HSU IT Department

ladyoneill posted her results on this quiz, so I figured I'd take it too. I did the "official" Myers-Briggs Type Inventory as part of a management-training (ugh) thing at work years ago, at which time I was an INTP (3% of population). Of course one does get slightly different answers depending on the test; this one said I was an INTJ (female INTJs are only 0.8% of the population). Clearly my I and T are very strong, while apparently I'm becoming more judgmental in my old age.

What's fun about this one is that it looks not only at your actualized type (who you are) but also your preferred type (who you wish you were) and your attraction type (what kind of personality you're attracted to). It will surprise exactly no-one who knows me that who I am is also who I'd like to be.

Oh, and also "Combining laziness and dishonesty is the quickest way to get on ISTJs' bad side." So much yes to that.

Jung Explorer Test
Actualized type: ISTJ
(who you are)

ISTJ - "Trustee". Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time- honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of total population.

Preferred type: ISTJ
(who you prefer to be)

ISTJ - "Trustee". Decisiveness in practical affairs. Guardian of time- honored institutions. Dependable. 11.6% of total population.

Attraction type: INTJ

(who you are attracted to)

INTJ - "Mastermind". Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

Take Jung Explorer Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Check out The World Star Wars Project! I found out about this yesterday from one of the professional lists I belong to. It sounds like a lot of fun -- I'm only sad I somehow missed the World Hobbit Project which apparently happened a couple of years back. Feel free to send this information around to any Star Wars fans you know -- the more participants they get the happier they will be :)

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to let you know about a research project that has been launched today and to ask for your help!

My name is Dr. Richard McCulloch and I am Co-Director of 'The World Star Wars Project.' Inspired by Martin Barker et al's 'Lord of the Rings' and 'World Hobbit' global studies, 'The World Star Wars Project' is a five-year longitudinal/ latitudinal study with multiple phases.

The first phase is an online questionnaire that aims to capture audience strategies of anticipation and expectation about the forthcoming film, *Star Wars: The Force Awakens* (released on December 17th).

As yet, we have not secured funding for the project, so we would be incredibly grateful if you could disseminate the link among your friends, family, students, and anyone else you can think of. It doesn't matter if you love Star Wars, hate it, or really don't care -- we simply want to hear from as many people as we can!

The window of opportunity here is quite small. We have twenty days or so until the release of the film, but wanted to open up a space for data gathering when fever pitch was reaching a crescendo. Given that this is the first Star Wars film in a decade, and the first Star Wars film since the Lucasfilm/Disney merger, this is a one-time opportunity, we believe, to capture 'audiences in flight' on the cusp of the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy.

Here is the link to the website: http://www.worldstarwars.net/.

We will be providing more information about the project on the website and will be asking researchers from around the world to join the project to collaborate on the global research. In the meantime, if anyone requires further information or would like to chat about collaboration or what have you, then please contact Project Director William Proctor ( bproctor@bournemouth.ac.uk).

'We would be honoured if you would join us'

Best Wishes

*The World Star Wars Project team*

My first crush on a fictional man was at about age eight or nine: Prince Gwydion from Llloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. Well, how could he not be? With his green eyes and wolf-grey hair and the sword and cloak and also hello, a prince, he was everything that a girl bored with sappy Disney royalty would adore. He didn't waste his time rescuing princesses, he was fighting THE LORD OF DEATH, for Merlin's sake. And I loved that he was noble yet accessible: a prince for working days, as it were, not in the least high and mighty, because he didn't need to be.

My next fictional crush was Laurie from Little Women (so sweet and funny and romantic, and played the piano with such passion -- Jo, how could you turn him down?!) closely followed by Dan from Jo's Boys (my black-eyed wounded rebel soul, I'm still sad he didn't win the heart of Bess).

Then I read Dragonsong and fell hard for Masterharper Robinton, with his sharp intelligence, his weakness for Benden wine, his wit and his generous heart; when he and Menolly were alone on the boat in Dragondrums I thought, "At last, at last!!" but the silly tart thwarted me, a betrayal for which I still have never quite forgiven her.

Next: a toss-up between Lord Peter Wimsey -- war hero, collector of incunabula, and sooo very persistently faithful -- and Laurie R. King's Sherlock Holmes. The scene with Peter and Harriet on the bank of the river is one of the all-time sexiest scenes ever, even though they never touch each other, and the night that Holmes tasks Mary Russell with wanting to propose to him caused me to cheer out loud.

You'll notice that Aragorn, Legolas, Boromir, Eomer & Co. are conspicuously absent. They were a bit too distant for me when I first encountered them, I think -- I was eleven, and at the time they all struck me as rather biblical, probably due to Tolkien's elevated language. Snape is also absent from this list since he didn't ring my bell until I saw Alan Rickman. After that it was very hubba hubba, but I don't feel right about including him in this list when it was a real person that actually spurred my interest.

So tell me, who are/were your fictional (book) crushes and why?

So, you know how so much of what we do happens on a little screen, and/or over headphones/microphones, and involves pixels instead of people? Here are two VERY funny takes on what if some of those things happened in real life. My favorite is the first, which only makes me laugh, but I identify more with the second, which makes me laugh AND cry.

How funny would it be if Google were a person you actually had to talk to? Very damn funny.


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And a conference call in real life:


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On the other hand, the Old Spice guy has a new ad out. I luuuuurv him.

Also, it is STILL SNOWING. Grrrr.

I'm a sucker for stationery (pay attention, sekrit santas!) but I'm almost as much a sucker for gorgeously illustrated calendars. For years, my mom's traditional Xmas gift was the Brothers Hildebrandt's Tolkien Calendar, and believe it or not I still have all of them.

Therefore I must plug two awesome calendars. The first is Great Moments in Library History, a very clever and funny calendar which includes the introduction of the large print book (20,000 BC) and the first reference librarian (109 BC, "The oracle is in").

The second is the Sci-Fi Fantasy Pinup Calendar, which was conceived and executed by sci-fi/fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss as a benefit for Heifer International. Mine just came in the mail and the Terry Pratchett page is gorgeous. I may have to go as her for Halloween next year...

droxy says she has been feeling Luddite-ish lately and bemoaned the lack of appropriate icons, so I made two. It gratifies my sense of irony to use technology to make and post and share icons about how suspect technology is. Anyway, here they are:

Finished Word Freak last night, about the author's investigation of -- and unwilling assimilation by -- the world of competitive Scrabble. I could have done without the detailed descriptions of the fringe personalities' drug and personal hygiene habits, but other than that I enjoyed the book quite a bit. Learned a lot I never knew about the history of the game (such as the fact that the inventor's total profit on the game was about $800,000 -- poor Mr. Butts). Very much agree it would be excellent if they televised the championships as they do with poker, billiards, etc. ("Too cerebral" ha ha.) Am amazed that a 600 or 700+ game is even theoretically possible, not to mention having been actually achieved more than once. A great game for me is if I break 300; my mom (English teacher turned lawyer, a tough combo) broke 400 once with ESTOPPAL on a triple-triple. Most impressive play mentioned in the book: AUBERGINES on split B, R and N. Mind-boggling. Who even thinks of things like that??

Also surprising: the upper echelons of competitive Scrabble are almost entirely male-dominated. This seems odd, until you read about how utterly obsessive one has to be to get to that level -- memorizing lists of thousands of words, inventing mnemonic tricks to remember all the letters that go with a given seven-letter rack for an eight-letter bingo, etc. That seems a more male attitude. The women he mentions in the book seem to play because they enjoy it; they have functional jobs, lives, families, and don't spend all their free time replaying games to see where they could have done better. (The author does mention in passing that there are well-adjusted male championship players as well, but he doesn't show you many of them!)

The book also includes an interesting digression, during the World Championships in Melbourne, on the differences between American and non-American players: Americans are self-absorbed, aggressive, and obsessed with winning. Pretty much the same as the difference between American and non-American anythings. Us Yanks, we are so Yank-ish.