Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Simon Riker
How many times have I heard someone say, “Oh, I just love the cello! What a beautiful instrument!”? Certainly too many to count or remember, since I began playing the instrument at the age of nine. Of course, it’s little wonder that the cello resonates so strongly with people, since its range and timbre so neatly overlap with the human voice, as many cellists will be quick to point out.
By Albert A. Foer and Sandeep Vaheesan
In early January, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) closed its nearly two-year investigation into Google’s conduct. Unanimously, the Commissioners stated that Google’s alleged favoring of its own vertical search features in search results was not an antitrust violation. They found that changes to Google’s search algorithm were intended to offer more informative search results.
By Philip Carter
It’s 1 July 1977: the Jacksons are Number 1 in the UK charts; a pint of beer costs 40 pence, milk per pint is 11p; Elvis has just given what will be his final concert; Virginia Wade becomes the last British player to win the women’s singles tennis championship at Wimbledon. – See more at: https://blog.oup.com/?p=45004&preview=true#sthash.r1cxNYqs.dpuf
Raymond Wacks
Do celebrities forfeit their right to privacy? Pop stars, stars of screen, radio, television, sport and the catwalk—are regarded as fair game by the paparazzi. Members of the British Royal family, most conspicuously, and tragically, the Princess of Wales have long been preyed upon by the media. More recently, photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge, taken surreptitiously while she was sunbathing at a private villa in Provence, were published online.
What’s the meaning of the word irrumatio? In Ancient Rome, to threaten another individual with irrumatio qualified as one of the highest offenses, topping off a list of seemingly frivolous obscenities that — needless to say — did not survive into the modern era.
By Dennis Baron
Perhaps the highest-profile cases to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court this term are the two involving the definition of marriage. U.S. v. Windsor challenges the federal definition of marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman” (Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA], 1 USC § 7), and Hollingsworth v. Perry seeks a ruling on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage which reads, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
By Kate Pais
Was the American Revolution more of a religious war than we thought? The Bible had a powerful influence in a land that was originally established as a haven for Protestant freedom. As seen in these examples taken from James P. Byrd’s Sacred Scripture, Sacred War: The Bible and the American Revolution, notable men in history frequently referenced Christian faith to help justify their patriotism and ultimately, war.
By Heidi Moawad
Health care is expanding its reach in many directions. Globalization is increasingly allowing patients throughout the world to access all types of health care from anywhere in the world. Between the growth in medical tourism, medical missions service, international education, and the increasing intersection of western medicine into eastern culture and eastern medicine into western culture, individuals have vaster array of choices to preserve their health than ever before.
By Christopher Capozzola
Ninety-six years ago today, on 26 June 1917, over 14,000 American soldiers disembarked at the port of St. Nazaire on the western coast of France. They were the initial members of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), the United States’ contribution to the First World War. As America approaches the centennial of World War I, will it remember the doughboys? For their sake—and for ours—we should.
By James Nicholson
Statistics to me has always been about trying to make the best sense of incomplete information and having some feeling for how good that ‘best sense’ is. At a very crude level if you have a firm employing 235 people and you randomly sample 200 of these on some topic, I would feel my information was pretty good (even though it is incomplete).
In December 1940 planning began for a German invasion of the Soviet Union. By that winter, the USSR had made further gains in the west, apparently with an eye to securing a glacis against a future German attack. A war against Finland gave her important strategic areas. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were swallowed in 1940.
By Caitlin Tyler-Richards
Dear readers, the time has come for the Oral History Review (OHR) social media team to say so long for now. We’ve had a fantastic time bringing you the latest and greatest on scholarship in oral history and its sister fields. However, all sorts of summer adventures are calling our names, so we’re taking a brief hiatus from the world wide web. In fact, as you are reading this, I am on my way to Nigeria for two months!
By Alex Sayf Cummings
Is there such a thing as a “used” MP3?
That was the question before the United States District Court for Southern New York earlier this Spring, when Capitol Records sued the tech firm ReDigi for providing consumers with an online marketplace to “sell” their unwanted audio files to other music fans.
Russell Stannard
Is there such a thing as a Higgs boson? To find out, one builds the Large Hadron Collider. That is how science normally progresses: one poses a question, and then carries out the appropriate experiment to find the answer.
By Roger S. Gottlieb
Many people think it’s a great idea: we can have all the benefits of religion…without religion! We’ll call it “spirituality” and in choosing it we will have unlimited freedom to adopt this or that ritual, these or those beliefs, to meditate or pray or do yoga, to admire (equally) inspiring Hindu gurus, breathtakingly calm Buddhist meditation teachers, selfless priests who work against gang violence, wise old rabbis, and Native American shamans—not to mention figures who belong to no faith whatsoever.
The 20th of June is International Surfing Day. I’m not sure if I have the proper street cred to write about surfing. For one thing, even though I grew up on the Mid-Atlantic coast, I can’t swim. My nephew, however, was part of a hardcore crowd who surfed regularly on the beaches near Ocean City, Maryland, and the Indian River Inlet, Delaware, in the ‘80s and ‘90s.