Presidential election rules of thumb

Now that both major party tickets have been decided for 2008, it's a fitting time to look at a couple of rules of thumb for predicting a winner.

Americans like presidents with British names
British here means vaguely English, with fairly bland Scots or Irish names, e.g. McKinley, Kennedy, or Reagan, being included. 39 of 43 presidents have had British names. The exceptions? Van Buren, T. Roosevelt, and F. Roosevelt were all descendants of the New Amsterdam Dutch elite and thus were New York's equivalent of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Eisenhower was a commanding general in a victorious war, a German-American equivalent of Jackson or Grant. Besides, he had the good British-sounding nickname "Ike."

For 2008, advantage: McCain.

The three-syllable ticket
Since World War II, the major party ticket whose surnames total closer to three syllables is 9-2-4 in winning the presidency. Since the mass adoption of color TV (before 1968), the tendency is even more pronounced: 8-0-2. Why? Non-British names are often more than two syllables (e.g. Eisenhower, Kefauver, Goldwater, Ferraro, Dukakis, Lieberman). Also, a common stress pattern in a three-syllable ticket is AaB (Reagan-Bush, Clinton-Gore), which provides an aural combination of power and restraint more pleasing to the ear than the thudding AB (Ford-Dole, Bush-Quayle, Dole-Kemp), the dog-trot AaBb (Carter-Mondale), or the mouth-mush of any five-syllable ticket (Mondale-Ferraro, Dukakis-Bentsen).

For 2008, advantage: McCain-Palin (4 syllables to 5).

Xenosociology 1: Division of Labor

I've known for a while that essentially every intelligent alien species would invent money, but it only occurred to me today that they also would invent the division of labor. Because essentially every intelligent alien species will be social (for reasons I'll address in another post), they would be able to break a complex task into simpler, specialized tasks for the different members of their group. Because they would be embroiled in intraspecies conflict (ditto), the need for military advantage would drive specialization.

Why you should care about the Mauritania coup

First, in case you haven't heard, here's la Wik on the subject.

Second, I assume you don't care. This seems a safe assumption. Furthermore, if you do already care, I suspect it's for the political correct reasons endemic to overeducated members of Western civilization--soldiers should stay out of politics, former president Abdallahi was elected (with the votes of about 12% of the population!), the Pentagon was probably behind it, etc.

Alternatively, you might care because Mauritanians are Muslim and you're a resident of the dar al-Harb. Although I respect your right to define an Other in order to try to galvanize your pseudotraditionalist vision for Western civilization, no, that's not it either.

What's the better reason you should care? Because there are four trends, two technological and two social, that will make Mauritania important in the next few decades. Do I hear laughter? Shall we go back in time to 1955 and ask your (grand)father if the US would lose a war in Vietnam within twenty years? We all have tidy visions of the future, derived by extrapolating the present, and they're all wrong.

Why will Mauritania be important? Background: it has a million square kilometers of the Sahara desert and about 450 miles of Atlantic coastline. (Map and data from the CIA World Factbook).

Trend 1: photovoltaics, aka solar cells, are continually getting cheaper and more efficient. But regardless of the efficiency of the solar cell itself, you'll get more energy from it if it's located in a desert. Mauritania is almost entirely desert. Hmmm. We could generate a lot of electricity there, but how can we get it to the US (or Western Europe)?

Trend 2: materials that are superconductors at liquid nitrogen temperatures are well known. We already know how to handle liquid nitrogen (trust me; I grew up on a farm with beef cattle and I've made liquid nitrogen ice cream in the lab) and the exotic copper alloys will get cheaper to make. A 4000-mile superconducting cable, sheathed in a liquid nitrogen jacket, laid across the Atlantic is not impossible, though it will probably always be relatively expensive. Don't we have a million square kilometers of desert from LA to El Paso?

Trend 3: Environmentalist NIMBYism. To provide an appreciable amount of our power needs will take a lot of land area covered with solar cells. True, unlike wind power, the Kennedys don't have vacation homes in the desert Southwest, but celebrities, the wealthy, and local politicians have a fondness for places like Santa Fe and Sedona. Also, there may actually be real environmental impacts from covering half of Arizona with solar cells. Just like concrete, they're impervious to rainwater, and desert plants generally aren't shade tolerant. But we have to export the environmental impact somewhere....

Trend 4: Post-Bono dogooderism. Though an uncouth sentiment in Western civilization today, the UNHCR/foreign aid approach to dealing with the Third World has failed. Not from lack of money--in recent years, Mauritania received 15% of GDP as foreign aid. (Aid totals here, GDP here). Eventually, even high-ranking people at NGOs and government bureaucracies will realize handouts don't promote literacy, education, health, women's rights, minority rights, manumission, etc., and instead, a welfare-to-work, Operation Bootstrap, handup-not-handout strategy will be more effective. (This process will be helped when the bureaucrats and NGO leaders realize their organizations' sizes, budgets, and prestige will remain large and continue to grow regardless of the particular services they provide). Figleaf neoliberal globalization with some pleasant rhetoric and an NGO's customers, that is, its donors who want to buy good feelings by giving money to help the poor, will lap it up. (Insert image of purchases from Pier 1 loaded into the back of a Volvo station wagon). Mauritania will be a golden opportunity for figleafed neoliberal globalization--jobs for the locals! A few megawatts for the local electricity supply!