A Year of Bach

As much as I love modern and contemporary music, I always go back to the basics, and for it is the music of Bach. Many "top 10" lists of classical music include his B minor Mass at the top of the list, and having listened to it last week in a concert in Jordan Hall (with the Cantata Singers), I would concur. After the concert I went to the web to take another look at that complete Bach edition I always coveted, a $2,400 172 CD box from Hanssler. Good performances by well known artists, but a bit pricey. And then, I found another complete edition, with lesser known performers but good reviews. At $107 it was too tempting to pass on, and 2 days later I got it in the mail.

And I've been listening to Bach ever since. 5 CDs a week, or one CD every day on the way to work and back (and a bit over the weekend) - it should just be a year before I finish listening to all of it. I'm so excited! It is an amazing deal, and I never expected to be able to listen to all of Bach's music, but it's going to happen this year.

The performances are pretty good so far. The box is sorted by genre: orchestral music, harpsichord, chamber music, cantatas, organ music, etc. I decided not to listen to them in order - I don't think I would be able to survive 60 CD's or religious cantatas. Instead, I've started with every 10th disk (1, 11, 21, etc.), and when I finish these I'll move to 2, 12, 22, etc. Surprisingly, the first batch of 5 CDs included some of the most amazing music ever written (IMHO): the Well-Tempered Klavier, Goldberg Variations, Brandenburg Concertos, "Ich Habe Genug" cantata, Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin... and this is just a random sample! I can't wait to see what surprises I'll find along the way.



And when I'm done, there's always the $110 complete Mozart edition!

Port Doom

Turns out I was too late in securing port 666. Id Software, the makers of Doom have already taken it. Click here for a full list.

When Free Markets Don't Work

Economists on the right say that the market knows best, and left alone will produce optimal results. I'm not an economist, but this assertion cannot be true, and I see it every day on my commute back from work. I'm an avid NPR listener, and Boston is fortunate to have two great public radio stations, WBUR and WGBH. Most of the time they have different shows, and usually I listen to one of the two (anything to avoid the horrible WCRB, I'll leave that to another post). But on weekdays between 4pm and 7pm they have the same exact lineup: 2.5 hours of news followed by Marketplace. Surely, listeners would be better served if they could, say, choose between news on WBUR and music on WGBH. And surely, with the rival station having the exact same programs at the exact same time, listeners choose more or less randomly between the two - there's no reason to prefer one over the other (unless it's fund raising time, which is a different story altogether.)

This makes perfect sense in an unregulated market. Suppose that 70% of the people prefer to listen to news, while 30% prefer music. If both stations broadcast the news, they'll get 35% rating each. If one of them switches to music, its rating will go down to 30%. Hence, neither station is motivated to change their programs. The end result is that the consumers lose.

A similar example happens with the location of shops. Have you noticed that once there's a tailor shop or a grocery shop in a city block, another one will pop right next to it? Imagine a sandy beach, mile long, and imagine you're the sole ice cream vendor on the beach. Assume that the sunbathers are equally spread along the beach, and want to walk the shortest distance possible to get their ice cream. The optimal place for your booth will be right in the middle. When a second vendor comes, the optimal place for him is just next to you! This way he'll get half the beach (for instance, if he's on your right, all the people in the right side of the beach will prefer to go to his booth). Once you're both in the middle of the beach, none of you is motivated to move your booth - moving it will only decrease your sales. But with regulation, the city can force both of you to space your booths. If they are located at the 1/3 and 2/3 milestones on the beach, you'll still divide the space equally between the two of you, but shorten the average distance that a sunbather needs to walk to get ice cream by almost 50%.

I heard this example once on the radio... probably on an NPR station :-) A quick search in Wikipedia found out this is actually called Hotelling's law.

The Dangers of Life in India

It's not all roses and pineapples in India. Having dinner one night in a charming restaurant in Arambol, tucked inside a coconut grove, I looked up and saw that there is a net hanging over the entire restaurant area. It didn't look like a mosquito net, but somebody did go through the trouble of carefully installing it over the tables and the kitchen. I asked my sister Deva about it, and it turned out that the net is indeed for catching something much bigger than mosquitoes - coconuts. Every year dozens of people are injured by falling coconuts. The fruit is pretty heavy, and dropping from 20-30 meters above ground can crack your head open.

Having escaped the coconuts, the next danger comes from monkeys. The roads are hazardous enough without them, but when they jump on you from a tree while you're riding your motorcycle, it can end up pretty badly - a couple of friends of Deva ended up with major injuries this way (it's unclear if the monkey survived - after the two riders fell off the bike the monkey was left riding it by himself.)

One of the online guides I read listed 13 other dangers in India. For the full list, check http://www.goacom.com/ad.php?aid=23. Turns out that it's not good to be sick. Check for instance the 11^th entry, regarding the hospitals in the region:

... the former Santa Casa de Misericordia Hospital in Ribandar as well as the Asilo Hospitals in Margao and Mapuça are sub-standard. In short : Do not cause yourself to be ill in Goa - anywhere, for that matter.

But the best part is left to the end, and I'll quote #13 in full:

Paedophilia : Of late, Goa has received some attention, albeit unwelcome, relating to this totally abhorrent crime by tourists against children. Almost every single paedophile identified so far, has been from Europe. If you are a paedophile, please do not practice it in Goa or on Goans . . . or anywhere, for that matter. They are virulently opposed to it and have been sensitized to this offence.