Chris Hedges - Radio Open Source

Here is a quick recommendation to listen to Radio Open Source, where Christopher Lydon interviews Chris Hedges about his bleak outlook on modern world in general and the US society in particular. Here he explains how he think our democracy is run down the drain - with Democrats and Republicans equally guilty. (feed)

About a year and a half ago, we also heard him on Media Matters with an equally grim depiction of where we live. Also here his concern is liberal democracy, but here he discusses how our culture is dumbing down and thus is undermining the proper political state. (feed)

More Radio Open Source:
Geography shifting big history,
Kai Bird,
Amartya Sen on India,
Mustafa Barghouti,
Jackson Lears.

Heads-up for 18 December 2010

New Books In History
Ann Fabian, “The Skull Collectors: Race, Science and America’s Unburied Dead”
What should we study? The eighteenth-century luminary and poet Alexander Pope had this to say on the subject: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man ” (An Essay on Man, 1733). He was not alone in this opinion. The philosophers of the Enlightenment–of which we may count Pope–all believed that humans would benefit most from a proper comprehension of temporal things, and most particularly humanity itself. For them, understanding humanity meant, first and foremost, understanding the human body. Naturally, then, the philosophes and their successors paid close attention to the body. They cut it up, took it apart, measured it and attempted to see how it worked. They were most interested in one part in particular–the human head. It was the seat of the human characteristic the Enlightenment scientists admired most: intelligence. If one could get a handle on the human cranium, then one would understand what it meant to be human. Or at least so they thought.
(review, feed)

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
Valuing the Humanities
James Ladyman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol and co-editor of the British Journal of the Philosophy of Science. Martha Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. Lord Rees of Ludlow is President of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College Cambridge. Richard Smith is a Former editor of the British Medical Journal and Director of the Ovations Institute. Mark Lawson from BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian.
(review, feed)

Big Ideas
Art historian Francis Broun on The Art of Sir Edwin Landseer
Art historian Francis Broun presents his lecture entitled Genius Denied: The Art of Sir Edwin Landseer. It was recorded at the Women's Art Association in Toronto on May 24th, 2010.
(review, feed)

Philosophy Bites
Philip Pettit on Group Agency
When a group of people acts together we can hold that group morally and legally responsible. But how does the group decide to act? Is a decision of the group simply the majoritarian sum of individual group members' views? Princeton philosopher Philip Pettit, who has written a book about this topic with Christian List of the LSE, discusses these issues with Nigel Warburton for the Philosophy Bites podcast. Philosophy Bites is made in association with the Institute of Philosophy.
(review, feed)

Veertien Achttien
Charles Mangin en het succes van de vijfde golf (zondag 17 december 1916)
'De slager' noemden de soldaten hem wel. Erger nog: 'de menseneter'. Charles Mangin nam in het krijgsbedrijf menselijke verliezen voor lief. Met het eind van de oorlog had hij ook geen vrede.
(review, feed)

Heads-up for 17 December 2010

Being aka Speaking of Faith
The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi
This Peabody award-winning show explores the spiritual world of Rumi, a 13th-century Muslim mystic and poet, with Persian scholar Fatemeh Keshavarz. Rumi saw human love as a mirror of the divine, and searching as a form of arrival. Hear his poetry and its echoes in our world.
(review, feed)

Forgotten Classics
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Deluge. In which we hear a retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh
and also consider myth and literature.
(review, feed)

Russian Rulers History Podcast
Peter Takes on the Turks
Peter, having partied for 5 years, is ready to take control of things and take the fight to the Turk backed Tatars in Azov.
(review, feed)

Witness
Washington Snipers
On December 18th 2003, one of the 2 Washington Snipers, Lee Boyd Malvo, was convicted of murder. He and John Allen Muhammad had terrorised the US capital and its suburbs for 3 weeks in 2002, killling at random.
(review, feed)

Harvard Business IdeaCast
Guilty People Make Good Managers
Frank Flynn, Stanford Business School professor and subject of the HBR article "Guilt-Ridden People Make Great Leaders."
(review, feed)

Remove iTunesU files - revisited

It is hard to remove iTunesU files from iPod (nano and older - not from iPod touch). I have written about this last August and that is one the most frequented posts on this blog - Problem with iPod: remove iTunesU files. This post gives three methods to remove the files, each with their own limitations.
1- Recategorize (safe, but does not work for all)
2- Delete through file system (risky and complicated, but effective)
3- Reset (easy and safe, but with side-effects)

Here I want to tell you about a fourth method I have found. The fourth method is safe and effective, but as I will point out, has drawbacks of its own.

4. Synchronize iTunesU

You can change the settings of your iPod to synchronize with iTunes on your computer. This can be done for Music and Podcasts as well as for iTunesU. Select your iPod in iTunes (as on the picture above) and click on the iTunesU label above the summary. Then select the checkbox to sync iTunes U and choose to synchronize all unplayed and all collections. As on the picture below.

What this setting will cause is for iTunes to automatically copy all unplayed iTunesU files from your computer onto your iPod and after you have played them, either on computer or iPod, automatically remove them from the iPod. In case you want to listen more than once, you can choose to sync All files from iTunesU and in that case, the files will only be removed from your iPod, after you delete them from your computer. In case your iTunesU section is very large, you may also want to not sync for all collections, but rather choose one or more among them.

So far so good - this indeed is a safe and effective way to get rid of redundant iTunesU files from your iPod. What are the drawbacks?

First of all, like me, you may want to prefer managing your iPod manually. You may not like all unplayed files to be on iPod and also, you may not want to immediately remove what has already been played.

A second, very weird phenomenon, is that iTunesU files will appear on the computer interface on the iTunesU item under iPod, that is, as a category like podcasts, yet when you handle the iPod independently, iTunesU acts as a playlist and not as a category like podcasts. This makes the files more difficult to find and one more click away than podcasts.

The best solution to the second phenomenon is the playlist, which is a feature I use anyway, because I like back to back listening. Copy your iTunesU files onto a playlist together with podcasts and other audio you like and create your own order there. One has to be warned though: you can only make playlists when your iPod is managed manually, so do not sync music and podcasts otherwise playlists are no longer available. Be aware also that this not stopping the first problem and therefore, the iTunesU files will be removed from the playlist as they are removed from iPod during synchronization.

The way around the first problem is to only use the sync iTunesU setting occasionally when you want to remove all iTunesU files and once that is done, revert back to manual.

UPDATE: Go to the BEST method I propose for dealing with this problem: Subscribe to iTunesU feeds as a podcast

Heads-up for 16 December 2010

In Our Time
Daoism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient religion and philosophy, Daoism. Said to date from the 6th century BC when a wise man called Laozi wrote the 'Scripture of the Way and its Power', the 'Daodejing'; Daoism plays a significant role in Chinese culture in general and is now one of the most influential religions worldwide. Melvyn is joined by Tim Barrett, Professor of East Asian History at SOAS; Martin Palmer, Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; and Hilde De Weerdt,Fellow and Tutor in Chinese History at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
(review, feed)

KQED Forum
AIDS Breakthrough
A team of doctors in Berlin say they've cured a man of HIV/AIDS with a stem cell transplant. While AIDS researchers say the exact procedure is unlikely to result in many cures, some are celebrating the findings as a huge leap in research that could lead to a cure.
(review, feed)

The China History Podcast
The Empress Wu Zetian REBROADCAST
Today we rebroadcast our July 19, 2010 program on the Tang empress Wu Zetian. Initially a concubine to the second Tang emperor and wife of the third, she later went on to reign as Empress of China in her own right. In this week's episode we look at her colorful life. Then next episode we will resume our dynasty overview in 705 after the death of Wu Zetian.
(review, feed)

Schlaflos in München
Dick im Geschäft
Erstmal vielen Dank für das Intro von Toby vom einschlafen-podcast.de. Heute endlich mal wieder ein Interviewpartner. Peter Kuhn von der Ascuro AG erzählt uns, wie schwer übergewichtige Menschen es im Alltag haben. Seine Firma verkauft im Online-Shop simplybig.eu viele Produkte, die dicken Menschen helfen sollen. Mehr Informationen auch bei Adicare. Er plädiert für mehr Verständnis und dafür, Vorbehalte endlich abzulegen! Wäre doch ein guter Vorsatz für's nächste Jahr... Das von ihm angesprochene Buch ist Fat! So?: Because You Don't Have to Apologize for Your Size.
(review, feed)

Rise of women, fall of men - inequality again

Most of the time, in most places of the world, I think, women are still discriminated against. The inequality mostly still is at the expense of women, yet, in the TED Talk I embed below, Hanna Rosin presents data of the rise of women in the modern age, in the modern world and the extent seems to not go towards equality, but rather show a flipped reality, in which women are the better performers, the better earners, the ones in power. And Rosin seems to also ask: was this what Feminism was aiming for? (feed)



I have been aware of some elements of what Rosin makes visible. For example, I have been seeing for decades that there is an especially underpriviliged chanceless class of uneducated poor young men. These days, for a man to be without education is worse than for women. Rosin adds the next nail to the coffin: men have been underperforming in the educational system for a long time. Consequently, this class of male drop-outs is only growing. Consequnetly, as Rosin has made me realize, our culture will change and within it our stereotypes of men and woman. We both fear that the next inequality will be just as bad as the other and most of all worse than the equality we had hoped for.

A last point to make is about this show being a videocast. I prefer podcast; my listening time lies especially in moments when my hands and eyes need to be somewhere else. Ted Talks are great videos to look at, but this specific talk I tested listening while not looking and there is very little you miss. I have experienced that this goes for many videocasts and so, if you are inclined like me towards audio alone, do not discard the vodcasts off the cuff.

More TED:
Rory Sutherland,
Dimitar Sasselov,
Sir Ken Robinson,
Photos that changed the world - Jonathan Klein,
Karen Armstrong on The Golden Rule.