Oxford University Press's Blog, page 483

This year’s other elections

The primaries, the conventions, and the media have focused so much attention on the US presidential candidates that it’s sometimes easy to forget all the other federal elections being held this year; for 34 seats in the Senate and 435 in the House (plus five nonvoting delegates). The next president’s chances of success will depend largely on the congressional majorities this election will produce.

Lyndon Johnson once observed that because of their different election cycles, presidents and Congress run “on separate clocks.” Presidents know they need to act promptly, their predecessors having achieving their greatest legislative victories during the first years after their election, before members of Congress headed home to run for reelection in the next cycle. With two year terms–the shortest of any national legislature– House members campaign continuously. Senators’ longer terms offer them more of a breathing spell. Georgia Senator Richard Russell used to say that a six-year term permitted senators to spend two years as a statesman, two years as a politician, and two years as a demagogue. But the six-year cycle means that in every other election, US senators will face the voters drawn to the polls by a presidential campaign.

13 of the senators running for reelection this year were first elected in 2010, when tea party activists scored their first big gains. That year, only 37.8% of the electorate came out to vote, a typical turnout for a congressional election. By contrast, a presidential election will attract an average of 54% of the voters. That means that those running for reelection now will collectively face about forty million more voters than their last time up – a substantially different electorate.

Historically, presidential victors have provided coattails for their party’s congressional prospects. Having made up their mind about a president, voters tend to favor the same party’s Senate and House candidates. If a presidential nominee happens to be unpopular in a state or district, congressional candidates will run local campaigns that steer clear of the national ticket, and will be nowhere to be seen whenever the national nominee holds a local rally. If congressional candidates win elections by larger margins than the president, the White House will find it difficult to convince them to vote for bills that may be unpopular back home. Members of Congress who attribute their victory to the president’s coattails, however, will more readily support the president, out of gratitude and self-preservation.

Losing presidential candidates have wreaked havoc on their parties in Congress. Barry Goldwater’s disastrous campaign in 1964 gave Democrats forty more seats in the House of Representatives. Lyndon Johnson’s chief legislative liaison calculated that Medicare, “for all practical purposes,” passed on election night, as did much of the rest of Johnson’s Great Society agenda, thanks to all those extra votes in Congress. Jimmy Carter’s early-evening concession in 1980 depressed voter turnout in the West, where polls remained open for several more hours. His poor timing cost several veteran Democrats their seats and their party lost the majority in the Senate for the first time in a quarter century.

As soon as this year’s votes are tallied, the president-elect will begin surveying the political landscape and counting heads in the House and Senate. Although presidential candidates are fond of promising all they will in “my first day in office,” the constitutional separation of powers hampers any executive action without congressional support – starting with presidents’ nominations for the cabinet and judiciary, and working through their entire legislative wish list. A lot more is at stake in 2016 than just the presidency.

 Featured Image Credit: US Capitol east front by Martin Falbisoner. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post This year’s other elections appeared first on OUPblog.

Scientific method and back pain

Do you have back pain? Statistics show you likely do. Or you have had it in the past or will in the future. Back pain can be a million different things, and you can get it an equal number of ways. Until you’ve suffered it, you don’t realise how disruptive it can be.

Trying to fix back pain is a superb way to make people understand the power of scientific method and how to use it. In many ways, we all use scientific method in daily life. We just do it intuitively, under-the-hood. Like when you cook a recipe the first time and decide it isn’t quite to your taste. You try again, making modifications. You like the second one better.

You’ve just cooked two experiments and interpreted the results. You made objective measurements with your taste buds; this informal approach works as well as a particle accelerator in this context. Iterative trials and judgements of empirical data are core to the scientific method. (Plus, anyone who has spent time in the lab will attest to the fact that much of lab work is exactly akin to cooking. Get and follow a recipe. Repeat.)

Scientific method is a simply a centuries-old, proven way of collecting empirical evidence for or against a particular idea. In scientific parlance, the idea is called a hypothesis. It’s a hypothesis since you can’t say yet it’s true or not. To eventually deem it correct, you need objective evidence (evidence that is repeatable). It isn’t an opinion, but an observable fact. Best of all, science is self-correcting. Countless hypotheses ticked off as ‘true’ have been modified or even thrown out under the weight of new evidence.

So, how does this help us solve back pain? Why the link to scientific method? Because your ability to follow it might be just what you need. You are best-placed to understand your body. Careful observation of what causes your pain, and relieves it, and how things are progressing during treatment, will prove crucial to getting back on track.

Aristotle, 384 BCE – 322 BCE. “As regards his method, Aristotle is recognized as the inventor of scientific method because of his refined analysis of logical implications contained in demonstrative discourse, which goes well beyond natural logic and does not owe anything to the ones who philosophized before him.” – Riccardo Pozzo. (Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition. Photographed by Jastrow (2006). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.)

Applying rigorous scientific method to your back predicament can often mean the difference between chronic pain and relief. Many sufferers give up and just live with the pain. They don’t progress through the options well enough to reverse what is an unexpectedly, tricky problem.

Back pain is often not simple to fix for many reasons that all have to do with the nature of the human body. This machine is wonderfully complex and has all kinds of safety features, some of which can interfere with fixing yourself. Your body will try to protect muscles from being used. While this is super while you are injured, once healed, you need to use these muscles, or they will atrophy and the supporting muscles that have taken over in their stead while likely become even more stressed.

The back is full of moving parts. Many work in groups and chains. Pain in your neck can be related to problems in your lower back. Whether the bottoms of your feet are flexible can help contribute to whether or not you can touch the floor with your fingers. The muscles in your arches link to your calves, to your hamstrings, and up into your back and then to your arms. The whole chain can seize up at any point, hindering flexibility. When you lose flexibility, you invite pain.

Back pain due to muscles can often be caused what we call ‘referred pain’. The pain you feel can often be the result of problems six inches or more away from the point you touch on your back that hurts. Entire maps of referred pain from trigger points in muscles can be found and might help you navigate your twinges and aches. Often, many trigger points can conspire to work together as one or more initial injuries get protected, straining neighbouring muscles. Like a traffic jam often starts with just one car putting on the brakes, you can end up with a massive snarl of cars, or inflamed trigger points.

Your pain could be due to bones, ligaments, muscles, or more rarely, another condition, including bacterial infections. Just like skin needs time to heal, so do these heavy-duty structural parts of your anatomy. The right type of relief might be working, but the pain will still be there for a while. Just like failing to take a full course of antibiotics, stopping short is a common cause of failure to fix back problems.

If one piece of your anatomy is damaged by injury, misuse, or overuse, it can cause other parts around it to fail too. They take too much of a load they aren’t explicitly designed to hold. Now you have any number of secondary issues too. The more aggravated the jam of problems becomes, the more you have to fix.

You might also get loads of conflicting advice. Should you push into the pain or avoid it? This decision will depend on how fresh the injury is. You shouldn’t exacerbate a wound trying to heal up, but once it has recovered, pushing into the pain to stretch what has become too tight can be what you need. Stretching is often as important as building muscle.

Fixing a long-term back problem often involves working through layers of problems to get to the underlying cause. How many of us have harboured aches and pains that we just ignore? Like a bag of trash, they just decay over time. Many of us only reach out for help once it’s unbearable. We should all learn to take out the trash bad as soon as its full, not waiting for it to fester and draw flies.

You could also be suffering more than one problem. Symptoms can even contradict each other. Things that are good for one injury can flare up a competing one. A final factor to keep at the forefront of your mind is that back pain can involve a long process of healing.

All of the above reasons can make unravelling the origin of back pain head-bangingly confusing. The first critical step is to develop your working hypothesis, or in medical terms, a diagnosis. In an ideal situation, you nail the problem immediately and get it fixed on the same day you visit your expert. I’m thinking about times that your bones are misaligned. YouTube abounds with videos of chiropractors cracking people’s joints. Until you see examples, you don’t quite believe how painful the starting condition of a misalignment can be and how immediate the benefits are of getting it corrected. People often go from excruciating pain and immobility to ‘fixed’ in seconds.

But snap-fixes are rare.

Just getting a diagnosis can be problematic. You might go to a range of potential experts for a diagnosis, depending on your means, situation, experiences, and pains. Paths towards help could include the doctor, physical therapist, chiropractor, masseuse, yoga instructor, or another knowledgeable person.

If the issue is bone alignment and you go to a physical therapist, there is only so much they can do. If it’s in your muscles and you go to a chiropractor, there is only so much they can do. If you go to a doctor, they will often just refer you to the physical therapist. If the physical therapist diagnoses a leg length difference you’ll be right back to the doctor for a referral to get a CT scan to confirm it. Then back to the physical therapist. If you have a mix of problems, you’ll have to jump around.

With the right diagnosis, you take action. You assess the action to see if it helped. The hypothesis proves correct if applying the fix reduces the pain. If not, you start again.

All of this reminds us that medicine doesn’t know everything yet. Science is constantly self-correcting and while new information collects, different hypotheses can be deemed ‘the truth’. Pelvic tilts used to be all the rage. Now a neutral pelvis is common advice. You’ll often have to inform yourself, use common sense, a lot of trial and error, and do your best.

A good practitioner at any level should willingly admit there is still much that medicine needs to learn. If she does, you know you are in good hands. Make yourself a part of your therapy, and use scientific method to help you.

Ideally, in the future, there will be “Scientific method back pain centres.” You’d be seen by a group of experts and shuttled to the right expert or combination of experts to help you. At the same time, you’d be taught scientific method and encourage to take your health into your own hands. The expert teams at such an idealistic centre would also expect to learn from patients, charting what didn’t work as actively as what did.

Featured image credit: Backache. © BrianAJackson via iStock.

The post Scientific method and back pain appeared first on OUPblog.

Was Anton LaVey serenading Satan in his cover of “Answer Me”?

Anton Szandor LaVey was the most outspoken and most notorious apostle of Satan in the twentieth century. On his life before founding the Church of Satan in 1966, LaVey liked to spin wild tales, but he did actually work as a professional and semi-professional musician in the carnival circuit. The High Priest of Satan was fond of bombastic classic music in the Wagnerian mould and popular tunes from the thirties, forties, and fifties, the period in which he himself had been young. He even formulated a magical theory to suit his tastes: when playing forgotten hits again, their pent-up magical energy would be released and could be directed to the magician’s advantage. In the Black House, LaVey had set up a battery of synthesizers to practice his golden oldie magic: he claimed to have caused the 1988 Mexico City earthquake by playing them in a particular angry mood.

While this may account for some of the unusual synthesizer covers LaVey released, his choice to record “Answer Me” stands out as unusual. “Answer Me” was originally composed in 1953 by the German songwriter Gerhard Winkler under the sweet title, Mütterlein (“Mama Dear”). In the same year, the song was translated by Carl Sigman and made it to the English hit charts in no less than two performances – one by Frankie Laine and one by David Whitfield. The song was already called “Answer Me” then, but its first line was not yet “Answer me, o my love,” but “Answer me, Lord above.” Because the BBC considered religious content in pop music inappropriate, Sigman removed the religious reference. In this secularized version, Nat King Cole sang the song into the US charts of 1954.

While one may debate the musical merits of Satanic leader Anton LaVey’s cover of “Answer Me”, his raw singing strikes one as eerily sincere. Who was the Exarch of Hell addressing with this plea? The idea that he was pleading with the traditional deity may be summarily dismissed: for all we know, LaVey remained completely devoted to the cause of antireligious Satanism until his demise in 1997. Was he singing directly to Satan then? There might have been some occasion for a prayer to Satan for LaVey when he performed this song. The Church of Satan had been plagued by schism, waning appeal, and general decay since the late 1970s. LaVey had first envisioned it as mass movement, then as a select cabal of superior Satanist schemers; none of these options had materialized. Seemingly extinct forms of Christianity were on the rise again and spreading obnoxious rumors about Satanism, and LaVey himself led an increasingly isolated life as lone Übermensch in a barricaded Black House. These circumstances might well have induced him to raise his own De Profundis to the Devil.

There is a third candidate for being the addressee of this song, however: LaVey’ex-wife, Diane Evelyn Hegarthy. LaVey met Hegarthy in 1959, when she was a blonde, seventeen-year-old waitress in the San Francisco restaurant where LaVey played the organ. Since then, she had been the most important woman in his life and provided indispensable help and support in running the Church of Satan. However, LaVey’s infidelities with “student witches”, his growing disrespect for personal hygiene, and his increasing general grumpiness had estranged Diane from him; by the late 1980s, she had filed for a divorce, claiming that LaVey hit her on at least two occasions. In January 1993, the year LaVey recorded this track, a Californian judge granted Diane the divorce with alimony, leaving LaVey financially and emotionally broke. And that is what we may be hearing on this record: a Satanic High Priest with a broken heart.

Featured image credit: 666 by Kuba Bożanowski. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

The post Was Anton LaVey serenading Satan in his cover of “Answer Me”? appeared first on OUPblog.

A summer reading list

The sound of paddling pools, ice-cream vans, and sizzling barbecues means but one thing: summer is finally here. Therefore, we caught up with four of Oxford University Press’ most seasoned travelers to see which books they recommend for trips to Thailand, Cambodia, Germany, India, and France. If you are interested in visiting one of these five beautiful countries this summer, or perhaps later this year, the following reading lists will help provide some insight ahead of take-off. So if you’d like to make sure your seat-belts are fastened, all tray tables are put away, and your cabin luggage is safely secured in the overhead lockers, we can start our journey.

India

Swastika Chatterjee is a Library Marketing Manager based in our Kolkata office. She is proud to share a selection of books about her country:

Jim Corbett’s India, by R.E. Hawkins

Jim Corbett’s name has become legendary, and his stories of tiger-hunting expeditions have become classics of adventure. Over the years, the books in which he described these expeditions and his daily life in India have achieved bestseller status around the world. Here is a selection of 22 of his most popular writings.

Bollywood’s India: A Public Fantasy, by Priya Joshi

This book analyzes the role of popular blockbuster films made by Bollywood in the making, unmaking and remaking of modern India. It explains that Bollywood films are India’s most popular entertainment and one of its most powerful social forces.

‘Elephants’, from The Encyclopedia of Mammals, Third edition, edited by David W. Macdonald

For millennia, elephants’ great strength has been exploited in agriculture and warfare, and even today, notably in the Indian subcontinent, they are still important economically and as cultural symbols.

Lonely Planet guides to Rajasthan, Delhi & Agra and Goa & Mumbai

The guide to Rajasthan, Delhi & Agra is your passport to the most relevant, up-to-date advice on what to see and skip, and what hidden discoveries await you. Marvel at the great marble Taj Mahal, step into ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’ at Jaisalmer Fort, or visit the massive Mughal Red Fort. The guide to Goa & Mumbai lets you explore Mumbai’s Victorian colonial-era architecture, poke around the boutiques and book shops of Panaji, or tour one of Ponda’s spice farms.

Germany

Eleanor Jackson is a Marketing Assistant and a keen traveler. She has picked her top ten books to read before you head off to Germany:

The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History, edited by Helmut Walser Smith

The best place to start for a comprehensive overview of German history from 1760 to the present, this is indispensable for students and scholars alike.

 The Seven Secrets of Germany, by David B. Audretsch and Erik E. Lehmann

Do you want to understand how Germany’s economy has thrived, and remained successful, despite global turbulence? As well as providing instructive insights for other countries, the authors refute the defeatist view that globalization leads to an inevitable deterioration of the standard of living, quality of life, and degree of economic prosperity.

The Global Chancellor, by Kristina Spohr

Helmut Schmidt is an often overlooked chancellor in modern German history, and Kristina Spohr demonstrates his true significance as a pivotal figure who helped reshape the global order during the crisis-ridden 1970s.

Go-Betweens for Hitler, Karina Urbach

This is the untold story of how some of Germany’s top aristocrats contributed to Hitler’s secret diplomacy during the Third Reich, providing a direct line to their influential contacts and relations across Europe.

Dachau and the SS, by Christopher Dillon

Christopher Dillon presents the first systematic study of the history of the first SS concentration camp and national ‘school’ of violence for its concentration camp personnel.

Harmful and Undesirable, by Guenter Lewy

Guenter Lewy offers the first comprehensive analysis in English language of the ways in which the Nazis exerted control over the creation, publication, and distribution of books by authors, publishers, bookstores, and libraries; a disconcerting and realistic portrait of intellectual life under the Nazi dictatorship.

Born in the GDR, by Hester Vaizey

An exploration of the stories of eight citizens of the former German Democratic Republic: their lives in the GDR, how their lives changed in 1989, and the remembrance of the GDR today.

Amnesiopolis, by Eli Rubin

Amnesiopolis explores the construction of Marzahn, the largest prefabricated housing project in East Germany, built on the outskirts of East Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, and touted by the regime as the future of socialism. Eli Rubin discusses whether a dramatic change in spatial and material surroundings sever the links of memory that tie people to their old life narratives, and if so, does that help build a new socialist mentality in the minds of historical subjects?

Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall, by Anna Funder

I read the first edition of this book as a teenager, and it sparked my fascination with East German history; it provided a radically different, personal approach. Anna Funder’s lyrical narrative explores extraordinary stories from the underbelly of the most perfected surveillance state of all time, the former East Germany.

Berlin Tales, edited by Helen Constantine; translated by Lyn Marven

If you’re rounding off your research with a visit to Berlin, Berlin Tales is the perfect accompaniment. A wonderful companion to explore the city with, or evoke your favourite haunts on your return home.

Thailand and Cambodia

Kim Behrens is an Associate Marketing Manager at OUP. She says that Southeast Asia has plenty of good food, friendly locals, and an abundance of temples in all sizes. Here is her reading list for both countries:

A Field Guide to the Reptiles of Thailand, by Tanya Chan-ard, Jarujin Nabhitabhata, and John W. K. Parr

Meeting the (mostly) friendly local reptiles! Thailand is home to over 350 reptiles, and not all of them are snakes. It’s one of the most ecologically diverse countries, though many species are under threat. Understand Thailand’s fascinating nature and see who you can spot on your travels.

The Shadow Line, by Joseph Conrad, edited by Jeremy Hawthorn

The Shadow Line forms part of Joseph Conrad’s Bangkok trilogy (the other two being Falk and The Secret Sharer), and tells the story of a young captain who takes command in Bangkok, where he deals with a malaria-stricken crew, and confronts calms that threaten his ship, crew, and reason. The events are based on Conrad’s own experiences and describe events to which he returned repeatedly in his work.

Buddhism: A Very Short Introduction, by Damien Keown

Buddhism shapes the everyday life of both countries, and you’re likely to visit a few temples on your travels. Wat Pho in Bangkok and the amazing temple complex of Angkor Wat (though initially build as a Hindu centre of worship) are a must, and understanding the religion will go a long way.

The Face of the Buddha, by William Empson, edited by Rupert Arrowsmith

After moving to Japan in 1931, William Empson found himself captivated by Buddhist sculptures and spent years travelling across Asia discovering various depictions. He meticulously collected his findings but was left heartbroken when he mislaid the only copy of the manuscript following the Second World War. It was rediscovered only recently and has now been published for the first time.

The Communist Experience in the Twentieth Century, by Glennys Young

Cambodia has a difficult recent history, and is slowly recovering from the devastation and loss of lives under the Khmer Rouge regime, which was only removed in 1979. This book offers an inside look at the Communist experience, and how people lived their everyday lives.

Survivor, by Chum Mey

The sobering account of one of the few survivors of the Tuol Sleng prison (S-21) in Phnom Penh. Chum Mey now spends his days at the prison, which is preserved as a genocide museum, to talk to visitors about his experience and survival – a living reminder of the country’s past.

France

This summer, Marketing Assistant Amy Jelf is heading to Paris – where she intends to consume as much cheese, pastries, and wine as is humanly possible. She also plans to read the following books:

French Decadent Tales, by Stephen Romer

This book is a unique anthology of thirty six of the best decadent tales from the French fin-de-siècle. It includes well-known writers such as Maupassant, Lorrain, Mirbeau, and Villiers as well as lesser known figures such as Léon Bloy and Jean Richepin.

Money, by Emile Zola

The first new translation of this powerful novel since 1894, and the first unabridged translation in English. The eighteenth novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, Money has many contemporary resonances, with a financier for its central character and a plot that involves a banking crisis, illegal practices, manipulation of the press, politics, sex, and power.

Fragmented France, by Jack Hayward

Learn more about the history and identity of France. For a thousand years, France has struggled to impose unity upon its diverse components. For most of the time its leaders have sought to define its identity by opposition to the ‘Anglo-Saxons’: first England, then Britain, and finally the USA.

Modern France, by Vanessa Schwartz

An overview of Modern France. Vanessa Schwartz argues that modern France, as both a world stage and a global crossroads, is an essential actor in the development of contemporary culture. Indeed, French is the only language other than English spoken on five continents, and more people still visit France than anywhere else in the world.

Paris Tales, Paris Street Tales, and French Tales, translated and edited by Helen Constantine

These books all contain an evocative collection of stories by French and Francophone writers who have been inspired by specific locations across Paris and France. If you want a literary, atmospheric tour of France before you set off on your journey, Helen Constantine’s books should be at the top of your list.

Featured image credit: Plane in the sky, by IvaCastro. CC0 public domain via Pixabay. 

The post A summer reading list appeared first on OUPblog.

How India can motivate Pakistan to prevent cross-border terrorism

As the new year dawned on 1 January 2016, six heavily-armed men crossed through a marshy section of the Punjab border from Pakistan into India. Disguised in Indian Army fatigues, they commandeered first a taxi, then a small SUV, eventually covering the approximately 35km to reach the Air Force base at Pathankot. There, they cut through perimeter security wire, scaled a wall, and eventually launched an attack on the base on 2 January, presumably aiming to destroy helicopters and fighter aircraft stationed there. After an operation lasting several days, Indian forces killed the terrorists, who were linked to the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Scenes like this have played out on several occasions over the last few decades, most strikingly in the December 2001 attack on the Lok Sabha in New Delhi and in November 2008 at several locations in Mumbai. The actors, targets, and effects of the attacks vary, but the strategic conundrum for India’s leaders is the same: what Indian actions could motivate Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders to stop the groups conducting cross-border attacks?

Naturally, the impulse for India’s leaders, and indeed much of its population, is to punish Pakistan for giving support to (or at least tolerating) the militant groups that attack India. The most direct means of retribution would involve operations by Indian armed forces. Such options could include stand-off air strikes on facilities linked to militant groups or their presumed supporters in the Pakistan military, or perhaps a ground incursion by the Indian Army to hold Pakistani territory. India has been putting in place plans and capabilities—including oft-discussed proactive strategies, otherwise known as ‘Cold Start’—to carry out such direct punitive actions.

Other options could involve more covert means, such as using special operations forces or funding militant groups that attack the Pakistani state. Pakistani officials often assert that India supports Baloch separatists and the Pakistani Taliban, for instance, while there is mounting evidence that India has funded the MQM in Karachi. Yet current and former Indian officials indicate that its capabilities and intelligence assets in this domain remain underdeveloped. In any case, due to the covert nature of these options, they could not satisfy public demands for punishment following another attack in India.

Thus far, the record suggests that India’s development of punitive military options has not motivated Pakistani leaders to do more to stop such attacks from occurring. Yet, as attacks continue and as Indian leaders spend more money on military capabilities, pressure will grow, not least within the military, to use them in response to another attack. Executing a limited military reprisal could satisfy the desire for punishment, but risks triggering an escalating military conflict of profound cost and consequence. More difficult to answer, however, is the following: would a military operation to punish the Pakistan Army, the one organization presumably capable of reigning in militant groups, increase its motivation to do so?

This question is at the heart of India’s strategic conundrum, and is probably the reason why Indian civilian leaders have not heretofore given a green light to military responses. Capitulation and doing nothing in the face of continued attacks are also not reasonable options, of course, so India’s leaders look for other approaches. One option that deserves greater attention and analysis is what might be termed non-violent “compellence”.

The November 2008 attack in Mumbai, perpetrated by the banned militant group Laskhar-e-Taiba with strong indications of support from elements of the Pakistani state, produced an unexpected effect among the strategic elite in Pakistan. Due to the robust international condemnation of Pakistan, many otherwise reasonable Pakistani politicians and analysts could not believe the attack was carried out by Pakistanis. They instead averred that the Mumbai attack must have been an Indian plot specifically to damage Pakistan. What made this conspiracy theory plausible was precisely the perception that Pakistan had suffered considerable reputational, economic and diplomatic harm.

India Pakistan Border Wagha by Koshy Koshy. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

Indeed, the diplomatic retribution against Pakistan was swift. All five permanent members of the UN Security Council voted to blacklist Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organization of Lashkar-e-Taiba that also functions as a charity. This was particularly notable because China, Pakistan’s ally, had previously vetoed measures to target this organization. Meanwhile, international diplomacy laid clear blame for the attacks on the Pakistani state. The French ambassador to India, Jérôme Bonnafont, for example, called on Pakistan to take action after the attacks, saying, “India is a victim in this attack and there is a clear link between the attack and Pakistan territory. We ask Pakistan to do the utmost so that this issue is settled and it does not happen again.”

It is difficult to discern the precise economic effects of the international reaction to the Mumbai attacks, given that the attack coincided with a global recession and a rise in domestic terrorism in Pakistan. However, there is no disputing that Pakistan’s economy has suffered. The value of the Pakistani Rupee depreciated significantly, from 62 rupees per US dollar in January 2008 to a low of 108 rupees per dollar in December 2013. Total foreign direct investment declined significantly from $5.3 billion in FY 2008 to $820 million in FY 2012, and has remained low at $851 million in FY 2015 even after a rebound in the world economy.

From these diplomatic and economic effects, Indian strategists can find the seeds of a strategy for non-violent “compellence”: the martialing of state diplomatic, economic, and social resources to build and sustain international pressure on Pakistan to force changes in its behavior. Through an anti-terrorism social media campaign that broadcasts the horrors of the terrorist attacks to the world, India could mobilize international public opinion against the actions of the Pakistani state. To impose further political isolation, India could convince its partners to postpone bilateral meetings with Pakistan or delay visa processing. In more tangible economic terms, India and its partners could seek to raise the prominence of anti-terrorism issues at the IMF to condition further financing for Pakistan on cracking down on terrorist groups that attack other states. Furthermore, India could seek an advance commitment from the United States and other major powers to cut security assistance to Pakistan after another terrorist attack in India, or to cease doing business with Pakistan Army-owned businesses. Such targeted penalties would strike directly at the coffers of the Pakistan Army.

The punitive benefits of this strategy may be less direct than military action, but they also come with far lower risks of an escalating conflict that could result in damage to India far greater than the instigating event. With a clear comparative advantage over Pakistan in economic clout and soft power, India can utilize these tools to isolate Pakistan internationally, which could in turn motivate meaningful counterterrorism action within Pakistan.

Featured image credit: India/Pakistan border by tjollans. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

The post How India can motivate Pakistan to prevent cross-border terrorism appeared first on OUPblog.

Etymology gleanings for July 2016

Feedback

As I have observed in the past, the best way for me to make sure that I have an audience is to say something deemed prejudicial or wrong. Then one or more readers will break their silence, and I’ll get the recognition I deserve (that is, my comeuppance). My thanks to those who notice my errors and typos! But occasionally I can partly vindicate myself. For instance, there was a comment from a Dutch speaker about the odd glosses with which I supplied Dutch klamp and klomp. He is of course right. I should have made it clear that I borrowed my material from English etymological dictionaries, even though I, naturally, compared the information in them with what I found in the great dictionary of Middle Dutch. Since what follows cannot interest those who don’t know Dutch, I’ll leave the glosses from the great Middle Dutch dictionary without translation.  CLAMPE (CLAMP, CLEMPE): 1) haak, kram, klamp; 2) hoop, schelf, stapel, (hoi)rook; CLOMPE (CLOMP): klomp, klont, kluit, blok.

I am also grateful for the comments on by hook or by crook. I did look up both words in the Middle English Dictionary, but my post, as usual when I deal with idioms, was devoted only to the conjectures in popular journals. I did not offer my etymology, though I sided with one explanation. It is true that a hook and a crook were supposedly the tools used by the Devil, but, if we begin our investigation at the level of customs and material culture rather than religion, perhaps we’ll agree that the Devil acquired this image because hooks and crooks were in common use. In all superstitions, the Devil is an anthropomorphic creature.

A smaller issue. Yes, the phrase silver lining was coined by Milton, but the proverb (every cloud has a silver lining) is more recent.

Roots and mushrooms

I have received a letter asking me to elucidate my position on kl– as a possible “root.”  I have touched upon the subject of roots more than once and devoted part of a chapter in my book on word origins to it. Therefore, my explanation will be brief. In etymological studies, the root is an ambiguous concept. On the one hand, it is understood as the common part of the words that are obviously related, for instance, pay is the root of payment and payee. Find is the root of finder. Someone who has been found is a foundling. We should probably agree that –ling (as in hireling, gosling, chitterlings, and so forth) has been added (somewhat unexpectedly) to the past participle of the verb find and isolate the root find ~ found. Even borrowed words may reveal their common part: consider err, error, erroneous, and erratic.

But it is often implied that the root generated words. Some very short complex like al– is said to have given birth to multiple nouns and verbs. We are told that at least five different al-s existed. Supposedly, they meant “beyond,” “to wander,” “to nourish,” “to grind,” and “all.” Sometimes a two- or three-letter root is further dissected, with the last letter acquiring the function of a pseudo-suffix. However, the residues never existed as separate words, unlike pay and err: they have been reconstructed only to show unity where unity seems to be apparent at first sight. That is why we are in trouble when dealing with kl-words. Are clod and clot related? They are only if we agree that the generating complex kl– once existed and produced clod, clot, cloud, clutter, and the rest. But did it?

Setting up the “roots” kl1– in clod and kl2– in, for example, clock would be an easy but useless procedure, though something along these lines could have been done if both were old, preferably very old nouns (the root kel-~ kol-, with kl– as its zero grade). Defenseless ancient formations offer less resistance to linguists than modern ones. I have once written how easy it would have been to explain the Proto-Indo-European noun nerd: n– is a negation, er– is the root of earth, German Erde, etc. (and compare Greek éraze), while –d is a suffix: a nerd would then emerge as someone who is not of this earth. This is a perfect etymology, except that nerd is, unfortunately, not Proto-Indo-European, though five or six thousand years ago nerds were probably as common as they are today. It is impossible to show that Engl. clobber is related to club (I wanted to say “to prove,” but John Cowan taxed me with confusing the functions of philologists and natural scientists, and I decided to play safe).

Clobbering with a club is natural, but that does not mean that clobber and club are related.

Therefore, I will say that kl– arose (accidentally?) in some words pertaining to stickiness, that it perhaps stimulated the rise of other formations, acquired a symbolic meaning, and encouraged speakers to coin more words of the same type. I may refer to my post of June 22, where mushrooms on a stump are said to resemble a family of kl-words. Is this the way all ancient words arose? Perhaps, but we don’t know.

Jitney

Stephen Goranson continues his investigation of the word jitney. The earliest examples he has found so far go back to 1899 and 1898.  In his view, those antedatings, “as well as the 1915 memory of jetnée, may show the origin in Black Louisiana French, from jeton.” The sources he mentions confirm my pessimistic view of anyone’s ability to compile an even relatively full bibliography of word origins. He refers to Literary Digest (1915) and Western Historical Quarterly (1986). I looked through LD for my bibliography, but did not go so far back. Nor have I used WHQ, though my team screened dozens of journals with the words Historical and Archeological in the title. In the preface to my bibliography of English etymology, I asked colleagues to send me their publications on the history of words or at least their titles. Since 2010, when my book appeared, I have not heard from anyone. Incidentally, I polled many people between the ages of twenty and fifty: none of them could recognize the word jitney.

The history of jitney. Alas, the word seems to be forgotten.
God and clod

This is the beginning of a letter from Walter Turner: “Your article on clod brought to mind something I once copied out of a book, typed on a card and stuck up onto the wall of my lab. I have now found it in the Internet, and I see the word God in it, as well. This grieving father certainly didn’t mean anything derogatory by the term. Tributary to the memory, alas of a loved and lovely son John Cholmeley Clarke who died at Swakeleys July 15th 1825 Aged 20 Years Thourt gone, but whither? To Heaven, to whom? To God Oh hush! A Father’s wish! For shame! Sleep on dear clod….” Those who want to read one of the most memorable dirges for a lost son will find it in the poem by Egill Skallagrímsson (Egil’s Saga). Search for Sonatorrek.

Egill lost two sons. After the drowning of his youngest son Böðvarr, he no longer wanted to live. Tricked out of an attempt of kill himself, he composed a great poem on his sorrow.

Image credits: (1) “Giambologna- Hercules beating Centaur Nesso-Loggia dei Lanzi” by Yair Haklai, CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons (2) “Sheet music cover – THE JITNEY BUS (1915)” by Chicago : Will Rossiter, publisher, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons (3) “Egil Skallagrimsson 17c manuscript” by Unknown, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Featured image: Lamp by PublicDomainPictures, Public Domain via Pixabay.

The post Etymology gleanings for July 2016 appeared first on OUPblog.

From the archives: the top 5 movie scenes set in libraries

Paul Feig’s Ghostbuster’s remake has made waves on both sides of the Atlantic. As the original 1984 film set some significant action in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library, we couldn’t help but indulge in a rifle through the archives of cinematic tributes to libraries.

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, particularly its Rose Reading Room, is perhaps the most omnipresent library of the silver screen, having also starred in Philadelphia, Sex and the City: The Movie, and The Day After Tomorrow. Though we’re firm believers that libraries are the ultimate refuge, we can’t quite forgive the characters of the latter for burning some of the library’s precious books.

Films such as the adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda necessitate several library scenes, as do legal dramas or investigative journalism procedurals (most recently Spotlight, which saw Mark Ruffalo make several fraught visits to public legal archives). There’s also a whole collection of films which not only feature libraries as places of reading and research, but create memorable set pieces or story arcs concerning libraries. These are highly entertaining while also representing and celebrating the diverse benefits provided by modern libraries. In short, there’s a film, and a library service, for everyone. Here are five of the best.

Love’s Labour’s Lost ­(2000)

Kenneth Branagh’s madcap reinvention of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost mashes up the Bard’s Renaissance men with a ‘20s style musical caper in the vein of Singin’ in the Rain. As you might expect from this genre-bending, the “scholars” spend as much time dancing in their beautiful round library as they do studying. One of the most memorable numbers is “I’d Rather Charleston”, in which the scholars declare and energetically demonstrate their preference for dance over reading. Thankfully, many public libraries now host dance classes so you don’t have to choose between the two.

The Breakfast Club (1985)

John Hughes’ biggest hit takes place almost entirely within the school library of its Shermer High School protagonists. Although the choice of the library as a setting for an all-day detention might suggest a negative attitude towards libraries, it’s in this space that the characters learn to empathise with one another, breaking down social barriers and learning about themselves and each other through a series of famed monologues. Despite the physical entrapment of the single setting the students conversely become more and more free as the film progresses, and this is most obviously manifested when they burst into dance like Branagh’s scholars before them. They do, however, exhibit some behaviour that is wholly inappropriate for the library (not to mention illegal), so we’re not saying you should follow their every example…

Nebraska (2013)

One of the most touching scenes in Alexander Payne’s lyrical contemplation on family and growing old takes place in a library of sorts. Protagonist David (Will Forte) and his father Woody (Bruce Dern) visit Hawthorne, Nebraska, the town where Woody grew up, and David takes a trip to the town’s newspaper office. Surrounded by the paper’s archives David talks to the owner about a story she plans to run on Woody. Through hearing the perspective of this woman who knew a younger Woody, David begins to understand him as a man as well as a father. The literal local archives provide the ideal backdrop for a scene concerned with family history.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Books are a crucial part of the fabric of prison life in this well-loved adaptation of a short story by Stephen King, who is himself a supporter of libraries. There’s Brooks, the kindly prison librarian who delivers fresh reading material (and, inevitably, contraband) to the cells, and Andy’s (Tim Robbins) campaigning to improve the library’s stock. In the current climate, Andy’s persistent lobbying of the government is an inspiration, and it’s immensely satisfying to see it eventually pay off. More recently, Netflix’s Orange is the New Black has taken up the mantle of celebrating the comfort and empowerment a prison library can provide. Litchfield’s library is a relatively safe space where inmates connect with one another, escape through fiction, and conduct legal research to mount appeals.

Monsters University (2013)

The library battle in Monsters University is a cheeky set piece which dares to ask “what’s so scary about a little old librarian?”. The librarian character is lazily stereotyped, but she deserves to be applauded for her commitment to maintaining the sanctity of her quiet study hall as Mike, Sully et al compete in an increasingly disruptive game of capture the flag. Pixar’s animation aptly echoes the style of an ornate old-fashioned library, with heavy wooden furniture and those classic green lamps. Look out for the bespoke shelving strategies neatly dividing up books of different sizes.

Watching someone study in a library won’t make for a thrilling movie, so these filmmakers have found ways of integrating libraries into their stories in engaging and often flamboyant ways, while also commenting on the wonders of libraries we can all enjoy, even if you don’t happen to be a Ghostbuster.

Featured image: “New York Public Library” by Jeff Hitchcock, CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

The post From the archives: the top 5 movie scenes set in libraries appeared first on OUPblog.

From ‘conforming stores’ to digital first – the changing world of retail

I was in a taxi in Hong Kong several years ago, stuck in traffic in the pouring rain. I said to my Hong Kong-based colleague how notable it seemed that all the apartment buildings looked exactly the same. “Cheaper that way isn’t it?” was his response, “Just design one then put up 50. Obvious really.”

Retailing used to feel much the same as designing apartment blocks in Hong Kong. Just design one store then roll out 20, 50, 100, 1000 of them. “Conforming stores” were very much the order of the day, especially if you were in the business of ‘big box’ retailing.

But today the world of retailing looks completely different…

No-one talks about conforming stores anymore. In fact, there’s plenty of people (although I’m not one of them) who would say that the future of retailing isn’t a physical store-based activity at all. Digital natives have never lived in a world without mobiles and high speed internet access so the world they have grown up in is ‘digital first, physical stores maybe’.

Whatever the end game looks like, it’s very clear that the challenges for retail enterprises and for the people tasked with leading them look very, very different today. As recently as a generation of leaders ago, coming up through the stores and having an instinctive feel for merchandise was seen as much the most important – perhaps even the only – pre-requisite to achieving success.

Today, when leaders of most retail businesses are asked what their main pre-occupations are – over and above the previous hour’s sales, obviously – you tend to hear a lot about needing to be much more competent in engaging difficult to engage digitally literate shoppers.

Shopping trolley by Yandle. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr

Here’s just a few of their concerns:

Having far more visibility on their shoppers and on where product is in much more complicated supply chains.
How to keep stores relevant and appealing to shoppers.
How to rebuild distribution networks so that they can cost effectively deliver huge numbers of small baskets of products to shoppers’ homes, workplaces and so on.

You’ll also tend to see a great deal of hand wringing about how so much more cost and complexity is being added into their business while, at the same time, shoppers simply won’t pay more because they know the price of everything and have almost infinite choice of where to get it anyway.

There’s a common thread to all of these very real and very widely held concerns…

The skills of individuals, the capabilities of the enterprise, and the organisation of the business all need to be very different today from what has been ‘fit for purpose’ and worked well in the past. Art Peck, CEO of Gap said it well when he said that: “We’ve been doing business the same way for 40 years, and there are very few 40-year-old business models that are successful forever.”

For many retail enterprises, this will almost certainly mean that skillsets need to become that much deeper and, well, that much more skilled.

Consider the marketing function as an example. Deep skills around digital campaign design and engagement through social media were simply not part of the marketing department skillset even a few years ago. Today they are mandatory.

In some areas – notably the logistics function for many – investment and focus needs to be very substantially ramped up. Other areas such as store development – traditionally regarded as being at the heart of a retail business – are being de-emphasised, if not absolutely then certainly relatively.

And this changes organisational structures.

It’s very easy now to imagine retail businesses with far flatter structures than they have had in the past, with the objective of making decision making faster and more joined up across an ever-proliferating set of touchpoints to the shopper. It’s also very possible to see a wide range of functions such as stores and marketing reporting into a Director of Shopper Engagement or some similar role.

As their shoppers and their businesses change, so too do the requirements of those tasked with leading retail businesses.

The days of the merchant prince are almost certainly over for many. So too are the days when CEOs had to have spent 20 years or more coming up through the stores before they were considered ready to lead the business. Too store-centric and too limited a world view will be how many now view such a progression. This means that it’s logical and helpful for many retailers to want to look outside the sector for their leaders.

The personal leadership attributes that look likely to define success today are very much around an ability to recruit and retain the best talent; to define and navigate paths of change that may leave the business looking very different to that which went before, and to create a culture that embraces risk, encourages innovation, and is tolerant of failure as the necessary price of change. Important also is the personal ability to lead effectively in environments that are necessarily defined above all else by uncertainty.

Sounds challenging? Well, yes it is. But the rewards are great and, even more to the point, the risks of thinking that this is an era of “business as usual” in retail-land are gone forever.

A version of this post originally appeared on Freshminds.

The post From ‘conforming stores’ to digital first – the changing world of retail appeared first on OUPblog.

Around the world in spices and herbs

On supermarket shelves, we are given a mind-numbing array of choices to select from. Shall we have some peppercorns on our macaroni, some cinnamon for baking, or a sprig of rosemary with roast pork? Five hundred years ago, however, cooking with herbs and spices was a much simpler choice. Many of the spices we use nowadays still flourished only in their native habitats, and were not as widely enjoyed as they are today. In fact, Christopher Columbus made it his quest to collect spices from around the world, deeming it as worthy as gold. “In truth,” he said, “should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.”

Thanks to these early explorers, cultures around the world have created delectable dishes based on spices and herbs both homegrown and imported, and it is fascinating how often these additions can change the essence of an entire meal. Indeed, many spices have been so commonly used they have come to represent entire cuisines. We cannot imagine Indian food without curry, for instance, nor conceive of any sashimi platter without that indispensable wad of wasabi.

In addition to spicing up dishes, studies have also shown that adding seasoning to your diet leads to copious health and other physical benefits. This is not a recent discovery. In ancient Roman times, the philosopher Pliny advised his students to wear a “crown of mint” upon their heads while studying, as it “exhilarates the mind.” Modern studies reveal that his advice was spot-on. Other than headaches, mint also alleviates asthma, nausea, and digestion problems. Other herbs and spices, such as the nutmeg, similarly helps prevent infection and ageing due to their antibacterial properties.

If you possess a green thumb, cultivating your own herbs is also a peaceful activity that calms the nerves. Thomas More, who kept his garden alongside the Thames, said of rosemary “I let it run alle over my garden walls, not onlie because my bees love it, but because it is the herb sacred to remembrance and to friendship.” Likewise, many other herbs also convey their own “flower language,” or floriography. Basil channels good wishes, sage pronounces wisdom, while tarragon, curiously enough, expresses “lasting interest.”

For all our familiarity with seasoning, not all of us can claim to know the origins of the condiments we use so frequently. The markers on the world map below introduce the native land and properties of some select spices (the fiery red markers) and herbs (the green ones) that bring a magic touch to our everyday fare.

Featured image credit: ‘Indian Spices’ by Maulpatel. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Around the world in spices and herbs appeared first on OUPblog.

National marketing in a global market

Marketing as a business function has swept the world. It is the fastest growing global business activity. It has infiltrated all aspects of life, not just the economic — but also the political, social, and personal.

During my 30 years of working in international marketing roles, I have witnessed this global rise, and consequently, my preferred approach is to be global with my marketing campaigns. In the digital, interconnected world this is, I believe, a necessity.

But in what sense global?

I have learned that global approaches to marketing campaigns need to be aligned to national culture and practice. Unique cultures often defy global homogeneity and practice. National approaches to marketing and perceptions of marketing persist despite the borderless dynamics of markets, money, and social media.

This ‘nationalism’ in the conduct and perception of marketing can often be linked to the recent history, culture, and social character of a given country, and to the status (high or low) that the discipline of marketing has there.

While most countries are now using similar methods – such as social and digital marketing – there are some enduring differences and perceptions.

Let’s look at marketing characteristics in some of the world’s largest economies:

The US pioneered modern marketing techniques at the beginning of the 20th century. It remains a beacon for innovative marketing practice. Although the majority of its marketing activities are focused on its huge domestic market, the US companies and people have continued both to adopt and adapt new techniques of marketing.

In the US, marketing is treated as a profession rather than a support service. There, marketing enjoys much higher social and professional esteem and is better understood as a central factor in economic development than in most other countries. The marketing of products, services, and individuals is pervasive and ubiquitous at all levels of American economic life.

Marketing accomplishment can be a route to becoming a CEO in many American companies. US presidential candidates make no secret of using marketing techniques to get elected.

The UK has great capability in media, communications, consumer goods marketing and creative advertising. The British have always been weak in industrial product marketing and in commercial market exploitation of Britain’s many innovations. Certain of the functions of marketing – such as creative advertising, journalism, and public relations – are respected in the UK.

Instagram and other Social Media Apps by Jason Howle. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

Many leading British filmmakers started their careers in creative advertising. The BBC has often held up as the world benchmark of quality in its broadcast communications and increasingly for its digital channels. However, the UK has never ascribed professional status to marketing as a whole. Board level positions in the UK are more filled with accountants than with marketers.

Germany, with its strong engineering roots, has majored in product marketing, particularly in the automotive industry. Enhancing product functionality is preferred to intensive marketing of the product. German consumers are conservative, private, and risk averse and are not easily influenced by advertising, either in traditional, broadcast, or online forms and tend not be early adopters of innovations. Advertising as a percentage of GDP is much lower in Germany than in the US or the UK. Unlike the UK, Germany has not been so open to American style marketing techniques. German journalists and media professionals are critical and rigorous and not easy to persuade.

Consequently, Germany is weaker in services marketing, creative advertising, and in its general appreciation of marketing as a serious business discipline. Marketing does not have the status in German business culture that it has in the US and is not regarded as a route to board level appointments.

In Japan, the customer is venerated. Customer service and putting the customer first is deeply rooted in Japanese business culture. The overwhelming focus of Japanese marketing is on winning the trust of customers and creating long term relationships with them. Japanese customers are fickle and demand highest quality in both service and in products. Their interpretation of product and service quality is the key to winning both their business and their enduring loyalty. Consequently much of Japanese marketing attention is on continuous improvements of product quality and the process of service improvement. As a result, Japan is skilled in consumer market research, and product marketing.

Japanese culture does not accord any distinction to marketing as a profession, and tends to see marketing as an integral part of business, rather than a separate discipline.

Russia and China, always historically strong on the uses of image, staged events, and propaganda within their own countries, are now coming to appreciate the necessity of marketing as they start to become major powers in global markets.

China in particular has developed unique forms of digital and social marketing in a very short time period. Chinese advanced home grown social media – WeChat, Weibo and Youku – have gone beyond Western social media platforms – and with vast Mandarin language user groups, have become a playground for Chinese brands.

Another uniquely Chinese market phenomenon is the demographic consequences of the one child policy, which has meant that a whole generation  of under 40’s having the undivided attention of 6 relatives, and whose patterns of higher spending consumer behaviour are totally different from their thriftier parents’ generation. China’s new generation of ‘little emperors’ are changing the way in which companies address marketing for a more consumer dominated society.

India uses a blend of traditional and modern marketing to power its phenomenal growth, often in spectacular cocktail mixes of the old and the new for their vast population. India is a vibrant and raucous market, with vast disparities of wealth and consumer behaviour. India uses many of the marketing techniques that the West would now view as traditional: giant bill board posters, print advertising, product placement in films and television, celebrity endorsement; ‘push’ marketing using texting. In other ways India has some unique features; firstly global brands must adapt to Indian customs and tastes – for example – most famously McDonald’s revision of its successful ‘global’ food menu to align with Indian culture, practice, and taste. Secondly the innovative use of celebrity marketing – notably leading Indian cricketers and Bollywood film stars – to market products and services – often involving elaborate hoaxes and long running stories.

So we have a paradox: an increasing global world, with increasingly standard digital marketing techniques, yet the endurance of local and national cultures that prevent total homogenization of all our products and services and how we see them, experience them, and receive them.

Featured image credit: WeChat cupcake by Cheon Fong Liew. CC-BY-SA-2.0 via Flickr.

The post National marketing in a global market appeared first on OUPblog.