AL Matherl PLS

If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything." -Alan WattsAs we move farther away from the equinox and towards the solstice, my part of the world is seeing not only more daylight,… The current "Ask a ScienceBlogger" opens a big can of worms:I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?I waited until the last minute… Not my pic alas, but one picked up from Top 10 Incredibly Beautiful Tree Tunnels via TPP. Photo credit is pawelklarecki.blogspot.ro.The quality of light in the upper branches is gorgeous - the trees seem to be holding the light. Huzzah for Smoot and Mather!In this comment, Momma Free-Ride discusses her time working on COBE (the project, not the satellite itself) with the newest Nobel laureates.TEDTalks: Al GoreAl Gore talks about averting disaster and shows off his bizarrely attuned comic sense. (via The World's Fair)…...

For local musicians itching to diversify their careers, it's an opportunity you'd be crazy to miss. After all, Berklee College of Music charges an arm, two legs, and six ribs, while the Juilliard School demands your first born.Not that you're required to study at a conservatory to become a successful scorer of visual media."At one time, you needed the resources of a giant orchestra, but a transition in gear – including sample sets and home studios – made it possible for independent musicians to do full film scores," explains Graham Reynolds, composer for Richard Linklater films Bernie, Before Midnight, and Last Flag Flying – all of which were nominated for various Academy Awards. "There's also been an aesthetic switch away from big, John Williams-style scores except in blockbusters. Trent Reznor is a perfect example: super minimal, done mostly on computer, and he doesn't need to know how to orchestrate to make his scores."Accordingly, two of the most game-changing TV and movie scoring teams of the last 15 years have spawned from Austin's musical underground. Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, key pushers in analog synth quartet Survive, rose to international acclaim in 2016 with their soundtrack to the wildly popular Netflix series Stranger Things, which spooked more John Carpenter than John Williams. They now own Emmy statuettes and garner major league projects like National Geographic's forthcoming Internet Age docudrama Valley of the Boom. “Musically, the goals are much more specific scoring a film than making a record. … It makes you work with a totally different part of your brain and that’s fun.” A decade earlier, another Austin instrumental outfit, post-rockers Explosions in the Sky, caught national buzz with their dynamic soundtracking of Friday Night Lights. Eventually, their IMDb page grew to include the Al Pacino vehicle Manglehorn and Peter Berg's war epic Lone Survivor. The work of both homegrown acts continues to be highly emulated. Reynolds notes that when...