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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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).
Did you know that 7th July is International Chocolate Day? This is, of course, a day to eat that extra piece of chocolate or bake (and then eat) a cake just for fun! But while you savor each bite of chocolaty goodness, keep in mind that behind the sweet flavor is a long and dynamic history that has traveled across oceans and transcended cultural boundaries.
Current statistics show a startling lack of diversity in corporate boardrooms. In February 2014, Fortune reported that just over 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs were minorities, a classification including African Americans, Asians, and Latin Americans. This is particularly disturbing given that these classifications of minorities comprised 36% of the United States population, and that many top business schools boast that ethnic or racial minorities comprise 25% or more of their student bodies.
The so-called Suess effect in radiocarbon (14C) has been known for decades. Geological sources of carbon like coal and oil, that formed many millions of years ago, long since lost their radiocarbon through radioactive decay – they contain 14C-free “dead” carbon. From the mid-19th century the radiocarbon activity of the atmosphere declined as dead carbon from fossil fuels was dug out of the ground and burnt producing carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.
May is known as International Zombie Awareness Month. After witnessing many poor comrades lose their lives in Hollywood zombie uprisings, we’ve decided that we need to prepare for any eventuality. Suppose the living dead do come calling, where is the best place to hide, and, as Simon Pegg hopes, “wait for the whole thing to blow over”? There is but one option, a library. Here’s five reasons why.
Dinosaurs, literally meaning ‘terrible lizards’, were first recognized by science, and named by Sir Richard Owen (who preferred the translation ‘fearfully great’), in the 1840’s. In the intervening 170 years our knowledge of dinosaurs, including whether they all really died out 65 million years ago, has changed dramatically. Take a crash course on the history of the dinosaurs with our infographic.
To reconstruct an ancient root with a measure of verisimilitude is not too hard. However, it should be borne in mind that the roots are not the seeds from which words sprout, for we compare such words as are possibly related and deduce, or abstract their common part. Later we call this part “root,” tend to put the etymological cart before the horse, and get the false impression that that common part generates or produces words.
You go to the museum. Stand in line for half an hour. Pay 20 bucks. And then, you’re there, looking at the exhibited artworks, but you get nothing out of it. You try hard. You read the little annoying labels next to the artworks. Even get the audio-guide. Still nothing. What do you do? Maybe you’re just not into this specific artist. Or maybe you’re not that into paintings in general. Or art.
I am recently returned home (Australia) from six months on a music research project in Cambodia. There were, of course, the practical challenges of the type I quite expected. In the monsoonal downpours, getting around in central Phnom Penh meant wading through knee-deep, dead-rat kind of drain-water. In the thatched huts of the provinces, malarial critters droned their way under my net by night. Gastro and heat exhaustion laid me flat.