I have a real soft spot for Bizet’s opera Carmen. I’ve watched a Met production on public television, a French teacher showed the film version in class, and I’ve even seen the contemporary film remake with an African-American cast, Carmen Jones. My youth orchestra performed the Carmen Fantasie with a very young Gil Shaham on violin. Watching Carmen in French class was the perfect multimedia activity to involve me in the language, since the literature wasn’t doing it for me. Camus, and the other French authors we read, didn’t feel as lyrical as much as they felt depressing (granted, I hadn’t taken any philosophy yet and wasn’t able to properly appreciate it). Carmen may be a tragedy, but it is full of life, and the music always teased my inner ear for days.

With that background knowledge, you may imagine my disbelief, which I gamely tried to keep from turning into horror, at hearing that MTV had created a hip hop version of Carmen. Yes. Hip. Hop. I like hip hop much better than I like certain sugary, exposed belly button pop (and hip hop has a laudable 20 year history). But I stopped watching MTV somewhere around the Jenny McCarthy era, and I haven’t had the distinct pleasure of seeing their current show, “JackAss”. Suffice to say I don’t expect much from MTV anymore, which, since I’m no longer in their demographic, is fine with me. Well, my fears about a hip hopping Carmen may be unwarranted. The reviews I’ve read of “MTV’s Hip Hopera: Carmen” have been positive. The venerable gray lady herself uses the words “artistically sophisticated”, and says it “is so vibrantly made that it might even appeal to people who ordinarily wouldn’t dream of going out of their way to hear rap.” MTV is even running it without commercial interruption, although I’m sure there is plenty to promote without having to break from the plot. If MTV inspires anyone to pick up the Bizet version, I’d be surprised, but perhaps they’ve truly added to contemporary culture with their hip hopera. Next up, J. Lo as Madame Butterfly, perhaps?

The Nun Study is a longitudinal study of aging and Alzheimer’s disease. Interesting, useful, scientific data has been collected from the 15 year observation of 678 nuns. This NY Times article presents a few of the findings; one result “Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study” is being published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The nuns participating in the study belong to the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and one of the convents is right up the street from the house I grew up in. I went to summer camp there and my mother worked there as a nurse’s aide. I remember wondering at the mystery of why my swim instructor wore a wedding ring, since all I really understood at the time was that nuns didn’t get married (after seeing a few movies with the marriage to Jesus ceremony later on, I figured it out). It’s wonderful that the sisters agreed to participate in this rather invasive study. Their generosity will certainly reap great fruit for the rest of us who are much less prepared to meet our maker.

From the WedLog of the just married BackupBrains: Dr Seuss Wedding Vows. It gets old real fast, but it’s an amusing concept. And in other wedding news, Crate & Barrel finally added online registry updating and creation. Thank goodness.

Princeton has selected Dr. Shirley M. Tilghman, a molecular biologist, to be its next president, making this a landmark year for Ivy League women leaders. UPenn and Brown are also welcoming female presidents this year. Dr. Tilghman was originally on the search committee, but was asked to become a candidate, and she appears to be a fine, progressive choice. Here, from the NY Times article, are some of her opinions: “She has argued to abolish tenure, calling it ‘no friend to women’ because the trial period leading up to the tenure decision usually coincides with childbearing years, pressuring many women to choose between a family and career.”, “Dr. Tilghman has also said that the federal government should deny funding to scientific meetings that do not include women on their panels of presenters.”, “She recently argued to the Bush administration to continue funding for stem-cell research despite the protests of abortion rights opponents.” I hope she doesn’t have too many staunch opponents in the traditional old boys network, because she could spearhead much positive change, not just for women, but also for genetic research, which is facing many conservative political arguments.

The NIST Stone Test Wall was built in 1948 to study how natural stones withstand the great outdoors. The website has a database of the stones by state, and I found a stone in there from Norwalk, Connecticut. There are 2352 samples, 320 of which are from foreign countries. (via Yahoo’s Weekly Picks)

Peter Gabriel’s WOMAD festival is back this summer and tickets for the Seattle event go on sale today. I attended WOMAD, which stands for “world of music and dance”, in San Francisco about eight or so years ago. Tons of people (we said “moo” a lot as we were herded around), but the music was wonderful, and hearing Peter Gabriel is always an ear-filling experience. It is truly a global festival and the locations this year hit most of the continents and a couple islands too.

Huh. The Seattle Times collected data from the state DMV and calculated what cars were over and under-represented in each zip code in Western Washington. I don’t know much about the Seattle region, but I know what’s in Redmond, and its residents seem to really like Land Rovers.

Metricom, better known as the provider of the Ricochet wireless service, is still hanging in there. They are making a last ditch marketing effort to attract customers. An analyst who doesn’t mince words says that their 40,900 member subscriber base is “effectively zero customers.” Ouch. Their original plan was to save marketing dollars for building out their infrastructure. But they probably should’ve seen if they could get one area serviced well before building access in more cities. It’s a tough logistic though; business travelers need more service areas. But with more cafes and public areas providing wireless ‘net access, like Starbucks’ deal with Compaq, is a Metricom network necessary? In my view of the future, you can pretty much go anywhere (a friend’s house, cafe, restaurant, mall, work, library, park, train, airport, etc) with your wireless enabled device and get online without needing an account, or to pay for anything (‘cept maybe a frappuchino).

Surprisingly, the SF Bay Area is not one of the “Enhanced Areas” for the California automobile smog check program. The L.A. area is, which is understandable, and there are these little spots in areas that I’m not as familiar with. I guess I should count myself lucky that I’m not living in one of the smoggiest areas of the state, but there are days when I wonder! The enhanced test includes a single-axle dynamometer (like a treadmill for cars), which can’t be used with all wheel drive cars. I have an AWD Subaru, so I need to pay attention to these things in case I get a clueless technician, but my zip code is still idle test only.

Update on my PalmVx: After it dried out, it seemed to work for a while. But the digitizer started being flaky and sometimes it would only register pen taps on one section of the screen, no matter where I was tapping. And then the on/off button started being stubborn. It’s a little scary when you can’t turn something off (and, in the case of the Vx, you can’t just take the batteries out!), even if it isn’t causing any damage. So, I called “customer care” and they are sending me a replacement and mine is going to go back for repairs (and probably get sent out to the next person who lives dangerously with liquids).