Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
As many of you may have noticed, it’s been a little chaotic in the New York office of Oxford University Press these past two weeks. The MTA and NJTransit have the Flickr streams to prove a photo of a boat on railway tracks is worth a thousand “Service has been suspended until further notice” messages.
Can you connect two seemingly different ideas? Now’s your chance! In a new addition to our regular Friday Twitter games, we’re introducing Six Degrees of Oxford Index or #6degreesOI. We’ll pose a challenge — such as Pompeii to propaganda – with the #6degreesOI hashtag. Discover the five steps to move from one Oxford Index Overview Page (Pompeii) to the other (propaganda) using the “Related Overviews” on the right hand side. The first person to tweet the correct steps with the #6degreesOI hashtag wins.
Ever wonder what ingredients are needed to make beer? How do they interact? What exactly does fermentation entail? Garrett Oliver, editor of The Oxford Companion to Beer, takes us inside the Brooklyn Brewery to show us where beer comes from and how fermentation works. He is brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery and the foremost authority on beer in the United States.
By Louis René Beres
Modern science has spawned revolutionary breakthroughs in the essential meanings of space and time. Still, such major breakthroughs in human consciousness remain distant from the often overlapping worlds of diplomacy and international relations. This disregarded distance is dangerous, and, potentially, catastrophic. In the Middle East, especially, there is ample room for needed reconciliations between science and diplomacy.
By Geraldine Johnson
When the latest news in the art world is all about record-breaking prices for contemporary works and the celebrity buzz of London’s Frieze Art Fair, thinking about Renaissance art might seem, well, a little old-fashioned, if not downright eccentric. But if the two experiences I had recently are anything to go by, maybe we need to think again.
By Jim Cullen
Over the course of the last thirty years, Denzel Washington has played a notable variety of roles: leading man and aging man; hero and villain; emblem of his race and Everyman. Yet to a truly striking degree the various roles he’s chosen — and here it’s worth noting that as one of the most blue-chip actors in Hollywood, he’s long enjoyed considerable power in this regard — revolve around two key relationships: mentor and protégé.
By Simon Wright
One hundred years ago this month the bodies of Captain Scott and his companions were discovered, eight months after they had perished from starvation, frostbite, and exposure on their return journey from the South Pole. Ostensibly a scientific and research expedition, Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his party had raced against Roald Amundsen to be first at the South Pole, and lost.
PB. The initials are not exactly as familiar as, say, BBC, or NPR, but we’re not operating in a massively different environment. PB: Philosophy Bites. Time was when to broadcast on the radio (or the ‘wireless’) you’d have to seek a license for permission to use a teeny weeny portion of the radio frequency spectrum. Broadcasting was time-consuming, bureaucratic, and above all expensive. It required staff and costly equipment and it was possible only with the support of highly-trained studio technicians and engineers. No longer
By Anatoly Liberman
Fowl, fox, and pooch. My cautious reservations about a tie between the etymon of fowl and the verb fly were dismissed in one of the comments. Therefore, a few additional notes on that word may be in order. The origin of fowl is uncertain, that is, controversial, not quite unknown.
By Travis McDade
On a “60 Minutes” episode on Sunday 28 October, Bob Simon looked at the Barry Landau archives theft case. Aside from some official-sounding but unsupportable claims (“Barry Landau carried out the largest theft of these treasures in American history”) it was a pretty good show. Still, one part rankled. In the middle of the segment, Simon was shown several coats Landau had outfitted with special pockets in which he could secret documents before leaving victim institutions.
In March 2012 an online video campaigning for the arrest of Joseph Kony, alleged Commander-in-Chief of the Lord’s Resistance Army, was launched by Invisible Children Inc. Within six days the video had been watched by over 100 million people. If you hate Joseph Kony you are now joined by a host of celebrities including Rihanna, Kim Kardashian and Justin Bieber.
By Elvin Lim
Everything is political at this time of the electoral calendar, so there is no use pretending that Hurricane Sandy will not have an effect on the presidential race. President Obama has been given a new life line. Forced to take politics out of his campaign, he can take a break from defending his record for two days. When an incumbent president is forced by emergency events to stop talking politics, he always enjoys the glow emanating form the Oval Office.
By Anthony Verity
There must have been hundreds of English versions since Chapman (c.1560-1634), a good many of them on bookshop shelves today. The usual answer is that great literature needs frequent reinterpretation. If students of antiquity and curious general readers are being urged today to return to the first work in writing in the Western canon, those who can read Greek will continue to translate the Iliad for their benefit, in the hope of recreating something of the “feel” of the original.
I had the great thrill over the week to perform as part of the Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show at the Voodoo Experience in New Orleans. The three day music extravaganza takes place under the live oaks in beautiful City Park. Sanchez asked me to read from New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Future of New Orleans at the beginning of his set on the Preservation Hall stage. I read about my return to New Orleans after hurricane Katrina as the band played the melodic swells of “At the Foot of Canal Street” behind me.
Last week, stories emerged about irregularities in elections in Lithuania and Ukraine that took place over the weekend. In the case of Ukraine, ahead of the election Yanukovyc’s government had been blamed of engaging in unfair campaign advertising practices, persecution of opposition leaders, and the fashioning of fake opposition parties; and following the election, international observers from the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) noted a series of problems with the conduct the election.
By Megan Crawley, MPH
Imagine you’re a doctor, taking the subway to work. You suddenly remember that your first patient of the day is preparing for a trip overseas. You want to prepare for this pre-travel consultation, but all your reference books are at the office and you won’t have time once you get there.