Redefining Death — Again
How do we define death?
Not a Chimp, Not Even Close
Jeremy Taylor on how “Ardi” proves chimps and humans are far less similar than we have been led to believe.
Friday procrastination: link love – blogging, bookcases, and boiled eggs
What Rebecca has been reading.
Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market
An excerpt from Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
Monsters and Wild Things
Stephen Asma, author of On Monsters looks at Where the Wild Things Are.
Podictionary Interview – Philip Durkin
A special podictionary episode with Philip Durkin.
What Made the Crocodile Cry? …And other language questions
Susie Dent answers some of your language questions.
Mario Savio: Freedom’s Orator
An excerpt from Freedom’s Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s.
Ethnic Slurs. Part III:
Another Derogatory Name for the Jew: Kike
Anatoly Liberman examines meaning of the word Kike.
A Linguistic Archaeology of the Mind
Julia Cresswell, author of The Insect that Stole Butter? on the puzzling history of the word ‘sack’.
Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson
OUP celebrates the Nobel Prizes of Ostrom and Williamson!
A Paradox of Love: Why Some Campaign Promises Matter more than Others
Elvin Lim looks at why sometimes you need to play hard to get.
Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know
An excerpt from Cuba: What Everyone Needs To Know.
Coming To Understand Obsession
An excerpt from The Thought That Counts by James Douglas Kant with Martin Franklin, PH.D., and Linda Wasmer Andrews.
F is for F*%#
Jesse Sheidlower is Editor at Large of the Oxford English Dictionary and author of The F-Word. Recognized as one of the foremost authorities on obscenity in English, he has written about language for a great many publications, including a recent article on Slate. Here, Jesse discusses the criteria for including certain words or obscenities in […]
Friday procrastination: link love – Michelle Obama, Superman, and yogurt
What Rebecca has been reading.