Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Mel Goodale and David Milner
Vision, more than any other sense, dominates our mental life. Our visual experience is so rich and detailed that we can scarcely distinguish that subjective world from the real thing. Even when we are just thinking about the world with our eyes closed, we can’t help imagining what it looks like.
By Harald Bathelt and Peng-Fei Li
In China and Canada, Shenzhen and Waterloo share the same nickname. Both are frequently viewed as their country’s “Silicon Valley”. Despite this shared name, there are fundamental differences between the two, which can be illustrated by the development of their leading firms. Let’s use the local weather of the two cities as a metaphor to describe the current situation.
By Anatoly Liberman
Reference works: I received three questions.
(1) Our correspondent would like to buy a good etymological dictionary of English. Which one can be recommended?
By Nicholas Rankin
The James Bond brand has awesome power. When Agent 007 helped Queen Elizabeth II to parachute into the opening of the 2012 London Olympics, the world gasped (and then laughed) at the witty conjunction of two instantly recognizable icons of Britishness.
For billions around the world, poverty translates not only into a struggle for food, shelter, health, and education. No, poverty exposes them to a vast spectrum of human rights abuses on a daily basis. Safety and freedom from fear do not exist for those living in underdeveloped areas. Ill-equipped judicial systems, under-trained and corrupt law enforcement agencies, and despotic housing complexes are just a few of the challenges the impoverished face.
With The Beggar’s Opera, Gay invented a new form, the ballad opera, and the daring mixture of caustic political satire, well-loved popular tunes, and a story of crime and betrayal set in the urban underworld of prostitutes and thieves was an overnight sensation.
By Ronald Cohen
I am saddened to learn of the passing of American folk musician Pete Seeger and am not sure how to sum up his life in a short space. I am just thinking: the world weeps. So I’d like to share the postcard I just got from him. It sums up his life, always caring and studying and thinking.
By Allan M. Winkler
Pete Seeger, the father of American folk music, died on Monday evening at the age of 94. Wiry and spry, he still played his long-necked banjo with the same exuberance he’d shown for decades until the very end. Pilloried in the past, he was part of the celebratory concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial the day before Barack Obama’s inauguration.
This YouTube video of a three-month-old polar bear taking his first wobbly steps at the Toronto Zoo was viewed over 4.5 million times in the first four days of it being posted, and is sprouting all over the internet. Something I noticed immediately is that the baby polar bear is mostly crawling backwards. Many (human) infants do the same – crawling backwards for a few weeks before they crawl forwards.
By Dr Christopher Kuner
On the occasion of international Data Protection Day on the 28th of January, I would like to explore how European data protection law can become more efficient and effective, and better tailored to the needs of individuals.
We asked our composers a series of questions based around their musical likes and dislikes, influences, challenges, and various other things on the theme of music and their careers. Each month we will bring you answers from an Oxford University Press composer, giving you an insight into their music and personalities.
By Steve Sheppard
In a recent post on Volokh Conspiracy, George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr writes that we have passed the “Golden Age of Treatises.” Considering an obituary of a law professor who had written a law treatise, Securities Regulation, Kerr observed how its author, Louis Loss, had been seen as giving shape and direction to a whole field of law.
To mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we present a reading list of books and articles that look at all aspects of Holocaust scholarship, including remarkable stories those who risked their lives to save Jews, post-Holocaust Jewish theological responses, and the challenges of recording oral histories.
By Julia Hӧrnle
In the offline world the distribution of pornography has been strictly controlled. Age-verification and rating stems ensure that minors cannot access hardcore pornography. The British Board of Film Classification rates cinema and DVD content; content rated as R18 can only be shown in specialised cinemas with strict age-verification standards and certain pornographic content will not be rated for cinema or DVD distribution.
By Rebecca Clifford
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Britain is certainly not the only country that observes this commemorative day; since the turn of the twenty-first century, countries across Europe have made 27 January an official day of remembrance of the Holocaust, and even supra-national entities such as the UN have official obligations to hold commemorative ceremonies on this day.
By Tim Harris
Historians have been arguing over how far back to trace the origins of the civil war that broke out in England in 1642 ever since the war itself.