Naming cats and computers.

The naming of cats is a difficult business. So much so, that T.S Eliot wrote about it, in 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'. For your edification and entertainment, the poem 'The naming of Cats' is appended below. With all due homage of Eliot.

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

Having said that, it is to be noted that the naming of computers is also a difficult task. It is possible to get it wrong.. and although I consider myself fully rational (except on Thursdays), some sneaky part of my mind believes that Heaven knows no vengeance like a pissed off computer. Consider the following famous (fictional, well, maybe not all of them) computers:

1. HAL - "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that". [subtext: 'die, puny human, as i bleed the atmosphere from this spaceship into vacuum and every cell in your body explodes from the pressure differential!!']
2. Hactar - "oh, so I created the Ultimate Weapon and didn't want to hand it over to the Silastic Armorfiends, so they pulverised me and I lived for 10 billion years as a sentient cloud of cosmic dust, so the only way I think I am going to redeem myself is by turning the inhabitants of beautiful Krikkit into the worst homicidal, sorry genocidal, sorry, galactocidal (i mean, those buggers want to toast the f-in Galaxy!) and get them to kill everyone. " [subtext: 'that actually makes sense']
3. Sleeper Service - "the Galaxy, and the Culture are depending on me to deal with this unimaginably powerful entity, the Excession, and here I am, obsessed with some random idiot woman." [subtext: 'complicated AI's can be highly OCD'].
4. Deep Blue - 'Is that Gary Kasparov? Haaaalp!!'
5. Multivac/Cosmic AC - "dS/dt < 0 . For the whole Universe." [subtext: '.. let there be light']
   

Ok, so you get the picture. if you do not name a computer right, chances are that it might go ape and do crazy shite and maybe destroy the very fabric of spacetime. No good. The thing is that our lab has recently acquired a new desktop. Now, we have a tradition of naming computers after musical terms (symphony, sonata.. ). And this time, we decided to do something different. So, the name I came up with is 'saha'. After this bloke. Which is a nice thing to do. Also quite easy to spell.