JC Dill

Please accept with no obligation, express or implied, my best wishes
for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress,
non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice
holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the
religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your
choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or
traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or
secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful,
personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of
the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not
without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures
whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to
imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor
the only America in the Western Hemisphere . Also, this wish is made
without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability,
religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

By accepting these greetings, you are accepting the aforementioned
terms as stated. This greeting is not subject to clarification or
withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the
original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually
implement any of the wishes for herself/himself/others, and is void
where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the
wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual
application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the
issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and
warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new
wish at the sole discretion of the wish.

An email about “Farm Machine Music” is making the rounds today. A good friend (who would normally know better) got fooled. It is NOT true that this was made from “farm equipment”, it’s an urban legend. The video is all done with computer graphics, and is very cool.

Snopes.com has a great article explaining the UL.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: Fwd: First read the message and then watch the video – awesome!

> This incredible machine was built as a collaborative effort
> between The Robert M. Trammell Music Conservatory and
> the Sharon Wick School of Engineering at the University of
> Iowa. Amazingly, 97% of the machines’ components came
> from John Deere Industries and Irrigation Equipment of
> Bancroft, Iowa, yes farm equipment!
>
> It took the team a combined 13,029 hours of set-up,
> alignment, Calibration, and tuning before filming this video
> but as you can see it Was WELL worth the effort.
>
> It is now on display in the Matthew Gerhard Alumni Hall
> at the University and is slated to be donated to the
> Smithsonian.