lectures

LECTURES 2

The ASH (Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities) talks offers an opportunity to test out ideas and arguments before an audience which is smart and interested, but has no specialist knowledge of the topic.

Clare Hall - ASH Colloquium

Art Bell Coast to coast AM

thinking times

term paper

1 November 2011, Conference Centre, British Library

Why do we have such contradictory views of young people? Fear and mistrust one minute; recognition and celebration the next. Are our perceptions of young people distorted? And what impact do our perceptions of young people and youth culture have on policy decisions? 

The speakers were Professor Ken Roberts, AcSS, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool and Dr Mary Jane Kehily, Senior Lecturer in Childhood and Youth Studies at The Open University. The discussion was chaired by  Ross Hendry, Director of Policy, Office of the Children's Commissioner, England.




Myths and Realities 11: Young people - troubled, troublesome or terrific?

In this talk from BSA Realism event on September 6th Dave Elder-Vass (Loughborough)  talks about Realism, ANT and the Post-Human

Dave Elder-Vass on Actor Network Theory

Panel discussion with

Jane Ellison (Commissioning Editor, Radio 4, BBC),

Matthew Cock (Head of Web, British Museum),

Bill Thompson (Technology writer and Head of Partnership Development, BBC Archive Development) 

History on the Internet

Professor Stephen Hawking offers his own perspective on theories about the origin of the Universe, with a talk entitled "Fire in the Equations".

Stephen Hawking: COSMO Public Symposium 2013

Professor Ian Roberts will explore how languages shape human culture and human thought. Some languages have shaped our world more than others and some of them are not as obvious as you might think. This talk offers a sample of those languages, from Sanskrit to Singlish, via French and Esperanto, with one or two real surprises along the way.

Ideas and languages: 10 languages that changed the world

How far do conspiracy theories undermine trust in government and shape history? From 9/11 to the rise of Holocaust denial, three leading academics will explore and reveal some surprising answers. Sir Richard John Evans is an academic and historian, best known for his research on the history of Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly the Third Reich. Professor John Naughton is an academic, journalist and author. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge, Vice President of Wolfson College, Cambridge, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the British Open University, Adjunct Professor at University College, Cork, and the Technology columnist of the London Observer newspaper. Professor David Runciman is a political scientist who teaches political theory at Cambridge University. He specialises in the development of the theory of the modern state and on aspects of contemporary politics.

Conspiracy theories: the impact on world history

The Government's welfare reforms are starting to bite, but are they radical enough, given projected demographic changes, or do we need a complete rethink of our social values? With Rory Meakin, Professor Simon Szreter, Bill Davies, Jeff Miley and chaired by Gaby Hinsliff.

Rory Meakin is Head of Tax Policy at the TaxPayers' Alliance. He has contributed to projects on a variety of subjects from local government spending to an influential paper on simplifying taxes on income called Abolish National Insurance. Simon Szreter is Professor in History and Public Policy at Cambridge. He teaches modern British economic and social history since 1700. His main fields of research are demographic and social history, the history of empirical social science and the relationship between history and contemporary public policy issues. Jeff Miley is Lecturer of Political Sociology in the Department of Sociology at Cambridge. His research interests include nationalism, language politics, identity politics, immigration, religion and politics, regime types, and democratic theory.

Is Britain's welfare system ready for the 21st century?

Do we really need more biographies of Hitler, or are historians currently adding to the wealth of existing literature simply cashing in on continuing public interest in Hitler and World War II? In this seminar on Modern European History, three scholars currently working on studies of the Nazi dictator offer their thoughts, and discuss some of their latest research. With Prof Wolfram Pyta (Stutgart), Prof Brendan Simms (Peterhouse, Cambridge) and Dr Thomas Weber (Aberdeen). Presented by Dr Bernhard Fulda (Sidney Sussex, Cambridge) and recorded at Sidney Sussex College on November 19, 2013.

Why Hitler Needs Revisiting

Peter Marks explores the irony that George Orwell never experienced the fame, authority and controversy that his name and writing command over sixty years after his death.

George Orwell has been called the ‘most influential political writer of the twentieth century’ and ‘the greatest English essayist since Hazlitt’. He is credited with introducing the term ‘cold war’ in 1945.
He invented the terms Big Brother, Thought Police, doublethink and the telescreen.
The adjective Orwellian is used to describe government intrusion and malevolent power.
Peter Marks explores the irony that George Orwell never experienced the fame, authority and controversy that his name and writing command over sixty years after his death.
Peter Marks is Associate Professor at the Department of English University of Sydney, and gave this talk at Clare Hall, on 19 November 2013.

From Nineteen Eighty-Four to 2013 and beyond: The Surprising Legacy of George Orwell

Michael Loewe relates his personal experience of work at Bletchley Park during WW2. The high-level intelligence produced at Bletchley Park, codenamed Ultra, provided crucial assistance to the Allied war effort. Sir Harry Hinsley, a Bletchley veteran and the official historian of British Intelligence during the Second World War, believed that Ultra shortened the war by two to four years and that the outcome of the war would have been uncertain without it. 

Michael Loewe was recruited as a code breaker while still an undergraduate at Oxford.  He writes:

‘We were a mixed bag: highly distinguished scholars and mathematicians; senior officers of the armed services; eccentrics; wise men and fools; veterans, long experienced in ‘the game’; or, as some of us, undergraduates torn away from the dreaming spires of Oxford or the fens of East Anglia.

Codes and ciphers varied in their complexity.  There were the simple systems used solely to deny information to lower ranks in the German, Italian or Japanese forces.  There were the highly refined versions of the commercially available ‘Enigma’ machine and its successors, used by commanders in the field, captains of submarines or naval attachés. 

In some cases, once the key to reading a message was found or broken, it could be read in its entirety; but for some systems the work was never complete and did not allow more than a partial reading, perhaps with the key word (the name of a place or a ship) undecipherable.

Codes and ciphers were broken by exploiting basic information, such as the behaviour of units of a language or predicting parts of the content of a message.  Those struggling with their wits at the Park blessed the well worn habits, the careless errors or the laziness of the cipher clerks!  But a basic characteristic of the Enigma machine itself provided the way in.

Occasionally the British services themselves helped, e.g. by a specially planned military operation designed to capture documents, or by laying a minefield at sea to provide a reaction by signal.’

Bletchley Park Code Breaker 1942-45

Michael Loewe, is a University of Cambridge academic and renowned sinologist who has authored dozens of books, articles, and other publications in the fields of Classical Chinese and ancient Chinese history.

In this remarkable talk, he describes the twenty-five Chinese dynastic histories that range from 221 BCE to 1911, a continuous account without parallel anywhere and anytime, and he ponders over what these unique records do tell us about the Chinese sense of history.

China’s historical writings are voluminous, including the basic series of twenty-five dynastic histories that range from 221 BCE to 1911.  Officially sponsored, these works set out to prove the legitimacy of  rule that each house enjoyed, coupled with emphasis on the evil ways that brought its predecessor to ruin.

The compilers sought to set human activities within the inescapable cycles that govern the universe, writing with an air of superiority and and an isolationism that called for a single and harmonious rule of all mankind.  Such was what may be seen as the Chinese version of a Whig interpretation of history, flawed by pride and bias and giving rise to misconception.

Officials called on incidents of the past to explain the activities of the present. Exceptionally some Chinese scholar-historians adopted a highly critical stance, breaking away from traditional standpoints and periodisation.  China’s leading universities to-day accept the need for a critical approach and, despite sensitivity over some matters, they invite westerners to deliver lectures on China’s history to their students.  Splendid newly built museums, crowded by parties of school children, and carefully maintained archaeological sites testify to the serious presentation of China’s past to its inheritors of to-day.

China’s sense of history past and present

The question of how language is acquired has fascinated scholars of linguistics and philosophy since ancient times. In this talk, I discuss the status of language universals and gaps in relation to this debate.

The question of how language is acquired has fascinated scholars of linguistics and philosophy since ancient times. Chomsky's work on this topic in the mid 20th century sparked a cognitive revolution after which the focus shifted from behaviourist approaches towards mental models positing a richly specified Universal Grammar (UG).

More recently, though, different kinds of objections have been raised to the concept of UG, notably the issue of how such a system could evolve.

In this talk, I discuss the status of language universals and gaps in relation to this debate. We shall see that many things which we might expect to find in human languages simply never occur. These gaps, we shall see, provide quite strong support for some kind of cognitive bias in language acquisition, particularly when evidence from artificial language acquisition studies is considered.

Michelle L. Sheehan is a Research Associate, Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics.

Nature or nurture: how much of language is innate?

An ethicist and palliative care physician examines end of life questions from both analytic and practical angles.

Few areas of medicine are as rife with ethical questions as the end of life. 

Is it ever appropriate for a physician to hasten a patient's death?  Do those who are using a disproportionate amount of societal resources have a "duty to die"?  Is the terminally ill patient who takes his own life acting courageously, or taking the easy way out?  Who decides when "enough is enough"?  

In this talk, an ethicist and palliative care physician examines questions such as these from both analytic and practical angles, with reference to recent controversies such as Sarah Palin's supposed "Death Panels" and the current furore over the Liverpool Care Pathway.

Ethics at the end of life

What is the evidence for, and why do some people confess to, crimes they have not committed? How reliable is the testimony provided by eyewitnesses, especially by children? Can false memories be created?  What non-legal factors have been shown to influence jury verdicts and sentences imposed by magistrates and judges? Are humans better at detecting lies than machines?

Justice is too important to be left to police officers, prosecutors, judges and juries.

What is the evidence for, and why do some people confess to, crimes they have not committed? How reliable is the testimony provided by eyewitnesses, especially by children? Can false memories be created?  What non-legal factors have been shown to influence jury verdicts and sentences imposed by magistrates and judges? Are humans better at detecting lies than machines?

The talk provides a brief introduction to legal psychology and then address these contemporary issues drawing on legal psychology internationally. In the process, the question of how best to narrow the remaining gap between psychology and law will be answered.

Andreas Kapardis is Professor of Legal Psychology, Department of Law, University of Cyprus

The whole is more than the sum of the parts: narrowing the gap between Psychology and Law

Art Bell - Richard Hoagland vs Tom Bearden - Hyperdimensional Physics

A lecture on November 9, 2013 at New York University.

Aquinas and Realism | Prof. John Haldane

This unedited conversation with David Brooks and E.J. Dionne comes from our produced show "David Brooks and E. J. Dionne on Obama's Theologian: Neibuhr and the American Present."

President Obama has cited Reinhold Niebuhr's teachings as significant in shaping his ideas about politics and governance. In a public conversation, we discuss the great public theologian's legacy and ideas -- and what influence they may play in the future of American politics.

See more at www.onbeing.org/program/obamas-theologian-david-brooks-and-ej-dionne-reinhold-niebuhr-and-american-present/136

[Unedited] David Brooks and E.J. Dionne with Krista Tippett

How do conspiracies happen, how can historians use them to understand more about the past, and where do they begin and cease to be relevant to the study of history? Such questions were the starting point for this panel debate, in which Professor Christopher Andrew and Dr Stephen Dorril examine cases from Stalinist Russia, Harold Wilson’s government in the 1960s, and Northern Ireland in the 1970s, to name but a few. - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/history-and-conspiracy#sthash.UnAMoebB.dpuf

History and conspiracy

Professor Harvey Mansfield is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University. He received his AB and his PhD from Harvard University and has taught at Harvard since 1962. Professor Mansfield is a preeminent scholar of political philosophy and government, having written on or translated works by Aristotle, Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, and Alexis de Tocqueville. He has received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, and the Sidney Hook Memorial Award.

Bigelow Fellow Vince Buccola provided commentary.

This talk was recorded on February 18, 2013, and sponsored by the Federalist Society.

Harvey C. Mansfeld, "A Critique of Legal Realism"

Join us as we welcome back one of our favorite people period Mr Jesse Marcel III to Skywatchers Radio!!!

Jesse Marcel, III is the son of Jesse Marcel Jr, and grandson of Jesse Marcel, Sr. who was the man in charge of the wreckage at Roswell New Mexico in 1947. Over the past 40 years, Marcel Jr. appeared on TV shows, documentaries and radio shows; was interviewed for magazine articles and books, and traveled the world lecturing about his experiences in Roswell.

Jesse is also a member of the Witnesses at the disclosure Citizens Hearing. www.citizenhearing.org

Main site for the flying car! www.airbornemotors.com

2015-02-18  - Skywatchers Radio W/ Jesse Marcel III

1992-12-12 - Coast to Coast AM

The news tends to focus on the antagonism between India and Pakistan. A distinguished panel of academics – Dr Kamal Munir, Dr Ornit Shani, Dr  Bhaskar Vira and Professor Joya Chatterji –
look at the common ground between the two countries. 


India-Pakistan: the common ground at Hay Festival

Ideas about states of emergency go back to Ancient Rome in which it was said that necessity knows no law. This idea took on different meanings during the early modern period and was employed again in 1848 to justify emergency rule in Paris. The idea was inverted by Marx. It was no longer emergency that justified dictatorship—dictatorship was posited as a desirable outcome in a transition to new forms of society.

The genesis of 20th C political authoritarianism by Prof Gareth Stedman Jones

In 1815, two large armies faced each other at Waterloo. Unknown either to Napoleon or Wellington, the battle would be decided by a small, ordinary group of British and German troops.

Did the Germans win the battle of Waterloo? by Professor Brendan Simms

In the age of Charlemagne, Rome was not just associated with the glory of classical and late antique empire, but above all with an authentic Christianity. North of the Alps, rulers and aristocrats created a virtual Rome by importing relics as well as liturgical practices that were thought of as typically Roman.

Charlemagne, Rome and the management of sacred space by Professor Rosamond McKitterick

Despite recent assertions to the contrary, Prof Matthew Kramer argues that there can never be any moral justification for torture.

Torture, morality and law by Professor Matthew Kramer

1984 orwell mix2016-02-05 18h59m22

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Audio Book

The Life Scientific - Child Developmental Psychology with Annette Karmiloff-Smith

Interest in George Orwell's novel "1984" has spiked in recent days since the leaks about NSA surveillance. Was Orwell prescient?  Anchor Marco Werman speaks with journalist and author Cory Doctorow about science fiction's vision of the future.
