(Source: fuckyeahmarykateashley)
Have we all been duped by the Myers-Briggs test?
The interesting — and somewhat alarming — fact about the MBTI is that, despite its popularity, it has been subject to sustained criticism by professional psychologists for over three decades. One problem is that it displays what statisticians call low “test-retest reliability.” So if you retake the test after only a five-week gap, there’s around a 50% chance that you will fall into a different personality category compared to the first time you took the test.
A second criticism is that the MBTI mistakenly assumes that personality falls into mutually exclusive categories. You are either an extrovert or an introvert, but never a mix of the two. Yet most people fall somewhere in the middle. If the MBTI also measured height, you would be classified as either tall or short, even though the majority of people are within a band of medium height.
The consequence is that the scores of two people labelled “introvert” and “extrovert” may be almost exactly the same, but they could be placed into different categories since they fall on either side of an imaginary dividing line.
A lot of things about Boy + Kite seem like they’re going to be a cute band: jangly guitars, mid-tempo drumming, girl-boy vocals, and a band name like Boy + Kite. “Ohio” starts off deceptively with a jangly guitar, but then the guitars really kick in, and the vocals do, too. Pretty soon the song turns into a full on jam along about driving in opposite directions from a lover that doesn’t care enough. The song concludes with wishful thinking followed by a swift harsh realization, “If you want to settle down / better quick, work it out / but yr head and yr heart don’t”.
Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” vs. Soul Train
(via tastefullyoffensive.)
Well, this is just awesome.
hold me, thrill me, kiss me // she & him
download: amazon mp3 | itunes
(Source: eightfold-path)
The best thing you'll read on Yahoo buying Tumblr...
comes from employee #2, practically the co-founder: Marco Arment
Five Doctors Go Hunting
Five doctors - a general practitioner, a paediatrician, an internist, a surgeon, and a pathologist - decided to take a weekend trip and go duck hunting.
Soon after they were in their duck blind, a bird flew over and the general practitioner said, “I think that is a duck,” and so he took aim and slowly squeezed the trigger…but then he lowered his rifle and said, “I better get a second opinion.” “Back of the line,” said the group.
Another bird flew overhead and the paediatrician said, “I think this one is a duck too,” and he took aim…only to lower his rifle and say “but that duck might be a mother have baby ducks somewhere.” “Back of the line,” said the group.
A third bird flew overhead and the internist shouted, “That looked like a duck, etiologically classified as Animalia, Chordata, Aves, Anseriformes, Anatidae, based on the size, I am judging it to be a male, with an estimated weight of…” Before he could finish his thorough assessment or raise his rifle, the bird was gone. “We do not need to hear all that gibberish. Leave it to me,” said the surgeon.
Then a fourth bird flew overhead and the surgeon immediately raised his rifle and with no hesitation shot the bird out of the sky. He then turned to the pathologist standing next to him and said, “now go find out if that was a duck.”
Instinctive drowning response (aka drowning is scary)
A person at, or close to, the point of drowning is unable to keep his/her mouth above water long enough to breathe properly and is unable to shout. Lacking air, his/her body cannot perform the voluntary efforts involved in waving or seeking attention.
New design pattern: Livatars
“Livatars,” a Portmanteau for “live avatars,” is a pretty simple concept: Take a traditional headshot and make it subtly animated so the person in it appears alive. It’s an homage to the living newspapers in Harry Potter and player popup profiles that appear on tv during sportscasts. We tried this on Aviary’s company page and have gotten great feedback on it from people who stumbled across it by accident.
I wouldn’t even call it a pattern yet, except I just noticed it has also popped up on wefollow’s company page as well. They did a more technically elegant implementation than us (if you don’t care about IE7-8 support): We used animated gifs and they used HTML5 background video with a CSS vector mask on top of it.
Benefits over a traditional headshot:
- Not boring, without being too over the top or trying too hard. It will probably make the viewer smile when they notice what’s going on.
- Makes the people in the photo that much more relatable.
- Seeing one makes you want to see a photo yourself alive on that page as well. What better way to unconsciously recruit?
- Simpler to implement than other about page easter eggs: Just record a few seconds of video of someone standing still and loop it back and forth.
The trick is to shoot for subtlety and have everyone try to stand completely still when you record them. You want the viewer to do a double take when they think a static snapshot blinks at them out of the corner of their eye as they quickly scan a page.
This is so cool
back to black // beyonce & andre 3000 [amy winehouse cover]
download: amazon mp3 | itunes
Space Oddity (by Chris Hadfield)
This is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever seen.
Chris Hadfield is the one guy in the world who makes me wonder if, perhaps, I had played my cards differently, could I have been an astronaut?
An Interview With The Most Powerful Woman In Health Care
Forbes interview with Judy Faulkner!



