OUPblog

This old house and these old houses

By Edwin L. Battistella
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Mary Kingsbury Simkhovitch’s fight for affordable housing [timeline]

By Betty Boyd Caroli
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Labor and luck in etymology

By Anatoly Liberman
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International Climate Policy: The Durban Platform Opens a Window

In late November and early December of last year, some 195 national delegations met in Durban, South Africa, for the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP-17) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the latest in a series of international negotiations intended to address the threat of global climate change due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHSs) in the atmosphere, largely a consequence of the worldwide combustion of fossil fuels, as well as ongoing deforestation.

Dictionary droids write definitions untouched by human hands

There’s a new breed of dictionary, untouched by human hands. The New York Times reports that teams of programmers have developed software that automates the making of dictionaries, eliminating the need for human lexicographers, who may favor some words and neglect others.

Heart of Buddha

A century ago, Tanxu used his temples to establish physical links between Buddhism and Chinese nationalism. At the same time, though, he was guided by the belief that the physical world was illusory. The title of his memoir, “Recollections of Shadows and Dust,” uses a common Buddhist phrase meant to convey the impermanence and illusion of the material world, hardly the theological emphasis one might expect from a man who transformed cityscapes with his work in brick and mortar. I tried to understand this apparent paradox as I researched Tanxu’s career, but my connection to him remained impersonal, even distant, and strictly academic.

One Voyage, Two Thousand Stories

Downton Abbey opens with the telegram announcing that the Earl of Grantham’s heir, James Crawley, and his son Patrick, have perished in the sinking of the Titanic. Since Lady Mary was supposed to marry Patrick, the succession plans go awry, and this sets off a chain of events. But how likely is it that an English aristocrat would have perished in the disaster?

Elizabeth Blackwell becomes first woman to receive a medical degree

On January 23, 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell strode to the front of the Presbyterian church in Geneva, New York, to receive her diploma from Benjamin Hale, president of Geneva Medical College. The ceremony made Blackwell—who graduated first in her class —the first woman in the modern world to receive a medical degree.

How to communicate like a Neandertal…

By Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge
Neandertal communication must have been different from modern language. Neandertals were not a stage of evolution that preceded modern humans. They were a distinct population that had a separate evolutionary history for several hundred thousand years.

Story of a Tuskegee Airman

The new George Lucas produced film RED TAILS reminds American audiences of the heroics of the African American pilots in the Tuskegee training program. In historian J. Todd Moye’s book FREEDOM FLYERS: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II, Moye captures the challenges and triumphs of these brave pilots in their own words, drawing on more than 800 interviews recorded for the National Park Service’s Tuskegee Airmen Oral History Project.

Newt Gingrich, Chameleon Politician

Veteran Gingrich-watchers wouldn’t have predicted the latest Newt incarnation, either, but they probably weren’t too surprised. Over the course of his long political career – he first ran for Congress almost four decades ago – Gingrich has been consistently inconsistent and predictably unpredictable. Whatever the issue, he has been on all sides of it.

I Believe! The Origin of “Strange” Mormon Beliefs

Many discussions of the Mormon tradition emphasize the utter absurdity of their beliefs. The average reader is left wondering how on earth Mormons could be so incredulous. In context, though, these caricatured beliefs make a certain kind of sense.

The invented languages of Clockwork Apples and Oranges

By Michael Adams
Belinda Webb’s futuristic, dystopian novel, A Clockwork Apple (2008), follows Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange (1962) closely in many details…

The First Two-Way Transatlantic Wireless Message

This Day in World History
As you look for wireless hot-spots to connect to the Internet, thank Guglielmo Marconi. The Italian inventor championed wireless communication at the turn of the twentieth century—and demonstrated it on January 19, 1903, when he sent and received the first transatlantic wireless messages.

Tibullus’ Elegies: an excerpt

Tibullus was one of a group of poets known as the Latin elegists, whose number included Ovid and Propertius. Living in the age of Augustus, his poems reflect Augustan ideals, but they are above all notable for their emphasis on the personal, and for their subject-matter, love.

Altruism versus social pressure in charitable giving

Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. There is at least one capital campaign to raise $25 million or more underway in virtually every major population center in North America. Smaller capital campaigns are even more numerous, with phone-a-thons, door-to-door drives, and mail solicitations increasing in popularity. Despite the ubiquity of fund-raising, we still have an imperfect understanding of the motivations for giving and the welfare implications for the giver. One may wonder: what moves all of these people to donate? Is such generosity necessarily welfare-enhancing for the giver?

An Etymological Headache

To an etymologist ache is one of the most enigmatic words. Although it has been attested in Old English, its unquestionable cognates in other languages are few.

Would Antonin Scalia convict Jack Bauer?

By Corey Robin
Next to Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia is the most conservative justice on the Supreme Court. He also loves the television show 24. “Boy, those early seasons,” he tells his biographer, “I’d be up to two o’clock, because you’re at the end of one [episode], and you’d say, ‘No, I’ve got to see the next.’”

Imagining depression

“There was in him a mixture of that disease, the nature of which eludes the most minute enquiry, though the effects are well known to be a weariness of life, an unconcern about those things which agitate the greater part of mankind, and a general sensation of gloomy wretchedness.”