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Situated in one of The Big Apple’s wealthiest neighborhoods, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Medical College of Cornell University boasts both research and teaching divisions. It is one of the most selective medical schools in the entire United States, only some hundred hopefuls are admitted each year – from out of some six thousand candidates every year. Now named after its latest and most generous benefactor – and often abbreviated simply to “Weill Cornell,” its largest endowment to date has come from the billionaire banker and philanthropist Sanford Weill, former executive officer and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. Mr. Weill and his wife donated over two hundred and fifty milion of their own money, with Mr. Weill able to raise a further hundred and fifty million through his own tireless efforts.

The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, a veritable Who’s-Who of local, national, and even international luminaries from business, politics, and entertainment, like the famous businessman Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. And now it’s become the first American one to operate abroad – in Education City, in fact, outside the capital of Qatar, with a campus dedicated to patient care offering a six-year integrated curriculum. The school is also famous for all its many notable graduates, leading men of medicine like Robert C. Atkins of Atkins Diet fame and former Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop. Other alumnus luminaries include Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley and Henry Heimlich of the Heimlich Maneuver.

Anyway, despite all the monetary support, the financial aspects of a medical education are severe, with some forty-two thousand dollars needed for the first year and thirty-eight thousand required for the second. But that’s still quite a deal when compared against the university’s own law school expenses, which eclipse it at just about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars over four years!

What can you do with wind chimes except hang them up somewhere?
Yet there are a very few musicians who are incorporating them into their very acts – live performances, actually.
That’s right – those things, made of stone, shell, wood, glass, or metal, used in actual music, as musical instruments in themselves.

Exactly what can you do with wind chimes except hang them up somewhere?
Yet there are a small number of musicians who are incorporating them into their very acts – live performances, in fact.
That’s right – those things, made from stone, shell, wood, glass, or stainless steel, used in actual music, as musical devices in themselves.

Seems impossible, given their extremely limited acoustic capabilities, so they can be much of a contributor, melodically or rhythmically, but some ingenious musicians have managed to work them into their performances.
Typically, they are used in modern music and used as percussion instruments.
The use of wind chimes in this way has been quite varied, with David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio hanging one at the end of his guitar to Oliver Messiaen using glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera about Saint Francis of Assisi.
Other composers using a wind chime in their works contain Toshiro Mayuzumi, Giles Swayne, and Koji Kondo, who scores videogame soundtracks, which includes those for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda!

While we’re talking about things Japanese, there is even a Pokemon depending on wind chimes, called – what else? – Chimecho!
Actually, it’s commonly referred to as “the wind chime Pokemon” because of its light frame and ability to produce a ringing, chiming cry.
This piercing sound can be amplified into ultrasonic shockwaves that knock back its foes.
Altogether, chimecho can make seven different tones to convey with other chimecho.

But to return to musical instruments: no discussion on the subject would be complete without mentioning that a percussion instrument does exist which is often mistaken for a wind chime but is truly a mark tree.
The resemblance is rather obvious, however, such that other names for it consist of chime tree or bar chimes!

Diversion safes are the stuff of childhood fantasies for me, when every book, key, or other typical item could contain a key or treasure map in its hollowed-out core.
They capture the imagination like nothing else, for what is a child’s imagination but that everyday things ought to be in reality extraordinary?
That secretly, the world is not as it appears.

Such is the suspicion of a child gradually waking up from childhood, slowly adapting to the possibility that the world is both more constrained – with its principles and adults – and much more fantastic – with its secrets and diversion safes – than apparent at first sight, the first sight of childhood.

There’s something intrinsically fascinating about objects that double as something different – or, to put it another way, objects that pretend to be one thing while truly functioning as another.
And so there’s something of the moral lesson in diversion safes, which may describe a child’s curiosity about them.

That’s possibly the single biggest reason why the Transformers line of toys were such a runaway success.
There had never been anything like it before – robots that would have been quite interesting in themselves, as robots, but to that was added the ability to, well, transform into (generally speaking) some non-robotic object, generally vehicles such as cars and airplanes but occasionally even animals like dinosaurs.

Now isn’t that somehow rather being a diversion safe?
A vehicle that hides a robot, an apparently unthinking vehicle housing actually artificial intelligence of the most incredible order.
A car, or a plane – or a armed gun, or a radio cassette player (with the cassettes themselves transformable into birds of prey and hunting dogs).
There have been few objects which Japanese toymakers did not, origami-like, re-imagine as robots.

And so a safe transforms into memories of the Transformers!

Just about the most important developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent concentration on ethics, resulting in the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, it’s also quite sad that standard human decency should today be so unheard of as to warrant an explicit requirement.

Of course, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official appreciation for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly worse scenarios than having ethics CPE needs – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which primarily made such courses so vital!
But there’s no doubting the fact that when fundamental human decency needs to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were primarily encountered (likely an unfortunate fact in itself, as the first place anyone should come across their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore unpleasant race to the bottom for all.

Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers are not even given the protection of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, for example General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make extensive use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world really achieved when corporate bean-counters still carry on to simply invent new ways of posting a profit while increasing productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?

For many people, philanthropy is something that other people engage in – people such as billionaires. After all, who else has the money to fund entire schools or hospitals?
But for Judaism, whether Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, or Ultra-Orthodox, there is the idea of tzedakah, which comes from the Hebrew for “justice,” and this is an obligation for all, even the poor. For to make charitable donations is prescribed as a religious duty and not one subject to personal fancy. In fact, it is taught to regard the very money for available tzedakah as not one’s own, but on loan, as it were, from G-d. This leads to the further injunction to carefully vet all recipients to ensure that any donations made will actually work for good and not ill.

On the face of it, this may sound like yet another curious aspect of the religion. But – as with many aspects of Judaism, even for an outsider – there is an underlying logic that is at once compelling and beautiful. That’s because by ordering even the poor to make acts of pious philanthropy, the religious duty to give makes of them actors and agents, not just passive charity cases, thus restoring their humanity, their own moral agency.

After all, the very act of giving is empowering in itself? For to give means to share of oneself, and in sharing we express ourselves – our love, our sacrifice, our character. It is not that poverty ennobles, but to bear poverty in righteousness: that is noble. And so, in Judaism one need not be a successful developer like Isaac Toussie so as to help financially. For Jews, such religiously commanded contributions are not just an obligation but a right.

The real tragedy of being poor lies in not being able to help not just oneself but others as well. This insight into human nature is what inspires the Jewish tradition to insist that even the poor not only have the duty to share, but can actually even enjoy sharing, giving, as a right!

One of the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This looks quite difficult initially, as typical varieties appear to consist of only tinkling cylinders, with the sound only slightly different depending on whether stone, wood, metal, or glass is used.
And so it is that [wind chimes] do indeed possess only a very limited set of musical abilities, whether melodic or percussive, but that has not stop some ingenious musicians from deploying them for their work.
And in fact, one of the most famous uses of one has been in probably the most popular videogames of all time.

That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time music director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.
In the follow up Super Mario World, wind chimes figure rather noticeably in the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” game level (or “world,” in the parlance of the Mario games).

Chimes have also been featured in the works of musicians as different as modern composer Oliver Messiaen and rock guitarist David Sitek.
Possibly what’s most unusual about their use is the fact that there are presently a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even sometimes mistaken for one!

Tubular bells are another such instrument which are often mistaken for wind chimes.
Yet these misconceptions by casual observers can be simply forgiven, given that one cylinder can only so different from another, even when on an altogether different instrument – and, probably, none of this class of instruments look very different!

Tubular bells, however, are much more widely used out of all the chime-like instruments.
The theme for the popular animated television series “Futurama” is played with tubular bells, as was that during part of the closing credits for the prominent children’s television show “Sesame Street” within the 1980s.

AC electric motor repair is often done these days, typically for generator turbines and the like, whether for power plants or ship and aircraft engines.
Nothing unusual about any of that.
But not so long ago, just a little over a century ago, AC, or alternating current, and DC, or direct current, were quite controversial matters – especially for the two men bitterly locked in what would become recognized to history as the great War of the Currents.

Sure, AC electric motor repair is frequent enough these days, but back then, AC was new, and originally appeared unsafe – ironic considering that it won out over DC in several applications due to its superior safety.
But before this came about, there were the most acrimonious protests, right down to court battles, as well as personal smearing strategies in the court of open public opinion, against AC, the newer technology.

While it’s arguable that the superior AC standard may have eventually been adopted, it’s almost certain that the campaign against it, and its most celebrated proponent, delayed its widespread use for quite some years.
While something such as AC electric motor repair is still rather expert work, it isn’t the revoluntionary thing it was back when engines running on AC were deemed exotic and, as previously mentioned, dangerous.

Thomas Edison, the excellent inventor, used AC’s initial faults as a method of personally attacking his one-time assistant Nikola Tesla, another brilliant mind.
Likely due to professional jealousy (though a lot of money had also been at stake, as numerous patent royalties were required), Edison went to great diets to discredit not only the technology but its most prominent proponent – to the point of macabre demonstrations electrocuting animals as well as a condemned prisoner in order to get the public agitated against AC!

A lot of personal household safes have been arriving at Japanese police stations in the wake of that country’s latest catastrophe.
They have not only been recovered by save workers rooting through rubble but have also been washed up ashore, and now law enforcement is running out of space to store them.

Until now, these safes have been kept in the station parking lot, but with each station holding onto a couple of hundred at a time, authorities decided to try a more pro-active method of reuniting them with their owners beyond simply watching for those people to show up.
Japanese police now hope to open these safes themselves hoping of obtaining identifying information within with which to make their own inquiries.

Under Japanese law, you will find there’s little more than three weeks for lost items to be claimed by their owners.
After twenty-three days, finders can turn into keepers – or the government takes ownership.
Police hope to reunite tragedy victims with their possessions prior to the finders/keepers-law can take effect.
Normally, given the special circumstances involved, extensions to the typical deadline have been made available, but any haste that can be made could surely be welcome by the victims.

The matter is especially important given the Japanese practice, found especially between their elderly, of saving money and other possessions not in banks but at home.
Such “wardrobe savings,” as the Japanese term goes, is very typical but has become quite the tragedy for disaster affected individuals who have lost literally everything short of their lives and the clothes on their backs.
Therefore, any effort expedited on behalf of such people wouldn’t simply be tremendously appreciated but is absolutely essential to ensure even their very continued survival.
Luckily, of course, it is a result of the exclusive nature of Japan that valuables have been turned in, along with the absence of looting and other rioting – a fact not lost on envious foreign observers.

Because of out fast-paced society, fast-paced because new discoveries are being made all the time which leads to things constantly changing, even personal fitness trainers have to use CPE courses to be able to stay in good ranking professionally.
As a former personal trainer myself, I have to say, however, that the standard trainer may still not be as educated as such accreditations may wish to suggest.

Those employed by chain gyms, which is the majority of those these days, are often children for whom personal training is a gig they happen to have come upon.
At something like New York Sports Club (NYSC), they wear the red tee shirts that say “here to help you.”
Now some are, of course, quite knowledgeable and rather interested in the subject, but for most it is just a job that did actually fit nicely with a casual interest in sports.

The certification exam they take is honest and rigorous enough for any employing a multiple-choice format, but it is really nothing more than a memory test and actually indicates no real expertise.
The required CPE courses run generally along the same lines, regurgitating data by rote.
The truth is, these trainers do not know anything that could not be received by anyone who logs online.

Naturally, one may say the same of any career – but when it comes to physical fitness, the very nature of the area permits for no small amount of misinformation and outright quackery.
The reason for this is really pretty simple: no one actually knows.

That’s right.
I’m a former personal fitness trainer and the only one who can tell the absolute truth: no one really knows.
Unless he or she is God or was there at the creation of Adam and Eve, no one really knows.
Therefore, all the personal trainer CPE courses in the world isn’t going to make up for this simple but shocking truth – “the human body is centuries before medical science,” as Doctor Sir Roger Bannister stated.

When I was a personal fitness trainer, I wasn’t too delighted with the idea of a complete certification process just so as to help people exercise.
But that was nothing compared to my shock that certification had to be maintained via online CPE courses as well!
Now obviously the aim of certification is to be publicly recognized as being skillfully competent, and because things are constantly changing in our fast-paced modern world being competent naturally means some type of continuing education.
My shock, however, stemmed from the common view of those outside the fitness industry that trainers are just muscle-heads and nothing more.

However, just because I was a muscle-head who happened to be aware of a little bit about the human body doesn’t mean that everyone else involved in becoming personal trainers also do.
But more to the point and very much to my chagrin, it turned out that as much as I actually realized there was so very much, much, much, much, much more that I didn’t – never mind online CPE courses; I barely had the basics covered!

My newfound respect for education based on the fitness industry now means that I no longer laugh at online CPE courses for personal trainers.
It isn’t likely to be as hard as what lawyers, doctors, and accountants have to contend with, to be sure, but neither is it just a joke, either.
Sure it is primarily memorization of facts at this point, nothing so academically rigorous that any high school student would find it unfamiliar, but still – it’s a good step in the right course for the industry as a whole and one which I now not only understand but also fully support myself.
My days as a trainer have ended but I have stored a lot of respect for continuing education for anyone.