Hiroshima Mon Amour

Philosophy 7 featured the French movie Hiroshima Mon Amour, which of course was not available for us podcast listeners. What was available was the analysis afterwards. One that I enjoyed enormously.

I had seen the film. It may be twenty five years ago, but as the lecture on the film proceeded it all came back to me. The love affair and the complicated communication between the lovers. We analyzed it at the time, but that was high school level and it was struggling with the French more than with the literary and philosophical matter. Yet, enough remained to be refreshed and from there the insights came.

I can applaud my French teacher for letting us taste French literature through this work of Marguerite Duras, but I can also appreciate my German teacher who never did such things. You guys are too young to understand he used to explain. I didn't understand half of it indeed. But then again, what I did understand made huge impression and the experience has been reserved for 25 years for Hubert Dreyfus to build on and expand the podcast enjoyment. It is also a very general recommendation into listening to educational podcasts - never mind what you do not understand, cannot pick up. Whatever you do take with you is what makes the listening worthwhile.

Previously on Philosophy 7:
Existentialism - Philosophy 7

Missing Link with Popper

In this review I am not going to talk too much about the main item in the ninth issue of the Missing Link. It continued the history of the Evolution - Creation divide and delved into the cultural associations with evolution. What is shown is that evolution is either shunned or embraced in the US, for its associations. When it was perceived as something anti-communist, it could be embraced, but when it was perceived as anti-christian, it was shunned. (site, feed, audio)

I'd like to talk about Karl Popper - again. Popper has become part of a consecutive series in this blog, that somehow stirs up many reactions. The Missing Link's host, Elizabeth Green Musselman, begins with Popper. She wishes to elaborate about a remark she made in issue #8 of The Missing Link. Her reaction, for all intents and purposes, addresses what I wrote about it in my review of #8.

Why does Musselman suggest she herself doesn't agree with Popper's views, but does nothing to indicate what her criticism might be? The effect is that the essay is labeled with an alleged naivety before it even starts.

Musselman says she had no intention to denigrate the essays of her students and spends a few words on her criticism to Popper. In her mind, Popper's falsification theory fall short of propelling science as it doesn't deal with paradigms, as shown by Thomas Kuhn. That is a pretty widely held view on Popper and I had it myself, using it in a review I wrote about an issue of the UChannel Podcast. The Popperian Pathway had a lecture of a medical doctor showing the progress in cancer research in the past decades by means of Popper falsification theory. It was here that I myself wrote, that we see a paradigm shift described, but that Popper doesn't address the paradigm shift.

A reader, Rafe Champion from Australia, corrected me on that. He has written several articles and from his website points to a range of sources that intend to show Popper has addressed the issue. Popper is not just about falsification, which is indeed merely an epistemological technique, but extended his writings to the realm of how in more general terms scientific theory and research should be conducted. What seems to be ignored among writers in logic of science are the writings of Popper about MRP's, Metaphysical Research Programs.

So, the last word has not been said. And the subject continues to give rise to heated debate.

Previously about Popper:
An evolved controversy,
The Popperian Pathway,
Researching Bush,
Shrinkrapradio on Freud and Jung,
Gravitational waves.

More about The Missing Link on this blog:
An evolved controversy,
Time's Arrow,
On Time and on Counting - The Missing Link,
Strength in Numbers,
Constant Companions.

Engines of our Ingenuity

Occasionally I pick up an episode of the podcast Engines of Our Ingenuity. This is a series of very short podcasts on the technologies of man. Speakers from the University of Houston in Texas speak their light monologue in issues that last less than 5 minutes.

I was surprised to find Hebrew and Yiddish as a subject recently. However, Hebrew is of course a in many ways a constructed language even if it is built on the age old foundations of a natural language. With the addition of Yiddish and an antiquarian find of the speaker, the point was built. His book discovery were two books from the 40s, one teaching Yiddish and the other Hebrew. The connection this essay makes with human constructions (loosely this fits in the technology framework of subjects) is how both languages were kept with the intention to help Jewish survival. One (Yiddish) through its cosmopolitanism and the other with its claim to re-vitalization.

In a 4 minute podcast, this opens up a can of worms, for those who are familiar with the subject. I am currently reading Amos Oz's A Tale of Love and Darkness and he is making this point with considerable irony and a sense of tragedy. The Jews of Europe in the early twentieth century were the first true Europeans, way before the gentile Europeans were to re-invent this idea and build a peaceful Europe and a European Union. The survivors wound up in Israel. Their cosmopolitanism actually opposes the use of Yiddish, as it has a provincial shtetl taste to it and embraced the newly living Hebrew, but got entrenched in a new kind of Israeli provincialism. Many of these old cosmopolitans, like the characters in Oz's book, do not so well in Israel. Not as well as they did in Europe.

There is this constant yearning for Europe. If the new Hebrews do not yearn for Europe, they yearn for the US. The promised land, for many, is not here with the Holy Places. This the Engines of Ingenuity doesn't fathom, but begins to point out, with the simple comparison of Yiddish and Hebrew.

Other recent issues that I recommend are Building Railroads (way before airlines and freeways, the tracks made the world small) and Tour de France (how we reduce man to a machine and what is gained and what may be lost by the example of the Tour de France).

An earlier review, in February, about Engines of our Ingenuity.

Making of the Modern World - UCSD

MMW was my first choice from the various lecture series UC San Diego has put on line as podcasts. MMW stands for Making of the Modern World and it is a lengthy series of history lectures presented at the Roosevelt College. It is cut into numbered consecutive series of which MMW 3 is the current.

MMW 3, is subtitled, Medieval Heritage and it consists of two different series delivered by two different lecturers. One by Matthew Herbst and one by Charles Chamberlain. I am still trying to figure out how they have divided the Medieval Heritage between themselves, but I have heard enough to know we have a great history podcast on our hands. Chamberlain's first two lectures did not make it to the podcast, but with the third lecture we dive head first into the roots of Christianity - viewed from within. Herbst's first lecture I advise to skip as it is too much of an overview and too much of administrative deliberation for the students, but with lecture two, we kick off into the hellenistic world and prepare for the roots of Christianity, but more from a state and religion perspective.

Here we see an approach which surprised me as to what I expected under the title Medieval Heritage. For me, Medieval stands for Middle Ages and I roughly place that between 500 and 1500 AD. The San Diego history course on the other hand, kicks off 100 BC and projects to continue till 1200 AD. Starting this early also shifts geographically the attention to the Middle East. Presumably, attention will shift westwards, as this is the direction in which the Modern World developed.

Apart from this lack of framework, which will keep the listener somewhat at a loss in the beginning, the series kicks off to a very promising start. One of the great advantages for me: it takes on the foundations of Christianity and the political and cultural developments that made Europe into the Renaissance, where Berkeley's History 5 starts.

Previously on UC San Diego's podcast courses.

UC San Diego - podcasts

Many academic institutions have found their way to iTunes U, but I have an additional appreciation for those who also disclose their content in the straightforward way Berkeley does on their Webcast site. To be a podcast listener, does not have to imply one is an iTunes user. For one, I find browsing iTunes U, or the iTunes podcast directory too bothersome. Too much loading time, too many graphics, too much of what I do not need and that takes up time and other resources. Alternately I can go to the simple list of courses at Berkeley and have it all in one instant, in one glance (or two).

The university which has follow suit, as I discovered this week, is the University of California San Diego (UCSD). Just as Berkeley, they have listed the current courses and you can directly subscribe or listen from the list. A couple of courses have immediately caught my eye: Medieval heritage, Language, The Planets, Twentieth-Century East Asia, Languages & Cultures/America and Introduction to Western Music - to name a handful.



Later this month you will be seeing the first reviews.

Conscious Living

Yet another fascinating issue of Shrink Rap Radio, should not scare you off, if you think it is about death. As a side note, there have been more podcasts in the series about death and they were quite good as well. This particular one, Conscious Living and Dying, is a case in point.

The best lesson to learn is that confrontation with death, not just one's own impending death or a near death experience, can mean a very positive turn for one's life. This is where the title inherits the conscious living element. Shrink Rap Radio's guest Annamaria Hemingway makes an convincing claim to this effect.

In modern life, death is much less near and people are less than ever capable of dealing with it. In fact, however, death can be a positive impulse. Death makes the true important elements in life much more clear, rather than the sometimes imposing, but basically diverting day to day worries and drives.

Once again, David van Nuys has pulled off a great show in this lengthy and very wonderful series. Shrink Rap Radio is one of the best podcasts around. It does so much more than bring psychology to an audience that covers professionals as much as interested amateurs. This podcast also shows what podcasts in general have to offer: on-demand talk radio of the very best quality.

All previous reviews of Shrink Rap Radio:
The Happiness Hypothesis,
Sign language for babies,
Doll Work and what with the brain,
Confronting Death (and more),
Process Work,
Authoritarianism,
Leadership and AI,
Shrinkrapradio at the San Francisco Exploratorium,
Dysfunctional personalities in the workplace,
Adventure Therapy,
Maternal bonding,
Materialism and its dragging feet,
Friendship in Shrinkrapradio,
At the New Media Expo,
David van Nuys invited by students,
The Commercialization of Childhood,
Bush on the couch,
David Lukoff,
War and the Soul,
The Dream interview method,
The Bitch, the Crone, and the Harlot,
Jerry and Dave discuss the podcast in its 100th issue,
Dr. Dave and the Zodiac,
Freud and Jung,
Dreaming as a Bridge Between Religion and Science,
Stanley Krippner,
Alan Siegel,
Mark Blagrove,
Curtiss Hoffman,
Dream language,
The Secret Spiritual World of Children.