Met voebele gaat het hart in twee (1)

Mijn vriend Oren nam me ooit mee naar een wedstrijd tussen Maccabi Tel-Aviv en Ajax in de Champions League, maar dat leverde geen echte tweestrijd in me op. Ajax blijft toch de club van mijn hart, maar hoe zal het vanavond gaan wanneer de nationale elftallen van Nederland en Israel elkaar ontmoeten op het niveau van het EK onder 21?

Over een uurtje begint de wedstrijd. Itamar heeft beloofd om met me te kijken, al heeft hij wel een DVD van Shrek in de aanslag, dus dat blijft afwachten...

Ik weet niet op voorhand voor wie ik kan zijn. Ik geloof dat mijn nationale affiniteiten meer richting Israel gaan, maar jongens als het om voetbal gaat... Ontrouw zijn aan Oranje? Dat is niet zomaar gedaan. Dit loyaliteitsconflict fascineert me misschien nog wel meer dan de wedstrijd. Na deze confrontatie kan ik weer gewoon voor allebei zijn. Maar hoe zal het zijn om ze tegenover elkaar te hebben? Twee keer een volkslied mee hummen -- wanneer gaat het hart het hardst tekeer? Ik zal er later kond van doen. Ik beloof het.

Shrinkrapradio meets Stanley Krippner

Dr. David van Nuys of Shrinkrapradio has interviewed Stanley Krippner in show #30 and did so again in the latest edition of his podcast, #95. We continue discussing dreams, a subject that has Dr. Dave's special interest anyway, but the latest series of shows are intentionally all on dreams and dream research. David van Nuys is building up to the Dream Research conference in Sonoma State University by the end of June.

There are three questions that for me stand out in the interview. First Krippner discusses why we dream. Some of the explanations he gives why evolution has supported the development of REM sleep and consecutive dreaming are less convincing to me (the whimpering baby has a better chance of survival), but it sure is informative and necessary to discuss. Together what with other guests of Shrinkrapradio have said, one definitely gets the impression that dreaming naturally comes with having a brain.

The next item on the agenda, in my opinion, delivers the most interesting part of the interview. Krippner gives his view on the contributions to the understanding of dreams of the founding fathers in the field. He discusses Freud, Jung and Adler. Not only does he indicate where these theoreticians differ, Krippner also makes in inventory of where they were right and where they erred.

The next issue that stands out is the subject of scientific research. Krippner shows several methodologies that allow for serious scientific study of tough issues such as telepathy and premonition in dreams. It is intriguing that such subjects that from a skeptical standpoint are hardly worth serious studying could be subjected to methodical observation. What I missed however, is some kind of indication what those studies actually try to show, apart from statistical correlation.

I wonder what the observations are teaching us, if statistics show telepathy and premonition occurring with higher than statistical chance? Wouldn't we need some working theory that intends to explain and predict those occurrences? I do not hear Dr. Stanley Krippner state anything in the way of such a theory.

Sjolem

Toen ik klein was was er een ritueel op het schoolplein om ruzies bij te leggen. Het heette 'vrede'. In een kring stapte je op je tegenstander af en vroeg 'wil je vrede' en het antwoord werd geacht bevestigend te zijn. Vervolgens schudde je elkaar de hand onder het gelijktijdig uitspreken van het woord 'vrede'. Dit gebeurde ook binnen de kring, waardoor de kinderen in de kring een soort functie als getuigen kregen.
In Israel hebben de kinderen iets dergelijks. Als je ruzie hebt, ben je 'broges' en om die situatie te veranderen is er 'sjolem' nodig. De twee die 'broges' zijn haken elkaars pink in en schudden op die manier de hand en verklaren 'sjolem'. Ik weet niet of er getuigen vereist zijn.

Nu een vertaling van het stukje dat Rachel in het Hebreeuws schreef:

Oded en Itamar zijn dikke vrienden sinds het begin van de kleuterschool. Gisteren kwam Itamar terug van school en toonde ons een afdruk van tanden op zijn rug. Hij vertelde dat Oded hem achtervolgd had op school, hem geprobeerd had te slaan en hem gebeten had. 'Waarom', vroegen wij. 'Ik weet het niet', antwoordde Itamar. 'Wat heb je gedaan?' 'Ik heb de juf geroepen en Lior en Ofir hebben me beschermd.'
Vandaag vertelde Itamar mij dat hij en Oded sjolem hebben gemaakt. 'Hoe dat,' vroeg ik. 'Ik heb hem gezegd dat ik alweer sjolem met hem ben en hij heeft gezegd dat hij sjolem met mij is.' 'Waarom heb je sjolem met hem gemaakt, Itamar?' 'Zodat hij me niet meer zou slaan.'

Siegfried Sassoon -- In Our Time

In Our Time discussed Siegfried Sassoon. I know him from my First World War Poetry. Together with Edmund Blunden, Wilfred Owen and of course John 'In Flander's Fields' McCrae. I was into First World War History and First World War Poetry before I was into Judaism -- hence missing out on the Jewish last name: Sassoon.


In Our Time briefly touches it. Sassoon's father was Jewish, descendent of wealthy mizrachi merchants from Bagdad, Persia and Bombay.

The podcast is not to be discussed but rather to be listened to. Sassoon had the luck -- if it were luck -- to survive the trenches and produce more literature than just Trench Literature. Melvyn Bragg's guests seem to suggest his Trench Poetry was not his best, though it was certainly very good. I do not know. I will always stay fond of the Trench Literature, although fond is a bit of an awkward word in this respect.

Apart from the English writers there are also the French and the Germans, among whom Erich Maria Remarque has a special place in my heart. But we started with Sassoon, so let us close with a few lines of his...

The rank stench of those bodies haunts me still
And I remember things I'd best forget.

Nukes! -- Pffp podcast

I am now at about one third through the Physics for future presidents series of the fall 2006, by Richard A. Muller (photo). The series of spring 2007 is also already on line, but since I had started the 2006 course already and the 2007 one seems to follow the same lines, I'll just stick with 2006. Maybe it will make me a president, half a year earlier, who knows.

This descriptive course in physics has a very good didactic structure. Even though it is supposed to be a total immersion course and you are indeed bumping into jargon right from the start, way before all terms begin to make sense, the lectures nevertheless follow a neatly designed path that angles Physics from one subject (energy and power) and step by step adds more to it. From energy and power, we are taken to atoms and heat, which brings us consecutively to gravity, satellites, radioactivity and by one third I have reached nukes. Even though I was a Physics drop-out ages ago, I have no trouble following. Quite to the contrary, I am gripped.

In the early nineteen eighties, when I was at secondary school, I dropped out of Physics class, missing out on obtaining a good understanding of radioactivity and nuclear energy and weapons. Yet, at the same time, just as everybody else, I was extremely concerned with nuclear energy and even more so, with nuclear weapons. These seemed contagious, dirty and destructive. So it was not hard to be against them, even though I never basically understood the contagiousness, the environmental dangers and the workings of the weapons. Consequently a whole lot of irrational anxiety based the rejection of nuclear energy and nuclear weaponry.

In Pffp, Professor Muller has succeeded in taking me by the hand and making this subject (and more!) very clear. The immediate result is a much better understanding of radioactivity, its relation to cancer and of nukes. There is still enough to remain worried about, but at least the irrational anxieties made place for knowledge based concerns. You still get cancer from radiation, but at least I can tell the dangerous radiation from the not so dangerous and fathom the relation between doses and increase of chance it causes cancer. Enough to know, my dentist is taking the right precautions when X-raying my teeth and the watch that glows in the dark is not dangerous.

On the subject of nukes, the cold war in 1980 has been replaced with post 9/11 war on terror. We no longer fear the nuclear confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, but rather terrorists with nukes. Richard Muller has a nice build up. Do terrorists have uranium and plutonium? They probably do. Can they build a nuke? They probably can. Am I worried? A bit, but no, not really. Why?
For a uranium bomb, one needs uranium-235 which is extremely hard to come by. Plutonium for a plutonium bomb is easier to come by, but the design of a uranium bomb wouldn't work and the construction of a plutonium bomb on the other hand is extremely difficult. Hence, chances are in fact slim, terrorists have working nukes.

I am glad some of my misconceptions I had to walk around with for nearly 30 years have been cleared. I am not nearly a president yet, but I am more of a physicist than I ever was.

Special acclaim for Bob Packett

Today I sat down and imagined someone would turn to me for advice on how to make an educational podcast. I am not a podcaster, so obviously the advice would be the advice from the listener's perspective. What makes for a good informative podcast? In a way, that is what I write about in all those reviews, but the imaginary aspiring podcaster seeking my advice, needed something more general. He needed pointers, not just examples.

It caused me to look at my podcast playlist again and evaluate with different terms. Here it is where I noticed that I keep very few podcasts that are pure monologues. I know there are a lot of those out there, because I try new podcasts all the time, but it suddenly struck me that those are the first I discard. It so turns out that the monologue is the hardest way of keeping someone's attention and pass the information. The worst kind of effort, I find, are those where the host actually has a transcript and reads out the monologue. Even if this doesn't turn out as rather monotonous droning, it comes out as a rather studied and artificially toned speech. It is either lulling or too intrusive, nearly irritating and therefore distracting either way.

The alternative for a monologue podcast is the impromptu, conversational tone which is produced by those who are not following a transcript but rather an outline with notes. This is, in my experience, better than the read aloud version, but is very delicate on the listener's attention as well. If the speaker is easy to follow he becomes too obvious, too transparent and I tend to impatiently ask for getting to the point and move on. Mostly the podcaster is harder to follow, but then the speaker could be too peculiar, too distracted on tangents, too much of many things he would perform better on, if only he'd have an audience in front of him, to guide him on whether he must pace up or slow down, add an example, or get to the point. In short, the monologue podcaster is vulnerable because of the lack of instant feedback.

Indeed, many of the podcasts I stick with have an built-in feedback. Many are recorded lectures, others are interviews and some are panel discussions. It appears to me, people speak better when they have instant feedback. They get better with intonation, with speed, with going in circles or getting to the point, with adding another example or closing off. It also strikes me that with a mix of voices there is more diversity in sounds thus making it easier to stay focussed.

So, my advice to the podcaster, also if he is not necessarily going into educational podcasting, is to make the show with a team. Have several people on the show and have them talk to each other. Because if you are on your own, you have to perform without any feedback and it takes enormous talent to blindly take the listener by the hand and keep him with you. It made me realize I know only of one podcast that sticks out and that will not leave my playlist which is a pure monologue and that is History according to Bob. Professor Bob Packett turns out to have that very rare talent of knowing how to tell the story and keep you listening tightly, without getting feedback in real time.