April 2013

Global warfare redivivus

Charles Townshend
When the ‘global war on terror’ was launched by George W. Bush – closely followed by Tony Blair – after the 9/11 attacks, many people no doubt felt reassured by these leaders’ confidence that they knew the best way to retaliate. Some, though, found the global war concept alarming for several reasons. The notion of a ‘war’ seemed to indicate a wrong-headed belief that overt military action, rather than secret intelligence methods, was an effective response. More seriously, perhaps, this seemed to be a ‘war’ which couldn’t be won. Since it is all but inconceivable that terrorism per se can ever be eliminated by any method, the Bush-Blair crusade looked dangerously like a declaration of permanent war of an Orwellian kind.

The life of a nation is told by the lives of its people…

America has a rich and diverse history which shows itself in its music, politics, film, and culture. The power of biography helps to illuminate larger questions of war, peace, and justice and in exploring the lives of the figures that helped to shape America’s history we can discover more about our past.

11 facts about penguins

By Georgia Mierswa

Happy World Penguin Day! And what better way to celebrate than by looking at photos of penguins waddling, swimming, diving, and generally looking adorable. Penguin facts are lifted from the Oxford Index’s overview page entry on penguins (on the seabird, not the 1950s R&B group).

Whose Magic Flute is it, anyway?

By William Gibbons
One of Mozart’s most enduringly popular operas, The Magic Flute has captivated audiences since its premiere in Vienna in 1791. Centered on the struggles of the heroic Prince Tamino, his beloved Pamina, and the wise Sarastro (with help and comic relief from the birdcatcher Papageno) against the Queen of the Night, we know The Magic Flute as a classic tale of the battle between good and evil, or perhaps between enlightenment and ignorance.

The illusion of “choice”

By Rickie Solinger
Recently Planned Parenthood announced that it will no longer use the term “choice” to describe what the organization aims to preserve. It’s about time. The weak, consumerist claim of individual choice has never been sufficient to guarantee women what they need — the right to reproduce or not — and to be mothers with dignity and safety.

World Malaria Day 2013

By Johanna Daily
The WHO’s Sixtieth World Health Assembly proclaimed the 25th of April as World Malaria Day in recognition of the continued high mortality caused by this parasitic infection, particularly in young children. The goal of World Malaria Day is “to provide education and understanding of malaria as a global scourge that is preventable and a disease that is curable.”

What to do in winter?

By Marie-Louise Bird
If you live a long way from the equator, the amount of daylight that you have access to in summer compared to winter varies hugely. For example at 41 degrees (Launceston in Tasmania, Australia, Boston MA, USA and Portugal, Europe) the length of daylight varies from just over 9 hours in winter to over 15 in summer and even more dramatic at 53 degrees, with hours of daylight from 7.5 in winter to 17 in summer. It is not surprising that this will have impact on the total amount of physical activity that people perform in the different seasons with less activity in winter (14% at 41 degrees south).

20 years since the Bishopsgate bombing

By John Horgan
On 24 April 1993, the city of London was brought to a standstill. A massive terrorist bomb exploded at the NatWest tower, killing one person and injuring at least 40 more. The truck bomb, planted by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) was designed to strike at the financial heartland of London, and it succeeded. In addition to the human casualties, what has since become known as the Bishopsgate bomb caused $1 billion in financial damages.

Monthly etymological gleanings for April 2013

By Anatoly Liberman
Thief again. One comment on thief referred to an apparently admissible Lithuanian cognate. It seems that if we were dealing with an Indo-European word of respectable antiquity, more than a single Baltic verb for “cower” or “seize” would have survived in this group. I also mentioned the possibility of borrowing, and another correspondent wondered from whom the Goths could learn such a word.

More than virtual: real community, many ways of connecting

By Karen Dill-Shackleford
Mike was a doctoral student profoundly appreciated and esteemed by faculty, peers, staff, and all who came in contact with him. As is typical in our community, Mike was already a successful mid-career professional. He worked in the tech world and brought his expertise to us. He didn’t have a background in research psychology, but in the last year of his doctoral program, his work was published on nine occasions.

How can we respond to the widespread inadequate understanding of dementia?

By Dr Victor Pace
Dementia is always in the news nowadays. Every day brings a new story: of poor care, of concerns about future numbers, of some new approach to treatment. From something that was never spoken about, it has moved centre stage, stemming from the combined realisation that many of us or our loved ones will develop it as we all live longer, and that the care people with dementia receive is grossly inadequate. This is difficult to remedy as care will become even more expensive as the number of dementia patients grows. Dementia has replaced cancer as the dreaded disease of the twenty first century.

Editing an encyclopedia

By Dr. David Milne
When I was invited to review the second volume of Odd Arne Westad’s and Melvyn Leffler’s The Cambridge History of the Cold War in 2010, I compared the enterprise to Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie — which I intended both as a compliment and as a criticism. Sweeping in its coverage, the Encyclopédie aimed to capture the main currents of Enlightenment thinking.

The environmental history of Russia’s steppes

By David Moon
When I started researching the environmental history of Russia’s steppes, I planned my visits to archives and libraries for conventional historical research. But I wanted to get a sense of the steppe environment I was writing about, a context for the texts I was reading; I needed to explore the region. I was fortunate that several Russian and Ukrainian specialists agreed to take me along on expeditions and field trips to visit steppe nature reserves.

Happy Birthday William Shakespeare!

We are celebrating Shakespeare’s 449th birthday with a quiz! Test your knowledge on the famous bard. Can you tell your poems from your plays? Do you know who his twins were named after, or his exact birthdate? Find out answers to these and much more in our quiz. Break a leg!

On Earth Day, remembering counterculture environmentalists

By Frank Zelko
Forty-three years have passed since Senator Gaylord Nelson’s teach-in first made its mark on America. Since then, Earth Day has become as regular a fixture on the US calendar as Labor Day and Halloween, albeit without the shopping and candy.

Workplace mobbing: add Ann Curry to its slate of victims

By Maureen Duffy
Journalists want to report the news not be the news. But in the case of Ann Curry, the former Today show co-host who was pushed into stepping down from the co-anchor slot last June, she has become the news. New York Times reporter Brian Stelter’s recent feature article about morning television and the toxic culture at NBC’s Today show provides more than enough information to conclude that Ann Curry was a target of workplace mobbing.