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Many people watching UK television drama National Treasure will have made their minds up about the guilt or innocence of the protagonist well before the end of the series. In episode one we learn that this aging celebrity has ‘slept around’ throughout his long marriage but when an allegation of non-recent sexual assault is made he strenuously denies it.

The post What if they are innocent? Justice for people accused of sexual and child abuse appeared first on OUPblog.

The world’s biggest book fair is opening its doors soon and, as a native “Frankfurter” working in the publishing industry, it's the time of year that my colleagues start asking me about my hometown. Sadly, the most common thing I hear is that there is little that they know beyond Frankfurt airport and the exhibition centre.

The post Beyond business and the book fair: exploring Frankfurt appeared first on OUPblog.

I’m no expert. Still, I reckon the notorious claim made by Michael Gove, a leading campaigner for Britain to leave the European Union, that the nation had had enough of experts, will dog him for the rest of his career. In fact, he wasn’t alone. Other Brexit leaders also sneered at the pretensions of experts, the majority of whom warned about the risks – political, economic, social - of a Britain outside the EU.

The post In defence of moral experts appeared first on OUPblog.

We adults are careful about swearing around our kids. We don’t want bad language to confuse or corrupt or otherwise harm them. As Steven Pinker says in passing while talking about profanity in The Stuff of Thought (2007), “if some people would rather not explain to their young children what a blow job is, there should be television channels that don’t force them to,” and there are. We have every right to be protective of our children even if we don’t have a reason.

The post Protecting our children from profanity appeared first on OUPblog.

Record-breaking mobile app Pokémon Go has been downloaded over 75 million times worldwide, a number set only to increase as the game is released in more territories. What five common crimes have police officers had to attend to as a result of this craze taking off?

The post Five crimes being committed by Pokémon Go players appeared first on OUPblog.

Podcasters P.J. Vogt, host of Reply All, and Starlee Kine, host of Mystery Show, addressed sold-out sessions at the Sydney Writers' Festival last month, riding the wave of popularity engendered by Serial, the 2014 US true crime podcast series whose 100 million downloads galvanised the audio storytelling world.

The post Video didn’t kill the radio star – she’s hosting a podcast appeared first on OUPblog.

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.

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

Come August 19th, we will be able to see our beloved Sirius Black, a.k.a Gary Oldman, on the big screen once again. Gary will be playing Nathaniel Shepherd, a NASA scientist in charge of sending astronauts to live on Mars.

With Gary Oldman alongside Asa Butterfield and Britt Robertson, The Space Between Us is about a boy who was born on Mars and raised by scientists. Gardner Elliot (Asa Butterfield) returns to Earth to find his father, only to find that his body can’t quite function properly on Earth. The trailer for the film can be seen below:

We know you have all been waiting with anticipation for the return of your favorite podcasters…and it’s time! There is a new Pottercast available on iTunes. Episode #257 talks about the upcoming fan convention unlike any other–GeekyCon.

Pottercast and Leaky will take part in hosting GeekyCon and its Harry Potter events, including the Cursed Child midnight release party!

Also wondering why PotterCast disappears for long periods of time? Have no fear, the Potter podcasters talk about their plans to get Pottercast back on track again!

Thanks to our amazing listeners for sticking with us!

(If the newest Podcast isn’t showing up in the Feed, refresh your iTunes several times. Go to “My Podcasts,” “Pottercast,” “Feed,” and refresh. For those of you who haven’t subscribed to PotterCast it may take a couple of days for the newest episode to appear on the iTunes page. Sorry for any inconvenience.)

Information now moves at a much greater speed than migrants. In earlier eras, the arrival of refugees in flight was often the first indication that grave human rights abuses were underway in distant parts of the world.

The post Why hasn’t the rise of new media transformed refugee status determination? appeared first on OUPblog.

डाईट चाट – वजन कम करना ये वजन कम करना नही आसान… मोटू, गोलू मोलू , गोल मटोल नाम भले ही हमें बचपन में प्यारे लगते हो पर बडे होते होते हम अपनी सेहत पर ध्यान देना शुरु कर देते हैं जहां लडकिया अपनी साईज जीरो पर ध्यान देने लगती हैं वही लडके भी स्मार्ट […]

The post डाईट चाट – वजन कम करना appeared first on Monica Gupta.

Lewis Carroll, J.R.R. Tolkein, and Philip Pullman are three of the many great writers to come out of Oxford, whose stories are continually reimagined and enjoyed through the use of media and digital technologies. The most obvious example for Carroll's Alice in Wonderland are the many adaptations in [...]

The post A reimagined Wonderland, Middle-earth, and material world appeared first on OUPblog.

In a speech made after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama criticized the media’s use of the word mastermind to describe Abdelhamid Abaaoud. “He’s not a mastermind,” he stated. “He found a few other vicious people, got hands on some fairly conventional weapons, and sadly, it turns out that if you’re willing to die you can kill a lot of people.”

The post Word in the news: Mastermind appeared first on OUPblog.

Julian Assange is an unusual figure in the world of hacktivism. He embraced his notoriety as leader of Wikileaks, and on 4 February 2016, he appeared on the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy holding a copy of a UN panel report that declared that he has been “arbitrarily detained” while avoiding extradition to Sweden for alleged rape for almost six years (British and Swedish prosecutors still seek to detain him).

The post Exposures from the dark side appeared first on OUPblog.

The wonderfully worn down and hand-decorated chair J.K. Rowling sat in to write the first two Harry Potter books will be auctioned in New York next month.

Rowling originally donated the chair in a 2002 auction called ‘Chair-ish a Child’. The money for which went to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, raising £15,000 ($23,475), later being sold on eBay for £19,555 ($29,117) in 2009.

The auction will be held by Heritage Auctions at their 445 Park Avenue gallery, and will open at $45,000 on March 18th, with the live auction itself taking place on April 6th.

“You may not / find me pretty ~ / but don’t judge / on what you see,” Rowling wrote across its wooden slats and sides. “I wrote / Harry Potter / while sitting / on this chair.”

The chair also features Rowling’s signature and multiple lightning ‘scars’.

The Guardian reports:

“For me, what’s important about the chair is that [Rowling] basically created a unique artwork that’s self-reflexive. It’s all about her creation,” said James Gannon, director of rare books at Heritage Auctions. “There’s not that much in Harry Potter world that’s very valuable or very rare because the books were so big so quickly, so after the first couple of books, the first editions were quite large, and I think, by the end, they were printing like 8m or 10m copies of the first edition.”

The chair comes with a typed and signed letter, “Dear new-owner-of-my-chair,” composed by Rowling before the 2002 auction. Written on “Owl Post” stationery, Rowling briefly relates the history of the chair before adding this parting line: “My nostalgic side is quite sad to see it go, but my back isn’t.”

Fancy placing a bid? Gannon suspects the chair will sell for ‘at least $75,000′, and could easily best $100,000, so we’d best get saving!

Our lives are full of distractions: overheard conversations, the neighbor’s lawnmower, a baby crying in the row behind us, pop-up ads on our computers. Much of the time we can mentally dismiss their presence. But what about when we are reading? I have been studying how people read with printed text versus on digital devices.

The post Concentrate! The challenges of reading onscreen appeared first on OUPblog.

How does one preserve the ephemera of the digital world? In a movement as large as the Arab Spring, with a huge digital imprint that chronicled everything from a government overthrow to the quiet boredom of waiting between events, archivists are faced with the question of how to preserve history. The Internet may seem to provide us with the curse of perfect recall, but the truth is it's far from perfect -- and perhaps there's value in forgetting.

The post Humanity in the digital age appeared first on OUPblog.

My Take on the Diversity Gap in Children’s Literature

I’m really excited to have a feature article in the February 2016 issue of Story Monster’s Ink – a terrific magazine all about children’s books. The topic coincides with Multicultural Children’s Book Day happening on January 27, 2016!

Continue reading Children of Color in Picture Books at Story Quest.

“Scientists confirm that East Antarctica’s biggest glacier is melting from below” – Washington Post

“Alaska’s Glaciers Melt Faster as Climate Change Speeds Up” – Climate Change News

“NW’s melting glaciers, in a word: ‘DISASTROUS’ – Seattle Times

“Melting glaciers blamed for subtle slowing of Earth’s rotation” – Yahoo News

“Earth May Spin Faster as Glaciers Melt” – Discovery News

“How the world’s newest glacier is forming on Washington’s Mouth St. Helens…site of the deadliest volcanic eruption in US history” – Daily Mail. Com

With so many conflicting studies and headlines being announced about glaciers and climate change, how do you know what to believe?

When we learn about the scientific process, the first steps involve asking questions to form a hypothesis and then testing that hypothesis. Some studies are very narrowly focused others are broader, and the results make assumptions based on the findings of the experiment. Because the scientific method is always questioning, the curious must repeatedly confirm that data is accurate and without bias to take the findings as fact.

But…what happens when a scientist has a strong bias toward the outcome? Errors and biases in studies are caught all the time. One of the more famous biased studies in history was Crania Americana by Samuel George Morton. Read more about it here.

Media bias is another reason so many conflicting headlines are reported each day. When a reporter has a story to write they may interview a scientist who has done a study that closely aligns to their angle, or focus on one fact in a much larger study. This is why it is so important to dig deeper into research to find the truth and even conduct studies of your own.

So… Are the glaciers melting? The answer is yes, some glaciers have greatly reduced in size. Here is a time-lapse video of a glacier melting at a rapid pace. 

Are glaciers growing? Yes, there is a new glacier growing into the crater of Mount St. Helens.

Read The Glaciers are Melting! and get the facts that may help you come to your own conclusion!

Chicken Little may have thought the sky was falling but Peter Pika is sure the glaciers are melting and is off to talk to the Mountain Monarch about it. Joined along the way by friends Tammy Ptarmigan, Sally Squirrel, Mandy Marmot, and Harry Hare, they all wonder what will happen to them if the glaciers melt. Where will they live, how will they survive? When Wiley Wolverine tries to trick them, can the Mountain Monarch save them? More importantly, can the Mountain Monarch stop the glaciers from melting?

Doodle by Vicky Lorencen

Because I enjoy eating and living indoors, I have a day job.

I’m in the marketing and communications departments of a regional health system. Part of my job involves media relations. Most weeks, that means interacting with reporters from local television, radio and print media. Recently, we had calls from reporters Cosmo and the Huffington Post, but that was a weird week!

What does all this have to do with you, my little parfait? Well, because I arrange interviews, I also help to prepare the interviewees, many of whom are new to the experience and naturally nervous. Since there may be interviews in your future, I thought why not share these tips with you?

TV interview

• Practice with a friend. Video your interview. Look for what you’re doing
  

  Doodle by Vicky Lorencen

  well and do more of that!

• Look at the interviewer, not the camera.
• Bring a copy of your book with you. Don’t assume the interviewer will have one.
• Don’t wear checks or stripes.
• See tips for radio interviews.

Radio interview

• Smile as you speak.
• Be sure you know how long the interview will be, so you can pace yourself.
• Ask if you can send questions ahead of time. The interviewer may really appreciate it, and you’ll know what to anticipate and how to prepare.
• If you can’t send questions ahead, it’s absolutely okay to ask the interviewer the direction of the interview (is it more about your book, about you, about your writing journey, about advice, about your favorite panini–you just never know).
• Prepare yourself a cheat sheet with answers to anticipated questions, but DO NOT write out every word. Make it more a “grocery list” of prompts. If you create a word for word script, you’ll be too tempted to just read it and you’ll come off sounding stiff even when we all know you are super cool.
• Have a cup of water handy. (A bottle takes too much time to open.)
• Thank the interviewer.

Phone interview

• Use a landline, if available, so you don’t have to worry about your call being dropped mid conversation.
• Try to be relaxed and conversational. Listeners will respond to your personality, not your perfect diction.
• See tips for a radio interview.

For any type of interview

It’s easy to get flustered. Make yourself a cheat sheet with basic information so if your mind goes blank, all you have to do is read–

• The title(s) of your book(s)
• Web site name and address
• How readers can can contact you
• Where your books are available
• Details about the event or signing you’re promoting (date, time, place, etc.)

And finally . . . 

It’s not uncommon for an interviewer to wrap up an interview with a question like, “Is there anything else you’d like to say?”

Think about using this as an opportunity to promote someone else’s book. David Sedaris does this every time he goes on tour for his own newest book. Isn’t that a beautiful, generous gesture? It’s a delightful chance to pay it forward for an author or illustrator who has been especially supportive of you.

Now, if you have an agent, publicist or your publisher’s marketing team advising you, please listen to them and learn. Use my suggestions when/if they seem useful to you. Most of all, no matter how an interview turns out, remember you, my little blueberry scone, are still one of the coolest, most talented people on ten toes.

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Fordham professors write your books, right?” This is often less a question than an assumption and probably the biggest misconception about not just our, but all, university presses.

The post “Fordham professors write your books, right?” appeared first on OUPblog.

For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Thursday, their theme was "#tbt" or "Throwback Thursday" featuring the histories of various presses, some fascinating photographs and artifacts from university press history, and historical context from university press authors on today's concerns.

The post University Press Week blog tour round-up (Thursday) appeared first on OUPblog.

I had settled down with a pint and a ploughman’s at The Wellington in Park Road -- the Friday lunchtime custom of LSU College academic staff -- when Paul Gardner, our convivial HoD, asked casually, if I might be interested in devising an undergraduate course in literary theory. Being young and naïve (it was around 1982), I expressed enthusiasm, and Paul said, as if casually, ‘Could you do it for Monday?’

The post Beginning Theory at 20 appeared first on OUPblog.

For the last few years, the AAUP has organized a University Press blog tour to allow readers to discover the best of university press publishing. On Wednesday, their theme was "Design" featuring interviews with designers, examinations of the evolution of design, and parsing the process itself.

The post University Press Week blog tour (Wednesday) appeared first on OUPblog.

Academic publishing is not as simple as it may appear. University presses such as Oxford and Fordham range from large to small; for-profit publishers such as Wiley and Elsevier must appeal to both academics and shareholders; start-ups such as Academia.edu and WriteLatex are fulfilling smaller services; and niche publishers, such as Hurst, offer tremendous depth and breadth of specific subject areas.

The post Change in publishing: A Q&A with Michael Dwyer appeared first on OUPblog.