OUPblog
blog.oup.com · Company blog · on HN since 2008
The blog of Oxford University Press, with articles by authors on science, language, history, philosophy, and culture.
What HN saysHN links it for general-interest explainers, like a piece on eating more DNA and word etymologies, and for context on topics like archive theft.
91HN people shared it
38linked it in comments
67stories submitted
593story points
3 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Kin selection, group selection and altruism: a controversy without end? (2015)4 people · 1 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 2Alzheimer's Disease and Musical Memory2 people · 49 points · first shared 2015 · 10 comments on HN
- 3Who is the ultimate arbiter of meaning?2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 4Are electrons conscious? (2017)2 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 5How New York Beat Crime2 people · 1 points · first shared 2012 · discussion on HN
- 6Unfinished fable sparrows superintelligence2 people · first shared 2017
- 7Sentence Structure for Writers (2017)1 people · 84 points · first shared 2024 · 35 comments on HN
- 8Theories on the etymology of 'strawberry'1 people · 67 points · first shared 2016 · 64 comments on HN
- 9Ancient Greek and Egyptian Interactions1 people · 64 points · first shared 2016 · 12 comments on HN
- 10The dwarfs of our vocabulary1 people · 60 points · first shared 2017 · 16 comments on HN
- 11The Problem of Colour1 people · 58 points · first shared 2017 · 78 comments on HN
- 12Ian Fleming and American intelligence (Part 1) (2011)1 people · 28 points · first shared 2021 · 10 comments on HN
- 13Really big numbers1 people · 26 points · first shared 2017 · 19 comments on HN
- 14The sense and essence of smell1 people · 19 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 15The building blocks of ornithology1 people · 10 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
shakil · 2017-02-21
Work environments aren't meant to be a forum to discuss politically sensitive topics. Would you be able to discuss abortion rights or gay marriage at work? Then why is it so problematic if honor killings are a taboo topic?
Also, what is your interest in honor killings, as opposed to say gun violence? Are more people being killed because of this barbaric custom, or is it because that's what the media and all Islamophobes love to bring up during any discussion of Islam? If you really wanted to educate yourself on the topic you would have easily found a source [1] with contrary information but that would burst the media bubble we are surrounded by in this country
[1] https://blog.oup.com/2014/07/five-important-facts-about-honor-killings…
inglondon · 2016-04-07
Tha simplest and best advice I've read was in an article called 'We should all eat more DNA' [http://blog.oup.com/2016/01/we-should-all-eat-more-dna/].
It follows one simple guideline 'Avoid anything that lacks DNA.'.
steve-howard · 2015-10-13
Found a broader discussion of archive theft here for those interested: http://blog.oup.com/2012/08/difficulty-inside-book-archive-theft-girol…
The basic challenge for the thief is finding something valuable enough to be worth selling, but not so valuable it's obviously hot. Then make sure there are no records it existed (in this case it appears the catalog didn't include the letters) and find somebody trustworthy to sell it to.
I have to agree that the best approach would be to digitize as much as possible, but that might or might not be a tall order for the institutions in question.
thelastgallon · 2026-05-20
Yes, perfectly okay for large companies for billionaires. As long its structured as a corporation, with the super wealthy as the majority owners, have the connections to get federal laws passed to grant monopolies and enable congress insider trading, everything is okay!
Some examples, there are probably hundreds more:
1) Its okay for pharma companies to provide addictive drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sackler_family
2) Coke can use cocaine, or coca leaves, but no one else: https://blog.oup.com/2014/03/coke-cocaine-coca-cola-capitalism-busines…
3) This one is hilarious and an ingenious innovation by current administration -- Ban on CBDC, locking out Fed Govt from providing crypto alternatives
stared · 2026-01-20
There is a nice "all women are queen, literally", https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kOY-vXuAiBA
And a longer text,
https://blog.oup.com/2011/10/wife/
Also, gynecology has the same roots.
ceejayoz · 2025-01-17
Hit pieces aren't a modern invention.
https://blog.oup.com/2014/11/roman-emperor-tiberius-capri-suetonius/
> Stories of this kind were part of the common currency of Roman political discourse. Suetonius devotes similar space to the sexual transgressions of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian – such behaviour is to be expected of a tyrant. The remoteness of the emperor’s residence itself must have fuelled the most lurid imaginations back in Rome.
Suetonius was born in 69 AD; Vitellius was emperor in 69 AD and Claudius was emperor from 41-54. They weren't contemporaries.
gmac · 2024-07-18
Nor sure it's that clear-cut. https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/
eesmith · 2023-10-08
Religion is also a dying system[1][2], yet there are many laws to fight religious discrimination.
[1] "Why is religion suddenly declining?" - https://blog.oup.com/2020/12/why-is-religion-suddenly-declining/
[2] "Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/22/us-churches-closing-re…
jychang · 2023-06-14
Strong disagree.
https://blog.oup.com/2016/11/evolution-human-memory/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-gps-weakens-m...
Navigation memory is the most core type of memory- most other forms of memory evolved later. There’s a reason why GPS usage is correlated with dementia. Human memory actually evolved out of a sense of navigation.
I strongly agree with the commentator who likened the hierarchal folder structure to the physical world, it’s a much more direct mapping of how human memory actually works.
Humans aren’t actually magical AI computers of energy floating in midair, they’re made of physical meat. Even if some abstract concepts (like tags) may make more theoretical sense (I agree with people who say that certain things can be classified in 2 different locations), it may not play to the actual structure and advantages of the human brain.
082349872349872 · 2023-05-24
On the linguistic side, Proto-Indo European does have reconstructed roots for "women and their suitors", but I don't know if we have making out in general or kissing specifically.
cf https://blog.oup.com/2014/09/kiss-word-origin-etymology/
globalise83 · 2023-03-15
Ha! I just learnt something new. Always thought it was desserts with two S's, but seems that my version is a pun that is slipping into general usage: https://blog.oup.com/2007/07/eggcorn/
notRobot · 2022-07-31
Not exactly what you're looking for, but a super interesting article from 2013 from the Oxford University Press's Blog:
The highest dictionary in the land? https://blog.oup.com/2013/06/scotus-marriage-definition-dictionary/
adolph · 2021-12-29
“adroit”
Isn’t that term kind of handist in that suggests lefties lack womanization?
https://blog.oup.com/2010/09/left-hand/
assbuttbuttass · 2021-11-19
For way more than 30 years women have dominated men in the librarian profession
https://blog.oup.com/2011/06/librarian-census/
pbhjpbhj · 2021-08-15
The part two link is broken, they put 11 instead of 12 in the URL, working link: https://blog.oup.com/2011/11/fleming-2/
x0x0 · 2020-12-13
We actually have evidence for this with eg Portugal (where most studies find a decrease in violent crime) and the US, particularly California where we, for the first time, decriminalized the supply chain. There also, there was a fall in crime [1].
Despite the fact that cartels may continue to control human trafficking, etc, it cannot hurt to take away large chunks of their profits.
[1] https://blog.oup.com/2019/07/how-medical-marijuana-hurts-mexican-drug-…
ralphc · 2020-05-22
Ever hear of the urban legends of knocking people out and stealing one of their kidneys? This would make it real.
There's a whole bunch of science fiction based on this, Larry Niven coined the term organlegger:
https://blog.oup.com/2008/02/organlegger/
chrisseaton · 2020-04-13
> What are the laws preventing UPS from delivering to extremely rural areas?
Apparently it's literally illegal for anyone but USPS to put something in your mailbox https://blog.oup.com/2017/07/mailboxes-us-mail/.
renaudg · 2020-01-08
You're just focusing on the wrong metric.
Because coal is so bad in terms of carbon intensity (800 gCO2/kwH), Germany's greenhouse gas emissions figures are still terrible on average.
"Why Aren't Renewables Decreasing Germany's Carbon Emissions?" https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2017/10/10/why-arent-renewable…
"Why solar and wind won’t make much difference to carbon dioxide emissions" https://blog.oup.com/2017/10/solar-wind-energy-carbon-dioxide-emission…
"German electricity was nearly 10 times dirtier than France's in 2016" http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/2/11/german-electricity…
twic · 2019-12-05
There's something about the story that is famiilar to students of modern VC-funded flim-flam:
https://blog.oup.com/2014/04/georges-pierre-des-clozets/
danans · 2019-05-15
> For example, sound [k] changed to [h] from Latin to Germanic, and the Latin word casa transformed into the English house.
The way this is written is incorrect. German is not a daughter of Latin, and the word "house" has a fully understood old Germanic origin [1].
Borrowings from Latin to German starting with the hard c sound retain that sound.
The relationship between the old Germanic and old Latin is that of cousins. The various Proto-Indo-European "k" sounds became "h" in Germanic and retained their "k" pronunciation in Latin.
i.e.
English PIE Latin
hound kyon canis
who kwo- qui
1. https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/house-word-origin-etymology/
tony_cannistra · 2019-02-25
This is a commonly-held misunderstanding! Natural selection doesn't stop acting once you've reproduced.
Characteristics ("traits") which are potentially not helpful for direct reproductive success but have an impact on the success of the group of people you're a part of are conserved through evolution. However, the exact formulation of this idea (known as kin selection or group selection) is still quite controversial [1] among evolutionary biologists.
[1]: https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/
hannasanarion · 2018-09-05
The prologue to Superintelligence was written with just for you. It is available here:
The Unfinished Parable of the Sparrows
https://blog.oup.com/2014/08/unfinished-fable-sparrows-superintelligen…
AlexCoventry · 2018-03-05
Not just that.
> Of course, psychologists often use their research findings to speak about how psychological processes function. But, such inferences represent a basic misinterpretation of our analyses.
> Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology... at the American University of Paris
https://blog.oup.com/2017/08/psychology-silent-crisis/
haberman · 2017-09-11
This seems to make the kin selection vs. group selection controversy even more trivial: https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/kin-group-selection-controversy/
mc32 · 2017-01-25
Oh, what is it they call that, reading history? But if you don't have the time, you can do some searching for yourself. Or, you know, talk to some Russian exiles.
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/21/ivan-the-terrible-cult-s…
[2]http://blog.oup.com/2012/05/russia-putin-elections-power/
chmike · 2016-06-24
Einstein was very lucky that the chief editor of Annalen der Physik was Max Planck [1] who was a really smart and open minded scientist. He would have had a huge red flag I guess. We are missing such types of editors and scientists.
[1] http://blog.oup.com/2015/11/einstein-planck-general-relativity/
kenko · 2015-10-21
Earlier one might have referred to "self-murder": http://blog.oup.com/2013/08/self-murder-killing-suicide-etymology/
refurb · 2013-10-24
This gives a much better summary of the theory...
http://blog.oup.com/2011/11/antibiotics/
tzs · 2012-06-18
Original here: http://blog.oup.com/2012/06/zimring-scientific-american-nyc-beat-crime…
The Mind Hacks post doesn't seem to add anything, or even explain what is going on, so I fail to see any reason to pass through there on the way.