In the post below, there’s a link to the Face Transformer. I feel like an evil soothsayer has just told me the date I’m going to die on, all I did was click on the “older adult” option. I dare you to try it and not start thinking about about your skin care routine. I hesitate to post this link.
to take some pictures and then promise to write some kind of proper post.
First off, the web designery is picking up nicely. You wait for 6 months then 3 come along at once, just as you’re about to leave the country for a bit… Not complaining though.
Last night, thanks to the magic of bittorrentary, we watched the first episode of the BBC’s latest flagship documentary Planet Earth. Now that’s what nature documentaries should look like. None of this half-arsed french/dubbed penguin rubbish. They’ve got their hands on some new fangled military technology that probably wasn’t originally designed for sneaking up on packs of coyotes and following them chasing their lunch. Great photography, understated but informative narration, and packing in the locations like nobody’s business… even Space… what’s not to like. I’m can’t decide which was the best bit, either the chase scene or the baby teddy polar bear cubs learning to walk. Or was it the killer whale leaping from the sea with a seal in its mouth in 40x slow motion. All interspersed with beautifully-rendered time-lapse photography over 3 years. Quite a start. I’m guessing there was a fair bit of hype surrounding it in the UK, but it came as a wonderful surprise here in Mejico. Looking forward to catching the rest of the series and am extremely glad to have something to watch between Lostathons.
My site’s playing up today, probably best not to submit any comments just in case. My budget web host, Ehostone promise they’re on it…
From The Telegraph of all places… who manage to dumb down scientific research to a point where it makes almost no sense then fail to provide a link to the original paper… :
A second language ‘changes personality’
By Robert Matthews (Filed: 03/07/2005)If only Basil Fawlty had learnt a little Spanish.
Psychologists have discovered that people take on the characteristics of foreign nationals when they switch into their language – and such a change in the embittered hotel owner could well have improved life for the hapless Manuel.
The personality changes, however, run deeper than a desire to gesticulate wildly when talking in Italian or to plunge into gloom when speaking Russian. According to research, using different languages alters basic characteristics traits such as extroversion and neuroticism.
Researchers at the University of Texas made the discovery while studying the personality traits of bilingual English and Spanish speakers in the United States and Mexico. They began by establishing the attributes of native speakers, using the results of personality tests on almost 170,000 people.
The results showed that English-speaking Americans are typically more conscientious, agreeable and outgoing than native Mexicans, but also less neurotic.
I always feel more extraverted and less neurotic when I’m in Spanish speaking mode, happily talking to strangers, smiling and all that. But the second bit of the article makes no sense to me. Does racial profiling via 170,000 personality tests make it OK? And how the chingada do you measure “agreeability” and “conscienciousness”? Are they including undocumented immigrants in the test, I’d feel less outgoing too if I thought I was in constant danger of being deported and the government of the county I lived in was hell bent on building a 4.5 metre wall along its border with my home country with funds left over after waging a ill-thought-out and illegal war on abstract nouns and then legalising torture round the world… And then there’s the socioeconomic aspects of the respective countries…
Meanwhile, somewhere in Torquay:
Basil Fawlty: Manuel…
[Basil thwacks him on the forehead with a spoon]
Basil Fawlty: …You’re a waste of space.
