ENFP

Today everyone in the office took an online personality test. It’s the Jungian sort of Myers-Briggs test, where you’re assigned four letters that supposedly encapsulate your personality traits. In high school when I took this test I scored as an INFP, but with the I/E balanced at 50/50. This time, I scored as an ENFP… and I am sure on another day it’d be just as easy to score as INFP. The interesting thing was degree: I was only very slightly Extroverted, and only very slightly Feeling, while I was moderately Intuitive and rather pronouncedly Perceiving. Interesting, since I thought I would turn out to be far more Judging than Perceiving. Except I have a feeling the test scores Judging when you are good at predicting future events or tend to try to do so, while I’m rather more strongly oriented toward the present situation. Which is odd for an SF writer, but there you are.

I was joking that we should post the personality types outside our office for when students want to choose their teacher. Not that most students would have any idea what the various codes mean, but it would be funny.

If you follow the link above, you can try the test too. Go for it!


Update: I didn’t look at the personality profiles until I saw Adam’s comment, but this is funny. I am a Champion, apparently. Hmmmm.

Global Warming and The State(s) We Are In

While I don’t agree fully with this article‘s seemingly skeptical take on global warming, I do agree that science and state need to be separate, with state reacting to science’s findings (instead of dictating them) and that politics in general have no place in science.

If climate science is to have any credibility in the future, its pursuit must be kept separate from global politics. The affluent nations should support research programs that improve the theoretical understanding of climate change, build an empirical database about factors that influence long-term climate change, and increase our understanding of short-term weather dynamics. Such research is fundamental to the greenhouse gas issue. But its rewards may be greater still, for it will also improve our ability to cope with extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods, whatever their causes.

I wonder if it’s politics that lead people at the Wilson Institute to be so skeptical? I don’t know where to look to find out but it seems to me that almost everyone I know who doubts that global warming is going on, significant, and a problem, is someone who is working in the oil industry, connected to it, or rich because of it.

Test Time and Stinky

Teaching invitations is very fun, sometimes. It’s the first unit I’ve broken away from the textbook for, because the textbook isn’t really very clear about what’s really a very simple process. When you want to invite someone out to do something, you need to do four things:

  1. Figure out if they like the kind of activity you’re thinking of inviting the person to join you in…
  2. Figure out when the person is free to join you in this activity.
  3. Extend an invitation to the person.
  4. Set up a time and place to meet.

Some classes get this much more easily, and quickly, than other classes. It’s strange, one class that stood to be my worst at the beginning of the year, is actually doing okay. But they had a hard time with this, with using all of the formulaic questions that are involved (which I wrote out on the board for them…

So I wandered from group to group as they practiced this conversation, having students invite me out to different activities. Since everyone but one student is a girl and they mostly have a good sense of humor, I hammed it up all the way along, pretending to be very disappointed when schedules didn’t match and playing a very excited young man when plans solidified. They were very amused by it all, but… they still need more practice at it. So… Tuesday will be practice, and Thursday the test.

Test time is funny… I was running late this morning, and when I went out to hail a cab, I saw a student clinging to a study sheet. It had English on it, I noticed, and since I live so close to the University, I asked the girl if she was going to Jeonju University. She was actually going to the same building as me, so we took the cab together, and then I noticed that her study sheet had all the standard questions for the English Upgrade midterm test. It turned out that the other new guy on staff, Michael, is her teacher, and that she was coming to school for a 8:30am test. So I gave her an impromptu quiz on the way to school, for which she seemed grateful. Then we talked about music… it seems, I found out later when relaying this story to Michael, that some pack of music students I’ve never met apparently know who I am and think that I am handsome. That’s nice, for whatever it’s worth…

As for the campus… the students have this wild, cornered prey look on their faces, well, the ones who aren’t napping when you see them. I got an SMS message from one of my students claiming she had to study all night for her exams today. She wrote, very eloquently, “HALP ME!!!” Walking around campus, it seems most people share the sentiment.

Last thing: I was thinking about what it must have been like to live 200 years ago. In those days, there was no such thing as mouthwash. I suppose in those days it wasn’t very odd for people to stink. But these days, when I crouch down to help some pair of pretty young girls with their sentence structure, and I smell toilet breath, I can’t help but feel some kind of sense of cognitive dissonance, as if some crucial law of reality has just been violated. It’s really strange. We expect people who look good to also smell good. And when they don’t, it’s even slightly shocking. And I can’t imagine when it was otherwise.

Good For You, People…

That’s right, it’s what I’ve been saying all along and now thanks to some scientists in Ireland, you’ll finally believe me: Sex is better for your health than no sex.

At least,

The best that modern science can say for sexual abstinence is that it’s harmless when practiced in moderation. Having regular and enthusiastic sex, by contrast, confers a host of measurable physiological advantages, be you male or female.

And health is important. So there.

Sob. Well, thanks for the link, Adam.

Chinese Space

I just read an article over at Salon about the Chinese space program. Did you know that they finally launched a man into space? No kidding: they did it in the Gobi desert today!

Against a clear blue sky, China fired its first astronaut into orbit without any visible hitches Wednesday, becoming only the third nation capable of manned spaceflight. The government said the mission was going smoothly and its “taikonaut” radioed back: “I feel good.”

Now, I predict that this will bring about comparisons about the poor kid who never got a bicycle till he was 14, and rode it everywhere, right? Or, maybe the kid who wanted to play in school band but couldn’t afford a playable instrument till high school?

Well, that kid was me. I was the star of the local jazz band a few years later, because I worked like hell and made something out of, well, basically nothing. China might just do the same… I don’t expect it, but… you just never know.

Go read the article at Salon.com.