The poet Rives has a lot of fun following coincidences in this talk at TED. He plays into the human brain’s hardwired ability to see connections where none necessarily exist. It’s easy to see how conspiracy theorists power their fantasies from this sort of thing.
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The Giacometti Code
2 responses to “The Giacometti Code”
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Great blog! I just added you to my blogroll at qlipp.com.
Ericeric@qlipp.com -
Thanks, Eric. I’ll take a look at some of the vdeos on Qlipp when I can…
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Not Just A Theory
I often read statements to the effect that "evolution is just a theory…", usually written by an American, but also (depressingly) increasingly by Europeans. It’s a statement that is a sure sign of ignorance. The writer, either genuinely, or disingenuously, does not realise that the word "theory" has a special significance in the scientific method.
Here’s a short, pithy primer on the scientific meaning of the word.
(hat tip to The Bad Astronomer for the link)
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The Personality Defect Test
Another test, another somewhat expected result…Your Score: Robot
You are 100% Rational, 0% Extroverted, 42% Brutal, and 14% Arrogant.
You are the Robot! You are characterized by your rationality. In fact, this is really ALL you are characterized by. Like a cold, heartless machine, you are so logical and unemotional that you scarcely seem human. For instance, you are very humble and don’t bother thinking of your own interests, you are very gentle and lack emotion, and you are also very introverted and introspective. You may have noticed that these traits are just as applicable to your laptop as they are to a human being. You are not like the robots they show in the movies. Movie robots are make-believe, because they always get all personable and likeable after being struck by lightning, or they are cold, cruel killing machines. In all reality, though, you are much more boring than all that. Real robots just sit there, doing their stupid jobs, and doing little else. If you get struck by lightning, you won’t develop a winning personality and heart of gold. (Robots don’t have hearts, silly, and if they did, they would probably be made of steel, not gold.) You also won’t be likely to terrorize humanity by becoming an ultra-violent killing machine sent into the past to kill the mother of a child who will lead a rebellion against machines, because that movie was dumb as hell, and because real robots don’t kill–they horribly maim at best, and they don’t even do that on purpose. Real robots are boringly kind and all too rarely try to kill people. In all my years, my laptop has only attacked me once, and that was only because my brother threw it at me. In short, your personality defect is that you don’t really HAVE a personality. You are one of those annoying, super-logical people that never gets upset or flustered. Unless, of course, you short circuit. Or if someone throws a pie at you. Pies sure are delicious.
To put it less negatively:
1. You are more RATIONAL than intuitive.
2. You are more INTROVERTED than extroverted.
3. You are more GENTLE than brutal.
4. You are more HUMBLE than arrogant.
Compatibility:
Your exact opposite is the Class Clown.
Other personalities you would probably get along with are the Hand-Raiser, the Emo Kid, and the Haughty Intellectual.
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If you scored near fifty percent for a certain trait (42%-58%), you could very well go either way. For example, someone with 42% Extroversion is slightly leaning towards being an introvert, but is close enough to being an extrovert to be classified that way as well. Below is a list of the other personality types so that you can determine which other possible categories you may fill if you scored near fifty percent for certain traits.
The other personality types:
The Emo Kid: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Starving Artist: Intuitive, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Bitch-Slap: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Brute: Intuitive, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hippie: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Televangelist: Intuitive, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Schoolyard Bully: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Class Clown: Intuitive, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Robot: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Haughty Intellectual: Rational, Introverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Spiteful Loner: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Sociopath: Rational, Introverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
The Hand-Raiser: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Humble.
The Braggart: Rational, Extroverted, Gentle, Arrogant.
The Capitalist Pig: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Humble.
The Smartass: Rational, Extroverted, Brutal, Arrogant.
Be sure to take my Sublime Philosophical Crap Test if you are interested in taking a slightly more intellectual test that has just as many insane ramblings as this one does!
About Saint_Gasoline
I am a self-proclaimed pseudo-intellectual who loves dashes. I enjoy science, philosophy, and fart jokes and water balloons, not necessarily in that order. I spend 95% of my time online, and the other 5% of my time in the bathroom, longing to get back on the computer. If, God forbid, you somehow find me amusing instead of crass and annoying, be sure to check out my blog and my webcomic at SaintGasoline.com.
Link: The Personality Defect Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test 2 responses to “The Personality Defect Test”
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My, Geoff, coming to your site is like going to a penny arcade, only more so. I took the book test and came out as Prufrock:
Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic
and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people trying
to impress other people. Though you make reference to almost everything, you’ve really
heard enough about Michelangelo. You measure out your life with coffee spoons. Apt enough I suppose. It goes with being classed as a Starving Artist in the personality test. Though hardly starving, I’d rather be a rich artist. My arrogance factor in the tests suggests I believe the world owes me royalties. Sigh. -
Corboró, I’m afraid that there will always be more Thomas Chattertons than Damien Hursts in the world so far as monetary worth is concerned. Still, look on the bright side, their artistic worth is probably in inverse proportion and you’ve survived beyond the age of 17…
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Maths Lesson
A maths lesson from Stephen Wells via PZ Myers. I’m definitely in the last camp.Leave a comment
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Paris
While Hollywood trots out tired old stereotypes, Parisian Ad agencies come up with illustrations of certain people’s fantasies. And before you jump to conclusions; they are not mine, but I can certainly understand the frisson.Leave a comment
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Proof
Proof, if any were needed, that Hollywood is still stuck in the days of the stereotype of Stepin Fetchit, only now it’s gays. Didn’t they learn anything with The Gay Deceivers thirty eight fucking years ago? Apparently not.Leave a comment
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The Open Library
The Open Library is a project that has as its goal nothing less than to make every book available via the internet to anyone. The project has just begun, so it’s very early days. Still, go and take a look.Leave a comment
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What Book Are You?
Apparently, I’m…
You’re Jurassic Park!
by Michael Crichton
You combine all the elements of a mad scientist, a brash philosopher, a humble researcher, and a money-hungry attracter of tourists. With all these features, you could build something monumental or get chased around by your own demons. Probably both, in fact. A movie based on your life would make millions, and spawn at least two sequels thatwouldn’t be very good. Be very careful around islands.
Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.I rather doubt that a film (not "movie", if you please) based on my life would break even, let alone make millions, but there you go…(hat tip to Ario, over at Altering Labyrinth, for the link))Leave a comment
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Don’t Blink
If you do, you won’t see how the men behind the curtain manipulate what you perceive.Leave a comment
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Waffle
Get it while it’s hot. Alister McGrath in full flow. Gawd, it’s like nailing jelly to a tree, and equally as pointless.Leave a comment
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A Non-Issue
A nice summary of the status of same-sex marriage around the world. Unsuprisingly, it’s practically a non-issue here in The Netherlands. Alas, the same can’t be said for other parts of the world.Leave a comment
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Phantom Limb
I’m nudged, by not one, but three, entries on Norman Geras’ blog, to the realisation that I have a literary phantom limb. I clearly remember a hardcover edition of Nevil Shute’s On The Beach in my parent’s bookcase. Where the book ended up, I do not know. All that is certain is that it did not end up with me. And yet, I wish I had read it at the time. I saw the film (which Shute himself hated) and it haunted me. Time to track down a copy of the book for myself and to reattach it into my library.Leave a comment
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Be Careful What You Wish For
The news that Boris Johnson has thrown his hat into the ring in the contest for London’s mayor has me staring into the abyss. Yes, he’s a celebrity darling, but would you want him to be in charge of anything more consequential than a stuffed toy? Red Ken may have his shortcomings (a blindspot for islamic scholars for one), but he seems to me to be a stronger candidate than Johnson could ever be. Still, when did the human race ever prove that its collective IQ was more than that of a lemming? Stand by for the outcome foreseen here. I have at least the distance. Thank the lord.Leave a comment
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WHS Is RTM
That means Windows Home Server is Released To Manufacturing for those of you who are not acronymphiles.
I, along with thousands of other folks, have been testing this software at home. I’ve found a few bugs, but most have been cured along the way. I’m still getting the “database inconsistency” bug, despite trying the steps to fix it. I see that Microsoft say that this bug will “more than likely be fixed by RTM”, so we’ll see.
But one thing that is not yet clear is whether WHS will open up the ability to access all flavours of Windows operating systems via the internet. At the moment it does not, even though you might be forgiven for thinking that it does if you just listen to Microsoft’s marketing.
Still, kudos to the development team for a product that has much to commend it.
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Pronunciation
Jerome Weeks tells a good, and possibly apocryphal, tale about a student who completes her dissertation on Samuel Pepys without ever realising that she has never learned the correct pronunciation of his name. Speaking as someone who didn’t realise until recently that Pharyngula was pronounced so as to rhyme with "singular", I’m certainly in no position to cast the first stone.Leave a comment
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Don’t Try This At Home
This white-coated gentleman tests the validity of the proposition that it is possible to blend an iPhone. What it has proved to me is that while I still have absolutely no desire to own an iPhone, I would kill to have a blender as powerful as that. Where can I get one?(hat tip to PZ Myers)Leave a comment
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The Canon
Earlier this month I wrote about James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia. In it, he calls for the creation of a guidebook to science:What we need is a book of knowledge written so well as to constitute literature in its own right. Something for anyone interested in the state of the Earth and of us – a manual for living well and for survival.The quality of its writing must be such that it would serve for pleasure, for devotional reading, as a source of facts and even as a primary school text. It would range from simple things such as how to light a fire, to our place in the solar system and the universe. It would be a primer of philosophy and science – it would provide a top-down look at the Earth and us. It would explain the natural selection of all living things, and give the key facts of medicine, including the circulation of the blood, the role of the organs. The discovery that bacteria and viruses caused infection diseases is relatively recent; imagine the consequences if such knowledge was lost.Coincidentally, I came across a book published in May this year that sounded as though it might fit the bill, at least partially. That book is The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier. The publisher’s blurb sounded promising, too:The Canon is vital reading for anyone who wants to understand the great issues of our time – from stem cells and bird flu to evolution and global warming. And it’s for every parent who has ever panicked when a child asked how the earth was formed or what electricity is. Angier’s sparkling prose and memorable metaphors bring the science to life, reigniting our own childhood delight in discovering how the world works.Sounds good, doesn’t it? That’s what I thought too, so I bought a copy.But, oh, what a disappointment I am finding this book to be. Admittedly, I am not yet quite halfway through, but so far it is proving a real struggle to keep going. The problem is Angier’s style of writing which I find irritating quite beyond belief. The publisher might think she has "sparkling prose and memorable metaphors", but I feel as though I am constantly being bludgeoned over the head by the author’s clever-clever remarks and witticisms (well, she thinks they’re witty) and metaphors that, far from being memorable in a good way, make me go WTF?And when I say "constantly bludgeoned over the head", I do mean constantly. Hardly a sentence goes by without Angier wanting to slip something in. For example:…Georg Simon Ohm, a German physicist who determined the relationship between voltage, current , and resistance in an electrical current, and who is rumoured to have practiced yogic meditation when he thought nobody was around.From Ohm we get ohm, the unit used to measure resistance in an electrical circuit or device. And though no one expects you to master the nuances of units or their namesakes (except to remember who the real watt’s Watt was and what that Watt was not), the ohm is a good place to start talking about the electricity coursing through your cords, and what it says about all of us.That’s a fairly typical example of her prose, which strikes me as being far too precious for its own good. I feel as though I’m drowning in warm maple syrup. Against all this constant barrage of wordplay, the actual science is getting lost. Angier clearly loves science, as do I, but in her desire to convey the attraction she has had the effect, at least for this reader, of making me want to turn my back on this book. I’m sorry, I did want to like this book, but I only give it half a star out of five. Lovelock’s guidebook to science needs another author to tackle it.Leave a comment
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Puppies
The mother of our labrador, Kai, has just had her last litter of puppies. We went to see them today. We also saw two litters of Jack Russell terriers. All together now: aaah!
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What I Did Wrong
That’s the title of a book by John Weir. I’ve mentioned it before, but now I see that Matthew Cheney, over at Mumpsimus, has a glowing review of the book. It’s on my pile of to-be-read books, but I see that I have to bump it up closer to the top.Leave a comment
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Take The Mickey
Marina Hyde, as usual, hits the mark exactly. Instead of cowering in fear we should be laughing at terrorists. That’s the way to break down their walls of virtue.Leave a comment
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