Libertine-a-tarians

American politics these days is less than 1 dimensional; it's binary. Are you a liberal or conservative? Those are the only options. But, as anyone who has discussed political and social issues for more than five minutes knows, the full palate of opinions that people can have about an issue cannot be forced into one of two camps.

Some libertarians have developed a two-dimensional chart that effectively expands how to think about where you stand in the political landscape. It's called the Nolan chart. I've including some links to various tests to place yourself on the Nolan Chart.

Here's the short version
Longer test 1
Longer test 2

And here's a decent explanation of how the Nolan Chart works with different issues. And here I am on the chart with some famous people. The blue dot exactly opposite George W. Bush is me.


SEMI-IMPORTANT NOTE! Some of of these sites invert the y-axis so that Anarchism is at the top and Authoritarianism is at the bottom. You should take this into account if you compare your results to my chart above.

Everybody Loves Cheney

Defective Yeti has come up with a very creative analogy worth checking out. Here's a brief quote from the post.

The xenomorph--antagonist of the Alien film series--has a complex lifecycle. After hatching from an egg, the "facehugger" attaches itself to a host organism and implants an embryo deep within its body. Having done so, it seemingly dies. In reality though, the creature lives on, gestating, advancing toward its next stage. Sometime later the parasite violently emerges from its carrier, then rapidly grows to enormous--and lethal--size, a near-perfect killing machine.

This reminds me of nothing so much as Dick Cheney...

Yes, in 2000, Cheney was appointed as head of the committee to find the most qualified Vice President to serve as Bush's running mate. His extensive search revealed that he himself was the most qualified for the job. Literally, a "Dick Maneuver". A lot of people missed that piece of news when it happened because reporting on it was not widespread.

A Bargain's a Bargain

Talk of benchmarks for the Iraqi government by US politicians or the media is often accompanied by the curious phrase that Iraqis must "hold up their end of the bargain." Every time I hear this phrase I want to smack someone. These kind of statements are the moral equivalent of saying a woman deserves to be raped because she is attractive. There was never any dialog or bargain between the US government and the Iraqi people. Are the people who talk about sharing responsibility for the state of Iraq imagining this conversation:

(The Scene: Late 2002, Halls of Justice)
All Iraqis: Excuse me sir, but you've got to help us.

US Government: Whatever do you mean?

All Iraqis: Our country is magically controlled by a brutal dictator that not a single one of us supports. We're desperate to remove him but too lazy to do it ourselves. If only the magic spell could be broken by simply removing this one person.

US Government: Sounds bad but what are we supposed to do about.

All Iraqis: Invade our country at once. It's the only way.

US Government: I don't know. The whole thing sounds dubious and could be pretty risky for us. For one thing, invading your country will hurt our standing with the rest of the world. It will hurt us financially and militarily. I mean, think about it. Unilateral aggression against a sovereign country that is no threat to us goes against everything we stand for. Not to mention its blatant illegality and...

All Iraqis: We don't care. We demand that you do this. In exchange, we'll meet any demands you might have of us. I think that would be a fair bargain.

US Government: Fine. We'll do it but you'll have to meet a number of arbitrary benchmarks that we will set in the future otherwise the deal's off. It's the least you can do.

All Iraqis: We agree and we thank you. You'll be greeted as liberators for the decade or more that we demand you stay.

The Ultimate Hunt

Since the announcement that a team of researchers will attempt to find Bigfoot in the expanses of my current home state, Michigan, I've constructed my own wish list team of experts. A Bigfoot "Dream Team" if you will. And they are:

• Jane Goodall
• Stephen Hawking (Smarty pants who sees the impending danger before anyone else)
• Richard Branson (Wealthy Gadabout)
• Ice Cube or LL Cool J (Black man with street smarts)
• Studs Terkel
• Arlen Spector (Government liaison who's thoughtless politicking puts everyone in danger)
• Alan Moore (Disheveled artist and inappropriate expert)
• Megan Fox (Needs the exposure to keep her on the "hot" list)

So, who's on your team?

UPDATE! - As per the first comment, I've modified the original team to make a no white all black team.

• Mae Jemison
• Neil Degrass Tyson (Smarty pants...)
• P. Diddy (Wealthy Gadabout)
• Desmond Tutu (Same reason Studs is in the previous list)
  
• Al Sharpton (Government liaison...)
• Maya Angelou (Inappropriate...)
• Beyoncé (Hot list...)

(a debt of gratitude to hua bing chong ji for risking life and limb to capture such a rare and beautiful moment of nature as when bigfoot battles a giant squid)

Gotta Have That Confidence

For the most part, sports commentators are morons. That's a big reason why I like going to actual games a lot better than watching them on TV. The mute button comes in handy too.

The basic problem facing your typical sports commentator is how to make himself (usually a male) even remotely useful since most games are self explanatory once you understand the sport. Home runs, yellow cards, sacks, three pointers and other important moments generally don't require the subtle eye of a veteran broadcaster.

King Kaufman has a whole article about announcers this week and he brings up the classic commentator lines about "knowing how to win" and "having confidence".

Location in Space

And, on the topic of sexy soulful female British singers, here's my attempt at a cultural triangulation of Amy Winehouse:

Lauren Hill : Cypress Hill : The Chantels

Triangulation is a technique used to locate the position of a point in space so cultural triangulation would be the cultural equivalent. Art and music critics sometimes use it or the it's two point equivalent which I would call artistic addition. For example, you might say that The Scissor Sisters might be described as Elton John meets a New Orleans Rag Time band or something like this:

Elton John + Rag Time = Scissor Sisters

Seen Your Face Before

I've always thought that Lily Allen often sports a look remarkably similar to the Captain's Daughter from the comic Maakies. Hoop earrings, super long lashes, straight black hair cut like a hemisphere across the forehead.


Now that Lily is in a video as a cartoon and the Maakies cartoon The Drinky Crow Show have come out, the whole thing's looking a bit more intentional. If you choose to follow The Drinky Crow link and are unfamiliar with Maakies, let me just warn you that it's extremely offensive.

The Whore of Babylon 5

I don't know how it happened but I've been watching Babylon 5 for the past week. That show has got to be the geekiest of all the TV shows I have ever seen. I don't even really like it but somehow I end up watching an episode every few days. I guess now I know how S feels about the Gilmore Girls. The only redeeming quality is that because it's hosted by tudou I get to bone up a little on my Chinese reading skills. Yup, the Chinese are to pirating video like crazy is to cats.

UPDATE!
So, Babylon 5 is getting better as the series goes on. It seems to be one of the earliest examples I can think of with a seasonal or series long story arcs. Reasonably solid and complex characters. The science is pretty good too. I'm at the middle of season 2.

DOUBLE UPDATE!
Now, the show's turning back bad TV again. I get the feeling that the writers painted themselves into a corner of the plot. I'm at the beginning of season 4.

Spiders, Spiders Everywhere

I had a dream last night that I was staying with my family in a hotel room full of spiders. I was freaking out trying to brush them off me and vacuum them up while my brother who is actually afraid of spiders just ignored them and went to sleep. That feeling of being immersed in spiders lasted for a few minutes after I woke up.

The moral of the story is: Don't sleep with the fan on you even if it's hot. That wind will penetrate the superficial layers of your body and cause some wind type diseases like headaches, stiff neck or in my case formication (no, not fornication you dirty birdies).


The other day, I was in a gas station and some guy with an African accent was telling the cashier not to sit to long with the fan on her because it will make her sick. It makes me think that African traditional medicine has a concept of wind, too.

("Gust of Wind" by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer via ARC museum)

He Loved Mother Russia

I've been reading a bit lately about one of the most complex and brilliant figures of the 20th century, Andrei Sakharov.Besides his achievements in the field of Russian hat wearing, Sakharov played an important although complicated role in nuclear proliferation. He was instrumental in both designing bombs and movements to limit their use. His scientific and engineering genius pushed the Soviet nuclear program to great heights in the 40s and 50s but then in the 60s the guy turned around and became a leader of the peace activists and internal critics of the Soviet system. He was an outspoken advocate of intellectual freedom as well as a strong opponent of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. For his work along those lines, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the West and was imprisoned in the closed city of Gorky for six years by the Soviet government (While I'd like to talk about "closed cities" here, this post is getting long enough as it is.).

Anyway, Mikhail Gorbachev released Sakharov from his "internal exile" in 1986 partially to get his scientific opinion on the planned US missile defence shield. Sakharov's main advice, by the way, was that the shield could be largely ignored as it would easily be fooled and effectively nullified (a fact which is most certain known by Putin and most certainly been told to and fogotten by Bush). What really interests me though is that Sakharov continued to advocate for reform but was also willing to give military advice to the Soviet government. I can understand the man's confusion since I used to drink Miller Lite because it tastes great but then I find out it's less filling. DILEMMA!

His scientific achievements include two of my favorite nerd fantasy level ideas. The first one being the invention (worked on in conjunction with Igor Tamm) of the Tokamak, a machine that attempts to use a toroidal magnetic field to contain a plasma and produce fusion energy. Now that's the kind of science a geek can chip a tooth on!

The second idea is that gravity is not a fundamental force but instead is an emergent quantum property. That one makes a person feel smart just saying it. So, what the hell does that mean? Well if you're a physicist you can just read this paper. But here's the layman's cliffnotes: Basically, the idea is that if you looked at the fundamental rules of how things behaved at a quantum level, gravity wouldn't be in there. Gravity only looks like a rule when you put together a large group of quantumy things. This theory is called induced gravity and has some proponents even today.

If you still don't understand emergence, just think of traffic. If you look at the local traffic laws, you won't find the rule that you must slow down as you go into a tunnel or as more and more cars get on the road. But, if you look at the behavior of cars on the road this might as well be a law. That's how the concept of emergence works.

(Photo of Sakharov via Gulag)