Irrefragable ≈ confutable?

Sorry for the dearth of communication lately. I didn't actually mean for the Halloween post to last for the whole year.

So while I work up the energy for a real post, have fun taking this 200-question vocabulary test in which you must make a simple determination for each pair of words you are presented with: same meaning or opposites? Some of them get pretty tough. My final score, for the record, was 168. And the above pair is one of those that I missed.

If your curiosity is piqued after taking the test, don't forget the lovely selection of dictionary links in my sidebar!

Time to unload quizzes

I may as well get it over with. If you hate quizzes, avert your eyes.

I'll start with the short and easy ones:

You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant. Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle. You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important. You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection. You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

You are Rerun!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla




You are 'Gregg shorthand'. Originally designed to
enable people to write faster, it is also very
useful for writing things which one does not
want other people to read, inasmuch as almost
no one knows shorthand any more.

You know how important it is to do things
efficiently and on time. You also value your
privacy, and (unlike some people) you do not
pretend to be friends with just everyone; that
would be ridiculous. When you do make friends,
you take them seriously, and faithfully keep
what they confide in you to yourself.
Unfortunately, the work which you do (which is
very important, of course) sometimes keeps you
away from social activities, and you are often
lonely. Your problem is that Gregg shorthand
has been obsolete for a long time.

What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


This is a really neat quiz with a lot of interesting results, but unfortunately, I couldn't get any of them. I cheated a tiny bit because I am simply not juggling.

And now the large and complex OkCupid quizzes. The political chart in particular has been pretty popular lately.

Pure Nerd 69 % Nerd, 43% Geek, 39% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd. The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the "dork." No-longer. Being smart isn't as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful. Congratulations! THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 80% on nerdiness You scored higher than 61% on geekosity You scored higher than 64% on dork points

Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating

You are a Social Liberal (70% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (23% permissive) You are best described as a: Democrat Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid

That's all. Content later, I swear.

Stuff or nonsense?

I've just come across a couple of very cool quizzes at Reverent.org. They aren't lame personality tests, they're simple quizzes with two answer choices, in which you must distinguish between something that is famous or great and something that is fake, obscure, or just bad. I only missed one on the "True art or a fake?" quiz, and got progressively worse from there. I only got 50% on "Great Prose or Crap?" which pits Charles Dickens against Edward Bulwer-Lytton*...a statistically likely result for mere guessing. And I think it got worse after that. Those with good eye can try "True art or a fake?" and "Famous or unknown artist?", the musically inclined can attempt "Mozart or Salieri?" and "MIDI or Virtuoso?", and literary folks can do "An artist or a hack?" and "Machine translation or Faulkner?"
Via A Sweet, Familiar Dissonance.

These remind me of another fun quiz I posted a while back, Programming Language Inventor or Serial Killer?

Good luck.

*Edward Bulwer-Lytton is the inspiration for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest to write the worst first sentence of a novel, and the Lyttle Lytton Contest, the same thing in 25 words or less. (Side note -- I had known of and admired the Lyttle Lytton for some time when I discovered that its creator was someone whom I had recently met and worked with. My mind was just a little blown. Especially when I browsed the rest of his site and saw all the interesting stuff he's into.)

Articles, etc.

Guédelon is an intriguing and ambitious project: as they describe it, "For the next 20 years, thirty five craftsmen and women will be building before your very eyes a medieval castle. They will do so following XIIIth century techniques. The natural site in the middle of the forest will provide them with all the building material necessary : wood, water, stone, earth, sand and iron." It's been underway for a some years already, and is quite an impressive undertaking.

If a castle seems extravagant, how about a house made of cardboard? This prototype could be the first of a series of commercially available, portable, some-assembly-required homes constructed entirely of cardboard and other recyclable materials.
Via Boing Boing.




Try this quick test -- can you tell the computer programmers apart from the serial killers? I got all but one right -- but I missed one of the killers, so I suppose I'm dead.

Worthwhile Onion article: "Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory."

A cute cartoon at Don't Drink the Koolaid, "God: A Career Retrospective", might explain a few things.

An interesting New York Times article about the badly-thought-out cover to Rick Moody's new book: "Book Misjudged by Its Cover Gets (What Else?) New Cover."
Via Bookslut.

An article at Editor and Publisher looks at what editors do when faced with an official movie title containing errors: Press Wrestles with Grammatically Incorrect 'Virgin'."
Also via Bookslut.

The portfolio of this professional retouch artist has a twofold effect: it could be a reassuring reminder that models aren't that different from anyone else, or it could be a sickening testament to our warped airbrush-culture and our outrageous ideals of beauty. I'm torn.

Slate has an interesting take on the always-delightful blog Overheard in New York.

Wisdom of ages

Who were you in your last life? Try the Past Life Analysis to reveal your soul's true history.

My diagnosis:

I don't know how you feel about it, but you were male in your last earthly incarnation.
You were born somewhere in the territory of modern North Japan around the year 775.
Your profession was that of a sailor or shoemaker. Your brief psychological profile in your past life:
Such people are always involved with all new. You have always loved changes, especially in art, music, cooking. The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
Your lesson is to learn discretion and moderation and then to teach others to do the same. Your life will be happier if you help those who lack reasoning. Do you remember now?

The English Proverb of the Day from Mythfolklore.net; or, since I can't post javascript, you can just look at the entire calendar of proverbs.

Try Sage, the oracle at Nick Bantock's official site.

The exact origins of the Sage will probably never be confirmed. However, given the location of the find, it is more than possible that the author or authors were members of the Knatii, a nomadic group of mystics that inhabited the area during that period.

Given the difficulties of translation, and the often obscure and ambiguous tone of the answers, the scroll's contents weren't released until 1977, when they appeared as an academic paper. This paper entitled The Ala-Dagh Sage, was given to a distinguished audience of linguists at the Salzburg Theosophical Symposium.

In 1999 a new (and more poetic) translation of the Sage was commissioned, and the following electronic version is one of the outcomes of that enterprise. When consulting the Sage it is important to remember that its wisdom is only fully revealed when the questioner accepts the sense within nonsense.

Wisdom from the Cool Quotes Collection.

Learn about yourself with the Ultimate Personality Test from thesurrealist.co.uk.

Or try your luck with the Bad Cookie Generator.

Stuff and things

Slow and Steady

Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It'd really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment. They expect you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then usually decide against it.

How Do People See You?

the Wit (52% dark, 30% spontaneous, 22% vulgar)

your humor style: CLEAN | COMPLEX | DARK You like things edgy, subtle, and smart. I guess that means you're probably an intellectual, but don't take that to mean you're pretentious. You realize 'dumb' can be witty--after all isn't that the Simpsons' philosophy?--but rudeness for its own sake, 'gross-out' humor and most other things found in a fraternity leave you totally flat. I guess you just have a more cerebral approach than most. You have the perfect mindset for a joke writer or staff writer. Your sense of humor takes the most effort to appreciate, but it's also the best, in my opinion. PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Jon Stewart - Woody Allen - Ricky Gervais

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 40% on dark You scored higher than 7% on spontaneous You scored higher than 20% on vulgar

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on Ok Cupid

Start ya off with a couple nice quiz results. Now that I've got y'all warmed up...

TIME has just created a worthwhile list of the fifty coolest websites. I was quite pleased to discover that I already knew about most of the interesting ones.

A man in Spain is building his own cathedral. It's pretty impressive-looking. Sadly, he's having trouble finding people to support him, and the unapproved building will likely be torn down after his death.




In other singlehanded-monument-construction news, a retired carpenter who believes he knows the secret to Stonehenge is raising his own Stonehenge in his backyard using only rudimentary tools and the power of his own body to move stone blocks weighing tons. (I read a news story about this somewhere, which had a video of the guy in action showing how it worked, but now I can only find his own website, which is much less interesting. Damn. Sorry.)




Giant "Bra Fence" Sparks Controversy: Official Says Fence Offends Asian Cultures, South Africans. For years, women returning from a pub in the nearby town of Wanaka have stopped at the fence and removed their bras...




The New York Times article Bad to the Last Drop explains why tap water is better than bottled.

There is apparently an update of the EPIC 2014 media-documentary-from-the-future video (I originally linked to it here): EPIC 2015.

I've just stumbled across somebody's blog called Bluetealeaf. I know it's impossible to be truly original in this world, but I'm always a little unsettled when I come across other people with identities I feel are unique and original to me. No sign of what inspired his name; I promise to tell the story of mine someday soon if anyone's interested.

The Brick Testament: the Bible in Legos! It's a Christian site, naturally, and while I am generally repulsed by things evangelicals do to make religion hip and appealing to kids (like Revolve, that New Testament packaged as a teen fashion magazine, and Refuel, its masculine counterpart, for example; or that game King's Call, which I'm still sore over), I like this particular project a lot. It's not cleaned-up at all, either -- a helpful little code warns about episodes containing nudity, sex, violence, and cursing, of which there are many. I never expected to see so many naked little Lego people knowing each other Biblically, so to speak. The segments are very short, and sometimes quite surreal and strangely humorous -- a lot of which comes from the source material, I suppose. The many panels which read simply "And then he died," with a little croaked-over figure, are wonderful. Ever read the Bible? There's some weird stuff in there. There's essentially no effort made to interpret or reconcile the bizarreness of some of the stories -- they're just there, built brick-by-brick as faithfully as possible. The Brick Testament is really a very impressive artistic endeavor, and a lovely rendering in Lego of a great work of literature.




UPDATE: I was not entirely right about what The Brick Testament is all about.

Jeff Russell's Starship Dimensions is a pretty cool site for science-fiction fans comparing images of spacecraft, bases, and other objects from numerous examples of the genre to show relative size. It also makes a nice visual compendium of sci-fi vessels. Very comprehensive.
Via Bibi's box.




reading: Charles de Lint, The Newford Stories; A.S. Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye (re-reading -- I love that book); Kenneth Morris, The Dragon Path; J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye; Lois Gould, Subject to Change
saw: Firefly; Beverly Hills Cop 2

music: The Blue Room on BBC Radio 1
beverage: Twinings Darjeeling tea

One Man's Quizzes

Today I choose to post a selection of results to a bunch of quizzes all created by one person. Each is a little less good than the last, but the final one was curious enough for me to keep them all.



Roman Capitals- You have a proud and noble bearing,
and are of ancient pedigree, but you tend to be
very rigid and set in your ways.


What Calligraphy Hand Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla




You are a post-Easter candy grab: Christ
died on the cross for the sole purpose that you
could deface the half-price effigies of small,
harmless, woodland creatures.


What Post-Holiday Consequence Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla




You are a spelunker. You are
practical, but seek adventure and have a desire
to see things first. You do tend to lack
imagination, though.


What Seeker of the Unknown Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla




You are Jessica. You are hot, single, easy,
opinionated, intelligent, and loyal.


What Type of Quiz Taker Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla


Well, okay. Obviously a quiz created for one person, who is not me. But it almost seemed like it for a while.


Oh, and some other things:



Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.


And finally:

WEBLOG wannabe 2005 weblog award awarded to Blue Tea in the category of "Least Updated Webcam"

Well, that does seem pretty accurate.

Grab bag

I was going to tell you about a spectacularly fascinating dream I had yesterday, but I may have lost too much of it since to be able to retell it coherently. It was great, though.

So instead, I'm going to empty out my links folder and post some random stuff.

These two articles challenge prescriptive grammar, reassuring us that it's all right (and preferred) to use "data" as singular and end sentences with prepositions -- because English isn't Latin. While I want to agree with them, I still find myself having trouble letting go.

The essay portion of the new SAT rewards kids for length, even if the writing is poor, sloppy, and even factually inaccurate.

Research suggests that women are far more susceptible to the effects of alcohol than men, but that feminism prevents this fact from being widely admitted, leading to increased alcoholism among women.

This BBC quiz that measures types of intelligence and tests What Kind of Thinker Are You? doesn't have any code you can cut and paste at the end (gasp!), so I'll give you the link to it, tell you that I scored as an Existential Thinker, and invite you to take it yourself and then read all the results.

This quiz also said I was quite existentialist, interestingly.

You scored as Modernist. Modernism represents the thought that science and reason are all we need to carry on. Religion is unnecessary and any sort of spirituality halts progress. You believe everything has a rational explanation. 50% of Americans share your world-view. Modernist 94% Existentialist 94% Materialist 88% Postmodernist 63% Romanticist 38% Cultural Creative 38% Idealist 19% Fundamentalist 19% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

reading: Charles de Lint, The Newford Stories; Ben Bradlee, A Good Life (K's pick)
saw: Die Hard; Die Hard 2; Die Hard 3; Shattered Glass; Enterprise; Law & Order; Red vs. Blue; Rocky
game of the day: Fly Guy, a delightful bit of pixel-art fun.

music: my "Oddtunes" mix, curr. necros - mystery mix
beverage: Twinings English Breakfast tea