The genius of Rostropovich: Complete Cello Concerto #1 C Dur by Haydn

A wonderful performance of Haydn’s 1^st cello concerto with Rostropovich both playing and directing a crisp ensemble.  I watched three other versions with excellent cellists who mug and agonize while Mstislaw holds an inner peace. I think Haydn would love to have been in the audience.   R walks onto stage gesturing with a pulse of energy and sits while the players lead spiritedly into the work.  Are the 1^st cello and string bass playing from memory too?  I had to clap my hands for joy.

A Thousand Year Tug of War: Borders of Europe in restless animation.

A bit of a lull from WW2 to the breakup of the USSR but change and struggle is the constant. It passes your eyes at five years per second.   Intriguing are the finely pixellated states where Germany now sits, unlike any other region. Their parochial granulation persisted for hundreds of years while surrounded by the pulsations of regional giants.  Russia, so much in the news this week, isn't clearly an empire or even a country until recent times.       Thanks to smalldeadanimals for the link.


Watch as 1000 years of European borders change (timelapse video) from TransferWise on Vimeo.

Russian humour in the Crimea: Obama promoted to KGB Colonel

'The newly elected PM of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, tweeted yesterday: “I wonder, after the successful campaign of handing over the Crimea, will Barack be promoted to a colonel?” '  The Russian-language Tweet was accompanied by a Photoshopped picture of Barack Obama wearing a Russian uniform.  (Quoted from the original at PJ Tatler).

Believe it or not, the Crimean PM-elect used yet another photo-shop for his tweet.  The use of mockery is a potent tool.

Sex-blind health premiums are a tax on young men.

Women consume more health dollars than men, a lot more. A third more.  Living longer explains only 40% of that. A Michigan study (2000) shows lifetime expense of $361,200 per woman and $268,700 per man. This isn't news to the insurance industry but it's big news for young men in America who are picking up the tab for Obamacare and being punished with a tax if they don't.  In Canada, health is over 40% of provincial budgets.  No wonder health is a woman's issue. The gentler sex has the upper hand and will keep it as long as health premiums are blind to sex. When most people live in families with children, who cares? When instead there are many single working adults taxed to pay health care for strangers, is that fair?

Sharing the load sounds kind of noble until you remember that the young generally have fewer assets and lower wages than those same people when they are approaching retirement.  Why pick on the young.  Just think of the last time you went out for a dinner in an upscale restaurant.  Almost every table has grey haired diners.

James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal:

Because ObamaCare prohibits insurance companies from charging different premiums according to sex, and because women tend to use more medical services than men--a disparity that is greatest among younger policyholders--the "gender averaged" premium increase is greater for young men than for young women.
That means young men are the most disadvantaged by ObamaCare's price controls--and, as a corollary, that they are the group on which ObamaCare's solvency is most dependent.

Obama, mocked as a "Prankster", has the germ of a good idea

The press and the Russians have mocked Obama for coming up with sanctions that might injure a dozen rich Russians and Ukrainians.   It does however echo the personalized strategy Israel developed to manage terrorism by taking down the command structure one kill at a time.  I think it likely that if a few hundred corruptocrats feared for their fortune, they would steer Russia's policy into calmer waters.  On the other hand, personalized sanctions is also the petty strategy of Obama and the left in America who try to attack and isolate people like the Koch family, rather than win a fair policy fight.

No government in history - a Word to the Wise.

No government in history
with a monetary system
ever intended to pay off all its debt.

Canadian oil moving south by train, competing with XL pipeline. Cue outrage.

Highlights from the Kansas City Star:

Choo choo trains of yesteryear have become “tremendously nimble competitors.” and "changed the competitive landscape forever", especially for thick Canadian oil sands product. Within two years CN and CP rail capacity will be abreast of the 830,000 barrels per day projected for the XL pipeline. North American oil train shipping ramped up from 10,000 carloads five years ago to 400,000 last year and 600-800,000 projected by 2016.  (This also means Canadian oil is getting a better price. By the way, most of the XL is already built from Cushing ND, south. Just the Canadian leg is blockaded by politicians and environmentalists.)

The little engine that could

The thick oil doesn't have to be diluted by a third and then undiluted at the other end to get through the pipeline, especially if the oil is kept warm in the tankers.  The tankers carry loads both ways but the pipelines are just one or the other.  The tankers can go to many more destinations including the east and west coast and barge destinations but pipelines cannot. Train capacity can be stepped up quickly in small increments with fewer approvals.    (If you Google "oil trains" you will only find links to outrage and danger flags.  Even in that area, there are gains:  New tankers have thicker walls and oil sands oil, being thicker, is less flammable.)

"Railroads have defied skeptics and are in it for the long haul".

Footnote:  Some oil prices are climbing because the backlog at Cushing ND is declining and that oil is being moved to market at world prices.   There was a big dollar discount for it until recently.  Another contribution to this is the Seaway pipeline that Enbridge bought and reversed to flow north to south.

"These barrels are no longer landlocked, so they're tracking the global price rather than that landlocked lower price they were seeing for the last couple of years,"

Graphene nano box is a hydrogen suitcase that opens and shuts on demand.

The ultimate hydrogen power pack has been invented.  A one-atom-thick graphene surface has nine hinged panels that fold when goosed by an electric charge.  The panels fold with overlaps into a six-sided leak-proof cube brim-full of trapped hydrogen. The 3-D animation at the link is beautiful.  The University of Maryland research by mechanical engineers Shuze Zhu and Teng Li points the way to amazingly light and long-lasting fuel cells.   h/t to Instapundit linking to phys.org

From the animation: (Click on the link above, not the fake "start" symbol below.)

Watch millions of Londoners going to and from work in sixty second animation.

The animation is based on scanned transit passes for the City of London for 3.1 million people.  The dynamic map is like a living crystal driven by solar energy (time of day).  Story found at zipcar.com

GPS Tracking all airplanes all the time everywhere in the world.

Flightradar24 is updating a world map every few seconds with the position and direction of all known aircraft aloft in the world.  Zoom on the world map to see your area.  You can check how far out your plane is while you wait.  The "About" page explains that Europe has almost 100% coverage and North America is increasing rapidly as more and more planes add the public GPS link.   Hat tip to smalldeadanimals.  Planes update by the second although some (in orange) have a 5 minute display delay.  Soon all planes will have this GPS satellite update as radar is replaced.

Here's the live display centred on Buffalo NY.
and two snapshots:

Truckers strike at Port of Vancouver: You are misinformed if you get all your news in one place.

From one site (CBC)you learn that container truckers' average pay is only $15.59/hour because of long waits and rates that have been pegged for eight years at the Port of Vancouver.  That seems ridiculous for a guy with a hundred thousand invested in his truck.

From a second site (CTV) you learn that great harm is being done to the Canadian economy and that the PM says it's not acceptable to have small numbers of people blocking important trade.

From a third:  The Seattle Times expects ships to be diverted to Puget Sound  and permanent market share loss for Vancouver, quoting a Port of Vancouver spokesman:

"What they're (truckers) doing is putting at risk their market share," he said. "If they thought it was competitive before, it's only going to get worse." Negotiations collapsed Thursday as Bob Simpson of Team Transport Services, which represents about 40 employers, asserted that demands by the truckers amount to an average 30 percent rate increase, plus 30 percent more in other monetary demands.

From a fourth, myself:  These truckers are mostly Sikhs and that has a bearing.  We paid an extra $1200 to get a Super B truckload of lumber delivered to our truss plant two weeks ago, double the going rate.  The lumber was two weeks overdue because no trucks could be found in the interior of BC.  One mill even refused new orders until trucks would come to clear out the mill yard.  No change is expected for 4 to 6 weeks.  Just like the drivers you see in the Port of Vancouver pictures,  most of the lumber truck drivers are Sikhs and, quite reasonably, they don't like to drive on poor winter roads.  The last delivery problem we had was because of the Diwali festival long weekend in November when Sikhs headed home to celebrate.  Can you find a single story highlighting the Sikh angle on this strike?

Good men but not into St. Patrick's day.

Thanks to Mark Twain for help with the headline.
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.”

Pi Pie

Pi Pie, created at Delft University of Technology, applied physics, seismics and acoustics.

Delicious and decidedly European, in honour of "pi" day.  The first 28 significant figures are iced into the top.  March 14th.  Why not?

More at Astrobob

You have to pay to find out if you're legal. CSA and the Building Code.

The BC Building Code 2012 governs all construction in the province.  It costs hundreds of dollars to find out if you are in compliance.  That's because BC pays the Canadian Standard Association for permission to print CSA specs.  This was publicized recently at restorecsa.com  "Ontario P:ays for Permission to Print Provincial Law", asking the question, "Does a private corporation own public law". (h/t smalldeadanimals).      

This is wrong in every way.  Power is arbitrary if the rules aren't clear and available to everyone subject to them.

Stop making fun of Shiny Pony

The Ban Bossy movement appeared in the States, apparently as battlespace preparation for Hilary to run in 2016.   Canada is ready for the Ban Shiny Pony movement.  Stop mocking this lovely toy favoured by young women honing skills for the adult world.

My beloved little pony
You can comb its lovely hair.
The video shows how.

Spy Olympics: America is #4 and China the top dog.

Strategy Page rates them:
#4  US
#3  Russia
#2  Israel
#1  China

Read the rest here.
US is ahead in data collection but not cyber attacks and penetration of other security agencies?

"Experts point to China as the undisputed leader in global cyber warfare. China is believed to have hacked the Australian intelligence apparatus, Indian government networks and departments within the Canadian government. The U.S. suspects China of both sabotage and espionage of American defense networks, private corporations, industrial organizations, research facilities and industrial assets"

US #4

.

Costco hearing aids - professional and the best deal. See photo with prices.

This is my second time to pick up a set of hearing aids from Costco.  People are still surprised to hear that Costco sells them.  Most don't know there are trained audiologists and technicians in every store that handles them. The photo with prices is from their display case in one BC store.  Everything is up front and open with prices clearly marked. I believe the Kirkland unit is a re-branding of ReSound.  You will need to make an appointment for up to an hour and a half. Testing includes the standard pitch-and-volume test done with an earphone and then re-done with direct-to-bone transmission, followed by discrimination with different background "white noises" that hiss or sound like traffic, followed by discrimination between various consonants at the same volume level and quizzing about your comfort levels for sound.  Prepay if you like their recommendation and pick it up two weeks later.    See link to "Why Costco rules in hearing aids as well as gummy bears" in Business Week.

Europe channels Sarah Palin: Drill Baby, Drill

Instapundit slyly points out that Europe sounds like Sarah Palin. Europe is pushing the States to up its energy exports so they can be independent of Russia's gas.  Obama doesn't want to hear what Sarah was saying but may have to.  A reminder: Once Obama releases gas export permits, the US is far ahead of the rest of the world.  (Most of the world except for Canada, that is.)  Read this:

"America remains the sole state to capitalize on its shale oil and gas resources.... The shale revolution was more than just the result of applying the dual techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well drilling to underground hydrocarbon reservoirs. Rather, the US energy revolution was the product of a mature oil and gas drilling industry, replete with robust supply chains. The boom depended on a unique set of mineral rights that provided landowners with a financial incentive to invite drillers on to their land, on a deep pool of capital, and on a variety of small wildcatting firms willing to take on the risk of drilling exploratory wells. . . .

Despite having some of the thicker—and therefore easier to drill—shale in Europe, faulted stratigraphy, stunted support infrastructure, and a byzantine regulatory environment are preventing Britain from imitating America’s shale success."

Trudeau fils or Harper (rinse and repeat)?

I admire Stephen Harper but like Beethoven too.  Ludwig won't be our next PM and Stephen is no shoo-in either. Justin will have the edge for likeability, the change vote and lost liberals looking for a home. Stephen has the edge for character, policy and experience.  Justin will do better in a boxing match while Stephen tickles the ivories with panache. Does it matter?  20% of the electorate swings in a fortnight over cancer, faked expenses or a rumoured affair.

Not one of us gets to vote for head of government, not even in ridings from which representatives Trudeau and Harper will advance.  That's decided in a Party meeting we don't attend.  If you want a better leader, change the Party.  Change policy and appointments at the Party level in ridings and in national conventions. Voting in national elections for a representative instead of a leader does less.

Contradiction in Canadian National Character

While we Canadians get huffy when called hewers of wood and drawers of water, we are proud of our ice.
The papers are full of stories about the Great Lakes freezing right over (almost) and Niagara falls being frozen solid (well a few bits).   We're not just a cute face selling wood, ore and water, we have manly virtues that withstand blizzards of the True North.

Example from The Star

CTV News: Niagara Falls freezes again

"Bird brain" may be a scientific compliment

Cells coordinate for cognitive tasks during sleep with 3D pulses dispersing throughout bird brains.  Instead of an "elegant layered mammalian necortex" with 2D waves travelling within the neocortex during sleep, birds have "un-layered seemingly poorly structured nuclear masses of neurons" and a 3D wave dispersal throughout the whole structure.

"They found complex 3D plumes of brain activity propagating through the brain that clearly differed from the two-dimensional activity found in mammals. These findings show that the layered neuronal organization of the neocortex is not required for waves to propagate, and raise the intriguing possibility that the 3D plumes of activity perform computations not found in mammals.

The authors note that during the course of evolution, birds replaced the three-layered cortex present in their reptilian ancestors with nuclear brain structures. "Presumably, there are benefits to the seemingly disorganized, nuclear arrangement of neurons in the avian brain that we are far from understanding".

Plumes in the sleeping avian brain (Science Daily News)reporting on work at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.

Who you calling bird brain?