Emily, I'm sorry. The job search process is so damned frustrating.

I really am moving across the country with no particular prospect of a job

I'm sorry you didn't get the job, Emily. I did the same exact move (from Boston to SF) with zero job prospects many years ago during a time when jobs were scarce anyway and I survived okay. And (it seems like anyway) you have actual skills that I'm sure will help you find a job sooner than later. I went there having just finished an undergrad film degree. It was stressful but I'm so glad I did it.

And (it seems like anyway) you have actual skills that I'm sure will help you find a job sooner than later.

Yeah, I'm hoping so. It's a bit stressful because of the seasonal nature of my particular job market, because I basically have a month to find a job, and there will be fewer and fewer jobs open. On the other hand, the ones that are still open will be getting more and more desperate to be filled, so that's an upside! I guess.

Emily, if you have any interest in private school teaching, I have some connections for you. E me.

we think it was written on a dare by someone who was very drunk

Or someone like our office clown, who likes to create fake memos for April Fool's Day.

His all-time greatest may have been the memo in which a manager supposedly announced that he was changing his name to Fjord. And another manager thought it was genuine....

On the other hand, the ones that are still open will be getting more and more desperate to be filled, so that's an upside!

Yes! And they will be lucky to have been so desperate.

Re: unconscious tonal modulation.

Yes, it's obvious that it happens and that it helps convey information the words are not conveying, but that doesn't mean we understand exactly how it works, or that it's unworthy of scientific study.

It's obvious that there are clouds in the sky, but it takes scientific study to understand that they are made of suspended water vapor, and to understand how they function within the lower atmosphere, how they turn into things like thunderheads, tornadoes and hurricaines.

Is tonal modulation a newsworthy story? I don't know. Maybe. But I'm a little baffled as to why studying the phenomenon is baffling.

Where's Rick? He needs to step in with "I've read the whole paper and what the article fails to convey is..."

ita knows me too well. I did read the original paper. It's a modest but interesting little paper in an obscure journal, tarted up a bit for the popular press. This really isn't a new discovery. Ask a friend to watch as you move an object and to say 'up' every time you move it up and 'down' every time you move it down. It is likely that their tone will rise and fall with the object. Even toddlers associate tone with verticality.

But what is of interest here is the very simple laboratory procedure of the moving dots. It's relatively free of social expectations and you can control speed, direction, number of dots, and consistency of movement. So it's really more of an efficient way to study something we already know about than it is a new phenomenon.

For example, the right-left differences were less intuitive (subjects talked faster when the dots moved to the right then when they moved at the same speed to the left). It's sort of like a visual Doppler effect. Anyway, with this method they can study many influences on this perceptual effect in a crisp, clear way. That's why the paper got published. But a new discovery? I don't think so.

that doesn't mean we understand exactly how it works, or that it's unworthy of scientific study.

But the article doesn't talk about the why. The article says things like:

the first evidence of "analog acoustic expression" -- people unconsciously modulating their voices in ways that provide an additional channel of expression understood by others

In case your bafflement included me, I never claimed that studying it baffles me. Talking about it as a discovery does. Also note that I wondered about the discrepancy between the paper itself and the article on it, hoping that the paper had a spin that the article lacked.

serial, so it doesn't get lost:

it's really more of an efficient way to study something we already know about than it is a new phenomenon.

Thank you! I knew you could be relied upon for more perspective than the article.