Another of the numerous Open University podcasts, this series of videos gives an overview of the town of Paestum, located in Campania. The town was originally called Poseidonia when founded by Greek colonists in the 7th century BC. There are 4 videos totalling just over 20 minutes in length. They are available in iPod or a larger (640×360) format. There are also transcripts. The visuals are of the modern ruins or of artefacts recovered from the town.

Modern day Paestum is dominated by three big temples built by the Greek founders. The first video spends some time on these temples and the time in which they were built. Unfortunately, the site was excavated in haste in the last century and damaged in the process. Despite this there is evidence of variations from established Greek culture. There are 24 flutes on the temples' columns rather than the traditional 20. The second video shows paintings from an archaic Greek tomb. In the 5th century BC Poseidonia was conquered by a nearby tribe - the Lucanians. The third video focuses on some funeral paintings from this period. Despite the Lucanians' reputation as barbarians, there is little physical evidence of disruption from this period in the city, and they must have been largely Hellenised. There was a large discontinuity to the city when it became Roman in 273BC and renamed Paestum. Much of the city was rebuilt in the Roman style although the temples remained intact. The fourth video deals with this period.

An interesting, but very short and narrowly focused, series.

The continuation of this post is a set by step tutorial detailing my methodology.

The continuation of this post is a set by step tutorial detailing my methodology.

Finding podcasts on ancient history which do not focus on Mediterranean civilisations is very hard. The only one I have found so far is UCLA's History 9A - History of India course. This is a recording of the lectures given as part of the university course by Vinay Lal at the end of 2009. However, the course encompasses far more than the ancient history for which I was searching. Starting with the first civilisations, it races through history to end with Indian Independence and Partition.

This course is not available on iTunes but there is a course website with the lectures in both MP3 audio-only and video in real player format. Unfortunately, two of the lectures were not recorded. The 27 recorded lectures are around 50 minutes in length and 24MB (for the MP3s, I didn't watch the videos). As is normal with recorded lectures there is some class discussion taking up the first few minutes of each podcast. The course reading is also available from the class website. Professor Lal occasionally mentions visual aids, but video is available. Production quality is otherwise fine and the material is presented in an interesting manner.

The podcasts start with the Indus Valley Civilisation (in what is modern Pakistan), one of the three early human civilisations along with Egypt and Mesopotamia). These people were replaced by the Aryans (no relation to the Nazi Aryans) in some disputed manner. From there the course quickly skips to Hindu religion and culture, telling Indian history through Hindu texts. I imagine a similar history of Europe could be told through early Christian texts, but it would miss much. In Europe, there were many non-religious texts; the lectures suggest that in comparison, Hindu texts are the main primary sources for ancient Indian history.

In any case the lectures on Hinduism are quite interesting if you don't already know much about the religion. The course covers the content of the main Hindu texts from the Vedas, Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Puranas and a little on the Bhakti poets. It is intriguing to see how some Hindu concepts such as Karma or Yoga have been transformed in western culture. Yoga is a much larger concept then physical exercise and describes many methods of achieving the goals of life. The Hindu gods also have many avatars - incarnations or personifications of aspects of the god. One of the avatars of the main god Vishnu is Buddha - this avatar appeared at a time when Buddhism was expanding in India. The lectures also detail the basic beliefs of Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism (including a discussion on its disappearance from India) - all of which have their origins in India.

After the arrival of Islam towards the end of the first millennium AD, the course returns to a more traditional history format. As there is still a thousand years to the present day, the coverage of events can be succinct. Starting with the Delhi Sultanate, Muslim rule of India continued with the Mughal Empire, which succumbed to the East India Company. It seems strange to have a country ruled by a foreign company and Professor Lal spends some time detailing how this occurred. The subsequent rule (and sometimes, misrule) of the British Empire is covered, with the final lecture detailing Gandhi and his policy of nonviolent civil disobedience leading to independence.

Not knowing much about Indian history other than the basics, I can't say I learnt a huge amount more through this podcast, although there are occasional worthwhile tidbits. However, I did learn a huge amount about Hinduism. It covers all Indian history in an introductory sweep.

Last night I watched Hurt Locker for the first time. I was looking forward to it. I had heard so many reviews and it had won 6 Oscars. However, to put it politely, I didn't like it. I consider it well below average. Both the major and minor characters are unbelievable and fit neatly into standard movie stereotypes ("he's a maverick, doing dangerous things - but he gets results!"). The scenarios in which the characters find themselves seem unlikely. One character carjacks a local and travels across Baghdad, then runs back to the base. At another point, 3 characters search for enemy bombers in the backstreets by themselves and unknown to their support. Coming to a three-way junction, they split up! The script is often heavy-handed, letting the audience know exactly what they are supposed to be thinking. For instance, when confronted with a possibly involuntary suicide bomber, the interpreter repeatedly reminds us "he's a good guy". Once is required, maybe twice to stress the point. However, the many repetitions beyond that are just clunky. At once crucial point we are told "he has 4 children". Are we perhaps supposed to empathise with him?

The plot is quite episodic. This got me thinking. It might be that the story's ambition was neutered by making it a movie in the first place. The story has potential and maybe many of its problems (heavy handedness, stock characters) could be solved by taking longer to tell it - much longer. It is very hard to fit a complete interesting story with detailed real characters into the 2 hour timeframe of a film. I doubt even extending the running length to 3 hours, the extreme end of theatrical releases, would give enough room to properly tell Hurt Locker's story. Perhaps it should be a TV series.

I remember a time not long ago when the 4 or 6 hours of a mini-series were the longest storylines around. Now there have been quite a few TV series with continuous storylines. Babylon 5 was the first I remember, but since then there have been the excellent The Wire and The Sopranos among many others. Generation Kill told a similar story to Hurt Locker more successfully over 7 hours. After watching these, other TV shows with their "everything resolved in 40 minutes" episodes seem inferior (Dr Who is suffering from this at the moment). I am not suggesting film is inferior in general, just that it has its limits and most of the best films don't try to do too much. For great characters and great stories the extra time afforded by TV pays great dividends.

The continuation of this post is a set by step tutorial detailing my methodology.

The continuation of this post is a set by step tutorial detailing my methodology.

'Buildings of Ancient Rome' is another of the consistently good Open University short podcasts. This one describes and details the histories of certain buildings (mainly temples) of Ancient Rome in the Circus Flaminus, Largo Argentina and Roman Forum. Thus it focuses on a few quite small (and, apart from the Forum, less well-known) areas of ancient Roman ruins. The format is a series of 5 short video documentaries (although iTunes only lists 4 videos on its iPod page, it then lists all 5 on the Mac/PC page). The videos are available in a 640×360 format or a smaller iPod optimised format. They range from 2 minutes to 15 minutes in length, and transcripts are also available.

The videos are made entirely of pictures of the temples/buildings being discussed in their current state (with the very occasional floor plan). The audio comprises details of the buildings and their history. There are no reconstructions or interviews. The information comes think and fast - dates of construction (and sometimes destruction), architectural notes, interesting events in their history and how it is thought they were used. It can be hard to orientate yourself - a little knowledge of Rome's history and layout helps immensely. Interesting, but not introductory.

The image is a graph of the FTSE 100 stock market index of the largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. It is a UK version of the S&P 500. Like other share indexes it is often quoted on the news in absolute terms as well as the absolute rise or drop over some time period. For example yesterday the FTSE 100 closed at 5123, a drop of 138 points. However, to compare movements the absolute point value should not be used. This is because the index is calculated as the change relative to some reference date. Calculated from this base, the larger the index, the larger point move required to be equivalent to a move at a smaller index move. A 2% move when the index is at 5000 is 100 points, when the index is at 2000 an equivalent move is 40 points. As the index gets larger, point movements will naturally become larger for no difference in activity. Thus the graph above is misleading because it exaggerates the more recent point moves at a larger index level compared to the earlier moves.

It is the percentage move that is important. If the graph showed percentage moves the 1987 crash would appear much larger and the recent crashes smaller. To better show the relative moves, I found a graph of the FTSE using a logarithmic scale on Yahoo. As can be seen below the recent boom and bust don't seem as large, but they are still there. So the same message could have been sent with a less misleading graph.

Having spent a week in Athens last month, I didn't leave with the impression disaster was imminent. People generally seemed to be going about their daily business. There were no clear signs of distress (apart from one incongruity). Indeed, other cities I have visited appeared to be in worse situations. While a large amount of my time was spent in busy tourist throngs around the archealogical sites, I also travelled out into the surrounding areas. What I saw appeared to be a working city. There were numerous storefronts with decent traffic and many business offices. The streets became busier after work hours. Bars and resturants were quiet during the day, but became busy late in the night. At one point we saw a crowd blocking a street near Syntagma, it could have been a well behaved protest, or just as easily people waiting for some celebrity. There was a lot of graffiti, but also a lot of graffiti art. Not so different to London really and there was probably about the same number of unused/abandoned buildings. Although unlike London, many of the occupied buildings appeared quite run-down and not well maintained.

There was one indication of possible problems. On a quiet side street North-East of Omonoia we walked past trees, parked cars, buildings that looked like apartment blocks, and little shops. Then there were two burnt out cars next to each other. They were completely wrecked - the fire destroyed everything. However, there was no damage apart from the cars. Either the fire was somewhere else and then the wrecks dumped there or the immediately surrounding area was cleaned up (but the cars left). Both seem strange. Apart from these wrecks, Athens did not feel different to most cities I have visited.

Cities are ususally places of vibrant activity - normally business related. Visit London, Paris, Sydney, Barcelona or Milan and you feel you are in a working city. There is the sense that the locals are busy getting things done. Travelling around London, I am constantly amazed by the number and variety of business nameplates outside buildings. You can walk for hours from the Shoreditch across to Hammersmith and it is busy offices the entire way. Washington and Rome feel more dominated by tourism and government, but there is still lots happening around you. Two places I feel didn't match this description, at the time I visited, are Lisbon and Tunis. There was a general lack of activity in Lisbon, it seemed almost empty. Never have I seen so many empty, decrepit buildings. Tunis was similar, full of people, but they didn't seem to be doing much. There was always a large number of men sitting in cafes, presumably un- or underemployed. These two cities felt like they were in dire economic straits. Indeed, Portugal is currently mentioned in similar financial terms to Greece, but that situation was clearer on the streets of Lisbon than Athens.

The menu focusses on British produce with a special emphasis on game, most of which is apparently hunted or caught by the owners. For a starter I had a wild mushroom soup with mussel fritters. There was a surprisingly large amount, although it was so nice it certainly was not a problem to get through it all. The main dish was shoulder of deer for two with celeriac mash, vegetables and a little salad. It all came on a large platter so that you could carve the shoulder yourself. However, this wasn't at all arduous as the meat was so beautifully tender it just fell off the bone. Again, a large amount of delightful food. After that I was too full for dessert, but I'm assured the sticky toffee and date ice cream with lemon curd was delicious.

The Harwood Arms had a pleasant atmosphere, not quite a pub but still welcoming. Service was prompt and courteous. The cost was reasonable for a top restaurant (by London standards!), dinner for two (starters, main and one dessert) with wine was under £100. Excellent food and well worth a visit.

This Open University series examines theatre during the time of Classical Greece. In particular it details the production of the world's oldest surviving play The Persians by Aeschylus, first performed in Athens at the Theatre of Dionysus in 472BC. Like the other OU podcasts, this series is a set of short documentaries to accompany lectures. There are 4 video podcasts totalling around 40 minutes in length, with the individual videos ranging from 7 to 14 minutes. They are available in iPod or a larger (640×360) format. There are also transcripts. The visuals are mainly talking heads interspersed with shots of theatre ruins, vases or in later episodes modern productions of The Persians.

The first video details what the Theatre of Dionysus would have looked like in the 5th century BC and what it would have meant culturally to attend the theatre at that time. Performances would have been important events, it is estimated that the theatre could probably hold around a third of the male citizens of Athens (it is not certain women were allowed to attend). The second video covers the actors and chorus in Ancient Greek theatre. Ancient Greek plays only had 2 or 3 actors, who would each play multiple parts while wearing masks. The next video examines how some Greek plays have managed to survive 2500 years - only 7 of Aeschylus' estimated 90 plays still exist. The last episode discusses some modern interpretations of The Persians.

A good short podcast series, but probably only for people particularly interested in Ancient Greek theatre.