Back to school for happy and healthy kids
Every September, caregivers and kids alike prepare for one big change: the start of a new school year.
Sabotage of the Normandie? [excerpt]
In the 1940s, the Normandie was the epitome of elegance and engineering—a French ocean liner renowned for its Art Deco splendor and unmatched luxury.
A cultural history of the purse [timeline]
In conducting research for The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America, Kathleen B. Casey discovered how one everyday object—the purse—could function as a portal to the past.
Your Indo-European beard
It sometimes seems that the greater the exposure of a body part, the greater the chance of its having an ancient (truly ancient!) name.
A snapshot of genomics and bioinformatics in modern biology research
I often tell my students that biology has become a data-driven field. Certainly, there’s a general sense that methods related to biological sequences (that is methods in genomics and bioinformatics) have become very widespread. But what does that really mean?
A handful of remarks on hinting and hunting
Allow me to introduce a group of seemingly ill-assorted words. Each member of this group occupies a secure place in the vocabulary of English, but no one knows for sure whether they belong together.
Knowledge and teaching in the age of information
The advent of the World Wide Web in the turn of the last century completely transformed the way most people find and absorb information. Rather than a world in which information is stored in books or housed in libraries, we have a world where all of the information in the world is accessible to everyone.
What does one day mean?
A while ago, a reader pointed me to a comment on another writer’s OUPblog piece. The comment complained about a caption on a photo, an image of the painting “Adam and Eve in Paradise” by the seventeenth-century Flemish painter David Teniers the Younger.
Quantum information theorists use Einstein’s Principle to solve “Einstein’s quantum riddle”
Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen introduced the mystery of quantum entanglement (entanglement) in 1935 and it has been called “Einstein’s quantum riddle.” Many physicists and philosophers in foundations of quantum mechanics (foundations) have proposed solutions to Einstein’s quantum riddle, but no solution has received consensus support, which has led some to call entanglement “the greatest mystery in physics.”
Why economists should learn machine learning
Economists analyze data. Machine learning (ML) offers a powerful set of tools for doing just that. But while econometrics and ML share a foundation in statistics, their aims and philosophies often diverge.
An etymological knockout
We know that in English words beginning with kn- and gn- the first letter is mute. Even in English spelling, which is full of the most bizarre rules, this one causes surprise.
Flunkeys and lackeys two centuries ago
In An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, I called William L. Blackley’s 1869 book Word Gossip singularly uninformative, and I am sorry for that remark.
In full swing
I received a letter with a question about the etymology of swag “booty; cockiness, etc.” The reader complained that dictionaries have nothing to say about the origin of this word. She is quite right.
Doppelganger names
We often think of personal names as specific to an individual, and sometimes they are. Yet often they are not. After all, the same individual may go by more than one name.
The words we use
The town where I live has a good newspaper. From time to time, it gives advice to its readers for avoiding language mistakes and for speaking correct English.
Pride isn’t arrogance; it’s love
Shae Washington, a Black queer Christian woman, struggled to reconcile her sexuality and her spirituality. Her church had always taught that you cannot be both Christian and queer.