Human Impact on the Environment - UCSD lecture series

An interesting summer course in Biology on the University of California San Diego (UCSD) is BILD 18 - Human Impact on the Environment by professor Milton Saier. (feed, website) As usual with UCSD courses, one is advised to download all lectures as soon as possible as they will be taken off line immediately at the end of the course.

In Saier's course the human impact on the environment is nothing to be proud or happy about. The nut shell example is the history of Easter Island. When humans first set foot on the island, it was a lush place with palm tree forests and a rich variety of fauna. For humans it was a good place to live. Plenty of food was to be had. Not just from the vegetation and animals on the island, but also, with the help of canoes, they could go out fishing and enrich the diet even more, notably with dolphin flesh. The famous statues of Easter Island are a distant memory on how rich life on Easter Island has been once upon a time. Yet, in order to build the canoes and move the statues about, the palm trees were cut. Once they were gone, so was part of the fauna and eventually also new canoes. The inhabitants had destroyed their habitat and fell to war and cannibalism.

In Saier's mind climate change, pollution and the rapid extinction of species on the entire planet are a large scale repetition of Easter Island's fate. So while he teaches the specifics of how humans impacted the environment, the facts speak for a normative conclusion. We bear the full guilt of the planet's impending collapse and radical change is needed to prevent disaster and contain the huge damage done already.

More Human and the Environment:
Defining Environmental History,
Climate Change will make us pay,
Electric Cars,
Good climate for everyone,
Lord Lawson and the alarmists,
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
Stern Review.

Downshifting with Marco Mattheis - German podcast review

Ganz Einfach Leben is a German podcast that takes environmentalism and economizing to the personal level. Host Marco Mattheis allows us to take part in his personal life and his personal strife to simplify his life. Eventually this is an excercise in discovering the good life with the minimum of means. (feed)

The effort to down shift, while obviously inspired by the need to bring down consumption for the sake of environmentalism and the need to simply cut costs, takes on a larger meaning of the good life. How to reduce stress, anxiety, compulsivity and the drive of the rat race by means of reducing the economic volume of ones life. Sticking to the minimum of possessions, to the minimum of credit should actually increase freedom and joy in life. The title of the podcast acquires a double meaning, not just to live simply, but also to simply live.

One can follow Mattheis on his quest to acquire this good life and both on the blog and the podcast see how this boils down to practical life. How decisions are taken what to purchase and why. What to cut away and why. Eventually this is not just an example one may consider to follow and take the podcast as a kind of guide, but it is also a possibility to connect with a community of people of like minds.

The need for Community - RSA podcast

The podcast RSA current audio contains recordings from lectures held at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (in short RSA). Usually these lectures are also compiled into the UChannel Podcast, which makes them to be available in both feeds. And consequently I pick them up, once in the one and then again in the other. This one lecture featuring, among others, Amitai Etzioni, about community, I picked up directly from RSA.

My first encounter with Etzioni, sociology professor at the George Washington University, was through the VPRO program Tegenlicht, where he was featured as an inpsiriation of a new generation of politcians among them Blair, Clinton and Kohl and Dutch Prime Minister J.P. Balkenende. Etzioni's sociology emphasizes values and community. At the RSA he was invited to answer the question whether people need community anymore. Based on my previous knowledge, the reply was expected; of course people do.

The basics of this idea are that the social fabric has gone bad, actually, once you have to 'bring in the lawyers and accountants'. Etzioni argues people need some kind of inner incentive to play by the rules and it is suggested community instills this in the individual. And then the really interesting question is: what is community? Where do you find it? And how does community help the social fabric remain intact? Here you will meet several levels of community and also will find Etzioni point out the darker side of community.

More RSA:
The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind,
Israel and Palestine,
Terror and Martyrdom,
Keynes.

Der Sonntagssoziologe - German Sociology with a wink

I suppose Der Sonntagssoziologe is a word that has a similar meaning in German as a 'Sunday's Sociologist' in Dutch would have; a less than serious sociologist. René Lehnert, the host of Der Sonntagssoziologe, is a sociology student who makes the occasional podcast, usually around a question (Frage den Sonntagssoziologen), in order to quickly clarify an issue from sociology or a sociological perspective. Always with a tongue in cheek. (feed)

Invariably, the question is read by a woman (Tabitha Hammer) with a French accent in her German and the answer can be a short as the one to the question What is Murphy's Law. The podcast breaks down, before the Sunday Sociologist succeeds in speaking. And so, this poking at sociology is apart from parody, also a bit of an audio play.

The most charming issue, I found, the one that tried to address the definitive question, What is sociology. Here the question doesn't come from the nice French girl, but rather from the Parents. 'Your brother makes machines, and you? You make... sociology?' Yes, I studied sociology at some point in my life, so I commiserate. René takes us down the line of the gruesome jargon of sociologists, deliberately mauling the answer. I hope his parents still love him.

Elucidations - philosophy podcast review

Two graduate students of the University of Chicago have a philosophy podcast named Elucidations (feed). They interview their professors about assorted subjects in philosophy. For listeners familiar with podcasts in the genre, their approach will seem extremely familiar to Philosophy Bites.

As opposed to Philosophy Bites this podcast apparently does not keep old episodes in the feed. The website suggests there were several previous episodes, but the feed delivers only one chapter, a talk with Agnes Callard about human desire and satisfaction. If somebody desires to catch the train to New York and finds he is late. He then runs to catch the train he sees leaving from the platform. He manages to jump on and while catching his breath he finds he has boarded the train to Chicago. Has his desire to catch the train been satisfied?

This case used to analyze the various ways to view desire and satisfaction. He wanted to catch the train and that he has managed, so his desire was satisfied. Or not, because he wanted to get to New York and now he will reach Chicago in stead. Callard proposes a different way of defining desire and satisfaction than either completely reducing or amassing the elements.

Philosophy Bites on this blog:
Michael Sandel,
Aristotle's Ethics,
Sartre,
Idealism,
Alternative Hedonism.

Brieftour-Pod podcast review

On Friday morning, I did exactly the right thing to optimize the experience of listening to the German podcast Brieftour-Pod (feed). I took a walk. Since the podcast is recorded with a 'Kunstkopf' microphone (dummy head recording), which basically means the podcaster (Michael Eggers) is wearing a stereophone microphone on his head and this records sounds exactly the way he experiences it.

Michael Eggers works as a mailman and makes his podcast while he is doing his rounds. Consequently, while I walked the streets in my Mediterranean home town, I was delivered the experience of Michael's Brieftour in the streets of Neumuenster, which is a small town north of Hamburg. It was like making two walks at the same time with undergoing street sounds of my town and his at the same time.

And while he does his round and makes us take in the surrounding soundscape, he talks about various subjects that come up. As to the content, this makes the podcast a personal audioblog. For example, the listener is made partner in the loss of Michael's mother. Also, he relates to the audience the recipes of his cakes and such. Somehow, the Kunstkopf aspect of the podcast gives the whole result a very fresh and impromptu quality.

More German podcasts:
Ersatz TV,
Volkis Stimme,
Skythenpodcast,
Geschichtspodcast,
Schlaflos in Muenchen,
And more.