Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Roberta Bivins
As a historian who writes about the controversial topic of ‘alternative medicine’, I get a lot of questions about whether this or that therapy ‘works’. Sometimes, these questions are a test of my objectivity as a researcher.
By Elvin Lim
The Obama White House has announced a series of personnel changes in recent weeks, ahead of the November elections. The aim is to push the reset button, but not to time it as if the button was plunged at the same time that voters signal their repudiation on election day. But the headline is the same as that of the Carter cabinet reshuffle in 1979: there is a crisis of confidence in the Oval Office.
This weekend, Michelle and Lauren took on New York Comic Con & Anime Festival to bring you superheros, speed dating, light sabers, and more.
By Dennis Baron
A computer at Carnegie Mellon University is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge, by soaking it all up and figuring it out in our heads.
People’s brains work better some days than others, and eventually we will all run out of steam, but the creators of NELL, the Never Ending Language Learner, want it to run forever, getting better every day in every way, until it becomes the largest repository imaginable of all that’s e’er been thought or writ.
By the time you read this, I will be at Comic Con. Don’t be sad. I’ll take photos. Lots and lots of photos. Lots.
With the Obama administration in its nascent years, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict proving as intractable as ever, relations with Iran reaching a boiling point and the political landscape changing rapidly both in the United States and the Middle East, wrestling with the issue of Islam is more crucial than ever and will be a defining feature of the 21st century. In this video clip, famous atheist and prolific author Christopher Hitchens and the accomplished and controversial scholar Tariq Ramadan debate one of the most pertinent questions of our modern age.
By Sharon Zukin
I’ll tell you what’s “very strange”: the population of New York City is going to get a whole lot older very fast. The city’s age spread is now about the same as that of the U.S. population. Around 7% are children too young to go to school, almost 25% are under eighteen years of age and half as many (fewer than 12%) are over sixty-five.
But according to demographers’ projections, after 2010 New York will be a rapidly aging city. Some reasons for this are natural (baby boomers aging), others are social (medicine and changes in cultural practices keeping us alive longer) while still others are a mix of both (fertility rates declining). All in all, though, the city’s older population will increase dramatically in the next twenty years.
By Gordon Thompson
On 9 October, many in the world will remember John Winston Ono Lennon, born on this date in 1940. He, of course, would have been amused, although part of him (the part that self-identified as “genius”) would have anticipated the attention. However, he might also have questioned why the Beatles and their music, and this Beatle in particular, would remain so current in our cultural thinking. When Lennon described the Beatles as just a band that made it very, very big, why did we doubt him?
By Amy Mandelker
The earthquake in China. The school that collapsed, crushing students and teachers, was established and funded by the charitable organization for which my ex-husband works. He is a conservationist and social activist, and for several days following the first shocks, he is only able to contact one of his co-workers at the scene, who digs alone at the site of the school with his chilled, bare hands for an entire day. By evening he uncovers the dead body of a teacher.
By Anatoly Liberman
The most universal law of etymology is that we cannot explain the origin of a word unless we have a reasonably good idea of what the thing designated by the word means. For quite some time people pointed to India as the land in which rum was first consumed and did not realize that in other European languages rum was a borrowing from English. The misleading French spelling rhum suggested a connection with Greek rheum “stream, flow” (as in rheumatism). According to other old conjectures, rum is derived from aroma or saccharum. India led researchers to Sanskrit roma “water” as the word’s etymon, and this is what many otherwise solid 19th-century dictionaries said. Webster gave the vague, even meaningless reference “American,” but on the whole, the choice appeared to be between East and West Indies. Skeat, in the first edition of his dictionary (1882), suggested Malayan origins (from beram “alcoholic drink,” with the loss of the first syllable) and used his habitual eloquence to boost this hypothesis.
By Jonathan Bate
My last three books have been a 670 page life of the agricultural labouring poet John Clare, a two and half thousand page edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, and a 500 page “intellectual biography” of Shakespeare in the context of his age. So how could I resist an invitation from OUP to write a VERY SHORT book!
According to surveys, 95% of Americans believe in God. Although it can sometimes feel that the greatest rifts are between believers and non-believers, disputes are more often caused between groups of believers who simply don’t agree about what God is like. In America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God – and What That Says About Us, Paul Froese and Christopher Bader use original survey data, in-depth interviews, and “The God Test” to reveal the four types of god most American’s believe in. Indeed, this is the most comprehensive and illuminating survey of Americans’ religious beliefs ever conducted.
By Elvin Lim
The generic Democratic ballot appeared to rebound a little last week, in part because of the Republican Pledge to America, the story of Christine O’Donnell of Delaware spreading in the liberal base, and in part because of anticipation of the One Nation march on the National Mall this weekend. Could it be that Democrats may actually be able to keep their majorities in Congress if this trend continues?A cold look at history tells us that the odds are still low. One of the iron laws of American politics is that the president’s party almost always loses seats in the House in off-year, mid-term elections. Since 1870, there have been 35 mid-term elections and on all but four occasions, the president’s party lost seats in the House (the average loss is 34 seats).
Tweet By Bram Vermeer Science can create a better world. We are no playthings in the Earth’s fate. Here are my personal top 10 breakthroughs that are badly needed to ensure our future. 1. Smart irrigation When farmers irrigate their land, they usually water it 100 percent of the time. But isn’t it silly for […]
By Edward Zelinsky
The United States is in the midst of a “free lunch” campaign in which Republicans and Democrats alike promise painless resolution of our budgetary problems. As a result, neither party will have an electoral mandate for the hard choices necessary to tackle our fiscal quandaries. Both parties are squandering an important opportunity to mold public opinion and set the stage for meaningful budgetary discipline.
OK, OK. I’m sorry. I haven’t done Linked Up in a while and I didn’t think anyone would notice. But you did (which I appreciate) and I’m sorry (but not that sorry) for letting you down (I think you’ll recover). Please forgive me (Jen).