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WEEK 30 2005
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Saturday 30 July
2005
Saturday
- at some random blog I ran across a link to a Jungian personality test, an online Briggs-Meyer quiz. I took it and the results were more or less as expected:
I'm an INTJ. The I is for Introverted. I scored 100%
on that. What? I'm not that bad. Seriously. Which makes me think the
rest of the test is equally wrong. Indeed, when I mentioned my score to
someone yesterday they just laughed out loud.
Another example, the J is for Judgmental. I scored 70%. Moi? Oh sure, I had someone I was dating once call me "critical and condescending" but I wasn't trying to be judgmental
- I was just clearing the grounds of discourse between us, showing her
where some of her arguments and ideas were fallacious. (We stopped
dating soon after.)
I enjoyed a couple of the comments on the blog Tall Dark & Mysterious linked above. For example, there was:
5. [ Postscript: I went and followed the link for the INTJ description.
For me the best part was learning that Donald Rumsfeld is an INTJ
because everytime I hear him talk to the press and use that “What are
you, children? Do you really not understand what I just said?” tone of
voice, I feel great empathy for the man — as I assume that I sometimes
come off equally incredulous when fielding questions in the course of
my job...]
and
9. ...
Wolfangel (I’m guessing you’re INFP, and my second guess is INTP - am I
right?) and RH - my experience is that math geeks almost always tend to
be INTJ’s or INTP’s. The INTJ’s are the arrogant bastards, and the
INTP’s are the ones who sit around all day and say, “I dunno, what do you want to do?” Most of my friends during undergrad were INTP’s. They always left me to choose where we would go for lunch.
...
It being another Canadian blog there is also a link at the blog to the
Hans Island affair I mentioned this Tuesday. And Baffin Island makes an
appearance! Is it World War III in the making? Perhaps not:
Graham was not clear on exactly how Canada will assert its sovereignty
without the equipment to keep foreign vessels out of Canadian waters.
Friday
29 July
2005
Friday - cat blogging. This is my brother's kitten, Zeno, who spent most of his time chewing on my shoelaces:
Zeno's paradox: Why does the older cat
let him live?
"How
the ill-equipped, almost hopelessly outnumbered Continentals managed to
stave off a two-pronged invasion from Canada and New York, how they
build the first American navy on Lake Champlain in a desperate
"speed-up" operation, and finally brought decisive defeat to Burgoyne's
proud forces at Saratoga, is told absorbingly. Against this turbulent
backdrop is the poignant love story of Captain Peter Merril and
charming Ellen Phipps - a romance nearly wrecked by the beautiful and
unscrupulous Marie de Sabrevois (a British spy) and by the
unpredictable fortunes of war. The re-creation of the character of
General Benedict Arnold has been widely acclaimed by some of America's
greatest military and naval leaders."
Ah, the evil Marie makes a reappearance - I'd forgotten that. As does Steven Nason, Phoebe, and the redoubtable Cap Huff.
I should probably say that the character of Arnold is probably a bit
whitewashed. A lot of other soldiers and civilians went through
indignities and suffered financial losses and insults without turning
traitor. But it's a good twist for an author, to get attention for an
extraordinary series of books.
Thursday 28 July 2005
Thursday
- years ago, as a teenager, I read Arundel, by Kenneth Roberts.
In it the character of Benedict Arnold - our most famous traitor - was
portrayed in a favorable light, shocking me at the time. It was where I
learned that we had actually invaded Canada, unsuccessfully, during our
revolution. There's a lot you don't learn in school history books!
(It's a good read, by the way.)
Oddly, law Professor Ann Althouse finds a link to this adventure in the writings of the current Supreme Court nominee John Roberts:
It was a close thing, but Benedict Arnold's bold
plan to capture Canada for the Revolution fell short at the Battle of
Quebec in early 1776.
As a result, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must now decide
when affiliates of Canadian utilities -- utilities not subject to FERC
jurisdiction -- may sell power at market-based rates in the United
States.
Wednesday
27 July 2005
Wednesday - My friend Tim is a father again. Congratulations to him and his wife!
NASA has launched Discovery, successfully, but foam fell off again. How
terrible. I assume they did their very best to avoid this, so it's a
tough tough problem. It could be the end of the Shuttle program.
Another book I finished over the last couple of weeks was Patrick O'Brian's Joseph Banks: A Life.
I enjoyed it, but felt a little unfulfilled after finishing it. I
didn't get a good sense of the man's personality - one problem being
that on his voyage with Cook he wrote little of a personal nature,
incredibly little, but I would expect a good biographer to show me the
man better than O'Brian did. In later life Banks was a prolific
letter writer. He mentions that Banks was generous, almost apolitical,
brilliant, sometimes deceived by his associates - but what was he like?
We can detect, perhaps, in Captain Cook and Joseph Banks some hint
of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, though in his long series of
Napoleonic fiction the personalities of the latter two characters are
somewhat reversed from the originals.
His descriptions of school life at Eton and Harrow were priceless
though. Not the quiet staid institutions we are accustomed too thinking
of today.
Tuesday 26
July
2005
Tuesday - am I a nerd? I don't feel too nerdish - but then I take a test online and get this:
Nerd God? Moi?
Here is another report on the dispute between Canada and Denmark on ownership of Hans Island, vital (maybe, kinda) to the possibly re-opening Northwest Passage. [via Ghost of a Flea, taking time out from his obsession with pop singers.]
Neenach. It would have been a better pic if I got out of the car.
Monday 25 July 2005
Monday - took the scenic route back to
Lancaster. Down the I-880, to the 101, to the 25 through Hollister, to
the 198, the I-5 and the 58. I stopped at the Pinnacles National Monument off the 25, thinking about a day hike, but it was just too hot. You could smell the pine tar oozing out of the trees:
Yeah, 107.
The Pinnacles, from the road. Note how I selected
part of the image. Cool.
Which works out to about a half inch per year.
Sunday 24 July
2005
Sunday - packed and headed home. Stayed the night at my sister's place in Niles. We went out for dinner and then caught a movie, Fantastic Four.
It was warm, and although the theater was jammed the guests were fairly
well behaved. It was an OK movie - an afternoon matinee movie really.
It wasn't as good as Batman Begins or Spiderman, but much better than The Hulk.
Picture of
the Week
Photo Notes:
Walking about in the west valley I spotted this cannon sitting in
someone's yard. Looking closer it's clear that it is simply laying on
the carriage beneath it, and that carriage is not actually military but
rather some sort of farming implement.
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