It snowed in Dubai this past weekend. No, not the fake snow that the obscenely rich oil emirate routinely manufactures for its decadent desert ski resorts, but real, honest-to-goodness snow.
For only the second time in recorded history, according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, The United Arab Emirates has experienced a “natural” snowfall. I wish we could just sit back and enjoy the rich, ironic humor contained in this weather update, but, as luck would have it, we happen to share an atmosphere with these lovely oil producers.
Climate change is real and it is here. Not only is it real, but a newly released study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America says that climate change is basically irreversible.
As study author Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, explains, “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we’re showing here is that’s not right. It’s essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years.” Continue Reading…
As our new president takes the reins, as so many dire problems face us, I have a question.
Where’s the peeance and freeance?
Yes, a Bushism for sure (if you’re not familiar with the reference, view the short video below), but a fair question nonetheless.
Now, it’s obvious that Mr. Obama is by far the intellectual superior of his predecessor and has no problem speaking in complete sentences. Yet those are not, in my mind, the key differences between these men. Continue Reading…
I’m a big fan of composer John Williams. We all know his work on almost all of Steven Spielberg’s films, the Superman films, the Star Wars films and many others. His contribution to American pop culture goes way back to the 50’s. The first John Williams piece that I fell in love with was the theme to the old Lost In Space tv show in the 60’s. Remember it?
But even though he is ultra-famous, I bet you’d be surprised to learn how very many pieces of John Williams’ music are part of our lives. Read his Wiki page. You’ll be amazed.
Corey Vidal is a young man from Canada who makes videos and posts them onto YouTube under the name of ApprenticeA. Have you seen his brilliant tribute to John Williams? If you haven’t, check this out!
My day started at 8 yesterday morning with the arrival of my partner, B Wishes, to work on our seemingly never-ending video project. We keyframed mattes, color corrected and moved clips around in Final Cut Pro until the scene, a dream sequence, was ready to export into Digital Performer for audio sweetening.
We recorded the parts we needed; whistling, synths, strings, wind chimes and a guitar. Since our main studio montors are down due to a heinous Christmas Eve mishap (see my first blog entry), we decided not to mix, and switched instead to evaluating and editing some tracks for The Toyes’ upcoming CD.
We were rocking. It was one of those rewarding days when we could feel the wind on our faces from the momentum of the great progress we were making. In our line of work, some days you feel like you’re standing still or sliding backwards, but this day was glorious for its sense of forward motion. Continue Reading…
