Spaceships

Why do sci-fi stories have so many spaceships named after sci-fi writers? I don't think anybody's got a ship named after Shakespeare.

Goe, thinks incestuous literary references are overdone.

Libertarians

Libertarians have been bothering me lately. Not in person, more in concept. I used to vote for libertarians in local elections, and seriously considered voting for their 2004 presidential candidate. I didn't because their presidential candidate thought that we should pretend the WTC attacks didn't happen and ignore the rest of the world. Isolationism only works as a foreign policy when you've got nothing anybody else wants, and people want our land, our money, and our stuff.

It's been bothering me more and more that very few libertarians can't discuss their philosophy without pushing either drug legalization or 'free love'. I'm being left with an impression that is growing ever stronger, that libertarians are nothing more than hippies who bathe.

Goe, supports killing bad guys.

It turns out...

Overall, the average literacy of college students is significantly higher than that of adults across the nation. Study leaders said that was encouraging but not surprising, given that the spectrum of adults includes those with much less education.

College students aren't as stupid as everyone else.

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

But it's a low standard to beat.

Meanwhile, people in the Ivory Coast have figured out that France and the United Nations are wrong. Not wrong on any specific issue, but just wrong in being.

I doubt frogs are hopping around Paris yelling 'No Blood for Chocolate!'

Goe, been reading.

festivus

storyblogging festival is up.

Goe, prefers them with descriptions.

Reading and Writing

I normally don't read muc aside from online news stories. The most recent exception being the Wheel of Time series, of which I read every book this last December. Publishers are having trouble getting people to buy books, blaming the multitude of other forms of entertainment for stealing away their audiences. It turns out that even die-hard book fans aren't getting what they used to.

Goe, sees many opportunities that he can't exploit.

Rumsfeld's Navy

It turns out that we don't have enough marines to guard the Navy, or enough soldiers to guard the army. If he can get enough private firms to provide "security" overseas, his job will become nothing but managing contracts.

Goe, because a military for hire is loyal only to the highest bidder.

Oh...

The woman who plays the younger gilmore girl is looking more than a tad bit anorexic. Someone should find her a sandwich.

Goe, sammich!

no four

chapter four will have to wait, it sucked, cat's been unwell, and relatives are in town.

Goe, letting nobody in particular know.

Behold

The evil that is bert.

Goe, standing up for rubber duckies everywhere.

An idea

It occured to me that it should be relatively simple to create an simple ai by using mud's to evolve it. It would take a bunch of computers, and the ability to program.

make one machine the mud server, make sure it can handle many thousands of connections.

make one machine a sex machine, to handle reproduction.

the others will be caretakers, to handle the organisms being evolved.

if the population drops below 10 on any given caretaker machine, the sex machine spawns a completely new genome, runs the genome through a script debugger that turns the genome into a script for the caretakers to run, then passes it off to a caretaker to take care of.

each script should be able to access thousands of variables per organism.

organisms would be able to reproduce randomly and asexually at first, with the parents genome passing itself off to the sex machine for mutation addition (and a little lengthening to future complexity). as the organisms learn to do simple things, like eat or drink, those will become criteria for asexual reproduction, favoring organisms that take care of themselves. since they'd all be on the same server, interaction would a part of their lives from the beginning. it would be possible (eventually) for people to log in and interact with them.

Goe, just passing on thoughts.

The bigger fish

The idea of the new Caliphate is the recurrent nightmare of presidents kings and emirs. In its al-Qaeda manifestation this threat may provoke a tragic blood-stained laugh, but the Iranian version sends a shiver down their spines.

“Our foreign policy will not be defensive but offensive” Ahmadinejad said recently, warning that “Islam is a universal religion and today the responsibility of imposing it on the rest of the world sits on Iran’s shoulders.”

Even the arab press is growing afraid of Iran's aspirations for world domination. Unlike Ann Coulter, he has millions of militants in agreement.

Goe, uneasy about the strength of our enemies.

History amended

"God cannot alter the past, though historians can."
~Samuel Butler, "Prose Observations"

Iran trying to recruit "historians" from around the world to write a comprehensive new version of the Second World War, in which the Holocaust is a trick created by German and Polish jews to defraud the rest of the world of life, liberty, and property.

Unfortunately, most of the rest of the world is either eager to play along, or trying so hard to be seen as having an "international" viewpoint that they'll overlook even current, existing concentration camps, and organized genocides. After all, it's important to overlook one anothers flaws, even if those flaws kill several million people. Save a few thousand lives and Speilberg will make a film about you. Save more, and you'll be arrested and shot for your ill manners.

But then, there are worse things to be remembered for.

Goe, wishes he could do more to make the world a better place.

Battlestar HA!

Even Mr. Goldberg agrees. except that they missed the possibility of promoting Adama.

Goe, outthinking professional thinkers.

Conspiracies again

Watching the new Battlestar Galactica. Admiral Kane is recognized by all the major characters as being just as evil and dangerous as the cylons. The president encourages Adama to kill Kane. Why doesn't the president relieve Kane of command or promote Adama over her to the same effect? With the stroke of a pen, she could retire Kane and solve all of the problems they have with her. Instead, she encourages backstabbing. Why can't anybody make sci-fi without friggin conspiracies?

Goe, wondering if non-conspiratorial plots cause the writers great pain and anguish.

storyblogging.

new thingie up. kinda slow.

Goe, changing the side links a bit today.

Learning Curve

There was no window. Dr. Merril made a mental note to have windows put in all the booths before going public. Windows and a name, he thought, laying in the booth. He'd just travelled across the continent in a fraction of a second, had been doing so for months, but nobody on his team could come up with a name that wasn't already trademarked by a zealous entertianment company. He chuckled and made another mental note to ask marketing if they had a name. The technician should be opening the booth to let him out at any second.

---

Tom looked out the window at the technician. He was supposed to travel to New York, but the safety protocols mandated a local test every day. Someone had forgotten to disconnect the secondary local booth afterwards. It wasn't a problem, really. The technician could send him from here once they verified that the New York booth was closed. At least this booth had windows. The thought of sitting in the dark made him chuckle as he watched the technician disconnect the local test cabling. The technician turned and gave him a thumbs up, before pressing the send button.

---

A fraction of a second passed before the disfigured remains of Dr. Tom Merril weighed twice what they should have. The safety protocols were modified within hours.

Goe, la di di, di di di da.

wow

it turns out that nobody really wanted a hippopotamus for christmas.

Goe, sold his share in the hippo farm just in time.

mis-U.N.derstanding

Palestinians attack the United Nations club bar to show their solidarity with Mothers Against Drunk Drivers and Beautiful People.

Goe, not a damned damane.

before i forget

another storyblogging carnival is up.

Goe, forgets many more things than he remembers.

No posts lately

It's not that I haven't had anything to say, but that I've been reading a lot. Gotten many ideas to fold into the Generic Adventure, and jotting many things down that I will write/complain about later.

Goe, giving himself headaches squinting at all the little letters.

Henry

Sang Henry the VIII for two hours to annoy an annoying relative.

Goe, was not a farmer's dog.

The Good Fire

Was reading a book this week when I realized something I'd probably noticed before and never put much thought into. In religions (both from novels and the real world), light is a good thing. It's bright, it helps plants grow, many monsters are scared of it and a few can't move in it. Not so for fire.

Balrogs and other demonic creatures are made of fire and shadow. Hell is a fiery pit. If light is a good thing, does firelight not count?

Goe, puzzled by the enigmatic conundrum.

farking holidays.

among the recent idiocy over on fark was mention of the iranian president's most recent claims about isreal.

Iran's president suggests Holocaust didn't happen, but if it did, Israel should move to Europe

Over half the comments either claim the holocaust didn't happen, or that it happened on a much smaller scale than history indicates. Among those are people claiming that there are no reliable historical records of jews living in the middle east prior to 1948. These people are incredibly stupid, and that is why the New York Times is not afraid of Glenn Reynolds and his pajamamedia.

Pope denounces materialism from balcony of marble, gold-domed building in midst of jewel-encrusted religious icons while wearing giant gold cross

This one is sort of funny, but the pope isn't as hypocritical as they're trying to portray him. None of that stuff was bought for Christmas, and probably none of it was bought during this or the last papacy. But the materialism thing is right. Christmas is a very materialistic holiday. It's far more materialistic than any religious understanding of the holiday would convey.

It's not just Christmas though. What holidays don't have mattress or furniture sales? We're far more likely to see ads for flag day sales than actual flags on flag day. Labor day is more about outdoor cooking than about honoring a strong work ethic. Memorial day is about movies and mattresses, not fallen soldiers. Veteran's day is about cheap furniture, not the soldiers who protected us. Halloween is about candy and costumes, not scaring away evil spirits. Thanksgiving isn't about giving thanks, but about family, football, and turkey. Why does materialism only become a bad thing at Christmastime?

Goe, thinks it's a conspiracy against wrapping paper manufacturers.

Chomsky on Bush

So therefore you have... George Bush... this pampered kid who came from a rich family and went to prep school and an elite university. And you have to present him as an ordinary guy who makes grammatical errors, which I'm sure he's trained to make--he didn't talk that way at Yale--and a fake Texas twang, and he's off to his ranch to cut brush or something. It's like a toothpaste ad.

- Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at MIT.

Both political parties and the media are far to the right of the general population on a whole host of issues. And the population is just disorganized, atomized... And that's why the media and campaigns keep away from (political) issues.

And here he's just flat wrong, the american public is smeared like a bell curve across the political spectrum. Politicians and the press don't avoid talking about issues, they love talking about issues. They avoid talking about philosophy because having an underlying belief structure of any sort will often conflict with party and local interests. Most of the public doesn't put thought into their own philosophy of government, focusing instead on specific issues, which encourages politicians to ally with whatever position their pollster tells them is most popular.

The only issue chomsky believes in is 'social justice', which is a left-wing way of ignoring their mothers. My mother often told me that life isn't fair, and I think it's a fairly safe assumption that most other people heard something similar from their own mothers. 'Social Justice' is the making of that unfairness illegal, so that everytime someone does not have a clear personal gain, someone else must be part of a criminal conspiracy to wrong that person. It's this concept of punishing the lucky and hardworking that turns every socialist state into a repressive nightmare, as any reward is taken as proof of guilt.

Goe, hoping that life will be unfair to his benefit.

No Nukes for Thou

The world should work to make nuclear weapons as universally condemned as slavery or genocide, UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei said on Saturday after receiving the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize.

- from here

So the UN believes that nuclear weapons should only be permitted in Europe, Africa, Asia, and everywhere else? Slavery and genocide are still fairly acceptable in the eastern hemisphere, although Chavez and Castro are working to make them fashionable on our side of the planet...

I would like to note that according to this source, the slave trade in western Europe is almost ten times that of the U.S., making the whole of the EU vastly more pro-slavery than the U.S., since most of their slave trading is done in eastern Europe. If immigration and employment laws were enforced, and border security tighted enough to prevent a terrorist attack, it would be impossible to bring slaves into this country. Any action taken to stop the slave trade anywhere would be taken as racist actions against non-domestic ethnic groups, and the people taking those actions would be condemned as racist by the 'international community', the same 'international community' that supported El Baradei's non-intervention in Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Goe, not hopeful for the future.