Electric Cars - My former boss at TED

To have feasible electric cars would do a whole lot of good. In several posts about issues of Global Warming on this blog it has been pointed out how important it is to minimize the CO2 output, but even those that are skeptic about Global Warming or about our impact on global warming, agree that the measure to which we become oil-independent, we improve the world politically and socially. Why all this is, has been said before. Let us look at the question how to achieve it. Specifically, how we can turn an entire country to electric cars.

In this TED Talk, Shai Agassi explains the workings of his company that aims to bring electric cars to the world, starting with Israel and also Denmark, Australia and California. He explains the approach to the technical issues of making an electric car economically attractive and to the political issue of adapting the infrastructure and of course to the companies and countries that have decided to team up with him.

Before I let you watch the video I have to tell that Shai Agassi is my former boss. Not only at SAP, but also at TopTier, the Israeli company that was bought by SAP and from which Agassi was CEO and he moved on to the executive board of SAP until he quit and took up the electric car project Better Place. I have come to know Agassi as a very charismatic motivational speaker. It was invigorating to work for him and I am very pleased he moved his formidable powers to a laudable goal such as oil-independence for Israel and the world.



More TED:
Elizabeth Gilbert,
Bill Gates,
Stephen Petranek,
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi,
Philip Zimbardo.

About Global Warming:
Climate engineering,
Lord Lawson and the Alarmists,
Hot, Flat and Crowded,
Waste Management,
The Stern Review.

Podcast Flavius bij de joodse omroep

De makers van OVT hebben zich voor de Joodse Omroep gezet aan een radioprogramma dat de naam Flavius heeft meegekregen. Het programma is ook als podcast beschikbaar (feed). Er zijn reeds zeven uitzendingen uitgebracht. Ik ben met luisteren begonnen bij de eerste aflevering.

Flavius is een licht, historisch programma dat (althans de eerste uitzending) in alles vergelijkbaar is met OVT (presentatie Jos Palm en Matthijs Deen, gast Fik Meijer), maar zo mogelijk nog lichter is dan dat. Ik heb wel eens kritiek gehoord op OVT dat het teveel geklets werd en dat gaat voor deze aflevering van Flavius zeker op waar het over de gemberbolus ging, maar voor de liefhebbers van het lichte genre is er toch ook veel te genieten.

Natuurlijk moest er een uitleg over Josephus Flavius bij. Fik Meijer heeft de Joodse historicus die namens de Romeinen over de onderdrukking van Judea schreef, vertaald. Hij legt uit waarom Flavius eigenlijk in Joodse ogen een verrader is. Niettemin was hij een uniek geschiedschrijver en daarom werd zijn naam aan het joodse historische programma verbonden. Ik kan me niet voorstellen dat iedereen hier even gelukkig mee is.

Het beste onderdeel vond ik wel het gesprek over Jozef Israel de Haan. Een fascinerende, veelzijdige figuur die in al zijn veelzijdigheid de revue passeert. Er had wat tijd van de bolus af gemogen zodat we De Haan wat beter hadden kunnen leren kennen.

Hoe dan ook. Ik ben nog niet klaar met Flavius. Ik ga zeker nog meer afleveringen beluisteren en wellicht volgen er dan ook nog meer recensies.

Meer OVT:
Mata Hari,
Danton,
Giordano Bruno,
Maria Stuart,
Jeanne d'Arc.

Two communities in one region - Open Source on Israel and Palestine

I do not usually find podcasts about the Zionist-Arab conflict that take on an approach that goes a little beyond the diplomacy and evaluation of geopolitics between governments, international pressure and the dynamics of international policy. Open Source with Christopher Lydon did just that by talking with Henry Siegman and Meron Benvenisti.

The issue this time is not only how peace can be approached, but rather also what ultimate form should a peace solution get. Siegman, who gets the most air time, believes in the two-state solution and sees a fundamental role for Obama to pressure this goal out of the Middle-East cooker. Siegman emphasizes how important it will be that the Palestine state should be formed properly and not be a still-born with three separated parts. Again the new US administration must take a lead into wriggling this result out of the balking contestants.

Then there is little time left for a few remarks by Meron Benvenisti who actually does not support a two-state solution and thus is basically the most interesting guest. He argues there is a regional continuity between the Jordan and the sea and that the Arabs and the Jews must live in one country. It is not hard to see this urgency, but how does Benvenisti think this can be achieved? We'd need much more time on the podcast for that.

More Open Source:
We want Obama,
The end of Hegemony,
Go for a walk with Open Source.

The Public Domain: enclosing the commons of the mind

University Channel Podcast republished an RSA lecture with Professor James Boyle about Intellectual Property that I reviewed last month and which I think is extremely worthwhile. For those who haven't heard it yet, this lecture is warmly recommended and here is my review again:

Here is one of the most interesting and exciting lectures I have heard in the past months. Speaker James Boyle, who spoke on the same subject on Thinking Allowed earlier this month, made an impressive argument for radically relaxing our concepts and rules about intellectual property, for the benefit of science, culture and economy.

Boyle spoke at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (podcast: RSA Current Events), after his book The Public Domain. He argues that the current rules for intellectual property, that, in the process of international harmonization, are getting more and more rigid are actually harming cultural, scientific and economic life. The rules are shutting too much valuable material out from the common use and thus harms the common interest.

The paradoxical thing is that with the emergence of the internet we are in fact experiencing the wonderful, counterintuitive blessings of openness and common use in open-source software, bottom-up knowledge (wikipedia) and speedy disclosure of information (a.o. with Google), while at the same time raising the thresholds of intellectual property. The internet that originally was set-up to serve science actually stumbles over IP rights and finds scientific material barred, leaving the common use with none, dated or second rate material. Boyle pleads to adapt the open character of the internet to much more material today in order to fully enjoy the wealth of intellectual sources that exist.

More RSA:
Israel and Palestine,
Terror and Martyrdom,
Keynes.

More Thinking Allowed:
The weekly social science stop,
Substance and Sociology,
Hole in the Wall,
Moral relativism,
Male Immaturity.

More UChannel Podcast:
Middle East challenges,
Good climate for everyone (global warming),
Robots and War,
Sudan and the fallacy of nationhood,
Against intervention.

History since 1715 - UCLA lecture series

The University of California Los Angeles is like San Diego and Berkeley one of those few institutions that bring lectures as podcast each semester and allows us to download independent of iTunes. The UCLA courses come in a large variety of disciplines and many of them are also available on video.

The course I have started, and which has gone off with a good start, is History 1C - Western Civilization 1715-present (feed). As usual, the first lecture is full of administrative stuff that needs to be taken care off before the course can begin, but in stead of skipping this lecture (which is usually a food idea) I'd recommend to stick with it and get some thoughts about the use of words like West, Civilization and Modern.

I always knew you cannot call anything history without it being a history among many other valid ways of narration. Pinpointing any history as being about the West, about a Civilization and about Modern Times, necessarily also carries some political and historic implications, but I hadn't had it specified until now. It turns out that talking of the West, is something that in the US has not been done until WW1. In Europe, lecturer Lynn Hunt claims, this word is not used at all, although I feel this may change very rapidly now. At least in Israel we clearly think as The West being a cultural conglomerate of North-America and Europe which is to be differentiated from the East and the Islam world, although boundaries are not so clear (where does Japan go?). Calling it civilization and modern, demotes elsewhere and since when to a lesser position.

Despite nasty audio trouble, I stuck around for the second and third lecture, where the beginning of the era is tackled from the perspective of how ideas can affect history. We get the Enlightenment and th French Revolution to show this. I hope the audio will improve soon and then this is just the perfect course.

Sentiments in international relations - NBIH podcast review

New Books in History (NBIH) keeps me excited. Now I have listened to an interview with Robert Hendershot about his latest book Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship. Hendershot, in short, concludes that on a sentimental level the US and the UK feel connected and that this keeps the political relationship close, much rather than interests and concurrence in international policy.

Listening to the interview is simply fun. Marshall Poe is a very inspiring interviewer. He is genuinely excited about the book. He has insights in the subject, but makes sure that it is Hendershot who is talking. And talking he does. In a smooth and natural fashion we get from his background to the making of this book. It turns out he already had the feeling that the close relationship of the US with the Brits was more one of a cultural, perceived than of a political, established kind, but the point is: how do you prove such.

The US and the UK have had, at times, bad relationship from a political standpoint. Like for example in 1956 during the Suez Crisis. So how can you show that even then, the two countries feel connected and the storm will pass quickly? It just so happens that because of the Cold War the US government invested in research compiling statistical data about the people's perception of other nations, inside and outside the US. Hendershot had access to these archives and could stave his ideas with hard data.

More NBIH:
Samuel Kassow and the Warsaw Ghetto history,
Ronald Reagan,
Prokofiev,
Evolution, genetics and history,
Kees Boterbloem about Jan Struys.