World Socionics

Alan Alda is an American actor, screenwriter, director and science communicator, probably most famous for his role as Captain "Hawkeye" Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H   (henceforth referred to as MASH ). What first tipped me off on Alda's type was precisely his impact on MASH . At first just one of many actors in the original cast, with several characters supposed to have more or less equal focus, gradually Alda's character Hawkeye moved to become the clear main focus of the show. At the same time, Alda himself evolved from just an actor hired to play a role to the person chiefly responsible for the the show's creative direction, by writing and directing increasingly more episodes and using his star power to steer the show in the direction he preferred. The impact of Alda's priorities is very obvious when comparing the show's seasons 1-3 to seasons 9-11, that is, from the period when his creative influence was small or negligible to the period when i...

Titus Fulvus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Augustus Pius , best known more simply as Antoninus Pius , was the 15th Roman Emperor. Despite the fairly unusual length of his reign - almost 23 years, from 138 to 161 - the direct documentation on the period is very limited. Still, I argue that there is enough evidence, based on what documentation is available, and the overall events of Antoninus's reign and what we know of his policies, to allow for an estimate of  his type, at least from a broad-brush perspective. Antoninus was born in a wealthy senatorial (i.e. aristocratic landowning) family in 86, during the politically tense years of the authoritarian Emperor Domitian, but he reached adulthood in the more politically relaxed years of the Emperor Trajan. He climbed apparently effortlessly the traditional steps of a Roman public career, that is quaestor, praetor and then consul, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, who obviously showed Antoninus considerable favor: Antoninus was...