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What’s your go-to summer concert?

It’s that time of year again! Summer concerts are warming up and festivals are in full swing. Cities around the world are putting on some of the best shows for locals and tourists to enjoy. Check out what concerts Oxford University Press employees love attending every year. You just might stumble upon your new favorite band.

Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York – All summer


“I’d suggest the (mostly) free summer concert series in Prospect Park at the band shell for us broke Brooklyn-ites!”


– Samantha Zimbler, Global Product Marketing Associate

Celebrate Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York – All summer


“I live a couple of hundred yards from the band shell in Prospect Park, home to Celebrate Brooklyn, and I try to get to as many performances as I can every summer. I love the variety of music, I love the performers, and I love being outside, but I especially love the way it draws my neighborhood outside together. This summer’s lineup is spectacular.”


– Anna-Lise Santella, Senior Editor, Grove Music Online & Music Reference

Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, Colorado – All summer


“My favorite summer concerts are at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado. It’s a beautiful natural amphitheatre with amazing views, which makes for a truly breathtaking experience. As long as it doesn’t rain or hail, that is.”


–Victoria Davis, Global Assistant Product Marketing Manager, Digital

Shaky Knees Festival, Atlanta, Georgia – 8-10 May 2015


“The Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta this summer was quite a treat. We got to see such legendary bands as The Pixies, The Strokes, Flogging Molly, and Neutral Milk Hotel, along with a number of others for a very reasonable price. Highlights included bluegrass mosh pits, delicious popsicles, and friendly encounters with music lovers from across the globe.”


– Megan Rose and Molly Rose, Marketing Associates, Institutional Marketing

La Fête de la Musique, France – 21 June 2015


“For over thirty years, town centers across France play host to a whole range of musicians from all over the world. The La Fête de la Musique in Paris though, is unbeatable. The already extraordinary city transforms into a concert hall and every street, square, and park pulses with the sound of music. Meanwhile revelers dance, talk, and picnic on good food and chilled rosé.”


– Callum Watts, Global Online Product Marketing

Photo of the Cowley Road Carnival, July 2007 taken by Damian Cugley. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Cowley Road Carnival, Oxford, UK – 5 July 2015


“The Cowley Road is the most multicultural part of Oxford and despite the very real clash of cultures, students and born-and-bred locals, they’re all part of a larger community that for some reason works. Every year, those that love the Cowley Road converge for the carnival to listen to live music as diverse as electro swing, Pink Floyd cover bands, and reggae. Thankfully, there’s always plenty of jerk chicken and shish kebabs available to soak up the free-flowing beer!”


–Joe Couling, Marketing Assistant

Father Cry $$$ Tour – 13 July 2015


“Rapper Father, founder of a misfit collective known as Awful Records (loved by industry star Drake), combines club hip-hop with ghostly melodies and is taking the rap world by storm with his 2014 breakout song, “Look At Wrist” featuring ILOVEMAKKONEN. The tour also presents some of the 15 other members of the group including up and coming Playboi Carti who was noted on Complex Magazine’s ’50 Best Songs of 2015 So Far.'”


– Vanessa Martin, Marketing Intern

Mostly Mozart Festival, New York City – 25 July-22 August 2015


“Not just for Mostly Mozart mavens, this festival features a first-rate house ensemble, an amazing array of guest artists, as well as varied, engaging, and smart programming.”


– Dan DiPaolo, Assistant Editor, Grove Music Online and Oxford Reference 

Warm Up 2016 MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York – 25 July 2015


“Warm Up and MoMA PS1 is an NYC summer staple and is an anticipated music series presenting the best local and international experimental music across a range of genres, including up-and-coming and established artists. Highly anticipated Skepta will be the highlight of the 25 July installation and is one of the main reasons why this foreign, mutant genre called Grime is finally being recognized in the States.”


– Vanessa Martin, Marketing Intern

Nicki Minaj Presents The Pink Print Tour – 26 July 2015


“This tour is definitely going to cause one to shed a couple pounds. The Pink Print Tour is dazzled by several breakout rap and R&B artists: Tinashe, Dej Loaf, Meek Mill, and Rae Sremmurd. Queen Nicki will truly be the star of the show performing several hits off her highly regarded album The Pink Print while gracing the audience with her charismatic and eccentric personality.”


– Vanessa Martin, Marketing Intern

Ratking and Bishop Nehru Summerstage, New York City – 5-6 August 2015


“Ratking is an NYC-based rap group whose influence spans from the youthful energy and DIY ethics of punk rock, the hard hitting lyrical flows of late 90s and early 2000s New York rappers a la Cam’ron and RZA. Their live performances are energetic and unique as the entire group’s personality shines through when they perform.”


– Vanessa Martin, Marketing Intern

Flogging Molly’s Nathen Maxwell & Matthew Hensle, August 2014 by Martin Bergann. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Afropunk Fest, Brooklyn, New York – 22-23 August 2015


“There’s really no better way to spend a summer day in Afropunk Fest. The music is great, the looks are on-point, and there’s even a few dance circles throughout the day.”


– Ayana Young, Global Digital Marketing

Lotus Fest, Bloomington, Indiana – 24-27 September 2015


“Hands down my favorite festival is the Lotus Fest in Bloomington, IN. I’ve been going almost every year for the past ten years. Lotus Fest combines an incredible range of ‘traditional’ world music genres—from Tuval throat singers and Finnish fiddlers to Swedish hip hop and Latin/Brooklyn washboard swing—into a weekend-long event that literally takes over downtown Bloomington. Performers are brought in from across the globe. Churches, bank parking lots, and movie theaters are transformed into performance venues. I found my all-time favorite band at Lotus in 2005 – Balkan Beat Box. What has impressed me most every year is the high energy created by the mix – the juxtaposition of musical styles, cultural profiles, and joy in musical experience in this down-home cosmopolitan town.”


– Suzanne Ryan, Editor in Chief, Humanities

Which festivals and concerts would you add to the list?

Image Credit: Music festival by Eva Rinaldi. CC BY-SA via Flickr.

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The curious case of competition and quality

Why should firms compete? The belief is that through competition society benefits with lower prices, better quality and services, and more innovation. Indeed, anyone who frequents restaurants or hotels protected from competition can recount the inferior meal, poor service, and high price. By contrast, in a competitive environment we expect more quality, for less.

Often, competitive markets develop products ranging in price and quality. Well-informed consumers evaluate the goods and make their own trade-off between price and quality. We may opt to purchase our baguette at our local organic baker, Marks and Spencer, or Asda.

Competition authorities agree that quality can be as, if not more, important than price competition. Cartels that degrade quality (but not price) are just as culpable, under the competition laws, as cartels that fix price. Indeed, quality competition has increased in importance over the past twenty years with the growth of free online goods and services.

So how do competition authorities assess how a merger or restraint will impact quality? In some industries such as health care, competition authorities rely on well-accepted measurements of quality. But many industries do not lend themselves to well-accepted quality metrics that can be analysed quantitatively and objectively. In such cases, the competition authorities rely on two simple assumptions: First, more competition will generally increase quality for a given price (or reduce price for a given level of quality). Second, when prices and quality vary, consumers will weigh the offerings using an internal price-quality metric. Price adjusts for quality, and consumers rely on the heuristic “you get what you pay for.”

Often, these two simple rules work well. But, at times, they don’t. Sometimes, the increase in competition does not increase quality where one expects it should. Further, in some unique cases, more competition actually reduces quality and may give rise to significant health and safety issues.

“Often more competition will generally increase quality. But this isn’t always the case.”

So what is going on here? Why doesn’t the pressure of competition always increase quality? Two underlying factors characterise these instances: first, it is prohibitively expensive or difficult to convey to consumers the inherent quality differences in the product offerings; second, consumers’ ability to accurately assess quality differences is limited.

To illustrate, let us consider cases where an increase in competitive pressure can reduce quality. A producer may choose unilaterally to degrade quality, when this represents the easiest (or only) path to successfully absorb the pressures of fierce competition. Quality erosion may lead to a competitive race to the bottom. Suppose several smaller suppliers are dealing with powerful retailers. One supplier decides to secretly lower its product’s quality slightly in order to meet the retailers’ pressures to lower price. Other sellers must now also degrade their products’ quality in order to remain competitive. Absent consumer awareness, quality control or effective regulation, consumers are increasingly buying poorer quality goods. This race-to-the-bottom is not limited to product quality. Sellers may further externalise costs by using child labor or polluting the environment.

Take for example the horsemeat scandal which dominated the media in Europe in 2013. Following an investigation by the Irish Food Standards Agency, many prepared meals across the EU were found to contain horse meat despite the meat being advertised as 100% beef. In another, unrelated instance, McDonald’s sales in Asia dropped after the discovery that its supplier was accused of repackaging old meat as new. In Sweden, a conspiracy to repackage out-of-date meat was exposed and led to a criminal investigation into four stores in the Swedish ICA supermarket chain. In another instance products carrying the budget private label “Euro Shopper” were found to contain water as the main ingredient, leading to retailers terminating their supply agreements.  A similar practice of adding water to fish products was exposed in Germany, leading to a removal of Edka private label King Prawns from shelves. Importantly, these markets exhibit fierce competition which normally would lead to higher quality at lower prices. Yet, here, the competitive downward pressure on price led to suppliers’ attempts to secretly reduce quality and costs.

Interestingly, quality erosion may also occur in heavily-regulated industries, such as air travel. The proliferation of budget airlines has increased the pressure on many airlines to provide services at lower costs. Some of the price reductions are accompanied with transparent changes to quality of service. Others, however, may involve disguised variants. Indeed, intense competition may induce airlines to exploit consumers’ behavioural biases, involving less salient factors such as air-quality in airplanes, quality of frequent flyer programmes and other ancillary services.

The competitive pressure may have also affected fuel supply levels and air delays. According to the regulatory framework, airlines should allow enough fuel to reach their destination, with an additional 30 minutes flying and a final approach before landing. Usually, low fuel incidents take place in the event of bad weather, where planes will likely spend more time in the air than originally planned. Reportedly, pilots can be under pressure from the airlines’ needs to minimise costs and carry the lowest fuel intake permitted by the regulations. As one pilot reported: “I’m constantly under pressure to carry less fuel than I’m comfortable with … Sometimes if you carry just enough fuel and you hit thunderstorms or delays, then suddenly you’re running out of gas and you have to go to an alternate airport.” As passengers are often unaware of this quality dimension, it remains undetected.

So, everyone agrees that quality is a fundamental aspect of competition. Often more competition will generally increase quality. But this isn’t always the case. First, consumers may be unable to accurately assess quality differences. This may be attributable to external factors (such as deceptive claims) or dispositional factors (such as consumer biases or imperfect willpower). Second, imperfect information flows make it difficult or costly to convey to consumers the products’ or services’ inherent quality differences. Companies recognise that neither they nor their competitors can easily or inexpensively convey to consumers the inherent quality differences in their and their competitors’ product offerings. They may be motivated to exploit this weakness when likelihood of detection is low. Ironically, in these extreme cases, the greater the competitive pressure, the greater the risk they may take in degrading quality. Consumers, in such instances, do not benefit from the competitive process. While paying less for a product or service they receive much less. In such cases, competition can turn into a race to bottom, where the environment is despoiled, the planes lack sufficient fuel, our burgers feature something other than beef, and our online search engines provide less than objective search results, despite competition being one click away.

So, competition authorities must exercise greater caution in markets characterised by the two conditions identified. If they don’t, and simply assume that more competition will solve the problem, they will fail to appreciate that consumers won’t always get what they paid for, even when competition is fierce.

Featured image credit: bland new architecture in bognor regis high street by shrinkin’violet. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Love before logic: politics, persuasion, and the Puritans

Election Day is more than a year away, yet already the presidential campaigns have begun. Given previous contests, we should most likely expect a good deal of disingenuous diatribes and debates—some of it from the candidates, and even more of it from their supporters.

In anticipation of the coming ugliness, it seems as good a time as any to learn something about civil disagreement and the possibilities of persuasion from an unlikely source: the Puritans. That may surprise us. After all, when the Puritans had a dispute, they really had a dispute. The world came to them through a theological lens and their very souls depended on getting that vision right, which meant that disagreements about God could lead to excommunication, banishment, or worse. If we think that civil debate is sorely lacking today, we should try living in the seventeenth century.

As with all things Puritan, however, this stereotype of intolerance is more complicated than it first appears. The reputation Puritans have garnered for less-than-civil disagreement certainly has a basis in reality, but it also obscures the range of differences they accepted and attempted to work out amicably. On the one hand, they openly touted their intolerance, as they thought it was a good sign of godliness to get rid of heresies. On the other hand, they advanced a careful, psychological model of persuasion that created a certain space for civil debate and may have much to teach us today when we think about our own all-too-frequent lack of civility.

Here is the simple idea: love comes before logic.

When someone speaks, no matter how reasonable he or she might be, if you hate that person, you are unlikely to listen. And the opposite holds as well: if someone dislikes you, it does not matter how reasonable you might be, your logic alone will not persuade. We listen to friends, not enemies, particularly when it comes to critique. In other words, the Puritans believed that a lack of love makes it hard to hear. If a disagreement was going to proceed civilly—if it was going to be aimed at actual edification—then only an underlying unity of affections (some basic sort of sympathy with one another) would make it possible.

This need for underlying affection appears all over Puritan texts. In Puritan theological disputes, the first question was whether the disagreement proceeded from a “love of the brethren” or from hatred of the godly. Assuming the first, the disagreement could be picked up and debate could ensue. “Since we detect…a love of brethren in your compassions and…a love of truth in your concern, admiring…the piety in both, we believe it will be profitable to pick up the correspondence with you in scholarly wise,” one preacher wrote. Or, as the English Puritan minister John Dodd put it, “As they do thankfully accept your brotherly love, so they our brethren here have taken your motion into serious consideration.” An assessment of underlying love made it possible to consider others’ claims.

I find this Puritan model helpful for two reasons. First, because of what it calls upon us to consider when we hear criticisms aimed at us; and second, because of what it requires from us when we make criticisms of others.

In both cases, a great deal depends on the spirit behind critique. If someone claims that we have a misguided policy or a mistaken belief we ought first to ask: Why are they bothering to critique us at all? In general, the Puritans claimed that if it came from a mutual affection or a motion of love, it could be profitably taken up and considered, and some kind of consensus might be reached. If, however, the criticism came from simple hatred or contempt, then it did not need to be considered seriously; it was not aimed at edification but destruction, and nothing edifying for both parties could come from engaging in the debate.

The idea of edifying both parties is important, for the Puritans spent plenty of time attacking others or defending against attacks. But they did not do so for the sake of their interlocutors; they did so to edify the godly who might be witnessing this dispute. The Puritans insisted on an inside and an outside, the godly and the ungodly, often imagining themselves as members of a small, persecuted community. Such a mentality limits the ability to listen and turns the vast majority of criticism into mere attacks on the faith. Given the consequences of such a mindset, the Puritan model is best approached as a good description of human experience, not a prescription for how to behave toward perceived outsiders. That is, the Puritan model of persuasion can help explain why people fail to listen to one another rather than suggest a good reason to dismiss the concerns of others. For the narrower one’s circle of fellowship—the more exclusive one considers his or her community—the more he or she will be apt to consider any piece of criticism as the mere assault of an ungodly outsider.

This Puritan model of persuasion—love before logic, the necessity of sympathy for the possibility of persuasion—can guide us as well, then, in our own attempts to change the opinions (or votes) of others. Why do we critique someone, after all? If persuasion is the goal (rather than just pronouncement), we will need to demonstrate first that we find ourselves sharing some kind of community, some common cause or uniting affection. Sending out critiques without this underlying sense of unity will mean that one’s words will probably be taken exactly as one would take them in reverse: as attacks from without rather than assessments from within. People do not consider attacks; they defeat them. We are not changed; we are hardened. Without even the appearance of some unifying, underlying affection, those we most want to persuade will be least likely to listen.

That’s something the Puritans once believed, and it seems like a lesson well worth learning again. Then let the debates begin.

Image Credit: “Embarkation of the Pilgrims” by Robert Walter Weir.  Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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“who wouldn’t want to get involved?” : Kirsty Doole on the OUPblog

On the tenth anniversary of OUPblog, we’ve asked past editors to reflect on their experiences and favorite memories. Today we speak to Kirsty Doole who served as OUPblog UK Editor from 2008-2012, and 2013-2014.

The OUPblog has been a part of my working life for something like eight years. These days I am mainly ‘just’ a reader, but for a long time, the blog was something I worked with on a daily basis.

I first became aware of the blog in about 2008. I was becoming interested in blogs generally and was racking up large numbers to add to my newly acquired RSS reader account. Somehow I heard that the US office of OUP had a blog, so I looked it up and started reading it. Then I started bugging my manager about whether we could get involved from the UK office. It seemed like a no-brainer to me; who wouldn’t want to get involved? She put me in touch with the then-editor Becca Ford, and the rest, as they say, is history.

My contributions were modest to begin with. For the first year or so I sourced just one blog post per week from the UK, under the moniker of the ‘UK Early Bird’, my post going up at 3.30am EST / 8.30am GMT. I spent a long time talking to people here in the UK office, telling them about the blog, and championing it as another way to get the word out about our books and products. Later, I started doing two posts per week, and then three, dropping the ‘Early Bird’ name along the way. The blog’s remit became more global, rather than being “an American thing”. There was no longer a need to distinguish where the content came from.

By the time I handed the UK reins over to Nicola Burton while I went on a period of maternity leave in January 2012, the blog made up a huge chunk of my job. When I came back a few months later, the UK input into the blog was bigger than I could have imagined. It was brilliant to see. Content was coming from all parts of the UK branch of GAB: not just academic and trade books, but medicine, law, and journals. I took over the UK editorship again for a comparatively short period in late 2013, but by then the blog, and social media more generally, needed dedicated time and energy rather than someone trying to do it alongside their normal job.

I have had a front row seat in watching the OUPblog develop and flourish over the years. I have seen it go through three different looks and formats, and I’ve contributed probably hundreds of posts through the years (I’ve even written a few…). It’s hard to choose favourites, but I’ve a serious soft spot for many of the Oxford World’s Classics posts: on The Wind in the Willows; on Anna Karenina; on The Poetic Edda; on Daniel Deronda. I’ve also learned about bumblebees in English gardens, how we came to understand Cholera, and why we eat food.

Happy tenth birthday, OUPblog, and may it continue to go from strength to strength!

Image credit: Laptop. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Marijuana legalization in the American states: recent developments and prospects

Although in the U.S. marijuana remains illegal under federal law, a number of states have legalized marijuana in some fashion. Sam Kamin, author of “The Battle of the Bulge: The Surprising Last Stand Against State Marijuana Legalization,” an article for the Summer 2015 Annual Review of American Federalism issue of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, agreed to answer several questions from John Dinan, editor of Publius, about recent developments in this area and the future of marijuana law reform in the U.S.

How many states have legalized marijuana, whether for medical use or more broadly, and how have states undertaken these legalization efforts at a time when marijuana remains illegal under federal law?

Currently 23 states plus the District of Columbia had legalized marijuana for medical purposes and 4 states (Colorado, Washington, Alaska, and Oregon) as well as D.C. have gone further and legalized marijuana for adult use. Generally, states have done this through the initiative process rather than by way of legislation.

What has been the reaction of federal officials to state marijuana legalization measures, and how and why has the federal government’s position changed over time?

The federal government has announced a number of approaches to marijuana legalization over the last 6 years, finally adopting a ‘wait-and-see’ policy and indicating it does not plan to block implementation of state marijuana legalization measures. The Justice Department has announced eight criteria by which state experimentation with regulating marijuana will be judged. They include keeping marijuana out of the hands of children, keeping marijuana within the state’s borders, and keeping organized crime and other drug dealing away from regulated marijuana and so forth.

While the Obama administration has finally settled on a policy of tolerance with regard to marijuana regulation, with the prospect of a new president and attorney general taking office in early 2017, the current period of relative stability is only temporary.

Supreme court by skeeze. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay

What problems are caused by the current situation where marijuana is legal in a number of states but illegal under federal law, and why is this a source of continuing concern?

The problems are myriad. So long as marijuana remains a prohibited substance under federal law, all those who produce, sell, and use it are at risk of arrest, prosecution, imprisonment and asset forfeiture. Although these risks are remote at the moment, they color all decisions in this area. So, for example, marijuana businesses do not generally have access to banking services in the way other businesses do: fearing the threat of money laundering charges or asset forfeiture, banks are unwilling to do business with marijuana enterprises. Similarly, marijuana businesses face a daunting federal tax structure that requires them to pay tax but denies them nearly all deductions available to other businesses.

For the marijuana user, things are not much better. Given the uncertainty surrounding marijuana’s quasi-legal status, marijuana users risk their employment, government benefits, and parental rights if they choose to engage in conduct that is permitted under their state’s laws.

Describe the various lawsuits that have been filed challenging marijuana legalization in the states — who is bringing these challenges, and are they likely to succeed?

Marijuana regulation is currently being challenged in 3 sets of lawsuits in federal court. First, Oklahoma and Nebraska sued Colorado in the Supreme Court, claiming that marijuana leaving Colorado creates negative externalities in their state. Similarly, a group of Colorado and neighboring state sheriffs have sued the state, claiming that voters’ decision to repeal the Colorado marijuana prohibition places them in an unconstitutional bind where they must choose between their oath to the federal government and their oath to the state government. Finally, two private plaintiffs have sued the state and a number of businesses under the RICO statute, claiming financial harms as a result of the production and sale of marijuana adjacent to their properties.

For various reasons, I believe all of these suits are without merit. At bottom, the state of Colorado has the power to legalize marijuana and to permit its production and sale within its territory. While the state government can do nothing to prevent the federal government from enforcing federal law within the state, neither can the federal government force Colorado to prohibit marijuana, to enforce any laws it might have on the books criminalizing marijuana, or to keep its existing prohibitions on the books. The 10th Amendment’s anti-commandeering provision simply prevents the federal government from dictating policy to the states.

Looking ahead, what do you expect will happen in the next several years regarding marijuana law reform in the U.S.?

A tipping point is coming within the next several years. With more and more states implementing either medical marijuana or adult use laws, the time will soon be upon us when a sizable majority of Americans live in a state where marijuana is legal for some purposes. This will create an irresolvable tension with the continuing federal prohibition and will, I believe, spur elected leaders into action.

Headline image credit: Cannabis by stankx. CC0 via Pixabay.

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Why a technologically enhanced future will be less good than we think

Today there are high hopes for technological progress. Techno-optimists expect massive benefits for humankind from the invention of new technologies. Peter Diamandis is the founder of the X-prize foundation whose purpose is to arrange competitions for breakthrough inventions. His aim is “a world of nine billion people with clean water, nutritious food, affordable housing, personalized education, top-tier medical care, and nonpolluting, ubiquitous energy”. The Internet is a special focus for techno-optimists. According to the Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen “future connectivity promises a dazzling array of ‘quality of life’ improvements: things that make you healthier, safer and more engaged”. K. Eric Drexler’s preferred instrument of universal prosperity is nanotechnology. He envisages a future in which miniature robots produce “a radical abundance beyond the dreams of any king, a post-industrial material abundance that reaches the ends of the earth and lightens its burden.”

Some of the shininess of these forecasts depends on a mistake about the well-being of people who live at different times from us. When determining how happy people were in the past or will be in a technologically enhanced future we imaginatively project ourselves into their times. We expect that we would feel miserable if sent on a one-way time travel trip back to the 13th century and therefore suppose that that misery must have been experienced by the people who lived then. We imagine that we would be ecstatic to wake up and find ourselves surrounded by the technologies depicted in Star Trek and so conclude that people fortunate enough to live then must experience very high subjective well-being. These imaginative exercises mislead us about the effects of technological progress on well-being by ignoring a feature of human psychology I call hedonic normalization. Differences in normalization make people today very different from people of the 13th or 23rd centuries.

Humans have flexible psychologies that enable us to flourish in environments ranging from the Arctic to the Kalahari Desert. Walruses and meerkats lack this psychological flexibility. They are unlikely to work out how to survive an exchange of habitats. Hedonic normalization permits a human raised in the high Himalayas to find that environment normal. The same psychological mechanism that hedonically normalizes humans to Arctic and desert environments normalizes us to the very different technological environments of the 1st and 21st centuries. We can predict that it will normalize us to the technologies of the 23rd century. Differences in hedonic normalization mean that ancient Romans, 21st century New Yorkers, and 23rd century residents of Cairo view cars powered by internal combustion engines very differently. What for the Romans is a quite miraculous technology, is boringly familiar to the New Yorkers, and repellently primitive and polluting for the Cairenes.

Image credit: “City Lights”, by Unsplash. Public Domain via Pixabay.

When we overlook hedonic normalization we tend to significantly overstate the extent to which technological progress will boost the happiness of future people. I would be very happy to abruptly find myself on board a 23rd century starship. But this is not how people hedonically normalized to 23rd century will feel. The error of ignoring hedonic normalization is especially apparent when we think about the past. Techno-optimists point to the big differences that technological change has made to our world. Mary Beard’s description of the streets of ancient Pompeii covered in animal dung, rotting vegetables, human excrement and flies makes modern city dwellers glad to be alive now. But imagining how a time traveller from the early 21st century would feel to find herself marooned in Pompeii does not tell us how people hedonically normalized to that time felt. Doubtless the Pompeians would have preferred cleaner streets. But the filthiness of their streets did not affect them in the way that it would affect someone normalized to our comparatively refuse and excrement-free highways and byways. To see this more clearly consider how people from the 23rd century will feel about life in our times. The conditions of our cities are clearly not perfect – but they are not nearly as bad for us as they will seem to someone normalized to the cities that 23rd century technologies will build.

New technologies can significantly boost the happiness of the members of the generation that first experiences them. However, hedonic normalization tends to erode many of these benefits. There is more at stake here than some unwarranted smugness about past lives and envy of future lives. A tendency to overvalue technological progress tends to make us reckless in its pursuit. In this era of climate change and nuclear arsenals capable of destroying the world many times over we are acutely aware of some of the perils of technological progress. When we overestimate the propensity of progress to boost well-being we are more likely to judge the risks of progress to be worth taking.

Our rush toward a technologically enhanced future is likely to expose us to many threats of extinction of similar or greater magnitude to those imposed by climate change or nuclear weapons.

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“I should’ve picked a better hashtag”: Lauren Appelwick on the OUPblog

On the tenth anniversary of OUPblog, we’ve asked past editors to reflect on their experiences and favorite memories. Today we speak to Lauren Appelwick who served as OUPblog Editor-In-Chief and Social Media Producer from 2010-2011.

I was late turning in this reflection. Do you know how embarrassing that is? The former Editor missing a deadline to the current Editor? Apparently blogging muscles atrophy after you adapt to writing mostly in 140-character sprints.

While we collectively celebrate OUPblog’s 10th birthday, I am celebrating the five-year anniversary of becoming its proud Editor. Five years. It’s difficult to believe it’s been so long. It used to be that I felt, somehow, I knew you all. Hundreds of thousands of you. Perhaps now you are millions, and we are only just now saying hello.

It feels strange to be writing here once again, conjuring memories of words I once helped string together. Essays. Quizzes. Podcasts. Tweets. But in many ways, that’s what blogging is about. Before we moved all our news (and truly, our lives) online, we started small. With weblogs. Blogs. These simplistic, digital pages of text which preserved our thoughts and memories.

Here are some of mine.

The #OxfordFortuneCookie game. How did that start?

It started because I was running out of ideas. I was a young publicist, and one of my books was the Little Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. As you might imagine, it’s a wonderful volume, a fun resource, and a nice gift — but not a book that came packaged with any newsworthy pitch angle.

As I was flipping through the book, I couldn’t help but think many of the more obscure proverbs read like fortune cookie slips. “A believer is a songless bird in a cage.” “After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.” “When an elephant is in trouble, even a frog can kick him.”

And so the game was born. I asked my followers to tweet a question tagged #OxfordFortuneCookie, and to pick a number between 1-390. Then I would reply with the proverb they’d landed on. Question: “Will they bring back KHAAAAAAN!!! for the next Star Trek movie?” Answer: “Faith will move mountains.” It was silly, and it often made no sense, but it was fun. Soon it felt like hundreds of people were tweeting at me for fortunes, and I was thrilled to get the book and its editor, Elizabeth Knowles, some positive attention.

Remember that this was January 2010, and many people hadn’t even entertained the thought of joining Twitter. I had a mere 155 followers, and most of those people were also in publishing, so I didn’t expect this idea to have legs it did.

After I stepped into the role of Blog Editor later that year, I gave the game to the blog and continued to play it on Fridays through that Twitter account. You can’t imagine how flattered I was to notice the Editors after me have continued to play it with @OUPAcademic‘s followers. If I had had any sense of the potential longevity, I would have picked a much more concise hashtag–that is my one regret. Perhaps I should have looked up my own fortune…

The Oxford Comment podcast has also lived on. What’s the origin story there?

Michelle Rafferty deserves credit for the idea, as she had taken a real interest in that area and was already doing audio interviews with her authors as a part of her publicity strategy. She clearly loved the process: going out into the world to create content, whether that was in a beer hall or backstage at a play. Podcasts weren’t new in 2010, but they were certainly popular and I was eager to work on more multimedia projects for the blog. So after talking about it for a while, we wrote out a plan and committed to a proper, regular podcast.

It was far more work than we anticipated.

Michelle and I would be holed up in the studio (read: an empty office) late into the evening and on weekends, replaying short clips to catch a p-pop, moving these little dots a pixel up or down in the ProTools suite to balance the audio. You’d be amazed how much work can go into cleaning up mere seconds of the final cut.

But we stuck with it because we had the sense that we were doing something worthwhile. And it paid off when the podcast was featured on the iTunes “New and Noteworthy” page after a few episodes, giving our listenership a thrilling boost. I can’t express how exciting it was to see those play counts rise. I’m pretty sure I sent a screenshot to my mother. But without Michelle’s talent for crafting stories and setting the scene, and her enthusiasm for recording on-site in different venues, we certainly wouldn’t have found that sort of success. It was my honor to co-produce with her.

If there is one thing I’ll take credit for, though, it’s the title, “The Oxford Comment.” I thought it was so clever, and likely pitched it with a wink and an “Eh? Ehh?” elbow-nudge.

What else comes to mind when you think about OUPblog now?

I mostly remember that it felt like so much more than a job to me, and I truly was honored to be trusted with it. Rebecca had taken this twinkle of an idea — at a time when very few companies had even considered blogging — and nurtured it into the most-trafficked university press blog in the world. It was respectable. It was authoritative. It was entertaining. And I certainly didn’t take that lightly.

But most of all, it was fun. I loved every day OUPblog was under my care. I loved crafting the essays and sourcing new material. I loved the enthusiasm of Oxford authors and colleagues, who pitched many excellent ideas. I loved watching our readers react and share. I especially loved Word of the Year day. There’s not a single other project of which I’m so proud. My time as Editor for OUPblog was incredibly gratifying, and I am beyond grateful for it.

Personally, I would like to thank Rebecca Ford, Purdy, Cassie Ammerman, Michelle Rafferty, Kirsty Doole, Nicola Burton, Sarah Russo, Betsy DeJesu, and Caite Panzer. Your contributions and guidance were undeniably valuable. To the regular contributors I had the pleasure of working with — Anatoly Liberman, Edward Zelinsky, Elvin Lim, Dennis Baron, Mark Peters — I cannot express enough how thankful I was for your words, and the time and care you put into each post. And to our other valued contributors too many to name, sincerely: thank you for your ideas and enthusiasm.

And to you: I can say with certainty that those of us who have worked so hard on this blog are beyond thankful for your readership. Here, we have had the opportunity to explore and discuss current events, challenge theory, and excite curiosity in many areas of interest. As much as you may have learned from our authors and contributors, we have also learned from you, and are grateful for this positive, supportive community of thinkers.

Featured image: Microphone. CC0 via Pixabay.

The post “I should’ve picked a better hashtag”: Lauren Appelwick on the OUPblog appeared first on OUPblog.

Let’s fly away: IAG and Aer Lingus

News has erupted of another potential merger and acquisition (M&A) in the Airline sector – the acquisition of Irish airline Aer Lingus by the International Airlines Group, IAG.

IAG, the product of the merger in the early 2010s between ex-state-owned enterprises British Airways and Spain’s Iberia, has become one of the world’s global giants, ranked in the latest Forbes 2000 index of 2015 as the third largest airline in the world. IAG’s formation took place in the wake of other ex-state-owned European airlines merging in the 2000s in the context of EU liberalization initiatives that changed the rules of the game, facilitating M&A. This was seen in the deals between Air France and KLM (which later took over an important stake in Alitalia, only to later sell this later) and Lufthansa’ and Swiss.

As the Aer Lingus/IAG deal draws out, how can we better predict the outcome? Surely, airline consolidation, as has taken place in other sectors such as automobiles, electricity, petroleum, and banks across the world, almost suggests an inevitable path where firms ‘eat up’ other firms and become global giants.

In order to understand the creation of world champions that merge and acquire, should one look less at what goes on in business and more at the ‘politics’ firms face in global markets?

Aer Lingus A320-214 EI-DVN “ST Caimin” by happyrelm. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

Let’s consider developments in Aer Lingus between 2006 and 2013. Privatized in 2006, the state nevertheless retained a 25% stake. Since the privatization, Dublin-based Ryanair, led by Michael O’Leary and which now has several other bases throughout the liberalized European economy, made 3 unsuccessful bids for full takeover of Aer Lingus (the last of which was in 2013). The main explanation of Ryanair’s failed takeover bids lies in the role of the Irish state, which wanted the acquisition blocked. It also lies in the role of European Commission’s regulatory authorities in DG Competition that blocked the proposed deals, despite the various remedies proposed by Ryanair. Politics – at the domestic level and at the supranational level in Europe – ultimately mattered.

Now, let’s fast forward to 2015 where IAG is trying to takeover Aer Lingus. With the recent green light indicated by the Irish government on May 26, this deal appears to be set. Why? Beyond the price offered, the Irish state is happy that IAG has given a commitment to the slots in Heathrow and offered a guarantee for smaller airports beyond Dublin that Aer Lingus flies out of (Cork and Shannon). At this stage, the deal is still subject to both other shareholder approval (including Ryanair which owns close to 30% of Aer Lingus) and, perhaps more importantly, regulatory approval of the European Commission. But considering that the Commission has never rejected a deal involving BA/Iberia/IAG as examined in the book, it is likely to approve the deal of the ‘trusted friend’ it has in IAG.

To be fair, talented operators who lead firms – such as Willie Walsh of IAG – are important, if not crucial, in explaining firms’ vision for global expansion.

But such leaders who envisage having their firms enter into other parts of Europe or the world by merging and acquiring only have to ask three essential questions that have less to do with business and more to do with politics. Do the rules allow for it? Will states facilitate it? And will regulators ultimately approve it?

If the answer to these is ‘yes,’ then it is smooth flying going forward. If the answer is ‘no’ to any of them, expect significant turbulence.

When it comes to IAG’s takeover of Aer Lingus, sit back and relax: it’s unlikely to be a bumpy flight.

Featured image credit: Aerlingus.a320-200, Bristol, 2005, by Adrian Pingstone. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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10 things you may not know about Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys’s diary of the 1660s provides ample evidence that he enjoyed writing about himself. As a powerful naval administrator, he was also a great believer in the merits of official paperwork. The upshot is that he left behind many documents detailing the dangers and the pleasures of his life in London. Here are some facts about him that you may not know…

Pepys kept a lion in his office.

In 1674, Samuel Martin, a consul in Algiers, sent Pepys “a Tame Lion”. Pepys wrote back to report that the beast was now living with him at the Admiralty Office in Westminster. The lion proved a good houseguest, being “as tame as you sent him, and as good company”.

Pepys was arrested for treason – 3 times.

Pepys’s first arrest for treason was in 1679, when the main charge was that he’d passed naval secrets to the French. In 1689, he was detained for plotting to restore the exiled King James to the throne. Just over a year later he was arrested again on suspicion of being involved in plans for an insurrection to restore James.

None of Pepys’s arrests led to a trial – these were trumped-up charges.

… and also arrested for piracy

The charges that got Pepys sent to the Tower of London in 1679 included piracy.

Disappointingly, this wasn’t of the eye-patch-and-parrot kind. Instead Pepys was accused of illegally arranging for a ship to plunder Dutch and English vessels. He wasn’t brought to trial on this charge either.

Pepys portrait by Geoffrey Kneller. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons


Pepys planned to run an international spy network

In 1677 Pepys and the merchant James Houblon worked on proposals for the Secretary to the Admiralty (i.e. Pepys) to become chief of a global intelligence network. The Secretary would get a budget to monitor the ‘navall Forces and Trade of all ye Europian Princes’, using well-placed informants around the world. Spies would be paid to find out the ‘Secret Intentions’ of enemy fleets.

Pepys and Houblon gave up on their plans, presumably because the crown was short of funds and in no position to finance a new intelligence service.

Pepys designed his own spectacles

Pepys had serious eye problems for much of his life and he tried out a range of different solutions.

In 1668 and 1669 he experimented with designs for ‘Tubulous spectacles’, taking his lead from articles in the Royal Society’s journal. Pepys’s final design was a mask into which tubes could be inserted, and lenses be put in and out of the tubes. He took to using tubes to write up his diary–which would itself have been a sight worth seeing.

Pepys was an admirer of double bottoms

­–specifically, Sir William Petty’s double bottoms. A ‘double bottom’ was what Sir William Petty called a two-hulled boat, or type of catamaran. Petty designed and built several of these double bottoms, and was much ridiculed for it.

Pepys, though, had great respect for Petty and took a long-term interest in the project. He first heard details of the double-bottom in a coffee-house in 1663. Two decades later he was to be found at Petty’s house helping to test scale models.

Pepys took vows against lazing in bed

… and also vows to restrict wine-drinking, play-going, book-buying, and womanizing. He was worried that these activities might damage his finances, or his reputation, or both.

The system of self-policing that Pepys used in the 1660s was rather like the modern method of paying a fine to a ‘swear box’ every time you turn the air blue. For example, each time Pepys kissed a woman more than once, he made himself pay a shilling to the poor box. His bad behaviour meant a donation to charity.

Pepys’s home kept nearly burning down

Pepys’s diary documents his hasty packing in 1666 as the Great Fire approached the navy buildings where he lived and worked. That time, the Navy Office escaped the flames. However, in 1673 a fire destroyed the building, nearly taking Pepys’s precious library with it. In the 1680s, when Pepys was living in Buckingham Street, Westminster, there were two more near misses.

Fire was common enough to make it worthwhile investing in precautions. Writing about his library in the 1690s, Pepys explained that his bookcases were designed “To bee taken in Peeces, in case of Fire” and for “Easiness of Transportation”. 

Pepys was a whistle-blower

In the late 1690s, Pepys fought a public campaign to expose financial corruption at Christ’s Hospital, a charitable school in London. Pepys was one of the Hospital’s governors and he didn’t mind making powerful enemies.

In a series of pamphlets, he claimed that his damning report on the Hospital’s finances had been “suppress’d”. Among the culprits for this, he named the Hospital’s President and the Lord Mayor of London. He threatened to make his entire report public if action wasn’t swiftly taken. The scandal became, in his words, “the Entertainment of Coffee-houses”.

Pepys’s strategy for generating public pressure did succeed in prompting change at the Hospital–he was appointed its Vice President.

Pepys wanted to be known as a historian

Although Pepys’s diary wasn’t written for publication, he did want to be known as a historian of his times.

His historical projects included a biography of his patron Lord Sandwich (unwritten), a grand history of the British navy (lots of materials collected, but it was never written) and an account of Charles II’s escape from Worcester during the Civil War (left in manuscript on Pepys’s death).

Only Pepys’s brief Memoires relating to the State of the Royal Navy (1690) was printed during his lifetime.

Header image credit: A letter by Samuel Pepys, engraved for the first edition of the Rev. John Smith’s 1825 edition of the diary. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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Devising data structures for scholarly works

For over 100 years, Oxford University Press has been publishing scholarly editions of major works. Prominent scholars reviewed and delivered authoritative versions of authors’ work with notes on citations, textual variations, references, and commentary added line by line—from alternate titles for John Donne’s poetry to biographical information on recipients of Adam Smith’s correspondence. In an effort to move these works online in an interlinked fashion, we were faced with an interesting challenge to structure the content digitally so that it can be viewed, searched, and navigated to best effect.

The Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) website needs to deal seamlessly and consistently with all manner of works, from letters and diary entries, through poetry and plays, to large works such as Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. As well as the variety of content type, there is also a wide variety in editorial style. The editions in OSEO have been published over a period of more than a century, and different editors have found different ways of dealing with the source materials available to them.

The main challenge in devising a data structure for the scholarly editions was to find a model that would be flexible enough to accommodate the variety of the content, but rich enough to allow the content to work in a useful way in its new digital environment. Describing all the challenges of creating a data model for OUP’s scholarly editions would be the subject of a book in itself. But we can illustrate the challenges by looking at a specific feature that is common to all scholarly editions, the editorial commentary.

In the printed book, notes on the text can appear in various locations—at the foot of the page, on the page facing the text of a work, at the back of the book, or sometimes in a separate volume.

Here’s an example from the printed Hamlet, showing the editorial notes on textual variants at the foot of the page:

On the website, we wanted all these notes to appear in a panel next to the text, and to “march in step” so that a reader could immediately tell when a line of text had an accompanying note. To enable each note to appear alongside the corresponding line of text, we needed to create a link from note to text, one that works no matter where the note is located in the printed book. Each link needs a fixed target in the text, which in this case is the line number. In print, typically only every fifth or tenth line is numbered, but in the digital format we need to number every line (exposing the occasional instance of an editor losing count!). So instead of the “127” in the print footnote, we must create a line number object, placed alongside the text at the start of the line.

Here’s what a line number object looks like in the digital XML format:

The line number object, called an “element” in XML, has several components:

The element name (milestone, borrowed from the Text Encoding Initiative) tells us what kind of object it is. Dozens of different elements are used in OSEO to mark up the text.
The value of unit tells us what kind of milestone it is. This case would require a line of text, but not every work has line numbering, and so other values are also used.
The value of num tells us the line number.
The value of id is a unique identifier that acts as the target of the hyperlink created from a note.

By putting these milestones in the text, we create targets for links from the editorial notes and textual variants. The website code can then pull all the relevant notes in alongside the text, no matter where they appeared in the print format.

The presence of a diamond or circle next to a line of text indicates that there is a note attached to it. The two different symbols are for the two kinds of note, textual variants and editorial commentary. Clicking on the symbol brings the note into line with the text, by making the text in the note pane scroll to the right place. The text is also highlighted with a yellow “flash.” Notes aren’t perpetually affixed alongside the text because the number and length of notes often take up more space than the original work. The click and flash offer a neat digital workaround not possible on ink and paper.

Of course, this is just one small fragment of the OSEO data model. Every display style and piece of functionality in OSEO has an XML element behind it. Close collaboration between content experts, data architects, and web developers was essential to getting the best possible experience of navigating scholarly editions online. And now, no longer faced with a pile of books, researchers can delve into these works in a new manner, creating opportunities to gain further insight into the humanities.

Image Credit: “Research Data Management” by janneke staaks. CC BY NC 2.0 via Flickr.

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