Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The 21 May 2016 drone strike that killed Taliban leader Mullah Mansour riding in a taxi in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, raises questions about the law governing State defensive action. Fourteen years after the first US counterterrorist drone strike in Yemen, legal consensus remains elusive.
Anthropologist Edward Sapir once wrote, “Unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. All grammars leak.” Sapir was talking about the irregularities of language. For me, this leakiness is especially evident in what I think of as doppelgrammar words.
Sixteen established Republican party candidates have slowly ended or suspended their presidential candidacies and party leaders are trying to divine whether Donald Trump’s unthinkable ascent actually spells the end of their party as we have known it since the late 1960s.
Logic is a deep subject, at the core of much work in philosophy, mathematics, and computer science. In very general terms, it is the study of what (conclusions) follows from what (premises)—logical consequence. The Early Modern philosopher, Immanuel Kant, held that Aristotle invented logic, and at his hands it was complete. There was nothing left to be done. He was notoriously wrong.
At this year’s OUP and BB National Mooting Competition, one of the UK’s most prestigious mooting competitions, the team of the University of Manchester was victorious. The original moot problem, written by barrister Ros Earis for the final, focused on whether or not a landlord was liable for an injury caused to his tenant by a broken paving stone close to the front door of the property, despite not being informed of the defect.
Over the past few years, Britain has commemorated Shakespeare’s life, works, and death in parallel with an extensive remembrance of the First World War and those who served in it. The elision of Shakespeare’s work with this particular conflict is not a new trend: 100 years ago, similar celebrations of Shakespeare were occurring in the midst of wartime, and both Britain and Germany were employing his image and plays for propaganda and recruitment purposes.
I fear death, you might think, because the fact that I will die robs the things I do in my life of their meaning or their value or their worth. This, if it were true, would justify the feeling of vertigo and emptiness that comes when we reflect that we will die.
Moustafa Bayoumi presented his book This Muslim American Life as part of the Oral History Workshops at the Columbia University Oral History MA Program.
Born in 1935, Robert Whitman was a member of an influential, innovative group of visual artists– Allan Kaprow, Red Grooms, Jim Dine, and Claes Oldenburg– who presented theater pieces on the lower east side in Manhattan in the early 1960s. Whitman has presented more than 40 theater pieces in the United States and abroad, including The American Moon, Flower, Mouth, and most recently Passport (2011) and Swim (2015).
It’s no secret that summer is one of the most universally enjoyed parts of childhood. Waiting out the seemingly eternal last days of school – some have even been known to have a countdown starting in April – is a true act of patience. Then school finally ends. And it is time to ride bikes, play on sports teams and in tournaments, swim, hike, and possibly attend sports camps.
Before looking forward to 2050, we must first look back at the key economic and social developments during the past half a century, and perhaps look even further back than that. The rapid rise of emerging economies during the last 50 years is truly astounding in the long-term historical context. Developing economies now account for over half of the global output (55%, in PPP terms).
Stephen Smith, author of Taxation: A Very Short Introduction, tells us 10 things we need to know about taxation, and gives us an insight into why we need taxes, how economic processes determine taxes, and how they can make political change.
In February of 1974, Philip K. Dick’s life changed. While he was recovering from dental surgery, he claims, he had a spiritual epiphany. It started with a delivery from the local pharmacy. Three days after Dick’s surgery, an order of medications arrived in the hands of a stunning delivery woman.
Robert Whitman is a pioneering American artist who, in the company of other groundbreaking figures including Claes Oldenberg, Jim Dine, and Allan Kaprow, performed experimental performance art pieces in New York in the 1960s. In 1966, Whitman would become a founding member of the collective Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.), along with Bell Labs engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhaur and artist Robert Rauschenberg.
Mammals are defined as warm-blooded vertebrates that are distinguished by the possession of hair or fur, of which the females secrete milk for the nourishment of their young, and typically birth live young (except five known species, including the duck-billed platypus). Can we match up your personality traits to those of our mammalian friends? Find out which mammal you most closely resemble!
When I started research in radio astronomy in 1947, the only known sources of cosmic radio waves were the Sun and the Milky Way. Observing techniques were simple: receivers were insensitive, there was no expectation that other radio sources could be located or even existed. A few years later, a whole vast radio sky was revealed, populated with supernova remnants, galaxies, and quasars.