Protecting The Private Life

For those who haven't heard of it, there's a personality test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator , based on Jung's exploration into personality types. Long story short: there are 4 binary categories, and everyone can be roughly classified into one of the 16 combinations. The categories are: Extroversion (E) – Introversion (I) Sensing (S) – Intuition (N) Thinking (T) –  Feeling (F) Judging (J) – Perception (P) Understanding exactly what each option means is kind of a pain and not really important - the main thing is that the 16 resulting combinations are all quite unique and easy to understand. You can probably name at least one friend that fits into each category quite nicely. It's at this point that in order to maintain my academic integrity, I should point out that criticism exists against the Myers-Briggs test, with some claiming that it's vague enough to border on horoscopes. This may be true for a couple of the categories, but the majority of th...

A few weeks ago I made the journey back to my home town for the chance to catch up with old school friends. After 5 years, I had no idea what to expect, and I can say now that two things struck me: how pleasant it was, and how surreal it was. The initial hit of surrealism came from equal doses of changed appearances, and a complete lack of changed appearances. Some people looked like they’d just gotten out of cryogenic pods, and others I physically bumped into after not recognising them in the slightest. Meanwhile, some hadn't been entirely successful in adapting to the slowed metabolisms of living in your twenties... The next wave of surrealism was more slow-burning, with the realisation that yes, everyone was now inexplicably extraordinarily nice. And not even just polite – they were genuinely proactively friendly. People I had literally never said a full sentence to in six years of high school would come up to me to hear how life was treating me, while I’d just been content ...

A popcorn movie through and through. When you’re released at the same time as another movie in the same genre, you’re bound to be compared, and this movie definitely loses to Ironman 3. Nothing is particularly wrong with it – it’s just nothing special. The script made sure to spell out even the most simple plot points to the audience multiple times, the music was overly dramatic, and some pretty damn corny lines were scattered throughout. It became painfully obvious that the plot was just there to have excuses for different action sequences. While solid, the action never wowed me like it did in Ironman 3 (except for the short warp-speed battle). Ironman 3 managed to be a far deeper and richer movie, while simultaneously winning on humour and action. If I was to sum up Star Trek 2 in a word, it would be “melodramatic”. Great to waste a few hours and have a bit of easy fun, but honestly I’d rather just re-watch Ironman 3. 7/10 Bonus Rant: The pre-title opening scene was embarras...