Three years Anne is a Man - New Design

I think May 10th will be a good day to start using the new design. On that day it will be three years since I started this blog. 1600 posts and 400 different podcasts reviewed and one and a half years with the current, adapted, design. As reported before, Blogger has expanded the possibilities with the standard templates and by that move taken away all the reasons I had for reverting to an adapted design in November 2008.

At a sample blog I have set up, you can get an idea what the blog will look like as of next month. The ease at which I can change the settings however, will imply that I, almost effortlessly, can continue to play around. Background images and color schemes are updated in a matter of seconds. It is the kind of flexibility I have been lacking for such a long time.



I would love to get some feedback on this projected design. Leave a comment and let your thoughts know. Thanks in advance.

Previously about the new design:
Choosing a design for Anne is a Man,
Where is the new look going?,
Your opinion on a new look for Anne is a Man,
An uncertain wind of change.

Philology guest lecture - Tolkien Professor

A podcast that has many people excited is The Tolkien Professor (feed). Professor Corey Olsen from Washington College teaches the works by J.R.R. Tolkien in a way, as he claims, would have been approved by Tolkien himself. I know people who do the readings before they listen to the next podcast - that shows how involving these lectures are.

From time to time Olsen invites guest speakers and one of the regular listeners alerted me to one of them: Michael Drout (download). Drout is a philologist just as J.R.R. Tolkien and aside from studying the same subjects, he studied the work of Tolkien from a philology perspective. He starts the lecture by reciting Beowulf, as Tolkien would start his, and kicks off from the text and the words of Beowulf, taking it to Tolkien and to the Lord of the Rings from there.

The point Drout so elegantly and entertainingly makes is that specific words and philological mysteries in texts such as Beowulf force the philologist to make wide stretching assumptions and conjectures. In that process, when he has to leave the realm of science and more and more enters the world of imagination, as a philologist he has to stop. Tolkien would not stop. And so, Drout argues, in order to give the words he struggled with a life, he invented a whole world for them. And he gives a number of examples from both Beowulf and Tolkien's literary work. Even if you are not into following the entire course, at least pick up this bonus lecture.

More Tolkien:
Tolkien Professor.

Podcast with pictures - Europe from its origins

Podcasts that contain visuals present me with a problem. The most of my listening time goes without the possibility to glance at a screen. So, I always try to figure out how much you can do without the visuals a usually I will be glad if I can. This is how I started the series Europe from its origins (feed). The conclusion remains you can follow without the pictures, but personally I cannot resist them.

For this podcast I will sit down and watch. Still, you do not absolutely have to see the pictures (apart from the occasional map), but they are just too good to miss out on. Also, my curiosity is roused all the time. Every couple of seconds the slide changes and I just want to know what depiction has been chosen when a certain figure or concept was discussed. Many of the images are reconstructions, or indicators, but still they liven up the experience. At some point, the images also have begun to serve as mental anchors in the story. The same picture for feudal knights, the same picture for Pope Innocent III and so on.

The maker of this series, Joseph Hogarty, has taken upon himself a huge project, not only because of the multimedia aspect of the podcast (in addition to the numerous images there is video and very fitting music incorporated). The task of telling the history of Europe from its origins (in 3rd century Rome ) until modern times is an enormous task. There have been 16 episodes up until now. Hogarty has improved on all aspects, but with each era he seems to be needing more time and the last episodes run beyond 60 minutes. We have just reached the 13th century and so there is at least 600 years of history ahead of us. An amazing achievement so far and I hope passionately, he will continue likewise.

I have not yet said all that impresses me about this series. As the speaker of five languages, I am especially sensitive to what podcasters do with names, words and sentences that are not in English. Hogarty makes in this respect an outstanding performance, which I find unparalleled in the podcasting world. To my ears he is impeccable in German, French, Spanish and Italian. In addition he is very convincing with Arabic. As to Greek and the Slavic languages, I have a limited power of evaluation, but with his prowess in the other languages, I trust him also beyond - something I never do with any other English speaker.

More Europe from its origins:
A history of Europe.

Baboons teach us about stress - Healthy Living (Stanford)

Thanks to a question at the Podcast Parlor I went to look for the answer to the question 'What do baboons tell us about stress?' Apart from a commercial podcast called MedPod101 (feed) which had a short introduction on the subject, with a promise to more I did not find anything. However, the MedPod101 issue about stress (download) referred to Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky as the source and this made me go search iTunesU.

On iTunesU I found Stanford's series Healthy Living in which Robert Sapolsky himself gives two lectures on stress. One telling why Zebras do not get ulcers and one relating what baboons teach us about stress. Sapolsky studied baboons in the field in Kenya for decades and his research on these primates taught him about stress among the apes many things that can be paralleled to humans. Not only do Baboons live under stress, they actually show stress related health problems that we know so well: high cholesterol, ulcers, heart disease and diabetes.

Here is how it works in a nut shell. Since baboons live in a strict hierarchy, being higher up is better for stress. When however, the hierarchy is threatened, the stress on top is just as bad. So, apart from being on top, it is best for a baboon to also have a good capacity to cope with stress. That is, to recognize stressful situation, react right and have an outlet. Sapolsky describes in detail what this means for baboons, but the bottom-line, that the more sociable ones are better at coping with stress, is easily translated to human society. As I would paraphrase Sapolsky: for your health it is best, first of all, not to be born poor, but beyond the poor line, you'd better be well socialized, have a good relationship, have friends and be around kids.

Check out the Healthy Living feed for many more interesting lectures on various subjects in medicine. (feed)

More Stanford:
Historical Jesus,
Global Geopolitics,
History of the International System,
Hannibal,
Stem Cells - policy and ethics.

Justice with Michael Sandel - Harvard lecture series

Harvard opened its gates on iTunesU and last month I learned about it through Open Culture (a blog you all must follow). Among the supply is Michael Sandel teaching his students about Justice (Justice with Michael Sandel). These sessions are extremely professionally recorded on video and vodcast in 12 issues. In spite of the great video, I would say you will not miss much, if anything at all, if you treat this series as an audio podcast (feed). The point is to hear Sandel and his lively interaction with the students. The few clips and slides can be easily caught without seeing them.

The first lecture video (Moral side of Murder on YouTube) takes the students down the path of consequentialism and utilitarianism. In stead of defining these concepts on morality, Sandel throws carefully tailored cases with moral dilemmas at the students and lets them sort out their evaluations. At this point the aim is to teach them consequentialism and introduce them to utilitarianism and so the cases are designed to let them make decisions about outcomes and the sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. This is continued in the second lecture where finally the opposition is met: categorical ideas of Justice.

I am always surprised how people are willing to take on these cases, especially if they are not based on real occurrences and how they agree to stay within the confines of the question. How can you possibly make decisions about running a trolley into either five workers, or one worker down the road? If you take a bit more time to evaluate these riddles, or if you have done so in the past, it may come as a bit of a disappointment that the students do not challenge Sandel a bit more. In spite of this slight drawback, the advantage is that Sandel remains in total control and has ample to guide even the most inexperienced listener into the tricky world of evaluations of Justice. I will surely take this course on until the end and keep you updated.



More Michael Sandel:
Michael Sandel - LSE / UChannel,
A new politics of the common good,
The bioethics concern,
Morality in Politics,
Morality and the Market,
Michael Sandel - Philosophy Bites.

Sir Mark Sykes - Veertien Achttien

De laatste aflevering van de onvolprezen podcast Veertien Achttien heeft een onverwacht staartje. Sir Mark Sykes, bekend van het Sykes-Picot verdrag, is in 2008 opeens terug in het nieuws. Een ander verhaal van de Grote Oorlog dan dat van het geheime verdrag tussen de Fransen en de Britten is dat van de Spaanse Griep. Een van de meer dan 50 miljoen slachtoffers van de pandemie is de Britse diplomaat Sykes. Hij blijkt begraven in een met lood geisoleerde kist - zou men daar het virus uit op kunnen graven? Dat was de vraag in 2008.

In 1916 was de vraag wat er na het verscheiden van het Ottomaanse Rijk met het Midden-Oosten moest gebeuren. De Fransen en Britten lieten hun diplomaten Picot en Sykes in een geheim verdrag de boedel verdelen. Daarin werden voor het gemak de Arabieren, de Zionisten, de Italianen en wie er verder nog maar belang hadden, buiten beschouwing gelaten. De vredesverdragen in 1919, hebben een en ander nog wel enigszins proberen bij te stellen, maar veel van de hedendaagse problemen in het Midden-Oosten en in de problematische verhoudingen tussen de Arabische en de Westerse wereld vinden hier hun oorsprong.

Het zij nog maar weer eens gezegd: De grote kracht van Veertien Achttiens biografieën is dat deze verhalen belangrijke historische mijlpalen zoals het Sykes-Picot verdrag in historisch perspectief zetten en een buitengewoon inzicht in de geschiedenis van de Grote Oorlog geven. En in dit specifieke geval, ook verbanden zichtbaar maakt met het heden. Voeg daarbij het uitnemende, narratieve talent van de verteller Tom Tacken en je hebt een van de beste historische podcasts te pakken.

Meer Veertien Achttien:
De Eerste Wereldoorlog in podcast,
Ford en anderen,
Sigmund Freud,
Edith Cavell,
Rudyard Kipling. (speciaal aanbevolen)