Space of Melodies - a Music Theory

From a waiting room Time magazine, I found out about the work of Prof Dmitri Tymoczko http://music.princeton.edu/, Princeton University. He asserts a few things (we always end up studying music from 1700-1900), then goes on to present an ordering in a perhaps multi-dimensional space termed "Chordspaces". A very pleasant software task there, provides downloads of his presentation engine. He has captured a few Chopin melodies, displayed here http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/chopin2.mov - I'll learn how to post mov's one of these days.

Wow

Just now mostly past a cranial tumorectomy - hospital was no resort, as I had tried to image it going into the deal. Wiser, way older.
Discovered youTube during the late recovery stage. I've had music going through my mind so many times, always wondering where it came from. One of theses is here...





hauntingly beautiful music
And many more, reminds me of another golden age.

Is this how the System works?

The story is about Canadians finding a cure, but global pharma lacking the will to pursue and promote because it can't be cornered -
www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20070116/cancer_dca_070116/20070116?hub=CTVNewsAt11
We are so proud of our economic system because supposedly it correctly allocates resources, but I see something wrong when enterprises trusted with developing the frontiers of pharmacy cannot be bothered with providing a way to a cure for something that kills so many, unless it fills their treasury.

Snowday Again - Idaho, personal medical encyc

It's another beautiful snowday - some years we have none, this year a bonanza. Lots of hills here, but everything else is lucky.

Guns scare people. Guns should scare people that are unfamiliar with the mechanism, make emergencies very quickly. Here's an education story from Idaho ~
A Rifle in Every Pot - New York Times

Marketing a medical information system to the citizens/electorate will take a lot of listening and cleverness. Patients have to want to keep their folder up to date - the slightest reason to not give yourself a scan will cut participation. And it will be like something they already depend on.

Let me say Hi!

Always on the watch for new playthings and gadgets, this looks cute.

Had a snowy weekend, chalet living in the Seattle, getting tired of the family getting tired of me. Also had the pleasant surprise of a call from a couple who stayed with us on a foreign exchange program years ago, their second baby is a month old and healthy (now). They called from Toulouse, France, is always exciting to hear from far away.

I had it easy this weekend. For now I am studying Clinical Diagnostics, and covering a Bioengineering seminar, at the University of Washington, on top of the unmentioned day job. I hope someday to have a life of ease, merely pursuing work in something like

• Vaccine production - how come, when there are better ways of doing things, we still manufacture vaccines on eggs, and spend precious weeks doing it ( ... I think it has to do with money - vaccine production on average is a money-loser
• The magic needle - years ahead, there will be ways to introduce substantial chemotherapy and even surgical tools through something that penetrates like a needle and then unwinds to open up a path through a small column. The leading edge or point of the contraption will have squibs that can perform as part of a medical imaging system to ensure vasculature and nerves are not violated, and to minimize the impact on membranes penetrated.
• Bowel movement where there is none - nothing worse than that bloated feeling. I would love to be part of a team developing an endointestinal robotic appliance that could be introduced through the rectum, manuever its way where it needed to, and stimulate the intestinal muscle wall. This could be used in a hospital setting, or before getting on an airplane -- or years away, around the house.

In the meantime, there are a lot of other things. The 'hospitalist' member of the trio of doctors leading our Clinical Diagnostics class hopes that someone will find a way to have all the patients data, information and findings easily and quickly accessible - a personal googling of your data from a variety of perspectives. That is something more in line with what I know more about than the thesis topics above -- I see the bigger problems with this as personal privacy, institutional intrusion and pervasive ineptitude of people too long in the easy life.

More later, I hope. We're lucky to have freedoms and lifestyles we have to do the things we do, but like the line is some Bruce Springsteen song, "take a good look around" now, it may not last forever.