Playing pretend
Tara Brabazon argues that popularising serious ideas enlightens no one
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Stars of wonder
From nativity scenes to Apollo 8 and Beagle 2, our eternal fascination with the heavens is never greater than at Christmas, recounts Colin Pillinger
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Cranfield University - Pakistani v-cs join the debate
Fourteen vice-chancellors from universities across Pakistan have visited Cranfield University's Bedfordshire campus to take part in a debate about global higher education. The visit was part of a ten...
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Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results, 2008
As the findings of the final research assessment exercise are released, Times Higher Education has devised tables of excellence to rank institutions according to their subject successes and their...
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Festive faux pas
Gloria Monday wonders about the dean’s motives in choosing the evening of the RAE results day for his annual Christmas party
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Read this T-shirt first
At a time when writing on technology and the future is banal, Tara Brabazon discovers a new source of trenchant critical commentary
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We Saw Spain Die: Foreign Correspondents in the Spanish Civil War
Despite the bad press, journalists played an important role in the conflict, says Julius Ruiz
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Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen
In Britain in 1914, the stern and imposing figure of Field Marshal Lord Kitchener pointed a finger at young men, telling them, peremptorily: "Your country needs YOU." In the US in 1917, Uncle Sam...
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Top 10 Academic Bestsellers: blackwell.co.uk
1. Oxymoronica: Paradoxical Wit and Wisdom by Mardy Grothe. HarperCollins, £10.99. ISBN 97800072810082. Clinical Sports Medicine by Peter Brukner and Karim Khan. McGraw-Hill, £54.91. ISBN...
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Patronizing the Arts
The relationship between creatives and their backers can be fraught, discovers Sally Feldman
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Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age
As Brian Ladd's introduction tells us, autophobia is "an obscure psychiatric diagnosis of 'fear of oneself'". Ladd justifies his use of the term to indicate fear or hatred of cars on the basis that...
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Book of the week - Thinking Popular Culture
In the cultural jungle, one person fights the good fight, finds Fred Inglis
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The week in books
Thomas Beecham: An Obsession with Music by John Lucas, emeritus professor of English, Nottingham Trent University. Boydell Press, £25.00, ISBN 9781843834021"The Beecham story is not new, but so much...
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Diamonds, Dispossession and Democracy in Botswana
Joanna Lewis on the riches that cast a shadow over an African nation's once-bright future
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The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption
Daniel Herwitz asks some fascinating questions. What makes a star an icon? Why does the public create and consume iconic figures? Caught between transcendence and trauma, they lead a double existence...