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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
I have no qualms in admitting that this Linked Up post is entirely inspired by the clip I found this week of Bill Gates, circa 1994, demonstrating his circus skills. How can I get this on OUPblog, I wondered to myself? I know; let’s have a TECHNOLOGY LINKED UP SPECIAL.
After re-explaining how this works so many times, I decided it would be easier to jot off a quick post. #OxfordFortuneCookie is a game I like to play with the followers of @OUPAcademic.
By Susan K. Harris
My respect for Mark Twain has soared lately. I started looking seriously at his political side in 2003, when I taught his anti-imperialist essay “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” the week the U.S. invaded Iraq. For the first time, Twain’s anger resonated with me, but I didn’t know what drove it. I’d always accepted the prevailing biographical narrative that personal disasters fueled Twain’s temper tantrums in his last decade. That didn’t really work for “Person,” however; the essay indicts the U.S. for complicity in imperialist aggressions throughout the world. Twain’s anger is political, not personal, and it’s based on a definition
This Day in World History – October 10 marks a signal date in Islamic history. On that day, Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, was defeated and killed at Karbala, in modern Iraq. His death cemented deep and lasting division among Muslims that persist to this day. In Iran, where the population is overwhelmingly Shia, the death of Hussein—“leader of the martyrs”—is regularly commemorated in passion plays.
By Simon Glendinning
Not so long ago Europe was not merely a recurrent theme for philosophy; it was central to the traditional discourse of “philosophy of the history of the world”. Taking in work by such giants as Kant, Hegel, and Husserl, the basic idea was that the history of “Man” can be related as a movement between an original “savage” condition and a final “fully human” condition. This construal of human history was not only European in origin, but also “Eurocentric”. Its centre was the idea that the transition for “Man” in history is a movement towards an end with European humanity at the head.
By Max Sinsheimer
The Oxford Companion to Beer in hand, I took off for three days at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver last week. This beer-lovers Mecca boasts the largest collection of American beer ever served, its popularity growing with each passing year. In 1982, the festival’s first year, there were 800 attendees in a 5,000 square foot festival hall. This year
By Ian Beck
It is often difficult to remember exactly the initial seed, the faint stirrings of an idea that sets off the beginning of writing a long story. The root of the idea for The Hidden Kingdom is certainly muddled but it must surely begin with my long interest in Oriental art; in particular, Japanese woodblock prints and the anime films of Hiyao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli.
By Lucy Delap
Downton Abbey specialises in dramatic twists and love affairs at all social levels. The world of domestic service provides an ideal backdrop for thwarted passions and sexual machinations of all sorts.
By Mark Peters
A few weeks ago, I spotted this tweet by Braden Graeber: “Dear white guys, stop trying to make camouflage cargo shorts happen.”
Minutes later—in a moment of true synchronicity—I saw a white dude in camouflage cargo pants. Whoa.
As a fashion-challenged, oft-confused doofus, I appreciated the heads-up to two facts: 1) those shorts are an atrocity, and 2) this phrase is a snowclone that’s invaluable in mocking anything fake or contrived that annoys or pains us.
Image, branding, and logos are obsessions of our age. Iconic images dominate the media. In his new book, Christ to Coke, art historian Professor Martin Kemp examines eleven mega-famous examples of icons, including the American flag, the image of Christ’s face, the double helix of DNA, and the heart.
Some of you may know that today is National Coffee Day. I’ve, personally, been trying to ignore the free/discounted offers around New York City since I’m trying to cut back, and decided to distract myself by putting together this quick video post about coffee and caffeine.
Now, I would be reimiss if I did not first mention the fantastic book Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine by Stephen Braun. This is a
By Adam Rosen
A little over three weeks ago, Hurricane Irene passed through New York City. Although residents greeted warnings from authorities with wildly varying degrees of seriousness, their response was nearly uniform: hunker down. Even for those types relishing the chance to buck official admonishment, there wasn’t much point. Concerts were canceled, beaches were closed, and untold numbers of brunches went unserved. I wasn’t, in truth, all that bothered by the state of affairs.
By Sue Arthur
Memories of your summer holiday may be fading, but the latest update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography seeks to rekindle the summer—or at least summers past—with one of the new additions from its latest update, published today. For forty years Reginald Dixon (1904-1985) played the Wurlitzer at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool, turning a former cinema organist into a recording star, known worldwide for his signature tune, ‘I do like to be beside the seaside.’ Here Dixon’s biographer, Sue Arthur, describes the man who became ‘Mr Blackpool’, and the interwar resort he helped to make a national attraction.
We all play three roles in every moment of our lives. As actors we move, speak, push and pull, make decisions, and otherwise engage in any number of activities animated by our goals and desires. As receptors we use our senses to listen, smell, touch, get pushed and pulled, and react emotionally to other people. As witnesses we observe everything going on around us, analyzing, synthesizing, describing, explaining, and understanding the world in which we live.
By Corey Robin
Ross Douthat, the conservative New York Times columnist, and Dan Savage, the liberal sex columnist, recently had a Bloggingheads conversation about sex, lies, and videotape. It’s a fascinating discussion, mostly because of what it reveals about the conservative mind and its attitude toward sex.
This Day in World History – While hiking through the Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, Erika and Helmut Simon, a German couple, spotted a brown shape in a watery gully below them. Scrambling down to investigate, they realized that they were looking at a human head and shoulder. Assuming the body was a climber who had been killed in a fall, they reported their find to authorities. The body was removed with a jackhammer and tourists made off with some of its clothing and the tools that were found with it.