As I've noted from time to time, speakers' pitch range is affected by many internal and external factors in addition to their anatomy and physiology. External factors include the level of background noise and the distance to the intended hearer(s). Internal factors include the level of physiological arousal. In particular, we expect the emotion of "hot […]
About a week ago I received this Facebook query from Scaruffi.com about Chinese chatbot poetry (relayed by Mark Liberman): Since friday Chinese social media are flooded with comments about a poetry book written by Microsoft's chatbot Xiaoice that was published on May 19 (three days ago). I cannot find a single reference to this book […]
Photograph of a sign at Sequim Bay, Washington taken by Stephen Hart:
Headline in the China Daily today (5/28/17): "Dophin sightseeing in China's Taiwan". As my colleague, Arthur Waldron, trenchantly remarked: "They fear a dauphin. This may be an omen."
Or not. Andrew Mayeda, "World Bank's Star Economist Is Sidelined in War Over Words", Bloomberg 5/25/2017: The World Bank’s chief economist has been stripped of his management duties after researchers rebelled against his efforts to make them communicate more clearly, including curbs on the written use of “and.” […] A study by Stanford University’s Literary […]
Earlier this week, I wrote a post titled "'Little Man' the eating machine" (5/22/17), in which I pointed out that "Man" here does not mean "(hu)man" or "male human", but that it signifies "(southern) barbarian", with extended meanings of “rough; reckless; fierce; rude; unreasoning; unruly; bullying”. I also noted that this mán 蛮 has another […]
Some say the administration will end in ICE, some say in FOIA/from what I know of corporate lawyas, I hold with those who favor FOIA…. — emily nussbaum (@emilynussbaum) May 26, 2017
Mythili Sampathkumar, "Donald Trump and Mike Pence approval ratings hit new low in latest Fox News poll", The Independent 5/26/2017: Voters polled were also asked “do you think America’s best days are ahead of us or behind us?” A majority – 62 per cent – said yes, they are. [h/t Michael Glazer]
The notorious WannaCry malware infestation began on Friday, May 12, 2017 and spread rapidly throughout the world, infecting hundreds of thousands of computers and causing major damage. Speculation concerning the identity of the perpetrators focused on North Korea, but the supposed connection was never convincingly demonstrated, and there were no other serious suspects. Yesterday, Jon […]
In "Transcendent Tonality" (11/5/15), we examined this topic a couple of years ago. That post focused more on the philosophical and ethereal aspects of this type of communication, although it also introduced some of the basics of interhuman whistling and its congruence with melodic musicality. Additional research takes us further toward understanding the linguistic, neuroscientific, […]
This morning's email brought an invitation to contribute to a "Special Issue on Intelligent Transportation Communication Systems" (for this journal). It took me a little while to figure out that conversing with cars (which I'm definitely in favor of) was not what they had in mind. And this process reminded me of how difficult it can be […]
Desmond Fishman is running for parliament, and has discovered (one of) the secrets of political rhetoric: