My map (Part 2)

In an earlier post, I created a divided map of the United States and covered some of the imaginary countries that would reside within, focusing initially on the western half of the country. Now it's time to fill in some more blanks here...

Democratic Republic of Valhalla (Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota)
Capitol: Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN
Population: 6.3 million (2000)
Summary: With a largely Scandinavian and Germanic population, it didn't take long for these three states to come together. With it's relatively small population and camaraderie with their neighbors to the north, however, it would not be surprising to find out they became South Saskatchewan at some point.

Federal Republic of Misanskawa (Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri)
Capitol: Kansas City, KA & MO
Population: 12.9 million (2000)
Summary: Responsible for growing a vast portion of the world's food and feedstock and possessing a rather large nuclear arsenal, Misanskawa becomes one of the most powerful countries in the world, well out of proportion of its population and economic output.

Republic of Texas (Texas, Oklahoma)
Capitol: Austin, TX
Population: 24.3 million (2000)
Summary: Originally, Oklahoma was slated to be its own country known as "Sequoyah" - however, the Republic of Texas, led by a charismatic leader who promised to restore "Greater Texas", immediately annexed Oklahoma. This leader promises to restore the original 1836-1845 boundaries of Texas; since Oklahoma's panhandle was originally part of the 19th century Republic of Texas, has abundant oil reserves, and since it was the weakest of Texas' neighbors, it was the first to get "reunited". This greatly concerns the already strategically vulnerable Sagebrush, since half of New Mexico was originally part of Texas, as well as the Rocky Mountain Republic and Misanskawa, both of which also possess former Texan territory.

Coming next... the South!

Christianity = Islam? Huh?

A couple of quick caveats before I begin:

1. My girlfriend's best friend is lesbian that is absolutely huge on gay rights and the like, so I get a regular dose of the subject every time I see her - we're talking at least once a week here.
2. I'm an atheist and a rather proud one at that. I'm not the kind that rubs religious people's noses in it, mind you, but, as far as I'm concerned, religion just doesn't make any sense to me.

That said...

Rosie O'Donnell, a lesbian that is an absolute case study in my theory that gays have an opposite sense of fashion compared to their straight compatriots (i.e. gay men have fashion sense, whereas most straight men don't, and gay women don't have fashion sense, whereas most straight women do), blurted out between feedings that, "And just one second, radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America." Now, let's keep something in mind here - in fundamentalist Islamic doctrine, it's okay to kill gays. Furthermore, they actually practice what they preach in some parts of the world. We're talking state policy here, not isolated incidents.

I know that Christianity is certainly not clean on this issue. I remember the case of Matt Shepard, along with the play produced in response to that. I also know about Jerry Falwell's thoughts on the subject, as well as the infamous Chick Publications cartoons. That said, fundamentalist Christian dogma, contrary to what you might think about the Bush administration's stand, is not official state dogma. Killing gay people is a crime in the United States, just like killing anyone else; it doesn't matter if God told you to do it or not.

Come to think of it, it doesn't matter if Allah told you to do it or not, so I guess Rosie does have a point - radical Christianity and radical Islam are, in fact, just as threatening in a country like the United States... hardly at all. Let's keep it that way.

My map (Part 1)

Following my last post, I mentioned that I would create a map.

So I did.


Since I'm running low on time, I'm going to give you a quick set of descriptions of the western nations outlined. By the way, all statistical numbers are from American FactFinder, courtesy of the US Census.

Democratic Republic of Pacifica (California, Hawaii, Pacific territories)
Capitol: Honolulu, HI
Population: 35.1 million (2000 Census)
Summary: The most pleasant to visit country in quite possibly the world, and also probably the most expensive to live in, at least in this hemisphere. This country adopts a European-style government with European-style social protections at European prices and has some of the most stringent environmental protections in the world.

Nirvana Republic (Alaska, Washington, Oregon)
Capitol: Seattle, WA
Population: 10 million (2000 Census)
Summary: Originally part of Pacifica, Oregon and Washington began to swiftly break away when the Pacifica Aqueduct project, designed to ship water from the Columbia River to ever-thirsty Southern California, was pushed through the Pacifica legislature behind the nearly indomitable strength of the California vote. Alaska later joined when Pacifica made oil drilling and fishing illegal, thus completing the creation of Nirvana.

Confederated Republics of Sagebrush (Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico)
Capitol: Phoenix, AZ
Population: 9 million (2000 Census)
Summary: An extremely dry country with relatively fierce libertarian leanings; between the relatively permissive social attitudes in Nevada, the strong distrust of authority in Arizona, and some unique Castillan heritage in New Mexico, Sagebrush is united for one reason and one reason only - protection against their much larger and more powerful neighbors to the south, east, and west. However, Sagebrush is faced with a severe water problem, a situation exacerbated by the division of the Colorado River through four different rival countries, and a severe transportation problem, with there being only two ways to travel from Arizona to Nevada by land and both involve driving on top of narrow dams. Furthermore, Nevada's transportation system is designed for east-west travel, making it highly susceptible to interference from both neighboring Pacifica and Deseret.

Deseret (Utah, Southern Idaho up to, but not including, Idaho County)
Capitol: Salt Lake City, UT
Population: 3.25 million
Summary: Deseret is the official homeland for the followers of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints, otherwise known as "Mormons". Incorporating Utah and Southern Idaho (Northern Idaho voted to become part of the Rocky Mountain Republic in a plebiscite), it's run by the President of the LDS Church through the Quorum of Twelve and the various institutions and bodies of the Church. Deseret is orderly, clean, and is more than happy to accept visitors, provided they don't drink, smoke, gamble, swear, or say the word "polygamy".

Rocky Mountain Republic (Montana, Northern Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado)
Capitol: Laramie, WY
Population: 6 million
Summary: In many respects, the Rocky Mountain Republic is similar to Switzerland - mountainous and neutral. Outside of relatively cosmopolitan Denver, however, things are very different, with the inhabitants maintaining a very proud and rural outlook on life.

Coming soon... the Plains countries

Strange Maps

In a very roundabout sort of way, I discovered strange maps, a site dedicated to, appropriately enough, strange maps. It's a nifty site and I'm definitely including it among my favorites.

One of the more interesting maps there links to Ex Unum, Pluribus, which suggests breaking up the US thusly:



Some quick critiques:

1. The only way Nevada would be part of California would be if California invaded it. Past that, though we certainly have our fair share of Californians here (and then some), most of them are here because California is horribly mismanaged.
2. Due to Mormon sympathies, I suspect that Utah and Idaho would probably get together. Meanwhile, the rest of the mountain states would be too busy laughing to join up.
3. I could see Washington and Oregon teaming up, since they both have similar values; in fact, I could very conceivably even see them teaming up with California, though I suspect their sentiments towards California are very similar to Nevada's.

In fact... maybe I'll come up with my own map in a few.

Two quick links

First, courtesy of Slate and Timothy Noah, Congress finally takes on OPEC - a brief excerpt:

Longtime readers of this column may recall my interest in a lawsuit filed in 2000 by Carl and Debbie Prewitt, a married couple who ran a Texaco station in Birmingham, Ala. The Prewitts were naïve enough to think that the United States might care to enforce the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts against an international conspiracy to fix the price of oil. The conspiracy, which began in 1960 and continues to this day, is called the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC. An appellate judge shut down the Prewitts in 2003, just as another judge had, in a similar lawsuit two decades earlier, shut down the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Far from taking on OPEC, the U.S. government actually protects OPEC from citizens who try to compensate for the Justice department's peculiar blind spot. Think about that next time you shell out $60 to fill up your tank.

Meanwhile, via Instapundit, an article in the Libertarian Center, which, in summary, states:

Yet, grading on a global and historical curve, America is a distinctively libertarian country. And despite the best efforts of ideologues on both the left and right, it has grown more libertarian, on the whole, over the past few decades. A grasp of these basic facts is essential to any sound understanding of the country’s recent history and current political muddle.

The author does mention that there are some distinctly non-libertarian leanings in this country, mostly relating to crime, abortion, and "virtue" (think anti-smoking campaigns), but, by and large, the US isn't divided between liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans - most of it is a little of both, taking a milder version of the social liberty offered by the left wing and a milder version of the economic liberty promised by the right wing. That, of course, would be the definition of libertarianism.

Live Earth - Heh.

Ah, the joys of hype... I will point out that I'm not the first person that's blogged about this, and I know I'm not going to be the last, but, well, who cares?

So, it all began with an article in the Christian Science Monitor titled, "Could this be the global-warming generation?", with quotes like:

Their older brothers and sisters, however, think differently. "Generation Y is getting fired up about global warming," says Jeff Angel, director of the Total Environment Centre, a green advocacy group in Sydney. "There's a lot of evidence in Australia to show that young people look for employers with the right environmental credentials."

In America, too, "there has been an absolute explosion among young people whose main concerns are related to the environment," says James Pittman, who teaches Environmental Studies at Prescott College in Arizona. "They are concerned about their future and it is really starting to sink in."

I know the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", and I know I don't exactly live with or work with a representative sample here, but, considering how the people indicating that "Generation Y: Seeks green employer" are the director of the Total Environment Centre and an Environmental Studies professor, I'm wondering if their dataset is as broad as they think it is, especially when you considering the following:

During the concert...

"There are people at this event who are not picking up their trash," said Clive Hall, a bartender and deejay from Brooklyn, N.Y.

Cassie Toner, another attendee, was disappointed that there weren't more efforts to inform concertgoers. "I thought that there were going to be more educational and NGO booths set up outside," but instead, she said, companies gave away useless materials, which were strewn around the grounds.

Some of the singers also openly admitted to being relatively uninformed. Akon, a singer who has spent much of the year at the top of the charts, admitted to not knowing what "green" meant until the day of the show, but said that he had decided to perform because he "wanted to be more educated about it."

Meanwhile, ratings weren't what they could be, failing to even outdraw the NHL.

So, long story short, there was a concert based around environmentalism that was supposed to be generation defining that failed to be environmentally friendly and failed to draw any ratings on TV. In other words, it failed. It's at this point that I'd like to mention the following:

This is not the 1960s. We are not our parents. People of my generation are more than cynical enough to know that, when a bunch of rich rockers and an opportunistic politician get together, the result is going to be a decent concert with some preaching to justify all the bands coming together. It's not going to be generation defining, it's not going to really advance any cause, and it's certainly not going to live up to its own principles. Put another way, Woodstock isn't happening again because large Woodstock-sized concerts happen often enough now where they're not groundbreaking. In fact, to be brutally honest, many of us are kind of ticked that we're "Generation Y" in the first place - just because we happen to be born between 1980 and 1989, does that really mean that we have enough in common to be a labeled generation, with shared experiences that define us? Do we have to be "Generation X+1" because nobody could come up with anything better to name us? Did anyone ask those of us born in 1980 that are actually old enough to remember the Cold War, Operation Desert Storm, and the Rodney King riots if we thought we have all that much in common with those born after 1985 that, honestly, remember none of this? Then, as if that weren't bad enough, we periodically have people from our parents' generation that remember things like Woodstock and Summer of Love and say, "Hey, why can't our kids do that?" This, of course, leads to someone from that generation trying to make those "generation-defining events" happen for us by throwing rock concerts like Live Earth, which misses the point:

The reason Woodstock and Summer of Love were "generation defining" for you in the first place is because two things were true:

1. Nothing like them had ever been done before.
2. YOU were the ones throwing the party, not your parents.

You want to know what would be a form of rebellion for us? Well, so do we, to be honest - you guys did enough drugs, sex, and who knows what else to raise the bar high enough (pardon the expression) that we'd end up killing ourselves trying to exceed it. So, it's a little easier these days to go the other way, to go conservative, to vote Republican or join a church or something.

For what it's worth, I've tried both - it's not that interesting. *grin*

Hold it - Sony isn't customer friendly?

Let's start with the article that started it all: Sony VAIO Customer Service, courtesy of Instapundit. It's a classic horror story of dealing with a product support line for a large company; in this case, Sony seems to be feeling a little more belligerent than most.

From where I'm sitting, though, Sony's behavior isn't terribly surprising. Let's take a look at the moves that Sony has made over the years:

- Creating MiniDisc, a wonderful idea at the time that, if it worked the way people wanted it to, would've made the iPod unnecessary. I have many a "fond" memory of dealing with Sony's SonicStage software and its byzantine anti-copy mechanisms. I also have many a "fond" memory of looking at MiniDisc support on a Mac and realizing that, yes, Sony hates Apple. Great.
- Okay, so here's the plan... right when everyone is all paranoid about spyware, we're going to embed a piece of software on our CDs that, when you put the CD into your computer, will install itself and create a huge, gaping security hole in your machine, all so we can make sure you're not copying our stuff. Good plan. Then, when everyone freaks out and says that we shouldn't be doing this, we're going to make an uninstaller that makes the problem worse and require people to get unsolicited junk e-mail in order to download it. Brilliant!
- Hmm... we sell a portable gaming console to a highly technical audience. How do we get more of those people to buy our product? I know - we'll insult their intelligence! Yes!

And the list goes on.

Honestly, what amazes me more than anything at this point is that Sony is still in existence.

Iacocca

Read an article on Lee Iacocca's new book, "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?", which, alas, I can't link to because Motor Trend is being rather weak at the moment. So, instead, I'll send forth an excerpt I found using a quick Google search:

From Informationa Clearing House:

04/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to, as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty, but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us. Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

Read the whole thing. Heck, read the book - I'm going to have to, I'm thinking.

I'm going to start by pointing out that I'm in favor of what we're doing in Iraq, even if the execution is only finally starting to make some sense - Saddam Hussein needed to go. He didn't represent his people - no, he gassed 1/3 of the people he ruled and condemned over half of the remainder in an environmental wasteland of his own making by damning off their water supply. I have no problems with us kicking him out. I also have no problems with us trying to take control of the situation. It would've been nice if our execution was a little cleaner - more boots on the ground would've been a good start, as well as a workable strategy. However, it seems that Petraus at least has a plan, which is more than can be said about anybody else that's taken the helm there. This brings up a point, though:

The only place that people think there is leadership is the military. Even that, though, is going down. Take a look at those numbers - they're all going down. Quoting from the article:

The drop in confidence in most institutions coincides with a period of time in which Americans have low levels of overall satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States, are giving Congress and President Bush low approval ratings, and are very negative about the direction of the economy. There is little doubt that this same "malaise" is reflected when respondents are asked to rate their confidence in the list of 16 societal institutions in Gallup's annual update. Whether these low ratings are becoming a permanent fixture of the American psyche or represent a short-term bout of public depression remains to be seen.

The problem, in my humble opinion, is not the economy - yes, gas prices are going up, but we're nowhere near in as bad of shape as we could be. I'm not rolling in the dough here, and the gas prices are hurting, but they're not breaking me. I'm not the only one in that boat. What is breaking me, and is driving everyone I know insane, is that there is no plan - anywhere. We're rudderless. We have a President that nobody likes and everybody refuses to listen to anymore. We have a Congress that is paralyzed with the twin duties of wasting time on a "comprehensive" immigration bill that nobody wants and with trying to stop a war by threatening to cut funding from the one institution that people actually like in this country, all while squeezing in a pay raise.

While talking with my girlfriend over the weekend about politics, she explained to me why she doesn't vote - she rarely likes any of the candidates. From where she's sitting, they're all liars, they all talk out of the corner of their mouths, and no matter who you vote for, you end up getting the same results. I'm willing to bet my girlfriend isn't the only one. Worse yet, I'm beginning to think that this is by design. Lower turnouts are predictable - you get the people that always vote with the names next to the "D" and the "R" in low turnout elections because they're passionate for their "team", whereas in larger elections you get a lot more independents, who tend to be much less predictable. When you're talking about the sums of money that are invested in elections, you want predictability. If you're asking donors to cough up millions of dollars, you want to make a business case that their investment will hold up, and the easiest way to do it is to say, "Well, there are more R's than D's in our district that are passionate about this hot-button issue that our candidate is solid on," or the party inverse of that. You don't want to say, "Well, our candidate is a very erudite, pithy candidate, who is capable of intelligently debating about a range of issues, and has a strong platform of new ideas that he/she wants to roll out." Why not? Because that says, "In order for our candidate to get elected, we will need to educate voters on this candidates issues - all of them - as well as the benefits of each issue. We will also need to combat voter apathy because we've been feeding them swill for the past two generations." Notice that, in the second example, you're selling an entire platform - in the first example, you're selling ONE ISSUE. Guess which is easier?

More on this later.