Swimming and snorkeling around Pulau Manukan I made some considerations on nature conservation. With 6,815,500,000 individuals of the species "homo sapiens sapiens :-)" (US Census Bureau April 18th 2010) nature conservation is a tricky issue. Homo sapiens is resource consuming, especially space and energy consuming. And most important: Homo sapiens has created it's own habitate and has created the circumstances to expand it's population size so ruthlessly. Without neolithical revolution, industrial revolution and further on, there would not be more than ???? human beings on earth.

"Democratic decisions can be wrong, unjust and impractical, violate the country’s constitution and even violate basic human rights. They can even relate to issues for which the democratic system is quite simply inadequate".

This is a citation from the article in openDemocracy which discusses the Swiss plebiscit againt the construction of minarets in switzerland.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/thomas-w-bechtler/danger-of-majority-tyranny

Also Italy is nearer to a tyranny of the majority than to a constitutional state under the rule of law.

I am normally frontrunner regarding ICT innovations. When I moved in 86 from Germany to Italy, I already came with my PC, well PC, it was more a typewrite with screen. When Internet came ppublic, can't remember the year, I had one of the first accounts. I still remember the emotion when after painstaking attempts finally the modem brought you into connection. I remember Mosaic. I programmed one of the first data driven ASP applications at FAO. I have cabled our flat and we have 4 internet connected PCs for three inhabitants :-).

Dear Colleagues,

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I already expressed my opinion about the superiority of the American education system. The attached sketch is another argument

Second visit on October 20 was to Yee Yan, (http://www.yeeyan.com), a start up founded by 3 Tsinghua students some years ago. This is not about research and automatic translation. This is about motivated people who want to bring foreign content to China, by creating a network of translators. One of the founders was motivated to start, because his father died of a rare disease by the lack of important information in Chinese language, but which was available in the USA.

I have been travelling the last week with my daughter through New York and Boston to visit colleges. We have seen 2 colleges in New York (NYU and Barnard) and 4 in Boston (Harvard, BU, Emerson and NorthEastern).

One of the better science articles in a journal, does not praise and does not condemn, but shows and discusses the possibilities of genetic therapies.

In Germany High School Students and University students are on strike. Well, some of them. At the moment it really does not look like a mass movement :-).
Reasons: what I got from the radio stations, the university students are protesting against the introduction of university fees and against the "Bologna Reforms" which introduced the split of German University curricula into Bachelor and Master Courses. The High School Students are protesting against too big classes and the shortening of the secondary schooling from 9 years to 8 years.

The German Parliament yesterday has decided a law about the "living will", "testamento biologico" in Italian.

An "advanced directive" (living will) is now completely binding for doctor, hospitals and relatives.
Background in German at.http://www.berlinonline.de/berliner-zeitung/politik/130415/index.php.

The initator of the law, the socialdemocrat law expert Stuenker said "Jeder Patient hat das Recht, seiner Krankheit den natürlichen Verlauf zu lassen", this means it is the right of a patient to let an illness go it's natural course,