Rob does math (is never pretty)

A while ago, a friend asked on Facebook how big a new widescreen TV should be if he wanted the height of the picture to be about the same as his old 32-inch TV, or something like that. I didn’t answer at the time, because I thought it was ridiculous. You want the width to be the same? Or maybe it was the area. It struck me as odd, because at the very least, you want your new TV to have the same picture area, or ideally, the same height.

The old standard TV picture is proportioned at about 4x3.  The newer widescreen TVs are typically about 16x9.  So if you maintained the same width, the height of the picture would shrink proportionally. So I declined to answer the question.

On the other hand, this has been simmering at the back of my head for weeks. Maybe months.  If I wanted to preserve the height of my picture (and add width to make up the new proportion), how would I do that?

So to distract myself this evening, I think I figured this out.

To do it my way (keep the height the same, add the width, starting diagonal dimension about 32 inches):  The 32 inch diagonal is the hypotenuse of a right triangle.  The two other legs of the triangle have the proportion of 4x and 3x.  Pythagoras, I think, teaches us that they length of the hypotenuse (32) squared (=1024) equals the square of the lengths of the other two sides (4x)^2 + (3x)^2.  At this point, I was stymied, since for the life of me I couldn’t remember how to take the square of a complex quantity. 

After some Googling, I finally figured out that (4x)^2 (4x-squared) is 16(x^2).  That is, both terms in the quantity square.  If this is wrong, please let me know and I’ll start over.

So now, armed with this, I know that 16(x^2) plus 9(x^2) = 25(x^2) = 1024 (parentheses here just to remind me I’m now just squaring my variable.  Divide both sides by 25 and we get x^2 = (approximately) 41.  The square root of 41 is about 6.4. 

So the proportions of the sides of my television are about 4 x 6.4 = 25.6 inches and 3 x 6.4 = 19.2 inches. I don’t mind doing a little approximating, since I assume the 32 inch diagonal I started with is also an approximation. 

So, to buy a widescreen with the same vertical height, I need one that is about 19.2 inches high, and it will be a little over 34 inches wide because (19.2/9)*16.  The diagonal dimension will be something like 39.something inches.

So having worked all this out, I built myself a little spreadsheet.  You put in the diagonal dimension of your old 4x3 TV and it tells you the diagonal dimension of a widescreen TV if the vertical dimension is the same, the horizontal dimension is the same, and if you want to maintain the picture area.

Me so smrt sometimes. Unless I got the original quantity wrong, in which case never mind.

I wonder if I could  somehow build an app out of this… Hmm….

Crowdsourcing my course stuff

Just because I know you were on tenterhooks, I think I've settled on my reading list for my prosody course in the winter term. Comments?
Segmental and sub-segmental phonology, content of features, etc.

• Clements, George N., & Hume, Elizabeth V. (1995). The internal organization of speech sounds. In John A. Goldsmith (Ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (pp. 245-306). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
• Browman, Catherine, & Goldstein, Louis. (1986). Toward an articulatory phonology. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 219-252.

Syllables, timing and quantity

• Broselow, Ellen. (1995). Skeletal positions and moras. In John Goldsmith (Ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (pp. 175-205). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
• Broselow, Ellen, Chen, Su-I, & Huffman, Marie. (1997). Syllable weight: Convergence of phonology and phonetics. Phonology, 14, 47-82.
• Hubbard, Kathleen. (1995). Toward a theory of phonological and phonetic timing: Evidence from Bantu. In Bruce Connell & Amalia Arvaniti (Eds.), Phonology and Phonetic Evidence: Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV (pp. 168-187). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Prominence stress and accent, deriving the prosodic hierarchy

• Kager, Réne. (1995). The metrical theory of word stress. In John A. Goldsmith (Ed.), The Handbook of Phonologcal Theory(pp. 367-443). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Arvaniti, Amalia. (2009). Rhythm, timing and the timing or rhythm. Phonetica(66), 46-63.
• Liberman, Mark Y, & Prince, Alan. (1977). On stress and linguistic rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry, 8, 249-336.

Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonation

• Odden, David. (1995). Tone: African Languages. In John A. Goldsmith (Ed.), The Handbook of Phonological Theory (pp. 444-475). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
• Pierrehumbert, Janet, & Hirschberg, Julia. (1990). The meaning of intonation contours in the interpretation of discourse. In P. R. Cohen, J. Morgan & M. E. Pollack (Eds.), Intentions in Communication. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
• Beckman, Mary, & Pierrehumbert, Janet. (1986). Intonational structure in Japanese and English. Phonology Yearbook, 3, 255-309.

Tones and Break Indices

• Beckman, Mary, Hirschberg, Julia, & Shattuck-Huffnagel, Stefanie. (2005). The original ToBI system and the evolution of the ToBI framework. In Sun-Ah Jun (Ed.), Prosodic Typology: The Phonology of Intonation and Phrasing (pp. 9-54). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Hayes, Bruce, & Lahiri, Aditi. (1991). Bengali intonational phonology. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 9, 47-96.

Interactions of prosody/intonation and ‘segmental’ phenomenal

• Jun, Sun-Ah. (1998). The Accentual Phrase in the Korean prosodic hierarchy. Phonology, 15, 189-226.
• Keating, Patricia, Cho, Taehong, Fougeron, Cécile, & Hsu, Chai-Shune. (2003). Domain-initial articulatory strengthening in four languages. In John Local, Richard Ogden & Rosalind Temple (Eds.), Phonetic Interpretation: Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI (pp. 145-163). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Adventures in Healthcare

Do me a favor.  Take the tip of the 3mm plug from your earbuds and press it into your tummy for 10 seconds.

Well, for about a year my glucose numbers have been climbing.  And making good food choices over bad food choices isn't really making a difference. So according to the endocrinologist, it's time to start on some insulin.

Technically, I'm a Type II diabetic, meaning, primarily, that my body makes insulin.  This is as opposed to a Type I diabetic, which is what they used to call 'juvenile' diabetes (as in Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation) because it usually is detected early in childhood.  Type I diabetics are insulin-dependent--their bodies either don't make or make insufficient insulin to keep up with dietary and metabolic needs.

Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas. It's job is to attach to receptors in cell membranes, which opens channels in the membrane for glucose (sugar) to be transported into the cell for use in metabolism (for those of you who want more detail, go back to organic chem and review the ATP cycle).  Obviously insulin is necessary for normal life processes at the cellular level.

Type II diabetics are typically treated with 'insulin sensitizers' (among other things) because there's plenty (usually) of insulin in the body, but for whatever reason, it isn't opening the channels.  So what insulin sensitizers do is make cells more ready to accept insulin.  Again, for more (and more informed) details, go look it up.

(One of the myths is that a high sugar/starch diet causes diabetes. It doesn't.  But high sugar/starch diets may contribute to insulin insensitivity, particularly if you're already a Type II or on your way to being one.)

Okay, so here's the story.  On Tuesday at my regular endocrinologist appointment, I got put on glargine insulin, a long-acting (time-release) form of insulin(-like stuff).  I just read the Wikipedia article on the stuff and I sort of understand how it works.  But basically it's a form of insulin that gets 'unpacked' slowly and distributed through the body, rather than going straight in (as 'regular' insulin would) and starting to open glucose channels in every cell it hits.

We've been talking about this for a year or so, when my glucose started climbing.  My HbA1C (also known as glycosolated hemoglobin, basically just a long-term average of glucose levels) was at 8.4, having climbed steadily from a 'normal' 6.4 a few years ago, up to a just over target 7.1 a couple years ago, and, well, higher since. 

What's odd is that my 'daytime' blood sugar readings, when I take them, are normal.  Mostly my post-meal numbers are in the 7-10 range, sometimes a little higher, depending on what I ate.  But my morning 'fasting' numbers, have been absurdly high. They should be 4-7. I haven't seen anything below 8 in a couple years. Often they're up near 14 (although this is complicated by the fact that this is often around noon, after I've been up and around and active--and caffeinated--for several hours).  But the point is, too high.

So my new instructions are to inject myself with glargine insulin at bedtime.  This is kind of cool.  There's a glass vial of the stuff that goes into a pen. There's single-use needle things that screw into the tip, you dial up the dosage, jab yourself in your belly fat (well any fat will do, but belly fat was recommended by my nurse clinician--there are very few pain receptors in the belly and, well, my belly fat is probably the thickest in my body, meaning there's a lot of room to shove some liquid into). 

Started at 8 'units' (still working out what the units are, but basically you turn a thing on the pen to the 8 and it spits out the right amount of stuff through the needle), with instructions to watch the effect in the morning, and increase 1 unit up or down not more than every three days until I start getting 'normal' morning readings. (According to the nurse clinician, 8 is sort of a 'normal' starting dose, and that some people need to go up to 20.)

So this morning was day four, and I've been steadily in the low-to-mid 8 range all the way. This is *such* an improvement I'm very excited by this. I could probably stick here if I actually started getting some decent exercise, but what are the odds of that? (Okay, now that the weather is finally cooperating, I might start trying again.)  Anyway, tonight I'll jump  up to 9 units and see how that goes for a few days. But the point is, I'm suddenly doing much, much better with this stuff.  And I have a new toy to play with. More sharps to figure out how to dispose of, of course, and you can almost always get better compliance out of me by giving me a new toy.

For those of you squicked out at the thought of jabbing yourself with a needle--the needle tips here are super, super fine (much smaller than the finger-jabby lancets I use), and 6mm long. The needle jab doesn't hurt (usually I don't even feel it). What is uncomfortable is the plastic collar around the base of the needle, which, because I'm squishy and hold the pen against myself probably more firmly than I need to, presses into my skin several millimeters. This is the earbud demonstration I started with. That's what it feels like.  After the injection, you can see the little 'hole', only because that's where the collar was, not where the needle was.  So uncomfortable, but not really owie.  And kind of cool--toy, and all.

Best laid plans, or "I love 24-hour supermarkets"

It all started as a plan to dash down to Maple Grove for a first-of-the-season Trader Joe's/Williams-Sonoma run.  I do this two or three times every summer.  I usually do this by dashing down to Fargo, bedding down for the night, heading over to the Greater Twin Cities for some shopping and then back to Fargo for a rest before heading back over the border and home. 

All was going well.  I stopped by Future Shop to buy a spare cable to attach my phone to the Aux outlet in my car stereo (so I don't have to fuss with the iPod that lives attached to the USB cable port in my armrest) (and so I can hook anyone's audio device into my stereo). Fortunately, I had to stop by Staples for a pair of scissors to open up the blister pack.  This will become relevant in a moment.

So I'm in Fargo, having Mexican food, making sure I have cash, and do my usual Friday evening in Fargo routine (while skipping the mall for Mrs Fields cookies), and then get ready for bed.

For this next part to make sense, you have to know that I have obstructive sleep apnea, for which I sleep with a CPAP mask--this is pressurized air mask that fits over my nose and mouth, held on with a neoprene strappy thing, which is why in the mornings you can see me with strap lines in my cheeks and usually my hair pressed into interesting shapes.

Anyway, the mask is hard plastic, and to keep it attached to my soft face there's this silicon gasket thing that goes around the edge of the mask and when pressurized is supposed to maintain the seal.  Because of the relatively high air pressures I need, there's often some comical flappy leakage. So I've learned to do things to hold the mask to my face in my sleep, like sleep with my arm over my face, or a pillow over my chest holding the bottom of the mask down. Or sleeping on my side and pressing the mask into my face with the pillow.

So back to the story. I'm staying in my palacial not-quite-suite in the new Hampton Inn in Fargo.  This is the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in. I suppose it helps that it's brand new.  Aside from the amenities you might expect, the light in the bathroom is controlled by a motion sensor. How cool is that?

Anyway, I'm getting ready for bed and I discover that I've torn the gasket thingy on my mask, inconveniently near the bridge of my nose, where because of the way the mask is built it's difficult to put any extra pressure down toward my face, and even more inconveniently on the right side such that any air that escapes, which is most of it, blows into my right eye. Not comfortable.

I have not slept a night without my mask since September 1, 2009. I have dozed off without it, lying in front of the tv or in bed listening to music or somethig, not more than four times. Three of those times, I woke up with a sore throat from snoring.  So I want my mask.

So I put on the mask and try to stuff the gasket around my nose so it holds.  As soon as the pressure hits it blows open.  I go down to the front desk and get some tape and try to tape it up. No go. Scotch tape doesn't like to stick to greasy silicon apparently. 

So just about 2 am, I head out in search of something more useful. Like surgical tape.  But the Walgreens that I know about is closed. As is the Target.  Luckily, there's a grocery store that's open, Hornbacher's.

I live across the street from a 24-hour drugstore, which may be the only one in Winnipeg. When I end up moving, I'm going to miss that.  There aren't any 24-hour grocery stores in Winnipeg that I know about.  I love America.

Anyway, so there I am, grocery shopping at 2am for the first time since moving to Canada.  I did find some tape, and as long as I was there I went looking for mint and cinnamon M&Ms which I heard about for the first time a few hours ago. And I looked a Crystal Light, in the absence of the Fibersure lemonade I like. Ended up getting some diet root beer for liquid. And wheat thins because if I'm up at this hour repairing my mask I'm damn well going to pump my sugars up.

So I bought some clotch first aid tape (which is supposed to be very adhesive *and* easy to remove--yeah, right) but since it is designed to stick to skin I'm going to assume it can deal with a now slightly cleaner silicon mask.  It's also 'easy tear', which is where the scissors come in. I have never,  in my life, been able to tear surgical tape, medical tape, or athletic tape that was 'easy-tear'.  Which is wear the scissors come in.

The end of the story is that it is now 3am, I'm blogging while I wait for the mask to dry from where I hit it with a non-alcohol wipe to clean it, and now I'm going to try to repair my mask enough for me to go to sleep.

But the point of all this is a) I love America where you can shop for things at any hour of the day or night and b) I don't think there's any way I'm going to be in any kind of shape to drive to Minneapolis and back tomorrow.

But I've already reserved my palacial room at the new Hampton Inn in Fargo for two nights, and I'm damn well going to enjoy it.

My best toddler story

This has come up with my nephew and his mother-in-law on Facebook recently, and this story is too good not to tell again.

My dad used to pick Michael and his brother up at daycare and they'd spend a couple of hours at the house until his mom or dad could pick them up before dinner time. 

One afternoon, I was making tacos or something for dinner and Michael saw me shaking chili powder into the pan.  He asked what it was and I said something about it being spices for what I was making for dinner that night. Then he asked if he could have some.

Me: "You want to try the spices?"

Michael: "Yes."

Me: "It's spicy. You might not like it."

Michael: "I wanna try."

So I gave him a little bit in the palm of his hand which he picked up on his fingers and put in his mouth. And then he toddled away.

A few minutes later, he came back, asking for more.

Me: "More? Are you sure?"

Michael: "Yes."

So I gave him a little more.  Maybe 1/16 teaspoon. Enough for a couple of good licks, but not enough to make him sick.  And he happily toddled away.

A few minutes after that, he came back, asking for even more.

Me: "Really? You're sure you want more?"

Michael: "Yes."

At which point I looked at the clock.  His father was not more than 5-10 minutes away.  And I thought "Well, not my kid." and so I gave him more.  Probably about 1/4 teaspoon. It looked like a lot for a little guy, but wasn't really a lot by culinary standards. 

And, as I said, not my kid.

I *think* I told his father when he came to pick him up. I know I *meant* to.

Crowdsourcing my course planning

I’m planning a seminar for the Winter term next year on “Prosody in Phonology and Phonetics” or something like that.  This started out as a seminar specifically on intonation and ‘general’ prosodic issues of ‘chunking’ like phrase-final lengthening, boundary tones, and different approaches to ‘question intonation’, focus, etc., but it turns out we need it to stand in for a graduate-level (general) phonology course, so there has to be some ‘standard’ phonology in there somewhere.  

So broadly, I plan to do a broad introduction/review of ‘standard’ features, ‘natural classes’, and ‘common processes’ (assimilation, syllabic lengthening/shortening, devoicing, and so on), and then move on to prosody, and use interactions of prosodic stuff and segmental stuff (especially Jun 1998 for Korean) as my 'punchline'.  I’d like to take a ‘broadly historical’ viewpoint—i.e. a few readings addressing development of ideas, and spending class time arriving at a generic ‘big picture’ appreciation for current thinking.

I need some help coming up with a reader of articles. Ideally, I’d like to have 2-4 articles in each of the following topics.  (subtopics are just my ideas of what might be covered under such a heading, with possible papers where I have a specific idea).

Any thoughts on a) my list and b) what articles I should have (both generally and ‘how on earth can you let them get away with not reading X’)?  Please comment or message as appropriate.  Any ideas welcome, both about topics/subtopics and readings.

Segments, syllables and timing

• Segments and syllables (do we need both?) 
• Skeletal (CV or X slot) style timing vs moraic timing (possibly Hubbard, if I can find something appropriate)
• Maybe some feature geometry, root nodes and how they fit with the skeleton and timing, but mostly to set up autosegmental tone (see below)
• Quantity (long-short, light-heavy) representations (and uses)

Prominence

• Lexical-metrical trees/grids (a la Hayes, Hammond, Prince…)
• Phrasal prominence, deriving a prosodic hierarchy (or what I usually try to call ‘a phonological parse)—probably Liberman & Prince
• Something bridging focus/emphasis/etc as prominence and the intonational literature (early Pierrehumbertian ‘nuclear’ accents and deaccenting, etc.)

Intonation

• Pierrehumbert’s jump from lexical tone to phrasal tone
• Intonational meaning (Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg 1990)
• Development of ToBI style transcriptions and representations (possibly Hayes & Lahiri (1989), Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1986),
• General introduction to ToBI transcriptions conventions (I may write this myself at the level I’m comfortable with)

Interactions of prosody/intonation and ‘segmental’ phenomenal (I think of this as my punchline)

• Domain-final devoicing (in Turkish?, Slavic? Germanic?)
• Domain-final lengthening
• Domain of segmental rules—Hayes & Lahiri (again), Korean (Jun 1998), Slave (Rice 1987), others?

(Possibly) Affected/dysfunctional prosody?

• Prosodic interruption in TBI, aphasia, etc (Ben?)
• Prosody in typically and atypically developing infants
• Cross-linguistic/typological comparisons of prosodic/intonational systems?

I don’t plan to do anything specific about the ‘British School’ and other alternatives to autosegmental-metrical/ToBI style representations, downstep/downdrift; but I expect one student or other with more knowledge of that kind of thing will follow up in their own final projects. Similalry, I have enough students who I know are interested in disordered communication that someone will want to follow up on that sort of thing, it might be worth doing a ‘formal unit’ on the topic, but it’s not something I really feel like I need to do in this class. But if there are good papers available….

I also haven't read the new Prosodic Typology volume (Jun, ed.), but it's on the list. Now that we're in the new fiscal year, I should probably get to ordering that...

Thoughts?

Shopping list and cold season

  This post is (as usual) a weird mishmash of musings.

A brief Facebook exchange with a casual friend reminded me of my need to go to a liquor store. I need to go to the liquor store for two reasons. Maybe three. First, I need liquor. For my mother's sore throat tonic (recipe to follow). Second, I need liquor. Peppermint Schnapps, Kahlua, Amaretto or Goldschlager, or somthing like that, to go into my hot chocolate in the evening.  Third, I may need a couple bottles of red wine, to make my all-purpose Italian-style meat sauce.

So, I need my throat tonic. I need it because I did something to my epiglottis Christmas night/Boxing day morning. Woke up with a sharp pain down the left side of my pharynx when I swallowed. Over the next couple of days, and to this day, it has moderated to a dull lumpy feeling on the back of my tongue. I think I did something to my epiglottis. I'm thinking it had to so with the very dry air, since starting the humidifier and over-loading the reservoir on the CPAP machine has helped a lot. But pre-SSRI Rob would be having a serious anxiety attack over this thing he can feel on the back of his tongue.

But anyway, my mother had two liquor based home remedies which it always amuses me to share with people.  The first was for teething babies.  She would get a glass, fill it with ice, pour whatever liquor my dad had in the house over the ice. She would then wrap a clean dish towel or something over her finger, dip it in the cold liquor and rub it on the fussy baby's gums.  Then she would take a sip of liquor.  Then she'd rub more on the baby's gums. And take another sip. I don't know if it helped with the teething pain, but by the bottom of the glass neither she or the baby seemed to care much any more.

I think my mother's sore throat tonic works on a similar theory.  It consists of equal parts honey (with its soothing and anticeptic qualities), lemon juice (with its anticeptic qualities) and liquor.  Mix to combine.

Seriously. I used to get this in a baby bottle as a kid.

The idea was to use a squeezey bottle or something to squirt it into your throat.  Liquor is slightly anaesthetic, honey is soothing, and all three are antiseptic. So good for your sore throat.  In graduate school I graduated from the baby bottle to just two teaspoonfuls every hour or so as needed.  Then I figured out I could put a tablespoon or two in some hot tea and have very happy-making hot tea toddy thing for when I was sick.

So I need to go to the liquor store. And the grocery store. Because of my sore epiglottis.

A thought

I label it 'thinking'.

No, this was just something that was too long for a tweet and too long as a status update on Facebook, so now it's a blog post.

Remember in the old days when comic book editors throught we needed little arrows to tell us what sequence the panels on a comic book page were supposed to come in?

Remember a little later when letterers artfully used sound effects, narration, and word and thought balloons to guide us to the next panel?

I miss those days.  Is it just me or has comic book story-telling, by which I mean 'layout', or 'pencilling' depending on the artist, just become completely anarchic and confusing? Also chase scenes in movies, but that's the subject of another rant altogether. (This one, in fact: http://vimeo.com/28792404).

A moment of blazing insight

I just had to share this story of me being very proud of myself.

Last night, I was prepping a lecture about tone for my General Phonetics class.  And I decided, as long as I was doing it, to put together a chart of "all" the ways people have to indicate tone.  The class is about the IPA, so of course we have to talk about Chao tone letters, but Chinese scholarship doesn't often use those, so I decided to take a sample of some of the other ways.

So the point was I was looking at a lot of Chinese on the web yesterday, and happily plagia--cop--er, um, making use of the information available in my chart. And so I lifted some Chinese characters from somewhere to use in my chart.

The four Mandarin tones are illustrated with the set "mother" "hemp" "horse" and "scold", which are all the syllable "ma" with different tones attached.  I will spare you the rest of the story, to get to the proud moment part.

I'm looking at my chart, and I notice that the character for "horse" can't be right.  I notice that the character, 麻, as two 'plant' radicals in it.  I know this because in my last name 'hagi' also has a plant radical in it.  So this must in fact be the character for "hemp".

So I do some more checking and I'm right. That's the character for hemp.  For the record, I have no idea about the other three symbols, since they seem to all share a radical, 馬, which seems to be "horse". So I'm betting "mother" and "scold" are wrong. Hmm.

But for one blazing moment, I'd recognized the plant radical!!!

Hey, I take my victories where I can get them these days.

Footie socks are a waste

So remember the dead car battery adventure, which ended with me buying socks at 8:30pm that night.

Part of the need for socks was the at-the-time-impending cooler weather, which would eventually necessitate the wearing of actual shoes.  Which would necessitate the wearing of actual socks.  So I bought socks.

Well, I thought I was so smart. For the 'transitional' weather, when it's too warm to warrant actual socks, but still necessary to wear shoes, for instance in the rain, I bought footie socks.  I don't know what else to call them.  Sock things that cover your feet but don't even come up over your ankle.  Footie socks.

Except footie socks suck.  You barely get them on and into your shoes when they start to come down. You take two steps and they've popped over your heel and if you don't stop and pull them back up/on they begin to wedge themselves into the toe of your shoes. Which hardly is the point. If you have to use surgical tape to tape them onto your feet so they stay on, it's time to find another kind of sock.

So I've just decided to junk them.  Off to Goodwill, or at least the bag of vaguely clean clothes that will end up at Goodwill, or a handy Salvation Army bin or something like that.  Stupid footie socks. Never again.