Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The brief history of America’s global war on terrorism demonstrates the folly of allowing the executive branch a free hand in determining the scope and conduct of that conflict. Deference to Mr. Bush’s fixation with Saddam Hussein has cost the United States dearly. To expand that misadventure will only drive those costs higher. Furthermore, an […]
Rosa Parks gave us a different image—defiance that was dignified and determined. And it moved us to action—action that was immediate in Montgomery, and spread over time throughout the South. It planted in my generation the psychological seed we needed to break out of the protective cocoon of our segregated worlds, where our families—biological and extended—did everything within their limited powers to keep us out of harm’s way, echoing, for different reasons, the white mantra that we should “stay in our place.” Rosa Parks defined her place –as a first class human being—and planted the seeds that germinated in the souls of young people like myself. Within a few years, we would follow Sister/Mama Rosa, I, into a resistant, all- white University, my classmates and friends into the streets held by Atlanta’s white powers—defying their intransigence singing that old spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me’roun.” As we, each in our own ways, challenged the system that made us second class citizens, we came to “see…in a new light both our past and our future. We could see that past—the segregation, the deprivation and denial—for what it was, a system designed to keep us in our place and convince us somehow that it was our fault, as well as our destiny. Now, without either ambivalence or shame, we saw ourselves as the heirs to a legacy of struggle…ennobling…[and] enabling us to take control of our destiny.”
Ben Keene, editor of Oxford’s Atlas program, made the circuit of NPR radio programs this week to discuss Atlas of the World, Deluxe Edition. He has appeared on Weekend Edition and Marketplace and both segments are available in the show archives. The Atlas of the World is the only atlas that is updated every year […]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a great excerpt from James C. Cobb’s Away Down South over the weekend. Entitled “RED CLAY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE,” the excerpt addresses “the readiness, even eagerness, of African-Americans both in the South and outside it to identify themselves unequivocally as Southerners and claim the region as home.” Here is the […]
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of Freakonomics, the book / blog sensation of the year, paid Fat Politics by J. Eric Oliver their “very highest compliment” over the weekend, saying: “This reads like something that we could have written!” They also include some substance of the Oliver’s argument via a Publisher’s Weekly review: Arguing […]
Richard Davis, author of Electing Justice, and Michael Comiskey certainly chose a propitious time to debate the judicial confirmation process. Last week, as the Bush Administration lost a nominee, Davis and Comiskey debated the limitations of the SCOTUS nomination and confirmation process, the reluctance of nominees to answer the thorniest questions for fear of revealing […]
Even though his book is now shipping, Tim Harford and the good folks at the Financial Times know you just can’t get enough of The Undercover Economist. So, yesterday they launched Harford’s new weekly column in the paper, ‘The Undercover Economist.’ Here is the beginning of the inaugural UE column, which addresses the mysteries of […]
The Undercover Economist appeared on the Radio Economics podcast website on Thursday (click on the post title to listen to the interview). It is an engaging 30 minute dialogue between Tim Harford (‘The Undercover Economist’) and the host of the Radio Economics site, Dr. James Reese. It includes a wonderful discussion of Harford’s growth as […]
In studying two centuries of Washington reporting, I found only one instance where journalists came forward to name their anonymous sources. It occurred in 1846 after the Washington Daily Times (no relation to the current paper) printed sensational allegations that Whigs were plotting with the British minister to bring about a settlement of the Oregon boundary dispute. When the Senate investigated the charges, the paper’s editor and publisher voluntarily divulged the sources of the story: a naval officer, a Senate doorkeeper, several lobbyists, and a few other journalists. Since those sources had everything to lose and nothing to gain by corroborating the Times’ allegations, every witness, under oath, denied knowledge of a plot. The committee branded the story “utterly and entirely false,” and banned anyone from the newspaper from the Senate galleries. The Washington Daily Times promptly went out of business, creating an object lesson that the rest of the press corps took very much to heart.
Despite the tremendous importance of politics in Supreme Court nominations, the single most important determinant of a successful confirmation is the qualifications of the nominee. We have measured the qualifications of all nominees since Hugo Black (1937) by content analyzing newspaper editorials from leading newspapers at the time of their nominations [see table below]. By this standard, Miers falls near the bottom of the stack. Thus, her withdrawal is not surprising.
With the “leak inquiry” grand jury adjouned for the day, it’s time for a breather. Gary Hart offers a fresh perspective in a piece in Tuesday’s Denver Post. Responding to the oft-repeated conservative defense that is, essentially, ‘no harm, no foul,’ Hart offers some historical context to the scene: The federal statute making it a […]
Some bloggers have declared today to be “Blog Quake Day” and are calling for online donations to agencies assisting the relief effort in Pakistan. Oxfam declared today that “rich countries” are “failing to respond generously to the UN South Asian Earthquake appeal.” In related news, Anatol Lieven, author of America Right or Wrong, wrote a […]
“…one of their clearest duties is to keep a wary eye on the gentlemen who operate this great nation, and only too often slip into the assumption that they own it.” — H.L. Mencken
That New Yorker article on the use of phony words to protect a dictionary’s copyright got some belated play on the seminal weblog Boing-Boing today. The article focuses on the search for the phony word in the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (NOAD). Erin McKean, the editor-in-chief of NOAD, whimsically likens a lexicographer’s copyright […]
Joseph Stiglitz: As the income distribution becomes increasingly skewed, with an increasing share of the wealth and income in the hands of those at the top, the median falls further and further below the mean. That is why, even as per capita GDP has been increasing in the United States, U.S. median household income has actually been falling.
The Financial Times has published a great excerpt of the forthcoming book from Tim Harford, The Undercover Economist. Here is a representative graph from the excerpt and the book that Steven Levitt called “required reading”: Supermarkets will often produce an own-brand “value” range, displaying crude designs that don’t vary whether the product is lemonade or […]