How accurately can we guess another person’s emotional state from just looking at their eyes? Without looking at the rest of their face, or other parts of their body, can we correctly determine a person’s inner state, desires or intentions?

Why not test yourself online with this test developed by Dr. Simon Cohen-Baron (Ali G/Borat’s real life cousin– I kid you not!).

I found this challenge extremely interesting, and although I struggled on a few of the faces, I did better than expected. See if you can beat my score of 31! In the results section, it’s pretty clear that females score higher than men, especially in the upper range. Maybe I have a less masculine brain? I’d never admit that…

Unfortunately, in the age of text-based communication, these innate and fine tuned skills have become somewhat debased; yet, the popular use of smiley’s and emoticons reveals that we’re still reliant on these signals to correctly decode the intent of others.

Do you ever find that your text-based messages are wrongly interpreted by the other end? Do you often hesitate to use satire or sarcasm online because it might be taken seriously?

Occasionally, I’ll catch an episode of NBC’s Chuck, a comedic spy thriller about a man who lives with a supercomputer stuck inside his head. Chuck, the show, is both funny and smart, yet never takes itself too seriously. Much of the show’s success stems from its solid cast, which includes the beautiful blonde, Yvonne Strahovski.

Yvonne Strahovski plays the character Sarah Walker, an undercover CIA operative who is in charge of protecting the man with the supercomputer in his head, Chuck Bartowski.

As any fan of the show surely knows by now, the writers of Chuck will occasionally pen in a scene where Yvonne Strahovski must forgo wearing some of her clothes! It’s pretty obvious that such scenes do little to push the plot development and are merely presented for the appeasement of the mostly male demographic that tunes in each week. I’m not criticizing the use of sex to garner more viewers, but I think they could be more creative in how they insert these scenes.

Australian native Yvonne Strahovski has a killer body, and fortunately, I found some screen caps of her latest panty-walk. These shots come from the same episode where Chuck finally makes his move on Sarah, which results in some tongue-locked, ass-grabbing, Mongolian bed wrestling. But don’t get your hopes up too high – the whole sex scene is cut short when Chuck realizes he doesn’t have a condom! I guess when you have an unparalleled amount of knowledge stuffed into your head, you know your exact chances of catching an STD from the CIA’s hottest agent!

Get a look at Yvonne Strahovski’s almost-nude, almost-sex scene. God I love a blonde in panties!

I wouldn’t call myself much of a fan of the televised series Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles, but I have faithfully watched most of the episodes spanning its last two seasons, including the latest finale, which aired just recently. The problem with the show is that its producers decided to switch the brilliant cliff-hanger saga format of the first season, for a more episodic, standalone product for the second. I found much of latter’s content boring and non-crucial to the main story arc, which greatly lowered my expectations for the show.

Concerning season two’s finale, one point of interest that the show’s creators finally give some attention to is the obvious sexual tension between teenage John Connor and his fembot bodyguard. Although often referred to as siblings in the storyline (to disguise their identities from outsiders) many implicit hints are dropped that either or both characters have feelings for each other. This moment is captured in a preposterous scene where the android Cameron asks John to climb on top of her, while she’s half-naked on a bed, to inspect some of her hardware. Uh-huh. The scene ends with John failing to get his disk into her floppy drive, or something like that.

Filling the cast’s roster with Lena Headey, Shirley Manson, Stephanie Jacobsen and other sexy actresses reveals the producers’ ostensible approach to attract a bigger audience – sex appeal. In fact, I bet many followers of the show simply tune in just to catch another glimpse of Summer Glau in her underwear. And hey, I’m all for seeing Summer Glau in her panties, but it’s a shame that they’re now ignoring the story’s original draw: badass sci-fi action.

Oh, and they’ve somehow outlawed the great comedic moments of the first season. Does anyone remember Cameron being called a bitch-whore in the girl’s washroom in high school? These hilarious terminator moments have seemingly disappeared.

So back to season two’s finale – without giving away any spoilers, I’ll just say that it ends with a sudden shift of events, no doubt fueling anticipation for a third season. But I won’t empathize if the show eventually gets shit-canned. In my opinion, they simply lost what good they had in the series, with the exception of maintaining a sexy cast. But even then, these one-dimensional characters do little more than just play out their simple roles, teasing us with sex, presumably because the show’s ammo and SFX budget got slashed with the rest of economy.

Is it fair to the Terminator legacy to let the show continue?