Why "The Center Gnome"

I want this blog to be responsive, and the first questions I got were what the name means.  So I decided that I would go ahead and explain.

I call myself a Radical Centrist.  There are a few reasons for that.  First off, in the US these days centrism is a pretty radical stance to take.  I confuse a lot of people when they talk to me and run across some political point where we disagree. Frequently Liberal folks think that I am Liberal, and Conservative folks I talk to think I am Conservative.  This kind of confusion is also increased because I tend to fairly extreme positions on some issues, and my positions on wedge issues can seem random to some people.  The extremity of some of my views is why I call myself a radical.

Exactly what I mean by radical centrism should become clear over time as I write more entries.  Well, as long as I actually write intelligibly it should.

I find myself wanting to write a lot, but the baby is making that rather difficult the last couple days.  She seems to not want me to put her down, and it is hard to write a blog entry with one hand while laying down with a baby on ones chest.

The second part of the name is rather more whimsical.  I grew up in Nome, Alaska.  When I moved to Seattle in 1999 I was friends with a number of other people named Jon.  So people needed a way to distinguish me.  Thus the nickname Nome-Jon was born.  Some people confused the spelling and wrote it Gnome-Jon.  I thought this was a fun reversal of the misspelling in The Gnome from Nome, and it kind of made me the Gnome from Nome.  I've had fun with that name ever since.

And just in case I wanted to walk away from the Gnome nickname my friend Nate made that rather difficult when he found the Evil Gnome in Fallout: New Vegas.  It hides in a cave, and as you can see from my profile picture it actually does look kinda like me.

So, there you have it.  I am a Centrist Gnome from Nome, thus the Center Gnome.

P.S.  Also I thought that "Center Gnome"  was suggestive of "Metronome."  I liked the idea of subtly suggesting a device that keeps a steady beat.