Languages--Chinese
I watched episode 45 of Travel in Chinese. This episode was about dealing with the aftermath of a car accident.
Articles:
I read one Wall Street Journal article and a technical report from Texas A&M University. The report was about the idea of software that can take someone's heavy foreign accent and change it so the accent is easier to understand. This would allow them to become more adept at learning English especially if what they're listening to is their own voice. And that's where the biggest concern is. How exactly do you change someone's voice without changing the identity of it? Think about the simple change of going from an English accent to an American one. Your vowels are placed further up front in your mouth, your pitch gets lower, you may pronounce your Rs more or less, depending on the accent. This is the nature of accent changes. So how do you keep what is inherently yours in the process? So I guess the biggest question is, what makes your voice as unique as it is? That's a question I would be really interested to find out the answer to.
The Wall Street Journal article was two sides of the argument: Are entitlements ruining America? On the side that debates yes, people are becoming too dependent on the government with things like unemployment and social security and people are losing that resilience that Americans used to have when they didn't have these benefits. As a result, people are becoming spoiled, as it were. On the side that argues no, the issue is much more complicated than the "yes" side makes it out to be. This author argues that it's acceptable for society to help those who cannot help themselves and as long as people aren't taking advantage of the government's generosity, it shouldn't pose a problem.
I agree with the "no" side. While some people do take advantage of the government's generosity, I don't think most of them do. If they get unemployment, they work hard to find another job so they don't have to always rely on it. But until they get that new job, unemployment helps them stay on their feet. So I think entitlements are a good thing.
Philosophy:
I read about Dewey's theories of virtue. He questioned the utilitarians, who believed that the good of the majority outweighs anything the minority might suffer. Dewey argued that people's welfare isn't fixed, and as a result, utilitarian philosophy can't apply. There's no way to determine who deserves to live, even if it means saving more lives in return.
Internships:
I looked at jobs with Zynga, which is a game developer company. They have lots of jobs in both the US and internationally.
Excellent points on the Texas A&M technical paper. "What makes a person's voice unique and recognizable to others?" is indeed fascinating and
ReplyDeleteuseful in today's identity-theft prone world. It is also a fascinating brain science and psychology question.
The fact that humans are very good at identifying the person by hearing his/her voice is telling us that there are some identifying characteristics that our brains are wired to look for in a voice. And, quite possibly, is accent independent.
I did a Google search with terms such as "speaker recognition", "voice identification", etc. and found quite a few article on the subject. May be you can sift through some of them to come up with a set of quantifiable variables that can characterize the voice of a speaker.
Anyway, a fascinating technical subject.
Cynga is an interesting game company. It is now a multi-billion dollar enterprise which was built solely on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteA very powerful testimonial to the sheer commercial power of modern, Internet-based social networking. Whether Facebook will be a success, paradoxically, is an entirely different question.
A good case in point on Dewey's virtue theory is that classic moral dilemma of utilitarianism:
ReplyDeleteA doctor is checking up on 5 very sick patients in one room. All of them need organ transplant for long term survival. They all need different organs. In the other room is a healthy patient waiting for a routine checkup.
According to utilitarianism, it is perfectly OK to take the organs out of one healthy patient to save the lives of five.
But what is not considered is whether the five deserve the life on the healthy one. They can be drug addicts or alcoholics - habits that are ruinous to their internal organs. And the healthy one can be a Bill Gate who contributes disproportionally to the world.
Even if they are deserving, is it the moral and ethical thing to do?