Using boobs to promote shoes

Ingenious ad by Reebok uses talking boobs to promote its new running shoes...

They say sex sells :)

Castrated for the love of music - the castrati

Castrati are male singers who have singing voices equivalent to sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, or contraltos (female voices essentially) due to castration (removal of the testicles) of the singer before puberty or have never reached sexual maturity by some reason.

It is obvious that castration prevents the necessary flow of hormones to stop a boy from reaching puberty, hence the vocal cords cannot enlarge and cause his voice to become lower. As a result, castrati had the high voice of a boy soprano but the lung power of a grown man. Castrati were treated like superstars in the 18th century due to the popularity of opera. They made a lot of money and had throngs of fans. Girls would even seduce them and have sex with them because they were sure they wouldn't get pregnant.

Their training regimen seems to be harder than present-day singers. Wikipedia recounts "The regime of one singing school in Rome (c. 1700) consisted of one hour of singing difficult and awkward pieces, one hour practising trills, one hour practising ornamented passaggi, one hour of singing exercises in their teacher's presence and in front of a mirror so as to avoid unnecessary movement of the body or facial grimaces, and one hour of literary study; all this, moreover, before lunch. After, half-an-hour would be devoted to musical theory, another to writing counterpoint, an hour copying down the same from dictation, and another hour of literary study. During the remainder of the day, the young castrati had to find time to practice their harpsichord playing, and to compose vocal music, either sacred or secular depending on their inclination. This demanding schedule meant that, if sufficiently talented, they were able to make a debut in their mid-teens with a perfect technique and a voice of a flexibility and power no woman or ordinary male singer could match."

Wondering how a castrati's voice sounds like? Listen to the clip below. Comments to that video seem to indicate that this is Alessandro beyond his prime, so his voice quality has already declined. He does not seem to be the best castrato either, but he does hold the distinction of being the only true castrato singer who was ever recorded.

How academics differs from business.

Spot on. Another amazing piece by XKCD that highlights the big difference between an academic career and a business career.

If you're interested, read up on Guy Kawasaki's blog on things that should be taught in school. He mentioned "Perhaps in school people have plenty of time and no money, so long papers, emails, and presentations are not a problem. However, people in the real world have plenty of money (or at least more money) and no time."

The most beautiful man in the world...

...is this guy. Search for Nong Poy on Google.

Slideshare has a detailed presentation about his journey, plus some more of his pictures.

Most Beautiful Man In The World

View more presentations from aie006.

Good afternoon, my name is Russell, and I am a wilderness explorer...

Does this kid look like Russell from Up or what?

This is the real Russell. Found by my brother on Facebook.

Anyway, cue Russell's lines: (thanks to kpbs.org)

RUSSELL: Good afternoon. My name is Russell. And I am a wilderness explorer in tribe 54, Sweat lodge 12. Are you in need of any assistance today, sir?

CARL: No.

RUSSELL: I could help you cross the street

CARL: No.

RUSSELL: I can help you cross your yard.

CARL: No.

RUSSELL: I could help you cross your porch.

CARL: No.

RUSSELL: Well, I gotta help you cross something.

CARL: No, I'm doing fine.

RUSSELL: Good afternoon. My name is Russell. And I am a wilderness explorer in tribe 54. Sweat Lodge 12. Are you in need of any assistance today...(door slams).

Gotta love Twitter's scheduled maintenance image

Raise your voice for Climate Change - support the Filipino voice

It's pretty rare to have unknown people raise their voice in a big way for climate change. That's exactly what my friends Paul Garilao and Ponching Orioste are doing right now, joining the COP15 Raise your Voice 2009 campaign. To vote for their entry just visit www.youtube.com/cop15; click vote; search Philippines on the videos per country; and click the green thumbs up sign for the entry entitled: Raise Your Voice by Filipino environmental advocates.

Please vote for them! :)

I've been thinking myself about what steps can be taken to help the environment. Often we focus on big controversial problems (like the recent Ondoy/Ketsana storm) and use that as a springboard for discussion. But I think some more fundamental aspects of our city life can be changed to produce significant results for our environment. Here are my ideas:

1. Improve traffic conditions

Problem: 5.3 million cars as of 2006 and an increase at the rate of 5-6% per year means a lot of greenhouse gases emitted to the atmosphere. Given the bad traffic situations in majority of the country, these cars spend more time than they need to on the road, burning even more fuel. Go to Wolfram alpha to get a feel of how much CO2 is thrown to the atmosphere. Apart from the greenhouse impact, bad transportation also results to anxiety and poor health in people and economic hits due to productivity loss, perishable meats, and more.

What the solution might look like:

Expand train network - The model is Hong Kong. A small place connected by a lot of trains. This reduces people's need for cars, so the carbon footprint per person is markedly reduced. The trains should be underground so we have more space on the ground.

Eradicate jeepneys and other public transport - consolidate public transport under the bus. This seats the most number of people and is most efficient (I think, I have no data). Keep taxis of course. Most valid for large cities.

Disallow parking along the streets - We can plant trees there instead. Requires a cultural shift and the creation of a strong parking industry.

What it will cost: A lot. Billions range obviously over the span of a few years, but the benefit will persevere for decades.

Benefits:

To the environment: lesser greenhouse emissions, fuel stock will last a longer time
To the country: productivity and value creation due to lesser time spent in transit, fuel importation might be decreased
To the people: less stress in travel

I hope a Philippine President addresses this soon.

Other ideas (I like to stress the first one, so I won't explain these.)

2. Modify educational framework to focus on the environment in the curriculum. Intensify the instruction of environmental science, and encourage experimentation/projects in this subject. Better start young.

3. Reward actions that help the environment. Reward citizens for helping the environment (activities, purchasing eco-friendly products) and companies via tax breaks. Reward entrepreneurs for eco-friendly businesses.

Big Bird is in today's Google doodle!

Today is the 40th day anniversary of Sesame Street!

But honestly, today's doodle made Google read like Googlle.

Testing Google Wave - embed a wave into a blog!

I finally have a Google Wave account. Wave is a very nifty tool, and I'm spending some time trying to understand it.

One of the cool features it has is the ability to export Waves to blogs, and have people interact with your wave from within your blog, in real time!

Take a look at the Wave I embedded at the bottom of this blog: (Note: if you don't see the wave, it maybe because you don't have a Google account, or even a Wave account.)

If you can't see the embed below, please refer to the screenshots: Click the pictures to view in higher resolution.

I want a drag and drop feature, I wasn't able to find something like that yet.

PS: I noticed that waves have to be made public so that other people can view them. This is done easily by adding the robot "easypublic@appspot.com" as a contact and adding it to the wave.

How to do the Nozomi Sasaki dance (for Fit's!)

Nozomi Sasaki starred in a Lotte Fit's commercial which became famous in Japan for this (very) cute dance. This spawned a dance contest in Japan. The steps are quite simple, but nonetheless, a Japanese magazine had to spell out the individual moves, as you can see above! Click the picture above for a high res version.

Thanks Reallycuteasians!

Did you know? (the extremely fast pace of tech changes)

This is from the Economist. This video's main purpose is to shock a person with numbers to rethink how businesses have been spending on advertising.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer selling Windows (circa 1980+)

LOL. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stars in a commercial advertising the original MS Windows product. As he said, "You get all these features plus reversi... for only 99 dollars!"

Watch the commercial here:



Discovered this via @JimAyson.

Twitter lists out as a beta feature

Twitter rolled out a beta feature for lists to a part of Twitter's user base, according to Techcrunch. This summarizes the list feature:

Setting up a list is simple. Currently, the homepage features a Lists banner that allows you to start simply by clicking on the “Create a new list” button. Once you do this, an overlay appears and you just type in the list name (which Twitter then converts into a permalink along the lines of twitter.com/USERNAME/LISTNAME), and set the list to be public or private. This is obviously an important distinction as the public one, others will be able to see, while the private one will be for your eyes only.

On the right hand column of you Twitter.com homepage, you will see a new “lists” area under you bio. Clicking on this will take you to your list overview page where you can manage your own lists, as well as see other user’s public lists that you are a part of. Also, on user profile pages you will see that the users’ lists are now listed under the “Favorites” area in the right hand toolbar.

Clicking on any of these lists will take you to a stream of just the users followed by that list. Basically, this is a filter, if used the right way. This is something Twitter proper has long needed (though plenty of third party services like Brizzly have stepped in to offer it).

Unfortunately, adding people to your list is not as easy as it should be. The reason for this is that there is no user search functionality. Instead, you have to either go to your “following” page, or to that person’s profile to manually add them.

I have created my own list - for "friends." I'm still playing with this feature. As of now, its main benefit for me is to filter my feed according to my own personal preferences.

Dear God... (more funny letters!)

After the first post, I decided to find more funny letters to God, and here are some of them!

By the end of the photos, I'd like to connect an amazing TEDtalk to these letters.

1. How hard is it to love people?

2. This reminds me of Kaitlyn Maher's answer to "Are you from New York?" and Maher's answer is... here.

3. Wow, this kid is suggesting to God what He should have done with Cain and Abel.

4. This takes the grand prize for me!

These letters written by kids remind very strongly of Rebecca Saxe's TEDtalk about how the abilities of children/people to reason out and judge scenarios of "people thinking about thinking people" develop markedly and rapidly between the ages of approximately three and seven years old.

She discusses how the RTPJ (the part of the brain that enables us to read minds and intentions) works (geek stuff here), and ultimately how we can influence other's minds (using magnetic devices).

It is a very exciting talk - one of the best I've seen via Ted.com!

Thanks to Geek Army for the letters!

Dear God...

LOL.