Two methods to support your favorite blog

At the end of last month I asked you all to click campaign if you liked the blog and wanted to tell me you do. I registered 39 people from all over the world who did so. Supposing Statcounter registers most, but not all clicks and some people may have clicked the post link when they actually intended to show support, I feel there are at least 40 readers that want to actively support the blog.

So, please continue and here is the next campaign. The second method to show you appreciation: leave a comment. This is very easy and can be done anonymously. Click on the comments link below (see the line 'Posted by The Man called Anne at 12:00 0 comments' and click 'comments'). This should fire up a new window (watch pop-up blockers!) in which you can write anything you like under any name you like. If you do not know what to write just type "Please continue" and we'll know you support us.

Of course you will all be able to see over time how many comments piled up, but by the end of the month I will report back to you and hand you a third method to support the blog.

Can't wait until then? Here are some ideas ahead: send a link to the blog to a friend, mark the blog on your bookmarking site, point to it from your own site, take an RSS subscription (What is RSS? - Help on getting subscription), connect with Anne is a Man on Facebook, Twitter and The Podcast Parlor. Or anything else you can think of.

Thank you all. I am happy and grateful with every sign of life.

Anne

Anne is a Man's stable following

I have been reporting every quarter about the growth of Anne is a Man's readership. Last January, I was still hoping I could show more growth, but already then I saw a trend that continued in the past three months: the readership has stabilized. I have around 200 readers hitting the blog every day. That is not bad, but we need more. The kind of material I am offering should interest way more people than actually succeed in finding it. This is why I have started campaigning, trying to get you, the readers, involved in spreading the word. More about this later. (statistics by Statcounter)



Even though the attention for the blog seems stable, there may be an indicator that actually we have more readers than we did before. Many people take an RSS subscription and then read the blog from their feedreader. This readership is not counted as visitors on the site, but they do read. And their number has been continuing to grow ever since we stabilized from around 50 to over 120.

Previously:
Hoping for more growth,
Rss following at the beginning of 2009,
October 2008: continued growth,
July 2008: small but growing.

Anne is a Man podcast reviews in the coming days

I will be on a short vacation with my wife and kids and I do not expect to be around to write podcast reviews as regularly as you are used. So, as a teaser, here are a couple of my reviewing plans for the coming days, without knowing exactly when they will eventually appear.

-BBC's In Our Time about Aldous Huxley's Brave New World will be in the feed for two more days. It is warmly recommended, also for those (like me) who have not read the book. By the time the review will come around, the podcast will be gone. So download now, read about it later.

-VPRO's Marathon Interview has an extensive archive in which, apparently, the best material can nearly go missing. The 1986 series have been released to podcast already a long time ago. Except for Martin van Amerongen's talk with Karel van het Reve which was discovered only now. Five hours of intellectual challenge with alrady in the first hour 'that Idi Amin' (God) and the 'Charlatan from Vienna' (Freud).

-ABC's Rear Vision had a charming and informative item about the history of coffee and coffee's impact on history.

-UChannel Podcast spoke about disasters and the unexpected effect on peacemaking processes. This is applied to Sri Lanka and Aceh, but Israel and Palestine are on my mind as usual.

- After a hiatus of six months, the Hebrew Podacast קטעים בהיסטוריה (pieces of history) is back with a double feature about the American War of Independence.

Furthermore, I will report about the readership of the blog (which I try to do every quarter) and report the results of the Anne is a Man campaign. There will be a new campaign in which the blog's readers can participate to stimulate Anne is a Man. Standby.


Subscribe in a reader
Paste the link
http://feeds2.feedburner.com/Anne_Is_A_Man
into the RSS reader of your preference. (What is RSS?  - Help on getting subscription)

I love to get new podcast recommendations. You can let your preferences know by commenting on the blog or sending mail to Anne is a Man at: Anne Frid de Vries (in one word) AT yahoo DOT co DOT uk

Connect with Anne is a Man on:
Facebook,
Twitter,
The Podcast Parlor.

Electric Cars - My former boss at TED

To have feasible electric cars would do a whole lot of good. In several posts about issues of Global Warming on this blog it has been pointed out how important it is to minimize the CO2 output, but even those that are skeptic about Global Warming or about our impact on global warming, agree that the measure to which we become oil-independent, we improve the world politically and socially. Why all this is, has been said before. Let us look at the question how to achieve it. Specifically, how we can turn an entire country to electric cars.

In this TED Talk, Shai Agassi explains the workings of his company that aims to bring electric cars to the world, starting with Israel and also Denmark, Australia and California. He explains the approach to the technical issues of making an electric car economically attractive and to the political issue of adapting the infrastructure and of course to the companies and countries that have decided to team up with him.

Before I let you watch the video I have to tell that Shai Agassi is my former boss. Not only at SAP, but also at TopTier, the Israeli company that was bought by SAP and from which Agassi was CEO and he moved on to the executive board of SAP until he quit and took up the electric car project Better Place. I have come to know Agassi as a very charismatic motivational speaker. It was invigorating to work for him and I am very pleased he moved his formidable powers to a laudable goal such as oil-independence for Israel and the world.



More TED:
Elizabeth Gilbert,
Bill Gates,
Stephen Petranek,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Philip Zimbardo.

About Global Warming:
Climate engineering,
Lord Lawson and the Alarmists,
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
Waste Management,
The Stern Review.

Podcast Flavius bij de joodse omroep

De makers van OVT hebben zich voor de Joodse Omroep gezet aan een radioprogramma dat de naam Flavius heeft meegekregen. Het programma is ook als podcast beschikbaar (feed). Er zijn reeds zeven uitzendingen uitgebracht. Ik ben met luisteren begonnen bij de eerste aflevering.

Flavius is een licht, historisch programma dat (althans de eerste uitzending) in alles vergelijkbaar is met OVT (presentatie Jos Palm en Matthijs Deen, gast Fik Meijer), maar zo mogelijk nog lichter is dan dat. Ik heb wel eens kritiek gehoord op OVT dat het teveel geklets werd en dat gaat voor deze aflevering van Flavius zeker op waar het over de gemberbolus ging, maar voor de liefhebbers van het lichte genre is er toch ook veel te genieten.

Natuurlijk moest er een uitleg over Josephus Flavius bij. Fik Meijer heeft de Joodse historicus die namens de Romeinen over de onderdrukking van Judea schreef, vertaald. Hij legt uit waarom Flavius eigenlijk in Joodse ogen een verrader is. Niettemin was hij een uniek geschiedschrijver en daarom werd zijn naam aan het joodse historische programma verbonden. Ik kan me niet voorstellen dat iedereen hier even gelukkig mee is.

Het beste onderdeel vond ik wel het gesprek over Jozef Israel de Haan. Een fascinerende, veelzijdige figuur die in al zijn veelzijdigheid de revue passeert. Er had wat tijd van de bolus af gemogen zodat we De Haan wat beter hadden kunnen leren kennen.

Hoe dan ook. Ik ben nog niet klaar met Flavius. Ik ga zeker nog meer afleveringen beluisteren en wellicht volgen er dan ook nog meer recensies.

Meer OVT:
Mata Hari,
Danton,
Giordano Bruno,
Maria Stuart,
Jeanne d'Arc.

Two communities in one region - Open Source on Israel and Palestine

I do not usually find podcasts about the Zionist-Arab conflict that take on an approach that goes a little beyond the diplomacy and evaluation of geopolitics between governments, international pressure and the dynamics of international policy. Open Source with Christopher Lydon did just that by talking with Henry Siegman and Meron Benvenisti.

The issue this time is not only how peace can be approached, but rather also what ultimate form should a peace solution get. Siegman, who gets the most air time, believes in the two-state solution and sees a fundamental role for Obama to pressure this goal out of the Middle-East cooker. Siegman emphasizes how important it will be that the Palestine state should be formed properly and not be a still-born with three separated parts. Again the new US administration must take a lead into wriggling this result out of the balking contestants.

Then there is little time left for a few remarks by Meron Benvenisti who actually does not support a two-state solution and thus is basically the most interesting guest. He argues there is a regional continuity between the Jordan and the sea and that the Arabs and the Jews must live in one country. It is not hard to see this urgency, but how does Benvenisti think this can be achieved? We'd need much more time on the podcast for that.

More Open Source:
We want Obama,
The end of Hegemony,
Go for a walk with Open Source.