True, but somehow I am more willing to rebind undo than insert; I am not sure this is logical. I also do like the h,ctrl-h and j,ctrl-j correspondences I mentioned - helps me remember the values in question when working with ascii (ctrl-a = 1, ctrl-b = 2, etc).
Of course, already having muscle memory for hjkl from vim, robots, hack, &c, I'm not rebinding anything standard - I find it valuable to be sufficiently at home on any system I am I find myself working on.
j still moves you in the same direction as ctrl-j (linefeed)
h still moves you in the same direction as ctrl-h (backspace)
there's never been a good association between k or l and their ctrled equivalents; no gain or loss there
u is now up - mnemonic ftw
moving undo to ctrl-u would make redo (ctrl-r) more discoverable