The criminal probe normally would be
handled by the U.S. attorney in Eastern Virginia, where the CIA headquarters
are located. Instead, Eastern Virginia prosecutors have been recused from the
probe. It was Eastern Virginia prosecutors who first alerted a federal judge
about the existence of the tapes and their destruction in October. Mr. Mukasey
said in a statement that their recusal was made "in order to avoid any
possible appearance of a conflict with other matters handled by that
office."
CIA Inspector General John L.
Helgerson, who worked with the Justice Department on the preliminary inquiry,
also recused himself from the investigation.
Government officials have played down
the importance the tapes may hold in several continuing or past terror cases.
The tapes also weren't shared with the commission that investigated the 9/11
attacks. Critics of the Bush administration have alleged that the destruction
of the tapes may amount to destruction of evidence, which is a crime.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said:
"The CIA will of course cooperate fully with this investigation as it has
with the others into this matter." The CIA has already agreed to open its
files to congressional investigators, who have begun reviewing documents at the
agency's headquarters.
The House Intelligence Committee has
ordered Jose Rodriguez, a former chief of the CIA's National Clandestine
Service who directed the tapes be destroyed in late 2005, to appear at a
hearing Jan. 16.
Mr.Rodriguez, who was to retire from
the agency at the end of last year, has become a focal point in the debate over
the tapes' destruction. According to several former colleagues, his goal likely
was to protect the officers who conducted the interrogations from criticism and
litigation. They have also described him as a cautious operator who probably
would have ensured that top CIA managers knew of the plan.
But in trying to avert one scandal,
the agency may have spawned a greater controversy. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.),
a member of the Senate intelligence panel, said last month that it was hard for
him to believe "that senior members of the White House somehow didn't pay
attention to this or didn't know about it."
The White House said last month that
President Bush "has no recollection" of hearing about the tapes or
their destruction before he was briefed about the matter in early December.
CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden
has said that the tapes were destroyed because the agency feared that the
identities of the officers would become public and that they would become
targets of al Qaeda.
But former officers familiar with the
events have offered a different explanation, saying Mr. Rodriguez had long been
concerned that the CIA lacked a long-term plan for handling interrogations. He
also worried -- given the response to Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad -- that
lower-level officers would take the fall if the videos became public, they
said.
One former official said
interrogators' faces were visible on at least one video, as were those of more
senior officers who happened to be visiting. He said Mr. Rodriguez was
concerned that "they were carrying out the direction from higher-ups in
the administration" but that the people who would end up in trouble would
be lower-level officials in the bureaucracy. Another former senior intelligence
official said, "Jose was concerned about how all this would end. He wasn't
getting instructions from anybody."
Mr. Rodriguez's attorney, Robert S.
Bennett, had no comment on today's announcement.
9999999999999999999999
It’s probably the happiest root canal
ever: Molecular archaeologists reported last January that they had drilled into
a 10,300-year-old human tooth discovered in Alaska and extracted genetic gold.
The molar, recovered from skeletal remains found in 1996 in On Your Knees Cave,
located on Prince of Wales Island off southern Alaska, holds the oldest genetic
sample ever recovered in the Americas. That sample supports the theory that
humans first arrived here about 15,000 years ago and then migrated down the
continent’s western coastline.
Brian Kemp, a molecular anthropologist
at Washington State University who led the study, found that out of 3,500
Native Americans examined from a genetic database, 1.5 percent showed the same
genetic pattern in their mitochondrial DNA as that found in the ancient tooth.
“What’s interesting is that the distribution is almost entirely down the west
coast of the Americas, all the way down to Tierra del Fuego,” says Kemp. That,
says Theodore –Schurr, an
anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “lends credence to the
reemerging hypothesis that the first modern human populations to arrive in North
America and then populate the rest of the Americas used a coastal route to
actually get there.”
Kemp also compared the ancient DNA
with its related modern DNA to see how fast it mutated over time. This
“molecular clock” of mutation rates can be used to calculate when the ancestors
of today’s Native Americans first arrived on these shores. Previous estimates
pegged their appearance as far back as 40,000 years ago, but Kemp’s newly
calibrated clock speeds up the scenario. “Within the last 15,000 years is my
bet,” he says.
In the traditional view of
photosynthesis, the energy carried by photons streaming from the sun is
transferred by bouncing from one chlorophyll molecule to the next, a process
that ultimately builds simple carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide. But
last spring, a team led by Graham Fleming, deputy director of the Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, reported that the process is much more
interesting than that.
Using ultrafast lasers, they found
that the interaction between the sun’s energy and the chlorophyll molecules in
a bacterium relies on a piece of quantum mechanical weirdness known as
superposition, where a single photon’s energy can temporarily be in many
different states at once. This allows photosynthesis to probe all the possible
reaction pathways within the various chlorophyll molecules. The most efficient
pathway is selected and energy is transferred through the bacterium as the
superposition collapses.
“This is similar to quantum computing
in some sense,” says Greg Engel, a member of Fleming’s team. “This is how
quantum computing realizes its incredible efficiency and its ability to solve
very complex problems, because it can evaluate many solutions at once.” http://louis-j-sheehan.com
It may seem like simple compassion to
give the terminally ill access to experimental drugs not yet approved by the
FDA, but some argue it may also jeopardize the effectiveness of clinical trials
and leave patients open to exploitation. In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia upheld (pdf) the power of the FDA to control
patients’ access to unapproved drugs. The court stated that patients do not
have a fundamental right to drugs that have not been proven safe.
The Abigail Alliance for Better Access
to Developmental Drugs and the Washington Legal Foundation had filed the suit
against the FDA. “What we argue in our lawsuit is that the decision should be a
patient’s with their doctor,” says Frank Burroughs of the Abigail Alliance. He
founded the organization in 2001 after his 21-year-old daughter Abigail died
from head and neck cancer. She had been denied access to the experimental drug
Erbitux, which was later approved by the FDA. Burroughs says the groups are
planning an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Many legal experts and ethicists argue that access to unapproved drugs would undermine the scientific process that determines which drugs are effective as well as the FDA’s ability to determine drug safety. Only 8 percent of cancer drugs that enter clinical trials earn FDA approval. The bulk are rejected as ineffective or unsafe. “The very, very sick are open to exploitation,” says Arthur Caplan, chairman of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He also notes that patients may not join clinical trials if they can get the drugs otherwise, which could impair the development of new drugs.
“I think the court got it right,” says
Peter Jacobson of the –University
of Michigan School of Public Health. Jacobson views the FDA’s efforts to extend
the compassionate use policy as the better way to handle the issue. “Then you’re
able to distribute some of these drugs under some kind of scientific protocol
without compromising clinical trials that are needed for long-term –understanding.”
The CDC's vaccine advisory panel voted
to make shingles vaccination routine for all Americans 60 and older.
Shingles is a painful disease caused
by reactivation of dormant varicella zoster virus, or VZV. Best known as the
virus that causes chickenpoxchickenpox, VZV is a herpesherpes virus that can
come back with a vengeance when a person's immunity wanes with age, disease, or
immunity-suppressing drugs.
Without vaccination, about 20% of
people who have had chickenpox eventually will get shingles. A person who lives
to be 85 has a 50% chance of getting shingles.
Shingles is a bad enough disease to be
a good reason to get vaccinated.
But in about a third of cases,
shingles turns into an excruciatingly painful disease called postherpetic
neuralgia, or PHN. A smaller percentage will get a painful, blinding disease
called ophthalmic zoster.
The new vaccine, Merck's Zostavax, won
FDA approval last May.
Now the main U.S. vaccine advisory
panel -- the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) -- officially
recommends routine use of the vaccine for everyone 60 and older.
The committee voted not to make
shingles vaccination routine for people under 60, citing a lack of clinical
data on vaccination in that age group.
Similarly, the panel said there was
too little data for it to recommend that doctors offer the vaccine for people
about to undergo immunity-suppressing treatments.
Good Vaccine, Terrible Disease
A major clinical trial shows the vaccine
is more than 60% effective in reducing shingles symptoms. Perhaps most
importantly, it reduces painful PHN by at least two-thirds.
"Reducing PHN is the motivation
for most of us working on this clinical trial," Michael N. Oxman, MD, of
the University of California, San Diego, said in a presentation to the ACIP.
"For people with severe PHN, their lives are blighted and the lives of
their families are blighted."
PHN pain can last for years. Sudden,
lancing pain can quite literally bring patients to their knees. Each year,
there are more suicides due to PHN pain than due to cancercancer pain.
And PHN isn't the only bad
complication of shingles. Some 15% of shingles patients get ophthalmic zoster
-- shingles that affects one or both eyes.
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In a public comment, Herbert Kauffman,
MD, former chairman of ophthalmology at Louisiana State University, offered the
ACIP a graphic description: "This is not going blind in peace and
quiet," Kauffman told the ACIP. "This is an all-consuming pain
patients live with every moment of every day for years."
The ACIP recommendation means insurers
will be more likely to pay for shingles vaccination in 60-and-over patients.
In one of the first studies to detect
cancer using RNA in saliva, researchers were able to differentiate patients
with head and neck cancer from healthy subjects based on biomarkers found in
their saliva, according to an article in the Dec. 15 issue of the journal
Clinical Cancer Research.
Researchers at the University of
California Los Angeles’ Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center reported in the
March 2004 issue of Journal of Dental Research that people have about 3,000
clinically distinct types of RNA in their saliva. This discovery led to a novel
clinical approach called salivary transcriptome diagnostics.
In a study to evaluate this diagnostic
approach’s value, researchers collected unstimulated saliva from 32 subjects
with cancers of the mouth, tongue, larynx and pharynx and 32 matched control
subjects. When they extracted RNA from the saliva samples, they discovered that
1,679 genes were expressed at significantly different levels in the test
subjects’ saliva than in the control subjects’ saliva.
Study results also showed that a
combination of four RNA biomarkers provided a detectable signature for head and
neck cancer. Researchers conducted a blinded second saliva screening and
identified the signature in test subjects with 91 percent sensitivity and
specificity.
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan, Esquire
http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com/ http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1http://pub25.bravenet.com/journal/post.php?entryid=22156
Louis
J Sheehan Esquire
"We will follow up with a larger
cohort of about 200 patients in the near future," said senior author David
Wong, D.M.D., D.M.Sc. "This study will hopefully allow us to distinguish
in saliva between the various stages of the cancer and ultimately push our
accuracy up to as close to 100 percent as possible."
99999999999999
This is intended as a hopefully
helpful, but somewhat lighthearted look at ancient philosophical beliefs that
would make five fine New Year's resolutions for today. They are meant as a
counter to typical New Year's resolutions, like these:
1. Lose Weight
2. Pay Off Debt
3. Save Money
4. Get a Better Job
5. Get Fit
6. Eat Right
7. Get a Better Education
8. Drink Less Alcohol
9. Quit Smoking Now
10. Reduce Stress Overall
11. Reduce Stress at Work
12. Take a Trip
13. Volunteer to Help Others
Source: U.S. Government site
Have you written a list of New year's
Resolutions? Does it include something geared to making you more like a
Hollywood ideal? Something like losing weight? We start each new year with a
clean slate, but as soon as we break down and eat that tempting cream-filled
puff pastry, we think we've failed and give up. Might as well have a couple of
beers and a a pizza. Oops! By February the scale has moved in the wrong
direction. One question we should ask before coming up with the duly
anguished-over creative list of new resolutions is whether or not they're the
result of social pressure. It may seem easier fitting into someone else's list
of shoulds than changing our own attitudes, but if you've ever tried to quit
smoking because your family begs you to, you probably know that's not enough.
People compile New Year's Resolutions
in an effort to improve specific aspects of themselves, thinking behavior
elicited by the resolutions will make them better people. If they volunteer one
day a month (making them better in the brotherly-love department) and exercise
three times a week (back to conforming to social pressure mode), including a
yoga class (eliminating stress one minute at a time), and if they put 10% into
a money market account (for retirement, as the news media drums into our heads
each December), life will magically improve. Even if it did work, this seems
like a piecemeal approach in need of a master plan. And therein lies the beauty
of ancient philosophy.
Masterplan: Emulate the Stoics
This list of 5 resolutions includes
passages from the writing of leading Roman Stoics, Epictetus (really a Greek,
but he lived in Rome), Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca, with applications or
parallels in the modern (or at least post-classical) world. The Stoics have had
a profound influence on Christianity and modern philosophy, so the ideas may
seem very familiar. There are even sayings and modern song lyrics reflecting
the Stoic philosophy. One problem of the Stoics for our contemporary, secular
world is the ongoing references to god. This god is really more like reason,
nature, or logos, but may still cause trouble for non-theists. To avoid this, I
have attempted to minimize the god-context in my selections.
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The Stoics believed in one basic
behavior: being good. People do this by, among other things,
1. living according to nature,
2. helping others,
3. commitment to self-improvement routines,
4. being dutiful, which may include attempting to
persuade others of one's beliefs, and
5. central to all else, maintaining a proper attitude.
The good person is not evil. He also
happens to be a philosopher. This may be another sticking point for moderns,
but the self-help books so popular today are like philosophy, so if the idea of
being a philosopher is too profound, consider these suggestions as
well-testified popular psychology instead of philosophy.
1. Live According to Nature: To
Everything There Is a Season
Stoicism comes from the Hellenistic
period of ancient Greece, which began around 300 B.C. There was no electricity.
There were no in vitro pregnancies. Most people used their own feet for
transportation. People followed the natural cycles of day, night, and the
seasons. Everything took time. We've been spoiled by artificial light,
microwave ovens, airplanes, and other conveniences, so we no longer have to
worry much about natural cycles. Instead, we impatient multi-taskers try to
cram everything in. This means that however much the ancient Stoics might have
had to struggle to try to live according to nature, we've got to work even
harder.
No great thing is created suddenly, any more
than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer
you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.
- Epictetus: Discourses Chap. xv.
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99999999999999999999999999999
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan, Esquire
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/6/502/285
http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com/ http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1
https://www.donotcall.gov/
Louis
J Sheehan Esquire
http://louisjsheehan.blogspot.com/2007/08/23281-louis-j-sheehan.htmlhttp://members.greenpeace.org/blog/whaleman
Stoics believed in the idea of one
universal human family. Just as it is contrary to nature to cut off your nose
to spite your face, so it is contrary to nature to hurt members of your family,
even if accepting people without being annoyed by them requires patience.
For we are made for co-operation, like feet,
like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth. To act
against one another then is contrary to nature; and it is acting against one
another to be vexed and to turn away.
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations Book II
http://louis2j2sheehan.us/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=14218f60-0cb6-4fa5-beba-5ee65da4b5e1&m=0
2. Help Your Fellow Man: Do Unto
Others
We are all members of the human
family. In recent years we've heard that it takes a village to raise a child
and many of the countries of Europe joined together into the European Union. In
these and many other ways, we see that we are all in it together. The Stoics
wrote about it, and in 1624, so did John Donne (Meditation XVII):
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by
the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a
manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the
bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Because we are all part of one
"family," we should work to its good and not try to separate
ourselves.
As thou thyself, whoever thou art, were made for
the perfection and consummation, being a member of it, of a common society; so
must every action of thine tend to the perfection and consummation of a life
that is truly sociable. What action soever of thine therefore that either
immediately or afar off, hath not reference to the common good, that is an
exorbitant and disorderly action; yea it is seditious; as one among the people
who from such and such a consent and unity, should factiously divide and
separate himself.
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations XXI
Labour not as one to whom it is appointed to be
wretched, nor as one that either would be pitied, or admired; but let this be
thine only care and desire; so always and in all things to prosecute or to forbear,
as the law of charity, or mutual society doth require.
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 9.X
Helping others is acting according to
nature, but it also has beneficial personal repercussions.
Wouldst thou have men speak good of thee? speak
good of them. And when thou hast learned to speak good of them, try to do good
unto them, and thus thou wilt reap in return their speaking good of thee.
- Epictetus: Golden Sayings L
3. Develop Good Habits: Practice Makes
Perfect
Many modern resolutions fall under
this heading. You should not set impossible standards, but you should
constantly work on getting better:
Practise yourself, for heaven's sake, in little
things; and thence proceed to greater.
- Epictetus: Discourses Chap xviii.
Whatever
you would make habitual, practise it; and if you would not make a thing
habitual, do not practise it, but habituate yourself to something else.
- Epictetus: How the Semblances of Things Are to
Be Combated. Chap. xviii.
What makes the Stoic habit-development
different is that the causes championed by repetition make you a better person.
The Stoics even envisioned breaking of a bad habit by repetition. No going cold
turkey for anger management here:
Reckon the days in which you have not been
angry. I used to be angry every day; now every other day; then every third and
fourth day; and if you miss it so long as thirty days, offer a sacrifice of
thanksgiving to God.
- Epictetus: How the Semblances of Things Are to
Be Combated. Chap. xviii.
If you don't know which habits you
should develop, the Stoics have a list, albeit somewhat generic and obscure.
You should develop the habit of avoiding evil, getting experience in your
strengths, making wise decisions, and, appropriately enough, forming careful
resolutions:
Shall I show you the muscular training of a
philosopher? "What muscles are those?" -- A will undisappointed;
evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolutions; unerring decisions.
- Epictetus: Wherein consists the Essence of
Good. Chap. viii.
4. Do Your Duty
Winston Churchill said, "All the
great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom;
justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope." Being part of the universe means you
have duty. The sun has the duty to shine. The earth has the duty to rotate on
its axis and make a yearly circuit of the sun. The bee has a duty to make
honey. And humans have the duty to act so as to be good.
As it is the duty of the universe to maintain
the round of the seasons, as it is the duty of the sun to vary the points of
his rising and setting, and to do all these things by which we profit, without
any reward, so is it the duty of man, amongst other things, to bestow benefits.
Wherefore then does he give? He gives for fear that he should not give, lest he
might lose an opportunity of doing a good action.
- Seneca: On Benefits 4.12
We also have the duty to keep our
promises, all other things remaining equal. We should not, however, fret over
reneging should we learn that our promise breaks the law or means going out
when we have a fever.
When I promise to bestow a benefit, I promise
it, unless something occurs which makes it my duty not to do so. What if, for
example, my country orders me to give to her what I had promised to my friend?
.... I shall be treacherous, and hear myself blamed for inconsistency, only if
I do not fulfil, my promise when all conditions remain the same as when I made
it; otherwise, any change makes me free to reconsider the entire case, and
absolves me from my promise.
- Seneca: On Benefits 4.35
The Stoics have, not too surprisingly,
rather a lot to say in the area of encouraging people to do their duty, since
duty is, after all, not the fun stuff. Duty varies. Sometimes duty requires
helping others with money; at other times, advice.
Do not grow weary, perform your duty, and act as
becomes a good man. Help one man with money, another with credit, another with
your favour; this man with good advice, that one with sound maxims.
- Seneca: On Benefits I.2
Men must be taught to be willing to give,
willing to receive, willing to return; and to place before themselves the high
aim, not merely of equalling, but even of surpassing those to whom they are
indebted, both in good offices and in good feeling; because the man whose duty
it is to repay, can never do so unless he out-does his benefactor;
- Seneca: On Benefits I.4
5. Adjust Your Attitude: You Get What
You Need
You can't always get what you want,
but you can change your attitude so you no longer want it. If for instance, you
are robbed, you are likely to feel that you are the aggrieved party, but there
is, actually another way to look at it. You lost your wallet, but what did the
thief lose?
The reason why I lost my lamp was that the thief
was superior to me in vigilance. He paid however this price for the lamp, that
in exchange for it he consented to become a thief: in exchange for it, to
become faithless.
- Epictetus: Golden Sayings XII
This is the area where we have the
greatest control. If we do as the Stoics encourage, do nothing to hurt the
community, act with deliberation, kindness
Let this be thy only joy, and thy only comfort,
from one sociable kind action without intermission to pass unto another,
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations 6.6
and care, and show true humility
Do nothing against thy will, nor contrary to the
community, nor without due examination, nor with reluctancy. Affect not to set
out thy thoughts with curious neat language. Be neither a great talker, nor a
great undertaker.
- Marcus Aurelius: Meditations III. 5
we just might find we get what we
need.
When we are invited to a banquet, we take what
is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table
or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for
what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many things!
- Epictetus: Golden Sayings XXXV
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Mukasey Opens Criminal Probe
Into Destruction of CIA Tapes
By EVAN PEREZ
January 2, 2008 5:02 p.m.
The Justice Department opened a
criminal investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency's destruction of
videos showing detainee interrogations of top al Qaeda suspects and appointed
an outside prosecutor to handle the probe.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey said
that a joint preliminary inquiry opened Dec. 8 by his department's National
Security Division and the CIA's inspector general determined "there is a
basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter."
MORE
[Michael Mukasey]
Mukasey
• Law Blog: Meet John Durham
• CIA Official Tended Toward Caution
12/10/07
• Justice to Probe Tape Destruction
12/09/07
• Letter to CIA About Tape Destruction
12/08/07
• Democrats Want Probe Into CIA Tapes
12/08/07
88888888
Born: June 23, 1892 - Lemberg (Lvov),
Poland
Died: May 22, 1993 - Philadelphia, PA,
USA
The Polish-born pianist, Mieczyslaw
Horszowski, was taught to play the piano by his mother, a student of one of
Chopin's students, and his main teacher, Theodor Leschetizky, was a protégé of
Carl Czerny. Horszowski was playing (and transposing) Bach inventions at age
five; at eight he was presented to the public as a prodigy, and at ten he began
his formal career. He played for Fauré and perhaps Camille Saint-Saëns in 1905
and made his USA debut, at Carnegie Hall, the following year. It was also
during 1906 that he met the youthful Pablo Casals and Arturo Toscanini, who
became lifelong friends and collaborators. Horszowski was especially noted as a
chamber music pianist and became a fixture of Casals' Prades Festival for many
years.
Interrupting his high-flying career to
pursue a humanities degree at the Sorbonne in Paris from 1911 to 1913, Mieczyslaw
Horszowski moved to Milan during the war and remained there until 1939, touring
internationally. As World War II broke out he was appearing in Brazil, and
instead of returning to Europe he headed for the USA, where he remained for the
rest of his life. He quickly found performing opportunities with Toscanini's
NBC Symphony Orchestra, and he began teaching at Philadelphia's Curtis
Institute in 1942. He was a fixture of New York's recital scene, performing
complete cycles of Beethoven's piano works and Mozart sonatas and concertos,
and he appeared at the White House in 1961 and 1978. Horszowski was the first
person to record while playing the first known piano constructed, an instrument
built in 1720 by Bartolomeo Cristofori and housed in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In 1981, at age 89, Mieczyslaw
Horszowski married for the first time; his wife was Italian pianist Beatrice
Costa. His eyesight declined, which put an end to his concerto and chamber
music performances, but he continued his solo recital career, performing from
memory. He performed his last recital at age 99, slightly more than a year
before his death in 1993. At the Curtis Institute he taught an impressive
roster of students, including Anton Kuerti, Murray Perahia, and Richard Goode.
Mieczyslaw Horszowski played a range
of music but focused on Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin, and even in his last years
he essayed difficult works like Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. Although his
recording career only goes back to 1936, the traditions of playing he
represented are much older than that, dating back to the early Romantic era.
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