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.

By Eric Cline

The story of the Trojan War has fascinated humans for centuries and has given rise to countless scholarly articles and books, extensive archaeological excavations, epic movies, television documentaries, stage plays, art and sculpture, souvenirs and collectibles. In the United States there are thirty-three states with cities or towns named Troy and ten four-year colleges and universities, besides the University of Southern California, whose sports teams are called the Trojans. Particularly captivating is the account of the Trojan Horse, the daring plan that brought the Trojan War to an end and that has also entered modern parlance by giving rise to the saying “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” and serving as a metaphor for hackers intent on wreaking havoc by inserting a “Trojan horse” into computer systems.

But, is Homer’s story convincing? Certainly the heroes, from Achilles to Hector, are portrayed so credibly that it is easy to believe the story. But is it truly an account based on real events, and were the main characters actually real people? Would the ancient world’s equivalent of the entire nation of Greece really have gone to war over a single woman, however beautiful, and for ten long years at that? Could Agamemnon really have been a king of kings able to muster so many men for such an expedition? And, even if one believes that there once was an actual Trojan War, does that mean that the specific events, actions, and descriptions in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, supplemented by additional fragments and commentary in the Epic Cycle, are historically accurate and can be taken at face value? Is it plausible that what Homer describes actually took place and in the way that he says it did?

In fact, the problem in providing definitive answers to all of these questions is not that we have too little data, but that we have too much. The Greek epics, Hittite records, Luwian poetry, and archaeological remains provide evidence not of a single Trojan war but rather of multiple wars that were fought in the area that we identify as Troy and the Troad. As a result, the evidence for the Trojan War of Homer is tantalizing but equivocal. There is no single “smoking gun.”

According to the Greek literary evidence, there were at least two Trojan Wars (Heracles’ and Agamemnon’s), not simply one; in fact, there were three wars, if one counts Agamemnon’s earlier abortive attack on Teuthrania. Similarly, according to the Hittite literary evidence, there were at least four Trojan Wars, ranging from the Assuwa Rebellion in the late 15th century BCE to the overthrow of Walmu, king of Wilusa in the late 13th century BCE. And, according to the archaeological evidence, Troy/Hisarlik was destroyed twice, if not three times, between 1300 and 1000 BCE. Some of this has long been known; the rest has come to light more recently. Thus, although we cannot definitively point to a specific “Trojan War,” at least not as Homer has described it in the Iliad and the Odyssey, we have instead found several such Trojan wars and several cities at Troy, enough that we can conclude there is a historical kernel of truth — of some sort — underlying all the stories.

But would the Trojan War have been fought because of love for a woman? Could a ten-year war have been instigated by the kidnapping of a single person? The answer, of course, is yes, just as an Egypto-Hittite war in the 13th century BCE was touched off by the death of a Hittite prince and the outbreak of World War I was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. But just as one could argue that World War I would have taken place anyway, perhaps triggered by some other event, so one can argue that the Trojan War would inevitably have taken place, with or without Helen. The presumptive kidnapping of Helen can be seen merely an excuse to launch a pre-ordained war for control of land, trade, profit, and access to the Black Sea.

In 1964, the eminent historian Moses Finley suggested that we should move the narrative of the Trojan War from the realm of history into the realm of myth and poetry until we have more evidence. Many would argue that we now have that additional evidence, particularly in the form of the Hittite texts discussing Ahhiyawa and Wilusa and the new archaeological data from Troy. The lines between reality and fantasy might be blurred, particularly when Zeus, Hera, and other gods become involved in the war, and we might quibble about some of the details, but overall, Troy and the Trojan War are right where they should be, in northwestern Anatolia and firmly ensconced in the world of the Late Bronze Age, as we now know from archaeology and Hittite records, in addition to the Greek literary evidence from both Homer and the Epic Cycle. Moreover, the enduring themes of love, honor, war, kinship, and obligations, which so resonated with the later Greeks and then the Romans, have continued to reverberate through the ages from Aeschylus and Euripides to Virgil and thence to Chaucer, Shakespeare, and beyond, so that the story still holds broad appeal even today, more than three thousand years after the original events, or some variation thereof, took place.

Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology and chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, as well as director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University. He is Co-Director of the ongoing excavations at Megiddo (biblical Armageddon) in Israel and the author of Biblical Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction, winner of the 2011 Biblical Archaeology Society Publication Award for the Best Popular Book on Archaeology. His recent addition to the Very Short Introductions series is The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with Very Short Introductions on Facebook, and OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image Credit: The Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy 1773. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo. Via Web Gallery of Art. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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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?

This month sees the publication of the latest version of the psychiatrist’s bible: the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM is arguably the definitive reference work on mental illness, used by health services worldwide (though the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases and Health Related Problems is widely used in the UK). Sales of the previous edition, DSM-IV, are estimated at about a million copies — not bad for a book that runs to almost 1000 densely packed pages and retails for around £80.

What’s changed in DSM-5 — apart from the move from Roman to Arabic numerals in the title? Well, terms have been revised (“mental retardation” has become “intellectual disability”, for example). New disorders have been introduced. For instance, “premenstrual dysphoric disorder” has been added to the list of depressive disorders. And, perhaps most controversially, some professionals have worried that the threshold for diagnosis of certain disorders appears to have been lowered — meaning that more people may be classified as mentally ill. Indeed there is organised opposition to the new edition, exemplified by the International DSM-5 Response Committee.

The DSM’s basic approach, on the other hand, has remained consistent for more than 30 years: a painstaking enumeration of symptoms, designed to make the clinician’s task of diagnosis easier and more consistent. This is an objective that it has undoubtedly achieved. But are those diagnoses scientifically valid?

Take clinical depression, for example. Nine possible symptoms are listed in DSM-IV, and you’d need to report at least five of them to warrant a diagnosis. These symptoms must be sufficiently intense to really interfere with a person’s life and they must have lasted for a while.

One effect of this approach is to emphasize the severe end of a spectrum that also includes relatively mild psychological problems. So the DSM criteria won’t capture everyday fluctuations in mental health. And they won’t pick up people with, say, four symptoms rather than five.

Implicit here is a debate about the nature of mental illness. The DSM uses a medical model of psychiatric illness. It thinks in terms of separate, discrete disorders, just like physical medicine. The approach is binary: either you meet the criteria for a particular condition, or you don’t.

Many would argue that this kind of all-or-nothing attitude, with hundreds of separate conditions, doesn’t fit well with people’s real-life experience of psychological problems. Better instead to think of psychological experience as being dimensional — that is, encompassing a wide variety of experiences, from the unproblematic to the severely distressing. The further along that dimension, the more symptoms a person is likely to have and the more upsetting and disruptive those symptoms will be.

This is the psychological model of mental illness. It argues that there’s no binary opposition between disorder and ‘normality’. Psychological disorders are simply the extreme manifestation of traits that we all possess to varying degrees. For example, almost everyone experiences occasional feelings of anxiety. People who develop what the DSM classes as an anxiety disorder aren’t experiencing something qualitatively different. They’re simply undergoing a more intense version of the same thing.

There is a third approach to understanding mental illness: the sociological model. Proponents argue that psychological disorders aren’t illnesses at all. They’re a label used to stigmatize and control behaviour society deems objectionable — such as homosexuality, which featured in the DSM until 1980.

Our view is that psychological problems aren’t illusory. They are real expressions of distress, for which most people — understandably — want help. However there is variability in the validity of individual diagnoses. Therefore it is often wisest not to focus on particular diagnoses. Better instead to adopt a dimensional approach, and to concentrate on the key problems and day-to-day symptoms that lead people to seek assistance. To help us understand these problems, we can look at epidemiological information to see which experiences occur together, and therefore may share common causes. Psychologists call this a data-driven approach.

We can also be guided by our knowledge of how the brain works. For example, basic emotions such as fear or unhappiness are powered by relatively distinct circuits in the brain. So we can understand certain psychological problems as what follow when these emotional circuits don’t function properly. We can match up the emotion and the problem: sadness and depression, fear and anxiety disorders, for example. This is what we might call a theory-driven approach, though given the complexity of brain activity it may – at least at present — be a little optimistic.

Importantly, even such a psychological, evidence-based approach doesn’t get around the need to classify problems. Mental health professionals must still make decisions about how to label the problems people describe to them. Without some kind of classificatory system, we can’t communicate, research, and evaluate treatments.

But the problems inherent in the current systems arguably constitute the greatest obstacle to that work. Given the extent of the burden on society and individuals alike, improving the scientific understanding of psychological disorders remains a priority. And that means DSM-5 certainly won’t be the last word on the classification of mental illness.

Daniel Freeman is a Professor of Clinical Psychology in the Psychiatry Department at the University of Oxford. Jason Freeman is a writer and editor. Their latest book is The Stressed Sex: Uncovering the Truth about Men, Women, and Mental Health (Oxford University Press).

The OUPblog is running a series of articles on the DSM-5 in anticipation of its launch on 18 May 2013. Stay tuned for views from Donald W. Black, Michael A. Taylor, and Joel Paris. Read yesterday’s post “DSM-5 will be the last” by Edward Shorter.

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Image credit: Thinker, created by Auguste Rodin at the end of the 18 century. San Francisco Legion of Honor. © Rafael Ramirez Lee via iStockphoto.

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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. It’s time to put your survival instinct to the test. Tie your hair back, do some stretches, pick up your bloody machete, and join us as we go over the front-line into zombie-occupied territory, armed only with some of Oxford University Press’s finest online products and a ferocious temper. 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. Are you ready? Let’s go!

1. Know your enemy

The term ‘zombie’ has seeped into our lexicon and bled into multiple areas of popular culture. For example, a ‘zombie’ can refer to a drink — a cocktail consisting of several kinds of rum, liqueur, and fruit juice. Alternatively, it could refer to a computer controlled by another person without the owner’s knowledge, or a ‘zombie’ could be a pejorative term for a Canadian soldier conscripted during the Second World War for service in Canada. However, the original meaning of the term ‘zombie’ came from nineteenth century West Africa and means “a corpse said to be revived by witchcraft, especially in certain African and Caribbean religions.” This is the entity that you have to fear in order to survive the zombie apocalypse.

According to The Oxford Companion to Consciousness, a zombie is “the living dead, a living creature indistinguishable in its physical constitution and in terms of its outward appearance and behaviour from a normal human being, but in whom the light of consciousness was completely absent.”

Therefore, in order to distinguish between the living and the living dead, you need to be able to spot the sentient from the senseless. Use Oxford Dictionaries to identify symptoms: those with a shuffling, lumbering, Neanderthal gait, faintly lugubrious facial expressions, and letting out guttural roars are most likely zombies. Also, if they appear soulless and are hell-bent on devouring your brain, it’s best to run as fast as you can…

2. Prepare your cardio

You now know what these harbingers of death look like but how can you get away from them if you can’t run? So long as you stay fit and exercise as much as you can during the zombie apocalypse, you will have a head-start on the creatures known as the walking dead. Actually, the clue is in the name. They’re called the walking dead for a reason. They can’t jog and they certainly can’t sprint, so provided you stretch before you attempt to replicate Mo Farah or Paula Radcliffe, you should be able to out-run these brain-thirsty zombies.

However, as Chris Cooper explains in Run, Swim, Throw, Cheat, there are other, less honest ways of improving your running ability. It may be unnatural, and cause you to exceed the normal limits of human endurance, but performance-enhancing drugs may help you out run your supernatural enemy. However, you’ll need more than running shoes to keep you safe…

3. Plan your resources

It may have sounded foolish to your neighbours but who’s laughing at your ‘Zombie Apocalypse Emergency Supplies’ now? Certainly not Martin, your overly friendly neighbour: he’s a re-animated zombie and desperately trying to devour Marjorie, the cat-lady next door. Failure to prepare is not an option. Using The Oxford Companion to Food as your guide, you’ve established what foods are the longest-lasting. Now equipped with a lifetime supply of canned meats, you barricade yourself in a DIY fort comprised of SPAM and canned tuna. Fun fact about SPAM: George A. Hormel, the inventor of tinned pork and the reason for its introduction to the food market in 1937, described the shelf-life of SPAM as ‘indefinite’. As you regard the desiccated daemons closing in around you, this might be the only time in your life you would trade places with a can of SPAM for its ‘indefinite’ shelf-life.

If the zombie attack becomes too much for you and all you want to do is sit in a corner, weeping silently and trembling with fear, then perhaps The Oxford Companion to Beer could help you through the dark times.

4. Pick your Weaponry

Don’t deny it; you’ve seen the films. The only way to kill a zombie is to remove the head or destroy the brain. It’s a lesson as old as time (it isn’t). If you’re thinking of a machine gun or a shotgun right now then you’re lucky to still be alive. Not only would the noise ring out like a dinner bell to the zombies, but ammunition would quickly run out and you’d be left with no means of self-protection. Your best bet is a machete, or anything that you can wield around. Reading the section entitled ‘Hand-to-Hand Weapons’ in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology is an excellent way to understand how to build your arsenal. I’m not sure if you can buy a samurai sword in your local newsagents, but it would be worth a try.

5. Write about your experience

‘Combat Gnosticism’ was a term coined by First World War academic James Campbell who advocated that ‘legitimate war literature’ is literature produced exclusively by combat experience; that soldiers have a kind of ‘gnosis’, a secret knowledge that makes writers such as Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, and Siegfried Sassoon the exemplars of First World War literature. You, yes YOU, could be the Wilfred Owen of the zombie apocalypse. All you need is a working laptop and you could become the voice of a generation of half-dead souls, documenting your experiences on the front-line. If your very own ‘Combat Gnosticism’ isn’t inspiration enough, Timothy Kendall’s Poetry of the First World War is due to publish October 2013. Let’s just hope the zombies don’t attack until then!

Congratulations brave soldier, you’ve done it! Fearlessly fighting your ferocious foe, you’ve stumbled out of the zombie apocalypse with all your limbs attached. We look forward to guiding you through the next ‘Zomb-pocalypse’!

Daniel Parker is a Publicity Assistant for Oxford University Press and fully prepared to fight off those seeking to eat his brains. You can find more about the Oxford resources mentioned in this article in Oxford Reference, Oxford Index, ODNB, Who’s Who, and Oxford Dictionaries.

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Image credits: (1) Haiti Zombie. Work of art by Jean-noël Lafargue. Free Art License via Wikimedia Commons (2) Blue Eyed Zombie. Photo by Josh Jensen. Creative Commons license via Wikimedia Commons

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You can also download a pdf of the infographic.

Leonard A. Jason, professor of clinical and community psychology at DePaul University and director of the Center for Community Research, is the author of Principles of Social Change published by Oxford University Press. Madison Sunnquist, Suzanna So, and Sarah Callahan are research assistants at the Center for Community Psychology at DePaul University.

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Infographic courtesy of the author.

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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. Our cardiologist friend knows the studies but can’t quite bring himself to let go of the association between weight and health. He is not alone. In fact, the pervasive clinical and cultural bias against fat and fat people distorts medical practice, despite mounting evidence that human metabolic function is far more complex than previously understood.

Weight Loss Advertisement from Woman Beautiful Magazine, November 1908 via Library of Congress

It is true that heavier individuals are more likely to develop heart disease on average than are thinner patients, although it is not clear that being heavier causes heart disease. It may be that some related factor or factors — such as diet, exercise, stress, socio-economic status or a combination of these — causes both increased weight and makes one susceptible to heart disease.

That said, a growing body of evidence has shown that, among people who already have heart disease, heavier patients are less likely to die. This is so counter-intuitive that medical researchers refer to this burgeoning body of research as “reverse epidemiology” or the “obesity paradox.”

A recent study has shown that this “obesity paradox” holds for Type II Diabetes as well. Granted, people in the general population are more likely to develop Type II Diabetes in the first place if they are heavier, although the causal pathways remain unknown. However, among those who develop Type II Diabetes, many are in the “normal weight” category. Furthermore, among Type II Diabetes patients, the heavier ones are less likely to die than their thinner counterparts.

In the general population, heavier body mass is indeed associated with cardiometabolic abnormalities (i.e., high blood pressure, triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, insulin resistance and inflammation). However, even here, the association is far from perfect. Specifically, almost one quarter of “normal weight” people — or 16 million Americans — have metabolic abnormalities, whereas more than half of “overweight” and almost one third of “obese” people — or 56 million Americans — have normal profiles, according to a 2008 study. We are beginning to understand that it is not the quantity but rather the quality of fat in our bodies that predicts cardiovascular risk; the unseen fat deeply embedded in our internal organs, known as visceral adipose tissue, is the type of fat most likely to lead to cardiometabolic abnormalities while visible fat beneath our skin may be more metabolically benign.

These studies belie the idea that heavier or bigger bodies are automatically diseased bodies and that weight loss is a panacea. When we further consider that 90-95% of dieters end up regaining what they lose, and that use of diet drugs or supplements may be particularly dangerous in patients with heart disease, the insistence on weight loss is more puzzling.

Rubber Reducing Garment advertising, Woman Beautiful Magazine, November 1908. via Library of Congress

“It took a lot of self-discipline, but I finally gave up dieting,” quips a popular Facebook posting. This post is funny because it inverts the common assumption that dieting requires discipline and is a virtuous endeavor. Indeed, being fat is still widely regarded as evidence of the sins of sloth and gluttony, despite — or perhaps because — of growing talk of “obesity” as a medical problem and public health crisis. It is this conviction that being fat is morally wrong that makes it hard for doctors, as well as ordinary people, to give up dieting and dieting advice. This is all the more true in times and places, like the contemporary United States, where the socially and economically privileged tend to be thin and the disadvantaged are more likely to be heavy.

Especially distressing are studies showing that many medical professionals regard their heavy patients as lazy and non-compliant. A recent study showed that doctors treat their heavy patients with less empathy and compassion than their thinner peers. In extreme cases, convinced that excess weight is responsible for ill health and that weight loss is the solution, doctors may not conduct necessary diagnostic exams that would have pointed to the underlying cause of illness.

It is time that medical professionals give up the focus on fat. This won’t be easy; the belief that if overweight and obese patients lost weight they would be healthier is deeply embedded in both our popular and our medical culture. Yet, there is a better way. Rather than focusing on outward appearance, it would be infinitely more productive and accurate to talk about cardiometabolic risk and to recognize that there are both metabolically-healthy and metabolically-unhealthy individuals in all categories of weight. Instead of promoting weight loss, doctors should emphasize that patients of all sizes incorporate physical activity and a balanced diet into their lives. Several studies have shown that physically fit “obese” individuals have lower incidence of heart disease and mortality from all causes than do sedentary people of “normal” weight. Similarly, a recent clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that adopting a Mediterranean diet reduced cardiovascular risk without inducing weight loss. The sixth of May is International No-Diet Day and a good time for doctors and patients alike to give up their unhealthy focus on weight loss.

Abigail C. Saguy, PhD is Associate Professor and Vice Chair of Sociology at UCLA and author of What’s Wrong with Fat? (Oxford, 2013).Tamara B. Horwich, MD, MS is a UCLA cardiologist who has published research on the link between body mass and mortality among heart disease patients.

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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?

CRIMINAL PROFILING

How does Will Graham get inside the minds of serial killers?

Criminal Law: The Essentials
By Sue Titus Reid
This brief text will introduce you to the main issues and developments within the field.

Crime Profiles: The Anatomy of Dangerous Persons, Places, and Situations
By Terance D. Miethe, Richard C. McCorkle and Shelley J. Listwan
Learn more about the motivation and design of criminal acts.

Forensic Psychology: A Very Short Introduction
By David Canter
A thorough overview of the field of forensic psychology including a chapter dedicated to how to track down a criminal.

CRIMINAL LAW AND JUSTICE

Jack Crawford’s FBI team doesn’t have the best record for bringing in criminals alive, but what can they expect when brought to justice?

Criminal Law: The Essentials
By Sue Titus Reid
This brief text will introduce you to the main issues and developments within the field.

Minds on Trial: Great Cases in Law and Psychology
By Charles Patrick Ewing and Joseph T. McCann
A behind-the-scenes look into high profile cases with an emphasis on the testimonies of mental health professionals.

Criminal Law
By Sue Titus Reid
A broader overview of criminal law and justice through a modified case by case approach.

The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Criminal Justice
Edited by Michael Tonry
A guide to the American criminal justice system and essential to learn what happens next to the killers caught on the show.

Criminal Law
By Nicola Padfield
Review this concise volume on criminal law before the next big case.

PSYCHIATRY

Do you need to stay ahead of Dr. Lecter’s mind games with the latest developments in psychiatry?

Psychiatry: A Very Short Introduction
By Tom Burns
Test your knowledge on this field and see if you can keep up with Dr. Lecter.

Psychiatry’s contract with society: Concepts, controversies, and consequences
Edited by Dinesh Bhugra, Amit Malik and George Ikkos
Read this to get a better handle on the complicated relationship between doctor and patient (luckily not as complicated as Graham and Lecter’s will be).

SERIAL KILLERS

Where did Thomas Harris get his inspiration from?

Gangsters, Swindlers, Killers, and Thieves: The Lives and Crimes of Fifty American Villains
Edited by Lawrence Block
Learn about the real villains that could have been the inspiration behind some of the characters on the show.

The Oxford Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing
Edited by Rosemary Herbert
Review the entry on serial killers and mass murderers by Marion Swan to see how real life killers inspire our writers.

ANTHROPOPHAGY

How does human flesh taste?

The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy
By William Arens
No book list on Hannibal Lecter would be complete without a few reference books on cannibalism.

The Oxford Companion to the Body
Edited by Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett
The entry on cannibalism by W. Arens provides a historical perspective on the anthropophagic nature of ‘others’.

Now that you’re prepared, use your newfound knowledge to solve the next case before Will does!

Kimberly Hernandez is a social media intern at Oxford University Press.

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Image credit: All images from the Hannibal television series copyright NBC. Used for purposes of illustration.

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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. Poor Londoners, rural English folk, and immigrants crowded in looking for work, but the district’s poverty was so overwhelming, many of the women who found themselves there became prostitutes, living and dying in squalid anonymity.

These conditions made Whitechapel the perfect hunting ground for killers. Of the 11 murders committed, five murders of prostitutes were attributed to a person called Jack the Ripper. The Ripper probably killed more than five women, but only these could be directly connected to him. The crimes were shocking and fascinating: the shock brought attention to the plight of Whitechapel’s poor which led to some transitory social reforms, but the fascination brought attention to the crimes of Jack the Ripper into the 21st century.

Jack the Ripper’s murders have been the subject of a slew of fiction and non-fiction books, films, short stories, graphic novels, and web pages. The murder even got his own “ology,” with people studying the murders calling themselves “Ripperologists.” Every few years, it seems, someone arrives with a new theory about the Ripper’s identity or some “startling new” evidence. In 2002, crime novelist Patricia Cornwell published a controversial book offering up artist Walter Sickert as Jack the Ripper. In 2012, author John Morris insisted Jack was a woman. Another researcher insists the Ripper was an American murderer named H.H. Holmes. The suspect list doesn’t end there. Lewis Carroll is on it, along with the Duke of Clarence, Sir John Williams, and on and on.

Why do we still care? Serial killers and murderers are at work somewhere in the world every day. For example, since 1993, hundreds of women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico have been routinely killed, with some being dumped into mass graves. The explanations are prosaic: jealousy, drugs, domestic violence, gang wars, robbery, rape. Some may be the product of a serial killer, but so many women have been murdered, it’s hard to tell. The police make arrests, but the murders continue. This story and others like it have been repeated for a couple of decades, but those murders don’t seem to have the appeal of Jack the Ripper. Why?

Is it the lack of a catchy moniker for the killers? “Jack the Ripper” does have a ring to it. Is it the gruesomeness of the murders? The Ripper not only killed his victims, he eviscerated them with surgical precision. Whoever the Ripper was, he knew his way around a human corpse. Is it the era? Victorian London was certainly an evocative place, and Victorian Whitechapel is stuck with all the sooty baggage the term “Dickensian” couldn’t carry. Whitechapel was much as one Ripper suspect was described: “of shabby genteel.”

The scores of years that separate us from the Whitechapel murders might make the whole business seem gloomily romantic to us, but it was terrifying to those who lived through it. Although serial murder had doubtless been committed prior to 19th-century England, the Ripper murders were systematic and one of the first times the public could really get its hands on all the juicy details. News about the murders were not just passed by word of mouth, they were printed in newspapers along with photographs of the victims. Both the murderer and the victims became individuals in the minds of the public. It was just the killer that they couldn’t put a face on.

It can be argued that the traditional systems of English—and by extension, American—justice has something to do with the Ripper’s popularity. These systems evolved to focus on the individual offender and his or her rights: the police are under pressure to arrest the person who is actually responsible, not just anyone. (The police in London arrested several people for the murders, but had to let them go.) The courts are under pressure to convict the correct suspect. Everyone looks foolish when suspects are in jail, and the slaughter continues. These factors, combined with a freewheeling media that publicizes any new information it can get, tend to individualize the offender.

Recall that 11 women were murdered between 1888 and 1891, but only five were attributed to Jack the Ripper. Who killed the other six women? Many Ripperologists say those, too, were the work of Jack, but others disagree. Two or more killers might have been at work separately, or “Jack the Ripper,” might have been several people working together. But the public likes to imagine the killer as a single person, an individual. It is much easier to put a face on, and a personality into, one person rather than many. It is thrilling to imagine one person bursting with that much evil.

We will never fully understand the Ripper’s methods or motive, or why the murders stopped, although most criminologists would say that serial killers only stop when they can no longer kill. They are either dead or incarcerated. It is unlikely that Jack the Ripper chose to stop killing. Something stopped him, but nothing will stop us from wondering who he was.

John Randolph Fuller is Professor of Criminology at the University of West Georgia and author of Juvenile Delinquency: Mainstream and Crosscurrents, Second Edition.

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Image credit: Jack the Ripper’s “Dear Boss” letter (part 1) postmarked 25 September 1888. (National Archives MEPO 3/142). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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“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 Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles: A History of LGBTQ Life at the University of Chicago. During his interview, Goldman spoke at length about coming out in the late 1960s and gay student organizing at the University in the early 1970s. His interview is just the first of many we at CSGS hope to collect from LGBT alumni, faculty, and staff over the next two years.

Chicago Maroon newspaper (ca. 1970), University of Chicago Library.

Building on the success of a previous oral history and exhibition project documenting the experiences of women at the University of Chicago, Closeted/Out in the Quadrangles speaks to a vibrant and growing partnership between the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality and the University Archives at Special Collections Research Center, one aimed at building archival collections in gender and sexuality studies. With support from CSGS’s undergraduate oral history internship program and archives-based undergraduate seminars (created specifically for the Closeted/Out project), we expect to deposit more than one hundred oral histories to the University Archives by 2015.

While scholars have documented the University of Chicago’s rich and numerous contributions to the academic study of homosexuality, we actually know very little about the experiences of LGBTQ individuals and communities who have passed through the campus gates. Filling that knowledge gap is our team of undergraduate student interns, who bring an important dose of energy, enthusiasm, and insider knowledge about campus life to the Closeted/Out interviews. Molly Liu, a fourth-year Biology major who first trained in oral history methods for an African history course, notes:

The loose, undirected format of oral history means that I get to hear people’s stories without needing to dig for any particular piece of information, and in doing so I’ve felt like I’ve understood these people in some way. Their words about gay identity, the University, and Chicago in particular have given me a lot think about. Plus, it’s very fulfilling on a personal level to talk to LGBTQ alumni who are happy and successful.

Kelsey Ganser, a fourth-year History major who is completing an internship with the project while working on her senior thesis in Russian history, reflected on both the academic and personal value of her work:

Working [on the project] has given me the skills to conduct oral history interviews, which are frequently overlooked in my history courses. As a young queer person, through the project I have been able to connect to my history in a way that was never available to me before. The pleasant and easygoing interviews help me feel how strong and welcoming the gay community is, and the difficult ones help me appreciate how far we have come. I had never met an adult gay person until I came to college, so discovering our history through the life stories of other LGBTQ people has been hugely important for the development of my identity. In this regard, I don’t think I can overstate how much this project has influenced my personal understanding of queer identity and history.

Molly, Kelsey, and our other student interns have also found themselves working on the front lines of gathering new archival donations for Special Collections Research Center. As Cal State scholar David A. Reichard has discussed in the Oral History Review article “Animating Ephemera through Oral History: Interpreting Visual Traces of California Gay College Student Organizing from the 1970s,” oral histories not only help us interpret student ephemera, they also help us collect it. Our interns have returned from their interviews with photos, event flyers, stickers, zines, and promises of future loans and donations to the Closeted/Out project. Their friends and classmates have offered to save materials documenting current feminist and queer organizing on campus. And the courses we offer in conjunction with the Closeted/Out project have also brought new undergraduate users to Special Collections Research Center, where they find archivists and librarians eager to help them explore an activist and social history of LGBT life.

University of Chicago students marching at Chicago Pride (1991), Chicago Maroon collection, University of Chicago Photographic Archive, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

As our students continue to interview, we also begin work on plans for a campus exhibition showcasing our findings, scheduled for the Spring of 2015. Shortly thereafter, the LGBTQ oral history collection will be available to researchers at Special Collections Research Center.

Monica L. Mercado is a Ph.D. Candidate in U.S. History at the University of Chicago and a dissertation fellow at the University’s Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, where she is a coordinator of the Center’s public history initiatives. Before coming to Chicago, Monica worked in exhibitions and programs at the Museum of the City of New York. You can find her musings on women’s and LGBT history, teaching, and Chicago’s unpredictable weather at @monicalmercado.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview, like them on Facebook, or follow the latest OUPblog posts to preview, learn, connect, discover, and study oral history.

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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.

Cleora’s brother, William Seaman Bainbridge, born 17 February 1870, became an internationally prominent surgeon and medical scientist, living a full life until 22 September 1947. Had Cleora lived, she would have accompanied her brother and parents as they toured American Baptist missions around the world, 1879-1880, which prepared her brother for many more such voyages. He co-founded the International Committee of Military Medicine in Belgium in 1921, and two years later, he had the equivalent of an email address, Bridgebain, receiving telegrams sent to it from anywhere in the world.

Long dead, a sister and brother have now returned to life inside virtual worlds, as avatars: Cleora in fantasy role-playing game EverQuest II, and William in two science fiction virtual worlds where medical science advanced to frightening levels, Fallen Earth and Tabula Rasa.

• Cleora Emily Bainbridge (1868-1870)

   

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  The only surviving photograph

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• Cleora's Avatar, a Half-Elf Conjuror Mage in EverQuest II

   

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• William Seaman Bainbridge (1870-1947)

   

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  At his most idealistic and ambitious, playing the role of Columbus at festivities marking the 400th anniversary of his discovery of the New World in 1892 at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, a remarkable educational resort founded in 1874.

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• Bridgebain in His Crude Chemtown Laboratory in Fallen Earth

   

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• Bridgebain and the Clone He Made of Himself, after a Battle in Tabula Rasa

   

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Long ago, the gods abandoned Norrath, the world of EverQuest II. The game imagines the gods as creeping back to regain their lost status as lords of all the lands; it presents a cynical view of religion. Given Cleora’s history, I cast her avatar as ambivalent about deities. Her perspective made her an excellent vantage point for research.

The post-apocalyptic gameworld of Fallen Earth depicts conflict between numerous small gangs and cults in a chaotic corner of the United States, some years after the fall of civilization caused by a plague that may have resulted from unconstrained genetic engineering. Set in and around the Grand Canyon in Arizona, including simplified versions of many real locations, the game requires avatars to scavenge materials from the environment so they can craft weapons and medicines in order to survive the new Dark Ages. Bridgebain joined the Tech faction—scientists and engineers who believe only technology can restore civilization—and set up his headquarters in an advanced Tech base named Chemtown.

Tabula Rasa imagined that the Earth was invaded by a vicious extraterrestrial army called the Bane, but a few humans were able to escape to the planets Foreas and Arieki, where they formed alliances with the indigenous civilizations against the invaders. In addition to exploring these alien worlds and battling the Bane, Bridgebain collected Logos symbols from widely dispersed and often hidden shrines, where they were left by an ancient civilization named called the Eloh. Assembled into sentences, these Logos elements are like scientific theories or engineering designs that give the user advanced powers. Bridgebain collected all the Logos symbols, learned new medical skills like cloning himself, and eventually battled back from the stars to a point in New York City only a few blocks from Gramercy Park where the real doctor had lived.

Cleora and the two Bridgebains are Ancestor Veneration Avatars (AVAs), a new way of memorializing, enjoying, and learning from deceased family members, especially for a secular society in which traditional ways of dealing emotionally with death have lost plausibility. When operating an AVA inside a virtual world, the user can draw upon personal knowledge of the dearly departed (many written records as in the case of Bridgebain), and a hopeful sense of what a life might have been like in a particular social context (as in the case of Cleora). The goal is as much to enrich the life of the user as to fulfill a duty to the deceased. Indeed, the user gains a richer sense of human life by experiencing a challenging virtual world from the perspective of another person.

William Sims Bainbridge is a prolific and influential sociologist of religion, science, and popular culture. He serves as co-director of Human-Centered Computing at the National Science Foundation. His books include eGods: Faith versus Fantasy in Computer Gaming, Leadership in Science and Technology, The Warcraft Civilization, Online Multiplayer Games, Across the Secular Abyss, and The Virtual Future. He is the grandnephew of Cleora Bainbridge and grandson of William Seaman Bainbridge.

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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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the primary schools athletics championships for New South Wales in December 2012, a 12-year-old boy, James Gallaugher, ran the 100m sprint in 11.72 seconds. This is a time that would comfortably have won him the gold medal in the 100m at the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.

The phenomenon of continual improvement extends to IQ. Amongst psychologists the Flynn effect (so-called because it has been extensively studied by the New Zealand psychologist James Flynn) is well known: it refers to the large increases in IQ that have occurred over one hundred years of intelligence testing. Intelligence tests have an average of 100, and they do so unfailingly. You would be wrong, however, to conclude from this that intelligence remains constant in the population. The consistent average IQ of 100 is the result of the work of the psychometricians, who toil to maintain the figure of 100. The tests and their marking regimes have to be continually reconstructed to bring the average to 100 and to make the distribution of scores conform to shape of the bell-shaped normal distribution curve.

The reconstruction is needed because our performance is improving all the time. When people are asked to take intelligence tests from a previous generation their scores are consistently above those of the earlier cohort.

Which brings me to GCSEs and A levels. The results keep improving there as well. They keep improving because, unlike with IQs, no one was working (until now) to hold them at a consistent figure. If the kids answer the questions well, they get an ‘A’.

It’s all part of the narrative that rubbishes schools that says that the steady improvements in examination results are down to ‘grade inflation’. There may be an element of grade inflation, but my guess is that most of the improvement is down to a variant of the Flynn effect, which also explains James Gallaugher’s extraordinary sprint speed. You can imagine why this happens: with IQ, it’s because so much more information and so many more tools for thinking and learning are about now — kids have access to machines and experiences that previous generations couldn’t even dream of.

Instead of watching Crackerjack on the TV, as I used to do when I got home from school, today’s generation are straight onto their computers. Scattered amongst the games and the music will be the occasional Internet search, which will lead to something else … and something else — they interact with their machines. Kids are encouraged to think, to find things out, to write and communicate in a dozen different ways. They go places, see things and have access to knowledge to which once upon a time only the most privileged had access. It’s no wonder they are getting cannier.

And James Gallaugher’s extraordinary 100m sprint is just as easy to explain. Children are better fed, taller, healthier, have access to better facilities and coaching, which in turn benefits from a hundred years of research into ways of improving running. Running shoes are marvellously improved and tracks are made of high-grip material rather than ashes. Why are we surprised  that things continually improve?

So, today’s kids are not only healthier, they are also more articulate and more knowledgeable than those of previous generations. Schools are better: not only are classes smaller, but children and young people are encouraged to think where once they would have been drilled in handwriting, Latin, and the names of national heroes from history. Teaching is improving all the time: today’s teachers are better educated and better trained, understanding the ways in which children learn. The differences between schools of today and those of my generation, forty years ago, are huge. This is why IQs, exam results — and sprinting speeds — continually improve.

Gary Thomas, Professor in Education, University of Birmingham. He has spent his career working in education, first as a primary school teacher, then as an educational psychologist, then as an academic in five universities. He is the author of Education: A Very Short Introduction.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

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Image credits: By alegri/4freephotos.com [Creative Commons] via Wikimedia Commons.

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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.

To get to this point, we’ve asked:

Sweet Sixteen: 11 March              Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Round of 8: 18 March                     Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Final Four: 25 March                      Which country’s capital will be more populated by 2015?

To determine the winner, we asked: Which country has a larger industrial output (that includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and energy)?

For Third Place:                               Madagascar vs. Turkey                     WINNER: Turkey

For First Place:                                  Mexico vs. Indonesia

OUP is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2013 March Madness: Atlas Edition is Indonesia!

First place: Indonesia
Second place: Mexico
Third place: Turkey

Indonesia’s industrial output equals $389 billion (US dollars), 10 billion ahead of Mexico. Turkey beat out Madagascar for third place with an output of $209 billion. Indonesia, with its 136,000 islands of which 6000 are inhabited, exports oil, natural gas, tin, timber, textiles, rubber, coffee and tea (to name a few). Mexico, in second place, is largely agricultural, but oil and oil products are its chief export, while manufacturing is the country’s most valuable activity. Mexico is the leading silver producer. In Turkey, agriculture employs 21% of people, and textiles, cars, machinery and paper products are the leading exports. In Madagascar, fishing, farming and forestry employ about 80% of people, but population growth has stressed the region’s forests and the unique wildlife.

Thanks for playing along, either on the courts or in your atlas! May the madness continue…

Oxford’s Atlas of the World — the only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information — is the most authoritative resource on the market. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price.

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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. The product they’re promoting is not what they lead people to believe it is, and it won’t do what people like to imagine it will.

Mammoths and mastodons once roamed throughout the Americas, as well as much of Europe and Asia. There were several species, but the best-known is the woolly mammoth, a creature of the far north. Well-preserved carcasses have been discovered melting out of the permafrost in Siberia and the Yukon. There’s been a lot of talk of ‘cloning’ a mammoth by using DNA recovered from bodies preserved in permafrost.

However, the genetic material in even the best-preserved mammoth specimens has been broken to bits, devoured by cold-adapted bacteria and shattered by thousands of years of freezing and thawing. No mammoth sperm cell holding intact DNA—a prerequisite for cloning—has ever been found. Using bits of ancient mammoth DNA, and referring to the genome of living elephants, researchers have pieced together much of the coding genome of the woolly mammoth—the segments that direct the building of proteins. But the vast majority of the genome, whose functions are little understood, remains unmapped.

Still, it’s now theoretically possible to create a pseudo-mammoth. This could be done by taking the genome of an Asian elephant, the closest living relative of the woolly mammoth, and splicing some sequences of mammoth DNA into it. This hybrid DNA could be inserted into an elephant sperm cell, which could then be used to artificially inseminate a female elephant. If the embryo developed and was carried to term, a mammoth-like animal would be born. This is a big ‘if’, because elephant reproduction is slow and complex. Even in efforts to clone living animals, there are often multiple abortions before a live infant is born. And those babies often don’t live long.

“We’d propose to make a hybrid elephant with the best features of modern elephants and of mammoths,” George Church said at a recent TEDx conference on De-Extinction.  A genomics pioneer based at Harvard, Church is a master of genetic manipulation. His motivation for trying to raise the mammoth is obscure.  When I spoke with him a couple of years back, he told me, “You can be very fussy and insist on getting the genome exactly right. Or you can go for something that has the main visible characteristics: the hair, the size, the tusk shape.” So, like many who imagine mammoths once again roaming the far north, Church was hung up on appearances.

Experiments using ancient mammoth DNA sequences have shown that these cold-adapted elephants had a different form of the blood protein hemoglobin compared to their modern cousins. Mammoth hemoglobin, which picks up oxygen in the lungs and offloads it in the tissues, was designed to release oxygen under cold conditions, a feat that modern elephant hemoglobin can’t perform. So a gene for cold-adapted hemoglobin is now on Church’s list of characteristics to splice into a mammothified elephant. But how many other subtle factors made the mammoth what it was?  To believe that human technology can fabricate an animal that will fill the lost niche of the mammoth takes a lot of blind faith—or hubris.

Mammoths lived in cold, dry prairies, an Ice Age habitat that Palaeoecologists call the mammoth steppe, and that once covered great swathes of the planet. Today, the mammoth steppe has vanished. So if bioengineers managed to produce pseudo-mammoths, they’d likely have no place to go. With a lot of luck, they might help to create their own habitat. Ecologist Sergei Zimov is running a long-term experiment in northeastern Siberia which he calls Pleistocene Park. His goal is to bring large herbivores into the soggy tundra in the hope that their grazing will transform the landscape back into the productive grassland that existed in the days of the mammoth. Large herbivores can shape their own habitats, a phenomenon that’s been observed in African savannas as well as in the Arctic. Zimov has seen some signs of success with horses and muskoxen. But whether mammoth-like animals could survive there is unknowable.

While some dream of raising the mammoth, living elephants are under siege. Poaching has reached a new peak; 62 percent of forest elephants in Central Africa were killed for their ivory over the last decade. (It’s worth noting that mammoth tusks were considerably larger: meaning a bigger pay-off of ivory for every animal killed). Elephants often die in clashes with subsistence farmers in Africa and Asia.  They need large stretches of habitat to survive, and land unoccupied by humans is becoming a rare and precious resource.

Even bringing back species that were deliberately wiped out in much of North America within the last century remains controversial. The reintroduced gray wolf population in Yellowstone National Park is by many measures a great success: the animals thrived, and have helped to restore an array of other creatures, from beaver to songbirds. Still, as the wolf population has expanded beyond the park’s boundaries, they’ve been met with outrage and gunshots. Yellowstone’s bison, the last free-roaming herd in the United States, gets the same reaction when the animals migrate out of the park in winters of heavy snow.

Conservation efforts for these living megafauna are chronically under-funded. So it’s hard to take the notion of raising a pseudo-mammoth, or any other long-extinct species, as a serious conservation move. The mammoth has been a favorite for resurrection, not because the idea is practical, but because the lost creature has such a strong hold on our imaginations.

Still, it’s probably not fair to compare all advocates of this idea to snake-oil salesmen. After watching a number of speakers at the TEDx De-Extinction conference passionately describe their dreams of raising not only the mammoth, but the thylacine and the passenger pigeon, I think many of these people are sincere. They believe they can raise dead species, and set them free to function in the wild. But they’re so focused on this vision that they seem disconnected from the reality of here and now.

Sharon Levy is a freelance science writer who specializes in making natural resource and conservation issues accessible for a broad audience. She is the author of Once and Future Giants, a book that introduces the idea that Ice Age megafauna extinctions hold important lessons for modern conservation. She lives in Humboldt County, California.

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Image credits: Smithsonian Woolly Mammoth. Photo by Kevin Burkett. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons; Woolly Mammoth. Photo by Flying Puffin. Creative Commons License via Wikimedia Commons.

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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.

As George Bush’s 2008 presidential proclamation stated, Tartan Day seeks to “celebrate the spirit and character of Scottish Americans and recognize their many contributions to our culture and our way of life.”

Though Census data does not go back as far as the 14th century Declaration of Arbroath, Social Explorer’s data resources offer a glimpse into the birth and development of the Scottish community in America. Back in 1790, the very first Census tracked the nationality of the foreign born population.

While the English and Welsh made up over four fifths of the population (81.4 percent), followed by the Germans (6.5 percent), the Scottish were the next most populous group (5.9 percent), followed by the Dutch (3.0 percent). (Calculations based on all available county data from the 1790 Census.)

Though small in number compared to other groups, they settled in particular communities of the early colonies, which you can explore in the following map.

Scottish Americans: Census 1790

Click the map to explore.

This detailed map of American Community Survey data shows where Americans with Scottish ancestry live today.

Scottish Ancestry: American Community Survey 2006-10

Click the map to explore.

The Scottish continue to immigrate to the US, and this detailed map data shows where residents originally born in Scotland live today.

Foreign-Born Scottish Residents: American Community Survey 2006-10

Click the map to explore.

Check out Social Explorer’s map and report tools for more Tartan Day data.

Sydney Beveridge is the Media and Content Editor for Social Explorer, where she works on the blog, curriculum materials, how-to-videos, social media outreach, presentations and strategic planning. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Social Explorer is an online research tool designed to provide quick and easy access to current and historical census data and demographic information. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to better illustrate, analyze and understand demography and social change. From research libraries to classrooms to the front page of the New York Times, Social Explorer is helping people engage with society and science.

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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.

We have had the Falkland Islands referendum. I was fortunate enough to be an accredited observer and spent a very interesting few days watching the voting and counting unfold in Stanley and the wider Islands. Shortly afterwards, an Argentine bishop was appointed the next Pope, Francis I, and this encouraged speculation about what the pontiff might have to say on the question of the Islas Malvinas. President Kirchner of Argentina was quick off the mark and paid her respects at the Vatican. Whatever special powers the Pope possesses, it won’t be enough to alter the sovereignty dynamic in the case of these South Atlantic islands. As Margaret Thatcher might have said the current UK government is not for turning — sovereignty is not up for discussion. And, most recently, new archival papers released in the UK revealed that members of the Thatcher government were divided over how to respond to the Argentine invasion of April 1982. For all the talk of an ‘Iron Lady’ and dispatching a ‘task force’ to recover the Islands, there was clearly the possibility at one stage or another of a deal being done. Raising in the process the enticing question of how British politics, let alone the fate of the Falkland Islanders, might have been different if war was avoided and some kind of settlement secured.

But that was April 1982 and things have moved on since then. Indeed, in the last two years, relations between Britain and Argentina have worsened and there is no reason to think that any settlement will be forthcoming. Whatever some newspaper columnists might think, the referendum was intended to send a clear message to Argentina and the wider world that the Falklands community is not looking to its nearest neighbor when considering future options. And, at the moment, it does not need to. The UK government has reiterated its support for respecting the ‘wishes’ of the Falkland Islands community and that other neighbours such as Chile and Uruguay are a benign presence. Brazil, while offering some rhetorical support to Argentina, is not unhelpful to the UK position. So the imbroglio continues.

At this stage, attention often turns to other kinds of options, beyond the continuation of the status quo i.e. the Falklands continuing as a UK overseas territory. While laudable, I think what continues to fascinate me about these islands is perhaps what insights they have to offer us more generally. As other geographers such as Alec Murphy note, territory continues to exercise an extraordinary ‘allure’ in our contemporary world. Noting all the claims made in the 1990s about globalization and border-free worlds, the idea of territory remains popular with political leaders and publics alike. For one thing, and perhaps other islands such as Cyprus animate this issue as well, territory helps to consolidate a view of political life being container like. Islands, with their apparently clear-cut distinctions between land and sea seem to lend themselves well to the containerization of political thought.

Second, we might think about territory as a flexible resource, which enables the socio-spatial education of citizens. In the case of the Falklands, there is a vast array of materials ranging from postage stamps, computer games and atlases to commemoration and museum displays that play their part in the geographical education of citizenry. They play their part in creating regimes of territorial legitimation and reinforce particular spatial commitments. The end result is to remind us perhaps that states rarely give up territory and usually only do so under extreme circumstances. Even when the territory in question was poorly understood and arguably neglected, as was the case of the Falklands in 1982, there was still sufficient allure in the territory itself combined with a sense of protecting the small resident community to ensure that the UK committed itself to resisting the Argentine occupation. The invading Argentine forces, on the other hand, while undoubtedly aware of the Falklands as a geographical component of Argentina, were remarkably ignorant of the English speaking community residing on the islands. Islanders still recall of Argentine amazement when they discovered that their first language was English and not Spanish.

What was striking, in the aftermath of the 1982 conflict, was the billions of pounds the UK was prepared to invest in the Falklands, and the wider commitment to bolster a presence in the South Atlantic and Antarctic. The idea of giving up the territory in question was now unthinkable, and if anything the Falklands is more embedded in UK stories about its extra-territorial scope and responsibities (as well as histories of war and commemoration). UK governments use the term ‘overseas territories’ to acknowledge that distance need not be any kind of barrier to their continued connection with the UK.

Finally, we should not under-estimate the power of territorially based world-views and the ease in which many territorial disputes seem unable to make much progress when it comes to promoting alternative imaginations — joint sovereignty, parallel statehood, cross citizenships, and other kinds of free associations. This does not mean such things are not possible or even desirable in the case of some of the most violent and apparently intractable disputes. But one should not under-estimate how keenly many people feel around the world about lines on the maps and barriers on the ground. Perhaps they offer a modicum of reassurance in a world, where to paraphrase Marx and Engels, all that appears solid melts into air. And this would apply to both Britain and Argentina.

Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London and a Visiting Fellow at St Cross College, University of Oxford. He is editor of The Geographical Journal and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is the author and editor of a number of books including the Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2007) and The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2012). He was a visiting fellow at Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury and has worked with national and international polar organizations including British Antarctic Survey, Antarctica New Zealand, International Polar Foundation, and the Australian Antarctic Division.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with Very Short Introductions on Facebook, and OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image credit: Wild Nature [public domain] via iStockphoto

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(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. Babies can understand a great deal of language before they begin to speak their first words.

People with autism often communicate differently to express what they know and want to share. Some will write thoughts on paper, or draw a picture demonstrating intent. They may use sign language, or a stack of picture cards to convey wants and needs. Many people with autism use shorter sentences with simplified language. This does not mean they are not thinking and comprehending full sentences with higher-level vocabulary. Being willing to communicate in a different way will allow you to be aware that communication comes in many forms. Autism Community provides resources and strategies to assist with communication and children with autism.

(2) Be aware that people with autism can be sensitive.

We learn our senses in first or second grade and can name ‘the five senses’ as tasting, touching, hearing, smelling, and seeing. In addition, we have two other senses that can let us know whether we are upside down or right side up and whether we are being squeezed or free to move. Almost all persons with autism have sensitivities that include one or more of these seven areas. In fact, most people in general have sensitivities in these areas as well. The difference is in the severity of the sensitivities. Some people with autism are hypersensitive to some of these areas and some are hyposensitive to some areas. Every person with autism is different; in fact, every person is different (whether they have autism or not)!

When near someone with autism, pay close attention to the way she reacts to sounds and lights, or how close she wants to stand to others. An awareness of these sensitivities can make a big difference in the way a person with autism engages in social events and activities. The Sensory World of Autism shows the sensory perspective of children with autism spectrum disorder that also struggle with sensory challenges.

(3) Be aware that people with autism think differently.

Someone who has autism often thinks differently. Different is not better or less than — it is just different. Someone with autism may need a longer period of time to process a question or statement. It is also common for a person with autism to think visually (or in pictures) and to be able to express thoughts easier using visual cues or images. An awareness of cognitive differences can go a long way toward being aware of the individual personhood of those with autism.

(4) Be aware that people with autism probably have a specific interest or topic that may help with communication.

Many of us have a specific area of interest that we enjoy discussing. Persons with autism often have an area of interest as well. It can be difficult for someone with autism to stop talking about or communicating this interest; therefore, it can be a great way to get to know someone by asking about this topic.

This awareness can be a terrific ‘ice breaker’ or a way to deepen a relationship with someone who has autism. The Indiana Resource Center for Autism at Indiana University offers unique strategies for parents and teachers in regarding to teaching and motivating children with autism.

(5) Be aware that people with autism tend to focus on the trees rather than the forest.

It can be difficult for someone with autism to think critically without focusing on minute details. If the discussion is about clothing, it may be necessary for the person with autism to discuss the stitching style used by the designer or seamstress. This often leads to the area of interest a person with autism may have, and is part of the cognitive patterning unique, yet familiar, to him. Be aware that the repetition or consistent use of minutiae rather than broad thinking is part of cognitive processing for a person with autism.

(6) Be aware that a child (or adult) with autism may be having a moment in public that seems confusing to you.

Because of sensory, cognitive, communication, and social differences, people with autism (and/or their family members) may sometimes have moments in public that can appear to be very different than they are. Because some people do not understand the differences and challenges that surround a family living with autism, they sometimes offer comments they feel may be helpful, or worse, judging glances and verbal recriminations to a family already in the middle of a negative moment or meltdown.

Being aware of the frustrations and challenges inherent within a family, and remembering to walk a mile in their shoes before coming to a conclusion, can be an excellent start in developing an awareness of autism. Moreover, what family doesn’t have its moments?

(7) Be aware that people with autism may need help with social circumstances.

Social situations can be beyond awkward for someone who has autism. The combination of sensitivities, communication differences, and expectations others have can be overwhelming. Having a friend to help guide a person with autism through the event, or a set of cards with conversation starters, etc. can be very helpful.

Be aware of the possible confusion and uncomfortable feelings someone with autism can have when placed in a social situation. Planning ahead with the needs of the person in mind can lead to a successful and less stressful social encounter. Social stories can be used to help facilitate positive, appropriate social skills.

(8) Be aware that a family that includes a person with autism may be tired and stressed.

It can be exhausting to be part of a family that includes one or more persons with autism. The daily challenges can mount and become overwhelming. Knowing that families who have members with autism (or other challenges) are often under a great deal of stress is a first step toward an empathic view. Families may honestly be too tired to set up play dates, go out to eat, or meet at the park, because the planning and implementation of these seemingly ordinary events can be overshadowed by the demands of daily life (cognition, communication, sensitivities, social challenges).

Awareness of and compassion for the needs of a family is sometimes demonstrated by planning events that take the needs of the entire family into consideration, or even, letting a family ‘off the hook’ knowing they may be exhausted from the demands of their daily lives. Support groups such as the Autism Society of America and Autism Speaks can help families connect with other families to share their stories and obtain services.

(9) Be aware that a child with autism may have siblings that get less attention than they do.

Siblings of those with autism may sometimes feel ignored or set aside because the needs of a brother or sister with autism overshadow the needs of the sibling at times. Developing an awareness of the specific feelings a sibling may have, and responding to that sibling in a way that conveys understanding can make a big difference in the life of that child or adult. Sibshops is a national organization that assists and provides programming for siblings of children with disabilities.

(10) Be aware that a person with autism is a person and not a label.

Autism is a label. Cans, cars, clothing, and technology have labels. People are not labels. A person with autism is a person. Be aware at all times that labels define and limit — real understanding comes with knowing the individual and responding to her needs.

Alice M. Hammel and Ryan M. Hourigan are the authors of Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs: A Label-Free Approach and the forthcoming Teaching Music to Students with Autism. Alice Hammel teaches for James Madison and Virginia Commonwealth Universities, and has years of experience teaching instrumental and choral music. Ryan Hourigan is Assistant Professor of Music Education at Ball State University and a recipient of the Outstanding University Music Educator Award from the Indiana Music Educators Association. The companion website to Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs provides more resources.

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Image credit: (1) via iStockphoto. (2) Having fun in a music class. Photo by SolStock, iStockphoto.

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Last week we asked: By current estimates, which country’s capital is expected to be more populated in 2015?

Madagascar vs. Indonesia                                           WINNER: Indonesia
Turkey vs. Mexico                                                           WINNER: Mexico

Did you know Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia, is expected to have 21.5 million inhabitants by 2015, making it the fifth most populated city in the world? Mexico City is expected to have 19.1 million inhabitants by 2015. Even though Turkey and Madagascar didn’t fare as well on the population front, they still have the chance to compete for the respectable third place title.

For the Championship, we want to know: Which country has a larger industrial output (that includes mining, manufacturing, construction, and energy)?

For Third Place:                                Madagascar vs. Turkey
For the Championship:                Indonesia vs. Mexico

To determine the winners in this week’s round, select the country that has a larger industrial output. You can print out our Atlas bracket (below) and place your bets, or play along on our Facebook page. Check back on 8 April to find out who the winner is!

Tournament schedule:

Sweet Sixteen: 11 March                            Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Round of 8: 18 March                                   Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Final Four: 25 March                                    Which country’s capital will be more populated by 2015?
Championship: 1 April                                     This week: Which country has a larger industrial output?
Winner Announced: 8 April

Oxford’s Atlas of the World — the only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information — is the most authoritative resource on the market. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price.

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“You can’t help respecting anybody who can spell TUESDAY, even if he doesn’t spell it right; but spelling isn’t everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn’t count.”
- Rabbit of Owl in A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner, chapter 5

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. This highlights one of the golden rules of orthography: before you criticise someone else’s spelling, be sure your own is up to scratch.

This clamp down on spelling standards raises a question which has been debated for centuries. Should we be investing so much school time in teaching children to acquire a spelling system which is bedevilled by idiosyncrasies and inconsistencies?  Wouldn’t it be simpler to reform English spelling to make it easier to learn? Calls for spelling reform have been voiced since the sixteenth century, although the proposers often had conflicting agendas. Where some reformers wished to restore a closer link between spelling and pronunciation, proposing phonetic spellings like niit “knight,” others sought to restore the link between spelling and etymology, introducing silent letters into doubt, scissors, language, thereby driving speech and writing further apart.

While spelling may pose many hurdles for unwary learners, it is by no means clear that it is the reason for comparatively low levels of literacy. Calls for reform today often draw on exaggerated and alarmist claims about the difficulties of English spelling, making unfounded links between English spelling and youth illiteracy and unemployment, and other social ills.   Claims that more transparent spelling systems have resulted in higher levels of literacy in countries like Finland and Spain, where there is a closer relationship between spelling and pronunciation, are based on intuition rather than evidence, and ignore the wide range of social and educational factors that inevitably impact upon early literacy.

The English Spelling Society continues to fly the flag for spelling reform today, lobbying for wholesale simplification of the system. In September 2008 its president, John Wells, proposed relaxing spelling rules, accepting variants such as thru and lite, and ceasing to distinguish between they’re, their and there. In his speech to the Conservative Party conference in October 2008 David Cameron attacked Wells’s proposals, reformulating them as a direct assault upon educational standards:  “He’s the President of the Spelling Society. Well, he’s wrong. And by the way, that’s spelt with a ‘W’.”

There is, however, an important question that gets lost in the politicisation of this debate. Is it necessary to have a standard spelling system? Why do we all need to spell the same way?  It’s easy to imagine that a single spelling system is a necessity rather than a choice, but it is a comparatively recent phenomenon.  In the Middle Ages there were literally hundreds of spellings of common words like through, including drowgh, yhurght, trghug, trowffe.  By comparison, the proposed tolerance of thru seems positively mild.  The proposal to tolerate variant spellings is not new; Mark Twain expressed a disdain for people who were only capable of spelling a word one way, while H.G. Wells viewed unusual spellings as an expression of character and personality. George Bernard Shaw left money in his will to fund an entirely new, “Shavian,” alphabet to replace the current system, whose surplus letters led to the waste of so much time and money: “Shakespeare might have written two or three more plays in the time it took him to spell his name with eleven letters instead of seven.”

Proposals to tolerate spelling variation are not merely evidence of recent liberal attitudes and slipping standards; a similar proposition to that of John Wells was made in a letter to the Times Educational Supplement in 1960, in which the writer questioned the need for a common orthography, suggesting that variants such as sieze, seize and seeze should be deemed equally acceptable.  Who is responsible for these trendy, permissive suggestions? C.S. Lewis. Such a policy would also encourage a more phonetic system, since alternative spellings could accommodate the different accents spoken in Britain and throughout the world.  For instance, speakers of English differ in their pronunciation of words like car and card, depending on their accent.  For Scots, Irish and most North American speakers, who pronounce the r in such words, these are logical spellings.  But for southern English speakers, for whom the r is silent, it would make more sense to spell such words without it.

Standardised spelling is a development closely linked with the introduction of printing; it is the role of copyeditors and proofreaders to ensure that an author’s spelling conforms to the standard. The recent publication of the manuscripts of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens provoked outrage in the media at their poor spelling. But their relaxed attitude to spelling is entirely unremarkable, given that correct spelling was imposed during the printing process. While printing has led to the establishment of a standard spelling system, the private spelling practices of diaries, letters and journals have continued to show considerable diversity up to the present day. The role of publishing houses as the gatekeepers of the standard is coming under increasing pressure today, as private spellings are now diffused more widely via websites, blogs, tweets, emails and other forms of unmediated online communication. There is a tacit acceptance that variant spellings are acceptable in such contexts and consequently the grip of the standard has begun to be loosened. Definitions in the online Urban Dictionary often view such misspellings as superior to conventional spellings; Teusday is labelled an “alternate spelling for Tuesday that better people use.”  C.S. Lewis regularly used this spelling in his private letters; perhaps his extensive reading in medieval literature meant he was reviving an earlier form, or perhaps he agreed with Rabbit that there are some days when spelling Tuesday correctly just doesn’t matter.

Simon Horobin is Professor of English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His book, Does Spelling Matter?, examines the role of spelling today, considering why English spelling is so difficult to master, whether it should be reformed, and whether the electronic age signals the demise of correct spelling. He also writes a blog about English spelling.

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Image credit: Rykneld School Spelling Certificate by Lindosland (Own work), shared under Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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A recent New York Times article, reports on a study that found private, corporate-run transitional halfway 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.

However, the size and scale of the halfway houses could have contributed to these disappointing results. The study included 38 facilities across the state housing up to 4,500 individuals; one private company had four facilities that could together house almost 800 individuals. Successful outcomes rarely occur when individuals are taken out of one dehumanizing large-scale system and put in another. Human warehousing is no replacement for real community reintegration.

Re-integration programs need to offer useful, scalable features with specific goals and consequences for program administrators as well as program recipients. As reported, inspections of these facilities revealed residents had too much unstructured time. Residents need support to use their time looking for employment or training opportunities for jobs. However, one individual mentioned that the private companies running these facilities seemed more concerned with filling up beds than providing effective services.

These recovery systems exist within the larger economic and social system. The current economic climate continues to provide few job opportunities, particularly for ex-offenders. As such, those with the most needs at the bottom of the social ladder have even fewer opportunities to positively change their life.

We need more naturalistic, humane, and cost-effective systems to address the more than 600,000 individuals released from jail and prison each year. In contrast to large facilities, we have seen much lower recidivism rates in Oxford Houses, which are small-scale (7-12 person), democratic, self-run, self-financed recovery communities. When ex-offenders in these small scale recovery houses have experienced mentors and hope, they are less likely to relapse and go back to prison. Today, there are over 10,000 former addicts who live in over 1,500 of these Oxford houses across the country, many of whom are ex-offenders.

What makes systems like Oxford House an attractive and economic alternative to other large systems is their adherence to specific goals (providing sober housing) modeled after a general program of mutual help and support groups. In these democratic settings, there are specific requirements (abstinence, employment, resident participation) and sanctions for violating these principles (immediate eviction). We need to explore alternatives to large, de-humanizing institutions that often perpetuate the problem of recidivism.

Leonard A. Jason, professor of clinical and community psychology at DePaul University and director of the Center for Community Research, is the author of Principles of Social Change published by Oxford University Press. He has investigated the self-help recovery movement for the last 20 years. Ron Harvey is a graduate student in Community Psychology at DePaul University.

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Last week we asked: Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Check out the winners below! Did you get them right?

Madagascar vs. Burma (Myanmar)                      WINNER: Madagascar
Indonesia vs. Japan                                                    WINNER: Indonesia
Italy vs. Turkey                                                             WINNER: Turkey
Mexico vs. USA                                                             WINNER: Mexico

For the Final Four, we want to know:
By current estimates, which country’s capital is expected to be more populated in 2015?

Madagascar vs. Indonesia
Turkey vs. Mexico

The development of agriculture more than 10,000 years ago led to the clustering of communities in farming villages. From there, the world’s first cities appeared in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valleys 5,500 years ago. Cities cropped up in China 3,600 years ago, and now the majority of the world’s population live in cities. The pull of city life is only growing. By 2015, 28.7 million inhabitants are expected to live in Tokyo-Yokohama, the largest metropolitan area by that year. To determine the winners in this week’s round, select the country whose capital will be the most populated in 2015. You can print out our Atlas bracket (below) and place your bets, or play along on our Facebook page. Check back on 1 April to find out what will make it to the semi-finals!

Tournament schedule:

Sweet Sixteen: 11 March                                  Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Round of 8: 18 March                                          Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Final Four: 25 March                                           This week: Which country’s capital will be more populated by 2015?
Semi-finals: 1 April
Championship: 8 April

Oxford’s Atlas of the World — the only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information — is the most authoritative resource on the market. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price.

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It is an interesting juxtaposition that World Meteorological Day should come immediately after World Water Day. World Water Day has been an event in the United Nations calendar since 1993, and the involvement of the international organisation and its topic for 2013 (‘Water Cooperation’) evokes the thought of ‘water wars’: arguments between nations over the use of this precious resource, efforts to actually map water resources, and of the extreme strife that can arise, even within developed nations such as the United States, over access to water.

For 2013, the World Meteorological Organisation has chosen their topic as ‘Watching the weather to protect life and property’ and is also celebrating 50 years of World Weather Watch, the coordinated, world-wide system that provides access to weather data to meteorological services around the world, so essential for monitoring weather systems and, in this context, rainfall, or as it is known to meteorologists in a broader context: precipitation.

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.

Yet the source of the world’s water may be expressed in a single word: ‘Rain’. (To be pedantic, we should really use two words: ‘Rain’ and ‘Snow’.) It is a persistant urban myth that the Inuit have a vast vocabulary of different words for ‘snow’, and there may various sayings about the intensity of rain: ‘soft rain’; ‘raining cats and dogs’; ‘raining pokers’; and ‘raining stair-rods’ – I wonder how many people nowadays are familiar with stair-rods? – but ‘rain’ is just simply ‘rain’. However, meteologists do sometimes, slightly light-heartedly, refer to two types of rain ‘warm rain’ and ‘cold rain’. These have nothing to do with the actual temperature of the eventual raindrops, but are a form of shorthand for the way in which the rain originates.

The technical terms for these two processes are coalescence, or ‘collision-coalescence’ responsible for warm rain and the Bergeron process (the ‘Bergeron-Findeisen process’ or ‘ice-crystal theory’) that produces cold rain. Raindrops have a typical range of 0.1—9 millimetres in diameter, yet the cloud droplets from which many form are extremely tiny, with typical diameters of about 1–100μm (1μm – a micron – being one thousandth of a millimetre). Vast numbers of cloud droplets are therefore required to form a single raindrop. In ‘warm rain’ this growth occurs simply through collisions and the coalescence of two droplets. Such collisions occur only when clouds are the site of extremely vigorous convection and turbulence and are not subject to freezing (glaciation) in their upper levels. (We will come to glaciation shortly.) Convective clouds of this sort are very deep cumulus congestus and cumulonimbus, and such clouds, and the warm rain that they generate, occur all year round in the tropics. In Britain, the vigorous convection and other conditions required to create these deep clouds tend to be confined to the summer.

Deep, summertime cumulus congestus clouds over the English Channel, which shortly afterwards produced a slight shower of ‘warm rain’. Later in the day, convection had reached higher levels and glaciation set in, giving rise to heavier ‘cold rain’. © Storm Dunlop 2013, all rights reserved.

‘Cold rain’ by contrast, does involve freezing. But this is not completely straightforward. In the absence of any suitable nuclei on which to freeze, water may exist in a liquid state at temperatures well below 0°C. This condition is known as supercooling and such droplets may survive at temperatures as low as -40°C, before they freeze spontaneously. (Clouds, such as altocumulus that often consist of supercooled droplets form a major icing hazard for aircraft, because the droplets freeze instantly on contact with a solid surface.) When a cloud is in such a state, any ice crystals that may have formed on suitably shaped solid dust or other nuclei grow rapidly at the expense of supercooled water droplets. Eventually the crystals become so large that they begin to fall towards the ground, and may subsequently melt into raindrops, or else, if temperatures are sufficiently low, be deposited as snow.

Glaciation occurs in many different forms of cloud, with the ice crystals turning into raindrops on their descent, but is most clearly seen in operation in the tops of cumulonimbus clouds. Here the cloud towers turn from vigorously growing cells, like those seen in cumulus congestus to a form known as cumulonimbus calvus, with slightly softer outlines – a slight misnomer, because ‘calvus’ actually means ‘bald’ – before going on to become cumulonimbus capillatus, where striations are clearly visible. Both states are signs that freezing is taking place. If the cloud towers reach the tropopause they may flatten into an ‘anvil’ shape, known as cumulonimbus incus. Depending on the wind shear at altitude, such anvils may grow, often explosively, to cover large areas of the sky.

Glaciated, cumulonimbus incus clouds limited in vertical extent by a relatively low, wintertime tropopause. © Storm Dunlop 2013, all rights reserved.

Ice crystals may form in various ways and in different sizes, the largest of which may be regarded as the hail pellets that are created by repeated passage through freezing layers, with the pellets being carried up to higher layers in strong updraughts, before eventually becoming so heavy that they fall out of the cloud. The very largest raindrops result from the melting of individual hail pellets. Small droplets are approximately spherical in shape, but the larger ones become flattened as they descend, somewhat resembling buns in shape. The very largest recorded reached diameters of 10 millimetres, but large drops (over about 5 mm in diameter) normally fragment into smaller droplets during their descent.

A large cumulonimbus cluster over the Isle of Wight, over which rain was falling. The ice crystals in the glaciated anvil top were spread across a wide area of sky by the strong, upper winds. © Storm Dunlop 2013, all rights reserved.

Trails of precipitation that do not reach the ground (known as virga) may often be seen below a number of different types of cloud. When the precipitation (of whatever type) does reach the ground, it is known technically as praecipitatio.

A very shallow, precipitating cumulonimbus cloud over the English Channel in an extremely cold, winter air stream. © Storm Dunlop 2013, all rights reserved.

Storm Dunlop is the author of A Dictionary of Weather, which is also available online as part of Oxford Reference. He is a fellow of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society.

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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.”

Raths noticed that young people who seemed apathetic, flighty, over-conforming, or over-dissenting in their behavior could become more purposeful, consistent, and zestful in their lives if they were asked to reflect upon their goals, purposes, and behaviors. He and his students Sidney Simon and Merrill Harmin refined and developed many ways that teachers and counselors could ask students “value-clarifying questions” and “values clarification strategies” to encourage them to reflect on what they prized and cherished, affirm their values with others, consider alternatives and their consequences, make freer choices about their lives, and act on their goals and beliefs in a consistent manner.

While developments and research on cognitive-behavioral therapies proceeded steadily over the decades, in the 1970s and 80s the focus of the values clarification movement stayed mostly on teaching, values education, and character education with youth. Although many of the methods and strategies of values clarification—such as voting, ranking, continuums, inventories, unfinished sentences, and the like—became staples in the repertoire of counselors and therapists, the utility of values clarification as a distinctive counseling approach was lost to one or two generations of new helping professionals.

In the 1980s and 90s, newer counseling and therapy approaches began to emerge on the scene, many of them utilizing concepts and methods of values clarification. Solution-focused therapy relies heavily on questions to help clients identify preferred goals, view their situation from an alternative perspective, consider alternative solutions, and evaluate coping strategies and solutions. Motivational interviewing, which has proven especially effective in alcohol and substance abuse counseling, uses clarifying questions and strategies to build on the client’s intrinsic motivation to change. Appreciative inquiry relies primarily on clarifying questions to help the client identify and capitalize on their strengths, vitalities, aspirations, possibilities, and core values as they set and achieve life and career goals. Acceptance and commitment therapy explicitly includes values clarification as a major component in their research-tested integration of western and eastern “behavior technologies.” Positive psychology recognizes that living according to one’s values is an essential element of life satisfaction.

I can’t help but be pleased that the importance of values clarification seems increasingly to be recognized as an important component in many different therapeutic approaches. Helping clients identify goals and priorities, make good decisions among competing choices, and take positive actions to achieve their goals and priorities—in a word, values clarification—is inevitably an important part of recovery, marriage and family therapy, career counseling, school counseling, pastoral counseling, financial counseling, and many other counseling and therapy foci. While values clarification is not a mental health counseling approach per se, it can be an important tool in psychotherapy when clients are ready to work on their recovery, set goals, and move forward in their lives.

So the question arises for me: Is it sufficient that values clarification seems frequently to be incorporated into many different therapy approaches and venues, or does it deserve its own renewed attention as a distinct counseling modality?

A partial answer to this question came to me in 2000, when I became chair of the Counseling Program at the Warner Graduate School of Education at the University of Rochester. I included the values clarification approach in my methods courses with both Masters students who were new to counseling and doctoral students who often had more counseling experience in certain areas than I did. Many or most of them loved values clarification: “It’s so practical.” “It’s so applicable to my work.” “Whether in individual or group settings, values clarification questions and activities make it so easy for individuals to respond and participate, even the quiet ones.”

So I became convinced that counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, social workers, and similar helping professionals could benefit by being introduced or re-introduced to values clarification theory and practice, including:

• the focus on prizing (affective), choosing (cognitive), and acting (behavior)
• the seven criteria or valuing processes that fall within those three realms
• the difference between value indicators and values
• how to ask good clarifying questions
• using the “clarifying interview” in individual counseling
• the scores of practical values clarification strategies for individual and group work
• specific applications of values clarification to different counseling topics and settings
• the overall values clarification hypothesis and research
• the appropriateness of values clarification for multicultural populations and issues
• handling value and moral conflicts with clients

In the end, values clarification can be, and often is, used by itself or integrated with almost any other counseling or therapeutic modality. Better that helping professionals use it awarely and to its greatest effectiveness.

Howard Kirschenbaum, Ed.D., is Professor Emeritus and former chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Development, Warner Graduate School of Education and Human Development, University of Rochester. He is the author of Values Clarification in Counseling and Psychotherapy: Practical Strategies for Individual and Group Settings by Oxford University Press and is the author or co-author of additional books on psychology, education, and history, including Values Clarification: A Handbook of Practical Strategies, Readings in Values Clarification, and Advanced Value Clarification. He has given workshops and presentations on the values clarification approach to counseling, psychotherapy and education throughout North America and around the world.

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Image credit: Excluded sad girl is looking the group talking. Photo by SimmiSimons, iStockphoto.

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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. These dynamic processes and trends represent neoliberalism on the move as it colonises the world. This is not to suggest that the same detailed and identical neoliberal template for social work is emerging in many disparate countries. Rather, these three developments represent an overall direction of travel. In individual countries the extent to which the developments have progressed and in what combinations they have developed is path-dependent; it depends on political institutions, constitutional arrangements, the extent of opposition to them, and so on. Nevertheless, as a direction of travel neoliberalism is increasingly prominent in many countries as a bounded rationality, governing the limits and forms of what is know-able, say-able, and do-able in social work as a result of the impact of the three developments.

Marketisation

Neo-liberalism tells us that markets are needed in social work and that the role of the state is to create the institutional framework within which the social services market operates. In neoliberal rhetoric the installation of markets is supposed to produce competition on quality and price, with the former going up and the latter going down. All too quickly, markets introduce a race to the bottom on price alone and undermine the sense in which social services previously countered market values by stressing citizenship rights, entitlements, and needs; the market is not an arena of social justice. Conveniently this means that governments are able to hold the consequences of punitive policies and cuts in funding at arms-length because market outcomes are, allegedly, neither fair nor unfair but simply flow from “impersonal” market forces.

Consumerisation

Markets require customers. Neoliberalism promises that markets will liberate the users of social work from their alleged role as passive recipients of social workers’ attentions and turn them into active, rational, self-interested, choice-making customers. Neoliberalism argues that customers have high expectations, forged in consumer culture and carried over into their encounters with social work. However, the neoliberal rhetoric slips all too easily into managerial definitions of what being treated well as a customer means, usually through simplistic and narrow definitions of customer satisfaction such as the use of proxy measures. For example, when I returned to a period of practice as a social worker, the proxy measure of the quality of an assessment was the social worker giving the service user a copy of the written document that resulted. I could have undertaken the worst possible assessment — not listened to a service user, behaved in an oppressive manner, and so on — but as long as I gave her or him a copy of the written document my assessment would be judged to have met the standard laid down to measure customer satisfaction.

Such narrow approaches sidestep questions of justice, inequality and oppression, and ignore the extent to which we have to learn to behave as consumers; proficient consumerism is not a ready-made experience that all possess innately. Our consumer learning is located within a class position that intersects with a range of other social divisions in our biographies (age, disability, gender, “race”, sexuality). In addition, consumerism hides the reality of how most, maybe all, people come into contact with social work. They aren’t making a “customer choice”. They come from stressful conditions, they have lives that seem unbearable, their contact with social work may have been initiated by someone else and may be unwelcome. They are, therefore, likely to be trying to get their circumstances or improved rather than seeing themselves as customers accessing a particular “commodity”.

Managerialisation

In order to move in the direction of marketisation and consumerisation, social work becomes increasingly managerialised. The search for “better” management focuses on the world of private business in the belief in a generic model of management, which minimises the differences between private businesses and social work. This has three main consequences. First, the commodification of services through managerial identification of discrete problem categories and a menu of service options, quantifying and costing service outputs. This results in social workers being deprived of meaningful working relationships with and commitments to service users and reduces social work to a series of one-off transactions. Secondly, cuts in funding and expectation of efficiency gains exert a general downward pressure on costs. Thirdly, greater managerial control is exerted over professional space. An example of this is performance management: organisational objectives are identified, performance indicators are developed to reflect the objectives, targets are set in terms of the performance indicators, and progress is monitored using the PIs. Even its supporters identify a range of dysfunctional consequences, such as tunnel vision (an emphasis on phenomena that are quantified in the performance management system at the expense of unquantified aspects of performance) and gaming (minimising the apparent scope for performance improvement to avoid increased expectations and higher targets in the future). Another example of the extension of managerial control over professional space is the introduction of call centres into social work. This is the epitome of treating users of social work as customers. It introduces a process for dealing with them taken from the business sector that ignores the potential complexity of their “transactions” and jettisons social work’s emphasis on seeking to establish trust with and appreciate the unique circumstances of the service user.

Call centres are much-vaunted by their proponents because they overcome barriers of place and time. However, a sense of place and locality has other connotations in terms of service users’ identities and where and how they want services to be provided. These kinds of concerns were traditionally seen as integral to the nature of social work. In many progressive aspirations for social work, the notion of responsiveness to the ‘local patch’ has had pride of place. With the advent of call centres, the ability of social workers to be aware of and utilise local networks and resources is rendered unimportant.

Think global, act local

Some readings of these three developments suggest that neoliberalism is now indelibly inscribed in the consciousness of service users, social workers and managers so that neoliberal social work is the only form of social work with which it is possible to identify. An alternative is to see service users, social workers and managers as interpellated (being “called”) by neoliberalism. From this perspective, social workers (and others) may be called but may not respond to the call or may respond to it in ways that were not anticipated. This potential gap between neoliberalism’s intentions and accomplishments needs to be exploited not only by individual social workers struggling to work in the interests of service users in their day-to-day practice but also through collective struggles that support World Social Work Day’s Global Agenda at the national and local level (see Social Work Action Network).

John Harris is Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was a social worker, training officer, and manager prior to moving into social work education. He is the co-author of The Oxford Dictionary of Social Work and Social Care with Vicky White.

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Last week we asked: Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Check out the winners below! Did you get them right?

Madagascar vs. Democratic Republic of Congo             WINNER: Madagascar
Ethiopia vs. Burma (Myanmar)                                             WINNER: Burma (Myanmar)
Indonesia vs. India                                                                    WINNER: Indonesia
China vs. Japan                                                                            WINNER: Japan 
Italy vs. Greece                                                                            WINNER: Italy
Costa Rica vs. Turkey                                                                WINNER: Turkey 
Venezuela vs. Mexico                                                                WINNER: Mexico  
Australia vs. USA                                                                         WINNER: USA

For Round 2, we want to know: Which country has a higher level of endemism?

Madagascar vs. Burma (Myanmar)
Indonesia vs. Japan
Italy vs. Turkey
Mexico vs. USA

Endemic species, plants, and ecosystems refer to those which are unique to a specific country, such as the aye-aye lemur of Madagascar. It’s currently estimated that there are about 14 million species in the world, but only 2 million have been formally identified. Can you figure out which country has the higher level? To determine the winners in this week’s round, select the country with the highest level of endemism in each bracket. You can print out our Atlas bracket (below) and place your bets, or play along on our Facebook page. Check back on 25 March to find out who the Final Four will be!

Tournament schedule:

Sweet Sixteen: 11 March                                               Which country has the highest GDP per capita?
Round of 8: 18 March                                                      This week: Which country has a higher level of endemism?
Final Four: 25 March
Semi-finals: 1 April
Championship: 8 April

Oxford’s Atlas of the World — the only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information — is the most authoritative resource on the market. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price.

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The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 2013 is in full swing, welcoming thinkers and writers from across the globe to our wonderful city of Oxford. We’re delighted to have over thirty Oxford University Press authors participating in the Festival this year! OUPblog will be bringing you a selection of blog posts from these authors so that  even if you can’t join us in Oxford this year, you won’t miss out on all the action. Don’t forget you can also follow @oxfordlitfest and check the event schedule here.

Klaus Dodds will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Thursday 21 March 2013 at 1:15 p.m. to provide a very short introduction to the Antarctic. The event is free to attend.

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.

The first inconvenient truth is that the Antarctic is a deeply disputed space. It is not a place where everyone co-operates straight forwardly just because there is no indigenous human population. We might be worried about the future stability of the polar ice sheet, but in the meantime a host of countries are busy cementing their sovereign claims. Britain has renamed a vast area of British Antarctic Territory Queen Elizabeth Land. The Chilean president visited the Antarctic in January 2013 to inaugurate a new research station to be manned by the Chilean air force. And Argentina believes that any resources lying off the Antarctic Peninsula belong to it and no one else. Alongside those three states, four other countries, Australia, France, New Zealand and Norway also believe that they enjoy sovereignty over large sways of the polar continent and surrounding ocean. The United States and Russia reserve a right to make a claim in the future while other members of the international community believe that the Antarctic is a global common.

The second inconvenient truth is that the parties to what is called the Antarctic Treaty System are struggling to manage resource exploitation. Fishing in the Southern Ocean is worth millions of pounds a year. Fish such as the Patagonian Toothfish are highly lucrative and the Commission for the Conservation on Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) struggles to get agreement on how best to manage such a fishery. And even then that does not even begin to address the problem of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in the Southern Ocean. Whaling, although addressed by the International Whaling Commission, is also a fractious affair. Australia and Japan are at loggerheads over whaling in the Southern Ocean, and there is currently a case pending in the International Court of Justice.

The third inconvenient truth is that some countries are perfectly prepared to investigate the Antarctic for its mineral potential. The Antarctic Treaty parties proudly announced to the world that the Protocol on Environmental Protection would ban mining in the Antarctic. The Protocol entered into force in 1998, and this was considered to be instrumental in reducing diplomatic and political pressure on the ATS from environmental organizations and members of the Global South who feared that an elite group of nations might exploit the continent for their own self-interest. In 2012, the Russian delegation submitted a paper to the 35^th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, which blithely mentioned that their scientists were interested in the ‘Determination of structure, geological evolution and potential mineral resources of the Antarctic lithosphere’.

The fourth inconvenient truth is that the Antarctic is heavily commercialized. As with the Arctic, the Antarctic supports a tourist industry involving multiple ships and planes transporting at its peak some 40,000 per year. The tourist industry is an important source of revenue for so-called gateway ports such as Christchurch, Punta Arenas and Stanley in the Falkland Islands. There have been accidents and emergencies in the Antarctic region caused in part because of poor sea conditions but another contributory factor might be the pressure on tour operators to go to ever more remoter parts in order to generate an ‘authentic’ expeditionary experience. A number of countries such as Chile are trying to cash in on this trend and establish hostels and other forms of accommodation to cater for wilderness holidays. It also helps to cement sovereign claims.

The fifth and final inconvenient truth is that there is a growing anxiety about the role of China in Antarctica. While everyone associated with the Antarctic Treaty System is eager to emphasize the consensual nature of decision making and scientific co-operation in the field, there is a worry that a new phalanx of countries led by China, and including Brazil, India and Korea, is going to challenge the political and scientific hegemony previously enjoyed by an alliance involving the United States, Europe and countries such as Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, the media has been full of stories about China’s growing polar footprint – bases, networks and place names. The Antarctic map is being changed as Chinese, Indian and Korean place names lie adjacent to Euro-American naming traditions.

So by all means enjoy the nature programs and continue to revel in the exploits of past explorers and their contemporary avatars but be aware that the geopolitics of the Antarctic is lively. This icy wilderness is being claimed, coveted, exploited by a growing numbers of nations.

Klaus Dodds is Professor of Geopolitics at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of a number of books including Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction (2007) and The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction (2012).

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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. In fact, he showed that such meetings actually serve to strengthen the existing stereotypes. Allport believed if certain conditions were met, meetings between rival groups could successfully lead to change. Under these terms both groups would send representatives of equal importance; the two groups would cooperate on a goal that is perceived as important for both of them; and representatives of both groups would be endorsed by their own official authorities. These conditions have become collectively known as the contact hypothesis.

Although meetings underpinned by the contact hypothesis have been fairly successful, I believe that it has several severe limitations. First, the practical stipulations are hard to achieve. For example, it is often hard to find participants of equal status. A series of contact meetings between warring factions may be complicated and expensive to arrange, particularly when a third mutually acceptable location has to be used. Second, face-to-face meetings with “the enemy” are almost certain to provoke anxiety among participants. These anxious feelings are likely to cause participants to “close-up” and make them unable to see the other side in a new way, thus unwittingly existing stereotypes on the both sides are reinforced. The third problem is what psychologists refer to as generalization. In other words, the contact meeting may be successful but participants may not generalize from their positive feelings towards the participants from the other side to their whole group, or they believe that other side’s participants, nice as they may be, are not representative of the group as a whole.

I believe that the Internet can provide answers to the three challenges mentioned above. First, practicality: when the contact takes place online rather than face to face, it is much easier and significantly cheaper to organize. The Internet also goes a long way to solving another practical problem, that of equal status among participants. Since the Internet does not contain visual cues, it is impossible to know whether your opposite number is wearing a Rolex watch or is 20 years younger than you and much better looking.

Second, anxiety: the apprehension that people feel when they sit together with “the other” is significantly reduced when the contact takes place over the web. Moreover, the Internet allows people to meet from a place that they feel comfortable, this may be even their own living room, thus further reducing the anxiety. Third, the Internet also assists with the lack of generalization from the individual to the group, since it allows people to emphasize their group identity. For example, members may tag the group identity to the participant every time he or she makes a contribution to the meeting. Such tools in online contact will enhance the chances of a positive contact, which will effect the whole perception of the “other group.”

It seems that the Internet, with its almost ubiquitous accessibility, may have significant advantages over the traditional forms of contact. It is also important to stress that such digital contact should not take place in a wholly unstructured setting. I believe that the supervision of a social psychologist that has expertise in group dynamics is imperative. This will help to avoid flaming, that is people using the web, not as tool to improve intergroup relations, but rather to launch vicious attacks on the other side. The skills of the supervisor are important to ensure the involvement and commitment of participants.

I believe that this type of contact will have a tremendous impact on reducing many of the major disputes between communities throughout the world. For example, initial contact meetings have taken place between Israelis and Palestinians, and between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. These are first steps. I believe that in the future we will see more and more online platforms aimed at reducing intergroup conflict and improving intergroup relations throughout the world.

Yair Amichai-Hamburger is the director of the Research Center for Internet Psychology and the editor of The Social Net: Understanding our online behavior.

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Image Credit: Human Network Connection on White Surface. Photo by Chromatika Multimedia, iStockphoto.

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