Haiku for the Titanic

industry built proud
ship which struck iceberg too bad
globe was not so warm

Continue . . .

Summary only...

Algae Crude is No April Fool

Today, the first commercial algae farm that I know of starts production.

I'm extremely eager to see how this works out. Maybe a year from now, we'll have a good idea of the feasibility of algae farming to produce oil for fuel.

Continue . . .

Summary only...

Sometimes I Think They Curse Too Much

I fear the dean will walk in. "Yes sir. This is a 'sound exercise.' No sir, I was not aware of the off-color nature of this song. I only listen to the peaks on top of the audio and the spaces between the sounds, and I teach them to do the same. It's like with lifeguarding. You don't want to watch the people. You want to watch the spaces between the people, because that's where the drowners are."

We had taken the midterm tests, and they had done surprisingly well on it. We were left with that age-old bane of all teachers -- extra time. So I said, let's record something someone may want to listen to, for a change. Let's get two mics on this. Let's get them on stands (something they had not done yet). Let's crowd some sound blankets around this to reduce the awful reverb that we have in our "lighting lab," not called a sound stage because my great-grandpa's outhouse was more of a sound stage than this. Chop-chop, we're burning daylight, I said. Warren, Brian needs another set of headphones. Go get them. Warren, we need more cables. Go get them.

Warren has spent his life standing by. It's maddening until you learn to just order him around.

Meanwhile, Eli tuned his stuff up while we lit and miced around him, and when we got things rolling, this is what came out, in just one take. Then we were out of time and had to wrap it up and go home.

Continue . . .

Summary only...