Plate Tectonics - IOT

The wonderful quality of In Our Time is to grant access to any which subject. I have seen this in the past with Victorian Pessimism and Gravitational Waves and this week we see it with Plate Tectonics. Even these subjects technical or remote from common interest are elevated in such a way, that one is engaged. What could be interesting in Plate Tectonics apart from the nearly surreal notion that the land under our feet is like a ship sailing on the ocean of molten rock beneath?

Such a notion is hard to accept and IOT reveals it took the world of geography some time to accept the theory. Once it did, a lot was gained. The guests explain the greatest merit of Plate Tectonics: it supplied a unifying theory for the world sciences. It brought land and sea, climate and rock, bio-diversity and the flipping poles together. What Plate Tectonics shows is that this earth is one big system in which all sub-systems are integrated.

Once having established that, Melvyn Bragg advanced to the next step: of all is integrated, then what is the virtue of the next theory, Gaia Theory. This is the theory that proposes to treat the earth system as a living organism, yet another surreal notion. One of the gathered specialists knocks it as absurd and the other praises it. The discussion lits up with true controversy. Who would have expected that?

More In Our Time
The Fisher King,
The Charge of the Light Brigade,
Albert Camus,
The Nicene Creed,
Four humor medicine.

Ben Dunlap at TED

I do not usually review vodcasts. I am one of many people whose portable player carries neither the file size nor the screen to render visuals. On occasion I do however follow some video streaming on line. I still love audio better, but surely there is much to be cherished in film as well. A very good carrier is TED.com and one of its latest releases was so unbelievably good. I simply had to report it. (By the way, TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design, as I saw explained on one of the speaker's sites, about whom more below.)

Ben Dunlap is the president of Wofford College in South Carolina. On this video he delivers a heartening speech on human nature, the human condition and reaching to an emotional plea for education and vigorous moral life. He does so by relating about three Hungarians: Sandor Teszler, Bela Bartok and Francis Robicsek.

Librivox - History of Holland

Jim Mowatt of the Historyzine podcast directed me to Librivox. This is a non-profit organization whose mission it is to record books from the public domain and publish them on-line as audiobooks. The result can also be downloaded as podcast per book.

I gave it a try with a couple of chapters from History of Holland by George Edmundson. This book from 1922 is read by the various volunteers of Librivox. Each chapter is a separate episode; the whole combined in one podcast feed. This was done very well, but with the inevitable and obvious drawbacks in such a project.

The winding writing style of a 1920's book lends itself, at least in my ears, much less to listening than reading. Another difficulty lies with the foreign names. The English readers are challenged by Dutch, French and Spanish names and this sometimes renders them beyond recognition. The English pronunciation of Hainault, neither resembles the proper French pronunciation of the name, nor the Dutch version (Henegouwen). Another aspect of a 1920's history book is the use of terminology or perspective acceptable in its own era, but highly suspect in ours such as race. Chapter II sets the race of Hollanders apart from that of the Flemish and Brabanters as robust men of the sea and not placid land people. Social Darwinism projecting the future success of Holland as opposed to the Southern Netherlands ahead.

These thresholds, make me look for others sources, if I want to know of this era. Had I wanted to read this specific book, I'd be very pleased though. In addition to this kind of non-fiction there are also great works of fiction to be listened to. In the list of new releases I see Dickens, Bronte and such. Amazing, frankly.

Fellow Travelers 1933 - OVT

In de jaren twintig en dertig komt het socialistisch experiment pas goed op de rails. OVT, neemt het jaar 1933 bij de kop en buigt zich over het fenomeen van de fellow travelers. Je zou voor fellow travelers ook een ander jaar kunnen nemen en voor 1933 ook wel een ander onderwerp, maar desalniettemin een buitengewoon interessante excursie.

De lotgevallen van een paar Nederlandse Communisten en Fellow Travelers die in de Sovjetunie aan de slag komen, worden besproken. Helaas loopt het slecht met ze af. Voor de Stalinistische paranoia blijken ze uitermate kwetsbaar. Wanneer ze opgepakt worden, menen ze dat het om een misverstand gaat. Ze verwachten snel weer vrij te komen, maar vinden zichzelf terug in Siberie en in een vroege dood.

Toch begint het vermoeden dat het systeem niet helemaal edel en heilzaam is, wel te rijzen. Van de Nederlandse fellow traveler (of was hij een communist?) George Fles wordt een uitspraak aangehaald die is teruggevonden in de verhoren van de NKVD. Hij ziet de feilen van het regime in de beeldende kunst die ze bevordert. Voor hem is het allemaal onverteerbaar slecht; de schilderijen mogen vernietigd worden en de schilders moeten maar iets anders gaan doen. 'Ik heb een schilderij met Stalin gezien dat ze in een kerk mogen hangen met het onderschrift: Jezus Christus en de kinderen.'

Eerdere besprekingen van OVT in dit blog:
1917 - Het oostfront,
1917 - Russische Revoluties,
1922 - Walther Rathenau,
1925 - Mussolini,
1929 - Goldene Zwanziger.

Non Violence

There is always the danger of overload. As a result of loving podcasts and writing about them, I listen to so many of them, it gets a wee bit too much from time to time. The effect is not just going numb and not hearing the casts any more, it is also that for some I am not open enough. It is easy to criticize, but I decided as a matter of principle to give podcasts I review as much credit as I can.

As a result of the intense listening schedule, I took on a new course from Berkeley on the wrong foot. A reader of my blog, drew my attention to Introduction to Non Violence which she recommended whole-heartedly. I took the course up and in spite of my inclination towards non-violence, I had a hard time engaging myself.

When common sense is challenged for the sake of something soft, I tend to retract - I do not like non-scientific new-ageism at face value. Common sense is that we live in a real and independent from our perception physical reality and also that each of us individuals are separate from others. When this is challenged even for the sake of showing how our basic concepts seem to exclude non-violence, took some effort beyond routine listening.

Hence I stopped my iPod for some 24 hours and then tried again. It makes sense, non-violence needs some different way of looking at things. And non-violence should not be some last resort method, when you have lost all power. It needs to be a matter of principle and permeate the whole look on the world and human relations. Once having cleaned myself I started following the stream of thoughts and started thoroughly enjoying this exceptional lecture series. There is still much to go, including a follow-up course. I hope to write about it some more in the future. For now, be advised to open up and allow yourself to listen in.

De vrijheid van meningsuiting - NRC FM

NRC FM, de podcast van NRC Handelsblad lijkt stapje voor stapje aan kwaliteit te winnen. Er is nog een lange weg te gaan, maar het gehakkel van vaste deelnemers Paul Steenhuis en Daan Diederiks wordt al minder en de opnamekwaliteit wordt al beter. Wat in de laatste editie ook helpt: er is maar een gast. Juridisch redacteur Folkert Jensma komt het een en ander uitleggen over grondrechten.

De aanleiding is, dat er recentelijk bij een demonstratie mensen opgepakt waren die een kennelijk beledigende afbeelding van het kamerlid Wilders hadden laten zien. Jensma, vertelt dat aanvankelijk gesteld werd dat Wilders geklaagd had beledigd te zijn, maar nadat gebeleken was dat zulks niet het geval was, werden demonstraten met dezelfde afbeelding opgepakt op grond van belediging van het gezag. Dat laatste was juridisch niet houdbaar, zo wordt ook door Jensma uitgelegd.

Vervolgens gaat het gesprek over de kwestie waar de grenzen van de vrijheid van meningsuiting in de praktijk liggen en hoe ze zouden moeten liggen. Het zou helpen als de gespreksleider, iets meer zou samenvatten of anderszins daadwerkelijk het gesprek zou leiden. Nu worden er een hoop behartenswaardige uitspraken gedaan, maar blijft daar weinig van hangen omdat er niet geordend wordt. Zoals Ronald van den Boogaard al eerder opmerkt had, Paul Steenhuis heeft er een handje van om te gaan deelnemen aan de discussie.

Meer over NRC FM:
Amerikaanse verkiezingen,
Over mannen en over Rumi.

Meer Ronald van den Boogaard:
Ina Muller-van Ast,
Ronald van den Boogaard geeft plug,
Jan Wolkers.