Open Yale Course feeds - Game Theory and Greek Classics

In the past I have reviewed three Open Yale Courses and have needed to emphasize that these courses were not podcast. This has changed. Two of them - and who knows before long, also the third - have been added to iTunes U and consequently been put in a feed. This I found out thanks to Dara of DIY Scholar.

Game Theory with Professor Ben Polak is a most accessible and even entertaining at times course into game theory. The principle aim is to teach game theory to economists, but each and every social science interested listener will greatly benefit from these course. Even though the subject is mathematical, Polak pulls off a course that is comprehensible also for the mathematically challenged. (feed)

Introduction to Ancient Greek History with Professor Donald Kagan is your ultimate entry into the history of the Greek Classical world. I would wish to be taught any subject by Kagan. He is capable of telling the narrative and disclose the historiographic problems, theories and reconstructions at the same time. (feed)

Hopefully the outstanding Introduction to the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible) with Professor Christine Hayes will also soon be added to iTunes.

More Open Yale:
The Hebrew Bible - Open Yale,
Introduction to ancient Greek history,
Game Theory.

The way of the plants - Ersatz TV

A new issue of Ersatz TV is available. The three main subjects are Schufa, Pflanzenstrom, Kurzweil. That is, one item about the credit authority, which, it turns out, has been around since the 1920's. One item about research that is aimed at cheaply generating electricity in the same way plants generate their energy: photosynthesis. And an item about Ray Kurzweil that is summarized as: Kurzweil is the opposite of Langweil. Ni Hao bei Erstaz TV.

A real surprise is by the end a new feature: commercial. Not just any commercial, but one by the conservative Bavarian political party CSU, such an unexpected find in Ersatz. The style of the commercial is entirely old TV and its persistent and uniform use of the blue color scheme of CSU completely out of style with internet TV. Their idea is 'we are all the same' where in the world of internet and new media, we are all different. It is almost a parody in itself.



More Ersatz TV:
The experts love Ersatz TV,
Deja-vu on Ersatz-TV,
The science of Ersatz TV,
Erzatz TV - German Vodcast.

The future of Pakistan - BBC Analysis

I have taken up listening to BBC's Analysis (feed), a program which attempts to analyze what ideas and powers shape British public policy. After issues about ecological policy and social science studies into moral choices, there was the last program of the season, which really stuck out and needs to be heard together with the latest podcasts I highlighted about geopolitcs, about Pakistan.

The scare word applied to Pakistan is 'Jihadistan'. The main point of the program is to show how Pakistan is edging dangerously close to becoming a state controlled by Jihadists. This as a result of a two way development, where the more moderate powers and the establishment are having little or a lessening grip on the country and religious fundamentalists are springing up in all regions together, albeit concerted or independently.

There is also a point that as a state Pakistan was never quite capable of controlling all regions and this called, in me, for questions about it being, maybe, a failed state. In that case a Jihadistan does not only mean a threat to Britain, to India and to geopolitical stability, but it would mean a deterioration of internal order, much in the way is already happening in remote areas such as Waziristan or the notorious Swat valley. The description of how jihadist militias recruit young kids are reminiscent of examples of other failed states such as Sudan and Congo.

More:
Sudan and the fallacy of nationhood,
Repairing failed states,
Lakhdar Brahimi about Afghanistan and Iraq,
Global Geopolitics,
Faith based diplomacy.

Henk Spaan - Voor een nacht

KRO's Voor 1 nacht is geen podcast die bol staat van de kwaliteit. De kans op interessante gesprekken wordt veelal gesmoord in formules en in het geval van gast Henk Spaan overdadige aandacht voor de successen met Harry Vermeegen en een ongeneerd pluggen van Henk Spaan's nieuwe boek 'De rapen zijn gaar', waaruit de schrijver enkele stukjes mag voorlezen en je je afvraagt of er werkelijk geen betere fragmenten te kiezen waren.

Kortom, het was een bar slechte uitzending. Marc Stakenburg valt opnieuw als interviewer door de mand. (Of hij mag niets van zijn redactie, maar waar sta je dan eigenlijk nog voor?) De formule met muziekjes en de openingsvragen waarin de gast uit tweetallen een keuze moet maken, bewijst zich opnieuw als obligaat en verwaterend. Waarom is het dan toch nog de moeite waard om te luisteren?

Het is omdat Henk Spaan heel sympathiek en relativerend over zijn werk en over media praat. Zolang het boek niet geplugd wordt en er niet al teveel gedweept wordt met het Harry Vermeegen tijdperk en Spaan gewoon aan het woord wordt gelaten om iets verstandigs te zeggen, dan werkt het gewoon. Ik heb al vaak gezegd dat een goede gast een interviewprogramma kan redden, maar dat het programma en de interviewer de uitzending kan bederven blijkt eveneens een serieus gevaar te zijn. Dat er ten slotte ook veel spannender uit De rapen zijn gaar kan worden voorgelezen, blijkt wel uit de onderstaande video. En dan snap je die titel ook eindelijk.



Meer KRO's voor 1 nacht:
Maarten Ducrot,
Candy Dulfer,
Olga Zuiderhoek en Paul Rosenmoller,
Gijs Wanders en Adjiedj Bakas,
Arnon Grunberg.

Lawrence Freedman - Big Ideas

TVO's podcast Big Ideas had a lecture with Lawrence Freedman (audio) in which he comments on his book A choice of enemies; America confronts the Middle East. This is a lecture with a historical perspective on US foreign policy in the Middle East.

In many ways, Freedmans outstanding lecture was an echo of a point also made in the excellent history and political science series from Stanford: The History of the International System. 1979 is a year with a couple of occurrences in the geopolitcs of the Middle East that break away from the Cold War logic of the time and are the harbingers of a new world order that is to come and that we have become familiar with today. The Egypt-Israel peace initiative, The revolution in Iran and (of you wish) the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan.

What makes Freedman's lecture refreshing is the emphasis on history. It gives a much clearer perspective on the geopolitics of the Middle-East and makes many of its feature much less surprising. So much less so that Freedman hardly avoids scolding foreign policy makers for not knowing their history and rerun old policies with old failing over and over again. After the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan came the US variety, with equal problematic outcome. After the British failure to dictate state building in Iraq, the US ran into the same conundrum. This lecture is indispensable for the podcast listener who tries to get a grip on the Middle-East.

More Big Ideas:
New Learning - Don Tapscott on Big Ideas,
On Crime,
Why isn't the whole world developed?,
The role and place of the intellectual,
Disaster Capitalism.

More History of the International System:
The State in The International System,
A century of geopolitics,
History of the International System.

Jewish varieties - From Israelite To Jew

The podcast From Israelite to Jew studies the cultural development in Judaism from a historical perspective. As explained by the beginning of the series, around the 6th century BCE there were Israelites that adhered to Judaism. Israelites were a rather loose federation of tribes. Over time they developed into an ethnicity called the Jews.

When speaking of THE Jews, the impression may arise that there is some kind of unity and there is one Judaism. The podcast's host, Michael Satlow, turns to what little sources there are and attempts to measure that unity. For one there are the Hebrew bible and apocryphal Hebrew sources, which mostly concentrate on the worship around the Temple in Jerusalem. In addition there are Greek and Latin sources that paint a radically different picture of assimilated Jewry, but does this mean there are these two, the real Judaism and the watered down, bound to disappear Hellenistic Judaism?

Satlow proposes a different idea, one that breaks away from the dichotomy of observant and assimilated Jews. There had been Jewish communities throughout the Greek Empires ever since the second Temple Period (500 BCE - 70 CE) started. if you look at the Temple cult in Jerusalem, the alleged pure Judaism, it would have been impossible for Jews in faraway places to maintain this kind of Judaism. However, this does not necessarily mean, that all these Jews assimilated to disappearance. Satlow suggests a wide variety of ways these Jews must have maintained and developed their Judaism. This is where the shift from Temple to Synagogue may have started, way in advance of the destruction of the Temple and the last diaspora. Satlow's history is a history of a Judaism that is in continuous development driven by many Jewish varieties.

More FITJ:
Jews in the Hasmonean era,
The Maccabee Uprising,
Hellenism,
Jews of the Persian Empire,
The fox and the hedgehog.