I put about as much faith in horoscopes as I do in online personality tests (see below), but I kind of like this one for Aries, which is what they tell me I am:

Happy Valentine’s Day, Aries! How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love how skilled you are at wriggling free of unproductive jams. I admire the way you change yourself into a fresh creation when you’ve gone as far as you can with the old model. I am delighted by how robustly you rebel against your past and fling yourself open to the unpredictable sweep of the future. There are so many other ways I adore you, my dear, but there’s only room to mention one more: I am enchanted by how you always seem ready to build a castle in the wilderness if this world ever fails you.

Found through pool, Karawynn Long’s message board.

These “What Kind of — Are You?” personality tests have run their course. Case in point:

If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be William Fulton and Joe Harris’s Representation Theory: A First Course.

My primary goal is to introduce the beginner to the finite-dimensional representations of Lie groups and Lie algebras. Intended to serve non-specialists, my concentration is on examples. The general theory is developed sparingly, and then mainly as a useful and unifying language to describe phenomena already encountered in concrete cases. I begin with a brief tour through representation theory of finite groups, with emphasis determined by what is useful for Lie groups; in particular, the symmetric groups are treated in some detail. My focus then turns to Lie groups and Lie algebras and finally to my heart: working out the finite dimensional representations of the classical groups and exploring the related geometry. The goal of my last portion is to make a bridge between the example-oriented approach of the earlier parts and the general theory.

Which Springer GTM would you be?

The Springer GTM Test

Now, I find this mildly amusing, since I used to work in a bookstore and was, more than once, responsible for receiving boxes and boxes of Springer-Verlag books (it was a University, we had quote-unquote “yellow sales,” it wasn’t fun), but what’s the point? Really, what’s the point? Found at Tuppence.

Wil Wheaton writes:

Although I hadn’t ridden the backstage tour in years, I knew immediately that I would miss it forever.

I never went on studio tours again like the ones I did when I was 16.

Jesus, does anyone?

I think maybe this is what I like most about Wheaton’s (award-winning, la de da) weblog and why I continue to come back to it — his willingness to poke fun at his image and his movies, in this case Stand By Me.

I still don’t think I’ll ever like Wesley Crusher, though.

Caterina writes:

I’m always interested in how little people sleep, seeing as how I’m a terrible insomniac myself. Rumor has it that [Thomas] Pynchon sleeps til noon or one, but then works non-stop until three in the morning.

But, then again, just about everything about Thomas Pynchon is rumor, isn’t it? The only known photographs of the man date back to the early 1950s, he doesn’t actively promote his novels, and he has been interviewed only once in the past forty years. Presumably, no one but his agent and editor could tell you when, or even if, he sleeps. I certainly couldn’t. I’ve never even read any of his books.