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Measuring myself

I’ve been super excited about my ‘quantified self’ project. I now measure:

Goals -  I use joesgoals.com to track things like brushing teeth, sleep debt/sleep debt paid, doing flash cards

Weight - Usually 145, sometimes up to 155. Measured with Withings scale.

Blood Pressure- Usually 120/70, with BPM 60 to 80. Measured with Withings BP cuff.

Sleep -  Now that I have a fitbit, it says I’ve slept about 7.5 hours the last two nights and slept like a stone.

Steps taken per day-  Anywhere from 4000-10,000, typically 10,000, up to 15,000 if I go hiking.

In fact I now have two pedometers, the Nintendo DS pedometer and the fitbit.

The DS only displays if you hit your goal unless you tranfer the data to your device. The DS appears to be a bit stricter. It stops counting when I take off my cloths in the evening, but the fit bit gets moved to my wrist and keeps counting. And it seems that the Fitbit is just counting more things as a steps.

Flights of stairs. Thanks to the fit bit, but no data yet.

Challenges- Slowly changing metrics

The metris are the same day to day, except steps taken. If I don’t walk enough, I can do something about it, like go to the gym for 20 minutes. If no metrics have changes noticably from yesterday, then all I can do is carry on, since my metric are all in the healthy range (although my weight is chronically a bit on the low side and my blood pressure while in the ‘normal’ low range, could be lower according to some studies about strokes.  If I could get to 110 or 100, then my stroke risk would bottom out.)

 

Posted 27 April 2012 † matt § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (2) °

I’m experimenting with a new blog editor

I will return to my irregularly scheduled updates with real content shortly.

Posted 17 April 2012 † matt § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °

Benefits of Bilingualism

I was recently asked this and didn’t have a very clear answer.

There is one obvious answer for learning a language: you might need it to get a job, go to school, or otherwise get ahead in life. In the US, this applies to English. All languages that are learned primarily for these reasons are lingua francas and are the most widely spoken and taught languages in the world. But English is such a successful lingua franca, even in countries where other successful lingua francas are spoken, such as Chinese, French and Spanish– there are large numbers of people that use English for business and academia.

The motivation for learning/teaching a heritage language (one that someone in your family speaks, but isn’t necessarily the local lingua franca) has to go beyond the benefits that accrue to speakers of successful and widespread lingua francas.

Advantanges that go beyond “This language is useful as a lingua franca”
1. It delays the onset of Alzheimers by about 5 years.
2. Bilingual kids have a better intuitive sense for grammar.
3. Bilinguals can multitask better as tested by seeing how they perform by doing multiple tasks in a driving simulator aka performing while distracted. (Also this article has more evidence about the same ability)
4. Bilinguals solve certain non-verbal standardized tests faster than monolinguals.

Caveats
The benefits don’t come from occasional use, i.e. High school French + reading an occasional menu.

Above from this NYT article

5. Bilingualism increases brain density, and more so when the 2nd language is learned early i.e. childhood vs high school or college

Ref. Web Md

6. Children who are bilingual early on can learn a third language more easily later in life. Ref This Faq.

That is the the well documented benefits I could find on the web, there might be more but there aren’t good studies for it yet, for example, it is fairly common in articles about the benefits of bilingualism to list vague benefits.

Posted 08 March 2012 † matt § Linguistics ‡ Comments (0) °

Chamorro Language

I’m thinking of reading up on this language to figure out how it ticks, but not following through to learn it. It takes more than a dictionary to learn a language– in particular you need a community. I’m in the DC area, so I’d have to track down what tiny number of Chamorro speakers there are in DC. By my rough estimates, most Chamorro speakers in North America are in Washington state. In DC, I’d have to be build a community out of people who don’t speak the language as a first language, which means finding a group of incredibly motivated and linguistically talented people. Outside of Guam, typical cultural events would be book, movie, and potluck events– which works well if the language in question has a good set of books in translation, movies with subtitles.

I found sources of Guamian music, esp Betelnut Radio, but not so much in the way of books and movies. Update! I found the independent movie Shiro’s Head, an authentic Guam/Chamorro movie that is English-Chamorro with subtitles. And another Chamorro indie film on the way. A few more movies are not really Chamorro movies: Noon Sunday, Max Havoc, Godzilla, No Man an Island (the last has the Chamorro speaking Tagalog!, the first three just take place/were filmed in Guam.)

As for me personally, as a vegetarian, at a Chamorro potluck I’m too picky to eat most Chamorro authentic foods– a problem I have at Icelandic potlucks as well–and Russian for that matter. This isn’t to say things are too hard for someone else to pull it off, but probably too hard for me to pull it off, especially with so many additional great language out there to study.

Resources for learners
There is a dictionary, it’s online and suitable for converting to Anki flash cards (with some processing).
There is a grammar. (and others)
There is a text book.
There is an online version of the bible, which appears to be the largest online corpora of Chammoro.
There is sort-of a Chamorro wikipedia.

There isn’t an online forum or mailing list that I could find.
There is a Facebook page.

There are cook books. (Cookbooks? In every language group I’ve been in, there is a significant subgroup who is there just for the food) I have no idea how I’m going to make vegan spam balls.

I couldn’t find any Chamorro comics– another language learning tool I found invaluable when learning Icelandic.

There are youtube videos, and Betelnut Radio, but no obvious publishing of Chamorro language books, movies, music or other media.

To find more, google “Fino’ Chamoru”

Chamorro on the Social Web
There are a handful of people tweeting in Chamorro. By handful, I mean about 2 who tweet a non-trivial amount of Chamorro.

I don’t see a suitable hashtag yet- #cha is Chattanooga, TN. #ch means Switzerland.

Chamorro Language Blogs

http://chamoruboy.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/AdventuresInChamoru
http://minagahet.blogspot.com/
http://inadaggao.blogspot.com/ - about the language, not in the language

Chamorro in Washington, DC
(Why DC? As I said above, I happen to live around there)

I couldn’t find any Chamorro language resources, but as it turns out there is a non-trivial sized Chamorro community here represented by the Guam Society.

Other Chamorro Clubs/Societies/Organizations outside of Guam
Starting with a meta-site “Guam Liberation” (a list of chamorro clubs/events world wide)
Kutturan also aggregates Chamorro events world wide and as I write this, they mention a Chamorro language class in Long Beach, CA
Che’lu in San Diego
Chamorro Assoc of Central Texas
Chamorro Golf Club in Washington State
Chamorro Club in Hawaii

Posted 15 February 2012 † matt § Linguistics ‡ Comments (0) °

Sleep, Post 3

Last weekend I was down about 6 hours, gained three hours in the first part of the week and was down two hours again last night. So I’ve a sleep debt of five hours.

Each weekend, I suppose I could pay four hours of sleep debt (to bed an hour early and get up an hour late– five hours if nothing fun is happening on Friday). At best, I can pay off an hour of sleep debt a day on a workday, and that only if nothing really is going on– just gym, eat, sleep and minor errands.

So 9 hours a week of sleeping in can pay back the maximum sleep debt of 20 hours in about 2 weeks, which seems low compared to other estimates of several months.

Posted 10 February 2012 † matt § Physical Fitness ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Sleep- Part 2

Sleep tracking in practice
I put my sleep tracker onto my Kindle Fire. Bad idea, for two reasons. I use my android cell phone for my alarm clock, so it would have made more sense to put it there. If your alarm clock is also your sleep tracking application, you can skip half of the manual entries as you only need to log when you went to sleep. The other problem is that I try turn my Kindle Fire off, which takes forever when I just want to record a data point.

Also, any manual logging of sleep start time consistently overestimate how much sleep I get since it takes time to go to sleep.

More complicated ways to calculate sleep debt.
This calculator assumes you need to sleep for 1/2 of an hour for every hour awake (I think– that’s 8 sleep per 16 awake). So to pay off sleeping only 6 hours for two nights means sleeping more than just 4 extra hours over the next few nights because you need to sleep for the extra awake hours as well. It creates an interesting algebra problem, or it means sleep debt needs to be tracked on a spreadsheet, kind of like a mortgage amortization schedule.

Yawning.
First point of yawning should be a good measure of sleepiness, but boredom will confound the results. In my experiment so far, I’ve started yawning at 3PM, 3PM and 11AM. And yawning is contagious, so hanging out with tired people will trigger yawning that isn’t related to sleep debt.

Joe’s Goals
With Joe’s Goals you can mark up to 3 good things or 3 bad things happening on a day. That roughly corresponds to a typical increase or decrease in sleep debt– although sleep debt should only be recorded as decreasing up to 2 hours a day and only if there was a sleep debt (i.e. if you start out fully rested, you don’t get credit for sleeping in advance of the day you stay up late). I use Joe’s Goals for other goal tracking already, so this could be a good solution for sleep debt tracking.

Results. Unexplained anxiety is way down and ability to get work done is way up. That is the good news. The bad news is I’m too old to stay up late and not suffer the consequences.

Posted 09 February 2012 † matt § Physical Fitness ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Sleep

Either I’m getting old, or I’m just getting better and spotting oddities in how my brain works. I’ve never been able to nap. I lack the talent for it. So if I don’t sleep, I used to sleep in to compensate. Sleeping in, it appears, isn’t happening anymore. So while trying to figure out where this disconnected sense of anxiety was coming from, it took a long time to suspect sleep debt.

The symptoms of sleep debt are either obvious– falling asleep during the day and yawning– or not so obvious– free floating anxiety. And it appears causation goes in both directions– anxiety discourages sleeping and the body pumps itself full of anxiety causing neurochemicals to keep you awake when you’re overtired, creating a vicious cycle.

Ref. Sleep debt causes anxiety:
Reasons
Sleep Deprivation and Anxiety
Original research using brain imaging & experimental subjects that skipped sleeping for 35 hours.

Sleep Debt is real.
Sleeping for 6 hours a day for a 10 days will cause people to behave as if they had skipped an entire night of sleep. However at least one researcher is skeptical of the existence of sleep debt.

Curing a Sleep Debt
It takes months to fix a chronic sleep debt. Other articles on the next are less pessimistic, see below.

Measuring Sleep Debt
According to this article– sleep debt goes up to about 20 hours, can be paid off by only 2 hours a day– max. Also, if you have 0 sleep debt, you can’t sleep in today to earn the ability to stay up late tomorrow, i.e. you can’t bank excess sleep. According to this, if you sleep an extra hour a day, i.e. about 9 hours, a maximal sleep debt can be paid off in 20 days, ten if you can manage to sleep 10 hours a day.

Typically these provide for recording an entry a day, a start/stop timer, graphs and sleep debt calculations
Android Apps for Sleep Debt
Sleep Bot– I’ve got one data point in this app. Whoo!

Posted 07 February 2012 † matt § Mood § Physical Fitness ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Fell in love with a girl

Fell in love with a girl,
fell in love once and almost completely,
she’s in love with the world,
but sometimes these feelings,
can be so misleading,
she turns and says “Are you alright?”
I said “I must be fine cause my heart’s still beating,”
she says “come and kiss me by the riverside, Pompeii says it’s fine he don’t consider it cheating,”

Black hair without a curl
mellow roll for the flavor
and the eyes for peeping
can’t keep away from the girl
these two sides of my brain
need to have a meeting
can’t think of anything to do
my left brain knows that
all love is fleeting
she’s just looking for vegan fondue
and I said it once before
but it bears repeating

—-
White Stripes. There might be some transcription errors here.

Posted 20 January 2012 † matt § Romance ‡ Comments (1) °

The perfect boycott

  • The boycott is related to something trendy and in the news. For example, SOPA and PIPA. There are tons of vulnerable companies in that support SOPA and PIPA
  • The company is a consumer goods and services company. Mining companies are immune from consumer boycott pressure, unless it is a highly visible item like diamonds.
  • You are a current customer or buy at least occasionally.
  • The industry has a variety of at least similar competitor. Presumably you’ll still need to get your stuff form somewhere.
  • Bad behavior isn’t widespread or fundamental to the business. Oil companies come to mind– they all pump huge amounts of carbon into the air and they all have spotty records when it comes to pollution from extraction and refinement. If the bad behavior is fundamental to the business, then its the consumer that needs to change. Again until people stop driving everywhere, there isn’t much point in boycotting an oil company on account of it’s carbon pollution.
  • There is a way to let the company know they are being boycotted.
  • The company has an effective way to communicate that they really have stopped their bad behavior so that consumers can resume buying. The Nesles Kills Babies campaign had effects long after the company said “uncle” and tried to respond to the campaigns demands. If the company doesn’t notice and think that responding to the demands will lead to normalization of sales, they might just treat the boycott the same as bad luck and bad weather–bad, but nothing they can do anything about.
Posted 20 January 2012 † matt § Politics ‡ Comments (0) °

Eating disorders and vegetarianism

I’ve read more times than I care to remember that eating disorders and vegetarianism go together and shallowing-thinking journalists seem to like to think that people get the idea of vegetarianism into their head and then become anorexic– i.e. develop a generalized aversion to food.

I think the direction of causation is reversed. People with an aversion to food for reasons unrelated to the principles of vegetarianism label themselves as vegetarians because vegan and vegetarianism have some degree of acceptability and merit, while anorexia is rightly condemned as a mental disorder.

When it comes to making basic changes in fundamental areas of lifestyle, people are so resistant to change that they are willing to entertain all levels of logical lapses and nonsense to keep eating what they ate yesterday at all costs.

And on the topic of food aversions and food phobias, we should remember episodes like the draconian measures taken in England to deal with mad cow disease– where entire herds were slaughtered for fear of a disease that was probably less common that other food chain problems like salmonella or e coli. So if we accept that fear of food is a phenomena, then it shouldn’t be surprising that some percent of people who fear food in general end up as vegetarians. After all, I can leave out a vegetarian entrée on the counter overnight and eat it the next day and not have to worry much, but I’d worry to do the same thing with a pound of pork or fish. It’s just a lot harder to screw up vegetarian food to the point where it’s not safe to eat.

Posted 19 January 2012 † matt § Vegetarianism ‡ Comments (0) °