The predictions for 2007

I haven't listened to the Skeptics Guide to the Universe for a long time. I have had this before: there is only so much I can stand from this panel style podcast. Even though the news items and interviews are always new, I feel there is a certain repetitiveness to the show. In addition, the studious poking between the panel members, becomes very tedious after some time. Third and not least, Perry DeAngelis is sorely missing among the speakers. His death remains a serious blow.



As a new year resolution, I returned to the Skeptics and gave them another run. Last week I dropped out, but this week I stayed on. Befitting the new year, there was the subject of 2007 predictions. What had the psychics in store for 2007 and how well did they do. The panel can't come up with one successful prediction apart from someone who has been predicting Anna Nicole Smith's death ever since 2003 and finally in 2007 got it right.

Even though personally I can't put up with this podcast time and again, generally it is a good recommendation. I think SGU is among the science podcasts with the widest audience and probably the most successful skeptical podcast in the world. Where I am put off by too much eager to please banter, the formula proves to be catching for a wide audience and that is exactly what skepticism needs. Kudos to SGU, even if I do not listen.

Previously on SGU:
In memoriam: Perry DeAngelis,
Barry Glassner,
Interview with Jimmy Carter,
Brian Trent,
Scott Lilienfield.

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What main stream language use won't show

I have finished the linguistics course from the University of Arizona by Amy Fountain. I cannot generally recommend this lecture series as a podcast (feed). It is too difficult to put up with missing out on visuals and it is highly technical, which may be interesting to some people, but I assume, not for the whole wide audience. When I mailed Ms. Fountain my previous reviews, she wrote me back:

You're very right about my not taking into account enough the podcast listeners in terms of the visuals in the lectures, that's something I'll think about in subsequent efforts.

So, the next series will be better. In the mean time, when looking back, some lectures stand out as more accessible to the average user. The story of English and the lecture about language families are less technical and contain a lot of interesting facts. As noted in the first review, the first lecture is also good for everybody, especially those who need to be freed from their grammar angst. There is this thing 'descriptive grammar' - it is serious grammar, describing what native speakers experience as correct use of their tongue, without the smart gits dotting the i's and squaring the t's.

I'd like to especially praise the lecture about taboo language. (Don't listen if you cannot stand the references to all kinds of swear words.) The most amazing thing about the lecture is how Fountain shows that the study of bad language can teach serious things to linguists. If you wonder whether English allows for infixes (bits of words inserted in other words), you'll find the positive answer only in swearing. And what about pig-Latin: the way this scrambles words (like 'scram' turns 'amscray') teaches linguists how English syllables are constructed. Never bash a foul mouth again. You may earnlay something new.

The two previous reviews: A new adventure and Prescriptive and descriptive grammar.



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Albert Camus - In Our Time

Last Wednesday's In Our Time paid attention to the French writer Albert Camus. When I was younger, he was my favorite writer, no competition. Later I grew a little tired of him. He did not write that much fiction and his philosophical work did not connect with me in the end.

As I have read him so carefully in addition to a lot of works about him, little of what I learned in the podcast was really new to me, but some did put more clearly what I had found. There was even a statement I do not agree with - an evaluation of Camus' position in the Algerian war. So be it, what remains the most interesting, I think, is his fictional work, notably the three novels: L'etranger, La peste and La chute. (The Stranger, The Plague and The Fall)

In Our Time's guests noted, as I did, how Camus' philosophy develops and how these three works have quite a different morality about the individual and his life in relation with others and society. The first work, The Stranger, places the most emphasis on personal happiness and no one nor society should or can stop the individual. The Plague, allows for personal responsibility regarding the group and praises the personal commitment to serve the greater good. The Fall returns to the personal level, but does so by focusing on guilt, to the extreme. For me, these novels remain great and the development is neither bothering nor irrelevant.

Previously on In Our Time:
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine,
The Sassanian Empire,
Mutations,
The Fibonacci Sequence.

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Dan Carlin interviews James Burke

Dan Carlin reveals in the latest version of Hardcore History he has a hard time achieving a timely production of the show. The aim is to release one show every 45 days or so, but usually it takes more. As a consequence he is to begin with some experimenting. A new kind of podcast to be interjected between the regular ones.

The first of this experimental kind consists of an interview with science historian James Burke. Dan Carlin assumes the listener knows who James Burke is and it is surely discernible Burke is a great example for Carlin in the making of his history shows, but I would have appreciated a bit more of an introduction. Another weak point in the podcast is the free style of the interview; Carlin has some prepared build up in his questions, but allows the conversation to take Burke and himself where it gets them. This can mean great listening provided one is able to bear with the speakers in their lines of thought. I imagine though, that most listeners like myself had a hard keeping up.

As far as content, the discussion between the two delivered some great remarks and thought provoking statements. Burke takes Carlin on a train of thought where he starts with the fact that for the large majority of people in history, life has been 'nasty, brutish and short.' History as we know it, is the history of people with access to power and knowledge. He proposes an entirely different way of looking at the past. Fascinating stuff that deserves a much more systematic address.

More Hardcore history:
Assyrians,
Nazis,
Depression,
Succession in Macedon,
The Plague.

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Social anxiety disorder - Wise Counsel

Dr. David van Nuys takes the Wisecounsel podcast to a couple of subjects that have appeared before: anxiety and CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and medication. He speaks with Dr. Richard Heimberg, Ph.D., and cannot wait to ask him whether anxiety should be treated with CBT or medication, or both and what would be the merit of each approach.

First thought, anxiety needs to be defined. Anxiety is distress that every body feels normally, but that turns excessive and interferes with the person leading a regular life. There is a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which is haunting people who worry excessively, uncontrollably and takes over the sufferer's life. Heimberg doesn't want to engage in the question about treatment for GAD.

His research has been directed more specifically to Social Anxiety Disorder or Social Phobia (old terminology). This disorder is seen with people who excessively worry about how they are perceived, evaluated and judged by others. The effect is, varying to the intensity, that the patient avoids social contact. In this category, he reveals that both CBT and medication have their benefit. Roughly, medication has more of a short term success, but entails a bigger chance of relapse. CBT takes longer to kick in, but ultimately has more persistent success. The situation can require either or both.

Other guests on Wise Counsel were a.o.:
Tony Madrid,
Francine Shapiro,
Amy Baker,
Marsha Linehan,
Deirdre Barrett.


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To know and be known

Philosophy Bites about friendship, consists of a discussion with Mark Vernon who has written about the subject. In ten short minutes lots is said, I'll throw in just a crumb and hope to entice you with that into listening to a very worthwhile issue.

Mark gives us Aristotle and the other Greek philosophers who thought high of friendship and made it figure quite centrally in their philosophies. Friendship represents an exquisite quality of life, a love that is maybe more pure than others. If family love is the need to care and be cared for and sexual love is the need to have and be had, friendship is to know and be known. I must say, that resonates with me more than anything else.

Later philosophy started paying less attention to friendship. Also, it was less valued. Nietzsche went as far as to call friendship feign. Since you can't tell the truth to a friend as you can to strangers. With a friend you are sparing sensitivities, which with a stranger you would not. I wonder however, if with a close friend, where the sensitivities are so well known as well as the mutual respect, one really can't tell the truth. Besides, with a friend, with all the mutual knowledge, how can the inconvenient truths can truly horrible and unspeakable?

More on Friendship.
More Philosophy Bites:
Egalitarianism,
Skepticism ,
Thought experiments (and Avicenna).

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