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Place of the Year 2012 in pictures

Fresh off the heels of an exciting “Word of the Year” week, OUP geographers are still debating what should be recognized as the Place of the Year 2012. This slideshow highlights the POTY shortlist, full of contenders that may have to duel this out.  Unless….if you make your vote below, we’ll be able to select the place that has inspired the majority of readers this year, sparing the planet World War POTY.

We don’t only want your vote, we want to see what you see!

Enter for a chance to win the newly updated 19th edition of Atlas of the World. Send in a photo of one of our shortlisted places for our panel of judges to review. It could be a street in Calabasas, CA or a panorama of Istanbul, Turkey; send us what you see. The best photo for each place will be included in a slideshow on the OUPblog on 26 November 2012. The best photo of the Place of the Year 2012 will be included in our Place of the Year 2012 announcement on 3 December 2012. If your photo is selected as the best photo of the Place of the Year 2012, then we’ll send you a copy of the Atlas of the World. Read more about the competition and enter here.




The general store in Qaanaaq, Greenland, part of the Arctic Circle

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Image courtesy of Andy Mahoney, supplied by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Can you keep up with the Kardashians in Calabasas, CA?

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Image courtesy of E! Entertainment

View of the LHC machine, dipole and cavity RF. Tunnel at Point 4.

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(c) 2012 CERN

Parthenon, Athens, Greece, ca. 1865-ca. 1889

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Image courtesy of the Cornell University Library

St. Sophia, Istanbul, Turkey, 1914

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Image courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum Archives

London at Sunset

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Photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Mars Curiosity Rover Self-Portrait.

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Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems.

Floating Tomato Garden at Inle Lake, Myanmar (Burma)

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Image courtesy of Ralf-André Lettau

Islands in the Senkaku or Diaoyu Island Chain

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Image courtesy of Behbeh, GNU Free Documentation License

Sayyidah Zaynab Mosque, Syria

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Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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What should be the place of the year in 2012?




London, United Kingdom Mars CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), Switzerland Istanbul, Turkey Myanmar/Burma Syria Arctic Circle Calabasas, California, USA Greece The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, contested by Japan, China, and Taiwan








View Result



Total votes: 64London, United Kingdom (14 votes, 22%)Mars (18 votes, 28%)CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), Switzerland (5 votes, 8%)Istanbul, Turkey (3 votes, 5%)Myanmar/Burma (5 votes, 8%)Syria (5 votes, 8%)Arctic Circle (7 votes, 11%)Calabasas, California, USA (1 votes, 2%)Greece (2 votes, 3%)The Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, contested by Japan, China, and Taiwan (4 votes, 5%)


Vote

And don’t forget to share your vote on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and other networks:

“I voted [my choice] for Place of the Year http://oxford.ly/poty12 #POTY12 via @OUPAcademic”

Oxford’s Atlas of the World — the only world atlas updated annually, guaranteeing that users will find the most current geographic information — is the most authoritative resource on the market. The Nineteenth Edition includes new census information, dozens of city maps, gorgeous satellite images of Earth, and a geographical glossary, once again offering exceptional value at a reasonable price.

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Is Almanac Day in your calendar?

By Benjamin Wardhaugh

As well as Halloween, Guy Fawkes, and All Saints’s day, this time of the year used to see another day of fun and frenzy. ‘Almanac Day’, towards the end of November, saw the next year’s almanacs go on sale. It generally came round on or about 22 November: St Cecilia’s Day. In London, Stationers’ Hall would be crammed to the rafters:

The clock strikes, wide asunder start the gates, and in they come, a whole army of porters, darting hither and thither, and seizing the said bags, in many instances as big as themselves. Before we can well understand what is the matter, men and bags have alike vanished – the hall is clear … they will be dispersed through every city and town, and parish, and hamlet of England; the curate will be glancing over the pages of his little book to see what promotions have taken place in the church, and sigh as he thinks of rectories, and deaneries, and bishoprics; the sailor will be deep in the mysteries of tides and new moons that are learnedly expatiated upon in the pages of his; the believer in the stars will be finding new draughts made upon that Bank of Faith impossible to be broken or made bankrupt — his superstition, as he turns over the pages of his Moore — but we have let out our secret. Yes, they are all almanacks — those bags contained nothing but almanacks.

Two hundred or three hundred years ago you could choose from twenty or more almanacs every year. Unlike most of the modern ones they were slim things, with a couple of dozen pages. There were almanacs for Whigs, almanacs for Tories, almanacs for people who believed in astrology and almanacs for those who didn’t, almanacs for farmers, sailors, merchants.

My own journey into the wonderful world of early modern almanacs began with Poor Robin’s Almanac. Robin was a fictional character, invented in the 1660s as a way to lampoon astrologers and their almanacs. He went on to write a long-running spoof almanac, clocking up 164 annual issues. He did prognostication –

If on the second of February, thou go either to Fair or Market with store of money in thy pocket, and there have thy purse picked of it all, then that is an unfortunate day.

and history –

1367 BC: Women first invented kissing

and the year’s calendar –

23 June: Friar Tuck’s Day.

Poor Robin’s intellectual descendants included Punch (it copied part of his title page) and Poor Richard, pseudonym of Benjamin Franklin and author of The Way to Wealth. In his day he was loved and very widely read, but he was killed off in the 1820s by a combination of mismanagement, waning popularity, and attacks from the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.

Others were less uproarious, but just as much fun. The Ladies’ Diary, or Woman’s Almanack specialized in genteel mathematical puzzles. ‘If I’m a year younger than one-twentieth the square of my age, how old am I?’ ‘If the sun takes four minutes to cross the horizon on New Year’s Day’, where am I? It attracted questions and answers sent in from all over Britain, and gave prizes for the best ones. It ran for over 130 years.

Old Moore provided predictions political, social, and meteorological based on the movements of the heavens.

Let my Muse raise, and tell what News she hears

Amongst the Stars, and Motions of the Spheres.

But it combined them with some remarkable popular science writing, on subjects ranging from astronomy to ancient history, compiled by authors who had one eye on the Philosophical Transactions and the other on the public’s taste for sensationalism.

Another scientifically-minded production was the Nautical Almanac, started in the 1760s by Longitude’s villain Nevile Maskelyne (he was actually rather a pleasant chap). It gave the moon’s position at three-hour intervals for the whole year, and instructions for working out your longitude from an observation. At two shillings and sixpence, plus the price of a sextant, it came in a good bit cheaper than a Harrison chronometer.

At times nearly one Briton in six was buying an almanac: ‘the greatest triumph of journalism until modern times’ according to historian Bernard Capp. Almanac day may be no more, but almanacs have been circulating for nearly as long as calendars, and if the genre has waxed and waned over the years it seems in no danger of extinction. Partly eclipsed in the early nineteenth century by other forms of popular instruction, the almanac blazed forth again from the 1830s, with sales rising to a million a year for the most popular. Today, Old Moore is still with us, though somewhat transformed; so is the Nautical Almanac. Whitaker and Schott have given almanacs a new lease of life as annual reference books. Their survival seems a safe prediction.

Benjamin Wardhaugh is a historian and fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. His book, Poor Robin’s Prophecies: A curious Almanac, and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain, publishes this month.

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Five GIFers for the serious-minded

By Alice Northover

When people think of GIFs, they often imagine a silly animation for a quick joke. But like any medium, it has potential beyond our cat-centric imagination. “The GIF has evolved from a medium for pop-cultural memes into a tool with serious applications including research and journalism, and its lexical identity is transforming to keep pace,” Head of US Dictionaries, Katherine Martin, recently commented. So it’s only appropriate to highlight a few GIFers who take the file format beyond a basic form.

(1) New York Public Library’s Stereogranimator

Stereographs, common in the 19th and early 20th century, paired two slightly different photographs together to trick the eye into creating perspective and a three-dimensional image. Now, we can experience something akin to that through the GIF animation (or GIFing) of NYPL Labs Stereogranimator. There are over 39,000 items in the stereograph collections of The New York Public Library, and the nearly 650 stereographs in the Boston Public Library. The general public — and scholars — can now easily see (and share) a stereograph as someone in 1880 had.

GIF made with the NYPL Labs Stereogranimator

(2) Elspeth Reeve

Can GIFs be used in the serious work of journalism? Poynter’s Ann Friedman cooked up a handy journalist guide back in August, while New York Times’ Still Life series used GIFs to complement their articles on summer spaces, but The Atlantic Wire’s Elspeth Reeve stands out. From her coverage of the Olympics to the presidential debates, she uses GIFs to provide context and richness to her work. While GIFs are most often used as one-offs, Reeve constructs a narrative with image and text.

McKayla Maroney's vault. GIF by Elspeth Reeve.

(3) Gustavo Fajardo

As in real estate, as in all things, artists have been using GIFs to great effect long before the rest of us. Common themes in GIF artwork include playing with graphic design and basic forms. Moreover, many GIF artists explore problems of modern life, particularly our tensions with technology. I’m cheating many fabulous artists by just naming one, so I encourage you to explore the GIF art world. (Thank you to Grove Art editor Jenny Bantz for her assistance.)

“Her father was a horse killer” (Genealogy decompressed 7.7) Series inspired by Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Metagenealogia” 2012. Work by Gustavo Fajardo

(4) Infinity Imagined

Who’s out there GIFing for science? Infinity Imagined is a science Tumblr that explains many phenomenon (often beautifully) with GIFs. The animations help people understand patterns and processes better, such as how waves and ripples work. Infinity Imagined covers many aspects of science from physics to biology to fractals. (Hat tip to Stacey Thinx / It’s Okay to Be Smart Joe / Maria Popova.)

MRI scans of a human brain. GIF by Infinity Imagined

(5) NatGeo-GIFs

While not an official outlet for National Geographic, Felipe of São Paulo captures beautiful nature scenes, many from National Geographic films, in brief bursts. His work lacks many GIFs’ characteristic jolts and creates a small cinematic experience for the viewer.

Although I’ve titled this post “Five GIFers for the serious-minded,” it’s important to recognize the flexibility and importance of humor. Our UK Word of the Year had its origins on a satirical British television show. Wit, invention, and genius is not restricted to so-called worthy endeavors. And it’s okay to laugh in an art museum.

And of course, please share your thoughts on the best GIFers in the comments below. There’s a whole world out there for people to discover.

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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Friday procrastination: M(o)ustache edition

By Alice Northover

It’s the close of WOTY week everyone and I’m GIFed out. Welcome new followers! And goodbye to those who quickly OD’ed on Oxford content. You will be missed.

First off, it’s Movember, when men around the world sprout moustaches to raise awareness of men’s health issues. Our own Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is presenting a moustachioed man (no women) every day this month on Twitter. There’s also this fabulously titled article, “Marvellous Movember in the MODNB,” featuring over 400 years of moustaches, mutton chops, and whiskers. So many fine moustaches on display, so little time.

#bbpBox_266916398524137473 a { text-decoration:none; color:#000469; }#bbpBox_266916398524137473 a:hover { text-decoration:underline; }Daily in #Movember we're tweeting a 'Mr Movember', someone whose moustache has gone down in British history, or at least in pages of MODNBNovember 9, 2012 9:53 am via web Reply Retweet Favorite Oxford DNB

One of the wonderful advantages of being part of Oxford is occasionally you get to talk to people from across the university (including Bodleian Libraries) about a variety of topics — even on the so called business-side of academia — which brings me to OxEngage and the blog 23 Things. It’s a series of events and more on social media for university staff and students. Together we tackle such issues as sharing research online; my current favorite is “Thing 18: Using Creative Commons and other copyright ‘need-to-know’ issues.” Be sure to check out the hashtags #oxengage and #23things too.

And for more on the place of university presses, be sure to check out the full AAUP University Press Week wondrous madness, including Mapping Our Influence and the Blog Tour. Georgetown University Press has been doing daily roundups. Here are my limited highlights but there’s so much more to discover.

“Ideas weren’t put on this earth to be sold”
Bookstores that make university press publishing possible (including one of my favorites Book Culture)
“the Press stands united to combat literary lice, whether born of cybernetic strain or, more likely, byproducts of this author’s postprandial fatigue”
University presses and LCTL (an acronym worth learning)

My favorite noseless astronomer wasn’t poisoned.

Vending machine for books. (Bring this to us Canada!)

Supersymmetry is on the rocks.

Books are rising from the dead. We must call the Ghostbusters; they’re great with libraries.

Libraries are cathedrals. Agreed. Are there any libraries in cathedrals?

Creative Commons. Let’s get on that. Please.

The textbooks are watching you. (h/t The Millions)

Art in Spain during Eurogedden.

Behind every great author is a great editor. (And behind them is a great copyeditor.)

And behind them is a librarian, on Pinterest. (h/t Jen Howard)

Watch kittens live. (No our office isn’t full of cat ladies…)

W.W. Norton editor Alane Salierno Mason’s excellent tips for academics when writing for a general audience.

Wiley, O’Reilly, and DRM-free.

This made my week: “A côté, les lexicographes des dictionnaires d’Oxford University Press sont autrement plus funky !”

Our editors are lovely.

And finally, John Green is also lovely:

Click here to view the embedded video.

PS. I’ve lost track of where I found all these things, so apologies if I’ve missed a hat tip or nine.

Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.

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Oral history, research, and technology

A month ago, the Oral History Association (OHA) hosted their 2012 annual conference, “Sing It Out, Shout It Out, Say It Out Loud: Giving Voice through Oral History” in Cleveland, Ohio. Through papers, performances, exhibits and roundtables, conference attendees examined “the ways many people express themselves within oral histories, and also the ways in which people craft existing oral histories into other means of expression.” Unsurprisingly, one topic that came up in both formal presentations and casual conversation was the field’s use of the latest tech. Below are two reports from conference by Jeff Corrigan and Melanie Morse that speak to technology’s increasingly importance to the collection and dissemination of oral history research.

Quick Response Codes
By Jeff D. Corrigan

One of the most interesting sessions at this year’s OHA Conference came from Juliana Nykolaiszyn of Oklahoma State University, who talked about the use of QR (Quick Response) codes and how they can connect scholars to new audiences. QR codes are seen on many print documents now-a-days, working in conjunction with smartphones to direct users to additional content, like websites or coupons. As Nykolaiszyn explained in her presentation, today, 45 percent of adults own smartphones, suggesting that a much wider audience has immediate access to digital content than we might generally assume. Therefore, QR codes could be one of the many ways to provide value-added content to one’s research; for example, by linking readers to the interview clips in discussion.

Although Juliana mainly discussed exposing people to oral history via QR codes printed on text and photo panels, this technology has all sorts of implications for how scholars share information. Often times today, you see these codes printed on posters, bookmarks, business cards, or any type of text panel. However, QR codes could also be used to help create an interactive historic walking tour, where QR codes would appear on signs outside of historic buildings, display cabinets, or street signs. With QR codes, access to oral histories is no longer limited to individuals with permission to enter the brick and mortar archive or the savvy researcher able to navigate online collections.

As with most new technology, one might ask “At what cost though?” Fortunately, as Nykolaiszyn pointed out, the cost to incorporate this technology into current publications is minimal, especially since there are several QR Code generators available online for free. For example, Oklahoma State University uses the Zxing Project to generate their codes, a .jpeg file that they can copy and paste into any document before printing. OSU can even track the number of hits on a particular QR code by incorporating code by the free URL shortener Bitly.

As easy and great as QR codes sound, individuals and institutions traveling down this new technology path should remember two things. First, to follow the footsteps of Oklahoma State and include an instructive text panel that explains what the QR symbol is, and how to use it. Second, that although QR codes are quickly gaining acceptance, it is important to remember that a majority of the population does not have the appropriate technology to access the information available via QR codes. Therefore, be sure to include all necessary information in your original document, so that it is easily accessible to all, regardless of what tech they possess.

“Scenes from the Exhibits Hall”
By Melanie Morse

In addition to OHA’s sessions, workshops, plenaries, and keynotes, there is another space where conference participants of any stripe can talk about their work, ask questions, and generate great discussions. The exhibits hall is where folks can meander their way through booksellers, businesses, community projects, and organizations showcasing their wares. These exhibitor tables often facilitate as much interesting debate as any presentation, if one takes the time to engage.

One topic that bubbled up in our part of the hall was how to provide access to digital oral history content. This should resonate with all 2012 OHA attendees, be they student, oral historian, commercial vendor, etc. Specifically, we discussed:

What types of programs are available for creating access to oral history collections online?
Who do I need on my team to make these programs work?
How do I gain and allow greater access to oral history collections?
How do we get oral history collections accessible for people to explore, experience, and use?
What is Apache, Java, MySQL, Oracle, XML…?

Of course, more questions came up as we dove deeper into these challenges of access:

What is your goal?
Who is the audience?
How do you envision them using these online oral histories?
Is it geared to kids? Veterans? Academics? Researchers? Teachers?
How do you want folks to use it?
What does “access” mean to you? Define it.

One key conclusion that arose is that we need creative programmers to help us get access, however we define it, in place — there is simply no way around that. And that is ok! Do not fear the programmer. You need a real live programmer on your team that doesn’t just know “some stuff about style sheets,” but programs for a living. Once again, further exhibit hall discussion only raised more questions. Once we have programming capacity on our teams, then what? Putting oral histories up online is like planting a tree in the forest: you plant a tree and it grows, but how do you let everyone know its there? Are there even people out there who want your content? How will they use it?

So, now it seems there is a need for a major marketing or business plan to make sure all the hard work put into designing a beautiful site full of rich, accessible content is used, explored, and enjoyed to the fullest extent. Having a plan in place before programming begins will help to ensure that your site has longevity and sustainability. Your plan should contain room for growth, too, with creative ideas ready to integrate technology that we know is coming but isn’t quite here yet. Think George Lucas pre-shooting the scene with Han Solo meeting Jabba the Hut for Star Wars 1977 because he knew he would be able to add computer-generated effects eventually. 20 years later, he did!

This is one of many scenes I witnessed in the exhibits hall. Lots of great questions, and lots of creative thinking leading towards innovative solutions. And yet, while these discussions were plentiful, none trumped the burning question of the conference: “Where is Doug Boyd?”

Jeff D. Corrigan has been the oral historian for the State Historical Society of Missouri at the University of Missouri since April 2008. Prior to that, he taught U.S. History and Western Civilization at Illinois Valley Community College. He holds a B.S. in Agricultural Communications and Advertising from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a M.A. in U.S. and World History from Eastern Illinois University.

Melanie Morse works with The Randforce Associates in Buffalo, NY, where she designs custom solutions for content management in the field of oral history.

The Oral History Review, published by the Oral History Association, is the U.S. journal of record for the theory and practice of oral history. Its primary mission is to explore the nature and significance of oral history and advance understanding of the field among scholars, educators, practitioners, and the general public. Follow them on Twitter at @oralhistreview and like them on Facebook to preview the latest from the Review, learn about other oral history projects, connect with oral history centers across the world, and discover topics that you may have thought were even remotely connected to the study of oral history. Keep an eye out for upcoming posts on the OUPblog for addendum to past articles, interviews with scholars in oral history and related fields, and fieldnotes on conferences, workshops, etc.

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Anna Karenina’s conduct

One of the greatest novels ever written, Anna Karenina sets the impossible and destructive triangle of Anna, her husband Karenin, and her lover Vronsky against the marriage of Levin and Kitty, thus illuminating the most important questions that face humanity. A new film adaptation of the novel, starring Keira Knightly and directed by Joe Wright, opens today in the United States. (It was released 7 September in the UK.) We’ve paired a scene from the film with an excerpt of the novel below.

EVERY one was loudly expressing disapproval and repeating the words some one had uttered: ‘They will have gladiators and lions next,’ and every one was feeling the horror of it, so that when Vronsky fell and Anna gave a loud exclamation, there was nothing remarkable about it. But afterwards a change came over Anna’s face which was positively improper. She quite lost self-control. She began to flutter like a captive bird, now rising to go, now addressing Betsy.

‘Let us go!’ she said.

But Betsy did not hear her. She was leaning over to speak to a General who was below.

Karenin approached Anna and politely offered her his arm.

‘Come, if you like,’ he said in French; but Anna listened to what the General was saying and did not notice her husband.

‘He too has broken his leg, they say. It’s too bad,’ the General said,

Anna, without replying to her husband, raised her glasses and looked toward the spot where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so far off, and so many people had crowded there, that it was impossible to distinguish anything. She put down her glasses and was about to go; but at that moment an officer galloped up and reported something to the Emperor. Anna bent forward to listen.

‘Stiva! Stiva!’ she called to her brother.

But he did not hear her. She was again on the point of going.

‘I again offer you my arm if you wish to go,’ said her husband touching her arm. With a look of repulsion she drew back, and without looking at him replied:

‘No, no, leave me alone, I shall stay here,’

She now saw an officer running to the Grand Stand from the place where Vronsky had fallen. Betsy waved her handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the rider was unhurt but that the horse had broken its back.

On hearing this Anna quickly sat down and hid her face behind her fan. Karenin saw that she was crying, and that she was unable to keep back either her tears or the sobs that made her bosom heave. He stepped forward so as to screen her, giving her time to recover.

‘For the third time I offer you my arm,’ he said after a while, turning toward her. Anna looked at him and did not know what to say. The Princess Betsy came to her aid.

‘No, Alexis Alexandrovich,’ she put in, ‘I brought Anna here and I have promised to take her back again.’

‘Excuse me, Princess,’ he said, smiling politely but looking her firmly in the eyes, ‘but I see that Anna is not very well, and I wish her to come with me.’

Anna looked round with alarm, rose obediently and put her hand on her husband’s arm.

‘I will send to him and find out, and will let you know,’ Betsy whispered to her.

On leaving the stand Karenin as usual spoke to people he met, and Anna as usual had to reply and make conversation: but she was beside herself and walked as in a dream, holding her husband’s arm.

‘Is he hurt or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him to-night?’ she thought.

In silence she took her place in her husband’s carriage, and in silence they drove out of the crowd of vehicles. In spite of all he had seen, Karenin would still not allow himself to think of his wife’s real position. He only saw the external sights. He saw that she had behaved with impropriety and he considered it his duty to tell her so. But it was very difficult for him to say that and nothing more. He opened his mouth to say that she had behaved improperly, but involuntarily said something quite different.

‘After all, how inclined we all are to these cruel spectacles,’ he said. ‘I notice…’

‘What? I do not understand,’ said Anna contemptuously.

He was offended and at once began to tell her what he wanted to.

Click here to view the embedded video.

‘I must tell you…’ he said.

‘It’s coming—the explanation!’ she thought and felt frightened.

‘I must tell you that you behaved improperly to-day,’ he said in French.

‘How did I behave improperly?’ she said aloud, quickly turning her head and looking him straight in the eyes, now without any of the former deceptive gaiety but with a determined air beneath which she had difficulty in hiding the fright she felt.

‘Don’t forget,’ said he to her, pointing at the open window behind the coachman’s box; and, slightly rising, he lifted the window.

‘What did you consider improper?’ she asked again.

‘The despair you were unable to conceal when one of the riders fell.’

He expected a rejoinder from her; but she remained silent, looking straight before her.

‘I asked you once before to conduct yourself in Society so that evil tongues might be unable to say anything against you. There was a time when I spoke about inner relations; now I do not speak of them. I speak now of external relations. Your conduct was improper and I do not wish it to occur again.’

She did not hear half that he said, but felt afraid of him and wondered whether it was true that Vronsky was not hurt. Was it of him they were speaking when they said that he was not hurt but the horse had broken its back? She only smiled with simulated irony when he had finished; and she did not reply because she had not heard what he said. Karenin had begun to speak boldly, but when he realized clearly what he was talking about, the fear she was experiencing communicated itself to him He saw her smile and a strange delusion possessed him. ‘She smiles at my suspicions. In a moment she will tell me what she told them: that these suspicions are groundless and ridiculous.’

Now that a complete disclosure was impending, he expected nothing so much as that she would, as before, answer him mockingly that his suspicions were ridiculous and groundless. What he knew was so terrible that he was now prepared to believe anything. But the expression of her frightened and gloomy face did not now even promise deception.

‘Perhaps I am mistaken,’ said he. ‘In that case I beg your pardon.’

‘No, you were not mistaken,’ she said slowly, looking despairingly into his cold face. ‘You were not mistaken. I was, and cannot help being, in despair. I listen to you but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress, I cannot endure you. I am afraid of you, and I hate you. Do what you like to me.’

And throwing herself back into the corner of the carriage she burst into sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Karenin did not move, and did not change the direction in which he was looking, but his face suddenly assumed the solemn immobility of the dead, and that expression did not alter till they reached the house. As they were driving up to it, he turned his face to her still with the same expression and said:

‘Yes! But I demand that the external conditions of propriety shall be observed till’—his voice trembled—‘till I take measures to safeguard my honour and inform you of them.’

He alighted first and helped her out. In the presence of the servants he pressed her hand, re-entered the carriage, and drove off toward Petersburg.

After he had gone the Princess Betsy’s footman brought Anna a note.

‘I sent to Alexis to inquire about his health. He writes that he is safe and sound, but in despair.’

‘Then he will come,’ thought she. ‘What a good thing it is that I spoke out.’

She looked at the clock. She had three hours still to wait, and the memory of the incidents of their last meeting fired her blood.

‘Dear me, how light it is! It is dreadful, but I love to see his face, and I love this fantastic light…. My husband! Ah, yes…. Well, thank heaven that all is over with him!

A classic of Russian literature, this new edition of Anna Karenina uses the acclaimed Louise and Alymer Maude translation, and offers a new introduction and notes which provide completely up-to-date perspectives on Tolstoy’s classic work.

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Drugs in the Internet era

By Les Iversen

 

When Drugs: A Very Short Introduction was published in 2001 drugs were relatively hard to obtain. Recreational users could buy illegal drugs from back-street dealers, while prescription medicines required a trip to the doctor to obtain a script. The Internet has changed all that. Nowadays in Western Europe and in North America there are dozens of website dealers offering novel psychoactive drugs (“legal highs”) and prescription medicines at modest prices. The market for designer drugs has grown hugely.

The chemical structure of amphetamine

By clever changes in the chemical structures of existing banned drugs these novel synthetic substances, which mimic the effects of banned drugs such as amphetamine, cannabis, cocaine, or ecstasy, escape legal prohibition. Because they are clearly marked “not for human consumption”, and labelled frivolously as “plant food”, “fish food”,  or “bath salts” they avoid other laws prohibiting the sale of new substances for human use. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction listed 49 new psychoactive substances in 2011, and have been registering a new one every week in 2012. The commonest legal highs are synthetic chemicals which mimic the intoxication caused by herbal cannabis. Ironically, many such chemicals were made and tested 40 years ago by the pharmaceutical industry, in an attempt to find medically useful mimics of cannabis which lacked its intoxicant effects. This aim was never achieved, but detailed records of the many potent synthetic cannabinoids that were made and tested are available in scientific literature. Forty years later some of these have been resurrected and incorporated into a herbal “smoking mixture” called “Spice”. Dozens of such compounds are involved in different variants of Spice, and many are also available on their own, sometimes with exotic brand names such “Black Mamba” and “Annihilation”.

Chemists find it relatively easy to make new drugs, while governments struggle to keep up with the flood of new legally available substances.  All this might be viewed as harmless fun, but there are very real dangers in offering new untested chemicals for human use. For a new human medicine to be approved, it requires years of careful safety assessment in animal and clinical trials, and the medicine must pass stringent standards of purity. The legal highs escape all such requirements – their safety is assessed directly in the users, who play a potentially dangerous game of Russian roulette.

The harmful effects of these drugs are not always immediately apparent. For example, some long term recreational users of the illegal veterinary anaesthetic ketamine develop severe painful inflammation of the urinary system, which may require surgical removal of the bladder. The weight-loss drug d-fenfluramine, although hugely popular and used by millions, turned out to have an unexpected effect on the valves of the heart in some patients, leading to severe cardiac malfunction and in some cases death.

Internet sales are not limited to novel psychoactive drugs. Many websites offer online sales of prescription medicines. Whereas such medicines were previously only available from pharmacies with a script signed by a doctor, many of these sites offer medicines either without a script or after a perfunctory online medical diagnosis. In the USA in particular the high cost of medicines has lead many patients to seek cheaper online supplies. But there is no quality control for the online medicines, and patients play a different form of Russian roulette: thinking that the supplier is a reputable US or Canadian based pharmacy, whereas in reality it may be based in China, India, or Eastern Europe and be of poor quality. Prescription medicines can also be purchased online for recreational rather than medical use. Strong pain-killers such as fentanyl or oxycodone (®Oxy Contin) can be purchased as alternatives to back street heroin. The misuse of prescription medicines has already reached epidemic proportions in USA, where in 2012 the President issued an urgent warning on the “Epidemic of Prescription Drug Abuse”.

There seems very little that governments can do to regulate the Internet markets for legal highs or prescription medicines, although some attempts have been made. In 2012 the US Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency announced the closure of many websites offering “legal highs” (sold commonly in the USA as “bath salts”) but it remains to be seen if this is a legally acceptable course of action. In Eire the government raided and closed virtually all of the High Street “head shops” – which offer another sources of legally available psychoactive drugs. However, regulating Internet commerce has so far eluded governments around the world. The online sale of drugs has become a huge Internet business, with an estimated size of $25 billion dollars in 2010 for prescription medicines. Sooner or later some effective means of regulating these markets will have to be found, but it may take a shocking wake-up call – such as the discovery of serious unpredicted harm associated with one or other of the legal highs.

Les Iversen is Emeritus Professor of Neuropharmacology of the University of Oxford and Chairman of the Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image Credit: Amphetamine structure (public domain via Wikimedia Commons)

What’s so impressive about drumming?

By Meghann Wilhoite

November is International Drum Month, so declared by the Percussion Marketing Council. Percussionists are often the most underrated performers in the world of music, perhaps because specialized instruments aren’t strictly necessary: anyone with an upturned bucket or even just two hands to clap can engage in percussion pretty much anywhere.

But drumming is harder than it looks. Let’s take a listen to Steve Reich’s appropriately named piece Drumming [sub req'd].

Click here to view the embedded video.

“What’s so impressive about this?” you might say. Well, for fun, take a pencil in each hand and alternate tapping them in a pattern of your choosing. Now have someone do the same pattern next to you, while you each subtly change the pace of the pattern independently of each other. This technique is called phasing, a signature move in Reich’s pieces. Were you successful?

Beyond being able to perform complex time shifts, most percussionists are also skilled at playing any number of percussion instruments, from the kit to the marimba to countless jangling, clanging things. For example, check out the dizzying array of instruments being used by yarn|wire to perform Music for a Summer Evening (Makrokosmos III) by George Crumb:

Click here to view the embedded video.

And, occasionally, percussionists are asked to play such unfamiliar instruments as 2×4 pieces of wood, as in Michael Gordon’s recent work Timber:

Click here to view the embedded video.

But let’s not forget the kit players, who must be the most coordinated people in the world, playing different rhythms not only in both hands, but also both feet. Neil Peart of Rush comes to mind:

Click here to view the embedded video.

No post on percussion is complete without mention of Dame Evelyn Glennie, the deaf percussionist who performed so impressively at this year’s Opening Ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Check out her performance of “Libertango” for solo marimba:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though I’ve only talked about a few different styles of drumming here, the different types of drumming are quite vast and fascinating. Why not celebrate International Drum Month by looking up some “talking drum” videos, playing in a drum circle, or making plans to head to Basel next year for their annual fife and drum event?

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meghann Wilhoite is an Assistant Editor at Grove Music/Oxford Music Online, music blogger, and organist. Follow her on Twitter at @megwilhoite. Read her previous blog posts on Sibelius, the pipe organ, John Zorn, West Side Story, and other subjects.

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

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Tarzan of the planet earth

 

by Jason Haslam

October 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ best known novel, Tarzan of the Apes, in the pulp-fiction magazine All-Story. The complete novel published in the October 1912 issue, was given the cover image shown here (where it was described as “A Romance of the Jungle”), and became an immediate hit among the All-Story’s readers. In the months following Tarzan’s appearance, dozens of readers’ letters were published, many of which asked for (or even demanded) a sequel, a request Burroughs would fulfill, eventually writing over two-dozen Tarzan novels.

When I was editing the novel for publication in the Oxford World’s Classics series, I included a selection of these letters in an appendix, recognizing that the intense reaction to Burroughs’ novel and its eponymous hero is a significant aspect of Tarzan’s history. It may be somewhat trite to say, but is nonetheless true, that Tarzan struck a chord with a large and wide-ranging audience 100 years ago, in ways that transformed the character from just another pulp hero and into an American cultural icon and a global phenomenon. As I write in that introduction, “the significance of the figure of Tarzan cannot be underestimated, certainly in relation to American culture, but arguably to global culture as well, given that the Tarzan novels have been reportedly translated into over fifty languages.” Part of Tarzan’s continued popularity, of course, stretches beyond the printed word, and arises from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ own management of his creation and his recognition of the role to be played by the then new media of film. That note struck by Tarzan’s popularity, much like the sound of his famous yell in the popular Johnny Weissmuller films of the 1930s and 40s, was literally heard around the world.

Tarzan’s translation to a global audience is a complex one, however. While such critics as Gail Bederman and Marianna Torgovnick have discussed the novel’s relations to debates surrounding race, civilization, and imperial politics, Tarzan has had a global impact beyond his original literary incarnation. As early as 1952, Frantz Fanon, in his now classic analysis of racial identity and culture, Black Skin, White Masks, uses Tarzan films as his example of the potential psychological effects Euro-American culture could have on colonized subjects. Arguing that “a host of information and a series of propositions slowly and stealthily work their way into an individual through books, newspapers, school texts, advertisements, movies, and radio and shape his community’s vision of the world,” Fanon then notes,

“We recommend the following experiment for those who are unconvinced: Attend the showing of a Tarzan film in the Antilles and in Europe. In the Antilles the young black man identifies himself de facto with Tarzan versus the Blacks. In a movie house in Europe things are not so clear-cut, for the white moviegoers automatically place him among the savages on the screen. The experiment is conclusive.” (Black Skin, White Masks 131)

While, as many critics have noted, Tarzan’s relationship with Africa and black Africans is not a stable one across all of Burroughs’ novels, still the storyline of a white European boy (Tarzan’s parents were English, not American) being raised in a largely mythologized African jungle has particular resonances that are difficult, if not impossible, to escape, as Fanon details.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Recent scholarship on Tarzan builds on such conclusions, pointing to the rich and complex challenge of analyzing the global popularity of Tarzan and his many offshoots.  Notable here is the new collection of essays, Global Perspectives on Tarzan: From King of the Jungle to International Icon, edited by Michelle Ann Abate and Annette Wannamaker. Looking at Tarzan both as a particularly American export, but within other national and temporal contexts, ranging from nearby Canada, to postwar France, to postcolonial India, to Israel and Palestine, the authors whose essays are collected in this study examine not just Burroughs’ work, but also the various Tarzans that have been re-created by international authors and creators, for both entertainment and political purposes.

What does it mean that Tarzan, a figure associated with particular European and American visions of the exotic “other,” has also become a Bollywood musical star, or an Israeli hero? One could assert that this demonstrates the flexibility of the archetypal traits Tarzan embodied, or one can point to the ways in which different audiences can redeploy similar tropes for different purposes (eschewing those who would say a text always carries with it a singular literary or political meaning). But, to recall Fanon, it is also important to recognize that the specifics of Tarzan are not lost in these appropriations, and can create an uncomfortable, at best, relation between the audience and the ostensible hero in front of it, be it on the page or screen.

I pose these questions not to answer them here (this is simply a short entry, after all), but to point to the difficult but valuable discussions a seemingly “simple” artefact of popular culture can raise.  One hundred years on, Tarzan’s yell still has a way of echoing with various audiences and in varying ways.  To likewise echo one letter writer from Lawrence, Kansas, who wrote to All-Story shortly after the original publication, people have consistently over the past 100 years found a way of transforming Burroughs’ original character, and importing him into their own lives: “he had become my Tarzan.”

Jason Haslam is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Dalhousie University and is the editor of Tarzan of the Apes. You can follow him on Twitter @JazzlamHazzlam

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

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Image credit: Tarzan of the Apes poster [public domain via Wikimedia Commons]; Edgar Rice Burroughs [public domain via Wikimedia Commons]

Media reaction to ‘GIF’ as Word of the Year [GIFed]

By Alice Northover

Reaction has been mixed from people around the United States and the world to the USA Word of the Year, so I thought I’d bring together a few highlights. Don’t forget the GIF WOTY confusables!

Jessica Roy for BetaBeat: “Now, the GIF has received the ultimate sign of zeitgeisty approval”



 

 

Marie Meyers for GeekSugar: “You go, GIF!”



 

 

Katy Steinmetz for TIME: “But the selection still seems to herald a post-recession era — a world where instead of counting pennies, we’re free to goof off on Reddit all day.”



 

 

Katy Waldman for Slate: “The bad news is that Oxford has instead selected GIF as its USAWotY—and even if GIF were actually a W, as opposed to another acronym, we would find the choice hard to forgive.”



 

 

Mark Raby for Geek.com: “Choosing GIF just because it is now recognized as a new part of speech seems to miss that mark. Oh well, if only there was a clever way to express disappointment on the Internet…”



 

 

Hannah Sung speaks with Dave McGinn at the Globe and Mail (video)



 

 




 

 

Nathan Ingraham for The Verge: “It’s high praise for a file format, but we’d be hard-pressed to disagree.”



 

 

Jan Doll for The Atlantic Wire: “So, we were giffed. Does that change things for you?”

(It’s quite hard to encapsulate the range of emotions in this article; I’m happy to take suggestions.)