Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Q: What is the brain supremacy? A: I use the phrase ‘the brain supremacy’ to describe the increasing relevance of neuroscience. It foresees an era – whose birth is already well underway – when the balance of power within the sciences will shift from the natural to the life sciences, from physics and chemistry to the fast-moving sciences of the mind and brain.
By James David Christie
The world lost one of its greatest and most beloved musicians on 26 February 2013, when the great teacher, recording artist and organist, Marie-Claire Alain, passed away in her 87th year. She was among the very few organists known in households around the world. She was usually referred to as the “First Lady of the Organ” and she was definitely that, but I always thought she should have been more appropriately called the “Greatest Organist in the World”
By Anatoly Liberman
I am saying goodbye to the Harlem Shake. The miniseries began two weeks ago withdance, moved on to twerk and twerp, and now the turn of the verb shake has come round. Reference books say little about the origin of shake. They usually list a few cognates and produce the Germanic etymon skakan (both a’s were short)
By Howard Kirschenbaum, Ed.D.
In the 1960s, about the same time that Albert Ellis was developing his original cognitive-behavioral therapy approach and William Glasser was developing his reality therapy (a cognitive behavior approach that evolved into Choice Theory), an educator named Louis Raths was developing a new affective-cognitive-behavioral counseling approach that eventually came to be called “values clarification.”
By Ian Donaldson
Some years ago, while I was working in Australia’s national capital, Canberra, I was about to give a lecture on Ben Jonson when the telephone rang. It was the Canadian High Commission on the phone. A small delegation (I was told) was just setting out to hear the lecture, and wanted more precise directions to the place where I’d be speaking.
By Dr Mark Roodhouse
On 27 April 1942, the Bow Street magistrates convicted The Waldorf Hotel, London, its head chef, and a London horseflesh dealer for ignoring the regulations fixing the maximum price of horsemeat. The chef paid the dealer £6 10s for 78 lb of horsemeat, nearly double the official price of £3 18s. Two American journalists, staying at The Waldorf while reporting on the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, read the news with consternation.
By John Harris and Vicky White
Social workers around the world are being invited to celebrate World Social Work Day on 19 March under the banner “Promoting Social and Economic Equalities”, taken from the Global Agenda (2010). Such a call to arms is sorely needed in the face of the growing influence of neoliberalism on global social work, an influence manifested in marketisation, consumerisation, and managerialisation.
By Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones
The question is not what can membership in the European Union do for us in the UK, but what can we do for the EU? There is one way in which we British can strengthen the benefits of union. We can demand and nourish a European Intelligence Service (EIS). Forget the parochial moaning, the time is ripe for such an initiative.
By William Kinderman
Two centuries after Richard Wagner’s birth in 1813, his final music drama Parsifal continues to exert uncanny fascination, as Francois Girard’s new production at the Metropolitan Opera shows. For much of his life, Wagner was captivated by the legends of the Holy Grail; this “stage consecration festival play” is his culminating work. Dark episodes in Parsifal’s performance history display clearly the risks of its aesthetic treatment of redemption, which can project a hypnotic portrayal of collective identity.
By Ninell Silberberg
In How Nations Behave, Louis Henkin’s classic book on law and foreign policy, he noted that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” The purpose then, of international law, is to provide a framework for the practice of stable and organized international relations and a process for resolving conflicts when they arise.
It’s time for Round Two of March Madness: Atlas Edition, right on the heels of the first round of the March Madness basketball playoffs beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, 19 March 2013. While players battle it out on the court, countries in our tournament are competing for the coveted title of “Country of the Year” based on statistics drawn at random from Oxford’s Atlas of the World: 19th Edition.
The 18th century novelist Laurence Sterne died on March 18 1768. During a recent trip to OUP’s out of print library in Oxford, we came across the 1928 Oxford World’s Classics edition of his novel A Sentimental Journey, which included an introduction by none other than Virginia Woolf.
By Kristin Hall
As North Americans, should we have confidence that the products we purchase are safe? Should we trust that manufacturers and advertisers keep consumer welfare in mind during the marketing process – from product conception to point of purchase? Of course we should. One would hope that corporations would have a sense of moral responsibility to act in the best interest of their customers.
By Klaus Dodds
When I wrote The Antarctic: A Very Short Introduction, I wanted the book to be something of a provocation. The aim, in short, was to highlight things that often get neglected in the midst of stories and images of past and present explorers, melting ice caps, tourists and the penguin. The reality is rather more disturbing.
By Mark P. Jensen
How can hypnosis affect pain management? The results from three lines of research have combined to create a renewed interest in the application of hypnosis for chronic pain management. First, imaging studies demonstrate that the effects of hypnotic suggestions on brain activity are real and can target specific aspects of pain. Hypnosis for decreases in the intensity of pain result not only in significant decreases in pain intensity, but also decreases in activity in the brain areas that underlie the experience of pain intensity.
By Patricia Fara
The world, wrote Darwin, resembles ‘one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice.’ Unexpectedly, that fine image of competitive natural selection was created not by Charles Darwin (1809-1882), but by his grandfather Erasmus (1731-1802)