It Ain't Over

'til it's over...

Swiss Ants

Ämesse, Omeisele, Äbese,
Aweissi, Ameisi, Uweisse,
Wurmeissi, Wurmeisle, Wurmasle,
Harmäusli, Ambeisse, Umbeisse,
Hampeissi, Lombeisse, Empeisele,
Ambitzli, Wumbitzgi, Humbetzgi,
Ambessgi, Umbasle, Hobäsle,
Wurmasle, Wambusle, Bumbeisgi

Source: Peter von Matt,
Tages-Anzeiger, 2010-10-16

I. Have. No. Words. For. This.

How to turn yourself into a Heuballen. Naked.


Thanks Alvis.

Ein bisschen Spass

muss sein...

Deutsch mit Roberto Blanco:



Lyrics:

Ein bisschen Spaß muss sein,
dann ist die Welt voll Sonnenschein.
So gut wie wir uns heute verstehn,
so soll es weitergehn.

Ein bisschen Spaß muss sein,
dann kommt das Glück von ganz allein.
Drum singen wir tagaus und tagein,
ein bisschen Spaß muss sein.

Heute Nacht feiern wir,
machen durch bis um vier.
Fragen nicht nach Zeit und Geld,
weil es Dir und auch mir so gefällt.

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann ist die Welt voll Sonnenschein.
So gut wie wir uns heute verstehen,
so soll es weitergehen.

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann kommt das Glück von ganz allein.
Drum singen wir tagaus und tagein,
ein bisschen Spaß muß sein.

Draußen wird's langsam hell,
und die Zeit geht viel zu schnell.
Noch ein Glas und einen Kuss,
ja, und dann ist noch lange nicht Schluß!

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann ist die Welt voll Sonnenschein.
So gut wie wir uns heute verstehen,
so soll es weitergehen.

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann kommt das Glück von ganz allein.
Drum singen wir tagaus und tagein,
ein bisschen Spaß muß sein.

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann ist die Welt voll Sonnenschein.
So gut wie wir uns heute verstehen,
so soll es weitergehen.

Ein bisschen Spaß muß sein,
dann kommt das Glück von ganz allein.
Drum singen wir tagaus und tagein,
ein bisschen Spaß muß sein!

Elise Visually

Beethoven - Für Elise (fur Elise, piano solo)

Chihuahua

A cantopop cover by Joey Yung of a Swiss DJ BoBo song:

Chihuahua - Joey Yung


Thanks to Carrie and Yolanda for the pointers.

Elise From Scratch

For your practice (if you need it:), here are only the first five notes from Beethoven's Für Elise, played by Detlef Kraus (BTW, my piano teacher's teacher): either for download e.g. into iTunes here, or to listen to in the web browser in a separate tab or window (just click on the link).

E, D#, E, D#, E

Here are four more bars a bit further down, again either for iTunes or to listen to directly in the browser.



Further more, love this improvised version by Yoke Wong:

Fur Elise Piano Demo By Yoke Wong -Watch Beethoven Fur Elise



This is also a wonderful visualisation and way to learn music, IMHO this application alone is worth getting an iPad!

Magic Piano for iPad [Fur Elise]



Last, not least, Artur Schnabel, Ivo Pogorelich, and also Detlef Kraus:

Beethoven - Fur Elise - Schnabel


Beethoven - Fur elise


Ludwig van Beethoven: Für Elise

Tiefenbrunnen

Tiefenbrunnen, 2010-03-16 23:14:23

Mozart / Haskil

Mozart: 12 Variations "Ah, vous dirai-je, maman" KV 265 (Clara Haskil)


With music score - very convenient for memorizing and studying (best interpretation by Clara Haskil anyway)!

Another very nice interpretation by Walter Gieseking:

GIESEKING - Mozart 12 Variations on Ah, vous dirais-je, Maman K.265


Update 2010-08-07

Here is a free music sheet of KV 262 from free-scores.com.

Kosta Fostiropoulos

The story of my brother-in-law's PhD time in the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, by Roland Knauer:

Fußball aus Kohlenstoff

Aus Papier bastelte Kroto ein mögliches Modell des Moleküls mit 60 Kohlenstoffatomen. Am Ende hatte er ein Gebilde in seinen Händen, das aus 12 Fünfecken bestand, die mit 20 Sechsecken eine Art Kugel bildeten. Als er Mathematiker bat, dieses Gebilde näher anzuschauen, verrieten sie ihm den Trivialnamen dieser Struktur: „Wir wissen ja nicht, wie Sie zu diesem Ding sagen, aber wir nennen es einen Fußball!“

Die Forscher hatten damit eine völlig neue Form des Kohlenstoffs entdeckt. Jahre später, 1996, wurden sie dafür mit dem Chemie-Nobelpreis ausgezeichnet. Zunächst hatte die Entdeckung der Wissenschaftler eher akademischen Wert, denn mit der Lasermethode ließen sich nur sehr wenige Moleküle der nach einem Architekten benannten „Buckminster-Fullerene“ herstellen. Es sollte noch einige Zeit vergehen, bis es gelang, auch größere Mengen von Fullerenen zu erzeugen. Das gelang schließlich in Heidelberg.

Niedriger Druck und niedrige Temperaturen simulierten die kosmischen Bedingungen, als dem Praktikanten Bernd Wagner im Herbst 1988 ein Missgeschick passierte und er versehentlich viel zu viel Helium in den Lichtbogen leitete. Obwohl der so entstandene hohe Druck von Weltraumbedingungen weit entfernt war, zog der Jungforscher das Experiment durch. Am Ende erhielt er kleine Mengen einer Substanz, die offenbar aus den seltsamen Kohlenstoff-Fußbällen bestand.

Das Praktikum von Wagner war längst beendet, als Konstantinos Fostiropoulos 1990 in seiner Doktorarbeit dieses schiefgelaufene Experiment wieder aufgriff. Viele Monate lang variierte er die Bedingungen, bis er immer größere Mengen der Substanz erzeugte. In seiner Experimentanordnung drückte dabei die Feder eines Kugelschreibers auf einen Stift aus Kohlenstoff, der im Lichtbogen verdampfte. Der aufsteigende blaue Dunst enthielt die Fullerene, die vier eng begrenzte Wellenlängenbereiche im infraroten Licht absorbierten.

Danach experimentierte der Forscher mit großen Grafitstäben, die 20 Zentimeter lang waren und entsprechend größere Fullerenmengen hergaben. Aber noch immer entstand ein Ruß, der im besten Fall zwölf Prozent Fullerene enthielt. Dann erhielt Fostiropoulos einen Tipp von einem Chemiker: Fullerene mit 60 Kohlenstoffatomen sollten bei ungefähr 500 Grad Celsius verdampfen. Der Doktorand stellte daraufhin seine Apparatur entsprechend ein – und der Dampf schlug sich in nennenswerten Mengen auf einem in der Nähe befindlichen Quarzkristall wieder nieder. Jetzt hatte Fostiropoulos tatsächlich reines Fulleren hergestellt. An einem Tag erhielt er damals bis zu einem Gramm der Substanz.

Seit dieser Entdeckung vor 20 Jahren arbeiten Wissenschaftler an möglichen Anwendungen der runden Moleküle. Sie kommen beispielsweise als Katalysator infrage oder als Schmiermittel. Auch die Herstellung künstlicher Diamanten aus den runden Kohlenstoffmolekülen wird erforscht.

Eine andere Anwendung verfolgt Konstantinos Fostiropoulos, der mittlerweile am Helmholtz-Zentrum für Materialien und Energie in Berlin forscht. Dort entwickelt der Wissenschaftler mithilfe der Fullerene Systeme, aus denen sogenannte organische Solarzellen gefertigt werden können.

Fun Stairs

Piano stairs - TheFunTheory.com - Rolighetsteorin.se


Amazing, 11 million people saw this. Thanks to Ann for the pointer.

The sponsor was a bit of a downer, but then their stock is also good for some fun (at least for some, but not for all):

Basel Botanic

Basel university botanic garden, 2010-03-28
(enlarge, big screen version).

Stray Dogs Using Subway

abc news: Stray Dogs Master Complex Moscow Subway System

Once joined the apartment complex with a cat named Moritz, who was using the elevator at his pleasure.

Via naked capitalism.

Word Designs

There are some good ones:

30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less

Pointer by Alvis.

Seung Sahn

From Open Buddha: “Completely Become One” by Zen Master Seung Sahn

After one week, my heart was only making one or two mistakes, and my doctors said, “This is wonderful! Most people take two or three months to come down to only one or two mistakes each minute!” So I said, “Thank you very much; you have helped me, so I can get better quickly. But this is only fix-your-body meditation. This is not correct meditation.”

“Why isn’t this correct meditation?” they asked.

“You can fix your body, your heart, your diabetes. In Korea, China, and India, there are people who do yoga. They go to the mountains and do breath-in, breath-out meditation. They can live 500 years and not get sick. Keeping their bodies for a long time is possible; even flying in the sky is possible. Trying this style body meditation, anything is possible. A body is like a car. Use the car a lot, and in three years, it is broken. Only keep the car in the garage, then keeping it for a long time is possible. But finally, after 500 years, then these yoga people die. Then what? Live a long time, then die; live a short time, then die–it is the same! Dying is the same.”

The doctors understood. “What is correct meditation, then?”

I told them, “I always try meditation. Meditation means always keeping one mind, not-moving mind.” They thought meditation meant only concentration and keeping your body still. So I said, “Meditation means keeping one mind. You must understand–What is life? What is death? If you keep one mind, there is no life, no death. Then, if you die tomorrow, no problem; if you die in five minutes, no problem.”

“What do you mean, no problem’?” they asked.

“Maybe you do fix-your-heart meditation. Then, ‘My heart is good; my body is good.’ It is very easy to become attached to this meditation. But, when you get old, and your heart is not so good, then you try this meditation. Maybe it is still not so good. Then, ‘Why doesn’t my meditation work?’ Then your body, your meditation become hindrances. If your meditation cannot help your body, then you don’t believe in your meditation. Then what? So, this style meditation is no good.

“Correct meditation means correctly understanding your situation moment to moment–what are you doing now? Only do it! Then, each action is complete; each action is enough. Then no thinking, so each moment, I can perceive everything just like this. Just like this is truth. Sick-time, only be sick. Driving-time, only drive. Only go straight–then, any situation is no problem.”

2010-03-13

Reminds me of this exercise by Ken McLeod.

Google - Translating

BTW, if the article is not accessible directly, goto Google News, search for the title, and go from there. At the moment most pay per view articles are free for Google users.

BTW BTW, this will be an area very difficult for Apple to compete in. Thought Apple has the cash reserves now, they don't have the expertise and no synergies to other areas of their business. They try already to catch up for maps.

BTW BTW BTW, the biggest progress in terms of artificial intelligence (well, since the invention of AI, whatever) is IMHO the Google Search database/engine. It is maybe not much more than a big big memory, but memory IS a VERY big part of intelligence! And every further software/module/engine/project can be build on top of that, with whatever new results and effects that might bring! However, and here is the problem with any further global progress and with Google itself, you better work for Google if you want to have the means and to have access to the goodies. Google has a treasure with nothing comparable in human history (gold, oil, land, resources, money, people, armies, you name it). And as you can see below, they intend on using it.

NY Times article: Google’s Computing Power Betters Translation Tool

Creating a translation machine has long been seen as one of the toughest challenges in artificial intelligence. For decades, computer scientists tried using a rules-based approach — teaching the computer the linguistic rules of two languages and giving it the necessary dictionaries.

But in the mid-1990s, researchers began favoring a so-called statistical approach. They found that if they fed the computer thousands or millions of passages and their human-generated translations, it could learn to make accurate guesses about how to translate new texts.

It turns out that this technique, which requires huge amounts of data and lots of computing horsepower, is right up Google’s alley.

“Our infrastructure is very well-suited to this,” Vic Gundotra, a vice president for engineering at Google, said. “We can take approaches that others can’t even dream of.”

...

“This technology can make the language barrier go away,” said Franz Och, a principal scientist at Google who leads the company’s machine translation team. “It would allow anyone to communicate with anyone else.”

Mr. Och, a German researcher who previously worked at the University of Southern California, said he was initially reluctant to join Google, fearing it would treat translation as a side project. Larry Page, Google’s other founder, called to reassure him.

“He basically said that this is something that is very important for Google,” Mr. Och recalled recently. Mr. Och signed on in 2004 and was soon able to put Mr. Page’s promise to the test.

While many translation systems like Google’s use up to a billion words of text to create a model of a language, Google went much bigger: a few hundred billion English words. “The models become better and better the more text you process,” Mr. Och said.

Chinese Food

... in the West

TED presentation:

Jennifer 8. Lee hunts for General Tso


Thanks to Sharon for the tip.

No Mouse

Oh yeah!!!

Inside Apple's iPad: iPhone OS vs Mac OS X

The thing that makes me frustrated is that so many users think that using the desktop version of os X is the way to go, and as you guys pointed out, doesn't work. What I think people are failing to see is that apple has finally figured out a way to make an OS that doesn't use a mouse. They designed it for the finger and they have done it very well. I think that apple should continue in this direction, and perhaps what they are looking to do is to eliminate the use of mice all together in favor of multi touch, and a keyboard. Could apple be using the iPhone/iPod touch OS as their map for mac OS 11? If that's the case then I'd say they are moving in the right direction.

I think the reason they don't allow for multi tasking on their mobile devices is because they are still seeing the iPhone OS as a beta for OS 11. They don't want to introduce multi tasking untill it is perfected, and can be done better then it has ever been done before. I hope other companies finally get the picture, and create finger friendly OSs.

I also beleive that there is more then enough evidence for OS 11 to be multi touch ONLY: apple has been moving their devices more and more towards multi touch, starting with the two finger scroll in their ibooks and ending on the computer end with the Magic Mouse and current macbook trackpads, and on the other side the ipad. If apple continues in this way, I beleive that the next step they have to take is to start making the iPad start eating the sales from their Macbooks when they come out with the iPad 2. If they can do this then we may see OS 11 be made just for multi touch and we will no longer need a mouse.....

But a keyboard still would be nice...

Amanda in Wonderland

Amanda Baggs is autistic. If you give her three minutes, she starts speaking/typing in our language:

In My Language



And from Alice:

Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

Alice didn't think that proved it at all; however, she went on 'And how do you know that you're mad?'

'To begin with,' said the Cat, 'a dog's not mad. You grant that?'

'I suppose so,' said Alice.

'Well, then,' the Cat went on, 'you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad.'

'I call it purring, not growling,' said Alice.

'Call it what you like,' said the Cat.

Pointer via Caroline Birks on unmind.ning.com.

Gone With The Sand

This is great! Give it three minutes. Already 12 million views on YouTube, so not the first one to recognize it, yet in case... Also the audience alone is worth the money;-).

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Україна має талант / Ukraine's Got Talent)


Pointer via When Martian Unicorns Dance.

The Known Universe

Very well done and fantastic video.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has some comments.

The Known Universe by AMNH


Pointer via Pat Stacey/UM Ning.

New Blog: Unfettered Clips

Exactly a month ago I started a new blog which I was working towards (on and off) for much of 2009 and of which I was first dreaming since exactly the time of this blog post, 2009-01-01. It has been and is a team effort as there is a group of people that took great effort to transcribe (and they still do) a lot of audio files and also Ken McLeod supports these projects and generously makes his material freely available to the public.

So what is it?

It's a kind of The Best Of Ken McLeod's teaching classes. Ken McLeod is a Western Buddhist teacher and author of the book Wake Up To Your Life (which is also available in audio form).

Personally I find his material full of wisdom, insight, and also practical value. A friend wrote about it: "I always think Buddhism indeed is among the wisest religions, or rather philosophies regarding the attitudes towards life. It is easy to understand, but also easy to forget. Thank you for reminding me these deep wisdoms. Ken McLeod did a very nice job in communicating these ideas."
Personally for me it is the other way around:), counter intuitive and difficult to understand, but once understood easier to remember. But maybe that's why I need a Western translator.

So I hope you enjoy this stuff:

Unfettered Clips & Quotes
QUOTATIONS AND AUDIO CLIPS OF BUDDHIST TEACHER KEN MCLEOD

Clips already posted and that I want to mention explicitly as I consider them especially important are the following three:

- Basic Skills
- Progression
- Manifesting Things

Cheers!

Largo d'Orta

Isola San Guilio at Largo d'Orta

Click on the image for a larger view (or if you have a big monitor even better here is a full screen version).

This photo here from Wikipedia was the reason to go to Orta San Guilio when looking for a place in the Piemont to hang out over the Christmas days of 2009. We didn't regret it (despite no internet and a rocky train ride).

From The Independent:

Lake Orta, one of the smallest and least-known of northern Italy's sub-Alpine lakes, is a place for sublime moments. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who visited the lake in May 1882 and believed that the experience changed his life forever, inscribed the date "von Orta an" ("from Orta onwards") as a preface to his masterpiece Thus Spake Zarathustra. Other 19th-century writers enchanted by its quiet beauty include the French novelist Honoré de Balzac, who wrote rapturously of this "grey pearl in a green jewel-box"...
...

Strangely, despite such praise, Orta seems nowadays to have become rather a secret place - so secluded that many Italians have never heard of it. But to those who know its fairy-tale setting, the lake is Cenerentola (Cinderella): the beautiful, self-effacing maiden ordered to stay at home while her flashy elder sisters go to the ball. As visitors flock eastwards to the comparative fleshpots of the nearby, much larger Lake Maggiore, pretty Orta offers altogether quieter, more mystical pleasures.

Robina Courtin

Slow start, but she speeds up, believe me.

Be Your Own Therapist

Da Hammer

What would you do with a hammer?

Peter, Paul & Mary - If I Had A Hammer


The Beatles- Maxwell's Silver Hammer with lyrics



IF I HAD A HAMMER
words and music by Lee Hays and Pete Seeger

If I had a hammer
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening
All over this land
I'd hammer out danger
I'd hammer out a warning
I'd hammer out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a bell
I'd ring it in the morning
I'd ring it in the evening
All over this land
I'd ring out danger
I'd ring out a warning
I'd ring out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

If I had a song
I'd sing it in the morning
I'd sing it in the evening
All over this land
I'd sing out danger
I'd sing out a warning
I'd sing out love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Well I've got a hammer
And I've got a bell
And I've got a song to sing
All over this land
It's the hammer of justice
It's the bell of freedom
It's the song about love between my brothers and my sisters
All over this land

Social Sites

Interesting graphic and list of social sites from Focus: The Boom of Social Sites

As one commentator (named "How the Common Man Sees It") said it:

Wow. I’ve heard of about 10% of those. I now consider myself officially out of touch with the internet.

And from Stephen Welton:

Wow! The common denominator is that people are meeting people! That will never change.

While these sites all facilitate great new services and ways of interacting, my problem with them is, they mostly try to fragment, privatize, and monopolize the internet in order to cash in. E.g. they all invent email again:). Same for blogging etc. But all just inside their network.

The same that happened on the PC with propietary file formats is bound to happen again. Companies setting standards by using their first mover advantage and then it takes a decade of establishing open standards to wring back control of your own data.

Well, guess what, I don't want to sign into Ning or Xing in order to read or send a message to another person. How can I disable on Facebook making public the list of people I am interested to play around with. Why do I need Xing or LinkedIn to publish a list of people that have "officially" confirmed to be connected with me? The good think now, the masses (aka the kids) are way faster in moving further along if it so pleases them or something better or new comes along.

Pointer via The Big Picture.