SPACE SHUTTLE: I just read that the Space Shuttle fleet was originally supposed to fly up to 50 times a year. (In actuality, it has been limited to about 4 or 5 flights per annum.) Wow, imagine if that had happened — one would just about always be up in the sky, sometimes two. The other two would be getting prepped to go. That really would have been something. But the technology and the economics just didn’t work out. It was a lot harder than they thought to turn a firecracker into a delivery van with quarters for 7 people. Maybe the Shuttle is an idea whose time has not yet come. For now, the sad words of a James Taylor song seem most appropriate: sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

MYERS-BRIGGS: I myself put a lot of stock in the Myers-Briggs human temperament sorting scheme (if you aren’t familiar with it, you can get a primer at www.personalitypage.com, www.keirsey.com, or punch Myers Briggs into Google for a long list of resources on the Web). Admittedly, there have been scores of different theories and ways of classifying people and their behaviors. But Myers-Briggs makes a lot of sense to me. Like any scheme, it can be used to split people apart based upon real differences, or it can help bring them together through understanding and tolerance. I’m trying to encourage the latter.

I find it interesting, though, that people’s responses to the Myers-Briggs system in itself seem quite predictable based on how they come out in the classification system. My unscientific sample of 10 or 12 people tends to indicate that type “N” intuitive people, especially the “I-N” introvert-intuitives, seem to naturally embrace Myers-Briggs. It just appeals to them right from the start. They wear their own temperament category as a badge of honor, e.g. “I am an INFP”. (Could one imagine a twist on a John F. Kennedy speech, i.e. “I am a Berliner”?). I’ve noticed that when a person volunteers their Myers-Briggs temperament, e.g. in the listings on a pen-pals site, it’s usually a type N category, not a type S.

By contrast, most of the type S “sensibles” I know seem to take Myers-Briggs very differently. A lot of them just don’t buy it. I’ve gotten looks as though I had four heads after trying to explain the system to them. Others just politely ignore you. I’ve known some S’s who become fascinated with it for a day or two, but they soon move on to the next item in the magazine. My experience with most type S’s is that they just don’t get it, whereas a lot more type N’s do (it’s not a question of stupidity; most of the S’s in my sample had graduate degrees).

I realize that people do not fall perfectly into the 16 Myers-Briggs temperament categories. I myself am a bit of a Myers-Briggs mongrel, being an INFJ with strong INTJ overtones. Research indicates that temperament has a strong genetic component, but is also influenced by the environment and thus can shift around a bit with the changes of life. Still, at bottom I find the Myers-Briggs system extremely useful in understanding people. But then again, I would, given that I am an “I-N” type.