Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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).
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
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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?