blogs

To follow weekly

To follow monthly

1. Sebastian Rahtz who helped develop TEI P5 contributes to OSS Watch which tracks open source innovation from the perspective of Oxford U.
2. Christopher Sundita's Salita Blog is dedicated to his thoughts about the language situation and the over 160 languages in the Republic of the Philippines. He recommends the next two blogs.
3. "... Languagehat & Sauvage Noble. I'm a regular reader of LanguageHat - the information about various languages in there simply fascinates me. I'll start reading Sauvage Noble, too, which is incidentally run by a Filipino named Angelo Mercado who's a doctoral student."
4. 
   

mammals

I was browsing about mammals again, especially their phylogeny. Here are some thoughts on preparing a educational resource of high school students.

The Life Story of Mammals

1. The Life Cycle of Apes

2. The Family Tree of Mammals

• 10 species-rich orders: economic impact, biogreography, 4 placental clades
• the most unique species, endangered biodiversity, hot spots (species portraits from 30 small families)
• a family level survey, principles of cladistic revision (cetartiodactyla)
• a case study of murine tribes (because this is targeting a Philippine audience)
• mammals in the tree of life

3.  Organ systems and diseases

4. Ecosystems and climate change

Wilson and Reeder 2005 (MSW 3) lists 21 orders, splitting the monophyletic Lipotyphla and and treating the two clades of Xenartha as orders. If retains the paraphyletic Artiodactyla, not merging in Cetacea.

I support the trend to smaller orders, and would suggest that the following subordinal clades be treated like orders in the Life Story, and I anticipate that authorities like Mammal Species of the World might support something similar in its 4th edition.

Split Rodentia into 5 clades:

• Hystricomorpha (Pocupine, Cavy and Gundi clade)
  
• Sciuromorpha (Squirrel and Dormouse clade)
  
• Anomaluromorpha (Animalurid and Springhare clade)
  
• Castorimorpha (Beaver and Gopher clade)
  
• Myomorpha (Mouse and Jerboa clade)

Split Artiodactyla into 4 clades

• Camelids
• Suimorpha (Pigs and Peccaries)
• Hippopotamids
• Ruminantia

Including the monotremes and 7 orders of marsupials, this would result in 36 ordinal level clades, the largest of which (Chiropterans and Hysticomorpha) have 18 families. Chiroptera could potentially be split, but it is unclear whether Pteropodids are basal or part of a larger sister group with the bulk of microbats. (A BMC article "A higher-level MRP supertree of placental mammals" suggests that Megadermatidae, Rhinolophidae and Rhinopomatidae form a clade with fruitbats.) 

A 2007 article by Bininda-Emonds in Nature reconstructs the age of divergence of mammalian families, and could provide some additional basis for revising the set of order taxa. It contains 4,510 of the 4,554 extant species listed in the 1993 ed. of MSW, or 99%. It suggests that 43 placental lineages predate the K/T boundary, so this could potentially motivate another 15 orders. For example, it suggests moles and solenodons is more basal than ancient hedgehog and shrew split in that lineage. It now places pteropodids and emballonurids as successively basal to two large microbat clades (which could be called rhinolophiforms and vespertilloniforms). It supports splitting feliform and caniform clades in Carnivora. Primates could be split 4 ways (the loris-galago clade split off from lemurs before K/T). There are early splits of jerboas from mice, and beavers from pocket gophers, adding two more rodent clades that could be elevated.

It also suggests that only the opossums, caenolestids (shrew opossums) and bandicoots are pre K/T splits among the marsupials, but the other four well-established orders are split not soon after. Camels and suiforms split early, but hippos split from cetaceans well after K/T, so Whippomorpha (or Cetacodonta) may be better than Cetacea, but probably not.

Portion sizes

baked potato

- standard computer mouse

peanuts

- egg

bagel

- hockey puck

meat

- deck of cards

cheese

- roll of film

spagghetti

- light bulb, base ball

chips, potato or corn

- teacup 

rice

- cupcake wrapper

according to a US clip broadcast on 9 MSN National News AU

reading for dissertation

Read at least 40 pages per sitting, usually from one or two books. Finish at least 100 pages a week from the same book. Generally work on only three books at a time, or at most five during times of selecting a focus, or evaluating new books.

Limit web puttering to 30 minutes in between 40-page reading sessions.

Week of 2009-01-05

1. Culicover, Peter W. and Ray Jackendoff. Simpler Syntax. Chapters 1-3. I have read parts of this before, so I can select parts to just scan, especially if I have pencil notes. Avoid interruption to write, just jot down outline thoughts and pointers for a few minutes then return to focused reading. Return to the outline notes for an hour of focused writing.
   
2. Fieldworks. Introduction to Lexicography
3. Something about HPSG, probably Kim and Sells
4. Maybe some papers from Bird or Baldwin, at least prioritize them
5. Himmelmann's paper on Tagalog roots

contemporary projects

1. Type in then analyze Cebuano community health manual with Filipino glosses.

2. Conceptualize a Filipino translation of Banaag at Sikat.

Long list for fixing climate change.

CNN quoted the president-elect:

“We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country, to re-power America, to redesign how we use energy, to think about how we are increasing efficiency, to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and make us competitive for decades to come, even as we are saving the planet,” Obama said.

Reordering those priorities hierarchically:

1. saving the planet

  2. to redesign how we use energy, 

    3. to re-power America, 

  4. to think about how we are increasing efficiency, 

5. create jobs all across this country, 

6. to make our economy stronger, 

  7. make us competitive for decades to come 

8. make us more safe, 

  9. reduce our dependence on foreign oil 

recognizing global threat of disruptive climate change from green house gas emissions

  1. fix causes and effects of global warming

  - prevent worsening

    2. redesign how modern economies use energy

       - shift to carbon neutral energy use

         3a. Electricity generation for public utility grid

             - build new distribution grid

             - replace polluting coal generation plants

             - reduce then eliminate burning of fossil fuels in power generation

             - capture and store carbon dioxide

    5a. Create jobs in energy sector

3b. Industrial uses of energy

    5b. Create jobs transforming industries

             - reduce then eliminate industrial burning of fossil fuels

                 9a. reduce imports of foreign oil for industry

3c. Transport

             5c. Create jobs Changing to carbon-neutral transport systems

                 - transition to new cars

                 - expand mass transit

    - change consumer behavior in transport

             - reduce then eliminate 

                 9b. reduce then eliminate burning of fossil fuels in transport

         3d. change consumer uses of energy

    - non-energy sources of greenhouse gases

      - reverse depletion of forests as carbon sink

      - reduce agricultural methane

    4. improve efficiency of existing and future energy use

      - other chemical emissions

        - CFC's, etc.

  - mitigate immediate effects

  - adapt to near-term changes until preventive strategies take hold

  - change regulatory frameworks to deal with climate change

6. Strengthen economy

  - by removing immediate and long-range threat in 1. 

  - by taking the opportunity of the redesign  in 2. to fix other weaknesses in the economy

  7. Make economy competitive by

     - avoiding and dealing with problems like 1.

     - eliminating carbon risk industries before they become uncompetitive in a changing regulatory framework

     - take an early lead in emerging industries

8. Make nations more safe

  - by preventing the disruptions of climate change through 1.

     - avoiding the creation of environmental refugees  

     - avoiding conflicts over disrupted resources 

  - eliminating the threats to oil supply

      9a. reducing the dependence of countries on imported oil 

ambition: write 5 books before 2021

One reason I am going for a PhD is I want to learn to write books. My inspiration is my mother, who once she got her kids out of the house has been publishing 10 books a decade. So now I am targeting to produce 5 books a decade, and to do the first 5 before I turn 60.

I already have ideas for serveral titles: 

1. one academic publication based on my thesis, 
2. another a popular book on human language technology (Philippine publisher could be Anvil or Vibal) initially for a Philippine audience (see the posting on Linguistic Exploration). 
3. another book might target language teachers in the Philippines, it could be a Kim and Sells type description of linguistic analysis tools applied to English, Filipino and Cebuano. It would try to be practical, but also attract them to contribute resources. Another theme would be the language situation in the Philippines, and the need for language development in multiple languages
   
4. I would like to write a book in Filipino, probably targeting Filipino teachers (working teachers, and pre-service training) and students. One stylistic effort would be to incorporate some vocabulary that is derived from less common Proto Central Philippine words, and newly loaned Proto-Bisayan words. I would need a co-author or heavily involved editor.
5. an HPSG description of Cebuano, with emphasis on innovations in lexical semantics. It should cover most of the constructions in Wolff's textbooks.

thesis timeline

now - review literature, write review notes or articles
- exercise tools: NLTK, LKB, FrameNet
- dialog with Tim and Steven on 2-3 mini-proposals
- work with Larmie on Cebuano dictionary
- work with SIL on collaboration
- do something with CSLI Verb Semantics Ontology
- improve programming skills: Java, Python, XML, XSLT, Javascript, CSS

upon receiving offer
- put books in order
- arrange visa
- arrange local phase out, consider setting date or possible deferment to Feb 2010
- correspond with other PhD students
- start zeroing in on potential early work and narrow range of topic
- systematically review literature, write it up generically

Month 1
- settle into Linguistic Exploration
- make short term plan with Tim based on this
- read agreed reading list, do agreed tasks
- audit selected coursework for sem 1
Month 3
- submit first draft of confirmation proposal, have an initial draft of proposal-specific lit review
Month 5
- second draft of confirmation proposal
- audit selected coursework sem 2
Month 7
- confirmation
- set out quarterly milestones until Progress Report
- present work-in-progress at conference every quarter
Month 12
- audit selected coursework sem 3
Month 18
- complete progress report, see if it can be submitted early
- have 2/3 of 80,000 word thesis in rough draft: about 54,000 words or 140 pages.
- intensive write up for 3 months, 1000 words a day at least 4 days a week
- start looking for post-docs
- audit selected coursework sem 4
Month 21
- submit first draft of thesis for examination
- schedule examination
- make formal presentation to department
- refine search for post-docs
Month 24
- examination
- graduation
- look for book publisher
Month 26-30
- postdoc, possibly still at Melbourne
- consider moving to Taiwan, Stanford, DFKI
Month 36
- publish book from thesis
- maintain at least 4 papers a year