Cargo Cults and Roses

Terry Pratchett described Cargo Cults (though I’m sure he wasn’t the first, he just happened to be the best) thusly paraphrased:  A ship gets blown off course circa 16^th century and finds itself, after the storm has passed, within sight of an island.  Upon landing, the crew is met by the locals who are more than happy to be of assistance by way of livestock, water, and fresh fruits in exchange for priceless baubles (priceless here being synonymous with worthless), alcohol, and shiny iron weapons. 

The ship then sails away, able to complete its journey, while the indigenous population gets drunk and kills each other over bright rocks.  Eventually though, the booze runs out, the baubles lose their shine, the iron dulls.  So, what are the people to do?  Far removed from regular shipping routes, how do they get more ships to come?

           

Well, what attracts ships?  More ships, obviously.  They start building, from bamboo and palm fronds, a false ship.  And they wait.  And, here’s the important part, it works.  Whether from weather or word of mouth from the last crew, another boat sails by.  This time, they see the false ship but assume it’s the real thing, and if there’s a ship there, it must be there for a reason.  Two ships attract even more ships and so on.

An easier way to understand this whole concept is; If you build it, they will come. 

Point being is that the internet works much the same way.  Padding your own stats will work quite effectively.  However, I’m either too lazy, or too honest (money on the former) to claim that I’ve had exactly 1,123,234 hits in the last two days.  Word of mouth…word of computer, whatever.  Spread it.

On roses:

What’s in a name?  Quite a bit apparently.  A rather fantastic point was brought up by my new (official) editor of Trader: “I’m waiting for the astronomer to come back, because I care about her…  But I think her name should be something else.  Her name doesn’t fit what I picture in my head [sic].” 

Adrienne Bottom, Bottom being her maiden name as I cannot spell her ridiculously complicated Polish looking married name, a long time friend with a penchant for technical writing and engineering has taken up the mantle.  Which isn’t to say I don’t appreciate the continuous stream of comments and corrections, she’s here for quality control.

What?  Where were we?  Oh right… 

It got me thinking about naming conventions.  Fox’s Firefly – the least subtle show when it came to naming its characters – had Mal the anti-hero, River the graceful kung-fu girl, Inara Serra the angelic space hooker, and Adam Baldwin. 

It begs the question of what a suitable name for a female astronomer that you want to come back should be.  I’m quite comfortable with Trader, Celeste, Keian, Jax, Lily, and Nala.  I was never any good at ancillary characters because if they weren’t coming back, I didn’t want to care about them.  But I suppose you should care about all of them, that’s what makes it a good story.

Whatever Juliet may have thought, names are, in fact, important.

Bet you weren’t expecting all that build up for just that.

Suck it.