A listener's guide to Geography of World Cultures

Now that I have finished Stanford's enhanced podcast Geography of World Cultures by Martin Lewis, I think it is very appropriate to give a listener's guide into the lecture series (see Stanford on iTunes U). The main reason being, no matter how excellent and deeply fascinating this course, it is a series that relies heavily on visuals, most of which the listeners misses out on

Central are the maps and these maps are part of the enhanced podcast. In order to sufficiently discern the details, one needs a large screen to see and simple mp3 players do not offer that quality. I have followed the course on PC, maybe a large iPod can do some of the same, but generally the advice is to do as I did - sit down in front of a computer screen.

The series breaks down in two major sections. The first six lectures (ignore the titles, they are synchronized with the planning, not with the actual lectures) are about the spread of languages. This is the part that is far the easiest to follow. Occasionally Lewis will point to the map and the listener will miss out on the indication, but generally the context suffices. Only when it is question time - about twice per lecture, one drops out of the visual connections. The same goes for the last four lectures, those about the spread of religion, but here the points Lewis indicates on the maps are far less intelligible. In addition there are frequent drops in sound quality and there is an entire section (the major part of lecture #7) about animism which is accompanied by slides that are not in the podcast visuals.

Hence, the language part is recommended for everybody, the religion part for the die hards especially #7 and #8 (#9 and #10 about Judaism, Christianity and Islam are much better). Die hards are the map freaks and the scourers for general knowledge about cultures that is rarely offered in such a comprehensive way. If only one could have physically attended the lectures...

Listener participation

The experimental podcasts of Shrinkrapradio that are sort of live, have seen their second edition. The advance we can note in comparison with the first edition was the actual participation of listeners. Two of them managed to use the phone in, which is a number in New York. Blog talk radio has suggested that their is a talk back button in their interface, but it seems that is yet to be developed. The phone number in New York can supposedly be reached free of charge with Skype, but I am not sure whether you have to have a paid schedule with Skype in order to be eligible and whether this goes for callers from outside North-America just the same as those inside. I'll see if I can connect next Sunday.

Jerry and Dave took the time to discuss a dream Jerry had had and thus gave the listener an idea of 'dreamwork'. Dreamwork has been discussed frequently in Shrinkrap shows and so the effective use of it will be very instructive for frequent listeners.

One of the callers was Tom Barbelet (spelling?) who is going to be interviewed by Jerry and Dave in the next live show.

A useful map into bio-ethics

I have complained in the past, I couldn't find a satisfying way into questions of bio-ethics through podcasts. I encountered factual explanations of what the bio-technology is capable of (or could be) or an overly religious version of ethicizing which gave me the idea the conclusions were set in advance. With a recent podcast from UChannel, I was refreshed with a more complete approach: Beyond the Genome: the challenge of synthetic biology.

Oct 24, 2007 at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE): The 1970s introduced genetic modification, the 1990s cloning and GM food, and the human genome was sequenced in 2000. Synthetic biology is heralded as the next frontier. But what is synthetic biology and how do we imagine its future directions? What are the implications of this new field for scientists, lawyers, regulators and ethicists? What social and political challenges does it pose and what role will the social sciences, the humanities and the public play in shaping the direction of this new field?

Panelists: Sarah Franklin who does anthropological research around synthetic biology; Peter Lipton the philosopher (he appears here one month before his untimely death); Chris Mason Head of the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Bioprocessing Unit in the UCL Advanced Centre for Biochemical Engineering; Dr J Craig Venter founder of The Institute for Genomic Research.

Silence and Speechlessness

The Word Nerds is a podcast about language and naturally normally deals with how we communicate in words and sentences. Communication can be non-verbal also, one tends to forget. Not the Word Nerds and consequently they already had a show about nonverbal communication a long time ago. In their recent show, they took this attention a step further and spoke of speechlessness and of silence.

Silence can be very effective in language and they proceed to show this with examples. For me the most impressive silence are the moments of silence taken for commemoration. For the dead of war, for the victims of 9/11 and such. Most impressive are those in Israel.

There is the silence of Yom Kippur, when the whole country comes to a halt and for city dwellers such as myself, the background hum of traffic comes to a stop and during the day there is the silence of the dead of night, more so than on an average night. Other silences are those of remembrance far fallen soldiers, terrorist victims and on the holocaust remembrance day. Even on the highway people stand still. They stop their cars and stand in silence next to them.

Neutraal in de Grote Oorlog

Het is al eens eerder in OVT aan de orde geweest: het neutrale Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Deze week, naar aanleiding van de verfilming van Geert Maks In Europa
, staat het jaar 1916 centraal. De blik wordt op het neutrale Nederland geworpen. Maar eerst was er een smakelijk voorafje over Tristan da Cunha - het afgelegen eiland in de Atlantische oceaan waar een virus de bevolking in de greep heeft.

Betekent neutraliteit dat de oorlog aan je voorbij gaat? De uitzending trekt de conclusie van niet. Het was politiek een vast beleid sinds 1830 om neutraal te zijn, maar er waren toch ook wel pro-Duitse sentiment, alsmede pro-Britse. Ik vroeg me af, hoe de Britse blokkade van Duitsland effect had op Nederland, maar dat komt niet aan de orde - wel het effect van een miljoen Belgische vluchtelingen.

Op mentaalgebied blijkt de oorlog ook in Nederland zijn sporen te hebben nagelaten. Niet alleen bij de strijdende partijen is er de schok en de ontnuchtering, ook bij de neutralen en ook in Nederland claimt een hele generatie veranderd te zijn door de oorlog.

New Evangelicals - SOF

Last week I was taken in by Jim Wallis in Speaking of Faith's twofold program about a new kind of evangelicals. This week's issue with Rick and Kay Warren inspired me less. Somehow, the political walk connects with me all right, but the spiritual talk can put me off seriously. Jim Wallis was fine, when he points out that the Bible is very frequently into poor people and how to help them, but with the Warrens I get rubbed the wrong way with certain phrases.

Look, the most important thing, I might and maybe must think, is that they have understood they shouldn't enter politics the way evangelicals did until recently and that their Christian Faith pulls them towards taking on the AIDS problem and to stop marginalizing people. That is where Krista Tippett comes in and where the parallels with Jim Wallis are drawn. That is also where obviously, they cannot be solely identified with a conservative right wing view on society.

I just feel extremely uncomfortable with the near casual way of talking about Jesus and the Lord as if they are each other's neighbors and have conversations on a day to day basis and know what the other thinks as clearly as can be. I could take out of the transcript about ten passages that express this emphatic faith but let's take just one where Kay Warren speaks of her husband.

I always knew Rick was — that God had big plans for Rick. I met him when he was 17. And I said he was — I had never met anybody like him then and I've never met anybody like him to this day. So I had a sense that God was going to do something through Rick, not because Rick was anything different, it's just — for whatever reason, it was God's choice that he was going to use Rick.