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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Forgotten books and postwar Jewish identity

In recent years, Americans have reckoned with a rise in antisemitism. Since the 2016 presidential election, antisemitism exploded online and entered the mainstream of American politics, with the 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue marking the deadliest attack on American Jews.

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The rising power paradigm and India’s 2024 general elections

India, the world’s largest democracy, is holding its national elections over a six-week period starting 19 April. The elections to the 543-member lower house of the parliament (Lok Sabha) with an electorate, numbering 968 million eligible voters, assumes critical importance as India is going through both internal and external changes that are heavily linked to its rising power aspirations and achievements.

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Do American family names make sense?

Do names really mean anything, even when they seem to? Individuals in present day America called Smith, Jackson, Washington, or Redhead are not usually smiths, sons of Jack, residents in Washington, or red-haired.

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From “frog” to “toad”

I did not intend to write an essay about toad, because a detailed entry on this word can be found in An Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology (2008), but a letter came from our correspondent wondering whether the etymology of toad is comparable with that of frog (the subject of the previous two posts), and the most recent comment also deals with both creatures.

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Understanding the EU’s Law Enforcement Directive

If you ask an average European if they may request Google or Facebook to delete their data, they are likely to refer to the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They are also likely to turn to a Data Protection Authority (DPA) or even directly to the domestic courts for that matter.

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Society was to blame for the letters, not twisted psychologies

In complex ways, social inequalities create the conditions for people to feel that writing anonymously might be useful for them. On top of this, social crises create anxious contexts, when the receipt of a threatening, obscene, or libellous anonymous letter might seem especially hazardous.

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Jonah and genre [long read]

Reading a piece of writing—from instruction manual, to sports page, to Op-Ed piece—according to its genre is something we do so naturally that it seems odd to even talk about it. Indeed, the very phrase “reading according to genre” sounds odd itself, entirely too formal, perhaps suitable for some English or Comparative Literature class, but hardly something that normal people do when reading normal things on an everyday basis.

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Philosophers don’t often write about the heart

The Heart and Its Attitudes illuminates interpersonal phenomena that are as local and commonplace as heartfelt connections and their rupture between friends and lovers, on the one hand, or as nationally or internationally significant as the emotional injuries of racial and gender oppression and war, on the other.  It is a work of philosophy that aims for rigor and analytical depth, but one that is unusual in its relevance to so much of ordinary life.

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some type of way book cover

Pay attention to your children

You’ve probably been ignoring your children. This isn’t simply you not paying attention to them because you’re distracted or need to do something.

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An etymological plague of frogs

Last week, I discussed a few suggestions about the origin of the English word frog. Unfortunately, I made two mistakes in the Greek name of this animal. My negligence is puzzling, because the play by Aristophanes lay open near my computer.

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Is humanity a passing phase in evolution of intelligence and civilisation?

In light of the recent spectacular developments in artificial intelligence (AI), questions are now being asked about whether AI could present a danger to humanity. Can AI take over from us? Is humanity a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence and civilisation? Let’s look at these questions from the long-term evolutionary perspective.

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The hidden toll of war

During war, the news media often focus on civilian injuries and deaths due to explosive weapons. But the indirect health impacts of war among civilians occur more frequently—often out of sight and out of mind.

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England and Egypt in the early middle ages: the papal connection

When the Venerable Bede (d. 735) looked out from his Tyneside monastery across the North Sea, over the harbour at Jarrow Slake to which ships brought communications, wares, and human traffic from Europe and the Mediterranean—how then did he picture Rome and the papacy, the city and institution he thought so central to English and even world history? His grasp of its visual culture cannot have been great. We know that Bede never saw Rome (in fact, he never saw any city or town). Our usual reference points of its basilicas, shrines, walls and mosaics—indeed, its sheer urban and suburban mass—cannot have meant much to him.

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Thinking disobediently?

A person who “thinks disobediently” can be invigorating, maddening, or both. The life and writings of Henry David Thoreau have provoked just such mixed reactions over time, scorned by some; cherished by others. What seems bracingly invigorating can also seem an off-putting mannerism.

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