Heads-up for 19 November 2010

History 5 (Berkeley) by Thomas Laqueur
Lecture 24: The Russian Revolution this is the title but the real subject is: The Great War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequences
How an assassination in Sarajevo came to embroil all of Europe. A war of stalemate and stagnation. A war resulting in revolutions and a radically changed power balance and world map.
(review, feed)

Being also known as Speaking of Faith
Translating the Dalai Lama
Geshe Thupten Jinpa, a Buddhist scholar and former monk, is the Dalai Lama's chief English translator. He shares the intricacies of Tibetan Buddhism that can't be conveyed in public teachings, and what happens when this ancient tradition meets modern science and modern lives.
(review, feed)

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
Impunity in Cambodia
Senior leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime of Democratic Kampuchea are now on trial in Cambodia for the crimes committed between 1975 and 1979 when two million people are estimated to have died. Will these trials help to break the impunity that has characterised Cambodia's recent history and which continues today? Brad Adams is executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division and is a general expert on Asia. Simon Taylor is one of three co-founder/directors of Global Witness, a London and Washington DC based NGO which investigates and campaigns to prevent natural resource-related conflict and corruption and associated environmental and human rights abuses. Margo Picken has worked in the field of human rights for much of her professional career. Most recently, she worked for the United Nations as director of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Cambodia from 2001 to 2007.
(review, feed)

Something other than the show notes promise - History 5

I was wrong. On Wednesday I wrote a heads-up pointing to the Berkeley lecture series History 5, and followed the lecture notes and title which suggested the just published lecture was about the Great War. It was not. It was about the Russian revolution. Today you will find a lecture published titled the Russian Revolution and this is the one about the First World War. (feed)

The cause is quite simple. For the Russian revolution Professor Laqueur wanted to conduct a conversation with a guest lecturer who was available on Monday and so he simple switched the Monday and the Thursday lecture. Yet, the show notes went out according to the original plan. And here is my pitfall when I write the heads-up: I actually rely on those show notes.

I would want to encourage everybody to take on both lectures, or better even, listen to the whole course. In my opinion this is the best modern history course on podcast available.

More History 5:
5 Podcasts I listened to when I was away from the blog,
Berkeley History 5 by Thomas Laqueur 2010,
History 5 by Laqueur in previous years,
History 5 by Carla Hesse,
History 5 by Margaret Anderson.

Heads-up for 18 November 2010

In Our Time (BBC)
Foxe's Book of Martyrs 18th Nov 2010
Melvyn Bragg discusses one of the most important books of the Reformation, Foxe's 'Book of Martyrs' that recounts the horrific deaths of hundreds of martyrs put to death in the reign of Mary I. Melvyn is joined by Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University; Justin Champion, Professor of the History of Early Modern Ideas at Royal Holloway, University of London; and Elizabeth Evenden, Lecturer in Book History at Brunel University.
(review, feed)

Forum Network
Paul Auster: Sunset Park
Writer Paul Auster reads from his newest book, Sunset Park, which follows the hopes and fears of a cast of unforgettable characters brought together by the mysterious Miles Heller during the dark months of the 2008 economic collapse: An enigmatic young man employed as a trash-out worker in southern Florida obsessively photographing thousands of abandoned objects left behind by the evicted families; a group of young people squatting in an apartment in Sunset Park, Brooklyn; The Hospital for Broken Things, which specializes in repairing the artifacts of a vanished world; William Wyler?s 1946 classic The Best Years of Our Lives; a celebrated actress preparing to return to Broadway; an independent publisher desperately trying to save his business and his marriage; these are just some of the elements Auster weaves together in this novel about contemporary America and its ghosts.
(review, feed)

Thinking Allowed (BBC)
AK-47
Laurie Taylor talks to Professor Philip Smith about his new research looking at public incivility and examines the impact of the AK-47 (the Kalashnikov rifle) with former US Marine and writer C.J Chivers and military historian Richard Holmes
(review, feed)

Three issues of Philosophy Bites

In recent weeks the eminent podcast Philosophy Bites has released three excellent new issues, which I recommend one by one. (feed)

Inequality. Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds spoke with Alex Voorhoeve about inequality. Our main stream line of thought seems to sort of imply that inequality is bad, but is it really so? And if yes, why? Voorhoeve gives very insightful answers to the question and shows how inequality eventually disrupts human interaction.

Moral Responsibility. Gideon Rosen is a skeptic on the subject of moral responsibility. We normally assume people are morally responsible for their actions and the only exceptions we might accept are extreme cases of ignorance about facts or moral incapacity such as mental disease. Rosen shows another set of possible exceptions and this allows for a huge close on th range of responsibility - yet he does not rule it out completely.

What is philosophy? This sort of seems to be the question for this podcast to start with, yet the question has not been asked until this bonus episode, or more accurately: the answers have not been compiled until this episode. What does it mean? Are Warburton and Edmonds making some kind of inventory? Is this the beginning of a hiatus? In any case, listen and find how many of the philosophers explode in embarrassed laughter as they have to answer the question.

More Philosophy Bites:
Morality,
The genocide and the trial,
Dirty Hands,
Understanding decisions,
Nietzsche repossessed.

Heads-up for 17 November 2010

My heads-up post which I try to deliver every day contains a number of good podcasts that publish on that day. It gives you the opportunity to pick and choose from a wider variety of feeds.

I noticed that my favorite blog DIY Scholar has begun to do something similar. She, Dara the DIY Scholar herself, published her 'listening notes' which do actually a little bit more than my heads-up. Where I just give you an idea what range of feeds I am keeping an eye on, Dara discloses what podcasts she has been listening to and reveals a couple of interesting points she has picked up on. I would say, heads-up, keep your eyes peeled for Dara's listening notes.

Witness (BBC)
Greek Student Protest
A woman at the centre of a momentous student protest in Athens in 1973 tells us of the moment when the country's military junta sent in the tanks.
(review, feed)

History 5 (Berkeley) by Thomas Laqueur
The Great War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequences
How an assassination in Sarajevo came to embroil all of Europe. A war of stalemate and stagnation. A war resulting in revolutions and a radically changed power balance and world map.
(review, feed)

History, linguistics and the downside of society

I want to point you to a lecture on iTunes U which has the lengthy title From Early Judeo-Iranian Jargons to Central Asiatic Argots of Rom Groups: Evidence for an Influential Jewish Underworld in the Late Abbasid Period. Martin Schwartz (Berkeley) spoke at UCLA about his research into the language of beggars and criminals of Central Asia as can be found in late medieval sources and which has traces until today. The lecture was published in the series from the Center for Near Eastern Studies (feed).

Schwartz's research is mostly linguistic, but since it uses Arabic and Persian sources from the 10th to the 14th century it becomes historic research already by virtue of that. In addition, once he delves into the linguistic peculiarities of his subject, you also get an indicator of historic influences and social stratifications. It seems almost impossible and not serious to research the underworld languages of beggars and thieves, but apart from the fact that there are sources, it always serves looking at society from below, while regular historiography most of the time takes on the top of society.

To be sure, the beggars and thieves do speak the common languages of their environment, whether it is Arabic, Persian or Turkic languages. Yet they have a need for switching to a slang of their own in order not to be understood in the environment when they need to. Strictly their colloquial is not a language but rather a jargon or an argot as Schwartz calls it. What is striking is that they look for replacement words that cannot easily be understood and often find them in Hebrew or Aramaic even if the speakers themselves are not Jewish.

More from the Center of Near Eastern Studies:
Jonathan Mark Kenoyer on Indus Valley Civilization.