OUPblog

The “Freest Writer” in Stalin’s Russia

By Peter Budrin
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Bob Turvey, a student of limericks

By Anatoly Liberman
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This old house and these old houses

By Edwin L. Battistella
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Kuwait’s war on ISIS and DNA

By Dawn Field

Kuwait is changing the playing field. In early July, just days after the June 26th deadly Imam Sadiq mosque bombing claimed by ISIS, Kuwait ruled to instate mandatory DNA-testing for all permanent residents. This is the first use of DNA testing at the national-level for security reasons, specifically as a counter-terrorism measure. An initial $400 million dollars is set aside for collecting the DNA profiles of all 1.3 million citizens and 2.9 million foreign residents

Etymology gleanings for August 2015

By Anatoly Liberman

I received a question about the greatest etymologists’ active mastery of foreign languages. It is true, as our correspondent indicated, that etymologists have to cast their nets wide and refer to many languages, mainly old (the deader, the better). So would the masters of the age gone by have felt comfortable while traveling abroad, that is, not in the tenth but in the nineteenth century?

Prepping for APSA 2015

By Cody Merrow and Taylor Steimle

This year’s American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Meeting takes place September 3-6 in San Francisco, where over 6,000 of the world’s foremost academic political scientists will gather for four days of lectures, sessions, networking, and scholarly discussion. This year’s theme, “Diversities Reconsidered”, promises to ignite intellectual discussion among all participants while still staying grounded in the current state of the nation’s political climate.

How much do you know about Great Expectations? [quiz]

By Amy Jelf

Do you know your Magwitch from your Miss Havisham? Your Philip Pirrip from your Mr Pumblechook? Perhaps Dickens’s best-loved work, Great Expectations features memorable characters such as the convict Magwitch, the mysterious Miss Havisham and her proud ward Estella, as Pip unravels the mystery of his benefactor and of his own heart.

“The discovery of a dead body”, extract from The Murder of William of Norwich

By E. M. Rose

The discovery of the mutilated body of William of Norwich in 1144 soon sparked stories of a ritual murder performed by Jews that quickly spread beyond the walls of Norwich. E. M Rose examines the events surrounding the murder as well as the trial that followed the discovery of the body and launches a historical forensic analysis into the death.

Meta-analysis of animal studies: a solution to animal waste

By Joanna IntHout, Carlijn R. Hooijmans, Maroeska M. Rovers, and Merel Ritskes-Hoitinga

Animal research has always attracted a lot of attention because it involves the welfare of animals being compromised. Given this pressure, you would expect that animal studies are performed according to the highest scientific standards; however, there are big methodological problems.

Wrong again

By Richard S. Grossman

Unlike fine wine, bad ideas don’t improve with age. One such idea is the Invest in Transportation Act, co-sponsored by Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rand Paul (R-KY), which would institute a temporary tax cut on profits brought back to the United States by American firms from their overseas operations and use the proceeds to fund investment in transportation infrastructure.

Could a Supreme Court justice be president?

By Lewis L. Gould

Bill Kristol, whose major political contribution to American public life is the national career of Sarah Palin, has another bright idea to free the Republican Party from the looming prospect of a Donald Trump presidential candidacy. The GOP, he writes, should turn to a dark horse from an unlikely source. After naming several long-shot contenders such as Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan, Kristol essays the presidential equivalent of a two-handed shot from half court. Why not, he inquires, Justice Samuel Alito from the Supreme Court?

Is phantom limb pain all in one’s head?

By Tamar Makin

Phantom limb pain is thought to result from changes in brain organisation. Recent evidence challenges this view, leaving this mysterious phenomenon unsolved. Picture yourself waking up in the hospital. Your body is hurting, but you can’t remember what happened. The doctor tells you that you had a severe accident causing you to lose your left arm.

Yorkshire: the birthplace of film?

By Annette Kuhn and Guy Westwell

Any assertions of ‘firsts’ in cinema are open invitations to rebuttal, but the BBC has recently broken news of a claim that the West Yorkshire city of Leeds was in fact film’s birthplace. Louis Le Prince, a French engineer who moved to Leeds in 1866, became one of a number of late 19th-century innovators entering the race to conceive, launch, and patent moving image cameras and projectors.

How well do you know the James Bond songs? [quiz]

By Adrian Daub and Charles Kronengold

Very soon now, we’ll find out who sings the next James Bond song. SPECTRE, the superspy’s twenty-fifth outing, will be coming out in the fall. But the song will be more like the thirtieth or so, depending on how you count.

Brand management in the internet age: new options, new concerns

By Allegra Waddell

Starting in 2012, ICANN revolutionized the internet with the release of a vast number of new top-level domain spaces. With the launch of over 1000 new spaces in the near future, simply registering your client’s business name in one or two extensions may not prove sufficient to reach their audiences.

Is the glass half full or will trouble for lawyers prevail?

By Benjamin H. Barton and Deborah L. Rhode

As new students dive into life as a 1L, recent graduates await their bar results and lawyers continue to soldier on in their ever-changing, ever-growing profession. Legal ethics scholar Deborah L. Rhode, author of The Trouble with Lawyers, and law professor Benjamin H. Barton, author of Glass Half Full, joined us to chat about a few hot topics in law.

Silencing Jean Louise: the media and Harper Lee

By Gregory Jay

For a brief moment in July of 2015, the American news media exploded with headline stories about a work of literature, something of an unprecedented turn for the mass media. That this coverage should have focused almost exclusively on race issues and ignored the “new” volume’s revelations about gender issues in Lee’s novels is understandable. The explanation lies in the coincidence of the book’s publication with a series of wrenching racial events from Ferguson to Charleston and summarized in the “Black Lives Matter” campaign.

Sects, witches, and wizards-from Pythagoreans to Kepler

By Snezana Lawrence

To start a conversation based on mathematics may seem to some to be one of the tasks inevitably converging towards the plot-line of Mission Impossible. Well, certainly there are more pressing things that would occupy people’s minds, concerning international politics, the future of Europe, and the future of the Middle East. What’s new?

Sexual exploitation and abuse by UN Peacekeepers

By Melanie O'Brien

Sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by UN peacekeepers is not fresh news. It has been going on for years. It first hit the headlines over ten years ago, and the scandal drove the UN to take action. Yet recent allegations over SEA by French peacekeepers in 2014 have brought the issue to the forefront again, and have motivated the UN Secretary-General to escalate the UN’s response to SEA in its peacekeeping operations.