What's in a name, and Who's on first

I would love to hear of someone naming their dog "police" or "fire". Calling him in for dinner would be weird but totally worth it.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I also think any police officer with the last name "Down" is in for some confusion.
PPS - I once had an acquaintance who named his dog "Oi".

On this day in the future

On this day in the future:

2084: The Olympic organising committee votes to allow traditional pole dancing as part of the female gymnastics program. Lobbying for male pole dancing inclusion begins immediately.
2123: The majestic Cadbury Creme Pigeon, source of all Cadbury Creme Eggs, is declared extinct. The last specimen goes on display at the Cadbury Natural History Museum in New Atlantis.
2191: A motorcycle with a horse's brain, called Grey Matter, wins the Melbourne Cup in 58 seconds. Muddy conditions the following year prevent Grey Matter from retaining the cup.
2208: After lengthy discussions between the Australian and New Zealand governments, The Commonwealth of Australia finally accepts statehood in New Zealand.
2253: Arnold Schwarzeneggar's brain dies at the age of 306. A stand-in brain is hired to complete filming of his 267th movie.
2288: Brazil successfully enters an ape in the Olympics for wrestling. Broadcasts are stopped mere seconds into the ape's first bout for undisclosed reasons.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I wrote these all at different times, for different reasons.
PPS - There's more about the sports and brains than I remembered until I put them together.

Nesting doll houses

Someone should make a matryoska doll house for those Russian nesting dolls. Just nest smaller and smaller doll houses inside each other, one for each size doll. Bonus points for observing that, once you unpack it all, it's bigger on the inside.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - My dad went to Russia and brought back souvenir matryoska dolls for everyone but me and my brother.
PPS - Twice.

To achieve a meaningless first

I want to be the first person carried up Mount Everest on a sedan chair. Sure, it's a kind of achievement, but I could easily be replaced with a sack of potatoes and it would make no difference. I like that kind of weirdness.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That is all. I'm tired.
PPS - Which is the perfect time to be carried around. Anyone interested?

Super-speed

I've always thought, if I could have a super power, that super-speed would be pretty great. I just think I'd get a lot done, plus the opportunities for messing with people are huge. We discussed this at a recent dinner with friends, because I have awesome friends, and we bounced back and forth different ideas of what you could do with such power if, say, someone was giving a speech. With a couple of props, you could make it look like they were trying to avoid giving the speech at all by performing a bunch of magic tricks. Imagine putting ping-pong balls in their mouth any time it opens up, releasing doves from their sleeves every time they gesture widely, then replacing them with a monkey in a critical moment. Hilarious.

Of course, this assumes that the force and speed don't disintegrate anything, create sonic shock waves or superheat the air, which is a real danger with super-speed and not at all fun. It has to be a weird kind of magical, non-destructive speed power. Quicksilver, in X-Men: Days of Future Past, holds Magneto's head so he doesn't get whiplash, then runs at a speed that would disintegrate a human body anyway. You want to avoid that, if you're super-speeding about. Just a tip.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I'd probably get a lot of reading done.
PPS - Then I'd probably get super-bored, to be honest.

You know, one of these days I'm pretty sure they're going to make a super-realistic animatronic replica of Jurassic Park, and I am so there. The world needs a free-range robot dinosaur park. I guarantee, no matter how much you have to pay to construct it, you'll make a killing. Figuratively speaking. I mean, there's a slight chance that the robots could go berserk and kill everyone, but I'm willing to take that risk.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - With the blood, and the kicking and the biting with the metal teeth and the hurting and shoving.
PPS - I'm sure we can fix it with flash photography.

Camping on the sea

Having a boat with a sleeping cabin is kind of like glamping on the sea or driving your camper van into the desert and just parking wherever.

So, from now on, I think I'm going to call yachts "the trailers of the sea".

Mokalus of Borg

PS - It should make me feel better about not owning one.
PPS - Though that doesn't come up much and it's not really a life goal of mine.

Hollywood chains

I think it's a little bit interesting to link up names of famous people that match first to last. For instance, Nicholle Tom -> Tom Arnold -> Arnold Schwartzeneggar. What is the longest possible one? If you insist on including Arnie, I think your only possible path is backwards from there, and I hadn't heard of Nicholle Tom until I went looking. I'm sure there are others.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I can't find anyone working backwards from Kevin Bacon.
PPS - Or forwards, for that matter.

Maturity

Sometimes I have an encounter with someone who is way more together and grown up than me. Someone with some real practical skills, used to being in charge. Bosses. Parents. It makes me wonder what kind of video games I need to play in order to gain that same maturity myself.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Is it Tetris? It's Tetris, isn't it?
PPS - I really do wonder about my maturity, though.

Little ideas

I have some little ideas that feel a bit too small to develop on their own. So here they are, basically unedited.

• Someone should make a backpack shaped like big AA batteries. I just think it would be cute and funny to see a hyperactive kid running around with a big battery pack on his back.
• I want to see a robot snooker tournament.
• I would definitely watch a steampunk noir detective show with a female protagonist. Somebody get on that.
• Someone should make a hat with handlebars for kids to hold while riding on an adult's shoulders.
• I'd like to see an acting-related reality contest show.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Feel free to point out anyone or anywhere these have happened.
PPS - Or go make them happen. Either way.

Movie/novel borderlines

If you were being kind of weird about it, you could try making a movie that was all text. Just frame after frame of words for the audience to read, like the Star Wars prefaces, but for the entire movie. At that point, would it still be considered a movie, or would it be more of a novel presented in video form?

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, ebooks could easily contain video, so you could do the opposite.
PPS - A bit like this, from CollegeHumor: The Kindle 3.

Logistical problems in the infinite hotel

There's a weird mathematical thought experiment to illustrate the properties of a countable infinity that goes as follows: you are the manager of an infinite hotel. That is, you have rooms numbered from 1, 2, 3 and so on, up and up, never ending, and right now, every room is full. When you get one more guest, even though every room is full, you can make room for them by moving everyone up one room and putting the new guest in room 1. The guest that was in room 1 goes to room 2, room 2's guest goes to room 3 and so on. Nobody has to leave and everyone still gets a room. This keeps working no matter how large a group arrives at once, as long as there's a finite number of them.

If an infinite number of guests arrives at once, you can still make room for them by advising every current guest to double their room number and move in there. The guest in room 1 goes to room 2, room 2 goes to room 4, room 3 to room 6 and so on. The new guests now check into the odd-numbered rooms and there's still enough space for everyone.

What I'd like to talk about, in a silly way, is the logistics of running a hotel like this. When these guests arrive, it's kind of a pain to move people. You could call up each room individually and ask them to move, but you'd never finish. You could just have the first guest relay the message to the next one, so room 1 tells room 2 to move to room 3, room 2 tells room 3 to move to room 4, and so on. Probably the best communication method is an infinite PA system so that you can address all the rooms at once.

The next part is what I always thought would get me down about staying in an infinite hotel. When that infinite group of new guests arrives, it's not so much trouble for the guest in room 1 to move next door to room 2, nor for room 2 to move to room 4. The guest in room 50 might be a bit miffed at having to move all the way up to room 100, but what about the poor saps up at room 1,000,000 and above? You'd probably still be on the move when the next call came over the PA to move up. So you start at room 1,000,000, and the manager calls out "infinite new guests, everyone please double your room number and move up there". You pack up your things and start walking from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000. Before you pass the door for room 1,005,000, the same call comes again, so now your new room is 4,000,000. It just gets further away all the time. Beyond a certain point, you're better off turning back to the check-in desk and announcing yourself as a new guest. In fact, that's probably where all these "new" guests keep coming from.

Lastly, every time you hire a new cleaner, you never see them again. They'd start cleaning at room 1, move on to room 2, then room 3 and so on down the line, never finishing until they just quit. Realistically, you probably need your guests to clean up after themselves.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Past a certain point, though, it would be impossible to verify.
PPS - Plus, on average, you'd probably spend all your time travelling to evict guests whose credit cards were declined.

Jobs of the future

I wonder what jobs of today will make future generations look back and wonder what the hell kind of caveman lifestyle we used to lead. I mean, probably 90% of us these days are either telling machines how to serve their human masters or hammering them back into shape when they break. Boil it right down and, since the industrial revolution, a heck of a lot of jobs can be summarised just that way. You're either a Machine Operator or a Machine Repairer. Or a CEO who pays a secretary to read his email aloud.

So what jobs of today might technology make obsolete tomorrow? Taxi driver? Bartender? What jobs might the future hold that we had no idea we needed? One thing I really hope becomes a thing is "robot car herder". When our roads are full of self-driving cars, some of them are going to break down either in places or ways where they can't drive themselves back to the repair shop. A tow truck would handle those. The robot car herder would be tasked with tackling those cars that go out of control in their software, driving out into the desert, circling the same roundabout for days on end or that just got hacked to drive through the city until their GPS log trail spells out "BUTTS".

I picture the robot car herder riding back into town, standing atop a herd of rescued cars, his cowboy hat silhouetted against the sun on the horizon. Godspeed, noble car herder. Godspeed.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Thank you, Mr Car Herder, you've saved our village!
PPS - Okay, I'm getting carried away now. I'll stop.

A reverse-secret society

I "started" a reverse secret society as a joke, whose membership consists of everyone who hasn't heard of it yet. It's so secret that its own members don't even know it exists. Congratulations on your excommunication! You are now a non-member of "The Ignoramii". That name was suggested by one of the first non-members on the original Facebook post that exposed (and therefore began shrinking) the membership from "everyone in the world" to "everyone but a few of my closest friends". And now to "everyone but the readers of my blog, too". It's like Godel's Incompleteness Theorem applied to secret societies.

It's just a silly, strange joke, of course, but it makes me laugh. For instance, can I be said to have created it, since, by the time I made it up, I was no longer a member? Maybe I'm more like the "discoverer". Does that suggested name have any validity at all, since it was also created by a non-member? There's no way back in (except, I suppose, amnesia) and no way for anyone to truly define anything about the society, either. Also, anyone outside the society can kick people out, but those inside can't invite anyone in.

It reminds me a bit of "Wonko the Sane" in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, who built his house inside-out and called it "Outside the Asylum", because he realised the world had gone insane. Also a bit like Futurama's "Voter Apathy Party" where you can only get in if you don't care enough to get in. I also like imagining the conversations it could bring up:

"Hey, what's it like being a member of the reverse-secret society?"
"The what?"
"The secret society where you're only a member until you hear about it."
"Huh. It was fine, I guess, until just now."
"Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry."

Mokalus of Borg

PS - You can try to submit your resignation to just about anyone you meet.
PPS - The problem is, once they try to accept it, they're out, too.

Crème fraîche

It bothers me, because I'm not really a foodie, that "crème fraîche" means "fresh cream" when translated literally, but really means a specific type of cream, soured with a bacterial culture. Then, of course, in France, "crème fraîche" actually does just mean "fresh cream", because the world is a deeply confusing place.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I've been watching Masterchef.
PPS - There are few other ways crème fraîche could insert itself into my consciousness.

Hotel price comparison comparison, ad nauseum

Every hotel has a booking website. To make the comparisons easier, people have set up separate price comparison websites. But which one of those should you use? Perhaps we need a hotel price meta-comparison website, to help you find the best hotel comparison website before you start actually comparing hotels.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Just make sure we don't set up more than one of those.
PPS - Because that would get really messy.

The hoon solution

Possibly one of the best things we could do to combat "hoons" on the roads is to create cars that just make it feel like you're going much, much faster than you really are. That way, you can get your 200kph speed kicks at 50kph instead.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - But then again, I gather that is kind of the opposite of the point.
PPS - In that it doesn't matter what you feel, as long as other people know you're cool, because fast cars.

How to avoid oppressive governments as a giant tech company

Your best option as a tech giant, like Google, to avoid oppressive governments is probably to buy a small country and run the government yourself like a dictatorship. That way you don't have to have any laws you don't like, and you don't have to answer to any other organisations at all. Plus you can plaster your logo all over every building, and finally start working on that private army you always wanted.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - That is, until someone invades you to liberate your people.
PPS - Which is pretty much inevitable at that point.

Inception plus Facebook equals sleep socialising

If we had those dream-sharing machines from Inception, and they could operate over the internet to connect with, for instance, our Facebook friends, then we could get days of socialising done while we sleep. It would be like going to a party where the food is infinite and non-fattening, the booze is free and the consequences of your actions are only as permanent as a video game. The problems of sharing your subconscious with your friends, however, are too many to list.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - Also, sleeping with a needle in your arm every night might not appeal to people.
PPS - I would assume it actually works with some kind of head gear.

The Mysterious Disappearance of Thirteen

There's an episode of House M.D. where Dr Remy "Thirteen" Hadley just up and disappears, much to everyone's confusion. Obviously now we know what happened. She got stuck in TRON.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I bet that happens a lot.
PPS - Or if not, it should be a standard way to write characters out of shows.