Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
I’m reasonably sure that most American boys who reached adolescence in the 1960s knew Dillinger’s dick. It was enormous, preserved in formaldehyde at the Smithsonian Institution. Friends of mine who grew up on the east coast told me years later that on high school trips to Washington, the boys would spread out and look for it.
Publishing a new edition of a style manual, particularly a lengthy, detailed manual that covers a ridiculous amount of technical material (Hello, ‘AMA Manual of Style’!), is a gruelling process. In our case, it involved ten people meeting for at least an hour every week for more than a year.
John R. MacArthur gives us a preview of Tuesday’s Bryant Park Reading Room discussion.
Elvin Lim defends Sarah Palin.
The top ten propaganda messages of the last century.
OUP USA President Tim Barton has published a detailed overview and position statement regarding the AAP/Authors Guild Settlement with Google which can be found here. Below is a brief excerpt from the piece. “…What once seemed at least debatable has now become irrefutable: If it’s not online, it’s invisible. While increasing numbers of long-out-of-date, public-domain […]
Can birds keep a beat?
An excerpt from The Woman Who Decided to Die: Challenges and Choices at the Edges of Medicine.
Peggy Pascoe shares the history of the holiday Loving Day, happening June 12th.
A recent study out of Harvard confirms Twitter is all vanity. This is not a big surprise to the dictionary team at Oxford University Press. OUP lexicographers have been monitoring more than 1.5 million random tweets Since January 2009 and have noticed any number of interesting facts about the impact of Twitter on language usage. For example the 500 words most frequently used on Twitter are significantly different from the top 500 in general English text.
Jeff Prucher looks at words coined by science fiction and fantasy fans.
Donald Ritchie looks at the reporting of Watergate.
Advice from Helen Gurley Brown.
An excerpt from The G.I. Bill: A New Deal For Veterans.
Patricia Fara looks at women in science who have inspired her.
Oxford University Professor of Physics, Frank Close, explains the antimatter errors in ‘Angels and Demons’.