Word: oxford
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. E.T. HALL, 77, archaeologist and leading archaeometrist who famously uncovered the Piltdown Man hoax; in Oxford, England. Using X-ray fluorescence, Hall showed that the Piltdown Man's skeleton--once thought to be evolution's "missing link"--had been stained to look fossilized and that the teeth of an orangutan had been filed to appear more human...
...ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK: Simon Winchester goes for arcane subjects. His bestselling "The Professor and the Madman" told the story behind the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. His new book, "The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology" (HarperCollins; August 14) tells the story of William Smith, "whose lifelong obsession with fossils and the strata of rock formations proved to be the foundation for the science of geology." Kirkus adored it, giving it a starred review. "A fluid, fascinating, emotional story of an unlikely genius who created a science." HarperCollins is really behind...
With a giddy Hollywood-induced hope that would have been better suited for a pimple-popping pre-teen than yours truly, I began my info center job and eagerly awaited the special tour filled with 22-to-26-year-old male Oxford students who had jaunted over to the States on holiday and were in desperate need of a guided stroll around fair Harvard. Instead I got, and still get, the belligerent mother of two who won’t accept the fact that there is no super secret formula for admission to the College, or the frantic Hungarian businessman...
...proceed, one generation to the next, through genes and memes. It was the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins who proposed some years ago that, just as genetics has genes, culture must have its own units of transmission, which he called "memes"-ideas of all kinds, images, tunes, games, concepts, movies, books, gestures, all the propagating thoughts that leap from mind to mind and, in our interactive information culture, have become a chaotically boiling universal soup...
...It’s hard to let go of that safe little cab of my truck where I’m queen of the world,” she says. “But my life is moving forward in a different direction. This [program in Oxford] is the bridge...