Heads-up for 8 September 2010

Elucidations: A University of Chicago Podcast
Brian Leiter discusses religious toleration
In this episode, Brian Leiter considers whether claims of religious conscience--as opposed to claims of other matters of conscience--should be given special status under the law.
(review, feed)

TED Talks
Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
(review, feed)


History 5, 001|Fall 2010 UC Berkeley
Lecture 4 by Thomas W. LAQUEUR: New Worlds, New Peoples, New Goods
The period 1450-1550 witnesses a radical re-conceptualization of the place of "man" in
the cosmos and the place of Europe and Europeans on the earth. Worlds unknown to any ancient civilization came under the European sway radically altering their ways of being and that of the Europeans.
Europe began in this period its rise to world dominance; Europeans came to regard themselves as the center of a world, which they could, and indeed had a right to, dominate. These claims, however, produced powerful and subtle voice, which questioned the assumption on which these claims were based. The "new" world thus consolidated European peoples sense of themselves as uniquely civilized at the same time as it provided evidence which belies that claim.
A new world economy based on new sorts of desire began to develop in this period. It was dependent on African slavery and would become more so in the centuries that followed. Europe is on the brink of its extraordinary dominance of a world economy, which it is in the process of creating.
(review, feed)

Ciencia y Genios
Antoine y Marie Anne Lavoisier, una pareja con química.
El final de la vida de Antoine Laurent Lavoisier es una de las páginas más tristes de la historia de la ciencia. El llamado “Padre de la Química Moderna” murió guillotinado en 1794. Junto a él, compartió su vida científica y participó activamente en sus logros, su esposa Marie Anne. Aunque es poco conocida, algunos la consideran como la “Madre de la Química moderna”. Les invitamos a escuchar la vida de Antoine y a leer la contribución de Marie Anne en la información complementaria.
(review, feed)

Rear Vision
Remembering 9/11
Rear Vision visits several 9/11 memorials and exhibits in New York, as Americans prepare to mark the ninth anniversary of terrorist attacks that still reverberate in unpredictable ways in the political life of both the city and the nation beyond.
(review, feed)

NPR Fresh Air
1) Journalist Lawrence Wright's 'Trip To Al-Qaeda' 2) Maybe We All Need Some 'Sensitivity' Training
(review, feed)

Geography C110, Interdisciplinary Studies Field Maj C101, 001|Fall 2010 UC Berkeley
Lecture 4: Capitalism Unleashed: Accumulation, Labor, Nature and Technology by Richard A. WALKER
(review, feed)

Heidegger in podcast - news

About half a year ago I wrote a post about where to find material on Heidegger in podcast and this post turned out to be, if not the cause for controversy then at least to a lot of attention - it is still one of the best visited pages on the blog.

I struck up a short exchange with Nigel Warburton of Philosophy Bites who kicked off on Twitter by tweeting: Heidegger - too foggy, pretentious & obscure as topic for PB? Possibly. Anne is a Man thinks not. Although I have a hard time understanding Heidegger, I would not dare to call him foggy, pretentious and obscure. I figure, even if Warburton thinks so and has good reason and authority to that effect, it would suit to a podcast like Philosophy Bites to help us on the way.

Until then, we might give yet another try to Berkeley's Philosophy 6 the course in which Hubert Dreyfus once again will teach about "Man, God, and Society in Western Literature" which goes from the Odyssey to Moby Dick and which has Heidegger's view on being in mind (feed). When I listened to the first lecture in the course, I learned that it has turned into a book that is to be published soon: All Things Shining, by Hubert Drefuys and Sean Dorrance Kelly.

The other author, Sean Kelly, used to be Dreyfus's right hand in the course. He has moved on to become a professor at Harvard and there he offers his own course on Heidegger which can be had as a podcast (feed). Although Dreyfus has his good points, Kelly seems to be easier to follow and I enjoyed the first lesson in the series and for the first time when I tried to get some Heidegger I actually managed to learn something; how things can become transparent when we use them well.

Other podcast sources on Heidegger:
Entitled Opinions - conversation,
J Drabinsky - university course,
Dichter und Denker in Freiburg - lecture (in German).