Forestry - EEH

Exploring Environmental History Podcast in its latest issue paid attention to the history of forests and forestry. (feed)

Specifically the effects of World War One were discussed with David Brownstein of the University of British Columbia. Brownstein points out that over WWI Canadian foresters came to Europe to serve the war effort. The war created a huge need of timber, much larger than in peace time and also much larger than the allies could supply to themselves. Normally they's get wood from the colonies, but with the U-boot threat, it was not as easy to ship all that timber.

The foresters from Canada were moved to Europe to get what little timber from England and France could be extracted. Here Europe and British Columbia began to influence each other. The Canadian foresters were learned to pay attention to and invest in replenishing the forest. Their own forests were considered to be so large replanting was not considered necessary, whereas in Europe this was standard. Once they learned the way to collect seeds, seeds from conifers from Canada became so abundant, they made it all over the world.

More Exploring Environmental History:
Exploring Environmental History (EEH podcast),
Volcanoes in European History,
Environmental History in the Middle Ages,
New weeds in Africa,
Biological invasions and transformations.

Norman Centuries - Lars Brownworth

It is an amazing thing how in Norman history the geographic focus switches. Somehow you expect it to be Scandinavia, but the podcast Norman Centuries kicked off in Normandy, made an excursion to England and over the last chapters has moved to Italy. (feed)

Normans got to Sicily and the peninsula as fortune seekers and worked their way up starting as mercenaries to the Byzantines. William Iron Arm (episode 8) thus made it to count and Robert Guiscard (episode 9) started as a knight and while making a name as a general, he succeeded in playing the latin power politics. Although he saw himself mostly pitted against the Roman Catholic Church and the Pontiff, but his ability to move into a position of power, made the Papacy sway and eventually ally with the Normans.

Robert Guiscard is a contemporary of William the Conqueror and so, by the time of 1066, when William attempts to invade England, Robert tries his luck with Sicily. Both succeed and what lies next for the Normans is the real prize of the time: Byzantium. We await the next episode to find out how such a grand ambition pans out.

More Norman Centuries:
William the Conqueror,
Magnificent Devil,
Richard the Fearless,
Norman Centuries - Lars is back!.

The interpretation of modern history - History 1c UCLA

Over the past months I have followed (again) the entire course of History 1c at UCLA - Western Civilization 1715-present. (feed) This is an undergraduate modern history course which you can freely follow about once a year among UCLA's courses. Professor Lynn Hunt is the main lecturer who is occasionally replaced by a guest speaker who is an expert on the subject or era at hand. The accessibility can vary with the guests, but with Hunt one is always sure to get an engaged, informative and inspiring lecture.

The obvious order to go through the lectures is to start from the first (which is on the bottom of the list from your feed - observe the dates) and work your way to the last. In case you want to make a pick, check with the course website.

As is always the case when you listen in on a university course is that in addition to the material, you get some audio time that is spent on the course's technicalities. Stuff about section, about papers, about breaks and about the exam and usually you'd want to skip that. However, there is a special treat in this realm to be found here. Listen to the last lecture. Here Hunt tries to prepare her audience for the essay questions on the exam and while this may normally be the kind of stuff you'd want to skip, Hunt goes about this so extensive, that you get a bonus to the course that highlights the conceptual issues with the covered history and historiography. Hunt supplies more questions than answers, more open ends than conclusions and this really deepens the material. You might even want to take this lecture before going through the entire series.

More History 1c:
Holocaust,
Nietzsche in a nutshell,
Industrialization and Italian unification,
History since 1715.

Veertien Achttien nieuwsbrief (PTSD versus shellshock)

Vanochtend zijn er maar liefst drie nieuwe afleveringen van Veertien Achttien. Ik heb al vaak genoeg de lezers aangeraden om zich te abonneren op de feed van deze voortreffelijke podcast. Wat ik er vandaag aan toe wil voegen is het advies om tevens een abonnement te nemen op de nieuwsbrief.

Niet alleen krijg je dan tijdig een mail met het bericht dat er weer een nieuwe aflevering zit aan te komen. Er zijn ook uiteenlopende, belangwekkende aankondigingen en links met betrekking tot de Eerste Wereldoorlog, de historie, de geschiedschrijving en de herdenking. Een buitengewoon interessante bijdrage was er de afgelopen week in de vorm van een link naar een artikel van medisch historicus Leo van Bergen waarin hij ingaat op een misverstand waar ik mij persoonlijk ook nog wel eens schuldig heb gemaakt en dat is het gemakshalve op een lijn zetten van shellshock met PTSD. Shellshock was het syndroom van soldaten uit de loopgraven van '14-'18 die het gevecht niet meer aankonden, terwijl PTSD het post-traumatische syndroom is dat psychiaters hebben vastgesteld bij vele moderne soldaten die uit gevechtshandelingen terugkeren.

Het blijkt dat de symptomen van PTSD en shellshock verschillen en deze trouwens ook van de symptomen van nog weer andere uitvallers uit andere tijden. Het geeft een belangrijk inzicht in de omstandigheid dat onze definities van ziektepatronen tijd- en plaatsgebonden zijn.

Neem via mail contact op met Tom Tacken de maker van de podcast Veertien Achttien en voor een schappelijk bedrag krijg je afelvering op CD en die nieuwsbrief met al dit soort meerwaarde toegestuurd.

Meer Veertien Achttien:

Sir Mark Sykes,

De Eerste Wereldoorlog in podcast,

Ford en anderen,

Sigmund Freud,

Edith Cavell.

Heads-up for 7 August 2010

Tom Tacken, the maker of Veertien Achttien, went on vacation. In order to let his audience of this Dutch, weekly biography show around World War I, not go without new shows, he uploaded three of them at once. (feed)

Edgy reviews from that podcast show the podcast review show, has made it to its 100th edition. Three new podcasts are reviewed every week. (feed)

Shrink Rap Radio
#243 – Exploring Behavioral Economics with Dan Ariely
Dan Ariely, Ph.D. is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University, where he holds appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the School of Medicine, and the department of Economics. He is also a founding member of the Center for Advanced Hindsight.

In addition, Dan is the author of the New York Times Bestseller Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions and The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home.

Using simple experiments Dan studies how people actually act in the marketplace, as opposed to how they should or would perform if they were completely rational. His interests span a wide range of daily behaviors such as buying (or not), saving (or not), ordering food in restaurants, pain management, procrastination, dishonesty, and decision making under different emotional states. His experiments are consistently interesting, amusing, and informative, demonstrating profound ideas that fly in the face of common wisdom.
(review, feed)

Dimitar Sasselov - TED Talks

Here is video from TED Talks (feed) in which Dimitar Sasselov discusses the existence of earth-like planets in the Milky Way



More TED:
Sir Ken Robinson,
Photos that changed the world - Jonathan Klein,
Karen Armstrong on The Golden Rule,
Media revolution and the effect on power - Clay Shirky,
Shay Agassi's visionary plan to bring electric cars to the world.