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Saturday, 27 August 2005
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Researchers Find That Carbon Dioxide Does Not Boost Forest Growth
Levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, have
been on the upswing over the last century. How the earth's plant life,
particularly trees, will react to the change remains unclear. Some
researchers have proposed, however, that the rising concentrations will
spur plant growth and thus allow them to store additional amounts of
carbon dioxide, thereby mitigating the atmospheric increase to some
degree. Now a report published in the journal Science
disputes this claim. A four-year study of a forest in Switzerland
indicates that additional carbon dioxide does not boost tree growth.
[Scientific American]
2:09:04 AM 
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I've just got home from a strange gig. I once used to make a decent bit
of my income from freelance playing, just waiting for the phone to ring
for a scratch band or filling in for someone who couldn't make a job
for one reason or another. Much of this work dried up for me long ago,
but the odd one still comes in.
This one was from my fellow TAFE lecturer Tony Lillywhite (see The Robe Trip and The Robe Trip Part Two) who has been working with this band for three gigs over three months at the No Liez nightclub in Adelaide.
The band itself is excellent, but the singer, in spite of her, er,
maturity, is very inexperienced, and just doesn't have a good grip on
the essentials. She didn't follow the form of songs, didn't always know
what key she did songs in, didn't communicate well with the band, and
called tunes for which we had no charts.
This last matter was no real problem for the band. Tony knows all the
standards in any key on piano, and the excellent tenor sax player, Derek Pascoe,
does too. Tony has worked with drummer, Frank Fragomeni, often enough
for them to know what's going on in intros and endings. Alas, in
spite of years of work, I have always drifted back to arranged reading
gigs, or rock gigs, and I never seemed to have thoroughly learned more
than a few standards. So it was a problem for me. I don't mind winging
it - in fact I like it - but I don't have a good enough ear to be good
at it. The others seemed pleased enough with tonight's efforts, but I
get a bit depressed at my inadequacies.
Then there were my solos! Again, kind words are said, but really, what
crap I played. Not only did I play crap ideas, I played them badly.
Where did my chops go? Well I know the answer to that. I don't practice
enough. And my hand hurts. I'm pretty sure I broke my left thumb about
four months ago, but I never did go to the doctor, or even bind it to
let it heal.
What an idiot.
1:59:19 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 27/9/05; 9:55:47 PM.
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