Baby Movement

Babies are cute. Here are some videos for you to enjoy, this is my daughter Henny when she was about 9-12 months old and just figuring how to move around.

First she learned to spin in circles:

Then she used that to move around a little:

She did what we call "the butt-skootch" for a couple months before she started walking:

Isn't she adorable?

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Talking

There is a saying often uttered by characters in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones on TV) which I find very apt for the world today: "Words are Wind."

Recently, I overheard a conversation where two people were discussing the "rape problem" our society has. You know the one, where every girl out there has been raped by guys repeatedly since she was old enough to talk? Well, their solution to this societal problem is to "talk about it more". This struck me as absurd, talking about things will not fix anything; but in the minds of these socialists that is the solution to everything.

I wonder why they think this way? Is it because our news organizations focus our attention on what is being said instead of what is being done? Let's take a quick look at todays headlines:

• Trump talks with Macron and Merkel - Talk!
  
• Stephen Colbert Explains Trump Tweets - Talk!
  
• Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore. - Talk!
  
• Stormy Daniels' Lawyer Michael Avenatti Challenges Sean Hannity to On-Air Face-Off - Talk!
  
• Yeti calls NRA claims 'inaccurate' says it has 'unwavering' belief in Second Amendment - Talk!

I just want to put it out there, somebody saying something is not news. I do not want to read quotes from twitter in a newspaper. News should cover actions, things that happen, things people do. If somebody uses twitter to announce a change of government policy, that is news but still a horrible choice of venue for the announcement.

And of course, the honorable mention of the worst set of offenders is given to Reddit, where people sit around talking about what other people said about what some other people said. And then my co-worker comes by and tries to start a conversation about what he read those guys on Reddit saying, and I really have to hold down the urge to break into the action of smashing his computer over his head.

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Book Review: The Hunger Games

I recently read The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. The story is set in a distopian future, where one city conquered the world and reminds all their subjects of their place once a year by forcing each city to send a couple children as tribute to play in a deathmatch contest.

The underlying idea has potential to be turned into a good book, unfortunately this is not it. This is a world with the political depth of a twelve-year old girl. The remaining population of the world seems to be less than you would find in Delaware. And to make the whole thing even less believable, the whole world consists of the current United States. Yet these down-trodden people never even consider the idea that they could just leave the stupid place they are in.

The whole story shoehorns the characters into a vicious gladiatorial contest where a bunch of children are thrown into a wilderness and have to kill each other to win. But the problem is that we know that is where we are going and the journey there is too railroaded, and once we get there, the kids don't seem to want to do it, and so we get a boring series of scenes with the main character hiding in the wilderness. And then they go and change the rules to ex machina allow the budding romance to proceed, letting there be two winners instead of just one. At that point the reader knows what is going to happen: main character is going to survive and take her boyfriend with her. The whole book seems to be trying to give you a sense of danger, but it never quite gets there.

I guess you might like this book if you are a ten-year-old boy, but there are so many book out there that are so much better, so don't waste your time.

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Allowable Boy and Girl Names

From the Logs:

Mircea Popescu: Names like "Trace Mayer" SHOULD be obsolete. Get a fucking human name why don't you. What is this Mug Costanza and Rifling Jones bs. Unless of course there's some King Trace in the glorious history of that great nation of Africa that I'm unfamiliar with.
Asciilifeform: Hey, if we had a Joe Stack, why not king trace. (is there a, e.g., Henry Heap?)
MP: Joe is fine. what the fuck reason did Mrs Mayer have to eschew calling her boy Rachel or whatever the fuck they do in her tribe.

PeterL: What kind of funny name is "Mircea"?
MP: PeterL ah, but in the god forsaken country of Romania, there's a bunch of kings called that.

PeterL: So you can only name people after kings?
MP: PeterL yes. You may only name kids after famous dead people. Either kings or saints. Pick.

PeterL: How about family members?
MP: PeterL well family members were named through the same process, so...

So, to build on the wisdom of Mircea Popescu, I figure it would be nice to have a baby name book made not with definitions of the names but with historical instances of the names. Here I list all the boy names which are presidents of the US, Kings of England or Scotland (which is where my family came from before moving to the US), governors of Michigan (where I currently live), and my own family names. The girls are mostly wives of those listed above, the list would only be about three names else-wise.

Here is a complete list of the boy names of my tribe:

Aaron Abraham Albert Alexander Alfred Andrew Arthur Austin
Barak Benjamin Brigham
Calvin Charles Chester
David Donald Duncan Dwight
Edgar Edmund Edward Edwin Elliott Elwood Ezra
Franklin
George Gerald Gordon Grover
Harold Harry Heber Henry Herbert
James John Joseph Josiah
Kenneth Kinsley
Lorenzo Lyndon
Macbeth Malcomb Martin Maurice Millard Moses
Peter
Reed Richard Robert Ronald Russel Rutherford
Spencer Stephen
Theodore Thomas
Ulysses
Ward Warren Wilber Wilford William Woodrow
Zachary

And here is a complete list of the girl names of my tribe:

Abigail Adelaide Alexandra Anna Anne Augusta
Barbara Bess Beth Betty
Camilla Caroline Catherine Charlotte Clara Clarissa Cora
Dantzel Diane Dolley
Edith Eleanor Eliza Elizabeth Ellen Elva Emily Emma
Frances Flora Florence
Grace Gretchen
Hannah Helen Henrietta Hillary
Ida Ila
Jane Janeen Jacqueline Jennifer Julia
Lady Laura Lou Louisa Louise Lucia Lucretia Lucy
Mamie Margaret Maria Marjorie Martha Mary Melania Michelle Miriam
Nancy
Patricia
Rachel Rosalynn
Sarah Sophia
Theresa
Victoria
Wendy

You may note that this list is segregated by boys/girls. I do not agree with the current trend of having gender neutral names.

If you think of an obvious name I missed, please comment and I will add it to the list!

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Caffeine

This post is just me trying some stuff out to test how the blogging platform works. Rather than just saying "testing, testing", I thought I would include a nice picture I drew of a molecule I like to consume.

Caffeine

Shown above is the molecular structure of the caffeine molecule, also known as 1,3,7-trimethylxanthene. It is a stimulant found naturally in plants such as coffee and tea.

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Contact Information

As this is a blogger.com hosted blog, you can probably guess, but I will say it explicitly: You can send email correspondence to my gmail account, PeterMLambert@gmail.com. Please send important or confidential information encrypted to my GPG public key.

It is important to use encryption. Some people say, "If you are not doing something wrong, you have nothing to hide", which it total baloney. Instead, I believe that all communication should be kept private by default, and if the government wants to see what I am saying then they will have to come ask me with a properly constructed warrant.

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Programming

I just thought I would link to my GitHub account. There are just a couple projects there, I think the most interesting one is the implementation of the Keccak hash function in Ada.

A little background about me and programming:

When I was in college, I took a semester class in the C programming language. That was a long time ago, and I don't use C much, but I can mostly understand what programs written in C are doing.

Later on, a friend suggested that I check out the Python programming language. I dove into Python, and I found it much more accessible than C. It helped me understand more concepts and abstractions used in programming.

More recently, I was introduced to the Ada programming language. This is an elegant language, with a published specification, and the things like type safety force you to be more methodical than Python. Programming remains a hobby for me, and I don't have much time to do it, but so far Ada is the most satisfying programming language I have used.

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