Alternative Media – Episode 14 – The Oxford Comment
Are we living in the “anti-60s”? This episode compares the counterculture movement to the blogosphere and pop music today….Bieber vs. Beatles! Hippies vs. Hipsters! Let the showdown begin.
The Westboro Church and Justice Alito: the other side of the story
By Edward Zelinsky
It is noteworthy when eight ideologically diverse justices of the U.S. Supreme Court all decide a First Amendment case the same way. Thus, Snyder v. Phelps is a noteworthy decision. The Westboro Baptist Church is well-known for its demonstrations at military funerals. Indeed, the Westboro Church, led by (and, some say, principally consisting of) the Phelps family, has the rare distinction of having been denounced by both Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee.
The art of political quotation
‘Politics feeds your vanity and starves your self-respect,’ according to the journalist Matthew Parris. In the video below, filmed by George Miller, Antony Jay discusses what makes a good political quotation.
Linked Up: April Foolery, Escaped Cobra, Peanuts
DISCLAIMER: None of these links are in the spirit of April Fools, so worry not. You’re not going to click anything that will cause a startling pop-up or download something you don’t want on your computer. We wouldn’t do that to you. (Or would we?) (No, we would not.) -Lauren & Kirsty
The Yosemite Sam Book of Revised Quotations
By Mark Peters
Some people and characters are forever associated with a word. I dare you to say refudiate, malaise, nanu-nanu, despicable, winning, and meep without thinking of Sarah Palin, Jimmy Carter, Mork, Daffy Duck, Charlie Sheen, and the Road Runner (or Beaker).
Without a doubt, the poster boy for varmint is Yosemite Sam, the rootin’-tootin’, razzin’-frazzin’ cowboy who
Hey everybody! Meet Kirsty!
Kirsty Doole has been part of the OUPblog team since…possibly forever, and yet I don’t know that we’ve ever properly introduced her to all of you. Formerly known as the ‘UK Early Bird,’ she is our UK Contributing Editor and keeps me on my toes at every turn. To my great delight, she’s also joined me on the @OUPblog twitter account! Without further adieu, I present this (fantastic) Q&A.
Omar is no Ozzie
By Michael Humphreys
Baseball fans love to compare the players of today to the players who came before, but one must wonder how great the margin of error in these comparisons is. Is there any way of knowing who the real baseball greats are, and whose legend should stand the test of time?
Let’s take Omar Vizquel as an example. So says Wikipedia, “Vizquel is considered one of baseball’s
Political violence and PRI
The conversation in the new and old media over the last several weeks has been dominated by reports about uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt and violent clashes in Bahrain, Yemen, the Ivory Coast, Iraq and elsewhere. In Libya, fighting currently is reported to take place close to strategic oil installations. Because of the scarcity of claims arising out of similar events in investor-state arbitration, political risk insurance claims determinations by the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) can play an important role to develop this area of law and fill these gaps in future investor-state arbitral arbitrations.
Thoughts of Pi
By Jason Rosenhouse
A recent satirical essay in the Huffington Post reports that congressional Republicans are trying to legislate the value of pi. Fearing that the complexity of modern geometry is hurting America’s performance on international measures of mathematical knowledge, they have decreed that from now on pi shall be equal to three. It is a sad commentary on American culture that you must read slowly and carefully to be certain the essay is just satire.
Monthly Gleanings: March 2011
Question: How large is an average fluent speaker’s vocabulary?
Answer: I have often heard this question, including its variant: “Is it true that English contains more words than any other (European) language?” The problem is that “an average fluent speaker” does not exist. Also, it is important to distinguish between how many words we recognize (our so-called passive vocabulary) and how many we use in everyday communication (active vocabulary).
The way of the abstract
“Physics, most of us would agree, is the basic science of nature. Its purpose is to discover the laws of the natural world. Do such laws exist? Well, the success of physics at identifying some of them proves, in retrospect, that they do exist. Or, at least, it proves that there are Laws of Physics, which we can safely assume to be Laws of Nature.”
The Isolationist Shift within Conservatism
By Elvin Lim
What is it about conservative opposition to Obama’s policy in Libya? It appears conservative critics think he has done both too little too late in Libya, and also too much. While there is agreement on the Right that whatever Obama does is bad policy, the divergent critical voices are not so much evidence of
Who’s winning in the sexual market?
As most of you probably know by now, there’s a new stage in life – emerging adulthood, or for the purposes of this post, the unmarried young adult. Marriage is getting pushed off (26 is the average age for women, 28 for men) which means…more premarital sex than ever!
According to sociologists, emerging adults are all part of a sexual market in which the “cost” of sex for men and women in heterosexual relationships is pretty different. Out of this disparity has risen the theory of “sexual economics,” which I recently
SciWhys: What are genes and genomes?
By Jonathan Crowe
I described in my last blog post how DNA acts as a store of biological information – information that serves as a set of instructions that direct our growth and function. Indeed, we could consider DNA to be the biological equivalent of a library – another repository of information with which we’re all probably much more familiar. The information we find in a library isn’t present in one huge tome, however. Rather, it is divided into discrete packages of information – namely books. And so it is with DNA: the biological information it stores isn’t captured in a single, huge molecule, but is divided into separate entities called chromosomes – the biological equivalent of individual books in a library.
On Being
By Peter Atkins
Deep questions of existence have entertained both sharp and dull minds throughout the history of humanity. Where did it all come from? What is the point of it? What happens after you die? Great mounds of implausible speculation have been tipped on these pressing questions by theologians and philosophers; whole churches have been founded as a result of the institutionalization of the answers. But all those answers were guided by speculation and sentiment and typically expressed in compelling language that captured minds but concealed emptiness. They were emperor’s new clothes with no emperor within.
Linked Up: Subway Cars, Poetry, Rebecca Black
Dearest readers, I think this might be the best collection of links I’ve ever gathered. So, you’re welcome. Have a wonderful weekend! Next Stop Atlantic: a photo series documenting the hurling of MTA subway cars into the Atlantic Ocean to create artificial reefs for sea creatures. [My Modern Met] “He doesn’t like George Michael! Boo!” […]