Riding the tails of the pink ribbon
By Gayle Sulik
The iconic pink breast cancer awareness ribbon – once a consciousness-raising symbol—now functions primarily as a logo for the breast cancer brand.
The golden wings of the bicentennial: Giuseppe Verdi at 200
It is finally here. The big anniversary. The bicentennial. Today, Giuseppe Verdi turns 200. There has been excitement in the air for quite some time—leading opera houses presenting new productions and outreach initiatives to honor the great composer, publishing companies rushing to release a host of new books for all sorts of readerships, and public and private organizations around the world (governments and municipalities, research centers and fan clubs) working to celebrate the occasion as it deserves.
Shakespeare and the controversy over Richard III’s remains
By Philip Schwyzer
What are we going to do with Richard III? More than a year after his bones were unearthed in Leicester, the last Plantagenet king is still waiting for a resting place.
An interlude
By Anatoly Liberman
Every word journalist is on the lookout for interesting pieces of information about language. H. W. Fowler, the author of the great and incomparable book Modern English Usage, confessed that his main reading was newspapers. Naturally: where else could he find so much garbled English?
Interrogating inequality around the globe
The Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York brought together leading sociologists from around the world to discuss the field, focusing on “Interrogating Inequality.” Arne L. Kalleberg, Editor-in-Chief of Social Forces, was lucky enough to steal five sociologists 20 blocks south to Oxford’s New York office.
Five reasons why China has the most interesting economy in the world
By John Knight
China is not only soon likely to have the largest economy in the world but it also has the most fascinating because of the challenges that it has successfully met and the challenges that lie ahead for this semi-industrialised economy.
Watching Titus, feeling flesh
By Hester Lees-Jefferies
Last month I sat in my favourite theatre, the Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon, watching Michael Fentiman’s excellent Royal Shakespeare Company production of Titus Andronicus. Titus is one of my favourite plays, loose and messy, blackly comic and oddly beautiful.
And the Nobel Prize goes to… Higgs and Englert!
By Jim Baggott
Earlier today the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to English theorist Peter Higgs and Belgian François Englert, for their work on the ‘mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles’. This work first appeared in a series of research papers published in 1964.
Pragmatic preservation and the Vanderbilt Hotel
As Grand Central Terminal celebrates its centennial this year, I have found myself admiring other accomplishments of the firm responsible for a significant part of its design, Warren & Wetmore. In my first days in the New York office of Oxford University Press, I noticed an imposing cadre of busts from the southeast windows of the building.
Education depends on brains
By Philippe Grandjean
This time of the year, parents worry about what the new school year will bring for their children, teachers complain about school budget constraints, and politicians express ambitions that at least 90% of all children complete basic schooling and 50% or more pursue college degrees.
The sounds of American counterculture and citizenship
We’re told many stories about the 1960s, typically clichéd tales of excess and revolution. But there’s more to the popular music of the 1960s. There are many ways in which rock music has shaped our ideas of individual freedom and collective belonging. Rock became a way for participants in American culture and counterculture to think about what it meant to be an American citizen, a world citizen, a citizen-consumer, or a citizen-soldier.
Metro North disruption and “employer convenience”, double taxation – again
By Edward Zelinsky
Once again, those of us who depend on Metro North’s railroad commuter service found ourselves bereft of adequate transportation to travel to work in Manhattan. Once again, the Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA), which runs Metro North, urged us to avoid Manhattan by telecommuting from our homes for the duration of this service disruption.
Place of the Year: Through the years
Next week we launch our annual Place of the Year Contest (POTY), where we reflect back on the world’s hits and misses. Our panel of geography experts are hard at work compiling a list of places that have made an impact felt around the world in 2013. One place will be chosen as the winner. While they compile the most newsworthy locales, we wanted to reflect back on past years’ winners.
Ten constitutional preambles you may not know
How do nations across the globe declare their intent in the formation of a new government? To celebrate the launch of the innovative, new platform Oxford Constitutions of the World, we have highlighted a broad range of preambles from several jurisdictions below and the full constitutions freely available on the Oxford Constitutions of the World site for a limited time.
Mr Leggy has left the building (for a while)
By Ali Sparkes
You might think this is just Children’s Book Week but it’s also another significant week on the calendar. It’s National Spiders Come In Week.
Confronting habitat loss in the 21st Century
According to the Convention on Biological Diversity, ‘habitat’ means the place or type of site where an organism or population naturally occurs. Tomorrow is World Habitat Day. The obvious question is, why do we need a day devoted just to habitat? The short answer is that loss of habitat is now the foremost conservation concern of the 21st century.