508th Century Baby Names

It's fairly common for science fiction to take place in an extremely distant future when none of today's cultures or ethnicities still survive in a recognizable form.

Isaac Asimov's Foundation is a fine example, and his future humans have vaguely-familiar-yet-unfamiliar names like Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow and Ebling Mis.

Right now I'm reading Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which is full of future humans named Sum Dotran and Kira Pen Lisolet and Trixia Bonsol.

Maybe it's just that I'm not a native of either the Asimoverse or the Vingeverse so they're both unfamiliar to me, but all those names seem like they could have come from the same cultural mix.

When I write my distant-future science fiction story, my humans will have names like Grxccnyth Qster or Eaoueeoa Yueeaoa or Z!n#b S&. And I shall make them all straight-laced conservative accountant types!

Something Wrong with That

Behind every great man lies a huge secret in his pants.

Just got that in my spambox. Perhaps it could have been worded better?

Why I Can Never Be President, Reason 2

Last October, I was visiting my parents in the States, and I went to the local university to see a talk by Bob Woodward and former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen. Before the event started, we all stood for the Star-Spangled Banner.

Even when I lived in the United States, I did not often go to events where the national anthem was played, and so I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to put my hand over my heart or not. So I looked around at what other people were doing. No one had their hand over their heart. So I didn't put my hand over my heart either.

Another reason why I can never be President.

Why I Can Never Be President, Reason 1

I remember when I was a kid and the big thing in the news was NAFTA. People were complaining that all our American jobs would go to Mexico.

I thought that was just plain selfish. Maybe the Mexicans deserved jobs more than we did.

One reason why I can never be President.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

The scene: A radio talk show host pumps up the crowd at a John McCain rally with over-the-top trash-talk aimed at Barack Obama. After the rally, McCain holds a news conference where he apologizes for the talk show host's comments and distances himself from them.

"It's my understanding," he said, "that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them Senator. We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans."

Maybe I'm just way too cynical for my own good, but did anyone else suspect that maybe this was all a setup to give McCain a chance to look classy?

Natural Born Citizens

An article in The New York Times raises the issue of whether John McCain is technically a "natural-born citizen":

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

Is this still an issue? I thought this all got sorted out long ago. I figured the consensus was:

1. You don't have to be born in the United States to be President; you only have to be born a United States citizen. George Romney (Mitt's father) was a major contender for the Republican nomination in 1968, and he'd been born in Mexico. But he'd been an American citizen all his life, so it didn't matter.

2. Besides, this isn't even relevant in McCain's case anyway. He was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was part of the United States in 1936.

This touches on me personally. I was born in Canada, but I've always been an American citizen (both of my parents are native-born American citizens) so I can't be constitutionally barred from running. On the other hand, no way am I stupid enough to run for President. I don't have the soul of a politician anyway.

I would not be opposed to a Constitutional amendment that would change the requirements so that naturalized citizens can run for President. Not that I'm a great fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger or any other specific person. It just seems like an unnecessary requirement to have; one that might be sending subconscious signals of American superiority to the rest of the world. Do we want to be telling the world that only natural-born American citizens can be trusted with the reins of power?

Internet Vacation

Peter Suderman at The American Scene writes:

Due to a combination of moving into the city and an array of screw-ups on the part of Comcast (about which the less said, the better, unless you’re really interested in a lot of over the top vulgarity and spit-on-my-monitor anger), I spent all weekend without internet. I didn’t even watch the Oscars. The only reason I’ve got a connection right now is because I went down the street to the wonderful little neighborhood coffee shop, without which, I would sitting on a downtown street corner, laptop in hand, with a sign that says, Will Work (or Blog) for Wi-Fi.

The experience, though, is strangely cleansing. Like most people who spend all day in front of a computer, I am hopelessly addicted to news and blogs. As many people have discovered, there’s something strangely compelling, in a narrative sense, about regular updates on your favorite news stories or from your favorite online commentators. Let me put it like this: I don’t watch soap operas, but I do read Matt Yglesias and The Corner—along with about a zillion other blogs and magazines.

But going without them, even for a relatively short period, is somewhat frightening. My mind starts to think about them, to wonder about what’s being written where and by whom—and there’s nothing there. I imagine it’s sort of like when one loses a limb and gets phantom itches (except not completely traumatic, and, obviously, entirely trivial in comparison). But then after a while, it’s suddenly not so bad. The mind is cleared; it begins to focus on other things, begins to center itself. Thoughts seem clearer, deeper, like I (perhaps nostalgically) recall them being before I had the internet.

I could say more, but the café is closing, and I’m about to return to my strange, almost Zen-like, blog-free existence.

Amen.

You know what's nice? Knowing that it's February 5, and thus Super Tuesday is happening in the United States, and all the political bloggers and TV reporters and spewers of bullcrap are all breathlessly reporting on the epic Clinton-Obama and McCain-Romney battles.

And you're in the middle of Sumatra, and you're in an area where the electricity and phones aren't reliable, let alone the Internet, and there is no easy and simple way of finding out what's happening.

That is nice. That is relaxing. That is peaceful, even though there are few other ways in which wandering around the middle of Sumatra can be considered "peaceful".

Okay, now I have to go to CNN.com again to see if any major breaking stories have appeared in the past 15 minutes.

John McCain for 2008 Election Loser

During the somewhat-shorter-than-I-expected Republican primary season, I figured John McCain was the Republican I most wanted to win the nomination.

Part of it was a feeling he'd lost to an inferior candidate back in 2000 and so now the wrongs of the universe were being righted.

Part of it was that McCain seemed like an actual human and not an android manufactured in a high-tech politician factory, unlike a certain former Massachusetts governor who shall remain nameless.

And maybe part of it was the theory that, since George W. Bush talked about having a "humble" foreign policy back in 2000 and we all know where that got us, a candidate who literally sang about bombing Iran would be likely to usher in a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity.

Now, for a long time I've been hearing voices across the Democratic blogs saying precisely why McCain would be an unacceptable President. Now that the nomination seems within his grasp, the attacks are multiplying. Two sharply-worded critiques have been Jeff Fecke's John McCain and the Cult of Masculinity and Melissa McEwan's McCain Is Not Fit to Be President, both at Shakesville.

But I am going to stay firm in my conviction that McCain is the best of the Republican possibilities, because:

1) We live in a culture where, if I hold on to my opinion come what may, it's a sign of strength, not stubbornness, and certainly not stupidity.
2) No human being in the history of the world has ever formed an opinion based on anything other than his own biased worldview, so I'm just following in my forefathers' footsteps.
3) I'm voting for Obama or Clinton this November anyway.

Various Blog Posts

Some particularly interesting and/or brilliant posts that I've seen from various blogs lately:

The Top Ten Things that Environmentalists Need to Learn at Depleted Cranium. A friendly reminder to well-meaning environmentalists that they live in the real world, and the real world is not some magical fantasyland where the right technology will solve all our problems and ordinary people will happily accept major reductions in their perceived standard of living for the sake of some abstract goal.

This came out a lot longer than I expected. However, this is also what is becoming an increasingly large portion of this website. Maintaining the environment is a critical issue especially as evidence of accelerated global warming mounts and as energy becomes more of an issue than it has in recent past. Unfortunately, many of those who claim to be working for environmental improvements lack an understanding of a few basic concepts which are absolutely critical to accomplishing anything.

Unasked-for Advice to New Writers about Money, at John Scalzi's Whatever. Let me tell you, I nearly made a terrible blunder. I estimate I have about 90% as much writing talent as J. K. Rowling, so I figured I would make about 90% as much money from my first novel as she did from hers. Which, you know, turns out to be a pretty decent sum of money. So I got all set to quit my job and begin writing my first novel. But then I read Scalzi's oh-so-sane advice, and I realized I was about to make a major mistake.

Why am I offering this entirely unsolicited advice about money to new writers? Because it very often appears to me that regardless of how smart and clever and interesting and fun my fellow writers are on every other imaginable subject, when it comes to money — and specifically their own money — writers have as much sense as chimps on crack. It’s not just writers — all creative people seem to have the “incredibly stupid with money” gene set for maximum expression — but since most of creative people I know are writers, they’re the nexus of money stupidity I have the most experience with. It makes me sad and also embarrasses the crap out of me; people as smart as writers are ought to know better.

Zompist's blog may be relatively new, but Zompist has a record stretching back several years of writing persuasive-sounding stuff - you can find much of it at Zompist.com. His The Failure of Neoliberalism, a review of Ha-joon Chang's Bad Samaritans: The myth of free trade and the secret history of capitalism, is a defense of economic protectionism and indictment of free trade that forces me to question some of my own assumptions. It didn't make me into an enemy of globalization overnight, but it presents arguments for protectionism that I'm going to have to deal with rather than ignore.

It’s the set of policies– free trade, eliminating tariffs, free movement of capital, privatization, safeguarding intellectual property, balancing budgets– that the IMF pushes on developing countries, and the Economist holds up as the self-evident standard for everyone.

Pretty obviously these are policies that rich First World companies like: they want to sell their products everywhere without restriction, they don’t want copycats, they hate when protectionist or nationalist governments get in their way. But it’s also claimed that these policies will somehow promote development and prosperity; indeed, enthusiasts like Tom Friedman maintain that it’s “the only model on the rack”.

As Chang shows, it’s not. It’s not how the First World developed. It doesn’t produce prosperity and it doesn’t develop economies.

Zompist's review of Chang's book makes me think critically about economic globalization (and reminds me of the need to actually learn something about international economics). I found his post The Problem with Nationalism to be much more immediately persuasive.

Of course nationalism isn’t the only evil in the world, nor the only cause of war. But for such a source of misery it retains an astoundingly high reputation. We now repudiate other historical evils (slavery, racism, sexism, religious wars), but many people still think that “—-ia for the —-ians” is a pretty good idea.

And I suspect he's right. I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea of Taiwanese independence, but what must be remembered is that, for all practical purposes, Taiwan is already independent, and has been for decades. And frankly, Taiwan is being governed much better than China.

Beowulf

Saw Beowulf last night. The computer animation made it seem like World of Warcraft was up on the big screen. I will say that I was impressed that there were times it was indistinguishable from live action.

I'm a bit gobsmacked that Beowulf managed to get away with a PG-13 rating in the United States. Presumably if Angelina Jolie's mighty nipples had been visible, that alone would have been enough to push the movie into R territory. Of course it's nothing new to point out that American movie ratings make no sense. The folks who decide if a movie will be the recipient of a PG-13 or an R rating are helplessly in the thrall of the mighty exposed female nipple. (And a lady's nipples are far more powerful than, say, a guy cutting off his own arm, then reaching into a dragon's chest with his remaining arm, tearing out the dragon's still-beating heart, and displaying it for all to see like a trophy.)

My girlfriend was amused that, in the end, Beowulf fought not just for his wife's honor, not just for his mistress' honor, but for the honor of his wife and his mistress.

I AM BEELZEBUFO THE ALMIGHTY. WHAT SEEKEST THOU?

Reading coverage of the discovery of the huge ancient frog Beelzebufo ampinga, I have to say I really like the artist's illustration of Beelzebufo with a typical modern frog.

Looks like a kid's book illustration, doesn't it? Our young amphibian protagonist is trying to hide his nerves as he seeks an audience with Beelzebufo the Almighty, the ancient and terrible one, who alone holds the secret that can save our hero's beloved pond.

Not sure how to work the pencil in.

The Magnificent Comedy that Is Best Buy

A Best Buy customer is suing the store for $54 million for losing her laptop:

Like many people, Campbell bought an extended warranty for her laptop when she bought it from Best Buy, and she took advantage of that when the power button broke off after a year. Best Buy accepted the machine for repair and said it would be ready in two to six weeks. But six weeks passed and the computer wasn't ready. After three months of ruthlessly hounding the company, Best Buy finally admitted it couldn't find the machine.

Ultimately, Best Buy offered to pay her $900 for losing the machine... as a gift card. She countered that it had originally cost over $1,100, not to mention all her data that was now gone for good. She demanded $2,100, and Best Buy simply ignored her.

At this point, Campbell was made aware that all her personal data on the machine could lead to a major identity theft issue, though Best Buy never filed their legally required notice that she was at risk. That was the last straw, and she filed suit for $54 million, representing herself. Best Buy has since upped its offer to a total of $4,100 if she withdraws the case. She says she doesn't expect to win, but wants to go to court anyway to force Best Buy to explain how her laptop was lost.

I guess I should count myself as lucky. When I took my two-month-old laptop in to Best Buy to be repaired under the extended warranty, they told me to come back in a month, so they could send it off to a special service center. I returned a month later, and they had not lost my laptop. It was right where I'd dropped it off several weeks earlier.

Untouched.

They hadn't sent it to the service center. In fact, they hadn't done a damn thing.

And they were remarkably blase and unapologetic about it. The guy behind the counter didn't openly acknowledge that the good folks at Best Buy had in any way failed to do what was expected of them. Well, apart from the inescapable fact that they said they would repair my computer, and they quite conspicuously didn't.

But at least they didn't lose it.

If this experience taught me anything (other than not to shop at Best Buy), it was not to trust extended warranties. Once I'm entitled to free repair service, the store has no financial incentive to give me good service.

Well, of course there's always the threat of me taking my business elsewhere in the future, but I get the feeling that doesn't matter because Best Buy has hit upon the successful business model of treating all customers as one-time cash machines.

They figure every single one of us will take our business elsewhere after our first Best Buy experience, so they expend as little expense as possible to try to milk us for as much money as possible with our very first purchase.

51 More Weeks of the Year of the Rat

New Year's was February 7.

Now it's February 17, and every evening from my apartment I can still hear fireworks going off. Did some people buy up enough that they could shoot them off every night till August? I guess there are worse ways of keeping oneself entertained.

Where this race could go

When Rudy Giuliani quit the 2008 Presidential race, I thought he seemed almost happy it was all over with. He seemed to enthusiastically throw his support to John McCain. When Mitt Romney quit the 2008 Presidential race, he gave a speech full of appalling nonsense, but he tried hard not to damage McCain on his way out. When John Edwards quit the 2008 Presidential race, he did not endorse either of his main rivals, but he acknowledged that the best thing for him to do was to bow out.

Now, Barack Obama by no means has the nomination sewn up. It's still possible that Hillary Clinton will win this thing in the end. But if Obama's lead continues to build and Clinton continues to fall behind in the delegate race, I have a horrible fear that she will not give up gracefully.

The potential battles to win over superdelegates and the fight to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates (Florida, I'm prepared to concede Clinton won semi-fairly, since all candidates were on the ballot. Michigan, no way.) foretell a really nasty inter-party squabble that could leave Democrats severely disillusioned before November. I don't share many Americans' hatred of Hillary Clinton, but I can picture her severely wounding her own party before accepting defeat.

For some reason I don't think the same of Obama. I think Obama will concede gracefully if Clinton eventually beats him. Is this just a delusion?

Hypocrisy's a Part of Life

Eight years ago, one of the major arguments that Democrats had in favor of Al Gore against George W. Bush was that Gore had far more experience, particularly in foreign policy.

This year, if Barack Obama wins the nomination, a lot of these same Democrats will be supporting Obama against John McCain, a candidate who has quite a bit more foreign policy experience than Obama. What's up with that? Is the Democratic Party a bunch of hypocrites?

Well, maybe, but it's all the nature of political discourse. Back in 2000, Bush wasn't really criticized because he lacked foreign policy experience. Rather, people who didn't want him elected President used his lack of foreign policy experience as a tool to cudgel him with. In a world where Bush was the experienced foreign policy wonk and Gore was comparatively new at the game, the Republicans would have used Gore's relative lack of experience to criticize him. That's just how political discourse works.

In the tedious sitcom down in Florida that followed the 2000 Presidential Election, lots of Republicans pretended that Gore was trying to "steal" the election. I don't think there are many politically minded Americans who doubt that had Bush been in Gore's position and vice versa, Bush would have been working just as hard to "steal" the election. Whether they would admit it or not. And, of course, there was a subset of Gore supporters who kept harping on Gore's victory in the popular vote, as if it meant something substantial. Maybe it did, but I can imagine some of the invective that would have been flying around in Democratic circles had the situation been exactly reversed, Gore in Bush's position and vice versa. Probably something along the lines of how all those Republicans fixated on Bush's victory in the popular vote but loss in the Electoral College were ignorant of the workings of the Constitution, the GOP is made up of dangerous uneducated ignoramuses, and so on.

For a modern-day 2008 example, just imagine how Hillary Clinton's supporters would react if Barack Obama had won the meaningless Michigan and Florida primaries, and now his campaign was trying to get those delegates seated at the convention. I'm guessing that they would have just a teensy little problem with it.

You can accuse political bloviators of hypocrisy all you want, but this form of hypocrisy just seems so widespread, so deeply rooted in how people choose to talk about politics, that it's really kind of pointless to bother criticizing it. Maybe it's better to look past the actual surface meanings of what they say, and instead focus on how they're saying it.

Or, even better, just don't listen to them.

I'm a political blogger!

Three weeks ago I posted this obvious troll:

If Barack Obama wins the Democratic nomination, I'm going to tell everybody not to vote for him in November because he's unelectable. After all, everyone knows a black man can't be elected President.

Also, he's a Muslim who personally crashed not one but both planes into the World Trade Center.

And while I was out of the country, I got four whole comments from people reveling in my trollish political snarkiness! Granted, all four commenters were racist anti-Semitic socialistic Zionist homosexual Muslim fundamentalists, but still. Four is a lot of comments for this blog. I am so happy.

Anyway, I'm happy that John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party (or the Non-Terrorist-Supporting Party). It was just too much that Mitt Romney was a Mormon, and Mike Huckabee was, even worse, a Christian. Of course, McCain is a sleeper agent who was programmed to destroy America during his years of captivity in Vietnam, but you can't have everything. Also, as everyone knows, he has an illegitimate black baby, but at least that proves his virility. It makes him seem more masculine. After all, one of his possible opponents in the general election is a penisless female woman, and the other is Hillary Clinton.

I'm happy that Hillary is still in a position to beat Barack Osama. I've been very impressed with her ever since she killed Vince Foster with her bare hands. I only wish she were more honest about her intentions to surrender this country to terrorists. I think a good solid period of terrorist rule is just the thing to fix a country overrun with socialist Marxist puppy-pureeing communists.

I would also be satisfied with seeing Saddam Hussein's cousin Barack Hussein "Obama" Osama elected President. Rather than the slow slide into Muslim fundamentalism that this country would see under Hillary Clinton, Barack Osama would plunge us head-first into Muslim fundamentalism. After all, what's less painful, taking off a bandage slowly or with one swift pull?

Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul Ron Paul.

Jesus is gay. Uncle Sam likes little boys. God is a lesbian.

The sad thing is, thanks to search engines and the like, I predict this nonsense will be read by more people than any other post on this blog.

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