborder Area by the United States State Department, has an Arab immigrant population exceeding 25,000 and is described as “teeming with Islamic extremists and their sympathizers, [where] businesses have raised or laundered $50 million in recent years” (Rother, NYTimes, 2002). A map of the area was found in […]
Southern Resistance In this week’s The New Republic (subscription only), James Cobb takes a stab at explaining “the steadfast refusal of people in Southern coastal communities to evacuate even in the face of the direst warnings that both hell and high water are headed their way.” A few weeks ago on this blog, Cobb wrote on remembering […]
Katrina – “the unnatural disaster” Ted Steinberg author of Acts of God: An Unnatural History of Natural Disaster in America has been commenting in recent press stories on the root causes of Katrina. In a story in the Wall Street Journal exploring how our efforts to control and populate the coastline has exacerbated the suffering, Steinberg says: “This is an […]
The End of Complexity This is the third of four excerpts from The Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins. The first excerpt, “The Disappearance of Comfort,” can be found here: LINK In the post-Roman West, almost all this material sophistication disappeared. Specialized production and all but the most local distribution became rare, unless for luxury goods; and the impressive […]
Dr. Katharine Phillips on Oprah – Body Dismorphic Disorder (BDD) Katharine A. Phillips, MD, will discuss body dismorphic disorder (BDD) tonight, November 8, on CNN with Paula Zahn.with Oprah Winfrey today. Body dysmorphic disorder (or BDD) is a relatively common, often severe, and underrecognized body image disorder. It consists of distressing or impairing preoccupations with perceived flaws in one’s appearance. People with BDD are obsessed […]
Possible effects of global warming on hurricane intensity In her “Storm Warnings” piece for The New Yorker this week, Elizabeth Kolbert writes that “in Nature just a few weeks before Katrina struck, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that wind-speed measurements made by planes flying through tropical storms showed that the “potential destructiveness” of such storms had “increased markedly” since […]
“Nothing to lose” – Katrina’s lessons If Sept. 11 showed us how terrifying it is to deal with alien ideologues who are prepared to lose everything for what they believe, the debacle in New Orleans offered what should be an equally unsettling portrait of alienated Americans who believe that they have nothing to lose. For years, both liberals and conservatives have […]
A little archeaology link… There have been some very interesting reviews of The Fall of Rome zipping about the ether lately. Some of it spurred by our excerpt series which began HERE From across the pond, Alun reacts to our post… Troels, a graduate student in the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, gives his […]
NY Times “Editors’ Choice” The NYT Sunday Book Review featured two OUP books on their “Editors’ Choice” page The Pope’s Daughter by Caroline P. Murphy In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family in the Old South by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger LINK to review of The Pope’s Daughter. LINKto review of In Search of the […]
Monte Testaccio This is the second of four excerpts from The Fall of Rome by Bryan Ward-Perkins. The first excerpt, “The Disappearance of Comfort,” can be found here: LINK “Monte Testaccio” When considering quantities, we would ideally like to have some estimates for overall production from particular potteries, and for overall consumption at specific settlements. Unfortunately, it […]
The Science Behind Your Smile What does it really mean to be happy? What does your brain really want? Daniel Nettle, author of Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile, will be on “Science Friday” with Ira Flatow this afternoon. LINK This is actually the second week in a row an Oxford author has appeared on “Science Friday.” Last week, Kerry […]
Welcome Galleycat readers Welcome to the OUP blog! Those of you looking for that “original content” we’ve promised can reference: Nancy Sherman’s post on America’s treatment of our Iraq War veterans… Harm de Blij’s post on why geography education really does matter… Jill Quadagno and Jerome Kassirer commenting on the problems in our health care system… And Donald […]
New Tangled Bank The thirty-sixth edition of Tangled Bank, the bi-weekly round-up of science blogs, is up at B and B. There is some fascinating reading in there, including a link to last week’s post on the Fall of Rome.
Emanuel on “Living on Earth” Kerry Emanuel, author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, appeared on NPR’s “Living on Earth.” From the transcript: Emanuel: It’s quite possible that it isn’t one-way. It may very well be two ways: that the hurricane activity feed back on the climate system. And one of the ways that that can happen […]
The Fall of Rome The Disappearance of Comfort It is currently deeply unfashionable to state that anything like a ‘crisis’ or a ‘decline’ occurred at the end of the Roman empire, let alone that a ‘civilization’ collapsed and a ‘dark age’ ensued. The new orthodoxy is that the Roman world, in both East and West, was slowly, and essentially […]
50 Years After Emmett Till, Bigotry Isn’t Just for “Bubbas” Anymore Fifty years ago this past Sunday, the brutal slaying of Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicagoan visiting relatives in the Mississippi Delta, laid bare the raw savagery and blatant disregard for decency and law that permeated the Jim Crow South. When Till’s mother insisted on an open casket funeral and Jet magazine published photos of his […]
Truth on Salon Glowing coverage of Simon Blackburn’s Truth continues apace! This week, a review in Salon.com! A choice paragraph from Andrew O’Hehir’s review: By now you may be nodding sagely, or you may be flinging your half-decaf latte across the room in a white-hot rage. But whichever side you’re on, and even if your impulse is to […]
August 2005 (25))
The Taking of Palo An excerpt from The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere by Caroline P. Murphy. Read last week’s exceprt HERE. Unlike his predecessor, the new Pope had no ties to Felice and no interest in developing any. For Hadrian, Felice was no treasured memento of Rome’s golden age. She was, rather, a symbol […]
The Pope’s Daughter – NYT Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section included a review of The Pope’s Daughter by Caroline Murphy. Here’s the final graph of the review by Bruce Boucher: Caroline Murphy has recreated Felice della Rovere’s life with agility and tact. She successfully fleshes out the customs and historical background of her Machiavellian princess, even though there […]
The Pope’s Daughter – An excerpt From The Pope’s Daughter: The Extraordinary Life of Felice della Rovere by Caroline P. Murphy. Felice della Rovere (1483? – 1536) was the illegitimate daughter of Pope Julius II, a close ally of Pope Leo X, and one of the most influential women of Renaissance Italy. Napoleone When Felice della Rovere entered the house of […]
“The Source of the Singing” by Marilyn Nelson Waniek “The Source of the Singing” Marilyn Nelson Waniek Under everything, everything a movement, slow as hair growth, as the subtle click of cells turning into other cells, the life in us that grows as mountains grow. Under everything this movement, stars and wind circle around the smaller circles of the grass, and the birds caged […]
Tangled Bank The most recent edition of Tangled Bank, the bi-weekly round-up of the blogosphere’s best science posts, is now up at Cognitive Daily. This edition includes posts on global climate change, monkey lizards of the Triassic and a link to OUPblog’s own “The Tuniit” post (Thanks guys!). LINK LINK to Tangled Bank home.
Restless Giant – On Tour James T. Patterson will be touring through New York, Chicago and DC in September for his upcoming book Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore. Restless Giant is the 11th volume in the Oxford History of the United States series which includes Pulitzer Prize winners Battle Cry of Freedom and Freedom […]
Truth “On Point” and across the pond Simon Blackburn appeared on WBUR’s “On Point” program last week along with Stanley Fish, Michael Massing and Michael Lynch. Truth has always been under attack from liars. But now two philosophers argue that the notion of truth itself is being threatened by more sinister opposition. It began with a cloistered, academic “relativism,” they say. But […]
A coffee table book for economists Origins of Value author William Goetzman, Professor of Finance at Yale University, was interviewed on Marketplace earlier this month. Goetzman describes his work as “financial archaeology” and tells the story of his favorite find: a bond issued in 1648 for the reconstruction of a canal near Utrecht. Purchased by Goetzman’s co-author, K. Geert Rouwenhorst for […]
Affluent and Uninsured? In the comments section of Jill Quadagno’s 08.04.05 post, Gordon Brown wrote: “Over half of the acclaimed 40,000,000 uninsured are that way by choice. Financial choice that is. The same people that say they can’t afford health insurance because of family rates between $300 and $700/mo per family….have between over $1000/mo in auto expenses, the […]
America by Henry Dumas America Henry Dumas If an eagle be imprisoned On the back of a coin And the coin is tossed into the sky, That coin will spin, That coin will flutter, But the eagle will never fly. – From The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry, coming in September. Learn more about Henry Dumas at the Modern […]
The Lessons of the “Dear Economist” On a much lighter note than Tuesday’s post on Korea’s “Dear Leader,” today we direct you to Tim Harford’s weekly “Dear Economist” column in the Financial Times. In today’s column, Harford analyses the ‘parable of the talents’ from a modern-day economist’s perspective. We can’t wait til he brings his wry sense of humor to our […]
Doctors Giving Advice to Investors The revelation in recent articles in the Seattle Times and follow-up articles and editorials in the New York Times about clinical investigators who were being paid $200 – $1000 for giving advice and opinions to investment firms is just another example of how blind some physicians are, either consciously or subconsciously, to how their financial […]
On Bull A big week for Oxford books in The New Yorker! Truth: A Guide by Simon Blackburn was one of three books featured in Jim Holt’s A Critic At Large piece, “Say Anything.” After a long discussion of the various forms of bullshit – from car salesmen to Martin Heidegger to Louis Althusser) – Holt turns […]
The crimes of the “Dear Leader” Jasper Becker’s Rogue Regime is given a long review in this week’s New Yorker. It is actually a double review, but the author, Ian Buruma, calls Becker’s work the “more intelligent” and “more incisive” of the two. Here are two of the more disturbing sections of Buruma’s article: After the Korean War ended in the […]
Jasper Becker on Leonard Lopate Jasper Becker, author of Rogue Regime, was on The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC today to discuss the drastic environmental problems faced by China. Learn more about Becker by visiting his website, www.jasperbecker.com.
Uncle Sam Wants You…to study geography! by Harm de Blij As a professional geographer living in Washington, DC in the 1990s, teaching at a major university, serving as geography editor on ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ and working for the National Geographic Society, I dreaded the intermittent appearance of media reports on international surveys that ranked American high-school students near the bottom […]
Have we learned the lessons of Vietnam? This President expects the nation to be unwaveringly stoic in war—for parents and loved ones of soldiers and marines to hold tight as they watch their children kill and be killed, and for soldiers to tough it out as they return home maimed and riddled with guilt that they are among the survivors. Stoicism is critical in wartime, but it has its limits. A soldier fights in the most honorable and brave way when he believes in the cause and conducts himself justly with the best tactics and weaponry available. But many on the ground are wondering just what war they are fighting, and whether they have they have the right armor and weaponry to face this brand of insurgency.
The Undercover Economist Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, due out in November, just finished a guest-blogging stint at Marginal Revolution. As he is wont to do, Harford treated a raft of subjects ranging from devaluing airline miles to the history of randomized medical trials. You can also find Harford posting almost daily at this blog, or […]
“The Tuniit” By about 8,000 years ago the Arctic environments of North America were as extensive as they are today, and animal populations had moved northwards to establish themselves on lands and in sea-channels recently freed from glacial ice. Although ancestral Indian groups made summer excursions northwards across the tundra, probably following the caribou as Dene and […]
Rogue Regime review in the Times Rogue Regime by Jasper Becker was reviewed in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review section. A few key paragraphs from the review: After his father’s death in 1994, Kim Jong II transformed North Korea from an odious totalitarian regime into something actually worse, “a Marxist Sun King” state that was ready to oversee an unparalleled […]
On relativism If relativism, then, is often just a distraction, is it a valuable one or a dangerous one? I think it all depends. Sometimes we need reminding of alternative ways of thinking, alternative practices and ways of life, from which we can learn and which we have no reason to condemn. We need to appreciate our […]
Jill Quadagno responds to comments I want to respond to Terry’s comments on my earlier post, “A critical national competitiveness issue” (Click here to read full post and comments.) You wrote: “Which nation is more competitive [than] the US that has universal health care? When has socialism been more efficient at providing a service people need? Socialism? That’s the same […]
A Human History of the Arctic World The passage below is from The Last Imaginary Place by Robert McGhee. Harper’s Magazine accurately describes McGhee’s book as “enthralling.” I once spent a few hours in the Ice Age. It was a brilliant July day, the sun’s heat comfortably tempered by a cool wind sweeping down from the frozen ocean beyond the ranges to […]
Beginnings of Sudanese conflict – Berlin, 1884 When the colonial powers gathered in Berlin in 1884 to finalize their partition of Africa, they paid little heed to the religious divide that stretched across the continent from Guinea in West Africa to Kenya in East Africa. Not only Nigeria but other West African states, as well as Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia to the east, found themselves with regional-cultural contrasts fraught with problems. In the process, the colonial powers created a regional problem whose consequences they could not foresee. The Islamic Front has become a zone of conflict that threatens the cohesion of countries and facilitates the actions of terrorists and insurgents.
Instapundit reviews Electing Justice Glenn Reynolds, blogger of Instapundit fame, reviewed Electing Justice by Richard Davis in the NYPost on Sunday. Davis notes that there have been various proposals for reform but thinks that radical surgery is called for. He suggests that Supreme Court justices be elected by the public for a single 18-year term with no possibility of […]
July 2005 (7))
Breaking a sweat There has been vigorous discussion of David Kennedy’s NYTimes Op-Ed (07/25/05) on right-leaning blogs this week, with opinions ranging from the scandalized to the more reasonable, like at redstate.org. Sadly, lost in much of the reaction, is Kennedy’s argument questioning the wisdom of continuing with an all-volunteer army. (He does NOT suggest that Hessian behavior […]
“A critical national competitiveness issue” "This rapidly rising health care burden is not, in fact, unique to GM — it is a critical national competitiveness issue for the United States, affecting our entire economy’s long- term strength. It’s clear that the health care crisis could benefit from stronger leadership by governments at all levels, and by business, and consumers, too […]
Group Think on the Bench? Cass Sunstein, author of Designing Democracy, just finished a guest blogging gig at Lawrence Lessig’s blog where he discussed aggregating information and "the risks associated with echo chambers and self-insulation." Here at the University of Chicago, we have something called the Chicago Judges Project, by which we tabulate and analyze thousands of votes of judges […]
Emsley on Fresh Air John Emsley, author of The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison, appeared on Fresh Air yesterday. He discusses the effects of mercury and arsenic on the human body, "the perpetual pill," the dioxin poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, and the story of Edward Palmer, who is believed to have poisoned his numerous illegitimate children with […]
Happiness on The Diane Rehm Show Happiness author Daniel Nettle appeared on the Diane Rehm show on Friday (07/22/2005) for an hour. The entire hour-long discussion is available in the archives via the link below. LINK
Leak City The Karl Rove/Valerie Plame/Judith Miller saga echoes a tune with many refrains. Washington, D.C. has been grappling with leaks to the press ever since the government arrived in 1800–the year that Congress held its first investigation into how the press obtained secret documents. Twice, in 1848 and 1871, the U.S. Senate held reporters prisoners in […]
Book thumbnail image “The bizarre case of John G. Roberts” Justice John Roberts has been nominated for the Supreme Court. You can entire the entire 734 page pdf file of Judge Roberts’ 2003 hearing before Judicial Committee on the New York Times website. We present an excerpt from Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Segal’s forthcoming book Advice and Consent: The Politics of Judicial Appointments below.
