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July 18, 2015

“Smart people blogging”: Becca Ford 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 Rebecca Bernstein (aka Becca Ford) who served as OUPblog Editor from 2006-2010.


No OUPblog editor has had a longer tenure than Rebecca Ford. She shepherded the blog through its early years and many of its growing pains, ranging from redesigns to blog attacks. She was also a tireless advocate of blogging across the industry, whether speaking with Publishers Weekly or organizing a question-and-answer session with our publisher. We talked about her life and ambition as an OUPblog editor.


What was your proudest moment as OUPblog editor?


Both redesigns of the blog were huge undertakings and truly works of love. The first, in Spring 2007 was meant to propel the blog into the mainstream and set the tone for where we were headed. The second, right before I resigned in 2010, was intended to give OUP inspiration to keep the blog going, even after my departure. I think both redesigns achieved their goals pretty spectacularly.


What was your most stress-inducing moment?


The morning I realized male-enhancement advertisers had hacked the blog. Walking into Purdy’s (my boss) office to let him know was terrifying. Little did I know that being hacked was a compliment (we finally had enough traffic to be worth hacking)!


When did you think that you might be on to something?


I had a hunch we were on the right track when Evan Schnittman (then VP of Business Development and Rights) decided he wanted to write for the blog. Evan was a bigwig and I was a measly blog editor only a few years out of college. His posts really raised the caliber of contributions from within the company and encouraged others to follow suit.


How has the blog influenced you?


Working on the blog raised all sorts of interesting legal questions that gave me the chance to meet and seek advice from OUP General Counsel Barbara Cohen. Speaking with her about the legal grey areas the blog kept stumbling upon made me want to be a lawyer (something I had never previously considered). Before working with Barbara I had seen the law as stale, essentially the same since the 1800s. The legal questions surrounding the early days of the OUPblog though, were without straightforward answers. I realized IP law was a rapidly changing field full of interesting “maybes” and that a career as an IP lawyer would never be boring.


What one resource would you recommend to someone who wanted to become a blog editor?


Read everything. Seriously. Read books. Read blogs. Read magazines. Read Twitter. Read the ads on the subway. Read. Read. Read. In fact, if you aren’t the kind of person who gets anxious on public transit without reading material, this is not the right job for you.


What are you reading right now?


I usually read fiction (still detoxing from years of non-fiction at OUP and in law school) but oddly enough I’m on a non-fiction kick again right now. I am about 100 pages into The Third Plate by Dan Barber.


How would you sum your editorship up in 3 words?


Smart people blogging.


Featured image: Laptop. Photo by Luke Chesser. CC0 via Unsplash.


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Published on July 18, 2015 04:30

The belated autopsy of a forgotten Revolutionary War hero

John Paul Jones died in Paris on this day in 1792, lonely and forgotten by the country he helped bring into existence. Shortly before his death, he began to lose his appetite. Then his legs began to swell, and then his abdomen, making it difficult for him to button his waistcoat and to breath. When he died shortly thereafter, the American minister to France had no interest in wasting public funds on a grand burial and gave instructions for the dead hero to be “interred at the least possible expense.”


If this were all we knew of John Paul Jones’ terminal illness, there would have been no hope of determining its cause. Fortunately for posterity, an autopsy was performed, which demonstrated the existence of a fatal inflammatory disorder confined to the kidneys.


When Jones died at the end of the 18th century, autopsies were not yet being performed, at least not ones capable of detecting inflammation of the kidneys. Not until a century later, as a result of the work of Rudolf Virchow, did the autopsy as we know it today come into existence. How then did John Paul Jones happen to have an autopsy capable of detecting microscopic abnormalities of the kidneys some one hundred years before Virchow, the father of cellular pathology, made microscopic examination an integral part of post mortem investigations?


John Paul Jones. Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.John Paul Jones, by Charles Willson Peale. Independence National Historic Park. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The answer lies in large part with the French government, which saw to it that John Paul Jones, the forgotten Revolutionary War hero, was interred with sufficient care in a lead-lined coffin (in case the United States, which he had served with so much honor, might one day wish to reclaim his remains). That day came more than a century later in 1905 when investigators hired by General Horace Porter, the American ambassador to France, located Jones’ coffin in Paris’ abandoned St. Louis Cemetery “for foreign Protestants.” Inside was a well-preserved corpse, evidently originally submerged in alcohol, which had long since evaporated. The body was transported to the Paris School of Medicine, where 113 years after Jones’ death, post mortem examination revealed injury to the kidneys, consisting of inflammation of the microscopic filters (the” glomeruli”) and surrounding tissues (the “interstitium”). Based on these abnormalities, the French professors performing the autopsy diagnosed “interstitial nephritis” and “interstitial glomerulitis.” In clinical practice today, the most common cause of this pattern of inflammation of the kidneys is the disorder known as “IgA nephropathy.”


Eventually, President Teddy Roosevelt had Jones’ remains brought back to the United States and enshrined in a marble sarcophagus beneath the rotunda of the US Naval Academy chapel as part of a campaign to promote America as a maritime world power. However, it was the French who made it possible for the lost American naval hero to be found and for us to understand the nature of the disorder that carried him into harm’s way and took his life.


Feature Image: US Naval Academy chapel. Photo by Rdsmith4, CC-BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.


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Published on July 18, 2015 03:30

Emerson and Islam

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), a quintessentially American writer and thinker, is also one of the most international. Greek, Roman, Chinese, Indian, Persian, French, British, and German philosophers and literary figures pervade his work. As we think about “Western values” and “the clash of civilizations” today, it may be useful to consider the significant role that Islam plays in Emerson’s thought. To begin, we need look no farther than the conclusion of Emerson’s greatest essay, ‘Self-Reliance,’ where he quotes “the Caliph Ali,” whom he learned about from Simon Ockley’s History of the Saracens (1718): “Thy lot or portion of life, is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it.” Emerson uses Ali to distinguish an accidental property like an inheritance from an essential or “living property,” something “that perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes.” This kind of property cannot be effectively pursued, but it can be received and employed.


Emerson regarded the Koran, as he regarded the sacred texts of all religions, as a work of poetry and invention that influenced world history by offering a vision and inducing enthusiasm. “Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world,” he writes in ‘Man the Reformer’ (1841), “is the triumph of some enthusiasm. The victories of the Arabs after Mahomet, who in a few years, from a small and mean beginning, established a larger empire than that of Rome, is an example.” This is the Emerson who wrote in ‘Self-Reliance’ that “Nothing great is achieved without enthusiasm.”



Ralph_Waldo_Emerson_ca1857_retouchedRalph Waldo Emerson ca 1857, scewing derivative work: 2009. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

But Emerson qualifies his approval of the Arab conquests. He predicts “a nobler morning than that Arabian faith, in the sentiment of love.” This is not a plea for Christianity, nor an entire rejection of Islam, but an embrace of what Emerson calls “love” or “universal sunshine,” and which he finds in many cultures. At the center of his own great essay, ‘Experience,’ Emerson finds this sunshine in a “region of being” that is as much American as Islamic: an “august magnificence, old with the love and homage of innumerable ages, young with the life of life, the sunbright Mecca of the desert … I am ready to die out of nature, and be born again into this new yet unapproachable America I have found in the West.” Interpreting these lines and the paragraph in which they occur is a large enterprise, but what I am calling attention to here is the conjunction of Mecca and America in a crucial section of a representative American writing.


Another line of Islamic thought in Emerson comes from the Persian poets, especially the fourteenth century poet Hafiz. In ‘History’ (1841), Emerson places Hafiz among the major writers of world literature, along with Homer and Chaucer. Emerson’s engagement with him deepened after he obtained Joseph von Hammer’s German translation of Hafiz’s Divan in 1846. Emerson appreciated Hafiz’s multiple aspects and tendencies: as a mystic and a proponent of wine and the beauty of nature and women, and as an active, ironic opponent of self-satisfied conformity. Emerson admired the “easy audacity” with which Hafiz approaches all topics:  he “tears off his turban and throws it at the head of the meddling dervis, and throws his glass after the turban.” Although Hafiz sincerely “praises wine, roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and music,” Emerson writes in ‘Persian Poetry’ (1858), that he “lays the emphasis on these to mark his scorn of sanctimony and base prudence.”


This sounds somewhat like Emerson himself, who in his younger days scandalized Harvard audiences with his “American Scholar” and “Divinity School” addresses, and who explained that to be self-reliant was to have an “aversion” to “conformity.” The portrait of Hafiz also resonates with an imagined Persian sage named Osman (the Turkish form of the Arabic “Osama”) who appears in Emerson’s journals and at the end of one of Emerson’s most deceptive essays, ‘Manners’ (1844). “The Shah at Schiraz,” Emerson writes with his characteristic taste for the overturning of established meanings, “could not afford to be so bountiful as the poor Osman who dwelt at his gate.” Osman’s humanity was “so broad and deep,” Emerson continues, “that although his speech was so bold and free with the Koran as to disgust all the dervishes, yet was there never a poor outcast, eccentric, or insane man, but fled at once to him — that great heart lay there so sunny and hospitable in the centre of the country … And the madness which he harbored, he did not share. Is not this to be rich?”


How can we learn to appreciate this kind of sunny wealth, and where are our contemporary Osmans? In his mid-nineteenth century innocence and wisdom, Emerson raises these and other questions for us today, in essays that show us not the clash but the confluence and interpenetration of civilizations.


Featured image credit: Roof of the Hafiz tomb, by Pentocelo (Own work). CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


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Published on July 18, 2015 00:30

July 17, 2015

Contemporary Muslims and the challenge of modernity

In my 22 years of teaching and writing about Arabic and Islamic Studies, I have probably heard every kind of naive and uninformed comment that can possibly be made in the West about Islam and Muslims. Such remarks are not necessarily all due to ill will; most of the time, they express bewilderment and stem from an inability to find accessible, informed sources that might begin to address such widespread public incomprehension. Add that to the almost daily barrage of news and media commentary concerning violence in the Middle East and South Asia, two regions viscerally connected with Islam and Muslims. With hopes deflating in the wake of the Arab Spring, and barbaric ISIS members continuing to inflict terror wherever they rule, Muslims seem to be descending into a spiral of violent nihilism. These days, Islam appears as nothing more than a spent force, incapable of regenerating itself.


This is a narrative that has considerable staying power, drawing its strength from a pervasive Western media that frequently reinforces such perceptions. With selective reporting on Muslim-majority societies, the journalistic bar for news reporting is usually very low; sensationalism is an essential criterion. What goes on in the daily lives of ordinary people is almost completely occluded. The diversity of voices and opinions that continue to characterize Muslim-majority societies, as well as the rich spiritual and intellectual resources available within the Islamic tradition (both as a religion and civilization), receive little attention.


Contrary to popular belief, Muslims are firmly a part of the modern world and are grappling with the challenges of modernity in myriad ways. Many of them are navigating modernity’s sometimes uncharted waters with creativity and imagination, re-engaging with their tradition and revisiting their history, as many non-Muslims are doing with their respective traditions and histories in similar contexts. Muslim academics, thinkers, and social activists are spearheading hermeneutic and revivalist projects, mostly occurring below the global radar, that are shaping and being shaped by modernity (or, more accurately, modernities). For there is more than one way of being modern, each being pegged to a society’s particular historical trajectory and cultural specificity. This realization is fundamental in appreciating the different paths to modernity that various societies can and do take. Here, the Western paradigm of secular modernity is hardly a universal one. It is, rather, a parochial model spawned during the specific concatenations of historical events in the European past. Other societies and civilizations are “indigenizing” modernity in ways that are compatible with their own lived, historical experiences and sociocultural institutions.



Contrary to popular belief, Muslims are firmly a part of the modern world and are grappling with the challenges of modernity in myriad ways.



Muslims, both men and women, are as engaged in the process of negotiating modernity as anyone else, often insisting (against great external pressure) that they do so on their own terms. Many of them are rereading their religious texts for guidance in this process of negotiation; for religion, in their experience, is an ally, not an enemy of the modern world. Sometimes this process entails questioning specific provisions of classical Islamic law, erroneously dubbed Sharia. The Sharia cannot be reduced to legal rulings that are the product of human rational deliberation. The Sharia is the repository of eternal, universal principles that prod humans into being the best they can be—principles that need to be interpreted and reinterpreted through time to allow for human growth and flourishing in changing circumstances.


Islamic feminism is a consequence of this re-engagement with the Sharia, as well as its primary component, the Qur’an, which, according to Muslims, is the record of God’s final revelation to humankind. Muslim scholars, through an egalitarian, non-gendered lens, are studying the Qur’an holistically and challenging some of the time-bound, culturally-inflected, gender-discriminatory regulations that many male jurists came up with in the pre-modern period. In the process, these modern scholars are establishing the Qur’anic foundations of gender egalitarianism and female social empowerment that are bound to resonate in Muslim-majority societies. One such society is Malaysia, where women activists within the organization called Musawa (equality) are already having quite an impact based on their re-readings of critical verses in the Qur’an that cogently undermine gender inequality. Muslim women intellectuals and social reformers are shaping their societies in a number of transformative ways that often go unheralded in the world press, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan being a prominent exception.


Muslim-majority societies are also experimenting with democracy, sometimes against great odds. There are forces of obscurantism in their midst, occasionally violent, that will have none of this. Isn’t the caliphate good enough for them, especially as an antidote to democracy, which is, after all, a foreign invention? Except that poll after poll convincingly shows that Muslims want representative, accountable governments that they choose themselves through the ballot box. All this is deemed consistent with the principles of the Sharia, which call for the adoption of consultative processes (shura) in administrative matters. A majority of Muslims are therefore clearly on record as wanting democracy and Sharia, both of which they understand to have been embodied in the earliest caliphate of the four Rightly-Guided rulers that came into being after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. Thus, when ISIS proclaims its sham caliphate, there is a basic reason why mainstream Muslims jeer at it. The Rightly-Guided caliphate is, after all, remembered by them as having been based on justice, law, and order consented to by the people—the very antithesis of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s ersatz caliphate. Graeme Wood and other journalists may mistake the ostensible trappings of Islamic history for Islam itself, but most Muslims know better. It is a genealogy of ethics and morality that connects them to their pious forebears, not a genealogy of similarly-named institutions that are emptied of such moral content.


And what about jihad, the ultimate scary word that conjures up unprincipled violence for most Westerners? Again, early history and its sources come to the rescue. Jihad (struggle; striving) has many components in the Qur’an, the most important of which is sabr, or patient forbearance to be constantly exercised in the middle of life’s vicissitudes. Jihad also includes qital, fighting in self-defense when attacked by an enemy that refuses peaceful overtures. One would be forgiven for thinking that jihad meant killing non-Muslims because they stubbornly refuse to convert to Islam; this is, after all, how many extremists portray it, and how it is represented in the mass media. The internal contestations within Muslim communities over time, particularly as they struggle to define the legitimate parameters of the military jihad, are left out of such simplistic accounts. As a result, such accounts permanently sully a concept that ultimately requires of Muslims to strive to promote what is good and right, and to prevent wrongdoing without causing harm to others.


Finally, the conversations that some Muslims are having today with some of their non-Muslim sojourners in the global village they cohabit never make it to the front page of our major newspapers. And yet knowledge of such interfaith and intercultural encounters helps undermine the “clash of civilizations” thesis that is predicated on implacable hostility between a reified Islam and a reified West. Both right-wing Western Islamophobes and militant western-phobic Islamist groups subscribe to the “clash” theory, meaning that each is a mirror image of the other. The hate-mongering of these groups has resulted in incalculable harm, which is evident in the terror-stricken world we inhabit today. However, stalwart individuals of good will, endowed with an unshakeable faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity, strive to rise above the fray and create channels of communication that help establish common ground and inter-religious solidarity. In the United States, interfaith groups have stared down bigots when they tried to scuttle the founding of the Park 51 Community Center in New York. In Egypt, a Muslim-Christian coalition has stood up to militants when they attacked churches belonging to minority Copts there. Such encounters produce hope and create an alternate narrative that focuses on shared values and goals, ultimately undermining the notion of an inevitable civilizational clash.


Image Credit: “Halaq at Masjid al-Haram, 6 April 2015, Makkah, Saudi Arabia” by Mohammed Tawsif Salam. CC BY SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.


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Published on July 17, 2015 05:30

War: a legacy of innovation and trauma

War. Of all human endeavours, perhaps none demonstrates the extremes of ingenuity and barbarity of which humanity is capable. The 21st century may be the century in which the threat of perpetual war is realised. Although many innovations have been brought about as a bi-product of the challenges war presents, the psychological and physical trauma wrought on the human body may prove too high a cost. Explore the relationship between war and medicine — from radiology to psychiatry to trauma — in the interactive image below.



Image credit: CC0 via Pixabay


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Published on July 17, 2015 03:30

Darra Goldstein on the history of sugar

Sugar. Sweets. These words typically evoke images of playfulness, youth, and energy, but there’s much more to them than that. Sugar has had an important hand in many facets of history, not all of it fun and games (but certainly not all of it dreary, either). Did you know fudge played a huge part in American women’s college education? Or that the sugar refining process is quite dangerous? We asked Darra Goldstein a number of questions on sugar and its history, unearthing the good, the bad, and everything in between.


The Oxford Companion reveals all — the juxtaposition of sweets

The Oxford Companion reveals all — sugar’s dark history

The Oxford Companion reveals all — Marie-Antoine Carême

The Oxford Companion reveals all — history of the American female and fudge

Headline image credit: Sugar by HebiFot. Public domain via Pixabay.


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Published on July 17, 2015 02:30

How much do you know about Roman Britain? [quiz]

For four centuries Britain was an integral part of the Roman Empire, a political system stretching from Turkey to Portugal and from the Red Sea to the Tyne and beyond. Britain’s involvement with Rome started long before its conquest, and it continued to be a part of the Roman world for some time it finally broke from Roman rule. But how much do you know about this important period of British history? Do you know your Claudius from your Caesar?


Test your knowledge with this quiz, based on Peter Salway’s book Roman Britain: A Very Short Introduction.




Featured image credit: Rome, by AlexVan. Public domain via Pixabay.


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Published on July 17, 2015 00:30

July 16, 2015

Children’s voices in family law conflicts

Children are commonly recognized as separate human beings with individual views and wishes worthy of consideration. Their ability to freely express these views and wishes constitutes the concept of child participation, defined by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the right of children capable of forming their own views to be able to express themselves freely in all matters affecting their lives. Children should particularly be provided with the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings pertaining to them, either directly or through appropriate representatives, and with necessary precautions and support.


Beyond the international law definition of child participation, the right of children to be heard has been increasingly recognized by national courts, even in the United States, which qualifies as one of the very few countries that has not yet ratified the Convention. For instance, the recent case In Re Marriage of Winternitz, 2015 DJDAR 3526 (27 February 2015) decided by the 4th District Court of Appeal, Division I, of California on 27 February 2015, includes an important holding regarding children’s wishes in custody law disputes. The California Family Code Section 3042 provides that courts should consider and give due weight to the wishes of a child when making an order granting or modifying custody or visitation. The statute has also recently granted permission to children to address the court if they are 14 years or older, unless it is against their best interest.


California courts have interpreted this statute in different ways. Some judges allow children to provide testimonies, others prefer to meet with children privately, and finally some still refuse to hear children’s preferences. The Winternitz opinion concerns Tami Winternitz’s request to move away with her minor daughter, Jamison. The father, William Winternitz, opposed the move and sought custody of the daughter. The trial court found that denying the move-away request was in the best interest of the child and decided to grant primary custody to the father, in spite of Jamison’s wish to remain with her mother. The court clarified that the fact that the decision did not follow the child’s custodial preferences did not establish an abuse of discretion because her wishes were expressly considered and given due weight by the court.



Image uploaded by Succo. 12 April 2015. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.Photo by Succo. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

Empirical studies conducted in Ireland and New Zealand have compared the different approaches adopted by national courts in providing children with the opportunity to be heard in family disputes. Findings show the importance of legislation in securing the implementation of the right of children to have their wishes taken into due consideration. In Ireland, where there is no proper regulation granting children the right to participate in family law proceedings, judges reluctantly and seldom seek children’s views. In New Zealand, on the other hand, courts are very supportive and accustomed to this practice, regulating judicial interview with children through legislation and national guidelines.


Studies conducted in Canada found that both judges and children benefit from judicial interviewing. Children shared their wish to be involved in the decision-making process affecting their family situations without dictating the final decision. They want to have “a voice, not a choice.” Judges, also, believed that meeting with children is a useful tool to complement or corroborate the facts and information about a case. Other studies in Israel have suggested that allowing children the opportunity to participate in their parents’ disputes has a positive impact on the decisions reached by the court and contributes to children’s well-being and satisfaction with the process. In addition, parents were surprised to find that the information sought by a third party helped them better understand their children and what they were going through. In California, when children are denied the opportunity to meet with the judge and have their voice heard, they become disappointed and frustrated.


Thus, the goal of allowing children to participate in judicial proceedings affecting their lives is not to impose their preferences or grant them veto power. It is instead about empowering children to voice their feelings and opinions and promote their self-esteem, respect, and trust in others and themselves regardless of the outcome. This is also the correct interpretation and the purpose of the children’s right to participation under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Thus, even though judicial opinions, as in the Winternitz case, may not always follow the child’s wishes, the court’s concern to consider and give them due weight in reaching the decision is exactly what child participation is about.


Image Credit: “Epic Parenting 101″ by Peter Kirkeskov Rasmussen. CC BY NC-SA 2.0 via Flickr.


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Published on July 16, 2015 05:30

The 34 most popular OUPblog posts of the last ten years

Yesterday we shared 34 selections of the OUPblog’s best work as judged by sharp editorial eyes and author favorites. However, only one of those selections coincides with the most popular posts according to pageviews. Does Google Analytics know something that our editors do not? Do these articles simply “pop” (and promptly deflate)? Or are there certain questions to which people always demand an answer?


Three trends emerge: (1) People are extremely passionate about words. (2) Many people need some quick facts about certain historical figures. (3) People frequently ask the same basic scientific questions.


#1     “Oxford Word of the Year 2009: Unfriend


#2     “Nine words you might think came from science but which are really from science fiction

” by Jeff Prucher


#3     “Ten things you might not know about Cleopatra” by Anne Zaccardelli


#4     “Oxford Word Of The Year 2007: Locavore


#5     “10 facts about Galileo Galilei” by Matt Dorville


#6     “Is it true what they said about John Dillinger?” by Eliot Gorn


#7     “Oxford Word of the Year 2008: Hypermiling


#8     “Why study paradoxes?” by Roy T. Cook


#9     “Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism!” by Ben Zimmer


#10   “Cleopatra’s true racial background (and does it really matter?)” by Duane W. Roller


#11   “SciWhys: Why are we told always to finish a course of antibiotics?” by Jonathan Crowe


#12   “Quantum theory: If a tree falls in forest…” by Jim Baggott


#13   “Eight reasons to unfriend someone on Facebook” by Lauren Appelwick


#14   “SciWhys: Why do we eat food?” by Jonathan Crowe


#15   “The impossible painting” by Roy T. Cook


#16   “25 recent jazz albums you really ought to hear” by Ted Gioia


#17   “My BFF just told me “TTYL” is in the dictionary. LMAO.


#18   “In the Beginning: Hip Hop’s Early Influences


#19   “How exactly did Mendeleev discover his periodic table of 1869?” by Eric Scerri


#20   “Sex-Crime Movies” by Nicole Rafter


#21   “Star Trek terminology” by Cassie Ammerman


#22   “The gender-neutral pronoun: 150 years later, still an epic fail” by Dennis Baron


#23   “OUP USA 2010 Word of the Year: Refudiate


#24   “Facts about the Silk Road” by Valerie Hansen


#25   “The seven myths of mass murder” by J. Reid Meloy


#26   “Five facts about the esophagus


#27   “What are those terrifying centipede-like things?” by Jeffrey Lockwood


#28   “10 moments I love in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby that aren’t in Baz Luhrmann’s film” by Kirk Curnutt


#29   “Absurd Entries in the OED: An Introduction To Ammon Shea


#30   “What mushrooms have taught me about the meaning of life” by Nicholas P. Money


#31   “Librarians in the United States from 1880-2009” by Andrew A. Beveridge, Susan Weber, and Sydney Beveridge


#32   “10 facts about the saxophone and its players” by Maggie Belnap


#33   “In memoriam: Amy Winehouse” by Nigel Young


#34   “Six methods of detection in Sherlock Holmes” by James O’Brien


Featured image: Computer. By Jeff Sheldon. CC0 via Unsplash.


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Published on July 16, 2015 04:30

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