So glad ya decided to hang around a bit longer.

Bach (pronunciation) wrote his Choral for organ BWV659, Nun komm’ der Heiden Heiland. A rather nice interpretation is on youtube. Never mind the boring video, it is a audition for the Geneva conservatoire, so fiddling with a camera would probably NOT be a good idea.

Then, more than a century after Bach’s death Italian composer Busoni came along. He (oh blasphemy) arranged quite a few pieces of Bach for piano. Remember that in Bach’s time, the harpsicord and organ, both non-dynamic instruments, meaning, impossible to change the volume by the way of playing, were the prevalent keyboard instruments and only late in his life, the Silbermann piano, predecessor of the modern piano, gained ground. Here is late Vladimir Horowitz romantic interpretation, played in his own home. It’s a cut out from a 1.5 hours documentary.

But I prefer the straight audio, here played by the then only 17 year old Joseph Kingma. Here is the beautiful score from the same website.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I love this, listen to it every day, a soul connection.

There are a three earthly things I would like to do in this life, some more achievable than the other. One of them is visit Yellowstone. This morning, as I was flipping through some links and photo’s I knew again why.

A nice international connection. In Praha (Prague), Dutch bank ING, always strong in building very strong architectural buildings (see here and here) had Canadian and a Croatian-Czech architect build “The dancing house”, depicting Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.

Image by wikipedia. More info here and here. Thanks Arrakeen.

Benazir Bhutto was murdered today at age 54, after surviving an earlier attack in Karachi in October, killing 140. She would have been the almost certain prime minister following the January 8th elections in Pakistan. Your votes please, Al-Qaida or Muschi?

Earlier on the nest: The dictator

Common medical myths, even upheld by some physicians, torn apart by Rachel C Vreeman in the British Medical Journal.

• People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
• We use only 10% of our brains
• Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
• Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser
• Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
• Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
• Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

Fair use quote:

A 2007 study, examining mobile phones “used in a normal way,” found no interference of any kind during 300 tests in 75 treatment rooms. In contrast, a large survey of anaesthesiologists suggested that use of mobile phones by doctors was associated with reduced risk of medical error or injury resulting from delays in communication.

Thanks VPRO.

This TED talk is funnily enough entirely spoken from a US-selfish point of view. The already old presentation (2005) makes a scientific-economical, peer-reviewed case to get entirely rid of oil dependence for transport in a couple of years time, without major governmental influence and actually gaining (American) jobs. Not that the barrel price back then was $26, not the $80+ range we’re seeing today. It is a compelling proposition, and what it did to me is showing at least the real feasibility. Having said that, there is still, 2.5 years later no way for me to buy a truly fuel efficient car (Toyota Prius) here unless I cough up at least $42.000, and that is NOT the sort of car this guy is talking about.

The Israeli army handed over a report to the military prosecutor stating it’s use of cluster bombs in Southern Lebanon in 2006 was not violating international rules. Therefore, that prosecutor decided last Monday to not press charge against the commanders responsible. The conclusion sharply contradicts those of the UN, which stated that cluster bombs were used far too casually and was not used exclusively against military targets. If it weren’t so serious it was almost good enough a joke for hysterical laughing. The bombs were “dropped on mostly inhabited terrain” and “a military necessity”. Sure, let’s drop some cluster bombs in empty dessert, that will teach those terrorists a lesson.

Facts: The offensive against the Hezbollah took 34 days. Almost 1200 Lebanese were killed, mostly civilians. 157 Israeli were killed, mostly military. After the offensive, over 30 people (usually children, but I have no figures for this specific case) were killed by littered cluster ammunition.

Earlier on the nest: US is investigating Cluster Bombs “fair use” in Lebanon, The cluster bombs revisited

On October 12th 2002 a massive bomb exploded in the Eks Sari Club on Bali, Indonesia, killing 202 people, most young tourists from Australia. Four of my countrymen lost their lives in the blast too. Later, a total of 26 people were arrested, 3 of which were considered the leaders. They were sentenced to death. Yesterday, all possibilities of appeals were exhausted and the authorities said the 3 will be executed by the fire squad before the end of January.

This is one of those tough cases where initially one, yes, me too, wants to rip apart the lunatic religious fanatics killing so many youngsters just having fun in the dawn of their lives. But then, would it make us, the people, better? Would it really bring closure for the victim’s families? Would it restore tourism in the area? Would it calm the protesting crowds demanding their lives? Would it end the intense fanatical hatred? Would it end the injustice fueling that hate?

Earlier on the nest: The day against death penalty,  The killing, The killing revisited

Through Google talks I ran into Dasher, a small text input program using language probability and the analog nature (instead of binary key clicking) of our body. The program uses simple movements, whether by mouse, eyetracking or just bending a finger to enter text . Actually I am writing this with dasher. It is very hard to explain how it works , but maybe the best way to describe is using a car analogy. I am driving over the most probable letter combination, mildly steering toward my intended goal.While I don’t see it replacing the keyboard soon it has some cool properties such as language independency. OK, quitting dasher here and typing on. Fantastic for the disabled, RSI affected, and it could come to your PDA or cell phone (for texting) soon. Give it a go, they have a Java applet running in the browser for the heck of it. Sure beats enter text on a numerical phone keyboard.