The Christmas holidays brought many of the clan together again and here are a few of the newsworthy items that we learned from our gatherings.

Bill Pentland has a new blog at Forbes.com that is accessed at this link: http://blogs.forbes.com/williampentland/. Bill’s posts provide objective, non-ideological information about the environmental impact of our energy consumption and sources. They are well written and a pleasure to read. Be sure to support Bill’s efforts by following his blog regularly and clicking on his most recent posts.

Qun Sha has received a competitive NIH grant for his atrial fibrillation research. Qun is the medical director of clinical affairs for CardiaLen Inc which has garnered a large amount of investment capital this past year. They are developing an implantable atrial defibrillator for a common and high morbidity heart condition called atrial fibrillation. The Wall Street Journal has recently touted these devices as both effective and likely to reduce the costs of repeated hospitalizations for treatment of this disorder. The link to this report is here.

Zel McClelland spent three weeks in Greece this last September researching funereal sculpture for her art history PhD dissertation at Washington University. She was assisted in these endeavors by her not-yet-weaned Christopher ‘Pericles’ McClelland. He was especially adept at wooing otherwise uncooperative curators at many of the museums which they visited.

 

Zel and Pericles McClelland at the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, AcroCorinth

 

Finally, Sarah Law participated last September in the MBA’s Cup, an annual regatta of sailboats rented, skippered and crewed by MBA candidates from the US and Europe. As you may know Sarah is at Columbia University’s MBA program. The accompanying photo shows Sarah and her fellow crew members aboard the Columbia Business School boat in the harbor of Santa Margherita Ligure before the traditional formal dinner ashore. There are twenty business schools which participate, half in Europe and half from the US.

 

From the edge of Ligurian Sea – the Italian Riviera

 

Kudos to these family members for their hard earned successes. Please keep us posted about the achievements of other clansmen

This post will not be illuminating to many, especially the android savvy readers – apologies in advance – but some of you may, like me, find the following interesting, and more importantly, delightfully useful.

First, some background. St Louisans recently have experienced a bitter blow, the loss of KFUO, Classic 99, the only classical radio in the St Louis area. Yes, it has been replaced by an NPR station KWMU-3 but this requires an HD radio, or an internet link to http://www.stlpublicradio.org/classical/. In addition, as was the case before, the listener is subjected to the tastes of the sponsors as well as to the fund raising chatter and ads of the host between pieces.

An alternative? Pandora. This to me is an incredible step forward for people who want some control over the music at home or in their workplace. Essentially, Pandora provides listeners with their own radio stations, each an internet stream of music which the listener selects and filters over time, with few (or none, if you purchase Pandora One at $3/mo) ads. Best of all, these stations can be dedicated to jazz, classical, rock, opera, or whatever suits your taste.

The idea for Pandora stems from something called the Music Genome Project, a fascinating and ambitious musicological venture.

The Music Genome Project®

On January 6, 2000 a group of musicians and music-loving technologists came together with the idea of creating the most comprehensive analysis of music ever.

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song – everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records – it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists – ranging from popular to obscure – and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

It has been quite an adventure, you could say a little crazy – but now that we’ve created this extraordinary collection of music analysis, we think we can help be your guide as you explore your favorite parts of the music universe.
…
Tim Westergren
Founder
The Music Genome Project

When Pandora opened her jar, we all know what occurred – all of mankind’s evils escaped to haunt us*. But did you realize that Pandora was able to prevent one thing’s escape? Hope. In the sphere of music, this hope to my mind has been realized in Pandora radio -something you should definitely explore – let us know what you think!

LC
(Disclaimer: no commercial or other link with Pandora by the Management)

*This myth is perhaps an early example of a ‘theodicy’, but you’d better check with Sophie Skinner to verify this…

John “Jack” Egan Cromie makes his appearance!

Specs: Born 11/23/2010. 8 lbs 1oz. Here are a couple of snapshots sent by Dad Dan- I think he’s probably a keeper don’t you? We can’t wait to see him in person.

 

Jack at 2 1/2 days

Jack in good hands with admirers Liam and Kate

 

Congratulations to Dan and Susan. His namesake would be proud…

LC

Editor’s Recommendation: Click on this brief audio file to capture the ambiance of what follows…

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Each year a favorite event for the Wisconsin Gatch family is the Bloomington Wisconsin Livestock Exchange. Here they enter their calves for sale at auction, and this year, as the following video attests, they did themselves proud…

And here is how Grandpa Gatch described the day:

“..[the video] doesn’t do justice to the event itself, which is our annual ritual at this time of year.

It’s always accompanied by great excitement. The auctioneer was complimentary in his comments on the calves, and the bidders responded. Calvin either topped or came close to topping the market for the weight class of his calves — which at 657 pounds for the steers and 617 pounds for the heifers — is the best he’s ever done. We are pleased cuz our cows are a rather motley bunch, and we rent our bulls from Perry Leibfried, who owns Leibfried Feed in Platteville. We called Perry to tell him the good news — on the proviso that he doesn’t raise the bull rent next year.

At the end of the video, Calvin scans to the top of the sale barn bleachers where Cal IV is hiding out. He was not as riveted as Calvin and I were by the event.

I’m certain that most of us have no idea how much work is involved in getting these calves to 657 pounds. So a congratulations is owed to Cal III on this achievement.

Addendum: Cal III has just re-enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve. Semper Fi Cal Boy!