Primates Reveal the Value of Grandmothers
In honor of Mother’s Day we are taking a closer look at grandmothers. In the post below is an excerpt from Ancient Bodies, Modern Lives: How Evolution Has Shaped Women’s Health.
Behind Nancy Pelosi’s Approval Ratings
In the excerpt below, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics, Pelosi goes under the microscope and is compared to both the Energizer Bunny and the Big Bad Wolf .
Vote Early and Vote Often
Tom Stoppard’s line: ‘It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting’ is well known, but is in fact closely paralled by a remark of Stalin’s in 1923: ‘I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how’. The importance of counting was recognized long ago: in the early nineteenth century the American politician William Porcher Miles described seeing election banners with the advice: ‘Vote early and vote often’.
The National Consequences of Arizona’s Crackdown on Illegal Immigration
Immigration is likely to become the new theater of the culture wars because Arizona’s new immigration law has further nationalized the immigration issue. Illegal immigrants in the state would be more likely to move to nearby states like Texas and California, and especially to those cities where sanctuary ordinances have been passed. Since immigrants settle disproportionately in California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Illinois, we would expect these states to be most affected by Arizona’s new law.
Icy Disaster in the Andes, Climate Lesson for the World
Although some US senators may resist discussion of the new climate and energy bill this week, people around the world continue to live with incessant dangers that disrupt their daily lives and threaten their existence. A recent glacier avalanche in Peru, for example, unleashed a powerful outburst flood that caused significant destruction. It was the same kind of flood that increasingly endangers people living near melting glaciers worldwide, from Switzerland and Norway to Canada and New Zealand, China and Nepal.
Against a VAT
A federal value-added tax (VAT) is today’s magic bullet for slaying the federal budget deficit. A federal VAT would be a veritable cash cow, obviating the need for painful measures like serious spending reductions and middle class income tax hikes. A VAT would be more regressive and complex than its proponents acknowledge. Like most putative panaceas, a VAT should be rejected.
Is Organic Food Healthier or Safer to Eat?
Food Politics: What Everyone Needs To Know, carefully examines and explains the most important issues on today’s global food landscape. Politics in this area have become polarized and Robert Paarlberg helps us map this contested terrain, challenging myths and critiquing more than a few of today’s fashionable beliefs about farming and food. In the excerpt below we learn about the organic food.
Doha Blues
Why have the Doha negotiations been so painfully slow and unsuccessful so far? A review of recent commentary and analysis seems to indicate that the difficulty has many roots, as shown by the following list of contributing factors:
Broken Britain and Big Society: Back to the 1930s?
The phrase ‘Broken Britain’ is well known to British newspaper readers; it’s a phrase commonly used across the media to describe society’s problems. Here, historian John Welshman traces this identification of a broken society back to around the time of the Second World War, and argues that the real answer is – and was then – to address society’s inequalities rather than ‘Big Society’ and a retreat from state involvement.
Much Ado About Voting
“In this pre-election period television plays a big role. On Sky News, at the bottom of the screen, you will see four colours: red, blue, yellow and grey. These represent Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat and other. There are numbers in each colour and these represent the latest survey results of voting intention. Watch carefully and the percentages change. The numbers change because they show results according to Mori, then YouGov, then ICM, then ComRes, then Populus. The results are not “true” because they are samples – the only true result would be a full count.”
Democrats Should Look Before they Leap into Immigration Reform
Elvin Lim is Assistant Professor of Government at Wesleyan University and author of The Anti-intellectual Presidency, which draws on interviews with more than 40 presidential speechwriters to investigate this relentless qualitative decline, over the course of 200 years, in our presidents’ ability to communicate with the public. He also blogs at www.elvinlim.com. In the article below he looks at immigration reform. See Lim’s previous OUPblogs here.
Several Fronts, Two Universes, One Discourse
Tariq Ramadan is a very public figure, named one of Time magazine’s most important innovators of the twenty-first century, he is among the leading Islamic thinkers in the West. But he has also been a lightening rod for controversy. In his new book, What I Believe, he attempts to set the record straight, laying out the basic ideas he stands for in clear and accessible prose.
Plantagenet Palliser vs. Gordon Brown
Anthony Trollope’s Palliser novels offer many fascinating parallels with today’s political scene, none more so than the fifth novel in the sequence, The Prime Minister. Nicholas Shrimpton, of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, will be editing the new edition of the novel for Oxford World’s Classics (out next year). His profile of Trollope’s fictional hero, Plantagenet Palliser, finds some uncanny resemblances between fiction and reality.
Keeping the Hustings Alive
Dr Jon Lawrence, author of Electing Our Masters, on the spirit of the hustings in this year’s general election campaign.
Head Start: Management Issues
Edward Zigler is a developmental scientist and a pioneer and leader in the field of applied developmental psychology. He served on the committee that planned Head Start and was the federal official responsible for the program during the Nixon administration. Sally J. Styfco is a writer and social policy analyst specializing in issues pertaining to children and families. Together they wrote, The Hidden History Of Head Start, which looks at this remarkable social program that has served 25 million children and their families since it was established 44 years ago. We get an insider’s view of the program’s decades of services and an idea of what the future may hold.
Obama means Business
Elvin Lim looks at the implications of the charges against Goldman Sachs.