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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
What do the public think of their police? This is a rather more complicated question than it appears. When public opinion polling was in its infancy, people were asked how they felt about ‘the police’. Perhaps training could make it look better, but that takes officers off the streets where the public demands to see them. To engage with controversy could, at least, elevate public debate.
This blog was launched on 1 March 2006, four or even five editors ago (to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut’s statement about his wives), and is now in the twelfth year of its existence. It has been appearing every Wednesday since that date, and today’s number is 587.
Despite unequivocal scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, many people are skeptical that climate change is man-made, or even real. For instance, lawmakers in North-Carolina passed a bill requiring local planning agencies’ to ignore the latest climate science to predict sea level rise in several coastal counties. They say that ignorance is bliss, but why would we not want to know useful information?
Media coverage of the European migrant crisis often focuses on the migrants themselves—capturing their stories as millions escape violent conflicts and crushing poverty. In Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Savior, Peter Tinti and Tuesday Reitano consider the smugglers involved in transporting migrants throughout Europe. Although many smugglers are viewed as saviors, others give little regard to the human rights issues.
I attended to different campus cultures and their supporting institutional structures, attempting to understand how their differences might affect hooking up. When I did, I found not “a” hookup culture but four different ones.
11 April marks the 304th anniversary of the signing of the Peace of Utrecht by most of the representatives at the congress that convened to negotiate the terms that would end the War of the Spanish Succession. Or perhaps it should be 12 April. A few contemporaries alleged that the documents were backdated so that the ceremony would not fall on 1 April, or Fools’ Day, according to the old calendar.
The Oxford Philosophy team is excited to see you in Seattle for the upcoming 2017 American Philosophical Association Pacific Division Meeting! We have some suggestions on sights to see during your time in Washington, as well as our favorite sessions to attend at the conference.
Could your glasses pay for themselves? In a manner of speaking, the World Surf League (WSL) and Visa would say yes. As part of the credit card company’s new official partnership with WSL’s Quiksilver and Roxy Pro Gold Coast (the first stop on the WSL Championship Tour), Visa is piloting payment-enabled sun glasses that “feature contactless payment capability and (eliminate) the need to carry cash or cards on the beach.”
What exactly is ‘scholarship’? According to a widely-used definition attributed to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), research is ‘creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge’.
With globalization and industrialization came both freedom and dependency, as Argentina shed the persistent stereotype that the country was simply a collection of farms and ranches. Rural and urban life blurred into a hybrid culture that thrived on export commodities and domestic consumption. To further illustrate how the urbanization of simple rural products shaped the culture and history of Argentina, we compiled some facts that help demonstrate how globalization had such an impact on Argentina from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th.
The planet Mars shares its orbit with a few small asteroids called “Trojans”. Recently, an international team of astronomers have found that most of these objects share a common composition and are likely the remains of a mini-planet that was destroyed by a collision long ago. Trojan asteroids move in orbits with the same average distance from the Sun as a planet, trapped within gravitational “safe havens” 60 degrees in front of and behind the planet.
The Island of Doctor Moreau is unquestionably a shocking novel. It is also a serious, and highly knowledgeable, philosophical engagement with Wells’ times–with their climate of scientific openness and advancement, but also their anxieties about the ethical nature of scientific discoveries, and their implications for religion.
A recent AARP billboard reminds us that the duty to care for an aging or ill parent begins with remembering the care provided to us when we were children. How does this caregiving expectation, grounded in reciprocity, apply to the approximately 76 million Baby Boomers in the United States whose aging will dominate the next few decades?
When international law reflects the values of the international community in a wide sense, it can potentially have a trans-formative effect for international relations and contribute to revising situations of hegemony and domination.
There are some sounds in life that simply cannot be put into words. One of them is the sound I heard this morning as I ran along the canal in that very special part of Sheffield known as Attercliffe. The sound shook me to my soul and reminded me of George Orwell’s visit to the city in 1936 when he had been shocked by the realities of hard industrial life. For me, however, it was a glorious sound – the heartbeat of the Steel City.
While much of the rhetoric surrounding the Anthropocene has been markedly negative, there has recently been a push by many scientists for a more positive narrative. Specifically, researchers are posing the question: can the Anthropocene be good? A good Anthropocene would balance the preservation of the natural world with realistic societal needs and consumption.