Yale - Hist 202, European Civ 1648-1945 - John Merriman

John Merriman and I have at least one thing in common, we both own only one tie. (His wife convinced him to dress up for the lecture on the Middle Classes). He's an old lefty made good, perhaps the best American scholar on all things France. He lives, breathes dreams and thinks in French, so I was a little surprised when he explained the unending complexities of Eastern Europe far better than I've ever heard. Likewise, his coverage of the fall of the Soviet Union is profound. He's a little hard on Napoleon but most people are.

Merriman wrote the text for this course, so the normal history is there. The lectures are all color. As a part time resident and frequent traveler of Europe he brings an insiders view to his lectures. It's an absolute honor to listen to a course like this. What we get is a lifetime of scholarship, forty years of reflection and a wonderfully interesting man. On my list of professors I'd like most to have dinner with, John Merriman is close to the top.

Search "open yale" for a smorgasbord of high quality offering from Yale in both audio and video. See my review last April of his other course "France since 1871".

UCLA - Pol. Sci 115c Citizenship and Public Service - Brian Walker

This is a most interesting and provocative course. Here's the background. After the sixties our education system eliminated all "civics" courses. "Don't encourage them, for heavens sake", seemed to be the reasoning. Bad mistake. Now that we're over the sixties it's time to get back in the saddle and Dr. Walker is leading the way.

I really enjoyed Walker's PS 114b, see review Oct 6th. That was a classic academic presentation of American political thought. But this course, although very academic in it's material, has at it's root - advocacy. Walker simply exhorts his students to consider public service. After some ground work, starting of course with Greeks and weaving in some Confucianism, Walker devotes most of the course to "Seven Paths to Citizenship". These are: -Soldier
-Public Servant
-Politician
-Activist
-Capitalist
-Artist
-Environmentalist.

Next year he plans to add Scientist and Journalist.

Walker put together a makeshift reader for the course and is planning to write a text. Included in his reader is one color photograph. It's of FDR late in life, sickly with dark bags under his eyes. In the "Public Servant" section he pulls up the photo and says like an evangelical, "This is the face of public service. This is what happens when you take responsibility. This is what happens when you worry". I was in the back seat saying "amen brother". Walker promises his students who choose public service less money but "the data shows greater happiness and fulfillment. What Walker doesn't say is that college professors are perhaps the best example of this.

In his PS 114b Walker presents all sides of political views so well, his students were never sure of his own views. In this course as he says, "I try to keep the devil down in the hole but sometimes....". We do learn where Mr Walker stands on many issues, but he always draws a line between his view and the opposing view. He is both academic and candid and that makes it easier to form ones own opinion.

You will learn of Florence Nightingale, who also had bags under her eyes. She is Walker's iconic public servant. Confucianism is threaded throughout the course and is essential since they more or less invented public service. Teddy Roosevelt introduced America to civil service examinations about 800 years after the Chinese.

Hopefully, this course will become a trend. Hopefully someone will water this down and put it in High Schools. Nonetheless, I feel certain that more than one UCLA student taking this course because it "looks good on the transcript" will end up making public service a part of their life's work. Advocacy works why not use it.

Ohio State U - Astronomy 141 Life in the Universe - Richard Pogge (continued)

This turned out to be as good as I hoped it would be. It's a riveting look into what science will be doing for the next 50 years. It's amazing how much useful information can be gained from such sparse data. Pogge is a spectographer, he actually builds the equipment. In some detail he explains that life has it's own spectrum markers, and that there are also tell tail signs that may tell us what phase of evolution that life may be in. We haven't yet found an earth-like planet outside our solar system but when we do we can gather a lot of data without having to spend 100,000 years going there.

Richard Pogge is the consummate scientist, and yet he kept using a phrase inherited from Sagan that is just plain wrongheaded; "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". Sounds good but it's fatally flawed. First, use of the term "extraordinary" is totally subjective, nothing more than a value judgment. What is "extra-ordinary" differs from person to person, culture to culture and even more so from time to time. Second, the phrase "extraordinary proof" is an oxymoron. One cannot arbitrarily raise and lower the bar of proof. To do so is fundamentally anathema to science. What is proof for the goose must be proof for the gander.

This subject is perhaps the most basic of all questions humans ask. Are we alone? Our culture has taken that question and turned it into a huge industry, to the point we can't think clearly about it anymore. Pogge brings us back to reality in a beautifully organized course. Are we alone? Don't bet on it.

Ohio State U - Astronomy 141, Life in the Universe - Richard Pogge

This course is ongoing but I'm going to review it now even though we haven't got to the best part yet and (I'm broke down in Chicago).

I sometimes question the way universities slice and dice content into new sexy courses. However this one makes sense. Just twenty years ago we didn't have evidence of another planet outside our solar system. Now we know of around 300 and we can safely project that there are tens, hundreds of millions in our galaxy alone. Now the question of 'life in the universe', which we have addressed mainly with novels, movies and TV, must be addressed by science. How do we do that? This course is built around that question. As Pogge says it's not just a question of are there microbes somewhere, what we really want to know is, "is there somebody to talk to".

Pogge is famous for his Astronomy 161 and 162, the solar system and the universe. These are two in depth courses, beautifully organized into self contained lectures. Two gigs of 'the greatest story ever told'. See my January review.

After an introduction, Pogge begins with five revolutions in Science including geological, chemical and biological. Next is a long section about earth and a lot on topics outside astronomy. When you get to know Pogge you know this guy does his homework. So the interdisciplinary lectures are really fresh. Geology is excellent, the story of oxygen is amazing. How did life get started, the magic jump from molecules to a single cell are topics addressed in some depth. Life goes back 3.5 billion years and evolution took forever. We almost didn't make it. Key terms and timelines will become meaningful. With 'extinctions' we're moving into the solar system, halfway through the course.

After years of false starts I'd nearly given up on Plato until I discovered Steven B Smith at Yale. If science has left you a little cold perhaps you just haven't found the right teacher. Meet Richard Pogge. Go to itunesU. Search "life in the universe".

Walker Walker and Johari

When I started this project in January business was down 30% and I had plenty of time between loads to write. Now, thankfully, for the past three months I've been busier than ever with barely time to go online. More time to listen but no time to write. Nevertheless, I will try to at least document the courses I listen to and add whatever commentary I can.

Here are three short reviews.

Brian Walker, UCLA Political Science 114b (US Political Thinking from 1865)

This is what I love about academia. Walker takes on the "right" and the "left" in a passionate and yet completely objective analysis. His students are required in their papers to argue both sides of a given topic and then give their own opinion. The first several lectures are the best coverage you'll ever hear of the American conservative movement. It's not negative it's not positive it's just what is. The last lecture is on the 60's and 70's, Walker's specialty, and it's not at all what you might expect.

Walker is an excellent lecturer; he tackles tough topics and is always interesting always objective.


Richard Walker, Berkeley Geog 110 (Economic Geography of the Industrial World)

This is a course from Fall 2007. Geography is by definition interdisciplinary. This course leans towards economics. Walker maintains that economics without geography is not good economics. He may have something there. Another contentious claim and one that comes from quite a few professors, regards Mexican immigration. Walker says "tear down that wall" and the sky will not fall. Indeed our economy needs every immigrant. I recall another economist putting a number on the value of every illegal Mexican immigrant. It was around $500,000 net gain to our economy.

Richard Walker occasionally goes on a political tirade which serves no purpose except to embarrass himself. "Obama hasn't got a prayer of a chance". He also seems to abuse his students with far too many slides. If the concept is off-shore banking, the slide shows crystal clear water and some beautiful beaches of the Cayman Islands. Unfortunately the slide reinforces just about everything but off-shore banking. The slides wag the lectures.

Berkeley has another Geography professor I actually prefer but have never reviewed, Nathan Sayre. Any course by Sayre gets my highest rating.


Ramesh Johari, Stanford, The Future of the Internet

This is excellent. It's a continuing education course, four long lectures and one short one. It needs to be four times longer. Johari is young but a great teacher, he never lost me. The course concentrates on the big issues and although it's two years old it's not seriously dated.

He maintains that the 'net neutrality' issue is not as simple as most parties want it to be. "There's problems on both sides". I listened to this course twice and when it's offered again I'll be there.

As pertinent as this is to all our lives and as amazing as the story is, I don't know why there are not many more courses like this. The internet needs the sunshine of academic analysis and we need the insights of Ramesh Johari. The internet works remarkably well. How not to screw it up is the challenge.

Heidegger, All Too Heidegger

Heidegger is an acquired taste. A very expensive taste. If you have lots and lots of time and don't mind getting little back on your investment and are willing to exercise your neurons till they hurt, then help yourself. Repeating these lectures over and over is required before they make sense, and you will never arrive at a complete understanding of Heidegger. So why are there students standing in the hallway trying to get into Hubert Dreyfus's course on Heidegger? Why does Amazon's Kindle ereader already have 60 books available when you search Heidegger? Why was Heidegger's impossibly obtuse, "Being and Time" so influential? Because what he said was revolutionary and simply very interesting.

There's two courses. Berkeley's Phil.185 with Dreyfus and now a course at Hampshire College with John Drabinski. Search 'jdrabinski.com' and find the "Between Husserl and Heidegger" podcast. But the place to start is a new youtube post. It's a five part BBC interview with a red headed Hubert Dreyfus made perhaps 25 years ago. Bryan Magee is the host. Fifty minutes total, it's an excellent introduction.

Heidegger's brilliant innovation was to get out of the Cartesian confines of 'subject-object'. Heidegger says, "we are that in which we operate", and "we are always already in the world". Existence is to be one and the same with our environment. From this basic premise he builds a complex language and philosophy. Following is my take on a little bit of evidence that tends to support this concept.

Artists develop a style uniquely their own. They also sense that their tools and their art are really integral extensions of who they "are". We go to a museum and we look at a Vermeer painting and we say that "is" Vermeer. Heidegger works! (although I'm stirring in some psychology). The motorcycle rider does not ride on the bike, the bike and the rider are inseparable and one with the road, mountains, sky and sometimes rain.

When John Drabinski was six years old he asked his parents how could he be sure he was not the last human on earth and everyone else was a robot. His father said that he was not a robot and of course little John replied "but that's just what a robot would say". We were all philosophers at six. (Truck drivers are all philosophers but really bad ones.)

Dreyfus and Drabinski are kindly patient teachers. Dreyfus gets down to incredible details. You'll learn some German and realize how arbitrary translators can be. Drabinsky paints with a broader brush. At first I skipped Drabinski's Husserl lectures but went back for them because he's part of the picture.

These lectures have another side effect. Everything else seems so uncomplicated.

Dan Carlin - Hardcore History - Ghosts of the Ostfront

Anne is supposed to be vacationing but he can't help himself. He just scooped me on this but great minds..... I'm a big fan of Dan Carlin; he's always fired up, well researched and always interesting, but I think his current episodes on the Eastern Front of WWll "Ghosts of the Ostfront" are his most compelling, most important podcasts ever. There's three parts posted and one or more to come.

This story is important because it's not a part of western consciousness. Our history books, our movies and especially Ken Burns documentary hardly give lip service to the Eastern Front. And if you don't understand what happened on the Eastern Front you don't know beans about WWll.

Six months in Stalingrad from Aug. 1942 to Feb. 1943 was the pivotal point in the 20th century! Everything prior led up to it. Everything after followed from that event. Stalin was a monster and that's a fact. That Stalin (with American jeeps and boots and rations) whipped the Germans 17 months before D-Day and by D-Day had them cowed has never been acknowledged. Why? Because Stalin was a monster. We cannot hold these two concepts in our heads. They're like rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together. Perhaps two years ago in an article in the Atlantic on this topic, a brave academic said, "Stalin saved the world for democracy". And whereas this outcome seems heroic, the way Stalin did it was by being his old ruthless self; shooting in the back anyone who retreated. A Russian soldier was captured by the Germans and then escaped back to his company. He was so badly abused when he returned, he went back to the Germans.

I also recently listened to Carlin's three part series, "Punic Nightmares". I had just finished Stanford's short course on Hannibal which seemed to be missing the final reel. Carlin's three episodes are just as good as Stanford's unless you really really have to know which route Hannibal took over the Alps. And Carlin gives the devastating ending.