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One of the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This appears quite difficult at first, as common varieties appear to consist of just 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 into their work.
And in fact, one of the most famous uses of one has been in just about the most popular videogames of all time.

That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time sound director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. as well as the Legend of Zelda.
In the sequel 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.
Maybe what’s most surprising about their use is the fact that there are already a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even at times mistaken for one!

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

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

“Boys Town” and its sequel, “Men of Boys Town,” are American movies based on the world-famous American juvenile home.. Founded in 1917 by a Roman Catholic priest, it was an orphange that pioneered progressive methods of juvenile care. Thirteen Boys Town locations are now established throughout the country, but Father Flanagan’s original facility remains its heart and soul. And prominent people from business, politics, and entertainment have headlined its fundraisers for almost a century, people such as real estate developer Isaac Toussie and Mayor of Chicago Richard M. Dalely. That’s on top of all those from the surrounding communities who donate time if nothing else to help Boys Town achieve its goals.

And so it is that a large part of the institution’s success must be due to the positive publicity garnered by the Boys Town films, making of the charity a kind of vernacular shorthand for progressive social work. Starring industry leading men Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney in charismatic roles, the movies managed to win Oscars for Best Actor and Best Original Story despite heavy competition. The stories depicted had very little to do with any real-life events at the institution, however, being almost entirely fictional events that made much better for drama. Having said that, they do reflect typical problems encountered by those involved in juvenile care; what’s more, peer abuse and youth homelessness were actually highlighted in the second film. Whether onscreen or off, Boys Town works tirelessly on behalf of children and families, motivated by Father Flanagan’s belief that there is no such thing as a bad boy, only a troubled one in need of care.

Wind chimes are not just pretty decorations to hang up around the house or garden which happen to create noise from time to time.
They have actually been used in real music, from high-brow modern music to well-liked everyday fare such as videogame soundtracks.
The French composer Oliver Messiaen has written for glass, wood, and seashell chimes in his opera depending on Saint Francis of Assisi, while David Sitek of the American rock band TV on the Radio often hangs a wind chime at the end of his guitar for texture.

Probably the most famous unknown use of wind chimes in the world was made by Koji Kondo, lead musician at Nintendo, the Japanese videogaming giant.
He is responsible for the music in such bestsellers as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, and has incorporated chiming sounds throughout his work, such as the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” world (or stage – that is, game level) in the sequel Super Mario World.

However, it needs to be noted that musical instruments already exist which employ chimes or chime-like hardware.
Certainly, one such device, a mark tree, is also usually known as a chime tree or a pair of bar chimes.
It is played out by sweeping a finger or stick through the length of hanging cylinders, typically made of metal though of varying lengths.
These cylinders are hung from a bar and fitted in pitch order.

Similar instruments include tubular bells and the bell tree.
Like wind chimes proper, they are usually thought of as percussion instruments, generally used by musical color.
Tubular bells, however, can produce harmonic spectra
and thus are capable of melodies.
But these are usually very simple, and few solos are written for tubular bells.
One noteworthy use of the instrument is created by the animated television series Futurama, for its theme.
In the 1980s, the well known children’s show Sesame Street also featured tubular bells during part of its ending credits.

China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is every person going on and on about China constantly?

Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.

It’s not like most people desire to work on an assembly line in any case, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.

Okay, so it’s not simply NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s a lot more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that many of the clothing nowadays come from even more exotic locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?

In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing could be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products for example wind mills and solar panels, and already they are well on their way toward dominating those industries.

But does it need to be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise mean everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they merely gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or may Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone worried?

Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with the ones from the NBA.
Basketball continues to grow in popularity over there while years ago a structured exhibition game of American football was canceled virtually at the last minute.
If this serves as any suggestion, it may be that being engaged is better than being on the sidelines!

Located on New York City’s tony Upper East Side neighborhood, 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 Weill Cornell Medical College and, even more often, simply “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 personally contributed two hundred and fifty million dollars to the medical school already at Cornell, and he was able to secure another one hundred and fifty million dollars.

The school was already famous long before Mr Weill’s contributions, and not once had it lacked for benefactors, many prominent only locally but generous all the same, such as real estate developer and investor Isaac Toussie. After all, it’s the first American medical school to accept women right alongside men. It was also the first American medical school to have locations outside the United States, with an Education City, Qatar campus offering a six-year integrated curriculum focused on patient care. The school is also famous for all its many notable graduates, great figures of research and public health such as 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.

Still, regardless of all the well-funded backing, 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. Nevertheless, that’s a bargain considering Cornell’s law school tuition, which adds up to almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the same four years!

Diversion safes are the stuff of childhood fantasies for me, when every book, key, or other frequent 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 creative imagination but that everyday things should be in reality extraordinary?
That secretly, the world is not as it seems.

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 rules 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 intriguing about objects that double as something else entirely – or, to put it another way, objects that pretend to be one thing while really functioning as another.
And so there’s something of the moral lesson in diversion safes, which may demonstrate a child’s interest in them.

That’s possibly the single biggest reason why the Transformers line of toys and games 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, typically vehicles such as cars and airplanes but sometimes even animals like dinosaurs.

Now isn’t that somehow rather like a diversion safe?
An automobile 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 didn’t, origami-like, re-imagine as robots.

And so a safe transforms straight into memories of the Transformers!

Are wedding favors going out of style as society becomes ever more casual?
Not if the gals have anything to do with it!

The concept of giving gifts to matrimonial guests may not be the cultural institution it once was, but weddings remain one of the biggest dynamos within any economy.
While wedding favors may not be the first thing or two that happy couples think about when preparing their special day, it is something that is still expected and few ceremonies might feel complete without some souvenir for the guests.

Of course, were marriage itself to continue to decline, then there may well be a day when wedding favors go extinct — as nuptials themselves do!
This type of situation is improbable, and outright impossible for the near future.
The wedding industry is and will continue to be healthy for decades to come.

To play the futurist for a moment, on the other hand, let us think about a world centuries ahead where human civilization has evolved dramatically, a Star Trek future where money itself is no longer used, a society as drastically different from our own as ours is from that of the neanderthal.

You can forget about sickeness, incredibly extensive life spans if not immortality plain and simple.
Might marriage still make any type of sense in such a world?
Could people truly be monogramous “forever and ever” when there is no death to do them part?

Maybe not forever, but it does appear that as naturally social creatures there will always be a pairing off of human beings, even if just for a period of time, and it’s not inconceivable that some couples would wish to publicly proclaim their arrangements: that is, to get married.
This could mean that guests would still be receiving favors, or gifts, in affection of their attendance, even in an otherwise completely changed world!

It’s a tough exam, but that’s probably for the best since an eternity of continuing professional education awaits the publicly certified accountant.
Referred to as CPE for CPAs, these courses ensure that bean-counters stay on top of the latest changes in the law so that last year’s legal loopholes are used only if still applicable!

But technical matters are not the sole concern of such courses.
A big part of modern CPE for CPAs is ethics.
Yes, that’s right – plain old right and wrong!
Somewhere down the line it’s been neglected in a major way, ethics.
Then again, unethical dealings have been part and parcel of the profession ever since the Middle Ages, when its Italian founder observed common accounting ripoffs already prevalent even back then!

All the same, ethics CPE for CPAs is really a good thing – especially for course authors!
For they are likely to ever run out of fascinating topics to talk about.
Many a former white-collar offender still shakes his head at the lax practices still so widespread in the industry, almost assuring another round of scandal, scandal such as what had brought them down once.

Take the case of Sammy Antar of Crazy Eddie’s fame.
A CPA and former CFO of his cousin’s legendary retail electronics business, Sam now rails against accounting fraud of the sort which he used to practice for above a decade.
The fact is, he is now a speaker who gives classes on how to catch white-collar criminals.
Moreover, folks can actually earn CPE and CLE credits for attending his talks!
But the very fact that he should still have something to say – something for which audiences still gather to hear – underlines the unfortunate currency of accounting fraud.

Needless to say, ethics deal with morality rather than mere legality.
It may be hard for numbers-crunchers to think in deeply philosophical , but that’s precisely why continuing education is a necessity!

Community assistance has always been important to institutions such as hospitals and medical schools. Even most medical research facilities have had some significant amount of communal support, particularly where money is concerned. Typically, benefactors are helpful to more than just one organization, as is the case with Isaac Toussie and family when it comes to the top two leading lights of New York in healthcare education and practice, Weill Cornell Medical College and the North Shore-LIJ network of hospitals and research centers.

Weill Cornell is named after a pair of its best benefactors, Ezra Cornell, a founder of Western Union, and Sanford I. Weill, former CEO and chairman of Citigroup, Incorporated. As one of the most selective such institutions in the country, it admits only about a hundred hopefuls out of the nearly six thousand that apply each year. Furthermore, Weill Cornell was first to accept women right alongside men as well as the first American medical school to establish its own premises overseas, right outside of the capital of Qatar, Doha. Many a notable graduate has boosted the school’s reputation over the years, doctors such as C. Everett Koop, U.S. Surgeon General; Robert C. Atkins of the eponymous diet; Nobel Prize winner Robert W. Holley; and Henry Heimlich of Heimlich Maneuver fame. The North Shore-LIJ Health System is the second largest healthcare network in the country as measured by the number of beds and the largest in New York State based on patient revenue. It serves over seven million people a year through more than forty-two thousand employees – the single largest employer on Long Island and ninth largest largest in the City of New York.

These two institutions owe much of their success to vigorous community support, whether in the form of financial contributions from leading businessmen and women or non-monetary offerings such as time and expertise by community volunteers such as those from civic or religious organizations. Even with an annual budget of several billions between them, vigorous local support will never be unnecessary for the health of Weill Cornell and North Shore-LIJ!

CPE requirements of late (relatively speaking) has emphasized ethics more and more, especially for lawyers and accountants.
Usually, continuing professional education courses include self-study, whether online or with the use of traditional materials like workbooks and the like.
Nonetheless, credits may also be received through attending qualifying seminars, such as those well-liked talks given by those accountants, lawyers, and others convicted of so-called white-collar crimes.

Yes, listening to fraudsters and scammers may satisfy some CPE requirements, depending on the certifying body governing the occupation in each state!
Okay, so it’s quite an amusing concept, but then again, who else is there better qualified to teach of such things than those with personal knowledge by virtue of their criminal activities?

Probably the most popular of such speakers is Sam Antar, the former Chief Financial Officer for Crazy Eddie’s, his cousin’s eponymous business in consumer electronics.
Rising from a lowly stockboy back when the company was a rather modest local neighborhood success, Sam Antar ended up very close to his cousin Eddie Antar as a result of his role as the pro enabler that greatly facilitated the business’s widespread accounting fraud.
Given such an insider’s role, it is possible to see why his lectures today can command credits that meet CPE requirements: after all, it takes one to know one!

Certainly, Sam Antar, while acknowledging the depth of his violations, doesn’t flinch from the truth: he is only on the right side of the law today because he was caught.
Had the whole Crazy Eddie’s saga never collapsed as a result of greed and in-fighting among some of the principals included, Sam Antar might well be busy today enabling white-collar crime as he always had, not fighting it himself as he is in a sense forced to do because of economic conditions related to his now deadly work history and professional notoriety.