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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:

the kitten, Zeno
Zeno's paradox: Why does the older cat let him live?

Honors may be even between Canada and the United States when it comes to invasions. I went looking for my copy of Arundel, but it is nowhere to be found. But I did find Rabble In Arms, and on the inside cover of the dust jacket this description:

"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:

eds nerd score
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.

neenach sign

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:
107 by thermometer
Yeah, 107.

Maybe some other time. The ranger on duty in the visitor's center say that there is an evening nature walk every Friday, and that every once in a while it's also an astronomical event. She (and just when did rangers turn into cuties wearing glitter makeup anyway?) said as well that spring was the best time of year to visit, because of the wildflowers, but that it was very busy then.

Pinnaces National Monument
The Pinnacles, from the road. Note how I selected part of the image. Cool.

Oddly, there is a connection between Pinnacles and my own home town. The Pinnacles is half of the eroded remains of a volcano that formed on the San Andreas earthquake fault, millions of years ago. It's on the Pacific Ocean side of the fault I guess, while the local town of Neenach sits atop the other half of the volcano, relatively motionless. After twenty five million years the twain are now about two hundred miles apart.

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
Old cannon, resting on farming gear

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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