Monday, June 04, 2007
I'm blogging more than usual today because i'm not doing anything useful.
2nd circuit strikes down FCC indecency rules.
From Crescat I surf to Margin Revolutions, where there is a link to language log, which has an article on two genes that two scientists think might be related to whether a given population uses a tonal or non-tonal language. The newer gene variants tend to be found more often in places where non-tonal languages, like english, are used.
Apparently in cultures which have tonal languages, all kids can learn it, but adults from non-tonal cultures may have untrained ears and have a hard time learning tonal languages. One reason I haven't moved to thailand.
So from there I read some links about tonedeafness. I have an untrained ear. I found this out in 8th grade when I couldn't tune a guitar, and this was reinforced in 9th grade when I was thrown out of choir.
I don't have the speakers working on this machine, so I wasn't able to take the pitch tests that are out there online. The articles say pitch is something that can be learned - I just need something remedial enough to get started with.
If this were a longer rant, I would tell the Dr Hoffstetter story,about a guy who wanted to teach ear training,and wound up helping develop a whole computer-based education system, back in the days of big iron before personal computers. He was ahead of his time,and the project fell apart, but that's where I caught the bug of wanting to be an online journalist, which I am, if in a very small way, with this blog no one reads, and an income of $100 today.
Meanwhile, it seems my roommate is probably in jail,and I suppose I should go visit him at some point. His dad stopped by and we compared notes.
2nd circuit strikes down FCC indecency rules.
From Crescat I surf to Margin Revolutions, where there is a link to language log, which has an article on two genes that two scientists think might be related to whether a given population uses a tonal or non-tonal language. The newer gene variants tend to be found more often in places where non-tonal languages, like english, are used.
Apparently in cultures which have tonal languages, all kids can learn it, but adults from non-tonal cultures may have untrained ears and have a hard time learning tonal languages. One reason I haven't moved to thailand.
So from there I read some links about tonedeafness. I have an untrained ear. I found this out in 8th grade when I couldn't tune a guitar, and this was reinforced in 9th grade when I was thrown out of choir.
I don't have the speakers working on this machine, so I wasn't able to take the pitch tests that are out there online. The articles say pitch is something that can be learned - I just need something remedial enough to get started with.
If this were a longer rant, I would tell the Dr Hoffstetter story,about a guy who wanted to teach ear training,and wound up helping develop a whole computer-based education system, back in the days of big iron before personal computers. He was ahead of his time,and the project fell apart, but that's where I caught the bug of wanting to be an online journalist, which I am, if in a very small way, with this blog no one reads, and an income of $100 today.
Meanwhile, it seems my roommate is probably in jail,and I suppose I should go visit him at some point. His dad stopped by and we compared notes.
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