Editor's Picks

Top ten developments in international law in 2016

By Merel Alstein

This year seems to have packed in more news events and shocking developments than any other in recent memory. As 2016 draws to an end, many are fearful of how the political trends that surfaced this year will play out and what their long-term effect will be on the international legal order. At the same time, the year has seen a number of successes in international law, most notably in judicial decisions that championed the rule of law against the interests of powerful states and corporations. This post highlights and discusses ten international law victories and failures in 2016.

Top ten OUPblog posts of 2016 by the numbers

By Dan Parker

The 2016 posts that attracted the most pageviews ranged in subject from philosophy to literature, and from mathematics to law. As you might expect, people were also interested in learning more about Shakespeare and politics in 2016. Please find the top ten performing blog posts on the OUPblog in 2016.

The logic of unreliable narrators

By Roy T Cook

In fiction, an unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is in doubt – in other words, a proper reading of a narrative with an unreliable narrator requires that the audience question the accuracy of the narrator’s representation of the story, and take seriously the idea that what actually happens in the story – what is fictionally true in the narrative – is different from what is being said or shown to them.

Reflections on ‘chatbot’

By Nicholas Agar

A chatbot, or chatterbot, is computer program designed to engage in conversation through written or spoken text. It was one of the words on the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 shortlist. The idea of a chatbot originates with Alan Turing’s mid twentieth century aspiration to build a thinking computer. Turing proposed a test to determine what might count as success in this venture.

Word of the Year 2016: a ‘post-truth’, ‘alt-right’, ‘Brexiteer’ing’ explanation of political chaos

By Matthew Flinders

The lexicographers at Oxford Dictionaries have been at it again with their choice of Word of the Year 2016 – ‘post-truth’. Now call me a pedant but I’d have thought ‘post-truth’ is two words, or at the very least a phrase, (‘Pedant!’ I hear you all shout) but I’m assured that the insertion of a hyphen creates a compound word that is not to be sniffed at. How then do words such as ‘post-truth’, ‘alt-right’, and ‘Brexiteer’ combine to explain the current situation of global political chaos?

2016 US presidential election reading list

By Erin Cavoto

Following the 2016 US Presidential election, we have curated a series of reading lists with resources that provide insight into electoral politics, key themes that stimulated some of the major debates from the election season, and important topics of discussion relating to the potential outcomes of the election. We have selected books and resources that detail American politics and investigate issues that influenced the recent presidential campaigns,

Word of the Year 2016 is… post-truth

Word of the Year 2016 is… post-truth. After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is post-truth – an adjective defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.

Vermeer and violins: science and art—strange bedfellows or partners in crime?

By Quincy Whitney

When Einstein claimed his theory of relativity came from a musical insight, no one blinked twice. Of course music could inspire scientific insight. But the reverse idea is often fraught with baggage. Artistic circles often feel that science is more threat than ally.

AAR/SBL Annual Meeting survival guide

By Alyssa Russell

The American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting is quickly approaching, and we couldn’t be more excited. This year, we thought we’d provide a survival guide of sorts, the “do”s and “don’t”s, from our perspective, for a successful AAR/SBL. Have anything to add? Let us know in the comments.

Why is the Bible so much like a horror movie?

By Rhiannon Graybill

What does the Hebrew Bible have in common with horror movies? This question is not as strange as it might seem. It only takes a few minutes with the biblical texts to begin to realize that the Bible is filled with all kinds of horror. There are strange figures dripping blood (Isa. 63) and mysterious objects that kill upon touch (2 Sam. 6:7).

10 myths about the vikings

By Eleanor Barraclough

The viking image has changed dramatically over the centuries, romanticized in the 18th and 19 century, they are now alternatively portrayed as savage and violent heathens or adventurous explorers. Stereotypes and clichés are rampant in popular culture and vikings and their influence appear to various extents, from Wagner’s Ring Cycle to the comic Hägar the Horrible, and J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to Marvel’s Thor. But what is actually true? Eleanor Barraclough lifts the lid on ten common viking myths.

What do the classics do for you?

This week, Oxford University Press (OUP) and The Reader announced an exciting new partnership, working together to build a core classics library and to get great literature into the hands of people who need it most, with the Oxford World’s Classics series becoming The Reader’s “house brand” for use in their pioneering Shared Reading initiatives.

Publish and be cited! Impact Factors, Open Access, and the plight of peer review

By Catherine Cotton

Can Peer Review ever be as important as publication? This year’s Peer Review Week focuses on the recognition of reviewers. Peer Review Week 2016 is an international initiative that celebrates the essential and often undervalued activity of academic peer review.

Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go players

By Heather Saunders

Record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories. What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?

Designer nature: mosquitoes first and then what?

By Jeffrey A. Lockwood

We’re told that we can insert a gene to confer sterility and this trait would race like wildfire through Aedes aegypti. Why this species? Because it’s the vector of the Zika virus—along with the dengue and yellow fever viruses. The problem is that A. aegypti isn’t the only culprit. It’s just one of a dozen or more bloodsuckers that will also have to be wiped out. After we’ve driven these species to extinction, we’ll presumably move on to the Anopheles species that transmit malaria.

Why did the Oxford University Press staff member cross the road?

By Dan Parker

In order to celebrate National Tell a Joke Day, I asked fellow Oxford University Press staff members to tell me their favourite joke(s). Some of these jokes will make you guffaw and some will make you groan but hopefully all of them will make you smile. The jokes below range from the strange to the downright silly.