Jan Leijten - Marathon Interview

Een sprekende Leijten (J.C.M, zeg maar Jan, destijds A-G bij de Hoge Raad en hoogleraar burgerlijk procesrecht) is voorzichtiger dan een schrijvende. Interviewer Hans Simonse heeft een keur aan pittige citaten uit artikelen, maar kan aan Leijten niet hetzelfde soort uitspraken ontlokken in het marathoninterview op 27 Juli 1990. Wel zegt Leijten na het aanhoren van zijn eigen ongezouten schrijfsels: Ja, dat vind ik nog steeds.

Het was weer een interview waarvan ik de vijf uur in een adem beluisterd heb, maar voor een deel is dat toe te schrijven aan nostalgie. 1990 was het jaar dat ik mijn rechtenstudie afrondde en het gesprek ademde de sfeer van die tijd en het ging over de onderwerpen van die tijd, in de taal van die tijd. Het was het feest der herkenning en trouwens ook de melancholie van ons beperkte inzicht. Leijtens vooronderstellingen over de toekomst zijn vooralsnog volkomen onjuist. Hebben we over twintig jaar geen opiumwet meer, omdat de drugs gelegaliseerd zijn? Er zijn achttien jaar om en het lijkt er niet op. Reserveren we gevangenisstraffen alleen nog maar voor de allerzwaarste delicten? Vergeet het.

Toch is het gesprek niet hopeloos achterhaald - zo meen ik. Het is buitengewoon fascinerend om Leijten te horen spreken. Hij formuleert als een jurist, hij weet het formalisme van het recht uit te leggen en schuwt tegelijkertijd het moraliseren niet. Hij is voelbaar aan het zoeken naar de rechtvaardigheid en is behalve uitgesproken op momenten ook vertwijfeld aan het verkennen. Ten slotte is Cor Galis in de af- en aankondigingen geweldig op dreef, amusant, scherp, provocerend en spitsvondig, als reactie op Leijtens wat al te semantische bewering dat vergelding niet hetzelfde is als wraak: 'vergelding is de wraak van de staat en wraak is de vergelding van het individu.'

Meer marathoninterviews:
Gerrit Wagner,
Rijk de Gooyer,
Hans Galjaard,
Bert ter Schegget,
De Gaay Fortman.

Anne is a Man, podcast reviews

Coming up in the next days, are a number of podcast reviews, but in addition the beginning of an article series intended to give technical help listening to podcasts - especially for beginners.

Tomorrow:
Marathon Interview podcast - About a 5 hour interview Hans Simonse had with Jan Leijten (Dutch)
Celtic Myth Podshow - About an Irish tale involving treachery, murder and the price to pay.

Thereafter:
Simek 's Nachts podcast - Review about this interview series featuring among others Gert Dumbar (Dutch)
Podcast Listening for Beginners (part 1) - A straightforward, step by step, explanation how to listen to podcasts on line. Next: Download podcasts to your computer and MP3 player.
Geography 130 - A review about this lecture series from Berkeley.

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David Hume - Philosophy Bites

We have to make our pick from the wide range of philosophical issues Philosophy Bites brings to the fore every week. This time around I choose one of my all time favorites: David Hume - and I have come to love him more than ever.

If only Hume himself could be on the show, but no such luck. Peter Millican appears to explain about Hume. The importance of Hume lies in epistemology and his ardent skepticism therein. He is considered one of the greatest philosophers from Britain and I think I missed Millican pointing out that for example Popper was highly influenced by Hume.

A very entertaining insight is given in Hume's assumptions about God. Millican makes a case Hume was actually an agnostic, possibly even an atheist. He had to hide these views in his work though in order not to enrage his friends and colleagues. So Millican shows how Hume disguises his thoughts, but how you nevertheless can extract them.

More Philosophy Bites:
Several issues of Philosophy Bites,
Free rider problem,
Humanism,
Is war innate?,
Wittgenstein.

Missing Link with monotheists

Proceeding on its journey to get clarity on the Evolution vs. Creation divide, The Missing Link podcast makes a stop at the three monotheistic religions. For an American audience, the divide should position Evolution with science and Creation with religion, but this need not be so.

The podcast reveals that it is a strong Protestant, Evangelistic, inclination, to root for Creation as the religiously sanctioned position. Their companion, so is claimed, is found with Islam and the podcast states that by all means, Islam is showing the widest consensus against Evolution.

The student essays then concentrate on Judaism and Catholicism. I found it not the strongest edition of The Missing Link, but with an interview with George Coyne (astrophysicist and former director of the Vatican Observatory) the issue does have a renewing feature. The bottom line is that Judaism and Catholicism leave much more room for science to make claims about facts and feel comfortable taking the scripture metaphorically.

More about The Missing Link on this blog:
Missing Link with Popper,
An evolved controversy,
Time's Arrow,
On Time and on Counting - The Missing Link,
Strength in Numbers.

Stern Review - UChannel podcast

Even though the discussion is still going on whether climate change is happening and whether it can be ascribed to and influenced by man, this seems more of a sideshow these days. There seems to be consensus there is Global Warming, man has caused it largely and must now make amends. This opens the possibly much more difficult issue: what needs to be done. Nicholas Stern, a British economist wrote about that in what has become known as the Stern Review (2006).

On January 7th, Princeton invited Stern to come and speak about his report. The lecture was recorded and published as a podcast in the UChannel series. (site, audio, video) In spite of the many slides during the talk, this is a very informative podcast. Stern explains, in terms largely comprehensible for non-economists, how climate change implies a considerable economic crisis. Even though the scope of the change is unknown, he proposes sound models for projection and on the basis of these projections one can assume the measures to be taken.

Once a model is chosen and one ponders on the measures to be taken, Stern claims, not surprisingly, these measures need to be global and are directed for a very long term. As to practical figures, he brings some clarity to their proportion and their fairness. When talking of emissions, it is said the Western World largely attempts to reduce with 80% in a certain amount of time. Whether this is a lot, fair or very little, is made more clear in Stern's talk. This is one of the practical points where this podcast allows the lay listener to get some more grip on the huge and sometimes very abstract problem of climate change.

More UChannel on this blog:
Islam meets Europe,
The rise and demise of Palestine,
Alan Johnston,
Nuclear Terrorism,
Attack Iran (or not).

Life and bio-engineering - podcast review

WNYC's Radiolab tackled Life as a subject. In a way there were two subjects and the bridge between them was somewhat flimsy, if you ask me, but nevertheless they were fascinating and both pertaining life, although not exactly as we know it.

At first they built up to a short interview with a chimera. Karen Keegan from Boston one day found out she was a twin in one person. Part of her organs genetically were her sister's and part were hers. They blended into one functioning human during the earliest stages of pregnancy. That is a chimera.

The bridge, as said, to bioengineering is not so compelling, but one wouldn't give up such a juicy story as Keegan's. Now hosts Krulwich and Ambumrad take on a couple of working examples of bioengineering: microbes that got new DNA in the lab in order to get functions they naturally do not have; human DNA implanted in other organisms. Eventually, life could be designed, as such.

The undertone in the last subject, and basically of the program is: is this right? One conclusion that stands out is: it could be dangerous considering we already have begun engineering while we still know so little in microbiology. But ethically? Even if we can make things work. We can cure disease, let microbes solve pollution and the energy problem? Is that right. Krulwich expresses it intuitively: it doesn't feel right, but other than that this question is not explored. It is as if they lack terms, or an entry into the philosophy.

In the past I have noted this inability apart from one podcast, the bioethics podcast, which knows it full well, but is so exclusively predisposed with its Christian fundamentalist outlook on the world, that it doesn't satisfy the need for a universal and not strictly evangelical answer.

More Radiolab:
War of the Worlds,
Wright Brothers,
Morality.

Bioethics:
Bioethics without Christ, please,
A useful map into Bio-Ethics,
Stem Cell Research: Science, Ethics, and Prospects.