An article in Slate yesterday on the castrati caught my eye. I remember the first time I learned about the castrati, from a professor who guest-taught one of my classes. She lectured on Farinelli, who some consider the greatest Italian castrato of them all. He and his three-octave range became very famous, and he spent his later years singing solely for the melancholy Philip V of Spain.
Castrati are in the news due to Cecilia Bartoli, an Italian opera singer who has just released a recording of some of the gorgeous arias written for them — men with heartbreakingly beautiful voices who were castrated before they hit adolescence.
Was this in the Dark Ages? No — rather, the 16th through the 19th centuries.
Earlier this week, we released the TechStuff podcast Jonathan and I recorded about the hackintosh. As you already know, Apple’s Macintosh is a closed system — they produce the hardware and the software both. It makes for an elegant solution, because in general the machines and operating system are tailored to each other and work well together.
One downside of this is that Apple charges a premium for its computers. So if you like OS X and want to run it on your desktop, you have to buy a Macintosh computer. If you don’t mind, it works out; Apple hasn’t released a lot of underpowered machines lately. But if you’re on a budget, you just might be buying a PC. Also, if you prefer netbooks, you’re also out of luck, since Apple’s stance on the issue is that the company can’t make a netbook of the quality that Apple can get behind.
It’s a good news/bad news kind of announcement: Fox is canceling “Dollhouse.” In spite of storytelling that picked up in the last half of season one, the show’s ratings have been poor, even with DVR results factored in. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. As if reports that Joss Whedon would be treating the season finale as a series finale weren’t enough, the show went on hiatus during November sweeps — presumably so it wouldn’t pull down Fox’s average. The good news (if you’re a “Dollhouse” fan) is that the network plans to air all 13 episodes of the second season after the show returns from its hiatus.
The USS New York is the Navy’s newest ship, and it is part of a ocmpletely new class of vessel. It is like a floating airport, marina and garage able to deploy 700 marines and their equipment anywhere in the world. Here’s a description of this class of ships:
The USS New York, commissioned this month in its namesake city, is the Navy’s newest warship. It’s a Landing Platform Dock ship, which means it brings Marines to wherever they are needed. The 700 marines on the ship travel ready for combat, and that means landing hovercraft (called Landing Craft Air Cushions), attack helicopters, tanks, amphibious vehicles and V-22 Ospreys come along for the ride. The aircraft launch from the ship and are maintained in hangars on and below the flight deck. The New York has the most famous hull in the world—the Navy integrated 7.5 tons of steel from the fallen World Trade Center towers into the bow. But that is not the only interesting detail of this new vessel’s design. Here are four high-tech surprises the USS New York has in store for enemies.
An amphibious landing is a major event, as described in this video:
They’re celebrating a big anniversary this week on Sesame Street — the children’s show marked 40 years on the air. Most discussions about the tremendous impact of “Sesame Street” include a mention of how the show’s writers handled the death of Mr. Hooper in 1983. When actor Will Lee, who portrayed the friendly shopkeeper in the neighborhood, died, the producers decided to have the character die as well. The writers consulted with psychologists who told them to take a direct approach with the young viewers, and producers chose to air the episode during the Thanksgiving holidays, so that families could watch it together.
I love the smell of old books. It’s just one of the reasons they’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming into the world of Kindles, Nooks and BeBooks. So it’s rather amusing that while the forces of technology and science seem intent on carrying out a kind of print holocaust, some scientists are hard at work creating new ways to smell books.
Hey there, folks. Thanks for tuning in this week. Joshers and I have some pure webcast goodness planned out and we hope you can all tune it to give it a look see. Enjoy, and let’s hear from you – we’ll respond to as many comments as we can, live on the air.
Here is an 84 square foot cabin – smaller than a single parking space in a parking lot:
Her house is dwarfed by this 100 square foot home:
Then he upgraded to 120 square feet:
And this 325 square foot house called the MiniHome is a mansion:
There’s an idea that if we were all to live as we do in the West, we would need an additional 10 planets. So instead of saying, “Well that’s absurd, we can’t have 10 more planets,” why don’t we reduce our consumption, our impact, to one tenth? So what we’ve done here is one tenth the gas, one tenth the water, and in fact one one hundredth the electrical consumption of a conventional home.
- “70% of the world consumes Arabica coffee, which is mild and aromatic. 30% drinks Robusta, which is bitter-tasting but has 50% more caffeine.”
- “Coffee is the second most traded commodity on earth.”
- “Espresso: It’s not a particular type of bean, roast or blend. Espresso is just a way that coffee is prepared: shooting pressurized, hot water through finely ground coffee.”
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