Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Selected listening for 1 February 2011

Wise Counsel
Raun Kaufman on Autism and Son-Rise
Former CEO of the Autism Treatment Center of America Raun Kaufman was the first recipient of the Son-Rise program, developed by his parents in response to his childhood diagnosis of severe autism. Though his diagnosis was presented by doctors as incurable, the Kaufmans, who had recently engaged with the 1970s human potential movement, remained hopeful with the understanding that if they decided the situation was hopeless, it would become so. They engaged intensively with their son, joining in and participating with his autistic repetative behaviors (against medical advice), seeking to create rapport. As Mr. Kaufman began attending to and engaging with his parents, they then used that hook to challenge him and teach necessary interpersonal and communication skills. Today the son-rise program offers an alternative to the dominant applied behavior analysis model which seeks to treat autism by first addressing the autistic child's difficulty forming relationships rather than their odd behaviors. The Center offers intensive parent training in the son-rise intervention model (as parents - not professionals - deliver this care) from their Massachusetts campus. Having been developed by non-scientists outside the university, the efficacy of the son-rise program has not been established with clinical trials. However, Mr. Kaufman suggests that recently resarch has been occuring which will shortly be published.
(review, feed)

London School of Economics: Public lectures and events
Phase Three of the Global Crisis
As countries adopt competitive exit strategies from the global crisis Paul Mason surveys the political economy of a flat recovery. He argues that mainstream economics have still refused to draw the lessons of asset price bubbles and situates the divergent recovery, east and west, within a long-wave explanation of the crisis. Paul Mason is the award-winning economics editor of BBC Newsnight, covering an agenda he describes as 'profit, people and planet' and author of the Idle Scrawl blog , which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize 2009. His first book, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. This event marks the publication of his latest book Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed.
(review, feed)

Entitled Opinions
Héctor Hoyos on Roberto Bolaño
Héctor Hoyos holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. from Cornell University. He was born in Bogotá, where he studied philosophy and literature at the Universidad de los Andes. He is preparing two book-manuscripts, entitled Beyond Bolaño: The Global Latin American Novel and El deber de la travesura: César Aira y la crítica cultural. His interests include visual culture and critical theory, as well as comparative and philosophical approaches to literature. Professor Hoyos has published scholarly articles on García Márquez, Roberto Bolaño, urban fiction, and the late thought of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
(review, feed)

KQED's Forum
Protests in Egypt
We get the latest on the protests in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak, who has been in power for nearly three decades. We'll also check in with members of the local Egyptian community to get their reactions to recent developments.
(review, feed)

Subscribe to iTunesU feeds as a podcast

Here is a hot tip for approaching iTunesU feeds in iTunes. Aside from the fact that iTunesU feeds, by all technical standards I can think of, are really podcasts and therefore that is where I'd rather have them grouped, this mode of operating also gives a solution to the problem of not being able to remove iTunesU files from iPod.

In short, my advice is to subscribe to iTunesU feeds as podcasts. In other words, take the url to the feed and subscribe to it as a podcast and NOT by simply choosing 'subscribe' when in iTunesU. The files will show up in your podcast list and not under the iTunesU category. In addition, as you copy them to your iPod, the files will be considered podcast files and as a consequence can be deleted whenever you wish (which is not so easy for iTunesU files, in case you have a 4th generation iPod or older).

If you know the URL to the iTunesU feed, choose in the iTunes Menu Advanced | Subscribe to podcast... and then paste the URL into the text field, followed by OK. That is all.

If you do not know the iTunesU feed URL, you can figure it out by temporarily subscribing through iTunesU. Interrupt the download and go to the course in your iTunesU collection. Right-click the course and choose Copy iTunesU URL. This will copy the URL to your clipboard so that you can delete the iTunesU course and continue to the iTunes Menu Advanced | Subscribe to podcast... and then paste into the text field, followed by OK.