Bright Sheng - Naxos podcast review

The Naxos Classical Music Spotlight Podcast's latest edition is about the composer Bright Sheng. This composer of Chinese descent is not easy to place, just as, host Raymond Bisha compares, the Belgian composer Olivier Messiaen. Not that Sheng is like Messiaen, Sheng is not easily categorized, just as Messiaen was.

It seems to come with the territory. Bisha tells us that the Chinese, in order to compete with the West, started having their own orchestras with their own instruments, only in the 1950's. As Bisha points out: making orchestras is one thing, but developing a repertoire is much, much more difficult. So, just as the whole concept of orchestras was imitated from the west, the evolving orchestral repertoire, no matter how Chinese in nature, is borrowing from the west.

Sheng is one such Chinese composer that writes orchestral music. While he brings in his Chinese roots, he also learns from the western musical tradition. The result is profoundly Chinese, yet accessible for the westerner, as I found out while listening to the podcast.

More Naxos:
Sir Charles Mackerras,
Pictures at an Exhibition,
Hildegard von Bingen.

Hole in the wall - Thinking Allowed review

BBC's Thinking Allowed had this week the most exciting, inspiring, romantic and nearly unbelievable item: The Hole in the Wall project. Laurie Taylor speaks with Sugata Mitra, who started the project which has such amazing and nearly unbelievable results and which among others supplied the basis for a movie success such as Slumdog Millionaire.

Sugata Mitra placed computers in holes in walls in places in India to allow free access to internet and computer use for underprivileged children. He reports the most astonishing fact that in a matter of months the kids master the software, surf and apply and manage to educate themselves. This even stretches beyond the boundaries of language and into tough subject fields such as bio-mechanics.

It defies common, or at least my, observation. My children of 4 and 7 years old, have free access to a computer in much the same way. They have to rely on self-learning and accommodate the language barrier with the mainly English and Latin letter internet and their Hebrew starting point. After months of finding their way around without much assistance I can indeed report amazing feats of self-learning, however, my kids, as opposed to the slum kids in India, do not use paint and Google, but rather have built an endless supply of arcade games to enjoy themselves for hours on end.

Such observation, but by all means, any critical reception would demand more detailing and explanation than is offered. It needs to be noted again Thinking Allowed is too short. Let's not be discouraged though and explore the questions about this program and this specific issue on the Podcast Parlor

More Thinking Allowed:
Moral relativism,
Male Immaturity.

The Podcast Parlor

Here is something new in our world of podcast reviews that hopes to be an addition to this blog and also to that of other reviewers of quality audio on line such as Do It Yourself Scholar and The Re-education of Baxter Wood. We have begun our blogs, not just to relate to cyberspace what we think of the podcasts we find, also to exchange thoughts with people who enjoy the same material.

What this demands is, apparently, more than just the comment option in our blogs. We have comments, but no serious dialogs have been kicked off there. And so, we want to invite you all to join us in an on-line community, where you can discuss and write your thoughts on the material we bring to the forefront or the content you want to present yourself: The Podcast Parlor.

Signing up is easy and discrete. From there you can observe the discussions we trigger, participate and instigate discussions and posts yourself. Feel invited and than ks in advance for joining.

Anne, Dara (DIY Scholar) and Baxter.

Alternative hedonism - Philosophy Bites review

The great podcast Philosophy Bites generally publishes every week and even if it has lapsed a bit on that demanding schedule these past weeks, the podcast is as great, as valuable, concise, comprehensive and thought provoking as ever. As a matter of fact, on a filled playlist as I have, it matches better with my pace.

Last week's edition (there is a new one in the mean time) had a compelling title to begin with: Alternative Hedonism. It featured an interview with Kate Soper who takes an unusual approach to tackle the problem of the impending environmental catastrophe, which she takes is at least in part is caused by our consumerism. Even if you are inclined to believe that such a connection is not actual, one may consider our consumerism destructive on other grounds and the whole idea of an alternative hedonism remains appealing.

Hedonism lies to the foundation of consumerism and possibly also (I might add) our inherited mind of the hunter gatherer: enough is never enough. However, if it is pleasure we ultimately strive to, changing the terms of hedonism, could channel this basic instinct into a more healthy direction. If other experiences are to counts as pleasurable rather than the amassing of goods and the size of our wealth, we'd be more healthily inclined. This would be a matter of cultural values, so that massive possessions are less valued than experiences. A best example Soper suggests is sex - a hedonistic pleasure that will not burden the environment. An example Philosophy Bites tentatively suggests, with some nod of Soper, is the podcast Philosophy Bites. Safe, healthy and green pleasure.

More Philosophy Bites
Non-realism of God,
Virtue,
Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard,
Machiavelli.

Israel and Palestine - strategies for peace

The RSA Current Events is a podcast of many that are replicated in the compiled feed of UChannel Podcast. If you missed it in the one, you may run into it in the second - this has happened to me frequently also with other contributors such as LSE and CFR. A curiosity that struck me with the podcast Israel and Palestine - strategies for peace is that it appeared quicker in UChannel than in the original RSA feed. Apparently there was haste, haste to publish before the war in Gaza was over.

The Gaza war loomed heavily over this discussion forum and makes for more heat than debate. I have also picked up very little in the way of suggestions for strategies for peace. What remains is an experience of all the familiar accusations. Israel is committing atrocities and war crimes. Hamas has provoked the war. The Palestinians have mismanaged. The West has lost the moral ground to dictate the goings on in the Middle East.

What strikes me in this and many other debates I have witnessed is how old strands of western imperialist logic continues to dominate, on both sides. The old fashioned world view has an inherit hierarchy in which the West has the superior culture of morals and values. Other peoples are backward and barely capable to rule themselves. In the accusations of Hamas's incompetence this is present just as much as it is in the thorough victimization of the Palestinians - in neither picture they are capable of ruling themselves and take responsibility for their actions. Also when the West is accused to have lost the moral ground, the presumption is that the West had it in the first place or is supposed to hold the high ground. Any which way, this logic imbues the debates with strands of condescension that are strangling the dialog.

More Israel:
Terror and Martyrdom,
Gaza - podcasts on diplomacy and war,
Whither the Middle East,
Desiring Walls,
Gabriela Shalev,
UCLA Israel Studies.

More RSA:
Terror and Martyrdom,
Keynes.

Gilles Kepel's view on Terror and Martyrdom - RSA podcast

The RSA Event with Gilles Kepel was simultaneously published in the podcast of RSA Current Events as well as UChannel Podcast. Another RSA podcast I saw show up in the UChannel feed even before it did in the RSA feed. With other suppliers to the UChannel Podcast, I usually see the original feed carry a podcast far earlier than the UChannel sampler. But that is merely an aside.

What I found especially interesting about Beyond Terror and Martyrdom, the lecture of Gilles Kepel (and also a book he wrote), is that he took on the overall terminology that has taken a firm grip on the Middle-East and its tense relations also with the rest of the world and showed a perspective from which this clinging on to 'terrorism' and 'martyrdom' fails. Neither the western view, that the Middle-East has become a victim of terrorism and that its terrorism has been exported to the rest of the world works, nor the Islamist view that it is fighting a holy war against modernity and Israel, the view of martyrdom has solid ground.

The War on Terror fails. The bringing of democracy in Iraq or Afghanistan has failed. The west has not been able to stop terrorism, nor taken aways its roots. The Islamists on their part haven't stopped modernization, or the achieved any weakening of Israel or the US or western Culture altogether, nor have they managed to unite the Islamic, or even the Arab world. Kepel concludes that the narratives are bankrupt. The narrative of the west that solidifies the idea of terrorism has failed and so has the narrative of the evils of western culture to which the martyrs of Islam must be sacrificed.

Kepel's work is a strong demand to get out of this dichotomy and start approaching each other differently. His so-called critics that are allowed to speak in the podcast, although they disagree on some analysis of Kepel, basically agree to this general tenet.

More RSA:
Keynes.

More Israel:
Gaza - podcasts on diplomacy and war,
Whither the Middle East,
Desiring Walls,
Gabriela Shalev,
UCLA Israel Studies.