Crossing Humor: An Eddie Izzard Portrait

The NY Times has a most enjoyable feature today on the British entertainer Eddie Izzard. Here is a snippet.

“Some people would heckle me and say ‘Where’s the dress?’ and I’d say ‘Don’t oppress me, you Nazi’ — tends to shut them up. Because I have fought for the right to be able to wear a dress, not that I have to wear a dress. I didn’t jump out of a not-wearing-dress box into a have-to-wear-dress box.”

I recommend the full feature.

Power of Jealousy Depends on How Tall You Are?

Kate finds truth in this. I have my reservations. Nevertheless, it's an interesting read.

"Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and University of Valencia in Spain asked 549 Dutch and Spanish men and women to rate how jealous they felt, and to list the qualities in a romantic competitor that were most likely to make them ill at ease.

Men generally felt most nervous about attractive, rich and strong rivals.

But these feelings were increasingly relaxed the taller they were themselves. The more vertically challenged the man, the greater his feelings of jealousy.

For women, what counted most in jealousy was the rival's looks and charm, but these feelings were less intense if the woman herself was of average height.

This makes sense in evolutionary terms, says New Scientist, in next Saturday's issue."
Read full post here.
graph per AFP

Maps of Personalities?

I am looking forward to a close reading of Florida's Who's Your City. He posted this today over at creative classroom.
He writes:

"These maps from Who's Your City? show the geographic distribution of personality types. Developed by my MPI colleague Kevin Stolarick, they are based on data on hundreds of thousands of people compiled by psychologists, Jason Rentfrow at Cambridge University and Sam Gosling at the University of Texas. Open-to-experience people appear to be the most mobile and distributed - look at the clusters around NY and the east coast corridor, southern Florida, Austin, LA and the Bay Area and Seattle. They are also the personality type most likely to be creative, innovative and entrepreneurial."

After I finish my close reading of his book, I'll comment more on this. In the meantime, fascinating map....

Read more of Florida's explanation here.

Quotation of the Day

"How do you tell if a blogger is extroverted? When he talks with you, he looks at your shoes."

per MR

Herr Professor Dr. Dr. Schmidt

Hat tip to MR for the pointer.

"Americans with PhDs beware: Telling people in Germany that you're a doctor could land you in jail. At least seven U.S. citizens working as researchers in Germany have faced criminal probes in recent months for using the title "Dr." on their business cards, Web sites and resumes. They all hold doctoral degrees from elite universities back home...Violators can face a year behind bars."

Read full article here.