Yale Classical - this is not a podcast review

The Open Courses on Yale are not brought as a podcast. You will have to use other means than a podcatcher to download the episodes. I import them into iTunes as music and then alter the file settings to those of podcasts, which most importantly is setting 'remember playback position'. Many courses this semester and in others, are very interesting on face value. The one that I picked up first and I wish to review here is Donald Kagan's Introduction to Ancient Greek History.

An initial snag in the course is Kagan's throat condition. He coughs and scrapes and rattles so frequently, unable to clear his throat, especially in the first lectures, it nearly put me off. After nine lectures this has either nearly died down, or I have grown so used to it and become so engaged, I am hooked. There is still lots to come, but even at this early stage into the history, I have had so many questions answered and so many new things learned, the course has become extremely rewarding.

Simply irresistible is Kagan's self-acclaimed inclination towards the 'higher naïveté', which means he accepts the factual possibility of anything mentioned in the old sources about Ancient Greek history, as long is it is not supernatural, or falsified by archeology. It turns the story of the Greeks into a narrative full of imagination and wonder. And while wondering, asking for example how the Greeks could have acquired their economic and cultural wealth and how hoplite warfare would have been, Kagan delivers answers. His answers, he credits specifically to Victor Davis Hanson, which is exciting for those who have heard Hanson in other podcasts as well as for the charm of Kagan - both naive, great story-teller as well as modest, who wouldn't love a professor like that?

More Yale:
Game theory - Yale online course review.

More Classics:
Political Science - UCLA Podcast review,
Some things Classical,
Roman History in podcasts,
Berkeley's History 4A.

More Victor Davis Hanson:
Hardcore History.

Enver Pasha - veertien achttien podcast recensie

In de uiterst verdienstelijke serie over de Eerste Wereldoorlog, de podcast Veertien Achttien, geeft Tom Tacken in de laatste aflevering aandacht aan de Turkse bijdrage in die oorlog. Met alle aandacht voor het Westelijke Front heeft het oosten nogal eens last van onderbelichting. Als het al aan de orde komt, is het in de relevantie van het oostelijke front op het westelijke. Met andere woorden: zolang de Russen de tegenstanders in het oosten nog bezighouden, kunnen ze in het Westen niet domineren.

Dan gaat het vooral over Duitsland. Dat er ook nog meer zuidelijk oorlog werd gevoerd, kwam al aan het licht in de aflevering over Oskar Potiorek, zodat we iets meer over Servie en Oostenrijk te weten komen - daar was het ten slotte allemaal begonnen. De Turken maakten ook deel uit van de centrale alliantie en door middel van een biografie van Enver Pasha komt de rol van het Ottomaanse Rijk in de oorlog ook eens voor het voetlicht.

Het is achteraf bezien vooral een verhaal van een rappe modernisering van de Turkse staat. Het is een vergeten voorloper van de dekolonialisering, waarbij de laatste hand werd gelegd aan de ontmanteling van het Ottomaanse Imperium en het Turkije begint dat we vandaag nog kennen. Enver Pasha is niet de laatste in die ontwikkeling. Hooguit de wat ongemakkelijke brug van Sultanaat, naar Kemal Ataturk's gelatiniseerde democratie.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
Veertien Achttien premium,
Hindenburg,
Oskar Potiorek,
Kato Takaaki,
Maximilian von Spee.

Whither the Middle East - Dennis Ross on UChannel

While the war has escalated around Gaza and the Middle-East seems less stable than ever, it is refreshing to hear a relatively old podcast on the subject, that is from December 10th before the IDF offensive started. It is a talk by Dennis Ross delivered at Princeton and published in the UChannel Podcast series. Only yesterday another one came out, which I still have to listen to (with Martin Indyk, Richard Haass and Gary Samore)

Ross talks about the diplomatic possibilities in the Middle-East, getting into the details with regards to Iran and to the Israeli-Arab conflict. I found it very interesting to hear a case being made for diplomacy, without being starkly anti-war, nor being blissfully optimistic. Ross seems to soberly paint the various options there are. His leading principle is that of leverage. With leverage you can pressure anybody towards where you want them to go and the point is to see where you can have some leverage. The US has little leverage on Iran, but China and Russia have and and through Saudi-Arabia, the US can put pressure on China - for example. Along this kind of chain thinking, Ross proposes way for diplomacy, rather than military to steer Iran away from its nuclear program.

Similarly, and perhaps not by chance also with an important role for Saudi-Arabia, Ross proposes approaches for Israel. However, here he also introduces another dimension: the deepest lack of confidence between Israel and the Palestinians, most notably Hamas. Ross calls it 'disbelief', which in his view goes further than just distrust. The situation of disbelief is the conviction that there is absolutely no partner for diplomacy, no basis for talk whatsoever. Hence, the start Ross proposes, is to deal with that psychology of the conflict and take measures that bring the populace to reevaluate its beliefs and hopefully draw different conclusions. What the current war, however, does for disbelief is dishearteningly predictable.

More UChannel:
Kafka comes to America,
Lord Lawson and the alarmists,
Terror and Consent,
Nudge: improving decisions and behavior,
Hot, Flat and Crowded.

More Israel:
Desiring Walls,
Gabriela Shalev,
UCLA Israel Studies,
The Arab-Israeli conflict,
UCSD MMW 6.

Angela Merkel (Angie) in Volkis Stimme

If you subscribe to the feed of Volkis Stimme right now, you will be offered the last episode of this comedy news podcast. This chapter contains Volkis retrospect on 2008 and this means he is not producing his news items but rather converses with a rather exceptional guest in the studio.

The guest on the podcast is nobody less than Frau Dr. Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel. With her host Volker Klärchen discusses the past year of 2008. There are many great achievements for Merkel to mark and this gives for a very close atmosphere. The chanceler surprises us by allowing Klärchen to thaw a bit and address her less formally. For as long as it lasts.

Klärchen's podcast is released every weekend promptly and usually marks for me the beginning of the working week. Every Sunday morning, when life has started too soon and it is hard to shake off the relaxation of the weekend and pick up working life where I left off before the weekend, Volkis Stimme manages to cheer me up and start the week with a smile on my face. And Angie Merkel, she made me laugh out loud. The year went out with a bang. Einfach Klasse!

Previously about Volkis Stimme:
Volkis Stimme - German podcast review.

Kafka to America - UChannel Podcast Review

I have both legal and sociological training. I usually take a sociologist's perspective on things as, apparently, that is the mode of thinking and viewing that comes to me naturally. However, I can easily switch to legal, just as I can switch between languages and that should come as no surprise. The sociological view of a profession and of training provides ample explanation: when you learn law, you do not only acquire the knowledge of the trade, you are also initiated into the trade, that is, educated in the social norms and the cognitive logic of the field. The norms are: the rule of law, due process and fair trial.

And so this is where I stand on the subject of detaining terrorism suspects indefinitely at the discretion of the administration, without the suspect ever being allowed access to one or more of the following: a charge, a process or a defense attorney. Even if you have only weakly internalized the principles of the rule of law, due process and fair trial your hairs must stand on end. If at all, any remote case can be made for this policy, it is through the bleakest utilitarianism, the mechanics of the world should be such that these draconian measures are the only means to the end. Even such is case is feeble to say the least; the means are not the only means and the chosen means are not the least intrusive means. Hence, this is such a shut case, I find it mind-boggling we need to discuss it at all.

Consequently, with Steve Wax's lecture at UChannel Podcast in which he discusses specific cases he has handled as a defense attorney in which individuals were held under these foul measures and he eventually could take the cases to court, my stand is a slightly abashed: this is an open and shut case, what is there to say? Wax uses the title Kafka Comes to America: Fighting for Justice in the War on Terror to underline this part of this sentiment. Yet, he apparently feels he must persuade the audience emotionally and embarks on a lecture that has nothing to do with Kafka or the indignation any true legalist should feel. He produces the melodramatic argument that possibly is needed for a jury and a TV audience, but lacks the sharpness of a true legal argument. This only becomes visible when the question and answer round commences and the first response from the audience is someone accusing him of murder and conspiracy against the US. Only then Wax exacts the cool refutation that was needed in the first place: the execution of state power was deemed to be in need of procedural monitoring and it is only this that I aim to enable.

If you are interested what exact excesses unmonitored state power exerts, given the chance, Wax's lecture is very instructive. If you are remotely like Kafka, or convinced a priori by the fundamental value of the rule of law, due process and fair trial and can sufficiently imagine excesses by yourself, the podcast will only be going through the motions. Even the pathetic shouter at the end is a predictable obligate.

More UChannel:
Lord Lawson and the alarmists,
Terror and Consent,
Nudge: improving decisions and behavior,
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
In 2050.

Cambridge Alumni Podcast review

The Cambridge Alumni Podcast of the University of Cambridge contains mainly vodcasts, that I must admit, I have not paid any attention to. I am trying to concentrate on the content you can take with you on the run, on the drive and along with menial tasks, or in other words: I concentrate on the audio. The vodcasts may be worthwhile, or are likely to be so and I may write about it in the future, but for now, I will talk about the few audio only in the Cambridge Alumni Podcast feed.

It was, as so often, Dara of DIY Scholar who put me on the track of this podcast. She wrote about the historic yet amusing lecture about Cambridge's codebreakers. MI 5's historian, Professor Christopher Andrew, lectures in a very light mood about Cambridge's contribution to the intelligence efforts in both World Wars and the Cold War. I recommend, just as Dara did, everybody to listen to this lecture. Yet, what I took away from the podcast was a lesson for the blog and for reviewing more than anything else. Since Dara so warmly recommended this specific lecture, apparently, I went in with high expectations and was slightly disappointed, not at the entertainment level, but rather at the historic content. This is hardly fair on Christopher Andrew, I suppose, but must be put down on the immense subjectivity of the listener. Subjective to the extent that the same listener under different circumstances can come to a radically different appreciation. (Should I stop writing in acclaim?)

While we are at the subject of Cambridge, its mathematicians and Intelligence, two more lectures deserve mention. For one: Cambridge Computing, 1937 - 2007: A history of not quite everything. What most fascinated me in this lecture is the development of computing altogether. How different computing was in the pre-PC era, how it developed and how this made for such a different set of users and experiences.

The next is Enigma and the Turing Bombe. Especially if you heard the first podcast, this is one not to miss. After the eccentricity of Alan Turing was mentioned in the previous podcast, this is the podcast to get acquainted with the actual problem he was faced with, when he attempted to crack the German's Enigma code.